To Be Or Not To Be: 1. A Special Visitor – Opening Chapters

 

1

EXCITING NEWS!

“MUM!” SHOUTED SALLY MUNKTON between quick breaths as she exploded into her terraced house. She had run all the way home from school without stopping despite the strap of her school shoulder bag sawing into her neck.

Meanwhile, Mrs Munkton hardly flinched at the familiar heavy slam of the front door as she sat in the living room with a freshly poured cup of tea. The living room door might just as well have been open than closed, such was the noise of the one-girl-war outside.

Sally, all of a blur, ripped off her shoulder bag and wrestled out of her school blazer while still managing to propel herself ever forwards. “Mum! Mummy!” she shouted, charging along the short hallway on her way to the living room where her mother was relaxing on a large comfortable armchair. The armchair looked as if it had seen far better days. In fact, the whole house looked as if it had seen far better days—and it had.

Mrs Munkton steadied her brimming teacup in preparation for the little whirlwind. She stared at the yellowing white-painted wood of the living room door. Any second now …

Whoosh!

The living room door flew wide open. A dead fly whipped itself up off the oak mantelpiece jutting out above the large old gas-fire and an unpaid bill flew off the top of the television set just minding its own business in a corner of the room in the determined draught of air. A small flurry of household dust swirled upwards towards the cracked and flaking faded white ceiling. And there, as the specks of dust lost speed and began to descend gracefully like a dirty microscopic snow upon the well-worn, grey Axminster carpet, stood an excited out-of-breath Sally in the dishevelled remnants of her school uniform.

Sally ogled her mother, wide-eyed, as if powered by the National Electricity Grid, gasping for air, throbbing with intent, a bomb waiting to explode. Her long blond hair had all but escaped its ponytail. She tried to express the thoughts in her head. But all she could do was roar another, “Mum!”

“Well, what is it, Sally?” said Mrs Munkton, carefully lifting her chipped white china cup off a non-matching blue plastic saucer, balancing precariously on a rip in the arm of the armchair.

Sally just stared, bursting with energy—like an electrocuted zombie. She moved her head a little to the side and opened her mouth wide as if to speak, but somehow nothing came out. She was too excited to say anything! A shaft of June afternoon sunlight sliced through the cracked French windows that gazed out on to the overgrown lawn of the back garden. Sally was strangely illuminated. She looked like an overexcited little angel. She seemed oblivious to the odd remaining specks of dust that couldn’t decide whether to rise or fall as they danced lazily this way and that, flickering like so many miniature stars in the shimmering sunlight.

“Come on, my little princess, you can’t possibly be lost for words—why, you and your brother can usually talk the ears off an African elephant, let alone the hind leg off a donkey.” Mrs Munkton eyed Sally thoughtfully, lovingly, and then raised and tilted her cup of steaming tea to her lipstick-smeared lips.

“It’s the Queen,” gasped Sally finally, struggling to get her breath.

“What do you mean by ‘It’s the Queen’?” asked Mrs Munkton after another sip of her tea. She was leaving lipstick prints around the rim of the cup.

“She’s coming! The Queen’s coming!” announced Sally feverishly. Then she added in her usual patter, “You know she is.”

“Where is she coming? When is she coming?” Mrs Munkton’s questions came calmly between sips of tea.

“She’s coming right here, Mum, to our house, and right away!” announced Sally, causing her mother to propel a fine spray of tea from her lips and almost dispossess her of her teacup.

“Oh, Mum! You’ll make the carpet dirtier than ever. Don’t spray it, say it! Quick, Mum, we must start tidying! We must, mustn’t we? Of course we must. Oh, Mum, I’m so scared. Oh yes, I am. You know I am.”

Sally took a deep breath. She watched disapprovingly as her mother tried secretly to rub the tea she had just sprayed into the carpet with her high-heeled shoes. Mrs Munkton was creating yet another dark grey stain on the Axminster carpet. Sally shook her head solemnly. She thought the carpet was so pockmarked with stains that it looked like it had a serious case of carpet measles.

“And, Mum, I don’t think rubbing your spilt tea into the carpet is proper—even if the carpet is so dirty that it doesn’t make any difference,” said Sally, still shaking her head.

Sally was throttling up her motormouth.

She quickly scampered over to the ancient mahogany bookcase and started coaxing a spider carefully into an empty matchbox. A shaft of sunlight caught the back of her hand as she steadied the matchbox. Thick and thin scar lines shone on the back of her hand where she had suffered an accident. It was her only distinguishing mark, and she called it her ghost-Chinese-symbol tattoo because that’s exactly what it looked like. She never liked to mention how she came by it.

“In you go, Sidney. It’s just for this evening. We’ve got to clean the bookcase, you see. Oh yes we do, Sidney. You know we do.” She cocked her ear towards Sidney. “What’s that you’re saying? I’m sorry, Sidney, but your voice is too tiny because you are too tiny. I can’t hear a word you say.” She shook her head in an exaggerated and concerned fashion, hoping Sidney would be able to understand.

