Playing the Palace

by Paul Rudnick

  He flipped onto his side to face me, saying, “You are such a complete and total piece of shit.”

  “What? Why?”

  “It doesn’t mean anything? Of course it does, and of course I’ve been obsessing. Because, fine, I’m royal and there’s a road map, but that’s the entire problem: I don’t just want to submit and salute and acquiesce. I want to take everything I’ve been given, the money and the access and the opportunities, and do something with it. The thought of which makes everyone in my family, and my country, shiver and recoil. They prefer me to remain inert and pleasantly comatose, to not take sides on anything, and to feel continuously and only grateful at having my face imprinted on so many cheap souvenir paperweights and shot glasses. Which I could embrace and even wallow in; it would be so easy and restful to merely relax into uselessness, to float amiably down the royal river to my eventual, unmourned death. And I’m on my way. I’ve done nothing. Because what I’ve been moronically hoping and praying for is—someone. A person. A partner. To share the ride and give me a boot in the pants. To goad me and question every action and inspire me. Which is a lazy man’s solution. But why do I crave that and dream of it so desperately? Because I’m about to turn thirty. And I’m alone.”

  “You’re alone?” I repeated, indicating certain bodily fluids glistening on various parts of both our torsos.

  “I’m sorry,” Edgar said. “I didn’t mean it like that, I just—I don’t know what to do, with myself or with you, or with how I feel about you, or with any of it. Because eventually we’re going to be required to leave this bed.”

  “Okay,” I said, feeling suddenly and bizarrely a tiny bit less abysmal. “Let’s try to be more, I don’t know, upbeat. Because we share a birthday, which means we’re both Aquarius.”

  Edgar groaned, the way so many people do when astrological forecasts enter a conversation. Maybe that’s why I have so many friends in the arts—it reduces the groan factor. Do I believe in astrology? No, but like everyone else, I’ll skim my daily horoscope, assess its probability and forget it within seconds. It’s soothing. It’s almost always peppy, rife with “Your horizons are expanding” or “Be on the lookout for love.” It’s a therapeutic breath mint.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” I told Edgar, “but hear me out. I’m not going to do your chart or make you get an ankle tattoo of your rising sign. But do you know what the primary characteristics of Aquarians are?”

  “According to . . .”

  “According to a candle wax and weed-stained paperback that I found at the bottom of the closet in my first dorm room. Aquarians are ingenious, creative and adaptable. Plus original and humanitarian. And our symbol, the Water Bearer, is based on Ganymede, a Phrygian youth who was so beautiful that Zeus fell in love with him and whisked him off to heaven to serve forever as the cupbearer to the gods.”

  “So what you’re saying,” Edgar concluded, “is that we’re both hot waiters.”

  “Maybe,” I replied. “But think about the other part. We’re in a huge mess—fine, a huge mess that I caused—but we’re ingenious, creative and adaptable.”

  There was a long pause, and I wondered if Edgar was asleep or silently begging Zeus to come get me, preferably in an airtight container.

  “Ingenious, creative and adaptable,” he finally said, putting his finger on my mouth to prevent me from issuing any further cosmic tidbits. He smiled, which might be encouraging, and said, “Yes, we are.”

  CHAPTER 21

  You are relentlessly repugnant,” Queen Catherine informed me.

  Edgar and I were dining with Her Majesty, the three of us spaced miles apart around the largest mahogany table in the palace—the grand behemoth. “He has repeatedly apologised . . .” Edgar chided.

  “And I did show respect for dragons . . .” I chimed in.

  “No! You do not speak!” the queen admonished me. “You shall never speak again, not only in my presence but anywhere on Earth! You have not earned the power of speech! I shall have your lips sewn shut!”

  Could she do that? She was the queen, and we were in her country. I glanced at James, who was standing by the door, and he mimed sewing.

  “This Caleb creature . . .” the queen continued.

  “His name is Carter . . .” said Edgar.

  “This Porter amphibian is the throne’s greatest enemy since the Viking attacks in the ninth century. Except this Carstairs demon is more purely malevolent, an amoebic plague without intelligence, forethought or decent shoes, a form of ditheringly irrational chaos.”

