Michael Dobbs - To play the king

At last she was there; the organist struck up the strains of Handel's 'Messiah' and the clergy, choristers and acolytes processed down the aisle. As they peeled off to occupy their allotted positions, in the Royal Box above their heads Landless nodded respectfully while she smiled from beneath the broad brim of a matador's hat, and the service began. Their seating was, indeed, private, at gallery level and beneath a finely carved eighteenth-century canopy affording them a view of the choir but keeping her at some distance from most of the congregation, who in any event were largely Christmas tourists or refugees from the cold streets. She leaned across to whisper as the choir struck up their interpretation of 'O Come O Come Emmanuel'. 'I'm dying for a pee. Had to rush here straight from lunch.'

Landless had no need to consult his watch to know that it was already past five thirty. Some lunch. He could smell stale wine on her breath. The Princess was renowned for her bluntness: putting people at their ease, as her defenders argued; displaying her basic coarseness and congenital lack of authentic style, according to her rather greater number of detractors. She had married into the Royal Family, the daughter of an undistinguished family who counted more actuaries than aristocrats amongst their number, a fact of which the less respectful members of the press never ceased to remind their readers. Still, she had done her job, allowing her name to be used by endless charities, opening new hospital wings, cutting the ribbons, feeding the gossip columns and providing the nation with a daughter and two sons, the elder of whom would inherit the throne if some dozen of his more senior royal relatives all suddenly succumbed. 'A disaster waiting for a disaster,' as the Daily Mail had once ungraciously described her after a dinner during which she had been overheard suggesting that her son would make an excellent monarch.

She looked at Landless quizzically. There were small, fragile creases underneath and at the corners of her slate-green eyes which became more prominent when she frowned, and the flesh at the bottom of her neck was beginning to lose its elasticity, as happened with women of her age, but she still retained much of the good looks and appeal for which the Prince had married her all those years ago, ignoring the advice of his closest friends.

'You've not come here to write some scandalous nonsense about me, have you?' she demanded roughly.

'There are enough journalists in the gutter taking advantage of your family without my joining in.'

She nodded in agreement, the brim of her hat bobbing up and down in front of her face. 'Occupational hazard. But what can one do about it? You can't lock an entire family away, even a Royal one, not in this day and age. We've got to be allowed to participate like other people.'

It was her endless refrain of complaint and justification: Let us be an ordinary family. Yet her desire to be ordinary had never stopped her embracing the paparazzi, dragging all the First Women of Fleet Street backstage behind the royal footlights to write gushing tributes, being seen eating at London's most fashionable restaurants and sedulously ensuring she received more column inches than most other members of the Royal Family, including her husband. With each passing year her desire not to fade from the spotlight had grown more apparent. It was part of being a modern Monarchy, she had contended, not getting oneself cut off, being able to join in. It was an argument borrowed from the King before he ascended the throne, but it was one she had never understood. He had been seeking to find a concrete but constitutional role for the heir, while she saw it in terms of being able to find some form of personal fulfilment and excitement to take the place of a family life which had largely ceased to exist.

They nodded deferentially through a prayer before picking up the conversation during the reading of the lesson from Isaiah – 'For a boy has been born for us, a son given to us, to bear the symbol of dominion on his shoulder; and he shall be called…' 'That's what I wanted to talk to you about, the gutter press.'

She leaned closer and he tried to shift his bulk around in the narrow chair, but it was an unequal struggle. 'There's a story going round which I'm afraid could do you harm.' 'Not counting the empty liquor bottles in my dustbin again?'

'A story that you're getting designer clothes worth thousands of pounds from leading fashion houses and somehow forgetting to pay for them.'

'That old rubbish! Been floating around for years. Look, I'm the best advertisement those designers have. Why else would they still keep sending me clothes. They get so much free publicity it's me who ought to be charging them.'

'As they offered gifts most rare, At Thy cradle rude and bare,' the choir rang out.

'That's only part of it, Ma'am. The story goes that you are then taking these clothes which have been… donated, shall we say, and selling them for cash to your friends.'

There was a moment of guilty silence before she responded, deeply irritated. 'What do they know? It's nonsense. Can't possibly have any evidence. Who, tell me who. Who's supposed to have these bloody clothes?'

'Amanda Braithwaite. Your former flatmate, Serena Chiselhurst. Lady Olga Wickham-Furness. The Honourable Mrs Pamela Orpington. To name but four. The last lady received an exclusive Oldfield evening dress and an Yves St Laurent suit, complete with accessories. You received one thousand pounds. According to the report.'

'There's no evidence for these allegations,' the Princess snapped in a strangulated whisper. 'Those girls would never-'

'They don't need to. Those clothes are bought to wear, to show off. The evidence is all in a series of photographs of you and these other ladies taken over the last few months, quite properly, in public places.' He paused. 'And there's a cheque stub.'

She considered in silence for a moment, finding reassurance lacking as the choir sang sentiments of bleak midwinter and frosty winds.

'Won't look too good, will it. There'll be a bloody stink.' She sounded deflated, the self-confidence waning. She studied her gloves intently for a moment, distractedly smoothing out the creases. 'I'm expected to be in five different places a day, never wearing the same outfit twice. I work damned hard to make other people happy, to bring a little Royal pleasure into their lives. I help to raise millions, literally millions, every year for charity. For others. Yet I am expected to do it all on the pittance I get from the Civil List. It's impossible.' Her voice had become a whisper as she took in the inevitability of what Landless had said. 'Oh, stuff it all,' she sighed.

'Don't worry, Ma'am. I think I'm in a position to acquire these photographs and ensure they never see the light of day.'

She looked up from the gloves, relief and gratitude swelling in her eyes. Not for a moment did she realize that Landless already had the photographs, that they had been taken on his explicit instructions after a tip-off from one of the women's disgruntled Spanish au pair who had overheard a telephone conversation and stolen the cheque stub.

'But that's not really the point, is it,' Landless continued. 'We need to find some way of ensuring you don't run into this sort of trouble ever again. I know what it's like to be the victim of constant press sneering. I feel we're in this together. I'm British, born and bred and proud of it, and I've no time for those foreign creeps who own half our national press yet who don't understand or care a fig about what makes this country great.'

Her shoulders stiffened under the impact of his bombastic flattery as the vicar began an appeal for help to the homeless built heavily around images of insensitive innkeepers and quotations from the annual report of a housing action charity.