Sally had expressive features when she spoke, especially where Sidney was concerned. Her emerald green eyes shone like emeralds and sometimes her ears wriggled. Her eyebrows tended to be quite active in all her expressions; you could almost tell what she was thinking just by looking at them. Only her snub, slightly turned up, rabbit-like nose stayed still on her face. One wonders if the spider could possibly appreciate her efforts?

“Come on, Sidney—no! Don’t try to run back to your web! Sidney, you thicko. If you joined my school, we’d sink to the bottom of the national school league tables. Miss Morgan says we’ve got to swim to the top, not sink to the bottom! Honestly, Sidney. Now get in the matchbox drawer—and mind your toes.”

Eventually, she manoeuvred Sidney safely into the matchbox. She looked over at her mother and found only a troubled face. “It’s all right, Mum. He’s safely in the matchbox now. He’s clever really, you know he is, isn’t he, Mum?”

“Sally, you are playing a game, aren’t you?” said Mrs Munkton, her frown melting into a crooked smile, her eyebrows gathering like an approaching storm. She tipped back the rim of her teacup slightly as she started another sip of tea so Sally could see her ever-watchful sky-blue eyes behind rising wisps of steam.

“Oh no, Mum, she’s really coming for tea. Definitely. There’ll be loads of others, too, I shouldn’t wonder. Oh, certainly there’ll be. At least the odd television cameraman … er … and a few security men, I shouldn’t wonder. Oh, Mum? What will the Queen think of our rubbish house? Just think, Mum, the Queen, coming here … to our house!”

Mrs Munkton frowned as she helped herself to another sip of tea. The hairline-crack running down the side of her cup widened a little as she banged the cup back down onto the saucer. She must have found Sally’s behaviour slightly disturbing, and she probably did not take too kindly to Sally describing their house as “rubbish”.

“Look! Sidney’s in one of your old empty matchboxes, Mum. Look, see! He’s definitely in here all right—can you see him, Mum? Now we can clean this shabby old bookcase. It’s about time we cleaned the house proper, Mum. You know it is.”

Then Sally looked her mother keenly in the eye, dipping her head a little and added for good measure, “I mean really proper, like we used to do before—‍”

“Don’t even mention the subject, Sally,” interrupted Mrs Munkton sharply.

Sally went quiet for a few seconds. There were times when even she knew being silent was the right way to behave. But she found it frustrating not to be able to talk about the subject her mother banned the house from mentioning. It often made her cry, as well as her older brother Tim. The subject in question was known in the household as the unmentionable.

Sally turned her attention back to her current concerns. “Can we just hide Sidney’s main cobweb behind the big Shakespeare books, Mum? Can we? I mean, this is our home, but that’s his home. Can we, Mum? Can we? You know we can?”

Sally was well in her element now. With her motormouth action fully restored, she was building up quite a pace—a well-oiled wordmobile gliding down the highway of words.

“I’ll just make some holes in the top of the matchbox with a pin,” she said. “Spiders can see through tiny holes. Miss Morgan told us that. I want Sidney to see the Queen. I do, Mum, don’t you? I’m sure he’ll get the idea of it all, Mum. He will, won’t he, Mum? You know he will. Oh, look, Mum. Here’s a drawing pin. That’ll do nicely. I best be careful not to spike poor old Sidney! Let me open the matchbox’s drawer out.”

Sally began carefully spiking the top of the matchbox. “There, it’s working. I don’t want to kill him accidentally so he misses the Queen’s visit. Oh no, that would be a big shame. It would, Mum. You know it would.”

Suddenly, Sally eyed Sidney trying to climb out of the matchbox drawer. “Oi! Sidney! Don’t you try to run away again. It’s for your own protection, silly. If I told you once, I told you twice, it’s only for this evening. Tut-tut! I don’t know.” She coaxed Sidney back down into the matchbox drawer. “That’s right, you stay in there; I’ll close you up later in the matchbox, safe and snug like a baby in a cot.” But Sidney tried to climb back out again … “Sidney, I’m warning you! All right then, I’ll put this playing card on top of your drawer.” Sally picked up a dusty playing card that lay face-down on the bookshelf below …

“Mum, look! It’s the Queen of Hearts! How funny, Mum, that the card I’ve picked up has a Queen on it. Sidney’s seeing the Queen earlier than he expected!”

“Hey!” cried Mrs Munkton. “I had three Queens the other day when we were playing cards. I was waiting for a fourth to complete a full set. Fiddlesticks, no wonder I lost!”

“Oh yeah. Tim won that game with four Jacks. Anyway, back to my matchbox case. I had better make some more holes on the top—maybe Sidney will see more things happening then. Spiders can see out of lots of different holes all at the same time, you know. Miss Morgan said. Just a few more … Twenty-seven I’ve done. Look! That’ll do nicely, Mum. I’ll just slide the little drawer back into the matchbox again. There, done it. I can’t see Sidney, but I’m absolutely sure he can see me—can’t you, Sidney? Yes, you can. I’ll put a piece of bread in later, Mum … dabbed in jam, of course. He’s bound to get hungry, won’t he, Mum? Of course he will. You know he will.”

