The Uncommon Reader

had always been very good at duty, until, that is, she started to read. Still, to be urged to write and to be urged to publish are two different things and nobody so far was urging her to do the latter.
    Seeing the books disappear from her desk and having once more something approaching Her Majesty’s whole attention were welcome to Sir Kevin and indeed to the household in general. Timekeeping did not improve, it’s true, and the Queen’s wardrobe still tended to be a little wayward (“I’d outlaw that cardigan,” said her maid). But Sir Kevin shared in the general impression that for all these persistent shortcomings Her Majesty had seen off her infatuation with books and had returned to normal.
    She stayed that autumn for a few days at Sandringham, as she was scheduled to make a royal visit to the city of Norwich. There was a service in the cathedral, a walkabout in the pedestrian precinct and before she had luncheon at the university she opened a new fire station.
    Seated between the vice-chancellor and the professor of creative writing she was mildly surprised when over her shoulder came a bony wrist and red hand that were very familiar, proffering a prawn cocktail.
    “Hello, Norman,” she said.
    “Your Majesty,” said Norman correctly, and smoothly presented the lord lieutenant with his prawn cocktail, before going on down the table.
    “Your Majesty knows Seakins then, ma’am?” said the professor of creative writing.
    “One did,” said the Queen, saddened a little that Norman seemed to have made no progress in the world at all and was seemingly back in a kitchen, even if it was not hers.
    “We thought,” said the vice-chancellor, “that it would be rather a treat for the students if they were to serve the meal. They will be paid, of course, and it’s all experience.”
    “Seakins,” said the professor, “is very promising. He has just graduated and is one of our success stories.”
    The Queen was a little put out that, despite her bright smile, serving the boeuf en croute Norman seemed determined not to catch her eye, and the same went for the poire belle-Helene. And it came to her that for some reason Norman was sulking, behaviour she had seldom come across except in children and the occasional cabinet minister. Subjects seldom sulked to the Queen as they were not entitled to, and once upon a time it would have taken them to the Tower.
    A few years ago she would never have noticed what Norman was doing or anybody else either, and if she took note of it now it was because she knew more of people’s feelings than she used to and could put herself in someone else’s place. Though it still didn’t explain why he was so put out.
    “Books are wonderful, aren’t they?” she said to the vice-chancellor, who concurred.
    “At the risk of sounding like a piece of steak,” she said, “they tenderise one.”
    He concurred again, though with no notion of what she was on about.
    “I wonder,” she turned to her other neighbour, “whether as professor of creative writing you would agree that if reading softens one up, writing does the reverse. To write you have to be tough, do you not?” Surprised to find himself discussing his own subject, the professor was momentarily at a loss. The Queen waited. “Tell me,” she wanted to say, “tell me I am right.” But the lord lieutenant was rising to wait upon her and the room shuffled to its feet. No one was going to tell her, she thought. Writing, like reading, was something she was going to have to do on her own.
    Though not quite, and afterwards Norman is sent for, and the Queen, her lateness now proverbial but catered for in the schedule, spends half an hour being updated on his university career, including the circumstances that brought him to East Anglia in the first place. It is arranged that he will come to Sandringham the following day, where the Queen feels that now he has begun to write he may be in a position to assist her once again.
    Between one day and the next, though, she sacked somebody else, and Sir Kevin came into his office in the morning to find his desk cleared. Though Norman’s stint at the university had been advantageous Her Majesty did not like being deceived, and though the real culprit was the prime minister’s special adviser Sir Kevin carried the can. Once it would have brought him to the block; these days it brought him a ticket back to New Zealand and an appointment as high commissioner. It was the block but it