A Royal Match

by Connell O'Tyne

  Everyone immediately started dialling friends and checking messages on their microscopic, fourth-generation, trendy phones.

  I noticed that Georgina didn’t even pick hers up.

  I checked my voice-mail messages on the brick and the clear tones of Prince Freddie announced, in a jokey, uncannily good New York gangster accent: ‘So, Foxy, you don’t call, you don’t write, you don’t come see me no more? Am I not good enough for you? You don’t want your old Freddie no more?’

  I tried not to laugh, but I couldn’t help myself.

  ‘Was that him?’ Georgina asked, suddenly bright-eyed.

  ‘Yaah,’ I admitted casually.

  ‘Are you really missing him, then?’ she asked kindly. I realised then that she meant Jay.

  ‘Actually, it was Freddie.’

  Star said, ‘You are kidding!’ only I could tell she wasn’t surprised because she winked at me as she grabbed hold of my mobile and replayed the message before I could stop her. Then she cracked up laughing and suddenly Georgina grabbed the phone and even she laughed. Then it did the rounds of the dorm rooms on our floor, with everyone chipping in the thirty pence it cost to call my mobile phone voice-mail messaging service.

  It was the first time at Saint Augustine’s that anyone had wanted to pay for a listen to one of my messages. Even Star had passed around listens once when her father had Ozzy Osbourne call her up to wish her happy birthday.

  Later, when Star and I were cleaning our teeth, I wondered aloud how Prince Freddie had got my number.

  Star gave my mirrored reflection a guilty look.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘Are you annoyed with me?’ she asked, as if she actually thought I might be. ‘He asked me at fencing,’ she explained, ‘and, well …’

  But I didn’t let her finish. I wrapped her in a big cuddle and lifted her off the ground with excitement.

  Prince Freddie had called me. Oh my God. Oh my God.

  When we were tucked up in bed and the lights were out, Georgina said, ‘I guess this means you’re going to the social after all, darling.’

  ‘I guess,’ I agreed, trying to keep the excitement out of my voice.

  ‘Tobias is so relieved, darling. He said he simply couldn’t bear it if you didn’t go.’

  Then, just as I was dropping off to sleep, I felt someone sit on my bed. ‘Calypso,’ Georgina whispered. ‘Promise me one thing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I know I shouldn’t say this, because, well, Honey’s been my friend forever, but darling, promise me you won’t trust her.’

  ‘OK,’ I agreed carefully, not that I was ever likely to trust someone like Honey anyway, but I couldn’t get to sleep for ages after that. What had compelled Georgina to say that? Was she actually worried about me, or worried that I’d become Honey’s friend and that she’d lose her? I decided I’d ask Star what she thought in the morning. But one thing was definite, Georgina clearly wasn’t the massive fan of Honey that I’d always taken her for.

  ELEVEN:

  The Burial of Arabesque

  The burial ceremony was really lovely, even though it was raining quite hard and we all had to huddle under big black umbrellas that the nuns just seem able to produce like magic from nowhere.

  It took place in Phipp’s Forest, near the hockey fields, in a little glade where all the dead pets of Saint Augustine’s had been buried over the years. The forest smelled of damp oak trees, which gave the occasion a sort of sacred atmosphere. I think we all felt it.

  All the dead pets in the cemetery have little wooden crosses above their graves, and some of the crosses are painted in bright colours. All of them bear the pet’s name and have RIP written above.

  Star had made a cross for Arabesque, painted it black and written Arabesque’s name in white, swirly Arabic sort of writing – only in English obviously because none of us can read Arabic. Most of us have enough trouble with our French and Latin.

  Several of the nuns (or, as we say, a flock of nuns) were there and we all held hands, umbrellas touching, while Father Conran stood saint-like in the rain in all his vestments and said a few prayers and sprinkled holy water over us.

  Mr Morton, the groundsman, wore a black overall for the occasion rather than his standard grey, although his solemn attire was slightly spoiled by his umbrella, which was a bright green contraption with Heineken written on it in white lettering. However, he had taken the trouble to find black satin ribbons to lower the cardboard box containing Arabesque into a hole he had dug earlier that morning. That’s one of the things I love about being a Catholic – we do have a great sense of occasion and ceremony.

  As the little coffin disappeared into the freshly dug earth we sang Arabesque’s favourite song, which was actually a pop song by Robbie Williams, so not really sad-sounding in the least. None of the nuns knew the words, so they just sang ‘la, la, la, diddley-dee’ in their funny little nun-like way, but we all cried, because … well, you just do.

  Even Honey, who was holding Claudine, looked really upset – although knowing Honey, that could have been eye-drops. Afterwards we all went back to the convent where the nuns live and had a little wake. We’re often invited over for tea and it’s always fun, mostly because they treat us like we’re the most exciting people in the world.