Then Sally swished out a large crumpled tissue from the back pocket of her school trousers and started busily dusting the bookshelves.

“But Sally—this is a strange game to play. I mean, you look so … well, you look like you mean what you’re saying?” said Mrs Munkton, concerned.

“Oh I do, Mum. I want Sidney to see everything. This will probably be the most exciting day of his life; you know what he’s like. Whenever we have visitors, Sidney’s always climbing up to the ceiling to get a good look down at them. He’s a nosey spider that Sidney, isn’t he, Mum?” Sally began busily rearranging books on the bookshelves so they looked more pleasing to the eye.

“I don’t mean about Sidney in particular. I mean, this business of the Queen coming for tea today?” asked Mrs Munkton, spinning her cup around on the saucer with an outstretched finger on which her false fingernail had fallen off.

“Mum, she’s coming—and soon! Hurry up and get the house tidied up, I’ll go up and tell Tim. He is back from school, ain’t he Mum?”

“Yes, he is—and it’s ‘isn’t he’, not ‘ain’t he’. And I don’t believe you about the Queen. You’re just messing around, Sally. I shan’t clean the house properly. Not today, at any rate. I just can’t do it yet. You know why …”

Sally ignored most of what her mother had just said. She skipped over to the French windows where a large rubber plant, two feet tall, half her height, stood. She reached behind the shabby, coffee-coloured velvet curtains that were pushed to one side of the French windows and plucked out a hidden plastic hand-pump water spray. The rubber plant received a welcome coat of fine water, making it look fresh and very much alive.

Sally looked admiringly at the plant, her head tipping to one side, then the other. Then she stole a quick glimpse across the room to see if her mother was watching her. She was. Consequently, Sally began spraying herself with water (which she found refreshing having earlier ran all the way home without stopping). She lifted the rubber plant up, hugging the pot around her waist. Then she started to sing “I’m Singing in the Rain” as she danced with the potted plant around the living room. Finally, she came to a standstill after a few repeated verses and placed the pot down carefully at the foot of the bookcase.

“Mum, look! I’ve put the potted rubber plant here at the foot of the bookcase, so it covers up where you burnt the carpet with the iron. Just as well we have a dark grey carpet, ain’t it—er, I mean, isn’t it?” finished Sally. Then she turned and bolted out of the room to find Tim.

Mrs Munkton rose with elegance and placed her cup and saucer on the mantelpiece of the fireplace. She was slowly shaking her head, smiling. She sauntered over to the bookcase humming contentedly and bent down slightly to attend the matchbox on the fourth shelf up from the floor. She stared intently at the holes pierced through the top of the matchbox, which were facing her, as Sally had placed the matchbox on its side so Sidney would have an excellent view.

She whispered, “Well, Sidney, my little princess is surely playing a game on me, but I suppose there’s no harm in doing a little housework. Of course, there’s no way I’m going to go over everything with a fine toothpick! ‘Rubbish’, she says our house is, Sidney. Did you hear her? Humph! The house is a touch run down. I’ll grant you that, Sidney. A little well lived in, too, perhaps. I suppose it’s a bit untidy and dusty. All right, it’s unclean and falling apart at the seams—but, if you please, not ‘rubbish’. You don’t think it’s ‘rubbish’, do you, Sidney? I suppose this game is Sally’s way of getting me to start doing housework again. Yes, that must be it, Sidney. The Queen, coming to our house—really! Putting you in a matchbox to make it seem all the more real. Oh that Sally, she is a one. Sidney, are spiders as crafty?”

Sidney did not reply.

 

2

OH BROTHER!

“THE QUEEN’S COMING!” shouted Sally, charging up the stairs like a baby elephant, rampaging towards Tim’s bedroom. “Tim! I said the Queen’s coming!” she trumpeted.

However, she couldn’t have known that Tim must have been blissfully unaware of her. He had his headphones on, almost at maximum volume, listening to some music. He always had his headphones turned up loud, even though his mother constantly reminded him that it would make him deaf one day. There he sat on his rickety old bed, propped up against the headboard, absorbed in a football magazine.

A small column of books acted as one of the legs of his bed, a bed that did not look out of place with the rest of the furniture in the bedroom. His room looked like a cross between a charity shop and the local rubbish-tip. If items of furniture could go to war, Tim’s would look like seriously wounded items patched up and returned from emergency surgery. String, tape, elastic bands, screws, nails … all sorts of quick-fix measures kept the furniture from falling to pieces.

Suddenly, Sally came bundling into Tim’s bedroom, interrupting his reading. She strode boldly up to him, avoiding various obstacles littered across the floor. With her emerald green eyes popping and a busy mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water, she roared enthusiastically at the foot of Tim’s bed.

