two magpies
Today I stood on the very tip of my toes and waited for the Queen, waited and waited, not entirely voluntarily. ‘Come on,’ said H as we peered fruitlessly between and over and around the shoulders of taller people, little children grabbing at our coats. ‘We’re here now, right?’ Flourescent yellow policemen stood avoiding eye-contact on the barricaded road. ‘She’s having lunch at King’s now,’ said a waiting teenager to his friends. ‘Quail,’ H nodded gravely as we sat in the Copper Kettle with our panninis and one eye on the gates of King’s College. ‘Seven courses.’ The Queen’s flag flattered from a gleaming black car. It reminded me of Mrs Dalloway. Its blinds drawn and its air of inscrutable reserve. Boys on bicycles sprang off. Only no horses and no omnibuses and no parasols.
We waited some more. At the gate of the registry building stood officious men and women, a pink shirt, a clipboard, a medal, a strange squashed hat. The woman in the hat glanced at her watch. The Queen was five minutes late. My calves burnt and my toes went numb. ‘Oooooooohhhhhh’, said the crowd with one breath. H and I craned our necks to no avail. People held up camera phones and shuffled closer and closer, crammed their heads together and filled every little space with shoulders and hair. And then everyone shoved and elbowed and snapped photos. ‘It’s okay,’ said the tall woman blocking our view, ‘she is wearing very bright colours.’
‘She’s there!’ I assume the woman in the strange squashed hat is shaking her hand or courtseying. Perhaps the Queen is waving. Did she wave? ’She’s walking down the carpet!’ I can no longer feel my legs. ‘She’s having her photo taken!’ And then for three seconds she appears, just before vanishing again into a marquis. She wore orange, she was stooped and small and clinging from the arm of Prince Phillip.
‘Right,’ said the crowd, and turned its back as one. The boys jumped back on their bikes and that was it.
