Read Online The Autobiography of The Queen by Emma Tennant - Free Book Online Page B

in reception of the Joli Hotel in St Lucia, have cried out in astonishment at what she saw.
    Hyde Park – it obviously
was
Hyde Park – and then, unmistakably, came the gates of Buckingham Palace, camera panning out to take in the length of the Mall – everywhere showed blown-up posters of the Queen, pictured against a vast array of floral tributes and these tied to railings and laid reverentially on every spare inch of grass. The image of Her Majesty dominated the screen. A newsreader repeated endlessly the unbelievable truth that the monarch of the realm had departed from her palace and her throne. Stifled sobs could be heard in the crowded foyer of the hotel, while shouts and weeping fits attracted cameramen at the scene.
    The Queen slipped out of the glass door and into the circular driveway; and, grateful for the palms standing on a triangle of over-sprinkled grass there, she escaped unseen down a side path to the distant sea.

The People’s Queen
    The Queen missed the way from reception at the Joli Hotel down to the lots for sale, and after circling the middle and lower reaches of the lush estate where her house at Bananaquit Drive must surely be, she gave up the idea of meeting the builders – as she had hoped – on site, and decided to make for the Rainforest Bar. Here, despite the bad manners shown by management last night, she would surely be able to order tea (Earl Grey if possible) and make a plan involving Austin Ford and a car to take her to buy clothes and shoes in Soufrière. As she had never arranged transport or shopping herself, it was not possible to foresee difficulty; and although she was aware she had been robbed and her handbag was as empty as even the most arduous lady-in-waiting would have liked, the Queen assured herself that Brno would be on the other end of the line when she called – for she hadnever in all her fifty-five years on the throne been asked to ‘hang on’ or – worse – been offered several ‘options’ to determine the nature of her inquiry.
    It would be hard to say that even a royal personage trained to exhibit no feelings, and to react to even the most outrageous situations (war, divorce of children, abdication of uncle, accession to the throne) with calm and a total absence of emotion, could go for long without betraying their inner thoughts on the TV news footage just ingested by the Queen. Her people loved her! She was, presumably, considered dead and mourned for having retained precisely that monumental calm in the face of a usurper (as she considered the late Princess of Wales to have been) or terrorist attacks – or even at Diana’s death the demand she lower the flag at Buckingham Palace – and this after having to agree to pay tax for the first time in the recent history of the monarchy! She was now proved, in her absence, to be the people’s Queen. The people might have refused to pay for the restoration of Windsor Castle after the fire, but they admired and loved their monarch and wanted her safely back where she belonged, on the throne.
    Despite the self-control instilled throughout her childhood, the Queen was unable to prevent herself from giving a shy smile when the realisation of her popularity began to sink in. But, as she had so often been taught when young, thinking of yourself leads to muddle and to vanity: and it was thus,pleasantly confused, that she missed the road where the shuttles drove, and, taking a footpath that soon petered out in thick rainforest, was soon totally lost
    The sea glittered below; trees, bearing a pink blossom that appeared to fall and then renew itself as she walked under them, arched below giant creepers. Little bursts of rain lasted no more than a minute before a hot sun struggled once more to penetrate the undergrowth. Twice, the Queen stumbled on the root of an unrecognisable tree. But the vision of the sea, postcard blue and capped with tiny white waves, drew her on