Tim’s pained expression suggested he could not hear a word she was saying. Sally grew more animated. She walked around her brother’s bed, almost tripping on a rumpled bearskin rug, and started spitting words right into his face. “I said, the Queen’s”—Tim threw off his headphones—“COMING!”

“Tim, Tim, she’s coming!” she bellowed again.

“Huh?” said Tim. “Say it again—and there’s no need to shout.”

“The Queen’s coming.” said Sally, raising her eyebrows in a matter-of-fact way and planting her hands on her hips.

Now it was Tim’s turn to be a regular little chatterbox cruising the highway of words. Being a year older than Sally, he knew a few more words than she did. “What? What are you on about? The Queen? Is she coming here to Langley? I mean, why? There’s nothing here really, except, maybe, old man Greenie’s garden. Mr Green is always in his garden. It won a prize last year for being Britain’s best presented council estate garden—something like that. I even saw him cutting some bright green blades of grass with a pair of scissors last week. I thought he looked more like a hairdresser than a gardener. All the time I watched him, he was trimming plants with a small scissors—an odd decaying leaf here, an out-of-place stalk there. He was even finishing off the shapes on top of his privet hedges and the like, and that’s when I got to thinking he was probably a hairdresser when he was a young man. Those privet hedges of his were getting a right old haircut, they was. Do you know what they call the art of making those shapes, those living sculptures, on his privet hedges? I do. They call it topiary. Yeah. Nice word ain’t it. Topiary. Miss Morgan told us last year when she was our teacher. She’s a good teacher, ain’t she? So anyway, why’s the Queen coming to Langley?”

Sally thought for a moment about the pretty flowers in Mr Green’s garden. She especially liked the pink roses, and even believed the rumour that Mr Green was able to grow bright-blue ones with a happy face on every petal. She believed Tim about the scissors because it was just like Mr Green: she had once seen him using a toothbrush to sweep out the seams between his paving stones on his garden path. Eventually, she returned her thoughts to her brother’s question.

“She’s not actually just coming to Langley … well, she is—‍”

“Oh, make your mind up, Sally,” interrupted Tim impatiently.

“Hold your ponies a minute,” snapped back Sally.

“Don’t you mean horses?” sniggered Tim, heaping further ridicule on his inimitable sister.

“No,” bellowed Sally, stamping her foot, “I actually do mean ponies. They’re much friendlier. And I mean the Queen is coming to Langley, but not just to anywhere in Langley,” said Sally, sweeping her small hand gracefully to and fro, “but to here, Tim—to our house! She’s coming for tea!”

“What?” blurted Tim, his eyebrows almost shooting off his forehead.

“Yes,” said Sally, nodding vigorously, “she’ll be here in maybe, oh, less than an hour. She’s supposed to get here at half-past-four, see. So shut up about old Greenie’s garden and tidy your bedroom, please.” Then she finished off by saying, “Why, it looks like some tramps have been having an all-night party in here!”

“The Queen’s coming to our house!” bellowed Tim mockingly, his blue eyes, like a pair of twinkling sapphires, widened until his face exploded into a fit of laughter. He kicked his legs as they lay stretched out on his bed and shook his head wildly, almost dislodging himself from the pillows that were propping his back up against the headboard of his bed. Sally could see he didn’t believe her Queen story, not for a minute.

“It’s not funny, you idiot,” she snapped. “Oh no it isn’t, you know it isn’t. Now, just tidy up your room, or you’ll be sorry. And by the way, I put Sidney inside one of Mum’s old matchboxes up on the fourth shelf of the old bookcase. He’s just in front of the Complete Works of H. G. Wells—your favourite book. So don’t move him please. And don’t you play with the matchbox and accidentally sit on it and squash poor dear little Sidney. He wants to see the Queen, too. You know he does,” finished Sally, dipping her head and widening her eyes on the word “know” to stress it all the more.

“How on earth can Sidney see the Queen if he’s stuck in a matchbox? It doesn’t happen to have windows, does it?” Tim’s voice drawled with sarcasm.

“I pricked drawing-pin holes into the top of the matchbox so he can see out through them. The matchbox is standing on its side, see. Miss Morgan says spiders can certainly see through the tiniest, weeniest of holes because their eyes are different from ours. You know they are. I didn’t understand why properly, but it’s true because Miss Morgan says so. You know it is.”

“But why did you put Sidney in a matchbox?” asked Tim, trying to stem his laughter. “I mean, he can see perfectly well from his web.”

“Because, for one thing,” replied Sally with a look of concern, “we must clean the bookcase for the Queen. So we’ve got to move him, don’t we? But really, the main reason is because one of her security men might squash him. They’re very strict on things called security threats—ask Miss Morgan. She said people reckon the Americans have developed a robot spider that has a teeny-weeny camera in it. She says that these robot spiders are used by the government and the military to spy on people.”

