House of Queenie

By Carolyn Steele

The British Republic has settled down after last year’s shenanigans. All is quiet, and the randomly selected government hope for an easy final year before their lives return to normal. Except, what on earth is wrong with Gerald? And who stole Caroline’s camera? And how bad can a cryptocurrency mortgage be? Trivial stuff, but the sort that can spiral out of control. Especially when a good guy gets desperate and another turns vigilante.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carolyn Steele
• Release date: May 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463877043

Carolyn Steele

Carolyn has been a psychologist, a paramedic, a proof reader and several other things, not all of them beginning with P. A trucker, for example. She began writing the day she decided to try and see the world...doing both just to find out if she could. It made a change from teaching CPR to nightclub bouncers and designing wedding cakes. When excerpts from her first travelogue were published by the Rough Guides she decided to keep on doing both.Carolyn maintains that she is either multi-faceted or easily bored, depending on who is enquiring. Born and bred in London, England, Carolyn and her son Ben are now Canadian citizens and live permanently in Kitchener, Ontario.The Armchair Emigration series will comprise three books when the next is written, Carolyn would call it a trilogy, except that sounds a bit serious. Then there will be a comic novel (it has a title so far) two children's books and something serious to do with grief, loss and anger.

Book preview

Clayton Brown stood for a moment, just inside the Straw Bear’s door, to let his eyes accustom to the gloom. It was one of those impossibly bright January days, with just enough frost on the ground to reflect the sunlight directly into your eyes. He’d been driving north-east, which shouldn’t have caused too much grief, sun-wise, but somehow it had insisted on reflecting off the satnav as he headed to the fens.

‘We’re closed.’ A face swam into view to match the voice from behind the bar. The unsmiling lad was balancing several plates of some sort of suet pudding on his arm as he turned his back on Clayton.

The pub was full. People were eating. Orders were being placed at the bar.

‘You look pretty open to me,’ Clayton ventured as the lad returned from his pudding delivery. He indicated the obvious bustle.

‘We’re closing in a minute.’

Clayton sighed. It had been a long time since the colour of his skin had caused this sort of thing, but maybe things were different out here in the sticks. For a moment he regretted agreeing to come out on this bizarre expedition, but then common sense took over.

‘I’m meeting some friends, they’re already here I expect.’ He scanned the depths of the pub and spotted Caroline, Minnow and Sammy crushed into a dark corner, waving at him. ‘There they are.’ He pointed them out to the surly lad.

‘Well, I suppose you could sit with them until they leave.’

‘That’s extremely kind of you.’ He tried not to let the sarcasm through. ‘Could I possibly buy a drink to help pass the time?’

‘Gone last orders,’ mumbled the barman, as several ruddy-faced locals waved fivers further along the bar.

‘I see. Well, I have a bottle of water in the car, I could go and get that to help soothe my thirst while I sit with my friends until they’re ready to leave, or I could give you some of my money.’

He watched the wheels turn.

‘Just time for one.’

‘Naturally. I’d like a Diet Coke please, driving you know.’ Clayton attempted a friendly smile.

A little fluid remained in the glass he picked up and carried over to join the others, after apologising to the people who got splashed as the beverage was half-slammed, half-thrown onto the bar.

‘You got a drink then?’ Caroline’s face registered amusement as he approached them. They were huddled into a small gap between two empty tables. Clayton picked up a chair from one of the tables and moved it to join them. The three orchestrated a joint sharp intake of breath.

‘The mayor won’t like that.’ Sammy covered her mouth in horror.

Clayton looked around the bustling pub.

‘Where’s the mayor?’

They sniggered.

‘What the hell’s going on?’

‘Excuse me...’ Caroline addressed a passing kid, who had emerged from the kitchen with some more plates of suet thing. ‘I know the mayor has booked both these tables for a big party, but we’ve been here half an hour and there’s no sign of them. Would it be okay if we just sat there until they arrive? Somewhere to put our drinks? And then maybe we could order some food?’

‘I dunno.’ The girl looked over her shoulder.

‘And while we do understand that you’re closing, other people still seem to be able to order food...?’ Sammy gave the girl a charming smile and cocked her head to one side. ‘We’d love to be able to give you a great review on TripAdvisor...’

The girl looked around the pub, presumably for inspiration.

