The Uncommon Reader

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 loudly.
    “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 has 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. That it should be reading that has taken Your Majesty’s fancy is almost by the way. Had you invested 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