“Cor! Robot spiders!” exclaimed Tim. “Soon they’ll have robot flies with cameras and poisonous stings—now that would be useful to use against the enemy!”

“Yes,” said Sally, “but then the enemy will catch some and make their own. Then we’ll all be in trouble. There are enough cameras and deadly weapons without you thinking up more, Tim.” Sally folded her arms and shook her head slowly from side to side, looking like a miniature version of her mother admonishing Tim. Tim rolled his eyes and laughed.

“Anyway,” said Sally returning to the main subject, “don’t worry about Sidney’s big web because Mum’s going to put some books in the way—we don’t want the Queen to see a dirty great big cobweb in the living room, now do we. Oh no, we don’t. You know we don’t,” finished Sally, again wagging her head earnestly.

“What books are big enough to cover Sidney’s web, then?” asked Tim, his eyebrows pulling together in thought.

“Those big Shakespeare ones that Mum says are so great,” replied Sally.

“Huh, so great that we’ve never ever seen her reading even a page of one!” said Tim.

“No, she read a page to me once. I remember. I do. It was sort of spooky. She read it to me a few weeks after Granny died. I remember how exciting it felt when she opened the book and she started turning its smelly yellow old pages.”

“What did they smell like?” asked Tim with a curious look on his face.

“Oh, quite a strange smell, really. I’d say they smelled of old, if that makes any sense,” said Sally.

“I know what you mean: a bit like fungus smells?” suggested Tim.

“Yes, like that, a bit. But maybe with pepper mixed in,” added Sally.

“Oh,” exclaimed Tim, who began to grow interested in the conversation and propped himself up against the bed’s headboard in a straight and attentive fashion. Tim loved to read books. The Shakespeare books were of special interest to Tim. He was not allowed to handle them. They were ancient and expensive family heirlooms—antiques—handed down from his recently departed Granny. For over two hundred and fifty years, they had been in the family. It was probably the curiosity of what they contained that interested him the most—that and his mother constantly telling him he couldn’t read them until he was older.

“What was the ‘sort of spooky’ thing she read all about?” asked Tim. “Was it any good?”

 

3

YOU MONGROLOID!

“I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND IT. I wish Miss Morgan had been there. She might have been able to explain it to me. All I remember is that Mum spoke the first few sentences in a funny voice, as if she was a famous actress or something. Then she seemed to get lost in the words, and she lost her reading place … and she made loads of mistakes … just like I do at school. Then she started to cry—‍”

“Just like you do at school,” put in Tim, quickly with his best cheeky face.

“Shut up, you mongroloid. I’m not finished yet,” insisted Sally, stamping her foot down.

“Mongroloid? Hmm … no doubt one of your made-up words. I’ll remember that one,” said Tim, and he started to chuckle.

“Now where was I …?” continued Sally. “Oh, yes. Then I saw a great big teardrop growing in the corner of Mum’s eye. It grew as big as a pea, and then rolled, like a tiny glass marble, all the way down her cheek.”

“Cor! If you cried teardrops as big as peas, the house would have flooded years ago,” said Tim.

“Oooh, you cheeky little monkey. You know you are,” shrieked Sally.

“Then what happened?” asked Tim.

“Oh, I’m allowed to speak now, am I? Well, Mum finished reading after a few more sentences and closed the book. Oh yes, I remember it well, I do. You know I do.”

Sally then lowered her voice and spoke in a forced undertone. “And then Mum got a photo of Granny from the sideboard top drawer—you know, where all the photos are kept—and she placed it at the page as a bookmark.”

“Wow! What a story it must be to do that to Mum? To think she only read a bit, and it did that to her. She never cries—except when—well, never mind that,” said Tim, and a dark look of sorrow swept over his face like the coming of a total eclipse of the sun.

“You mean the day—‍”

“Yes,” interrupted Tim, seemingly determined to keep the delicate subject at bay. For the second time today, Sally’s family had prevented her from mentioning the unmentionable. Tim added, as fast as he possibly could, to get away from the unmentionable, “I can’t wait to be older, so Mum will let me read those Shakespeare books. Hmm, I wonder why she put Granny’s photo as a bookmark in the story she was reading. Why did she do that, Sally?”

“Don’t know, but she did—I remember. I do, honestly. You know I do. Brownies’ honour, I do.”

“Anyway,” said Tim, “the Queen’s not coming to our house. That’s nonsense.”

“The Queen is coming!” insisted Sally, looking cross as she was getting the distinct impression that everyone thought she was making things up today: and she knew she wasn’t!

“She’s not—you little liar!” insisted Tim.

“Oh yes she is! You know she is!”

“Oh no she isn’t! Liar, liar, your school trousers will catch fire!”

“She is!”

“She isn’t, you mongroloid!” yelled Tim, looking happy with himself for getting the new word in against Sally so quickly.

“Is! You know she is!” screamed Sally, jumping up and down, causing a tennis ball to start rolling off the cluttered shelf above the bed and above Tim’s head.