  They served us the sort of food you usually see at tiny children’s parties – sandwiches, butterfly cakes, fairy bread and lemonade. And they didn’t even make a fuss when Claudine threw up a gherkin all over their sofa.

  That afternoon, one of Saint Augustine’s Old Girls came to the school chapel to give us a talk on Raleigh International and the gap year possibilities available to Upper Sixth students. She had really long, dark hair and a gorgeous tan and showed us slides of the school she was helping to build in Africa.

  It wasn’t a bit like the boring talks we usually get, because she had all these really funny stories about the different children and the mad things that had happened while they’d been building the school and how, even though the children were really poor, they were all still into a lot of the same things we were.

  She said that she had shown them pictures of Saint Augustine’s and they were really envious, or maybe just incredulous, of our art room facilities. She had even brought a painting they’d done of their class in Gambia.

  Sister Hillary and Sister Veronica carried the painting into the hall. It was so bright and funny, done in a cartoon style, with all their names scrawled across the bottom of each of their faces in graffiti-style writing. I couldn’t believe how cool it looked. I mean, they didn’t even have walls on their school, let alone the luxuries we take for granted – like television, mobile phones and computers.

  It made me feel pathetic in comparison, trying to change my life by inventing a fake boyfriend for myself – a gay one at that. When we were filing out of assembly, Star and I discussed what we would do in our gap year. Honey interrupted, bragging that her mother had already arranged for her to do a three-month stint at Condé Naste.

  ‘That’s what I love about you, Honey,’ said Star, ‘your incredible desire to look beyond your own tiny little pointless world! Maybe they’ll have you research a piece on distributing make-up tips to the starving!’

  As ever, I was awed by Star’s ability to carve Honey up fearlessly, but most of all I was surprised that Clemmie and Arabella and a few other girls who’d overheard actually giggled.

  Honey’s face turned puce and I could tell that she wanted to give Star a slap, but Georgina intercepted by reminding us that our gap years were at least three years away whereas we were already late for Latin.

  I wrote a chatty letter to Freddie in Latin class when I should have been translating Cicero. I thanked him for his call and told him about how Sister had handed down this mad punishment to raise money after we’d had a food fight. I didn’t mention how it started or anything like that. I made it sound as madly amusing, enthralling and exotic as I could. I deliberated forever over whether to sign
it love Calypso or from Calypso and opted for just Calypso so I didn’t sound too desperate.

  After study, when Star was off buying sweets at the tuck shop and Georgina was having a shower, I lay on my bed and wondered how I would cope if my parents were killed in a war and I had to rebuild my life with mud bricks and humanitarian aid.

  I looked at the photographs I had put up of Jay. I know they had worked in a way, but it was all a lie and it wasn’t me. I felt so angry with myself that I tore them down and shoved them in the rubbish bin. I reached under my pillow for my copy of Nancy Mitford’s Love in a Cold Climate and began to read it for about the hundredth time.

  Nancy Mitford survived the war and grew up in an even madder family than Star’s. Her father had hunted her and her sisters and brother with hounds. But even while the bombs fell all over London, she had managed to write books. That’s what I wanted to do – to write.

  My other favourite writer, Dorothy Parker, also endured a horrendous childhood – her mother died when she was young, and later her brother died on the Titanic, but by the age of twenty-one she was working for Vanity Fair.

  Then it hit me. Where would I be at twenty-one if all I focused on was fitting in with a cool pod of girls? I should be focusing on what I really wanted. I wanted to write and read and fence, and be accepted for who I actually was, rather than making myself fit into the world of posh toffs. But, OK … I would quite like to pull a boy or two or three.

  I snuggled down under my duvet, but that was when I noticed that as well as the sound of water running in the shower, there was the unmistakable noise of Georgina throwing up her dinner.

  I got up and tried to open the door to the en-suite. It was locked so there was nothing I could actually do. I just sat there and waited dismally with my book on my lap, looking out over the oak trees of Puller’s Woods while Georgina heaved and heaved and heaved some more.

  It sounded horribly painful. Finally she stopped and I heard her flush the loo. She came out with a cheerful look on her face and asked me what I was reading.

  I desperately wanted to say something, but I still hadn’t thought of the right words. I didn’t want to sound like a teacher or a community nurse or something lame like that.

  I wished that Star were here because she would definitely know what to say. In the end I asked her if she was OK in a breezy, casual sort of way and she said, ‘Of course I’m OK – why wouldn’t I be?’ in a pissed off, back-off-and-how-dare-you-even-speak-to-me sort of way.

  ‘No reason,’ I replied and pretended to be engrossed in my book.

  Then suddenly she said, ‘Oh, I love Nancy Mitford!’ as if the last ten minutes or so hadn’t happened. ‘Don’t you just love A Talent to Annoy, darling?’

