The Uncommon Reader: A Novella by Alan Bennett
Though he saw her every week, the occasional want of variation in the Queen’s attire and the sameness of her earrings went unnoticed by the prime minister.
It had not always been so, and at the start of his term of office he had frequently complimented the Queen on what Her Majesty was wearing and her always discreet jewellery. He was younger then, of course, and thought of it as flirting, though it was also a form of nerves. She was younger, too, but she was not nervous and had been long enough at the game to know that this was just a phase that most prime ministers went through (the exceptions being Mr Heath and Mrs Thatcher) and that as the novelty of their weekly interviews diminished, so, too, did the flirting.
It was another aspect of the myth of the Queen and her prime minister, the decline of the prime minister’s attention to her personal appearance coinciding with his dwindling concern with what Her Majesty had to say, how the Queen looked and how the Queen thought both of diminishing importance, so that, earrings or no earrings, making her occasional comments she felt not unlike an air hostess going through the safety procedures, the look on the prime minister’s face that of benevolent and minimal attention from a passenger who has heard it all before.
The inattention, though, and the boredom was not all his, and as she had begun to read more, she resented the time these meetings took up and so thought to enliven the process by relating them to her studies and what she was learning about history.
This was not a good idea. The prime minister did not wholly believe in the past or in any lessons that might be drawn from it. One evening he was addressing her on the subject of the Middle East when she ventured to say, ‘It is the cradle of civilisation, you know.’
‘And shall be again, ma’am,’ said the prime minister, ‘provided we are allowed to persist,’ and then bolted off down a side alley about the mileage of new sewage pipes that had been laid and the provision of electricity sub-stations.
She interrupted again. ‘One hopes this isn’t to the detriment of the archaeological remains. Do you know about Ur?’
He didn’t. So as he was going she found him a couple of books that might help. The following week she asked him if he had read them (which he hadn’t).
‘They were most interesting, ma’am.’
‘Well, in that case we must find you some more. I find it fascinating.’
This time Iran came up and she asked him if he knew of the history of Persia, or Iran (he had scarcely even connected the two), and gave him a book on that besides, and generally began to take such an interest that after two or three sessions like this, Tuesday evenings, which he had hitherto looked forward to as a restful oasis in his week, now became fraught with apprehension. She even questioned him about the books as if they were homework. Finding he hadn’t read them she smiled tolerantly.
‘My experience of prime ministers, prime minister, is that, with Mr Macmillan the exception, they prefer to have their reading done for them.’
‘One is busy, ma’am,’ said the prime minister.
‘One is busy,’ she agreed and reached for her book. ‘We will see you next week.’
Eventually Sir Kevin got a call from the special adviser.
‘Your employer has been giving my employer a hard time.’
‘Yes?’
‘Yes. Lending him books to read. That’s out of order.’
‘Her Majesty likes reading.’
‘I like having my dick sucked. I don’t make the prime minister do it. Any thoughts, Kevin?’
‘I will speak to Her Majesty.’
‘You do that, Kev. And tell her to knock it off.’
Sir Kevin did not speak to Her Majesty, still less tell her to knock it off. Instead, swallowing his pride, he went to see Sir Claude.
In the little garden of his delightful seventeenth-century grace and favour cottage at Hampton Court, Sir Claude Pollington was reading. Actually, he was meant to be reading, but he was dozing over a box of confidential documents sent over from the library at Windsor, a privilege accorded to him as an ancient royal servant, now ninety at least but still ostensibly working on his memoirs, tentatively entitled ‘Drudgery Divine’.
Sir Claude had entered royal service straight from Harrow at the age of eighteen as a page to George V, one of his first tasks, as he was fond of recalling, to lick the hinges with which that testy and punctilious monarch used to stick the stamps into his many albums. ‘Were there a problem discovering my DNA,’ he had once confided to Sue Lawley, ‘one would only have to look behind the stamps in dozens of the royal albums, particularly, I recall, the stamps of Tanna Touva, which His Majesty thought vulgar and even common but which he nevertheless felt obliged to collect. Which was typical of His Majesty . . . conscientious to a fault.’ He had then chosen a record of Master Ernest Lough singing ‘O for the Wings of a Dove’.