“Isn’t!” bellowed Tim fiercely, and the tennis ball fell and bounced off his head—amazingly, he managed to catch it.

Sally’s face started to squash up a little, as if it couldn’t decide whether to cry or not. She grew frustrated and angry.

Tim made to throw the ball at Sally, but seemingly changed his mind and simply tossed it lazily onto the floor to join the other bits and pieces that did not belong there. It bounced over George the one-armed gorilla and knocked over Robbie the Robot before settling beside a jam jar filled with foreign coins.

“Okay, keep your pony-tail on,” said Tim. “Don’t start getting upset. I don’t want you blubbering in my room just because your game’s going wrong.”

“What game’s that then?” demanded Sally, her voice sounding like a dam holding back a river of tears that was about to burst—if a voice can sound like such a thing. Sally raised her ghost-Chinese-symbol tattooed hand to her eyes.

“Oh, never mind,” said Tim smoothly, staring intently at Sally’s ghost-Chinese-symbol tattoo. It had an instant cooling effect on him. “Anyway, I noticed something sticking out the top of one of those Shakespeare books recently. So I believe you about Mum using Granny’s photo as a bookmark and her reading you a bit of the book. I know you’re not a liar or a mongroloid. But I can’t understand this Queen-coming-to-tea business—so I’ll just have to forget that bit for now.”

This calmed Sally down instantly. A smile crept along her face.

All of a sudden, Tim lost interest in talking to Sally and listening to her outrageous tale about the Queen coming to the house for tea. He plunged back into reading his football magazine.

“Just you tidy this room—in case the Queen comes up the stairs to see it. Honestly, Tim, your room looks like a bomb has exploded in it.”

“What, and killed all those tramps having an all-night party,” said Tim with a smile, looking up from his magazine; he had remembered what Sally had said earlier.

Sally snatched the magazine out of his hands, grinning, and placed it carefully on a small wooden desk near the bed. She patted the magazine almost as if it were a pet. The desk creaked quietly in response to her pats and looked as though it might collapse at any moment. Tim’s overenthusiastic use of the desk had badly cracked one of the desk’s legs. Only a roll of bandage wrapped around it, strengthened by a column of elastic bands, prevented it from keeling over.

Sally looked back at Tim and said flatly, “Please just tidy your room or you’ll regret it—you’ll see. You know you will.” Then she thought up one last act of tomfoolery to play on her older brother …

She walked over to his wonky old chest of drawers with its improvised centrally placed drawer knobs, which Tim had made with large wooden chess pieces. She tugged open the top drawer by pulling on a white bishop chess piece and cackled into the drawer like a tiny witch. Then she shoved the drawer shut. She peeked back at Tim to make sure he was watching her every move—he was. She turned her back to the chest of drawers and leant back with a mischievous grin on her face.

“You’re definitely bonkers,” laughed Tim. “What daft-as-a-brush episode are you dreaming up now, I wonder?”

Sally sucked in a huge breath, then began what she thought was a traditional Irish dance. She kept her head perfectly still and her arms rigidly down by her sides as she hopped wildly on one leg, then the other. She looked like an out-of-control jack-hammer.

“Hey! What’s all that noise up there?” sounded Mrs Munkton’s muffled voice through the floorboards from down in the living room. “How many times have I told you—a bedroom’s not a gymnasium!”

Sally’s “dancing” petered out …

“Oh my Giddy Aunt!” said Tim. “Where on earth did you learn that nonsense?”

“I didn’t learn it anywhere,” said Sally. “I saw it on the radio.”

“You mean you saw it on the television, don’t you?”

“No, I saw it on the radio,” insisted Sally. “You see, the man on the radio described the dance—‍”

“Dance?” interrupted Tim.

“Yes, dance. It’s called traditional Irish dancing. And the man explained it, see. Then you could hear the people dancing. The noise of their feet was like the noise the men who did the road outside made. So I could I see exactly how to do the dance … you know I could.”

“I see,” said Tim. “Which accounts for your ridiculous ‘dance’. Sally, I’ve seen Irish dancing on a video-clip at school … and I can tell you … you definitely did not see any dancing on the radio!”

Sally’s eyebrows did a little Irish dance of their own, and then she simply shrugged her shoulders. “Well,” she said, “never mind that … I haven’t finished my ‘daft-as-a-brush episode’ yet.”

She turned around and once more faced the chest of drawers. She squatted down, grasped tightly a black queen chess piece affixed to the bottom drawer and pulled it back … Then she turned and faced Tim. She cocked her head to the side a touch and started to let out a muffled laugh through a fixed pumpkin-like smile; as if to imply the laugh was coming out of the drawer. She looked like a miniature amateur ventriloquist. The laugh was a series of low thunderous tones, as if the cackling witch-like laugh she had first forced through the top drawer had slowed down after falling through the chest of drawers before it came tumbling out of the bottom drawer, which was her aim.

