‘Oh, all right. The old and the new. I can see that.’
‘The question is, can you feel it, ma’am?’
The Queen thought about it and her face lit up at last. ‘Yes! I really can. I think you have something, Daphne. I know people who feel as I do. Slightly frightened, I mean. Not wanting to let go of everything that’s got us this far. But we must look forwards, mustn’t we? We must.’
‘Wonderful, ma’am. That’s the first six minutes practically in the can. Let’s work on it tomorrow. Right now, I could do with some gin. Couldn’t you?’
Chapter 37
They had two gin and tonics, followed by quite a lot of champagne, a glass of wine with dinner (Daphne had three), and a little whisky to round off the evening. There was no more talk of speeches, or television, and Daphne thought the Queen looked infinitely more relaxed.
They had been joined for dinner by a couple of local landowners, an artist friend of Philip’s and the Queen’s racing manager. By the time they got to charades in front of an unseasonal fire, the party was raucous. Hair was let down; jokes were blue; even Daphne relaxed, and Philip was in his element.
After a few rounds of charades, someone suggested Nebuchadnezzar. It was explained to one of the younger equerries that this was like charades, but involved whole scenes, with each team dressing up to present them. They raced around the house gathering tablecloths and coal scuttles, performing silly skits and getting gradually drunker.
‘The Ascot Races’ was a popular one, with one of the ladies-in-waiting holding up two coffee cups as binoculars and miming agony, ecstasy and then agony again as a viscount, Sir Hugh and Daphne herself galloped by on all fours.
‘Oh, it’s me!’ the Queen shouted with delight. ‘Winning the New Stakes and then losing the Gold Cup! Atlas was pipped at the post. It was ghastly! You are clever. Hugh, were you Lester Piggott or Zarathustra?’
‘The horse, I think,’ Sir Hugh said, straightening up with difficulty.
It was the Queen’s turn next, and Daphne was the one to get it. Her Majesty stood to face the audience and waved her arms around. She held her fist to her chest. Her diamonds glittered in the lamplight. Was it champagne, or something more fervent behind her eyes? Her cousins and Philip’s artist friend, sat cross-legged on the floor in front of her, looked on, pretending to be mesmerised.
‘Billy Graham! Launching his crusade at Madison Square Garden!’ Daphne called out.
‘Oh, really?’ Philip said from beside her. ‘Well done. I thought it was Joan of Arc.’
Two equerries were next. At first, they pretended to play tennis in a dainty, ladylike way, and then one put on a big straw hat and presented the other with one of the dinner plates.
‘Me again!’ shouted the Queen. ‘At Wimbledon.’
Daphne, who had grown up in the theatre, felt that the equerry playing the Queen had made a decent fist of presenting the Rosewater trophy, but the one playing Althea Gibson, the winner, had been disappointingly unimaginative. He had played tennis like a ten-year-old schoolgirl, whereas Althea was a true athlete, better than any man in the room right now. A black woman, too – a real record-breaker. Daphne had watched the highlights of the match on a newsreel and wondered what dizzy heights of fame Althea would reach one day . . . or whether her achievement would be consigned to a footnote in history, as women so often were. Then it was her team’s go again.
‘The news, is it?’ one of the cousins muttered, slurring his s’s, as they gathered in a huddle to decide what to do. He made a suggestion that Daphne found in equal parts distasteful and fascinating, but the others agreed to it. All except Sir Hugh who, she noticed, made his excuses and disappeared. Was he horrified by the idea, she wondered, or did he simply need the lavatory? Roles were assigned among the others, and they did a quick prop hunt and rehearsal in the hall.
When they were ready, a sheet was held up by the equerries as a screen, facing the audience. The racing manager and the viscount arrived arm in arm, the latter being dressed in a tablecloth (the airing cupboard must be practically bare by now, Daphne thought) with a headband with cutlery stuffed into it, and clutching one of the flower arrangements from the dining table. They went behind the sheet, then Daphne and the lady-in-waiting sat down to play cards at the front. Each got up to disappear briefly behind the sheet. Then they moved to one side and the screen was lowered, to reveal the viscount lying supine on a velvet chaise longue, in a vest and white tennis shorts, the flowers clutched tightly to his chest, while the racing manager lay sprawled on the floor beside him with a hideous expression on his face and a red scarf wrapped around his neck. His acting was terrible – he would keep blinking and his grimace tended towards a smirk – but the effect was still startling.
There was a collective gasp from the audience.
Looking out, Daphne happened to catch the Queen jerk her head sharply towards her husband, so she glanced over to see why. It wasn’t obvious. Philip was frowning, but then, so were several other people.
‘Bad show!’ Philip called out.
‘Is it Hamlet?’ one of the cousins asked. ‘Or Othello? I always get those two confused.’
Someone shouted, ‘Chelsea murders!’ There was a smattering of applause, more for form’s sake than anything, and the viscount got up to take a bow.
‘Oh, forks in his hair!’ the cousin said. ‘The tart in the tiara! I get it now.’
The next five minutes were rather awkward as the murder scene seemed to have sobered a lot of people up and nobody felt like Nebuchadnezzar any more. Daphne saw that, under her powder, the young Queen was still pale. She went to sit beside her.
‘Is everything all right, ma’am?’
‘Absolutely, thank you, Daphne. Are you having fun?’
‘Absolutely,’ Daphne said, with the same level of truthfulness.
The Queen put on a sociable smile. ‘I thought William, who played Althea Gibson, was shockingly bad, didn’t you?’
Daphne relayed what she’d been thinking earlier about women being consigned to footnotes in history. ‘Our stories are usually told by men. I wonder how often they do us justice.’
‘Yes. I suppose mine will be, too,’ the Queen said ruefully.
Daphne had forgotten that she was talking to a historical figure. She realised that the Queen never really forgot that she was one.
‘They make an exception for queens,’ she suggested.
‘Perhaps they do. I’m often told I’m an honorary man. It comes in useful sometimes. I’d ask you to do it – write about me, I mean – but your stories are so dark. I’d end up dead in the second chapter.’
‘I’m not a historian,’ Daphne said. ‘I could never write that dark.’
The Queen smiled, but it was clear she wasn’t really listening again. She was looking at the chaise longue, where the viscount had been lying. Daphne was curious about that.
‘I’m sorry our scene upset you,’ she said.
The Queen looked at her sharply. ‘Oh, it didn’t at all.’
Daphne realised she had made a faux pas, to talk to the sovereign about her feelings. She tried quickly to make up for it.
‘It was just so theatrical, wasn’t it? Much too theatrical, if you ask me.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘A classic case of misdirection. My father used to do it all the time when he wanted to divert attention. There’s the girl, the beautiful innocent, clutching her flowers, and the man at her feet, the victim of a hideous crime. They set it up like something out of Victorian music hall. I do it in my novels sometimes, when I’m trying to slip something past the reader. The question is, what didn’t they want us to see?’