In his little drawing-room every surface sprouted framed photographs of the various royals whom Sir Claude had so loyally served. Here he was at Ascot, holding the King’s binoculars; crouching in the heather as His Majesty drew a bead on a distant stag. This was him bringing up the rear as Queen Mary emerged from a Harrogate antiques shop, the young Pollington’s face hidden behind a parcel containing a Wedgwood vase, reluctantly bestowed on Her Majesty by the hapless dealer. Here he was, too, in a striped jersey, helping to crew the Nahlin on that fateful Mediterranean cruise, the lady in the yachting cap a Mrs Simpson – a photograph that tended to come and go, and which was never on view when, as often used to happen, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother dropped in for tea.
There was not much about the royal family to which Sir Claude had not been privy. After his service with George V he had been briefly in the household of Edward VIII and moved smoothly on into the service of his brother, George VI. He had done duty in many of the offices of the household, finally serving as private secretary to the Queen. Even when he had long retired his advice was frequently called on; he was a living embodiment of that establishment commendation, ‘a safe pair of hands’.
Now, though, his hands shook rather and he was not as careful as he used to be about personal hygiene, and even sitting with him in the fragrant garden Sir Kevin had to catch his breath.
‘Should we go inside?’ said Sir Claude. ‘There could be tea.’
‘No, no,’ said Sir Kevin hastily. ‘Here is better.’
He explained the problem.
‘Reading?’ said Sir Claude. ‘No harm in that, surely? Her Majesty takes after her namesake, the first Elizabeth. She was an avid reader. Of course, there were fewer books then. And Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, she liked a book. Queen Mary didn’t, of course. Or George V. He was a great stamp collector. That’s how I started, you know. Licking his hinges.’
Someone even older than Sir Claude brought out tea, which Sir Kevin prudently poured.
‘Her Majesty is very fond of you, Sir Claude.’
‘As I am of her,’ said the old man. ‘I have been in thrall to Her Majesty since she was a girl. All my life.’
And it had been a distinguished life, too, with a good war in which the young Pollington won several medals and commendations for bravery, serving finally on the general staff.
‘I’ve served three queens,’ he was fond of saying, ‘and got on with them all. The only queen I could never get on with was Field Marshal Montgomery.’
‘She listens to you,’ said Sir Kevin, wondering if the sponge cake was reliable.
‘I like to think so,’ said Sir Claude. ‘But what do I say? Reading. How curious. Tuck in.’
Just in time Sir Kevin realised that what he had taken for frosting was in fact mould, and he managed to palm the cake into his briefcase.
‘Perhaps you could remind her of her duty?’
‘Her Majesty has never needed to be reminded of that. Too much duty, if you ask me. Let me think . . .’
And the old man pondered while Sir Kevin waited.
It was some time before he realised that Sir Claude was asleep. He got up lou
‘I will come,’ said Sir Claude. ‘It’s a bit since I had an outing. You’ll send a car?’
‘Of course,’ said Sir Kevin, shaking hands. ‘Don’t get up.’
As he went Sir Claude called after him. ‘You’re the New Zealand one, aren’t you?’
I gather,’ said the equerry, ‘that it might be advisable if Your Majesty were to see Sir Claude in the garden.’
‘In the garden?’
‘Out of doors, ma’am. In the fresh air.’
The Queen looked at him. ‘Do you mean he smells?’
‘Apparently he does rather, ma’am.’
‘Poor thing.’ She wondered sometimes where they thought she’d been all her life. ‘No. He must come up here.’
Though when the equerry offered to open a window she did not demur.
‘What does he want to see me about?’
‘I’ve no idea, ma’am.’