Tim looked confused, but still managed a hesitant smile and a slow shake of the head.

For a moment, Sally wondered why queens seemed to be everywhere today. The real queen. The dusty Queen of Hearts playing card. The black queen chess piece chest of drawers’ drawer knob. Weird, she thought …

Finally, she swivelled around towards the bedroom door and, with all the grace of a ballerina, sped to her own room to do some tidying—even though, unlike every other room in the house, her room was, as per usual, spotless. She couldn’t wait to see Tim’s face when the Queen turned up. She knew the Queen would understand why his bedroom looked like a charity shop, rubbish tip, bomb-exploded all-night tramps’ party, all rolled into one mess of a room—he was a boy! But Sally knew her mother wasn’t much better!

 

4

TEARS FOR TEA

WELL, IT WAS five o’clock in the afternoon by the time the two children had joined their mother in the kitchen ready for tea.

Now, as it happens, in the Munkton house, the kitchen faced on to the road. Unlike the living room, which, if you remember, faced on to the back of the house. In the kitchen, Tim always sat facing the window so he could see the street outside. Sally sat in different places but usually next to Tim so she too could look out the window. Mrs Munkton would always sit with her back to the window.

This teatime, Sally sat to the side because she was feeling miserable because the Queen had not turned up, and because her mother and Tim had not believed what she had told them. Tim kept making fun of her ‘silly game’, and she didn’t care much for what was happening outside in the street.

Sally had told them everything, as best as she could, and couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t believe her. She fully explained that earlier in the day, her class had taken part in a videoconference session in the school’s Computer Suite. The Queen and some of her advisers were at the other end of the videoconference in a communications and media room, lurking somewhere deep in the bowels of Windsor Castle. The videoconference was partly down to the magnificent efforts of Miss Morgan, of course, who was always trying to get famous people to take part in such school events or visit the school. She knew how much it meant to the children. Apparently, the Queen had heard of Miss Morgan and her media representatives had contacted the school to set up the videoconference at the Queen’s royal command.

According to Sally, Miss Morgan gave all the children a turn to ask the Queen a question. And Phillip Crosby, the class comedian, had asked the Queen a cheeky question. Much to the horror of Miss Morgan. When his turn to speak in front of the microphone and camera came, Phillip asked the Queen, “Why don’t you never visit any of your subjects for tea? And I don’t mean Maths and English and Science … er … and History and Geography and all those other boring school subjects.”

The Queen just smiled, seemingly unperturbed. She asked him why he thought that might be a good thing to do. He replied, “Well, if you did, Mrs Queen, it would be well good because you could get to know the ordinary people. And they, Mrs Queen, your Royal Pardon, could get to know you, see.”

Miss Morgan’s face went as white as milk at first. Then it quickly turned as red as an exploding volcano. She looked as if she had never felt so embarrassed and angry with a pupil in all her life. She need not have worried. One of the Queen’s advisers whispered something into the Queen’s ear … A few moments later, after the Queen had nodded approvingly, the adviser surprised Miss Morgan and the children with an announcement. “Her Royal Majesty has decided to visit one of you children and your family after school today for tea, for the sake of public relations.”

The whole class froze in disbelief. If you had walked into the Computer Suite at that moment, you would probably have thought that Miss Morgan and her class were dummies stolen from a clothes shop window display. There was complete silence except for the hum that sang from the computing equipment. Sally said the hum seemed to increase in volume. Until eventually, Miss Morgan announced that she thought the after-school visit was an excellent gesture by the Queen, and an equally excellent exercise in public relations.

The phrase “public relations” sounded important to the children. At first, they didn’t understand what it meant. Most of them thought that perhaps it meant the Queen was somehow related to all of them. But afterwards, Miss Morgan explained to them what it really meant. She said that it was something to do with the royal family getting on friendlier terms with the general public. That is to say, the people. That is to say, the loyal subjects. She said it was what some people would call a publicity stunt, or a photo opportunity, for the royal family.

This helped the children to understand why the Queen had decided to visit one of their homes.

And the Queen chose Sally!

Much to Sally’s surprise the Queen picked her out as the lucky child because she liked the question Sally had asked her … When Miss Morgan had placed a terrified Sally in front of the computer microphone and camera, Sally had given a little curtsy (which she made a complete hash of; she simply ducked down and placed her right foot forwards) and asked the following question. “Erm, er, erm … oh yes. Your Majesty, would you give up your throne if you could cure every person in every hospital in every country in the world?”

The Queen had replied, “Oh yes, of course. There is nothing more important than helping other people. I think that perhaps I am only the Queen because we cannot cure every person in every hospital in every country in the world. I do not believe my life is any more important than anyone else’s. The duty of a Queen is a matter of our history. Yours and mine. Generation after generation hand this duty down. I did not ask for it. In fact, it is a great burden of responsibility. Perhaps one day we will not need any monarchs. Then one’s descendants will not be kings or queens, but quite possibly doctors and nurses—all helping to cure every person in every hospital in every country in the world!”

