Van Gogh's Room at Arles (21 page)

“Ahh,” I said, “that explains it. They owe them to their diminished dinners.”

Royal Taster smiled. “Just so,” he said, exactly as if he knew to what I referred.

Royal Peerager spoke to me. He told me, rather too pointedly, I thought, that it was his job to watch out for pretenders. The Mayfairs, he said, could be traced back to Lear and Macbeth.

He would have gone on—I was interested enough despite a fear of the silly starting to take hold in me—but just then some new personage, burdened by several parcels, burst upon the scene.

“There
you are!” King George said.

“And high time, I would have thought,” Charlotte scolded. “You knew I especially wanted you to meet your brother’s new fiancée.”

“As if ever he had an old one, Mother dear,” said Princess Denise.

(For that’s who it was, another ingenue for what might turn out to be—I hadn’t met Princess Mary yet—an entire company of ingenues. She’d changed in the two years or better since I’d last been in England. I suppose her picture had been in the papers plenty of times but the truth is I had enough on my mind in those days not to have noticed. Well, not actually the truth, Sid. What the truth actually is is that I consciously tried to avoid what was going on at home, to the point that I wouldn’t even go to an English film or watch
Masterpiece Theater
on the telly—which I’d started to call TV—and had stopped drinking tea. So the last thing I needed was to keep up with the British fascination with the prurient goings-on of its more hereditary characters, pushing aside as much as I could of the silly gossip that surrounds one—surrounds? embraces—in both countries like climate. Maybe America was the wrong place to go. Perhaps I should have chosen somewhere less civilized, some hot, plague-ridden African place, where I might have comforted dying children and futilely brushed away flies from their faces that the children themselves were too weak to brush off and probably didn’t even notice for all that the flies crawled across the huge, swollen surfaces of the very eyes they didn’t even seem capable of shutting. So why would I? What did I need it, Sir Sid?)

I hardly recognized her, though how much could a seventeen-year-old girl, now a twenty-year-old young woman, have changed in two years? There was something slightly askew and off-plumb about her appearance, and as soon as she burst into speech as she’d burst into the room (as one is said to “burst into song,” from a standing position as it were—— like some instantaneous, transitionless transformation or sea change or jump cut in the pictures), I thought I knew what it was. It was as if she’d undergone some powerful, personal Damascene rearrangement—— a persona inversion of the seventeen-year-old, almost womanly creature I vaguely remembered from photographs I’d seen in the papers over two years before into the twentyish, pretty, oh- so-girlish young thing before me—before me? practically all over me—now.

Although she was got up as a sort of latter-day flapper— fringe swayed at the bottom of her too-short skirt like the fringed, beaded dividers that separated backrooms in the décor of thirites-era movies, or plays set somewhere in the Orient, from the low taverns and bars on the ground floors of whorehouses, places where sailors are shanghai’d or slipped Mickey Finns—with dark, wide eyes immensely open and sketched in with eyebrow pencil, and her red, fire- engine mouth had been painted into a pout at once as cynical and cute as someone about to cry, this flapper- cum-ingenue seemed hyperactive as a kid at a slumber party.

“Why, Larry, she’s
adorable!
You’re adorable, Louise!
Isn’t
she adorable, Father? Isn’t she adorable, Mother? You’ll make just the most brilliant Princess, Louise. No wonder even an old pooh like Larry lost his heart. Well, I should think
so
. Here, sweetheart, here are some things I bought you. (That’s why I was late, Charlotte dear. So there!) I just guessed at your sizes, but don’t fret if nothing fits. We won’t even bother to return it, we’ll just give the stuff away to our servants or those absolutely smashing Mounted Horse Guards in Whitehall to offer to Oxfam. Then we can go shopping for all
new
things!”

As she spoke she produced one exotic garment after another from her various boxes and bundles. I recognized the names of boutiques all along the Kings Road, some so chic I’d supposed they’d shut up shop years ago. I couldn’t have told you the function of some of this garb or, had the Princess not held a few of the pieces against me, have identified more than the general area of the body they were supposed to cover. Of the material of which they were made I could have told you nothing, only that much of it must have been experimental.

“Oh, Louise,” she said, “you look quite fabulous in that!”

She was enjoying herself and, to be frank, I was too. Despite the public character of our performance, I felt comfortable, somnolent, spoiled and at ease as a teen having a makeover.