Sir Claude came in on his two sticks, bowing his head at the door and again when Her Majesty gave him her hand as she motioned him to sit down. Though her smile remained kindly and her manner unchanged, the equerry had not exaggerated.
‘How are you, Sir Claude?’
‘Very well, Your Majesty. And you, ma’am?’
‘Very well.’
The Queen waited, but too much the courtier to introduce a subject unprompted, Sir Claude waited, too.
‘What was it you wanted to see me about?’
While Sir Claude tried to remember, the Queen had time to notice the thin reef of dandruff that had gathered beneath his coat collar, the egg stains on his tie and the drift of scurf that lay in his large pendulous ear. Whereas once upon a time such frailties would have been beneath her notice and gone unremarked, now they obtruded on her gaze, ruffling her composure and even causing her distress. Poor man. And he had fought at Tobruk. She must write it down.
‘Reading, ma’am.’
‘I beg your pardon.’
‘Your Majesty has started reading.’
‘No, Sir Claude. One had always read. Only these days one is reading more.’
Now, of course, she knew why he had come and who had put him up to it, and from being an object wholly of pity this witness to half her life now took his place among her persecutors; all compassion fled and she recovered her composure.
‘I see no harm in reading in itself, ma’am.’
‘One is relieved to hear it.’
‘It’s when it’s carried to extremes. There’s the mischief.’
‘Are you suggesting one rations one’s reading?’
‘Your Majesty has led such an exemplary life and that it should be reading that has taken Your Majesty’s fancy is almost by the way. Had you invested in any pursuit with similar fervour, eyebrows must have been raised.’
‘They might. But then one has spent one’s life not raising eyebrows. One feels sometimes that that is not much of a boast.’
‘Ma’am has always liked racing.’
‘True. Only one’s rather gone off it at the moment.’
‘Oh,’ said Sir Claude. ‘That’s a shame.’ Then, seeing a possible accommodation between racing and reading: ‘Her Majesty the Queen Mother used to be a big fan of Dick Francis.’
‘Yes,’ said the Queen. ‘I’ve read one or two, though they only take one so far. Swift, I discover, is very good about horses.’
Sir Claude nodded gravely, not having read Swift and reflecting that he seemed to be getting nowhere.
They sat for a moment in silence, but it was long enough for Sir Claude to fall asleep. This had seldom happened to the Queen and when it had (a government minister nodding off alongside her at some ceremony, for instance), her reaction had been brisk and unsympathetic. She was often tempted to fall asleep, as with her job who wouldn’t be, but now, rather than wake the old man she just waited, listening to his laboured breathing and wondering how long it would be before infirmity overtook her and she became similarly incapable. Sir Claude had come with a message, she understood that and resented it, but perhaps he was a message in his own person, a portent of the unpalatable future.
She picked up her notebook from the desk and dropped it on the floor. Sir Claude woke up nodding and smiling as if appreciating something the Queen had just said.
‘How are your memoirs?’ said the Queen. Sir Claude’s memoirs had been on the go for so long they had become a joke in the household. ‘How far have you got?’
‘Oh, they’re not consecutive, ma’am. One does a little every day.’
He didn’t, of course, and it was really only to forestall yet another probing royal question that he now said what he did. ‘Has Your Majesty ever considered writing?’
‘No,’ said the Queen, though this was a lie. ‘Where would one find the time?’
‘Ma’am has found time for reading.’
This was a rebuke and the Queen did not take kindly to rebukes, but for the moment she overlooked it.
‘What should one write?’
‘Your Majesty has had an interesting life.’
‘Yes,’ said the Queen. ‘One has.’
The truth was Sir Claude had no notion of what the Queen should write or whether she should write at all, and he had only suggested writing in order to get her off reading and because in his experience writing seldom got done. It was a cul de sac. He had been writing his memoirs for twenty years and hadn’t even written fifty pages.
