Excerpt from Chapter Twenty-One: Audience with the Queen

The sparkling black Mercedes-Benz comes silently into the narrow parking space of the Royal Over-Seas League House, at Park Place, St. James’s Street — a stone’s throw from St. James’s Place — and from the letterhead on the stationery, I read, of the hotel’s pedigree: “Patron H.M. The Queen, Vice-Patron HRH Princess Alexandra.” The Mercedes-Benz is a 2004 model. In the car, is Colin X, a member of the Commonwealth House committee, who will present me at Buckingham Palace, “for your Audience with the Queen.” At twelve-forty in the afternoon, on Monday the eighth of March 2004. The car comes for me at eleven-thirty, to take me to Commonwealth House, to meet the other officers, and to get the lay of the land, so to say; and to have a gin, to settle my nerves, an assumption made by Colin, proven to be correct.

Colin’s right hand is bandaged with white dressing, is bulging, is painful, is eventually conspicuous in the official photograph requested by the Queen, to be taken to mark in history that this day existed, because his little finger was broken in an accident, and had to be broken a second time to get it back in place.

The car takes us through London’s busy streets, to the Palace, passing places I have been seeing in photographs in newspapers and in news on BBC television; and introduced to me first, earlier, in the Island, in textbooks, in Punch magazine, in the Time newspaper, which trickled into Barbados, and in the reading room of the British Council, many months out of date, but still contemporary in a colony; and from the description of these buildings, monuments, in the pages of novel and memoir written by West Indian authors who lived in England from the 1950s.

And then, the Palace. I had the same disappointment seeing it close up, as I had when I first stood in front of the White House, in Washington D.C., looking in. It seemed to me that Buckingham Palace and the White House have a more dramatic and architectural aesthetic power when shown in a photograph, or in a television news report, than they have when you are standing at the wrought-iron gates, looking at them; when you are a tourist. And the disappointing thing about this is that they look more ordinary, and without the power, both real and symbolic, that you have been brought up to think that they have. So, this afternoon, as the black Mercedes-Benz moved toward the entrance to Buckingham Palace, slowing down to accommodate the press of people, tourists come to see the Changing of the Guard, to peer in, unsuccessfully because of the tinted windows, to see who the important personage in the car was, as a bonus for the delay in the Changing of the Guard, I suddenly felt the power of the Palace, and the significance of my presence here. And miraculously, the Palace became grand and imposing, and was like the Palace made out of glass and diamonds in a children’s book of fairy tales, inhabited by a beautiful queen, and it took on a swell-head enchantment from my being so close to its mortar and wrought-iron fence, and its glistening windows and winding staircases made of glass.

The Mercedes-Benz is directed to the main entrance of Buckingham Palace. A member of the Guards is waiting to greet us. I can see the brilliance of his black boots, in blinding shine, equal to the black shoes the Prince of Wales wore the night before. Spit-and-polish, I remember my father saying, as he spat on the thick-leathered ugly black boots issued by the Royal Constabulary of the Island; and when he was finished with them, they were like the ones I am looking at now.

All of a sudden, I am nervous. Has the Queen been told of my cynicism in the title of my memoir: Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack? And if she has, will she mention it, even in passing? But the Queen is a queen, polite, diplomatic, intelligent, wise, and worldly. And I am still nervous. The Guard ushers us to a long couch against the wall, on which are oil paintings, fields and castles and pastoral scenes of English country life; paintings I have seen before, in films and newspapers, and the Illustrated London News magazine.

The colour of the palace is a yellowish brown. But I am colour blind.

A delegation is waiting before us, to be presented to the Queen. Last night returns, with its colours and its races and its beautiful women, and African princes and kings in robes just like the diplomat who introduced me by the wrong name. The King of Morocco! Is there such a title, such a man? But this gentleman stood out in my memory because of the tantalizingly beautiful woman beside him, wife, queen, daughter, or lover?

This same king and his wife are sitting in the delegation waiting on my left hand. And another Guards officer goes up to them and ushers them farther along the long anteroom, on the ground floor of the Palace, and up the stairs, and into the silence, out of sight. Only the paintings, of Sir Joshua Reynolds, of J.M.W. Turner, remain to remind me of the dances and dinners and cocktail parties that have been pitched in this room, years ago.

“When we go in, you will bow. The Queen will speak first. We have ten minutes. You do not initiate any conversation.” It is my friend, Colin, with the bandaged hand, instructing me on protocol.

