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cold.
     
    Equerry (
correcting
) Flu, Ma’am.
     
    Elizabeth Cold.
     
    Equerry The doctor was quite clear …
     
    Elizabeth (
barks, suddenly furious
) It’s a
cold
! Now
scram
!
     
The Equerry and several dogs scatter.
     
John Major appears in the doorway. He bows from the neck.
     
    Elizabeth I do hope you bring good news. I could do with cheering up.
     
Major senses her mood. And freezes.
     
    Major I … I’m afraid not.
     
He takes a deep breath. This won’t be easy. Unsure where to begin:
     
    It was a probably a mistake my embarking on this whole thing, and imagining I could make a difference. I just thought having successfully negotiated safe havens for the Kurds that my mediating skills would help reach a breakthrough here … (
A beat
.) But it seems nothing could have prepared me for the factionalism at Kensington Palace.
     
    Elizabeth Who did you see first?
     
    Major The Prince of Wales.
     
The Queen perceptibly stiffens. The merest mention of her son irritates her.
     
    Major It’s clear he feels very angry and betrayed following the unfortunate business with the Gilbey tapes … and that there is now little warmth or respect left for the Princess of Wales. Worse, he feels she is becoming increasingly problematic, and concern is growing about her influence over the Princes.
     
Thunderclouds pass over the Queen’s brow. Her knuckles momentarily appear to whiten.
     
    Elizabeth And the Princess of Wales?
     
    Major I’m sad to report she appeared quite fragile. She feels the marriage is to blame for her depression and several suicide attempts. She continues to find the Prince of Wales uncaring, cold, and is hurt by the fact that he persists in treating her like the eighteen-year-old she was when they got engaged. When I urged her to be more compassionate and try to see it from
his
perspective, too – a conflict-resolution technique I picked up shuttling between rival Serbian, Croat and ethnic Albanian warlords at the Geneva conference on Bosnia this year – she said that in a sense they’d
both
been victims since he’d obviously had feelings for someone else all along, and they had both been pressurised into an ‘appropriate’ marriage by the Royal Fam—
     
Silence. Major tails off.
     
    Elizabeth Ah, so it’s my fault?
     
    Major She never went that far, Ma’am. Never
once
referred to you personally. Or the Queen Mother.
     
    Elizabeth Just the institution we represent.
     
    Major (
clears throat
) She did offer some thoughts on that.
     
    Elizabeth May I hear them?
     
    Major I don’t think it will help.
     
    Elizabeth I didn’t suggest it would
help
. I asked to hear them.
     
    Major All right … (
Clears throat
.) The Princess felt the monarchy in its current form was outdated, unegalitarian and unrepresentative of the modern country Britain has become – and that the people were growing sick of it. She mentioned the fact that most monarchies in western democracies had been swept away by now – Portugal for example, Italy, Greece …
     
    Elizabeth That we should be swept away, too?
     
    Major She didn’t go that far, but I think she feels – and here the Government would tend to agree –
     
A silence. Major gathers the courage.
     
    – that there might be a case to be made for
further
reform and modernisation … (
A beat.
) On top of the extremely generous concessions you already made this year when you agreed to foot the bill for the repair to your own home, Windsor Castle, after the fire.
     
Stony silence.

  
Major clears throat.
     
    It’s just when you agreed to those measures, we expected public approval to be reflected in the polls, and it seems it hasn’t yet – the most recent one suggesting … that every second Briton now considers you – the monarchy – a luxury the country cannot afford.
     
The Queen looks away.
     
    So there are one or two further
tiny
modifications – the payment of inheritance tax for example – which the Government would ask Her