‘Yes,’ he said firmly. ‘Ma’am must write. But can I give Your Majesty a tip? Don’t start at the beginning. That’s the mistake I made. Start off in the middle. Chronology is a great deterrent.’
‘Was there anything else, Sir Claude?’
The Queen gave her wide smile. The interview was over. How the Queen conveyed this information had always been a mystery to Sir Claude, but it was as plain as if a bell had rung. He struggled to his feet as the equerry opened the door, bowed his head, then when he reached the door turned and bowed his head again, then slowly stumped down the corridor on his two sticks, one of them a present from the Queen Mother.
Back in the room the Queen opened the window wider and let the breeze blow in from the garden. The equerry returned and raising her eyebrows the Queen indicated the chair on which Sir Claude had been sitting, now with a damp patch staining the satin. Silently the young man bore the chair away, while the Queen gathered up her book and her cardigan preparatory to going into the garden.
By the time the equerry returned with another chair she had stepped out onto the terrace. He put it down and with the skill of long practice quickly set the room to rights, spotting as he did so the Queen’s notebook lying on the floor. He picked it up and before replacing it on the desk stood for a moment wondering in the Queen’s absence if he might take a peep at the contents. Except at that moment Her Majesty reappeared in the doorway.
‘Thank you, Gerald,’ she said and held out her hand.
He gave her the book and she went out.
‘Shit,’ said Gerald. ‘Shit. Shit. Shit.’
This note of self-reproach was not inappropriate, as within days Gerald was no longer in attendance on Her Majesty and indeed no longer in the household at all, but back with his scarcely remembered regiment yomping in the rain over the moors of Northumberland. The speed and ruthlessness of his almost Tudor dispatch sent, as Sir Kevin would have put it, the right message and at least put paid to any further rumours of senile decay. Madam was herself again.
Nothing Sir Claude had said carried any weight, but still she found herself thinking about it that evening at the Royal Albert Hall, where there was a special promenade concert in her honour. In the past music had never been much of a solace and had always been tinged with obligation, the repertoire familiar largely from concerts like this she had had to attend.
This was a voice, she thought, as a boy played the clarinet: Mozart, a voice everybody in the hall knew and recognised though Mozart had been dead two hundred years. And she remembered Helen Schlegel in Howards End putting
The boy finished, the audience applauded, and clapping too, she leaned over towards another of the party as if sharing her appreciation. But what she wanted to say was that, old as she was, renowned as she was, no one knew her voice. And in the car taking them back she suddenly said: ‘I have no voice.’
‘Not surprised,’ said the duke. ‘Too damned hot. Throat, is it?’
It was a sultry night and unusually for her she woke in the early hours unable to sleep.
The policeman in the garden seeing the light go on turned on his mobile as a precaution.
She had been reading about the Brontës and what a hard time they had had of it when they were children, but she didn’t feel that would send her off to sleep again and looking for something else saw in the corner of the bookshelf the book by Ivy Compton-Burnett which she had borrowed from the travelling library and which Mr Hutchings had then given her all that time ago. It had been hard going and had nearly sent her to sleep then, she remembered, so perhaps it would do the trick now.
Far from it, and the novel she had once found slow now seemed refreshingly brisk, dry still but astringently so, with Dame Ivy’s no-nonsense tone reassuringly close to her own. And it occurred to her (as next day she wrote down) that reading was, among other things, a muscle and one that she had seemingly developed. She could read the novel with ease and great pleasure, laughing at remarks, they were hardly jokes, that she had not even noticed before. And through it all she could hear the voice of Ivy Compton-Burnett, unsentimental, severe and wise. She could hear her voice as clearly as earlier in the evening she had heard the voice of Mozart. She closed the book. And once again she said out loud: ‘I have no voice.’
And somewhere in West London where these things are recorded a transcribing and expressionless typist thought it was an odd remark and said as if in reply: ‘Well, if you don’t, dear, I don’t know who does.’