  When the Queen of England is throwing this degree of shade, it’s hard not to feel, well, like an insect trapped under a magnifying glass in bright sunlight.

  “From your barely concealed dishevelment,” the queen noted, “I presume the pair of you have succumbed to your most primitive desires and ignited a cheap physical release. Which has undoubtedly offended and degraded our entire palace staff. Am I correct in this, Mr. Claverack?”

  James shut his eyes and grimaced, as if recalling something too traumatic to bear, perhaps an incident on a foreign battlefield or an especially painful version of Jingle Bells on a Christmas variety show. He tried to speak but couldn’t.

  The queen brought it home: “There is but one feasible recourse. This rancid crustacean must depart within minutes and never return. And the two of you will cease any and all future contact. In short, this relationship, if it can be dignified with that many syllables, must and shall end immediately.”

  I’ll give her this: She’s good at it. She was playing 3D queer chess and winning.

  “Nana . . .” Edgar ventured.

  “Did I ask you to speak?”

  “No. But I have a counterproposal. I agree with you, and much of the world, that Carter’s remarks at the children’s hospital were ill-advised. But he’d been asked to speak spontaneously, and after the event, donations to the hospital increased tenfold. I’m told that while some benefactors wished to uphold the hospital’s honor, others liked Carter, and I’ll quote an email which was accompanied by a gift of fifty thousand pounds, from a woman who said, ‘Carter Ogden is a breath of fresh air.’”

  Edgar hadn’t told me about any of this. Had I done some good?

  “And while I can’t condone Carter’s words, he’s guiding me in redefining, or at least adjusting, my role in this family. He’s helping me relate to our country more directly and with greater humour and emotion.”

  “Excuse me, Edgar. Have you suffered a drunken fall from your horse and undergone subsequent surgery? Has much of your brain been removed?”

  “Hear me out, Nana. All I’ve ever wanted is to make you, and my parents, and this country proud. But I’ve been floundering. I haven’t found my voice, so all of my preoccupations, and my dull little speeches, they’ve been disciplined but routine. I can see it in peoples’ eyes—they glaze over, thinking, ‘Ah, more royal prattle, listening is optional.’”

  “They don’t need to listen! They’re calmed!”

  “Which isn’t nearly enough. If all I am is careful and dutiful, I’m worthless. I’m not making an impact or building on your decades of fine work. I’m a shadow. So what I’m asking is this: Let me explore. Let me learn whatever I can from Carter.”

  “Learn from this fetid slug? This clot of American phlegm? This associate event pothole?”

  “Bitch,” I whispered, under my breath.

  “What did you say?”

  I mimed sewing my lips shut.

  “Nana, let me prove to you that Carter isn’t just an ignorant, destructive, mewling infant.”

  Slandering me was now the royal family’s favorite pastime. I was their Jenga.

  “I have an idea, and I’ve made all the necessary arrangements. There’s a way to present Carter in a less pressured, more congenial format. A means of telling the world, ‘Here’s Carter, and he’s not so bad.�
�”

  “Not so bad”? James caught my eye, silently signaling, Hush, Edgar’s on a roll.

  “He’s a person, he’s fun, he’s a functioning adult.”

  James gestured to me: No! Shut up! This is working!

  “‘He’s a person’? ‘He’s fun’?” the queen sneered. “Is he a new enzyme detergent or roll-on deodorant?”

  “He could be. I’ve gone over my campaign with Marc and Alison, and they’ve approved. So please, Nana, trust me. I can do this. Carter can do this. It’s brilliant. It will make everyone say, ‘Carter Ogden is a bit of all right. Carter Ogden isn’t—Carter, what was that word your great-aunt Miriam called that inebriated fellow who bumped into her on the dance floor? A putz? Imagine it, Nana, if that was on everyone’s lips, as they turn to one another and toast our family, if the nation could speak as one and proclaim, ‘Carter Ogden—not a putz!’”

  “And just what is this inherently unworkable notion?”

  “You’ll see. Because for perhaps the first time in my life, I’m working on instinct. I’m thinking, as it were, outside the throne room. I’m being ingenious, creative and . . . and . . .”

