Michael Dobbs - To play the king

'Francis,' she whispered in his ear. 'I know it's late. It will be in darkness, but… You always promised to show me the Cabinet Room. Your special chair.' He couldn't answer. Her fingers held him speechless. 'Francis? Please

He hadn't slept again. And he knew he was beginning to get things out of proportion. Ridiculous things like his tooth mug. The valet had changed it, just like that, assuming as they all did that they knew best what was good for him. It had caused an unholy, spitting row, and now he felt ashamed. He'd got his mug back, but in the process lost his equilibrium and dignity. Yet somehow knowing what was happening to him only seemed to make it worse.

The face in the bathroom mirror looked haggard, aged, the crow's feet around the eyes like great talons of revenge, the fire within damped and exhausted. As he studied his own image he saw reflected the face of his father, fierce, intemperate, unyielding. He shivered. He was growing old even before his life had properly started, a lifetime spent waiting for his parents to die just as now his own children waited for him. If he died today there would be a huge state funeral at which millions would mourn. But how many would remember him? Not him the figurehead, but him, the man?

As a child there had been some compensations. He remembered his favourite game dashing back and forth in front of the Palace guard, all the time being greeted with the satisfying clatter of boots being scraped and arms being presented until both he and the guard were breathless. But it had never been a proper childhood, alone and unable to reach out and touch like other children, and now they were intent on depriving him of his manhood, too. He would watch television yet couldn't understand half the commercials. A stream of messages about mortgages, savings plans, money dispensers, new liquids for washing whiter and gadgets which got the paint into those difficult corners and out of the bristles of the brush. It was as though the messages came from another planet. He already had the softest brand of toilet tissue, but hadn't the slightest idea where to buy it. He didn't even have to take the top off his toothpaste in the morning or change a razor blade. It was all done for him, everything. His life was unreal, somehow so irrelevant, a gilded cage of miseries. Even the girls they'd found to help with some of the basics had called him 'Sir', not only when they first met and in public, but later when they were alone, in bed, with nothing else between them other than an enthusiastic sweat while showing him how the rest of the world spent their time.

He'd done his best, everything that was expected of him and more. He'd learned Welsh, walked the Highlands, captained his own ship, flown helicopters and jumped out of planes at five thousand feet, presided over charity committees, opened the hospital wings and unveiled their plaques, laughed at the humiliations and lamentable impersonations, ignored the insults, bitten his lip at the vicious untruths about his family and turned the other cheek, crawled on his belly through the mud and slime of military training grounds just as he was expected to crawl through the mud and slime of Fleet Street. He'd done everything they had asked of him, yet still it was not enough. The harder he strived, the more cruel their jests and barbs became. The job, the expectations, had grown too much for any man.

He looked at the bony, balding head, so like his father's, and the sagging eyes. He'd already seen the morning newspapers, the reports of the debates, the speculation and innuendo, the pontification of the leader-writers who cither discussed him as if he were known so intimately to them they could peer deep into his soul, or treated him as if he, the man, simply didn't exist. He was their chattel, a possession brought out on display at their convenience to sign their legislation, cut their ribbons and help sell their newspapers. They wouldn't allow him to join the rest of the world yet deprived him of the simple solace of being alone.

The once clear blue eyes were bloodshot with fatigue and doubt. Somehow he had to find courage, a way out, before they broke him. But there was no way out for a King. Slowly his hand began to tremble, uncontrollably, as his thoughts began to tangle in confusion, and the tooth mug started to shake. His damp fingers gripped white around the porcelain, struggling to regain control, yet it was all slipping away and the mug flew off as though possessed, grazed the edge of the bath and bounced onto the tiled floor. He stared after it, captivated, as if watching the performance of a tragic ballet. The mug gave several tiny skips, the handle bouncing this way and that, waving at him, taunting him until, with a final extravagant leap of despair, it twisted over and smashed into a hundred angry, savage teeth. His favourite tooth mug was gone after all. And it was their fault.

'Couldn't I have done this at the Cup Final, Tim? You know how I hate football.' Urquhart was already having to raise his voice to make himself heard above the crowd, and the match hadn't even started.

'Final's not until May, and we don't have time.' Stamper's bright eyes darted around the ground. His pleasure was not going to be diluted by the whingeing of his boss; he had been a keen fan since the days he was no bigger than a football. Anyway, it was part of his programme to make Urquhart appear a man amongst the people, a Prime Minister out enjoying himself and keeping in touch. The media would get bored eventually with such spoon-feeding but not, Stamper had reasoned, before March. This was an ideal occasion, a floodlit European Championship qualifying match against arch rivals Germany with passions of victorious wars and World Cup defeats being rekindled on the terraces and in front of televisions throughout every constituency. As he had reminded the recalcitrant Urquhart several times, soccer fans may not have as much money as the crowd at the Opera House, but they have many more votes and Urquhart was there to be seen helping them defend the nation's honour.

A roar engulfed them as a Mexican wave rippled around the ground, the fans throwing themselves from their seats in the image of their forefathers going over the top at the Somme, Verdun, Vimy Ridge and countless other bloody encounters with the Hun. The VIPs' box was littered with an assortment of half-consumed drinks, overweight football bureaucrats and magazines carrying the latest news of twisted ligaments and even more distorted dressing-room gossip. None of it was to the Prime Minister's taste and he sat hunched over, seeming to have withdrawn inside the folds of his overcoat, yet as Stamper leaned over Urquhart's shoulder from his seat in the row behind he discovered his leader engrossed in the screen of a miniature television, less than three inches across. He was watching the evening news.

'She's getting too old for a bikini, if you want my opinion,' Stamper bantered.

The liquid-crystal display shone bright with the image of a paparazzi photograph, slightly shaky with the effect of a gentle Caribbean swell on the long-distance lens, but unmistakably showing Princess Charlotte cavorting on a secluded beach. The tropical colours were brilliant.

'You don't do our Royal Family justice, Tim. She is doing nothing improper. It is not a crime, after all, for a princess to be seen on a beach with a tanned companion, even if he happens to be considerably younger and slimmer than she. Nor does it matter that only last week she was skiing in Gstaad. You simply have no appreciation of how hard the Royal Family works. And I do deprecate the unpleasant British characteristic of envy, that simply because we are sitting here freezing our balls off in January while the country is slipping into recession, we should criticize those who happen to be more fortunate than ourselves.' 'I fear others won't see it in quite the same noble light as you.'