Free Queen Camilla by Sue Townsend

into the house and came out moments later with a bucket of water, which she threw over the two trysting dogs. They flew apart immediately and the Queen angrily clipped the lead on Harris’s collar and dragged him back to Hell Close.
    Several people had stopped her on the way to say that they would be sorry to see her leaving the Fez. Maddo Clarke, skunk dealer and single father of seven unruly boys, said, ‘We seen it on the news, ’ow you might be going home to Buckingham Palace like. I said to one of my customers, ’ow you brung a bit of class to the neighbourhood like.’
    Violet said, after Maddo had lurched away, ‘I know it’s not the done thing to talk about why we’re all in the Exclusion Zone, but do you know why Maddo got sent here?’
    The Queen bent her head to hear Violet’s story.
    Everyone in Hell Close had at least one dog, except for Maddo Clarke, who had been forbidden by a magistrates court after the five dogs he’d owned at the time had destroyed the council house he rented and made it unfit for human habitation. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals had brought a prosecution, claiming that Maddo’s dogs were emaciated and covered in sores caused by untreated flea bites. Maddo had defended himself in court, maintaining that a thin dog was a fit dog and that fleas were nature’s natural parasites. When the five dogs had been rounded up and taken away, Maddo was bereft; he started drinking heavily and then stumbled into the brotherhood of the drug-dependent.
    Finally, when to his great disappointment, his wife Hazel gave birth to a seventh boy, Maddo cracked, and under the influence of drugs and drink tried to snatch a baby girl from a maternity-ward nursery and substitute his newborn son for the day-old child. He was caught trying to remove the kidnapped child’s plastic identity bracelet with his teeth, earning him the sobriquet of ‘Wolf Man’ after a headline in the popular press: ‘WOLF MAN GNAWS ON BABY’S ARM.’
    For some reason, Maddo had always blamed his five-year prison sentence and subsequent banishment to an Exclusion Zone on dogs.
    As Violet and the Queen turned into Hell Close, the Queen saw Camilla in her front garden planting bulbs. Camilla looked up and said, ‘Beverley Threadgold told me you were having a tooth pulled by the pliers woman. Was it wretched?’
    The Queen prodded the gap where the molar had been with the tip of her tongue and said, ‘Not as wretched as watching one’s dog copulate in public.’
    Later, after a rest on the sofa, the Queen was cleaning her front-room windows when she saw Arthur Grice’s yellow Rolls-Royce draw up outside her house. Grice’s Dobermann, Rocky, could be seen snarling on the back seat. The Queen ducked out of sight and hoped that Grice was not about to call on her; she was not dressed for company. She was wearing an apron and slippers and had two plastic rollers in the front of her hair.
    To her great annoyance, she heard an aggressive knock on the front door. Harris and Susan ran into the hallway and barked their usual hysterical warning. The Queen tore her apron off, snatched the rollers out of her hair and stuffed them into a drawer of the Chippendale bureau in the hall. As she reluctantly opened the door, Arthur Grice removed his custom-made baseball cap and swept it in front of his bulky body with a theatrical gesture, reminiscent of a bad actor in a Restoration drama. He then gave a deep bow and waited for the Queen to speak first.
    Arthur had ordered Sandra, his wife, to download and print out a few pages on royal etiquette from the Web. The pages had told him he must not address the Queen first, but must wait until she had spoken to him.He must not touch her on any part of her body. He must call her ‘Your Majesty’ the first time he spoke to her, and thereafter call her ‘Ma’am’.
    After a brief silence, the Queen said, ‘Mr Grice, how do you do?’
    Grice lifted his head and gave the Queen one of