  “Adaptable,” I murmured.

  “Adaptable!” said Edgar. “So let us surprise you.”

  I had no idea what Edgar was talking about, and I wasn’t being asked for my opinion. But I loved hearing him bargain like this, improvising and coaxing. He reminded me of me when I was thirteen and begging my parents to let me take the train into New York by myself, or when I’d borrowed Callum’s leather jacket when he was out of town and lost it at a dance party. I’d told him it was stolen by a Republican senator. He’d bought my story. It’s all about believing whatever you’re saying, especially if it’s insane.

  Queen Catherine shut her eyes and inhaled as if she was vaping the universe. She opened her eyes. She glanced to either side, consulting invisible ancestors. She sighed and gave her form of permission:

  “Get out of my sight.”

  CHAPTER 22

  We were brought in a golf cart to the set of The Great British Baking Jubilee the next morning at seven a.m. When I asked Edgar how he’d come up with this idea, he told me, “I imagined I was you, handed an assignment which called for friendly media attention, a nonpartisan, immersive activity, a colourful backdrop and a live audience which exists to applaud. I’m an associate event prince.”

  I was floored by his process; this was an innovation worthy of me, someone who’d branded a morticians’ conference at a Pennsylvania Marriott by stuffing the gift bags with black water bottles embossed with a skull and crossbones, along with temporary tattoos reading “Kill Me Now.” I’d also provided a link to a hookup app called Dying to Meet You. Morticians, it turned out, love to party.

  While I’m only an occasional fan of The Great British Baking Jubilee, my dad DVRs every full season, and while he’s watching he’ll text me every few seconds: “Betty’s adding currants to her scones! She’s living on the edge!” “Eleanor is shaving lemon curd onto her aspic—I can’t watch!”

  The show’s billowing white tent is erected on the grounds of various National Trust manor homes and ruined cathedrals that only my dad knows the details of (“That’s where Ethelred the Unsteady married Helen of Bramwich!”). He has strong opinions on the show’s longtime host, Agatha Benwhistle (“She really understands tarts”) and her current cohost, a younger loose cannon named Miles Tanney (“He went to culinary school, so he thinks he knows everything about marzipan. As if.”). He duplicates the recipes and poses each lemongrass loaf or elderberry compote atop a velvet ottoman in our living room to catch the sunlight from a picture window, posting photos on Instagram at Professor Yummy Jubilee.

  So I was well-prepared when the show’s production manager led Edgar, James, the security team and me backstage on the lawn of Hallinghurst Castle, and when I sent my dad photos he texted back, “Drooling. Jealous. Bring back a spatula!”

  “Your Highness,” James asked, “while I know it’s an inexplicably popular program, is this really a proper environment for a royal appearance?”

  “Did anyone catch the episode on sweetbreads?” asked Ian. “There were real eyeopeners.”

  “Who gives a damn?” argued Clark. “Compared to the olive and garlic rolls.”

  “I adore this show,” said Maureen, joining us with Gerald; they were slated, along with Edgar and me, to act as surprise guest judges on today’s episode. “I’ve had our chef copy the mango and cardamom tea cakes.” Gerald and Maureen were, as always, overdressed in coordinated outfits. In their forest green blazers, pink gingham shirts and, oh my dear Lord, ascots, they looked like prissy Mercedes-Benz sales reps, or Hansel and Gretel as cruise ship social directors.

  “When I told Maureen that you and Carter were going to be here,” said Gerald, “she insisted we chaperone. I went along, because you chaps can’t afford another epic mishap.”

  They had a private chef. We had epic mishaps.

  Gerald and Maureen were keeping a close eye on Edgar, and I suspected something: if they could somehow rejigger the line of succession, Gerald would get to be king. They were like conniving understudies, wishing the star every success while spiking his latte with antifreeze.

  Or maybe I was being paranoid. But while Abby and I would kill for each other, there was a polite distance between Edgar and Gerald. I’d never heard Edgar say a bad word about his brother, but they didn’t hang out together, aside from their royal obligations. This made me even more protective of Edgar; I was starting to feel responsible for him. Which felt good.