The blindingly polished black boots of the Guards officer … I forgot to pay attention to the pips on his shoulder telling me his rank; but I think he has at least, two pips. His back is straight. Erect as a tree trunk. Spit-and-polish. And well prepared; well trained; well spoken. And kind.

“The Queen will initiate any conversation. The audience will last ten minutes. Unless the Queen prolongs this audience. You will be shown where to sit by the Queen. When the audience is ended, the Queen will press a button, which is inconspicuously placed on the table beside her, to indicate that it is over. She will stand, say goodbye to you, and you will leave, walking backwards, with a bow …” This is the Guards officer speaking. “Naturally, there will be no photographs taken. Unless the Queen orders one …”

We are led up the stairs at the end of the long room. I pass animals on English lawns and fields; and a woman is walking with a basket in her hand; and the beautiful woman from last night, walking beside the King of Morocco, comes down the dramatic stairs that shine as much as the boots of the Guards officer, and leaves her husband the king and the other members of her delegation, breaking rank, and comes up to me. The King comes too. They congratulate me; and shake my hand; and tell me when I am in Morocco, remember to call on them.

Colin with the white-gloved bad hand knows them. They have come to him, not to me, to pay greetings. But I accept my share, too; for I remember when they arrived in the black Rolls Royce, and about ten men and women, bodyguards crowded round and hid them from view except by those who were entering the same door of dignitaries, which is when I first rested my two eyes on her flowing robes.

We are in a second floor room, a waiting room, with more paintings I have recognized from former times, but do not know the names of the men who painted them, or the names their painters have called them by; and the Guards officer cannot remember either, “although I have seen them many times.” And we sink into this satisfaction and self-confidence, aware that we are in the household of the Queen, for “Her Majesty” — which is how the Guards officer addresses the Queen. “Her Majesty has decided to have your Audience in her private apartment.” This says something. I am not such a commoner that I do not grasp the significance. “And she has asked that a photo be taken of you when you enter,” the Guards officers adds.

Colin with the sprained finger is smiling. He wants to give me more history, and place me in the context of this history. “Very good,” he says, like an Englishman telling you that what you have heard, or what you have just spoken is very good, meaning in the language of an American, or a Canadian, “fantastic, super!”

The only other winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize to have had his audience with the Queen in her private apartment is Peter Carey, the Australian writer.” I know Carey. I met him once at Harbourfront International Festival of Authors in Toronto. I take a cursory glance at my clothes. I straighten my tie. I inspect my fingernails. I pull my socks up. I wet my lips. I hold my right hand in my left hand, not tense; but relaxed. I look at Colin’s white bandage, like a soft boxing glove, and I say, “How’s the hand.”

“Little pain.”

“Good,” the Guards officer says.

And as the words leave him, we are summoned to present ourselves. The door of the waiting room opens, and I hear the yapping of dogs. The Corgis! Did not one of them chew a small dog to bits, recently, in the London tabloid newspapers. I look down a hall, on my left, and there they are, Royal dogs behaving like hungry dogs. There are about four, but they could have been six, all the same size. We are at the door. And everything changes. My world has come topsy-turvily on its head, around one hundred and eighty degrees, in my ’membering journey from the two-roofed and shed-roof, grey-painted house on Flagstaff Road, Clapham, St. Michael, in the Island, in the British West Indies, with its name, “Macon,” on it, to Buckingham Palace, in the private apartment of Her Majesty, the Queen. I know now what it means to win the 2003 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for the Best Book. And I wonder how long it will take her to hint at the title of my memoir, Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack.

Colin sits across from us, ushered to his seat by Her Majesty.

I sit beside Her Majesty, almost knee-touching distance apart, with the round table separating Queen from “old Colonial” and with the discreet buzzer on the table, to alarm the guards and the Guards, to announce the end, to require a cup of tea, to have a martini brought into the company and the conversation, to say, “time’s up!”

In the presence of kings and queens, as in the presence of dictators and cruel criminals, what is said, either to you, or by you, is not usually remembered afterward, there is no indelibility in those words spoken. The place swallows the meanings of words, and becomes the meaning of the words themselves.