Sally did not understand all the Queen had said, but Miss Morgan seemed to—and she was beaming. Sally looked to Miss Morgan and thought her an angel, so she beamed too. Then so did the Queen—right at Sally. Sally thought at that precise moment in time the Queen looked even kinder and prettier than Miss Morgan ever did. She wondered if perhaps that’s why she was the Queen.

Miss Morgan told Sally later, it was really the answer as well as the question that had won Sally the visit.

Sally’s cheeks had burned red like a pair of cooked tomatoes when the Queen singled her out. Her heart had started to pump furiously and hammer hard inside her chest. She could even feel her pulse throbbing in her ears, something she had never felt before. She had to rub them because they started to itch. Nevertheless, aided and encouraged by Miss Morgan’s whispered instructions, she still managed to mumble, “Thank you, Ma’am.”

The Queen’s advisers said a small royal party, including the Queen, would be arriving at Sally’s house at half-past-four that afternoon.

After the videoconference was over, Phillip Crosby complained that he should have been the one chosen because, after all, it was his idea. However, Miss Morgan explained that Sally was just as deserving. She said it was Sally’s question that won the Queen’s approval. She said the class should congratulate Sally on her good fortune. And she said that   everyone usually gets a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity”, and when they do, they must “grasp it with both hands”. Miss Morgan told everyone that the whole school should be proud the Queen was coming to visit one of their pupils and that Sally would simply be representing them all.

This made everyone feel a lot happier—even Phillip. Miss Morgan then suggested to Phillip that perhaps one day his favourite footballer might visit him for dinner; Phillip would talk about his favourite footballer until the end of Time if he could. He was never rude to Sally. On the one occasion when he saw an older pupil bullying her, he was first to wade in and protect her. Though they rarely spoke, they understood something important about each other that no one else in their class would understand … Phillip had patted Sally on the back and said, “If it wasn’t me the Queen chose then I’m glad at least it was you.”

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Tim and Mrs Munkton made it abundantly clear that they thought Sally’s account was a make-believe game of some kind—especially as the Queen did not turn up at half-past-four!

Sally had already had a good cry and was only interested in getting teatime over and done with.

Mrs Munkton placed a steaming teapot carefully on the table.

“But why would the Queen have chosen you? Surely it can’t just have been for your question?” said Tim, playing soldiers with the salt and pepper containers as there was little going on in the street outside the kitchen window.

“Now that’s quite enough of that, Tim—leave Sally alone—we’ve finished with that game. You’re not to tease,” scolded Mrs Munkton.

“Sorry, Mum. I was only asking.”

“Well, stop asking, please. There’s a good boy,” said Mrs Munkton.

Sally, although upset and feeling let down, nevertheless in one way, felt hugely relieved the Queen had not turned up because she had never felt so scared in all her life. She wondered if perhaps she had misunderstood what had happened in the videoconference session. She even thought that perhaps the Queen might have gone to Phillip Crosby’s house by mistake … She was so confused that she didn’t know what to think anymore. Also, she felt silly because she was sitting at the kitchen table with her school uniform on, in her efforts to represent the school because Miss Morgan suggested it might be a good idea.

“What’s for tea, Mum?” asked Tim eagerly. He looked hungry.

“Fish fingers, chips and peas, with apple-pie and custard for afters,” proclaimed Mrs Munkton. Then she brought over a large circular covered dish and revealed the steaming main course.

“Mmm,” said Tim, sniffing the tasty aroma of the meal.

Sally did not feel particularly hungry, but the sight and smell of the food managed to whet her appetite. Suddenly, an idea came into her head.

“Mum?” asked Sally.

“Yes, dear?”

“I know you think I’m playing a game, but maybe I didn’t understand what the Queen had meant. So can’t you just telephone Miss Morgan at the school? She might be marking books. She told us she stays until at least six o’clock every night marking our books.”

“Go on, Mum,” said Tim, “Ring her up. That’ll end the game, at least.”

“Hmm?” thought Mrs Munkton, looking closely at Sally. “Okay, that’s just what I’ll do. Something must have happened at school today to make Sally behave so oddly. Yes. I’ll call the school now. I only hope there’s someone in the school office. Meanwhile, you two can spread the butter on some slices of bread and get on with your tea.”

Mrs Munkton crept out of the kitchen and into the living room to ring the school …

Unfortunately, there was no answer because the school secretary had gone home. So it was not possible to contact Miss Morgan.

“I’ve a good mind to walk down to the school right now and see Miss Morgan in person,” said Mrs Munkton, returning through the kitchen doorway.

“What happened?” asked Tim, with a chip sticking out of his mouth.

“Don’t speak with your mouth full,” replied Mrs Munkton, frowning. “There was no answer from the school office. The secretary wasn’t there to pick up the phone.”

If the word “glum” were a face, it would be Sally’s right now. She was about to burst into a flood of tears when suddenly …!