‘I suppose it might be all right.’

‘Thank you.’ Caroline took charge. ‘We’d each like one of those, what are they?’ She indicated the passing plates of suet object.

‘Plough Pudding,’ the girl muttered.

‘How lovely, very traditional, we’ll have one each.’ Caroline indicated the table to their left. ‘We’ll be sitting here, and can you organise another round of drinks? Same again.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Since you clearly aren’t closing, and we are all here awaiting the same event which is still three-quarters of an hour away, and if and when the mayor does deign to turn up I’m sure we’ll manage—’

The girl turned and ran.

‘Poor kid, do you think she’s in tears yet?’ Sammy grinned at Caroline. ‘You used your cabinet voice.’

Minnow coughed a laugh. ‘Shall we move before someone changes her mind?’

‘Good plan.’ Sammy was giggling now. ‘Quick, before they notice.’ She shot surreptitious glances over both shoulders, picked up Minnow’s glass and her own and sidled to the table. ‘We’re in!’

Clayton planted his glass, moved his chair back to the position he’d taken it from, held the one next to it out for Caroline and tried again.

‘What the...?’

All eyes turned to Caroline.

‘Don’t look at me. It’s bonkers. We thought at first there was some sort of racist thing going on...’

‘That was my first impression.’ Clayton glanced around the pub, taking in the sea of white faces.

‘But we’ve been watching the door.’ Sammy took Minnow’s hand and Clayton registered that he wasn’t the only visible minority at the table, maybe just the most self-conscious. ‘And they’re telling loads of people they’re closed. Most just walk away, we only barged in because we’d said we’d meet you here.’

‘Is it some sort of are you local? shtick?’

‘Must be. But why? It’s a cruddy little out-of-the-way village that only gets busy one weekend a year. Why not grit your teeth and take people’s money?’ Minnow shook his head. ‘Makes no sense at all.’

The barman who had greeted Clayton approached them with a tray of drinks and two packets of crisps.

‘You can’t sit there—’

‘The mayor’s coming, we know.’ Sammy used her winningest smile. ‘As soon as they arrive, we’ll move. Promise.’

‘Well, make sure you do.’

‘Are those crisps for us? How kind.’ Clayton decided to follow up Sammy’s attempt to inject a little charm into the proceedings.

‘You can’t have pudding, we’ve only got enough for the mayor’s party left. That’ll be thirteen-seventy-five.’

He dumped the tray on the table relatively carefully—maybe the mayor didn’t like spillages—and held out his hand.

‘Allow me,’ Clayton riffled in his pocket and proffered a twenty. ‘Keep the change,’ he added. Just in case it was a bit racial after all.

‘Guess we don’t get to sample Plough Pudding, then.’ Sammy applied herself to one of the bags of crisps. ‘Pity, I’m starving.’

Caroline picked up the other pack. ‘Not sure it looks nice, anyway. What’s in it, do you suppose?’

‘No idea,’ said Minnow, ‘but I can Google it if you like.’ He reached into his pocket for his smartphone, but Sammy put a restraining hand on his arm.

‘Not today,’ she said. ‘We’re unplugging, remember? A day of ancient and fascinating tradition. Gerald will know, he can tell us after the parade.’

‘Does he know we’re here to watch?’ Clayton asked.

‘No.’ Caroline shook her head. ‘He’d have forbidden it.’

‘Pity,’ said Sammy. ‘I bet we’d have got something to eat if he’d been with us.’

Clayton surveyed the faces in the pub again. ‘I haven’t seen anyone else from our lot, I wondered if Queenie might have wanted to come.’

Caroline snorted on her shandy. ‘Please don’t. She did but we talked her out of it. Poor Gerald was mortified enough when it all came out last year. Can you imagine what he’d go through if Queenie and the media circus came to watch him Morris dance down some daft little street covered in straw. Anyway, Bert put his foot down, said he wasn’t having her stand about outside in the cold all day with her knees.’

‘She looked it all up though,’ said Minnow. ‘Had me in to show her how to bookmark pages on her computer. Nothing about Plough Monday she doesn’t know now, in fact she probably knows what’s in those puddings.’

‘I’ve promised to take loads of photos for her,’ Caroline said as she dug in her coat pocket for a small digital camera. ‘Probably best not to let Gerald see this.’

