‘If we don’t do it, somebody else will,’ Philip pointed out. ‘That genie’s out of the bottle, I’m afraid.’
Deborah looked despairing: this was supposed to be a party. But Philip was enjoying himself. The university students gathered round him, all talking at once, and they wandered off together, with Bridget in tow, arguing the merits and otherwise of mutually assured destruction. Deborah followed them like an anxious mother hen, glancing back to the Queen with a look of horror.
‘I’m sorry, ma’am,’ Paul said, grabbing a couple of champagne coupes from a passing waiter. ‘Bridget’s having one of those moments. She mad on a boy who’s a physicist at Oxford. Convinced the world’s about to end. Forget Cecil Beaton – she’d rather be on a rowing boat in the middle of the ocean, chanting for peace.’
‘But we’ve got peace,’ the Queen said.
Paul shrugged. ‘You and I know that, ma’am. They take it all for granted, these young people. They want us to go around shaking hands with Soviets and turning swords into ploughshares. They don’t know what’s going on behind the Iron Curtain . . .’ He stopped and slapped his forehead. ‘I’m sorry. Enough! Let me start again.’ He reset his face to its normal, suave, gently amused setting and asked, ‘Have you heard about Bill Astor’s new swimming pool?’
Bill Astor was the redoubtable Nancy’s son and a fellow horse owner.
‘Didn’t he have it put in with the money he won when Ambiguity won the Oaks in ’fifty-three?’ the Queen asked, grateful for the change in subject. Although she was rather jealous of that little win. She wouldn’t mind winning the Oaks herself.
Paul grinned. ‘Of course you’d know! Nancy wouldn’t let him have one at first, but Bill can afford it now. It’s in the walled garden. Would you like to see it?’
The Queen was pleased at the chance to go outside, and she was always curious about swimming pools. They were such an extravagance but also very practical for one’s health. Paul accompanied her as they wandered past the converted stables, where Bill lived, to a lovely walled space where a body of water a bit smaller than a tennis court glinted temptingly in the moonlight. Four women in bathing suits and rubber caps performed tricks together in perfect time. What Shakespeare would have made of synchronised swimmers, the Queen didn’t know. But they looked very graceful as they rose and twirled and disappeared under the water, save only for one pointed foot.
After that, a group of Guards officers appeared through a door in the wall and announced that horses and carts were taking guests down to the river. The Queen never missed an opportunity to meet a horse, and found herself cheerfully accompanied down the winding drive to the riverside.
She loved this spot. Windsor Castle had many things, including a medieval chapel and a thousand years of history, but it didn’t have a riverside mooring where one could keep a boat. Here, on a gentle stretch of the Thames, several couples were taking to the water. It was a gentle evening in early May, and England was at its best. The Guards officers vied with each other to take her out on the river, but she politely declined. The boats were pretty to look at, but not entirely safe, she decided. Not with the flickering lights and the general level of inebriation. As the officers drifted away, she was happy to stand by the boathouse and watch.
It was easy to spot the debutantes who hoped the evening – or the summer – would end in a proposal. They arranged themselves as attractively as they could in the launches and rowing boats, looking doe-eyed at their partners. Others sat stiffly, looking out into the dark. At one point, she thought she saw Jeremy Radnor-Milne emerging from the Astors’ famous electric canoe, but it turned out to be the real David Niven. He was wearing some sort of fairy headdress and was quickly surrounded by female admirers, much as Bridget had been surrounded by men. The Queen decided to join them – she was a fan, too – but as the film star headed for a buggy waiting to take revellers back up the hill, she felt heavy footsteps beside her.
‘Your Majesty!’
She turned round to see the portly Duke of Maidstone, dressed as Prospero, clutching a hip flask. Bunny Maidstone had been a very good-looking man in his youth, but the contents of many hip flasks over the years had made him go to seed. He didn’t seem to have noticed, and behaved like a matinee idol. Unlike the real film star, up ahead, who was climbing into the cart without her. It filled up with squealing women and set off.
‘Bunny!’ she said politely. The duke had been called this since his schooldays, for reasons lost in the mists of time. ‘How are you?’
‘All the better for seeing you, ma’am. You’re looking delectable, may I say? Trousers! How funny. D’you mind if I tag along?’
The Queen did, but couldn’t say so. She wished Philip was with her. He’d have told the duke exactly what to do in no uncertain terms, but she simply wasn’t made that way.
‘I didn’t know you knew Deborah,’ she said, to make conversation while they waited for more carts to come.
‘I don’t, really,’ he admitted. ‘But my elder boy races with Paul’s outfit. He’s got a bit of a thing for Bridget. She’s fallen in with this Trotsky crowd, though. One hopes she’ll grow out of it.’
‘Mmm.’
The Queen looked desperately up the drive, but there was no sign of more horses.
‘Did you see the Astors have got a swimming pool?’ Bunny scoffed. ‘Terribly infra dig.’
The Queen thought it infra dig to dismiss the prize possessions of one’s host, but she had often noticed that some dukes thought themselves above that sort of nicety.
‘I ask you!’ he went on. ‘Astors. They may be viscounts these days, but they’ll always be hoteliers at heart.’
‘We have a pool ourselves,’ she reminded him. ‘My father had it put in when we were little.’
‘Ah yes!’ Bunny took another swig from his hip flask. ‘That makes sense. You wouldn’t want the whole of London crowding in to ogle at two girls’ adolescent bodies . . .’
‘I thought this one looked rather charming,’ she said quickly, eager to move off the topic of adolescent bodies – hers or anyone else’s. A buggy arrived at last, with room for two, and Bunny sat snugly beside her. So snugly in fact that she said she’d rather get out after a couple of minutes and walk back across the lawns. She remembered Fiona Matherton-Smith’s mother telling her once about ‘NSITs – men who were ‘not safe in taxis’. Bunny wouldn’t try anything, but she knew how it felt.
The lawns were full of people, at least. Fairies cavorted around them and the sound of laughter came from behind a thick laurel bush. Several Romeos and Juliets passed in the opposite direction. There were a couple of Queen Elizabeths in farthingales and ruffs, which the Queen thought was cheating slightly. As Bunny insisted on walking her back to the house, which still seemed a long way away, she noticed that for once her costume was doing her no favours. No one recognised her and came to the rescue. She realised that she relied on this happening more often than she cared to admit.
Her attention was caught by a very beautiful woman on the arm of a man in a toga. She was wearing sandals, turquoise jewellery and a tight, gold lamé dress that reminded the Queen of the one worn by Marilyn Monroe.
‘Cleopatra,’ Bunny said, following her gaze. ‘Clever. Oh my! Look who it is!’
‘Who?’ the Queen asked.
‘That’s Lucy Seymour, with her husband. Bit of an ice queen. No wonder Stephen . . . But anyway, I’m surprised to see them here tonight. Very brave. Ha!’
He bowed lavishly to them as they passed, and they both looked slightly horrified and walked on quickly. They, too, didn’t recognise the Queen, although she thought the man in the toga looked familiar.