Colin introduces me to Her Majesty, calling me by my right name, Mr. Clarke. And Her Majesty smiles. I take the chance, for she has spoken first, to say, “I was introduced to you, last night, as “Mr. James, ma’am.” And the moment the words fall out of my mouth, I realize how stupid a thing it was to say, when so many other important, witty things could have been said. I could have commented on the Corgis, whose barking and playing I could still hear. The Queen is sympathetic, and says, “Those things do happen.”

I am dumbfounded, can think of nothing more to say, and Colin, his bandaged hand no longer painful after Her Majesty has inquired of his injury, fills the discomfiture of the moment with light conversation.

“And what tie are you wearing, Mr. Clarke?”

“Harrison College, Barbados, Your Majesty.”

“Oh! My trainer, Michael Stoute, is a Barbadian. His father was Commissioner of Police, I think.”

I am uncertain of the word, “trainer,” and I must have shown my mild curiosity, for I take the liberty to glance, most prudently, knowing she will not detect my curiosity, to see whether there is obvious evidence that Her Majesty the Queen of England, has time from her impossibly busy schedule of appointments, with personages more important than myself, to jog around the gardens of Buckingham Palace; or even run up and down the stairs, with the Corgis trailing and encouraging. “Horses,” she says.

“Oh,” I say, “I know Mr. Michael Stoute. He and I went to Harrison College.”

Mr. Michael Stoute was no longer Mr. Stoute, but was Sir Michael Stoute. It was an afternoon, at Bigliardi’s on Church Street, in the company of Barry Callaghan, drinking wine and martinis and betting on the Triactor races, in which Callaghan is a master, the best I know, that the name Michael Stoute came up; years ago. “Ain’t he the Bajan who trains the Queen’s horses? Who won the Derby for her?” This was the man; this was the Knight. Sir Michael.

I take the opening offered me, not deliberately, perhaps only casually, and expand on the history, and the connection, between the Island and the training of horses and knighthoods, and imagine the ring and the sound of “Rise, Sir Austin Clarke.” — if only I liked horses, even to bet on them! I think it was a reasonable expansion on the skeleton of a common history, if not a common culture between Sir Michael and me.

“As a matter of fact, Your Majesty, Major Stoute was the Commissioner of Police, and my stepfather, who was a police constable, was his driver …”

“Is that so?”

“As a matter of fact, ma’am, I had a photo of my stepfather being given a medal, Distinguished Service Medal, by Major Stoute.”

“Really?”

“And the dean of the church I attend in Toronto, St. James’s Cathedral Church, is the brother of Sir Michael, your trainer!” We are, after all, in her private apartment, and the nature of our conversation is relaxed, informal, cordial, something approaching the exchange of ideas between two friends; two old friends; and the demand for formal decorum was not required. And I felt so. And when I look at the photograph she asked to be taken, from her face, and from her smile, a stranger looking at this group of three persons, so diverse, in background and place and position, there is no conclusion that they are not three friends. And you will pardon my impropriety in this expansiveness.

I look at the two fingers on her right hand, touching her engagement ring; as we stand to leave, for she has, without my knowing, without Colin knowing, touched the buzzer on the table beside which we sat, and we stand to leave, and I see the beauty of her yellow dress, which I call gold, and the light in her eyes, expressing some joy, happiness rather, some enjoyment at what is being said amongst us. I cannot recall what it is we were talking about, as we stood, just before leaving, to pose for the photograph. But her visage — I use the word, advisedly — is more that of a happy grandmother, and not the stern, reserved, thoughtful expression she has sitting amongst the members of the 1st Battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.

We had talked of other things, too: IBM Selectric typewriters as against IBM laptops; and how I had lost the first five hundred pages of The Polished Hoe and went to the grave of a depression; and now the irony of it; and children; and books; and the computer, which we, at our age and with our taste, had not much regard for; and we bid Her Majesty goodbye, remembering to bow and walk backwards; but the length of my courtesy is not imposing, for the Guards officer is there, smiling, happy that the audience went so well and so long; and he congratulates me; and he tells Colin he will see him again, sooner than he will see me, “But who knows?” Colin is walking on thin air, and I am beside him on a cloud of confusion — happy at my success, happy at my recognition, and, at the same, like the victim, like the “old Colonial,” who cannot help but remember colonialism, and who questions the singling out of me and of my work, for this success; wondering if the success is real, if the adoration and praise is honest, when I should be wallowing in the idea and in the event and in the act, instead of being crushed by this historical burden of doubt that Empire and Commonwealth had instilled in me, and in all of us, of my generation.