‘Wouldn’t a phone be subtler?’ Clayton asked, as Minnow attempted an eyeroll. He looked like someone who had recently been taking lessons in facial expression.

‘She pretends not to have one.’

‘I’m confused,’ Clayton said. And he was. ‘I’ve got your mobile number.’

Sammy winked at him. ‘That makes you pretty special.’

‘Oi, you lot.’ Caroline feigned outrage. ‘Just because I choose to unplug more than once a year.’

Minnow stuck his tongue out. Perhaps he’d been taking lessons from Queenie.

‘Be fun if Queenie was here, she’d outrank the pigging mayor.’ Sammy spilled a little of her coffee into her saucer, twirled the cup in it, then placed it on the tablecloth, leaving a perfect circular stain. ‘Sorry,’ she said to Minnow as he winced. ‘It’s to annoy the mayor, not you.’

‘What’s she up to anyway, Queenie, that is?’ Clayton addressed the question to Caroline, Queenie’s head-of-state-sitter-in-chief.

‘Some kiddies’ shindig at Buck House. The schools aren’t back yet so she decided to get the local reps and their families in for one last party.’ Caroline eyed the remainder of her crisps. ‘Looks like she got the better deal, there’s usually sausage rolls.’

Clayton checked his watch. ‘Half an hour to Straw Bear time, I wonder if Gerald is all dressed up yet.’

A commotion at the pub door attracted his attention. Several loud voices, much bustling, and a pub full of mutterings. The barman dashed over with a grimace on his face as half a dozen people bore down on their corner of the pub. ‘You’ve got to move, the mayor needs this table.’ Clayton was just about to obey when he saw the smirk on Caroline’s face. She waved at one of the entourage.

‘Ah, I see you have been taking grand care of my friends.’ Gerald’s voice didn’t miss a beat.

Queenie and Eugene stood at the door to Buck House’s enormous ballroom and surveyed the chaos. Queenie caught Eugene allowing himself an approving nod out of the corner of her eye.

‘The boy done good,’ she said, as if to no-one in particular. ‘And the boy knows the boy done good.’

He smiled at her. ‘We’ve learned a thing or two since you started this game.’

Some of the more difficult-to-clean items had been popped into storage, along with the most valuable paintings. Well, the ones hung low enough to have jelly-and-ice-cream smeared fingermarks on them anyway. The ancient and gilded space didn’t quite look as though it had been wrapped in plastic but at the same time, the public purse wouldn’t be spending so much on cleaning and restoration this year.

Queenie waved at Sally and Doug, who seemed to be supervising a game of Twister with Sally’s twin boys, plus little Troy and Chardonnay, who had clearly pushed their way to the front of a relatively orderly queue of overexcited anklebiters to get to play with their friends.

‘Those grandkids of Doris’s are more at home here than Bert is these days. What with stayin’ over during Bobby’s bit of trouble.’

‘Yes.’ Eugene laughed. ‘But all the kids love your parties, you know that...woah...slow down...’ He put an arm out to grab a toddler wielding a fistful of egg sandwiches. ‘You need to eat those sitting down, you know, or you might make yourself cough. Now. Where’s your mum?’

‘Dad, actually,’ puffed someone Queenie vaguely recognised. ‘So sorry. We were sitting nicely, weren’t we?’ The little girl fidgeted, crestfallen, squashing the sandwiches into an eggy ball as she stood still for her telling off. ‘But I mentioned getting in the queue for the Twister game and forgot to say, after we’ve eaten, didn’t I?’ The trio received a miserable nod.

‘It’s not your fault, and you’re not in trouble, you know.’ Eugene dropped onto a knee to catch the kiddie’s eye.

‘I should say not.’ Queenie bristled. ‘It’s your dad’s fault for not saying it right, so shall we tell him off?’ She was rewarded with a soggy smile and an even soggier handful of ex-egg-mayo. ‘Lovely. I’ll put them over here, shall I? Then we’ll get Eugene to find some wipes for your hands and you can go and wait for a go with the others.’

Eugene produced a travel pack of baby wipes from some inside pocket or other and the clean-up commenced.

‘I don’t know your name, do I? Come to think of it, I’m not sure I remember your dad’s name either, ain’t that awful of me. See, if I was Caroline, I’d have a page in me notebook all about you both but I don’t...’

