Queen Camilla Read Online Free PDF Page B

seen.

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    Violet Toby, the Queen’s next-door neighbour, best friend and confidante, had dropped in to complain to the Queen that Prince Harry had called her granddaughter Chanel a ‘minging spag’ and if he ever got to be king, he would lock her in the Tower of London and order her ‘minging head to be chopped off’.
    The Queen said, ‘That’s highly unlikely to happen, Violet, since we live in a republic. And anyway, Harry will be king only over my dead body.’
    Violet the pedant lifted her swollen feet on to a tapestry-covered footstool and adjusted the skirt of her navy and white polka-dot dress. The Queen noticed that there was a strip of white showing at the roots of Violet’s otherwise red hair.
    Violet said, ‘Charles will be king over your dead body. And if Charles fell under a bus?’
    The Queen said, ‘Then of course William would be king.’
    ‘And if William fell off some scaffolding…’ said Violet ‘…and broke his neck and died?’
    The Queen said bleakly, ‘Given those unlikely circumstances, then Harry
would
be king. Unless, of course, William has married by then and had children.’
    Violet said, ‘Well that ain’t likely, is it? ’E’s not even courtin’.’
    The Queen gave a deep sigh, imagining Harry and his hoody friends on the balcony of Buckingham Palace swigging from cans of lager and giving the crowd below the V sign. She said to Violet, ‘We must find a wife for William.’
    The conversation turned to the Queen’s toothache and then to teeth in general.
    ‘I ’ad a set of false teeth for my twenty-first birthday,’ said Violet. ‘Mam and Dad bought the top set and the rest of the family clubbed together an’ bought the bottom.’
    Violet gnashed her porcelain teeth at the Queen. ‘The dentist didn’t want to take me teeth out. He said they were perfect, but me dad said, “No. I want all ’er teeth took out, an’ false ’uns put in. It’ll save her trouble later in life.” ’
    The Queen was horrified. She said, ‘What a beastly thing to do.’
    Violet bridled, ‘No, Dad were right. I’ve ’ad a lot of trouble in my life, with money, men an’ our Barry, but I’ve never lost a day’s work, or a night’s sleep, with toothache.’
    The Queen momentarily felt a little jealous of Violet’s teeth. She had spent a very unpleasant night wishing that Mr Barwell, by royal appointment, dental surgeon to the Queen, was still on call. At the slightest twinge, Barwell would be flown in the royal jet to wherever she was staying. Now, thought the Queen bitterly, she had no dentist at all. Mr Patel, the National Health Service dentist, had recently escaped from the Fez and nobody had taken his place.
    Violet said, ‘I know a woman what takes her own teeth out with a pair of pliers, do you want me to have a word with ’er?’
    ‘Goodness, no, it sounds terribly dangerous.’
    ‘No, it’s dead safe, she sterilizes the pliers first, in a pan of boiling water.’
    They were sitting in the Queen’s tiny front room on matching Louis XVI armchairs next to the gas fire. They were waiting for
Emmerdale
to come on the television. It was going to be a double episode. This one-off special had been trailed all week. The whole population of Emmerdale Village were to go on a coach outing to an agricultural show in a fictional county. The trails had shown the villagers having a jolly singsong, then cut to the coach braking to avoid a stray sheepdog. There had been close shots of various actors/villagers screaming as the coach slid down an embankment on to a railway line below. The Queen and Violet were avid to find out which of their favourite characters would survive the accident.
    Harris and Susan were also waiting; they were curious to find out what was to happen to the dog. Violet’s dog, Micky, a gruff-faced, ginger mongrel with a tail that curled on to his back, was not allowed inside the Queen’s house; Micky was emotionally unstable, and given to sudden irrational