The Royal Visit
This is a story from the Before Times.
The Before Times, when people took pictures on film.
The Before Times when we called one another, had meetings and discussed things.
A phone call. A meeting. A conversation. The sequence sounds so quaint now.
And so… this is the story of how I came to photograph the Queen. In the Before Times. Oh and by the way, I am smiling as I write these words. Smiling, because it is simply ludicrous to say that I photographed the Queen in a meaningful way. It would be more accurate to say that I pointed a camera at her and got paid to do so, for I wasn’t introduced to her, I didn’t direct her or add any flourish to the pictures. In my defence, though, I’d say on the other hand that the photographs were correctly exposed and in focus. Of course, in the Before Times, this wasn’t always as simple as it is now, so…
The story starts with exactly one of those meetings. I am in the boardroom of one of London’s most prestigious private equity firms. Project your mind to a room with carpeting so thick that you leave impressions of your feet in it when you walk across it. Scott crossing the frozen wastes of the Antarctic.
There is something about the atmosphere of a top tier boardroom. A tension lives there even when unpeopled. There’s a sense of impending awe, the climax of a sleight of hand trick, one you hadn’t suspected was in play until it was over.
My client, Sofia, and I are in the main boardroom, a rectangular room featuring a sleek, highly polished wooden table, which tapers at each end. At one such corner we are seated, chatting genially, and drinking coffee. There is a particular type of silence here: the outside world is damped down, held at a safe distance. The better for the PE bods to have a perspective on things.
She is old school Continental, elegant and poised at all times. Effortlessly at ease in any situation.
She sits forward, shifts closer, scans the room carefully as if to ensure there is no one to overhear us as she speaks.
No one must know, she tells me. The Queen – none other than Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth and Defender of the Faith, herself – is coming to visit, part of a government initiative to show the nation that even the monarch is engaged with the go-go world of private equity and venture capitalism, and Sofia's go-go-goers need to document this honour. Truly not my usual sort of photography, but I can't resist the challenge.
Sofia's eyes – it must be noted – are deep brown, expressive. The prospect of the visit animates her and during the telling, she's wiggled forward on her chair until she is perching on its edge. Our faces are very close together now, and her cologne fills my nostrils. While I am slightly concerned by her sudden proximity, the electrical charge radiating from her pins me down. Her eyes are aflame.
Out of the blue she says, “I bend my knee to no man.” Earnestly, but with some vigour.
It's a curious phrase and I am lost in translation, wondering at its meaning, whether metaphorical or actual.
She explains: the young Masters and Mistresses of the Universe have discussed it thoroughly and decided they would neither bow nor curtsy to HRH, for they live in a world bound not by republican attitude, but by merit alone.
These were the Before Times, before this particular Randian conceit was demolished by the 45th President of the United States.
On the day, Her Majesty arrives and enters the building, then chooses one of the two lifts at random; both have been serviced, checked and locked off the day before. Even so, the elevator company's engineer is hidden in an anteroom off reception, just in case.
I'll let you in on a secret. I arrive moments after the security detail has checked the location. They pass me by as I come out of the stairwell and start their own descent; neither of us able to use the elevator, of course. They do not search me. Nor do they get the explosives sniffer dog to check my capacious camera bag. Oops. Yet I feel weirdly guilty, wonder if I should call out or something. I imagine saying something, but they're already on the third floor.
She travels to the fourth floor, steps out with her entourage, including two ladies in waiting, an equerry in full Guards uniform, various press officers and a phalanx of police bodyguards.
As often noted by others, she is far smaller in person than expected. Having seen her face repeatedly over my lifetime, my first reaction is to feel a sense of polite yet casual familiarity. She does, after all, trigger an involuntary it's-my-grandmother reflex in us.
The company has set out a linked series of rooms that she can walk through, each with a small team making a brief presentation. It's uncannily like Show and Tell. Each group talks her through the wonders of their intervention in a floundering business and the resulting bounce the business experienced from their association. They mention the largesse of their capital injections, but do not mention the inevitable and sometimes painful liquidity events – as they are known – to come.
Security considerations mean that I am the only one permitted to actually accompany her from room to room. I am therefore the only one to hear the repeated motifs of each party's scripts. The only one to hear her reaction.
"Hmm, hmm. Astonishing performance," she says to each, in the same even tone, the words exactly metered, accompanied by a professional smile and slight inclination of the head.
Flowers presented, Visitor's Book signed, she departs as precisely as she arrived, choosing a lift car, descending to street level only to find that a small crowd has spontaneously formed. There are suddenly people to greet, a long-time Standard vendor to exchange pleasantries with.
The escorts slide up. The road is closed by invisible forces. The car doors open. She is gone.
Another routine visit. More anodyne words mouthed. She couldn't possibly remember either today.
I do remember. All bowed or curtsied on the day.
Except Sofia.
Across a busy and now-crowded room, our eyes meet. She sends me a smile of complicity. The room is full, she's busy. I make an imaginary telephone handset in mid-air with my hand and smile back.
The lift awaits.
© Copyright Michael Harding
Please note that the date for this blog post has been assigned to create a sequence and not a chronology. Note, too, that Sofia’s real name has not been used in this text.
