Royal visit by Deborah Thwaites

The noise was like a loud noise but much louder. I jolted in my seat, sending a blur of cat scattering from my lap. Big Jemmy stayed put. His ears closed over after the great Stomp riots of ’97. He only hears blue now. His eyes remained fixed on the latest episode of Celebrity Death Camp Warden as the players moved in a grotesque mime.

Out I went, into the field beyond, where an assortment of metal chunkage was marinating in the heavy smell of charred earth. Smoke bled into the perpetual greyness of the sky. Up ahead, like some Stars in their Eyes hopeful who, swarmed by last minute doubts over their Tina Turner impression, had broken out the Harvey’s Bristol Cream, something tottered, squinting through the haze. But this was no half-cut account in an ill-fitting leather mini-skirt. Crown all askew and wobbly-sceptred but with an unmistakably regal bearing, from the wreckage she emerged.

The face was unmistakable even covered in soot and blood. That face that has been held in the palm of the masses, powdered with cocaine a million times, thrown to the bottom of countless wells, imitated to varying degrees of success, killed for, rejoiced over, and endlessly swapped for time, life, and labour; that face was approaching and it wasn’t happy.

She uttered her stream of vocalisations and me mine, but to no end. Each of us was entirely incomprehensible to the other. She clutched a charred little handbag to her chest, and gesticulated skywards, her tiny frame draped in a scarlet robe of silk-lined velvet. I decided it best not to alert her to the mangled hind quarters of a corgi which were riding her train.

Understandably, she was wary of her new surroundings. She looked around furtively as if waiting to be ushered along to the next event but no one came. She was perhaps for the first time in her long life without her people, utterly entourage-less. Finally, I managed to wrangle her into the kitchen with the help of the outdoor broom. “Urgh! Get that thing out ‘ the house! You dunno where it’s been!” spluttered my fat-headed uncle. The face of a young starlet deformed by the girth of a thousand boxes of something-like-chicken strained across his chest and wept a solitary gravy tear for her misfortune. He turned away, picking the grime from under his fingernails with the bent prong of a fork, his only use for such an implement.

I coaxed my new charge towards the kitchen. Not having any foie gras to hand, I mashed some Sheba and spread it onto a digestive biscuit. Then I dusted off the mug with the picture of the poor mite’s mother on it, hoping to comfort her with a familiar face. I left the tea and snack on the table and backed away. Once a distance she deemed acceptable had been established, a rice paper hand outstretched. Weighty jewels threatened to snap the boney fingers. So thin-skinned was she I was amazed that she hadn’t dissolved in the drizzle like a Christ wafer on a pious tongue, misted off in a whisper like her Russian cousins. After a tertiary sniff the offering was snaffled up, and I was proffered a crumb-flecked smile.

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Days turned weeks turned months as I nursed the stricken creature, secreted away in our shed. We fell into a routine and grew comfortable in each other’s company. Occasionally she would sit on her makeshift throne and recite a speech punctuated by hand waves. I would clap and cheer and wave a little flag that I had drawn a picture of her face on. This seemed to amuse her. I decorated the room with objects to make her feel at home. I stuffed a dead hedgehog and mounted it on a plinth. I cobbled together objects to remind her of her colonial spoils, but without her regalia she began to fade. I simply couldn’t provide the pomp to which she had become accustomed.

Although I had grown attached to the royal, and her to me, I knew that she needed to be with her own kind. She was on-edge and twitchy when the day came, aware that something was afoot. Tentatively, I swaddled the elderly royal in an argyle blanket and popped her into a wheelbarrow. As gently as such a transportation would allow, I bumped her to the edge of the Downs where I had found her. I stepped back and watched as she took a few uncertain steps in one direction then the other. I wondered if too much time had passed and I would have to resort to plan B.

It was then I spotted, partially obscured by a thicket, an idly masticating King Consort. His heavy-lidded eyes stared blankly ahead. I saw the glint of recognition flicker across her face and she emitted a squeal. Bolting forward towards her mate, they united with jubilant ceremonial dancing punctuated with strange chatterings, and in an instant they were gone.

Deborah Thwaites

Image: Image by ScouserUK from Pixabay – British coins and a five-pound note.