Free Queen Camilla by Sue Townsend Page B

the sound of the water got on her nerves.
    ‘Well, perhaps when you leave ’ere, you’ll visit me and my wife at home, Your Majesty. We’ve got a glass floor in the living room so you can watch the watergoing by. We’re both nature lovers,’ he said, ‘like yourself.’
    The Queen gave him one of her frosty smiles but he did not respond. She walked to the front door and opened it, giving Grice no option but to leave the house. Harris and Susan stood on the doorstep barking at the Dobermann on the back seat.
    ‘
Heil
, Rocky, we hope you fall through the glass floor and drown!’ barked Harris. Rocky threw himself against the car window in a frenzy of frustrated anger.
    Grice shouted, ‘Get down, you stupid bleeder!’ Once inside the car he added, ‘Another do like that, Rocky, and I’ll have your balls cut off and fried up for me tea.’
    Rocky lay down on the back seat and calmed himself. Grice didn’t make idle threats.
    The Queen realized she could no longer ignore the possibility that she would have to once again take up her royal duties, and decided that the Royal Family should have a meeting to discuss the possibility of their return to public life. But first she would visit her husband and ask him for advice.
    HRH Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, had been confined to bed for two years after suffering a stroke that snatched away his vision, memory and mobility. He was a long-stay resident in the Frank Bruno House nursing home at the far end of Arthur Road, which ran through the centre of the Fez, a fifteen-minute walk from Hell Close. He languished in a dark back room that he shared with a garrulous former trade union official – the wheelchair-bound Harold Bunion,aka ‘Bolshie’ Bunion. Bolshie talked in his sleep with the same aggrieved tone he used in the day, when he was fully, aggressively, awake.
    The Duke of Edinburgh was confined to his bed and considered himself a prisoner of Bolshie’s. He constantly complained to the staff that he had been moved from Heaven, the royal palaces, into Hell, the Fez, and was now living in Purgatory.
    Dogs were not allowed inside Frank Bruno House, so the Queen tied Harris and Susan by their leads to a wooden bench bearing a little bronze plaque, on which was written ‘This seat is dedicated to the memory of Wilf Toby: 1922–1997’. Until recently, residents of Frank Bruno House had been allowed, even encouraged, to sit on the bench. Others had sat nearby in their wheelchairs, to take the air and watch life on the estate pass by. However, the new manager, Mrs Cynthia Hedge, had stopped this practice. She was a firm-jawed woman who maintained that she was introducing a ‘locked-door policy’, to protect the residents from a possible terrorist attack.
    The Queen pressed the intercom at the side of the door and waited in the cold wind for it to be answered. Eventually a voice crackled something incomprehensible. The Queen shouted, ‘It’s Elizabeth Windsor,’ into the intercom.
    Several long minutes passed, during which an old lady in a nightgown, with hair like a dandelion gone to seed, made obscene gestures at the Queen through the plate-glass door. Eventually, Mrs Hedge herself, not often to be seen in contact with the residents, led theold lady away, then returned and opened the door to the Queen.
    Mrs Hedge said brusquely, ‘Identity card, please.’
    The Queen said, ‘I’m terribly sorry but I have temporarily mislaid my card.’
    ‘Then I can’t let you in,’ said Mrs Hedge. ‘Now you’ll have to excuse me, we are short-staffed. Three of the Somalis have not turned up for work.’
    The Queen laughed. She said, ‘But you know who I am, Mrs Hedge.’ She laughed again and tried to pass through the door.
    Mrs Hedge barred her way, saying, ‘I’m sorry you have such a light-hearted attitude towards security and the war against terror, Mrs Windsor.’
    The Queen said, ‘Mrs Hedge, I do not think that Frank Bruno House is a likely target for