In the end, however, she discarded almost all of it, dropping stuff on the floor, kicking it away, a bit disappointed in both of us because we’d both failed to live up to some vague, preconceived image she had of me which her gifts represented, but pleased, too, because now we could go shopping for new things, just, as she put it, “us two girls.”

She paused a moment, then retrieving a sort of turban, held it out toward my head. “Never mind,” she said. Carelessly, she dropped it again. “Of course,” she said, “we won’t
really
know until we do something about that hair.”

She began to bat at my hair rather as if it were on fire.

When I continued to flinch Charlotte at last intervened. “Oh do stop, Denise, you’re alarming her.”

“I’m only trying to
help, Mother!
I’m only seeing if it can be fixed. If you’d only stand
still,
Louise! So I know what to tell the hairdresser before us two girls go shopping again.”

“For goodness’ sake, Denise,” said Prince Lawrence, “stop carrying on about ‘us two girls,’ why don’t you? It’s ‘us two girls’ this and ‘us two girls’ that. ‘Us two girls,’ indeed. How can you speak so? You’re a Princess of England.”

“I was putting
her
at ease.”

“Oh please,” the Prince said. “Louise is my fiancée. One day she’ll outrank you.”

“Oh, Lawrence,” said the Princess, “we’re all of us only these accidents of birth, so why must you be so stuffy all the time? It really is too boring. Anyway, it isn’t even true. Dear, adorable, brilliant, fabulous, and absolutely stunnin’, charmin’, smashin’, and perfect for you as she quite so most obviously is,
I
am the daughter of royalty, after all, and darlin’ Louise here is only a common commoner. So what do you mean she’ll outrank me? She never will, will she, Royal Peerager?”

“Scissors cuts paper, paper covers rock, rock smashes scissors,” the Royal Peerager said.

“What do you mean?” Charlotte said. “I never understand what you mean when you say that.”

“Me t’ know … you t’ fin’ out,” he muttered, sulking.

“Really, George,” Charlotte objected, “listen how he speaks to me. Do I have to put up with that? A proper king wouldn’t stand for it. I daresay a proper husband wouldn’t.”

“It was a joke, Your Royal Highness,” the Peerager said. He turned to my mother-in-law manqué. “It’s a joke, Your Highness.”

King George sighed. “Well,” he said, “I suppose she
is
dear and adorable and brilliant and all the bloody darlin’ rest of it. I only wish Their Royal Caterers and all the Holy British Empire’s Florists and Band Leaders would just get on with it so we could have the damned wedding and retire. If she’s all right with you, she’s all right with us. Your friend passes muster, Prince,” he said as though I really didn’t.

“Where’s Alec?” the Princess broke in. “I thought Alec was coming. He promised he would. He should have been here by now.”

“I told him to come, I spoke with him just this morning. Oh my,” Charlotte said, as if remembering something she’d forgotten. Troubled, flesh-is-heir-to things played across her features, plain, ordinary as a sneeze, and, quite suddenly, she ceased to look regal, bereft of even those vestiges of bearing left to her in even only her theatrical ways. “Oh my,” she said again, worriedly. “Today’s the seventeenth.”

“That’s right,” Denise put in, “tomorrow’s the time trials.”

And now Charlotte was possessed of a flustered, lashing, unfocused anger, her rage oddly, ineptly maternal, like the helpless, confused rage of a woman just back from hospital with her first child. Even before I understood the reference of her anger I understood the reference of her anger. “He collected his new Quantra today!” she cried. “He’s off testing his damned limits, isn’t he, George! He’s off pushing his damned envelope!”

“He’s a perfectly capable young man, Charlotte, You mustn’t coddle him. The boy knows what he’s doing.”

“Oh, George,” she said, “if only he did. I
wish
he did.”

“It’s just an automobile. He’s been driving a car since his eighth birthday.”

“Too right,” she said, “the day he swerved to hit the gillie to avoid hitting the gillie’s dog.”

“That was an accident, Charlotte.”

“The man will never walk again, George.”

The King nodded. “I know,” he said, and for the first time that evening neglected his posture. “Look here, Ropes,” he said. “Look here, London Intentioner, Royal Peerager. Look here, Royal Taster, look here all. I’m sorry,” he said. “I am so really very sorry, but the Queen, worried as she is regarding our Alec, is a bit out of sorts this evening. Now our revels all are ended, thank you very much for coming.

