A Royal Mess (47 page)

Malcolm replied. ‘Yaah, likes his sabre does our Pyke. No, he’s one of the heroes that drew us here. Rather hoping to get some triumphant footage of the boy wonder making mincemeat of the legendary Italian swashbucklers.’ Then he turned his attentions back to me. ‘Calypso, you’ll be wanting your usual.’ He shouted out to Orlando,
‘Hunte, get a bottle of Veuve, will you? Get two, in fact, three, four – a dozen! In fact, tell them to empty the bar.’ Then he flung down a huge pile of Euros on the table.

‘Get it yourself, McHamish,’ Orlando replied, lazily chucking the notes back at Malcolm. ‘I went last time.’

‘Honestly, I don’t want any champagne,’ I told Malcolm.

‘Nonsense, you live on the stuff.’

‘No, I don’t,’ I told him truthfully.

‘Really?’ Malcolm looked shocked. ‘Well, why are you always swilling the stuff down, then?’

‘I’m not always swilling the stuff,’ I said with lashings of indignance. ‘I don’t even like the taste of it.’

Malcolm wiped a stray lock of his slicked-down hair from his face. ‘Excuse me, Calypso, but you are a champagne swiller of the highest order. The first night I met you hanging off the wisteria vine outside my room – vision of loveliness though you were – I thought, Malcolm this is not your usual girl. McHamish, old chap, this is a girl who lives life on the edge. Pissing down with rain it was, long after midnight, and yet there you were climbing vines looking for boys. No stopping this one, I said to myself. And then you accepted my invitation to dry off in my room, draped your lingerie on my radiator and made a beeline for the champagne fridge.’

‘I was lost,’ I explained, outraged. ‘I was looking for Freddie, remember? And you offered me the champagne.’

‘Ah, but you knocked it back like it was your mother’s own milk, as I recall.’

Portia pulled herself away from her brother Tarquin to say, ‘She only drank it because she was trying to be polite. Calypso barely ever drinks.’

Malcolm rolled his eyes and then held up his hand to halt further discussion. ‘Campari and soda, it is then,’ he announced, disappearing into the throng before I could explain that I couldn’t drink on the night before the tournament.

TWENTY-EIGHT
Developing My Aptitude in Matters of La Dolce Vita

The Campari and soda was red. Not that I could drink it, but it contrasted nicely with my green dress, so I swirled it around with my straw, hoping it would make me appear fabulous. Even though I wasn’t smoking, I was fairly confident that I looked
molto, molto
sophisticated swirling my elegant drink about with my swizzle stick while all around me
pazzo
reigned supreme.

Sister Bethlehem had obviously been storing up reserves of energy during all her years of napping because she didn’t leave the dance floor all night. In fact, Bell End, Sister Regina, Biffy and Fizz Whiz were all tripping the light fantastic.

Malcolm, Billy, Tarquin, Orlando et al. did some fancy dancing too.

‘There’s no way they’d dance like that in England,’
Portia remarked. ‘Look at Tarquin,’ she said, pointing to her brother, who was in his own little mad world on the dance floor.

‘I agree it does seem against nature’s way to see British boys actually moving their feet on a dance floor.’

Then I leaned back in the banquet and inhaled the heady scent of smoke and
la dolce vita
into my lungs. I had been feeling an odd mix of emotions that night; it was wonderful being entertained by so many fit boys. Then again, I felt odd about Malcolm being there and
molto
guilty about Freds being ill. Tarquin assured me as Malcolm had that all Freds had was a nasty chill, but still the guilts are hard to shift once they get a grip.

Then Malcolm came up, and without so much as a by-your-leave, kissed me. Right out of the blue, no warning whatsoever, just like that, he wrapped his lips against mine and got on with it.

Talk about frightening a girl. Admittedly, I rather enjoyed it when he kissed me in Windsor, well up until Freds fell in the Thames, anyway. But that was then, in the context of making Freds jealous. This was now, under the watchful gaze of the British national fencing team, my nuns, Bell End, Biffy and Fizz Whiz – not to mention the Eades Film Society. It was the very apex of mal-ness.

‘Hang on a minute,’ I told him, disengaging from his clinch. ‘What in the name of lip-gloss are you up to?’

‘I rather thought I was kissing you.’

‘Yes, well, I don’t know what the rules are amongst you
Scottish film types, but in the real world you don’t just go round kissing girls without a by-your-leave.’

Malcolm didn’t look in the least bit chastened. ‘What the hell is a by-your-leave, anyway?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I’ve always wondered about that,’ added Orlando, tapping the ash from his cigarette in the ashtray. ‘Is it an old highway code or a Shakespearean whatsit?’

That set the whole table off on an in-depth debate on the linguistic origins of ‘by-your-leave.’

‘Is that even the point?’ I asked the table.

Malcolm, who now had his back to me, turned as if he’d only just noticed I was there. ‘What?’ he asked.

Well, what’s a girl to do? I asked myself. So I stood up to leave. I could see Portia waving at me in the distance. Malcolm had turned back to the debate, which was getting highbrow, with Greek translations flying through the air like croissants at Sunday breakfast. I marched off in a stroppish sort of way to see Portia.

‘Seriously, Portia, sometimes I wonder if boys are worth the effort. You won’t believe what Malcolm just did.’

‘Tell me later. We’ve got a problem with Jenny. She’s totally wasted. Alison is holding her head out of the toilet bowl as we speak. I just walked in and found her there with her head down the loo. I swear I thought she was going to drown. And she’s asked specifically for you. Can you take over while I have a quiet word with Bell End. I mean, The Commodore will go spare if he finds out.’