‘It’s okay, I’ve not been here since the start, which is probably when you all put pages in notebooks. This is Lottie and I’m David—’

‘Oh, I know. You replaced the mad doc! I mean, uh, you are the new health minister they found after...’

‘That’s me.’

‘Findin’ your feet all right?’

‘Yes, thank you. It’s been a little strange, coming in mid-term, disconcerting that everyone else knows what they’re doing—’

‘Hah!’ Queenie snorted. ‘Don’t let them fool you, we’s all just muddlin’ through the best we can. And the ones what tells you they know what they’re doin’, mostly them’s the idiots.’ Eugene suppressed a giggle and Queenie toyed with the idea of aping Andy Carswell’s cigar and tie routine, just so Eugene knew she wasn’t being rude about him, but decided to be dip-lo-matic instead. ‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘come and sit down and we’ll have a proper chat. I should have come and found you and done a real welcome to bein’ the government sort of thing months ago and I’m not sure why I haven’t. See, I’m crap at my job too, oops...’ She covered her mouth and looked around to see if any kiddies had overheard. ‘I’m supposed to be cuttin’ down on the swearin’, after, you know’—she dropped her voice to a whisper—‘last Christmas.’

David smiled. ‘I can imagine. Even if most of us did love it. But this year’s speech to the nation was fine wasn’t it?’

‘They made me stick to the script.’

‘Yes, but that wink when you told us you’d been ordered to, that was hilarious. You got a round of applause in my house, and I bet we weren’t the only ones.’

‘That’s nice. Anyway, David, I’m goin’ to start a page in my book about you right away, so while I sort it, you fetch us some lemonade and a handful of them Twiglets over there and come and be grilled. Lottie will be fine with Sally and Doug. Although we might want to keep an eye out for Big Doris coming back, she’s bound to have a bottle of something stronger than lemonade in her handbag and her language can be worse than mine...’

Tom Bothamley asked himself, for the umpteenth time this Christmas break, whether it was a sign of impending age that he seemed unable to get out of his dressing gown. It was the having nothing to do; he wasn’t used to it. When you’ve got to be somewhere, no matter whether it was suited and booted or safety-shoed and work-gloved, you just did it on automatic pilot to get out of the door. He wondered how people who worked from home managed. Did they save a fortune on clothes?

He’d drawn the short straw this year. His turn to be the cabinet minister asked to stick around in London in case something happened that needed input from a person of the people. They tended to ask the childless single blokes, assuming they had nothing to go home for. He didn’t really mind, much though he hated the stereotype; he did have nothing to go home for but he’d been hoping to spend the break doing a bit of agency work. He liked to drive. It helped him think. A couple of container trips to the continent and back would have been just the ticket. Not quite as satisfying at the days of nothingness when he drove long haul in the States, but pleasantly mindless all the same. And truckstops were always warm and welcoming over Christmas. Everyone tried that bit harder to take care of those on the road when others were feasting.

Instead, here he was, in his flat in Portcullis House, in his dressing gown. Would one more day matter? It probably needed a wash, that white stilton the cafe had sent with his Boxing Day supper had been a bit crumbly. He was still wafting specks of cheese from various nooks and crannies as he stood up. He’d wash it tomorrow when he had to be back in a suit anyway, being the nation’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, who had heroically sat about all Christmas being a slob in case of a crisis. There hadn’t been one and he was bored.

He’d watched a bit of Netflix, idly sat through an old documentary on the rise and fall of BitCoin. His ‘viewing choices’ then flagged up something called Can Blockchain survive Quantum? He watched that too, and tinkered about online looking at the new supposedly greener and unhackable cryptocurrencies. He even considered a flutter on one or two. That was about as chancellory as he’d got.

Would the accountant he used to be have considered that enough? The old Tom would have had a flat full of projects and spreadsheets by now. Driving for a living had soaked away that need for constant mental busy. An antidote to the treadmill. The insomnia, the anxiety, he’d not noticed it draining his soul away until it stopped.

His wife had left him on the spot of course, as soon as she realised he really was going to chuck away a lucrative career for the dubious joys of being covered in diesel all the time, instead of just talking about it. He suggested she come out on a run to see how freeing it was, but that was back when he thought she might care how he felt. To be fair, the extra dose of freedom he felt when he got home from his first overnight run and she wasn’t there...well, maybe he hadn’t cared much how she felt either.

