The Uncommon Reader

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, being 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 antique 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