‘We can’t let Biffy or Bell End know that Jenny’s drunk!’
I blurted, and then wondered why. I mean, who was Bell End to judge? I thought as I spotted him at the front of a conga line consisting of a large part of our fencing party, with Biffy taking up the tail end. Talk about letting our side down. Here we were in the capital of style behaving like Basingstoke chavs. It was too
pazzo
for words. ‘I don’t think he’ll be much use,’ I added.

‘I see what you mean,’ Portia agreed, having witnessed what I had. ‘Well, come in and help anyway.’

Jenny was, as Portia had warned, head down in the loo, which was not one of those squat jobbies, thank God. She was totally chateaued, mortalled, wasted, bladdered, or to put it more plainly, revoltingly drunk. We may have been sworn enemies, but every girl has a duty to every other girl when it comes to this sort of thing.

‘Hi,’ I said to Alison. ‘I’m Calypso.’ They were probably the first words I’d uttered to her, which spoke volumes about my commitment to bonding with my fellow teammates. Still, what better way to bond than sharing the load of sobering up a drunk teammate, I told myself.

‘Yeah, I know. You’re the girl that’s going out with that Prince Freddie. I read about you.’

‘Yaah, well,
was
going out with Prince Freddie,’ I corrected her, feeling a bit of a lump form in my throat. ‘Anyway, let me take over for a bit. We’ve got to get some water into her.’

‘I’ll go get that,’ Portia said, and left Alison and me to it.

‘Good thing tomorrow ain’t the tournament. She’s going to feel like death.’

I signalled my agreement with a nod as I pulled Jenny’s head out of the bowl. Her eyes were closed and her head was lolling. She looked rough. ‘Jenny?’ I said her name to check if she was conscious. It’s a trick I learned from watching old episodes of
Beverly Hills 90210.
Whenever someone was drunk or on drugs, their friends would all repeat their name over and over. Sometimes they even slapped them across the face, an idea I nobly pushed aside.

All Jenny did was moan.

‘I don’t think she’s in a good place,’ Alison said as she passed me a wad of wet loo paper.

I wiped Jenny’s face and told her, ‘You’ve got to get some water down you, Jenny,’ even though she wasn’t in any state to understand.

I tried not to show it, but I was actually afraid for her. I mean, people died of alcohol poisoning, didn’t they? At least that’s what they told us in Special Studies. Jenny looked desperately unwell. The only other people I’d seen drunk were Honey, and Star’s dad and his mates, but even they had never been drunk like this. Well, no, that’s not true. Tiger was often unconscious.

Portia came in with the water and we managed to get Jenny to drink some. Jenny slurred my name, which I took as a good sign. Italian girls were coming in and out and the word ‘mal’ was being bandied about with much abandon. I know it sounds shallow, but I was feeling embarrassed
about sitting on the floor holding my drunk anti-girlfriend’s hair out of her face while her head lolled in the toilet bowl. It didn’t paint me in that
la dolce vita
light I was aiming for. Portia had said we were representing our country, and this wasn’t how I wanted to represent England or America, or Outer Mongolia for that matter.

‘I told Bell End,’ Portia said once Jenny had finished drinking the water. ‘Well, he’s going to find out, isn’t he?’ she added when she saw the look of horror on my face. ‘He’s gone off to the pensione. Apparently he’s got some sachets of electrolytes there.’

‘I don’t think we should be giving her
more
drugs,’ I whispered sternly.

‘They’re not drugs,’ Alison said helpfully. ‘They’re sort of like mineral salts. They’ll bring her mineral levels back up.’

‘We don’t want her bringing anything else up, animal, vegetable or mineral,’ I said as Jenny put her arms around my neck and told me she loved me. I reluctantly let her nuzzle my face for a bit before allowing her head to droop into my lap. She smelt of toilet water.

Portia and Alison left me alone with her – Alison to tell some Italian boy she’d pulled what was happening, and Portia to get more water. I was left alone with Jenny, who was quite sweet when she was drunk, really. Apart from smelling like toilet water and being cross-eyed. At least she wasn’t death staring me.

I stroked her hair and said some nice soothing things,
and then she started to laugh. ‘Sucked in!’ she cried, sitting up as straight as you like. Then she punched the air triumphantly with her fist.

I stopped my soothing talk and death stared her, but all she did was shrug. ‘I just wanted to see how far I could take it. No biggie.’

‘Erm, take what, exactly?’

‘You and your stuck-up friend. Lady High and Mighty. Think you’re all that with your entourage of Eades boys flying out to play with you.’

I was wrong. Jenny was as bad as Honey. Maybe even worse. Not even Honey would stoop to sticking her head in a toilet bowl for attention. Like Delilah cutting off Samson’s hair, Honey would get someone else to do it for her.

I stood up as imperiously as I could, walked over to the basin and washed my hands. Then I stepped over Jenny and all her mal-ity and left the loo. Let her deal with Bell End, Portia, Alison and the rest of the team and grownups, who were no doubt running themselves into a conga line of feverish madness to save the situation.

I passed Portia as I walked through the club. I took the water from her hands and walked back into the loo and threw it over Jenny. Then I grabbed Portia’s hand and led her out, briefly filling her in on our anti-girlfriend’s pathetic scheme.

‘So what should we do?’ Portia asked. ‘I mean, Bell End’s having kittens. He’s charged off back to the pensione for electrolytes and …’

‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We can leave Jenny to sort out her own drama and enjoy ourselves. I’m going to pull Malcolm and you’re going to pull Billy.’

‘But we’ve broken up.’

‘Only in England. We’re in Italy now, the country of good food, good clothes and good loving.’

Then I walked up to the table where Malcolm et al. were still debating the origins of ‘by-your-leave.’ And without a by-your-leave or a how’s-your-father, I unceremoniously sat on Malcolm’s lap and kissed his lips off.