I HAD A LONG TEA WITHÂ GRANNY, just before she left for Balmoral. I gave her a recap, all the latest. She knew a bit, but I was filling in important gaps.
She looked shocked. Appalling, she said.
She vowed to send the Bee to talk to us.
I’d spent my life dealing with courtiers, scores of them, but now I dealt mostly with just three, all middle-aged white men who’d managed to consolidate power through a series of bold Machiavellian maneuvers. They had
normal names, exceedingly British names, but they sort more easily into zoological categories. The Bee. The Fly. And the Wasp.
The Bee was oval-faced and fuzzy and tended to glide around with great equanimity and poise, as if he was a boon to all living things. He was so poised that people didn’t fear him. Big mistake. Sometimes their last mistake.
The Fly had spent much of his career adjacent to, and indeed drawn to, shit. The offal of government, and media, the wormy entrails, he loved it, grew fat on it, rubbed his hands in glee over it, though he pretended otherwise. He strove to give off an air of casualness, of being above the fray, coolly efficient and ever helpful.
The Wasp was lanky, charming, arrogant, a ball of jazzy energy. He was great at pretending to be polite, even servile. You’d assert a fact, something seemingly incontrovertible—I believe the sun rises in the mornings—and he’d stammer that perchance you might consider for a moment the possibility that you’d been misinformed: Well, heh-heh, I don’t know about that, Your Royal Highness, you see, it all depends what you mean by mornings, sir.
Because he seemed so weedy, so self-effacing, you might be tempted to push back, insist on your point, and that was when he’d put you on his list. A short time later, without warning, he’d give you such a stab with his outsized stinger that you’d cry out in confusion. Where the fuck did that come from?
I disliked these men, and they didn’t have any use for me. They considered me irrelevant at best, stupid at worst. Above all, they knew how I saw them: as usurpers. Deep down, I feared that each man felt himself to be the One True Monarch, that each was taking advantage of a Queen in her nineties, enjoying his influential position while merely appearing to serve.
I’d come to this conclusion through cold hard experience. For instance, Meg and I had consulted with the Wasp about the press, and he’d agreed that the situation was abominable, that it needed to be stopped before someone got hurt. Yes! You’ll get no argument from us on that! He suggested the Palace convene a summit of all the major editors, make our case to them.
Finally, I said to Meg, someone gets it. We never heard from him again.
So I was skeptical when Granny offered to send us the Bee. But I told myself to keep an open mind. Maybe this time would be different, because this time
Granny was dispatching him personally.
Days later, Meg and I welcomed the Bee into Frogmore, made him comfortable in our new sitting room, offered him a glass of rosé, gave a detailed presentation. He took meticulous notes, frequently putting a hand over his mouth and shaking his head. He’d seen the headlines, he said, but he’d not appreciated the full impact this might have on a young couple.
This deluge of hate and lies was unprecedented in British history, he said.
Disproportionate to anything I’ve ever seen.
Thank you, we said. Thank you for seeing it.
He promised to discuss the matter with all the necessary parties and get back to us soon with an action plan, a set of concrete solutions.
We never heard from him again.