I started to move off with the rest but Prince Lawrence motioned me to stay. Princess Denise, patting the broad piano bench on which she was seated, indicated I should join her.

“He’s crashed the car,” Queen Charlotte said. “I know it, he’s crashed the car.” Unexpectedly, she turned to address me. Denise, very softly, was picking out a tune on the piano, providing a sort of quiet background music behind her mother’s speech. She was very good. “He’s probably had one too many. He’s fond of surprising people in their local, Prince Alec is. He loves it when they fall all over themselves to buy him drinks. And him a prince,” she said, giggling, taking up another role. “Not once has he ever volunteered to return the favor, Louise. He brags on this as if the most wonderful service he can render them as a Prince of the Realm is to let them stand him drinks.”

“It is,” the King said wistfully.

“He’s so charming,” Charlotte said.

“Very charming,” said his sister, never breaking the rhythm of her sad, bluesy tune.

“But too much of a drinker,” his mother said. “George dearest, what’s the horsepower on the new Quantra?”

“It has a Rolls-Royce engine,” my Larry said, “I heard it can be pushed up to a thousand horses.”

“A thousand horses. A veritable cavalry,” the King said, interrupting his own husky, hummed accompaniment to Denise’s accompaniment.

“Should he be driving it through the streets?” wondered the Queen.

(Did you know, Sid, they may not be brought up on charges? I didn’t know that. I don’t think most people know. I daresay you yourself don’t absolutely know. Oh we’ve all heard rumors from time to time, and many of us have known of someone of whom it is said that once she’d known someone who was supposed to have known someone else who had had it on good authority from a friend with a pal who had connections with a person who used to be in a position of authority, but all of it is just so much blown smoke or, rather, smoke wrapped in time, or mist. Smoke wrapped in mists wrapped in time lost in legend, like the identity of Robin Hood, say, or who Christ’s cousins were.

(It isn’t even a question of influence. Of course they have influence. Everyone has influence.
I
have influence. And for darn damn sure it certainly isn’t written down anywhere. I mean, you could search in all the books and charters, pamphlets and whatnot in the British Museum and never come across it, and of all the controversial things I’ve set down here—the King’s Pinch, how Larry was a virgin when he done me, how Royals behave at home when they let down their hair—surely this is the most controversial. That they can’t be brought up on charges, that that gillie who was sacrificed to his own dog and was run over when Alec was eight and out on a joyride and who’ll never walk again while Alec, eight-year-old or no eight-year-old, but simply because he was a Royal and not only couldn’t be hauled into court but wasn’t even grounded, for God’s sake, and who to this day drives a souped-up thousand hp Quantra capable of whipping down the narrowest, twistiest country lane in all of England, never mind powering about Trafalgar Square or Piccadilly Circus pressing the pedal to the metal!

(This isn’t rage, Sid, so don’t mistake me. It isn’t rage but merely the gentlest indication to my gentle readers to let them know how badly I feel to have lost out on so much, because if only a pipsqueak younger brother at a two or three times remove from the throne can have so much freedom and latitude, then how much more free and how much more wide would the latitude be for the bona fide royal- wedding-related bride of the out-and-out King! Sid, I mean, they’re not even
licensed!
All that hocus-pocus and rigmarole and long, winding trail and trial by blood descent they have to go through just in order to get to be considered to be in the just royal aristocratic running, and then they’re permitted to skip and finesse entirely the simple red tape of filling out a form to apply for a driver’s license! I mean, once in a while you can depose them, or maybe actually even kill them, but you can’t sue them for damages if you slip and fall on their walk if they haven’t shoveled their snow or they blindside you for life on the clearest day in the world when they drive home drunk from the pub where you’ve bought all their drinks!)

Denise, sighing, said, “Please, Mother. Mother, please don’t,” and shut the lid over the piano keys as if she’d finished the evening’s last set. “No use to fret, darling,” she said, and took up the Queen’s hands in her own. “Mustn’t be anxious. Alec’s all right. You’ll see. He’s much too fond of his life to give it up stupidly. There,” she said, “that’s better. You look so much better. Doesn’t she look so much better, Father?”