In defence of the indolence, he did call around to see if the other Portcullis sad singles were about but they were mostly in the process of becoming less single. Doug Sideworth had spent Christmas with Sally Farnham, presumably alcohol-free. Clayton Brown was off out somewhere with Caroline and co and the insufferable Winstanley— ‘call me AW’—allegedly had an extended family somewhere who could tolerate him.

He retrieved his glasses from his forehead, flipped on the computer and decided to track a few coins.

CHAPTER TWO

‘It was like having the old Gerald back.’ Caroline smiled as she waved her shortbread biscuit about for emphasis. ‘He barely twitched a muscle as he said, Good to see you all, glad you found us, is no-one sampling the Plough Pudding?’

‘Blimey.’ Queenie put her knitting down on the coffee table, so she could lean forward and do a passable impression of Gerald’s steeple-fingered thinking pose. ‘And he really had no idea you were going?’

‘No. We assumed he’d be mortified so we kept it quiet.’

‘But why was he in the pub anyway? I thought he was there to do the dance.’ Queenie riffled about in her capacious knitting bag and retrieved some webpage printouts. ‘I’ve been readin’ all about it, it’s very historical.’

‘The pub’s all part of it.’ Caroline finished her biscuit. ‘They put him in the straw getup in the pub, then it’s the mayor’s job to send him off with a tot of whisky to keep out the cold, hence the whole ‘waiting for the mayor’ thing. But the mayor was already pissed when he arrived, so instead of two tables full of worthies, there was just him and Gerald and few hangers on because he’d upset most of the others mouthing off about something.’

Queenie’s grin began to spread.

‘So we ended up helping put all this straw stuff on him, and then the mayor spilled the whisky down it and we had to get another one, so we sent Clayton to the bar to announce another tot for Straw Bear! because they’d been rudest to him. You should have seen the barman’s face.’

Caroline stopped for breath. She’d been looking forward to telling Queenie the story. ‘The only way it could have been funnier is if you’d been there.’

‘I didn’t know history had so much drinkin’ in it. Maybe I’ll bring Bert next year, it sounds more fun than when Gerald explained it.’

‘He was probably trying to put you off.’

‘Did you get those photos for me?’

Caroline sighed. ‘I took my little camera and got some great shots. Each one I took I thought about the fun we’d have looking at them now...’

Queenie gave her a puzzled look. ‘And...?’

‘Some bastard nicked the camera out of my pocket. Didn’t notice until I got home, they must have had some dippers working the crowd.’ Caroline realised over again how angry she was. It wasn’t so much the photos, just the final insult of a day of insults.

‘Can’t trust these country types,’ Queenie muttered as she proffered the shortbread plate. ‘Has he forgiven you though, Gerald, that is?’

Caroline gave the matter some thought. ‘Not sure. I think so, but he’s been a bit subdued for months. Last year’s screw-ups hit him hard.’

‘He’ll have to perk up soon,’ Queenie said, with an emphatic dunk of her shortbread. ‘We need him. I need him.’

Caroline grinned. ‘I’m sure he’ll be mightily surprised to hear that.’

‘Oh, no offence ducks, I need you too...’

‘Don’t be silly. Now, what about your Christmas? Eugene says the party was a great success.’

Caroline checked her watch as subtly as she could. Theoretically this was the first business meeting of the new term. They might be ensconced with coffee and biscuits in Queenie’s reception room in the head of state’s quarters at Buck House, but Queenie’s January diary was on the agenda and the others would be along soon. However, she’d learned over the last couple of years that getting the storytelling and gossip out of the way first was a more efficient use of time than expecting the old darling to concentrate right away. Besides, it was fun. And they had a few more minutes.

‘It was lovely, we had all the kiddies again, and I went about seeing if everyone was all right, just like you do. I put notes in my book and everything.’ She wiped a drip of coffee from a notebook that looked as if it had seen some serious service as a coaster. ‘Oh, and I met the new one,’ she added in a stage whisper.

‘The new what?’

‘The bloke what replaced’—Queenie glanced over her shoulder to the door to the rest of the flat, then rearranged herself in a remarkably good impression of Les Dawson—‘the doctor.’

