The Autobiography of The Queen by Emma Tennant

off again,’ Fiona joked.
    The Queen felt almost nostalgic, for the talk of gin made her think of the Queen Mother and the reminders of a lost era inspired by the handsome horse, depicted in colour on the silk Hermès scarf, brought pictures of Bond Street and then of the royal jeweller’s, Wartski, where that terribly nice man would drop everything if summoned to the Palace to discuss the resetting of an item in the monarch’s glittering array of jewels. Then she thought of the Cambridge emeralds, and how they had disappeared almost as soon as she arrived on the island. What would Her Late Majesty Queen Mary have thought of the present Queen’s carelessness – or had the scandal of Francis of Teck and hismistress been kept from her? The truth would never be known, and the Queen felt terribly tired; serving the American women who, eyeing their British upper-class contemporaries with ill-concealed disgust, now clustered by the wooden sill of the bar, was the very last thing she wanted to do. For the Queen would find it effortless to make conversation with Boofy’s girl or Fiona – but the … what were they? the Queen did not choose, like her great-grandmother Queen Victoria, to forbid the existence of lesbians; but to these unappetising and strident women she could think of nothing whatever to say. Besides, one of these monsters was speaking of ‘empowerment’ and other meaningless but threatening terms were bandied about by the sisters, most of whom were unkempt in the extreme.
    â€˜No,’ – the voice the Queen refused them with was crystalline and startled both of the English visitors, so they looked hard at the woman behind the bar and then subsided again into their fruit punches, topped up with grenadine – ‘no, there is no Bourbon here.’ And then, recovering from the unpleasant after-effect of pronouncing the name of the guillotined Royal Family of France, the Queen pulled up the sill and marched to the back of the hut.
    â€˜What an odd woman,’ Boofy’s girl’s voice sounded through the badly nailed-together planks.
    â€˜Yes, apparently they go bushy if they stay out inthe tropics too long,’ the owner of the Hermès headscarf concurred. ‘But I’m sure she wasn’t here a couple of years ago when I came on Roman’s yacht …’
    But by the time Fiona had embarked on her reminiscences of her last trip to the island, the Queen had fallen fast asleep.

Secrets
    Now, darkness had come and a swelling moon climbed the sky. Austin Ford and the Queen sat in companionable silence on the beach, the Queen in a pair of new flip-flops purchased for her by Austin in Soufrière on his return from his fishing trip (he had caught a fish and had sold it to the Rainforest Bar immediately – and just as quickly it had been thrown into the deep freeze, to emerge at some future date as a creature suitable for a Latin, Italian or American buffet – or as one of the unidentifiable components of an ‘island barbecue’ at an inclusive Saturday night).
    â€˜You know, I think I take you to my village so you meet my Auntie May,’ Austin was saying. ‘Tomorrow, maybe. And we go to find that Lot 75 man, that builder, and I make him build your house, Gloria.’
    â€˜We do need to speak to him,’ the Queen said.‘We are beginning to be a little disappointed by promises made and their lack of fulfilment. We are happy to accept your offer to take us up there.’
    Austin smiled and raised his can of Piton lager. The Queen had refused water from the plastic bottle and had taken a Coke: now he wondered if she had slipped a shot of rum into the glass. Who were the others who would accompany her tomorrow? Why did she speak in the plural, when she had clearly come out on her own? Not for the first time, he considered dumping his client altogether – but the takings at the bar hadn’t been bad: the