  “This is a terrific opportunity,” said Edgar. Because this was the season finale, the show was being aired live. The proceedings were underway, and on the video monitors I saw that the contestants had been assigned to make trifle, an especially English dessert. I texted my dad and got back emojis of applauding hands and cartwheeling chefs along with “TRIFLE!!! You’re in for a TREAT!!!”

  The tent was arranged with twenty workstations stocked with sinks, mini-fridges, restaurant-grade stoves, counter space and drawers of pots, pans and utensils. The contestants, recruited from all over the country, could bring a limited number of “lucky” knives, whisks, sifters and measuring spoons. Everyone was wearing the show’s signature aprons, which, as the baking progressed, became daubed with ingredients. The show combined cutthroat competition with heartwarming individual backstories, as everyone bustled painstakingly to complete their trifles before the one-hour deadline, with the hosts dropping by each workstation to offer passive-aggressive tips like “Ah, so we’re moving toward clotted cream” or “Won’t that be marvelous, if it doesn’t congeal.”

  Staff members with clipboards and headsets summoned us for the climax of the telecast. I texted my dad, “It’s happening!” and he replied, “If you don’t bring me an apron don’t bother coming home.”

  “Won’t this be a lark!” trilled Maureen, checking her makeup in a mirror held by her minder for the umpteenth time, and it occurred to me that Maureen’s head could become a future Baking Jubilee Cranberry-Pistachio Baked Alaska challenge.

  “And did Edgar mention,” said Gerald, “this is Nana’s favourite program? So I’m sure she’s watching.”

  “You see?” Edgar told me. “Just being on this show will make Nana worship you. Along with the entire world. It’s the ideal event.”

  “You’re both so brave,” said Gerald.

  “Contestants, and viewers all across the globe,” said Agatha Benwhistle, standing at the front of the tent beside a long, Last Supper–style table covered with a white cloth, “the time has come.” Agatha was somewhere in her sixties, stout and wearing a forgiving corduroy tunic, wide-legged purple pants and comfortable shoes with rubber soles. Her hair was a silver thatched-roof bob, and she spoke in a good-tempered, booming, beloved headmistress’s voice; she was devoted to English baking, often posted photos of her thr
ee basset hounds wearing the turtlenecks and booties she knitted for them and never humiliated contestants. Her worst assessments were “Well, you’ll live to bake another day” or “At the end of the day, it’s only a smoked walnut flaxseed muffin, not an ailing grandparent.”

  “I can barely contain myself,” said Miles Tanney, who was half Agatha’s age, with a background as a bubbly podcast host (Smiles from Miles), commercial spokesperson (for everything from kebab skewers to garden hoses) and YouTube influencer (with videos where he organized closets “by necessity and mood”). His giddy cheerleading was a great foil for Agatha’s earthy straightforwardness.

  “Oh, Agatha,” Miles gushed breathlessly, “today’s episode will become culinary legend!”

  “Perhaps, but just for now, let’s allow our cat out of the bag, shall we? Because to rate our final trio, and to award our highest honor, the season’s Grand Jubilee Golden Rolling Pin, let’s welcome our esteemed and very special guest judges—Their Royal Highnesses, Prince Edgar and Prince Gerald; Maureen, the Duchess of Longshire; and a friend of the family, Mr. Carter Ogden!”

  Edgar embraced Agatha, while Miles managed to bow, wave his arms and crouch in wonderment as if we were giraffes he’d spotted in the wild, enthusing, “Welcome, royals and friend! What a surprise! What an occasion! As I’m sure our contestants will agree, today is a Great British Baking Jubilee pinnacle par excellence!” He pronounced “excellence” as if it was floridly French and the equivalent of a magician’s “Abracadabra!”

  “Thank you so much for inviting our little group to become part of this superb program,” said Edgar. “We’re so lucky to be here amidst all this extraordinary baking talent.”

  “Just so,” said Gerald, and after trying to come up with another remark, repeated, with emphasis, “Just so.”

  “I live for this show,” said Maureen. “I even watch it in the bath!”