‘Oh, the new health minister?’

‘Yes.’

‘There’s no need to whisper, it’s hardly any secret.’

‘I know.’ Queenie picked up her knitting again. ‘But it feels like it should be. So horrible.’

‘Can’t be helped. Fortunately we had a pool of good people to pick from. This one’s an NHS administrator, I understand.’ Caroline retrieved a notebook of her own from her capacious briefcase-and-knitting-bag and flipped to a page towards the back.

‘You haven’t done your getting to know you thing?’ Queenie looked surprised. ‘That’s not like you, and I think you should, ‘cos he’s struggling a bit with coming in new while everyone else is settled and that.’ She wrinkled her nose in an effort to look over her glasses.

‘You’re right.’ Queenie was right. ‘I’ve been putting it off a bit.’

‘Why would you do that? You never do that. People like Bert put stuff off. And people like me...’

‘I think I recognised the name...’ Caroline was more uncomfortable now than she had been in that blasted pub. And she was being stupid.

Queenie rearranged the glasses on her nose so she could look over them properly. She didn’t look any fiercer but the thought was there. ‘Old flame eh? I’m sure that nice Mr Brown won’t mind.’

‘No. Not an old flame and no he wouldn’t mind, I mean, he’d be in no position to mind, we’re not—’

‘Well, you should be, He’s good for you. And don’t change the subject.’

‘It’s stupid.’

‘So am I, dearie, spit it out.’

‘We went to the same university, that’s all.’ Caroline sighed, someone had to know. ‘And, he might think I’m a Provo sleeper.’

Queenie threw her head back and guffawed. ‘You? Why?’

‘Well, there’s always conspiracy theories out there, and everybody knows one got into government last year—’

‘Yes, I seem to remember him trying to kill me, but why you?’

‘He stayed on after finals and did a sabbatical year as a Student Union full-timer...’

Queenie sat back and waited.

‘Some friends and I, uh, well, me, we started a stupid thing, a joke...’

Queenie put her head on one side.

It came out in a rush. ‘We started a Custard Appreciation Society and had a committee and meetings and researched the history of custard. Did you know Alfred Bird invented custard powder because his wife was allergic to eggs? We had a bloke who did custard cream rubbings and we applied to the Union for some funds for events. When word got round that the Union might pay for parties we got a lot of people signing up...and this bloke, David Atherton, he got us banned because it was too stupid to be a thing so it had to be a cover for a democratic sleeper group and we nearly got chucked out.’ She stopped for breath. And realised she’d been avoiding Queenie’s eye.

The knock on the outer door interrupted Queenie mid-guffaw.

‘I was the trifle secretary,’ Caroline muttered as Eugene ushered in the day’s dignitaries.

‘Bugsy’ Malone sat at the kitchen table and looked at the envelope. The letter had been there, unopened, all weekend. The kids had asked him what it was, why he hadn’t opened it, could they open it, was it exciting? Was he saving it up for a special occasion? That’s what Mum always got them to do with special things, save them up, look forward to them.

Then they’d chatted about the things Mum made them look forward to, birthday presents, Christmas stockings...Mum had started that thing about ‘finding’ a few stocking stuffers on Boxing Day. Back when he’d been in the army, if he couldn’t get leave, she’d sometimes hide an entire stocking until he was home to watch them open it. It was the sort of happy chat about Mum that left them feeling a bit better. They’d hugged, chatted about what Christmas might be like in heaven, and forgotten the letter.

He’d been saving it up all right, but only until term started. So he could scream if necessary, punch the walls, go get a broken hand put in plaster, that sort of thing.

The envelope stared at him. He stared back. Might as well.

‘Dear Mr Malone...’

Was it a reprieve? It might just be kicking the can down the road but the sense of relief made him wish he’d not spent the weekend envisioning destitution. Still, with the kids back at school, at least he had plenty of time to spend trying to deal with call centres. If they wanted more information before they could make a decision, he’d give them as much information as their little hearts desired. Information was cheap. Unlike mortgages.

He made a pot of coffee, put his phone on to charge lest it run down while one department put him on hold trying to transfer him to another department, flipped it to speaker, made himself comfortable and made the call.

Queenie and Caroline moved to the conference-stroke-dining