  ‘Adore it,’ I agreed, going along with her denial, and then rambling on in that way I have when I am nervous. Then out of my mouth came the words that would change everything and I heard myself saying, ‘I’d love to write …’ before I could stop.

  ‘Well, why don’t we, darling? Start a writing salon, I mean?’

  I looked at her, stunned. ‘You mean like the Algonquin Round Table? Erm, I don’t think we could actually scratch enough girls together to go around a table.’

  ‘No, I mean like the Hons,’ she said, referring to a code word in Nancy Mitford’s book used to describe a secret society the Mitford children had when they were young. A gathering of the favoured few who would sit in the closet, heated by the boiler, and talk irreverently about everything from life to death and beyond. ‘Don’t you think it a fabulous idea, darling?’

  ‘Do you really think it would work?’ I asked, still amazed at the sudden change in Georgina’s mood, not to mention the fact that we seemed to share an interest. I mean, minutes before, I’d been considering speaking to Sister Dumpster about her throwing up and now, here she was, babbling away about a writing salon.

  Georgina laughed and sat on the bed beside me. ‘Oh darling, we simply must. I need something to cheer me up.’

  I definitely agreed with that, anyway.

  Miss Cribbe wandered past and said, ‘Well, aren’t we all the best of friends today then, girls?’ and we fell apart laughing – more about the way she said it rather than what she had said. But I suppose that was when it first struck me that Georgina and I really were sort of becoming friends. And that even though up until recently, it had been Georgina and her type that had made my life at Saint Augustine’s sheer hell, I was seeing another side of her now. Maybe she was seeing another side of me too? Or maybe it was only when she wasn’t around Honey that she was the Georgina I liked.

  Whatever the reason I wasted no time in agreeing to the salon and insisting we try to find members immediately.

  ‘Well, there’s already the six of us,’ she pointed out. ‘Our dorm room and Honey’s dorm room.’

  All of a sudden a feeling of doom swept over me. The thought of having anything more to do with Honey filled me with horror. And I could just imagine Star’s reaction.

  TWELVE:

  The Lit Chick Salon

  We held our first salon later that evening after lights out, by torchlight. As I’d predicted, Star confided in me while we cleaned our teeth that she had her doubts about being stuck in a writing salon with Honey. Actually what she said was, ‘Are you dead or just mad? Hell can freeze over and Miss Cribbe can be made Queen but there’s no way I am going to be part of a group with that evil bitch.’

  I pleaded and did my jokey sad face – the one where I let the toothbrush hang limply from my mouth and make weepy-eye gestures. ‘OK, but this is going to take a lot of lip-gloss,’ she said. ‘A lot!’

  Writing has never really been Star’s thing; in fact, books have never really been Star’s thing. I’ve tried to get her into Nancy Mitford, but it takes her forever to read a book. She just prefers music. Sister Hillary – who simply adores Thomas Hardy (erk) – says you can’t really push these literary things, you either like something or you don’t. Ms Topler should listen a bit more closely to Sister Hillary on that point. When the girls snuck into our room (Honey wearing her high-heeled Jimmy Choo slippers), Star rolled her eyes and reached for the lip-gloss.

  ‘I don’t see the point of all this writing rubbish, darling,’ Honey said. ‘Can’t we just break out the vodka and talk about boys?’ Even though it was too dark to see each other properly, I could imagine the pouty face she’d be pulling.

  ‘No, just listen, Calypso and I think it would be a fab way to raise money for Children of the World. You know, for our punishment.’

  Had I heard correctly? Had Georgina just united our names in the same sentence?

  Honey groaned.

  ‘When did this happen?’ Star asked.

  ‘Erm, while …’ For a moment I was about to say, ‘Right after Georgina finished making herself vomit,’ but stopped myself in time. ‘You were, erm …’

  ‘Look, think about it,’ Georgina interjected. ‘We’ve got to make this money somehow and Calypso came up with this fantastic idea that we could ask everyone in our House Block to write something satirical, which they would then have to read out loud at a literary party.’

  My head was spinning, but Georgina didn’t so much as draw breath. ‘We could fine non-contributors five pounds.’

  ‘Oh, I like that,’ Honey added. She would make a great traffic warden; she’s always trying to introduce fines for things. During our first term she had tried (almost successfully) to introduce a fine for girls who didn’t have long, straight hair.

  Star said, ‘Erm, maybe I’m just being stupid, but will everyone know what we mean by satirical?’ She was looking pointedly at Honey as she did this.

  ‘Correct, you’re just being stupid,’ Honey replied with a sneer.

  ‘OK, so what does it mean, brain drain?’ Star challenged.

  Honey, holding her torch to her face, rolled her eyes. Obviously she had no idea what it meant herself.

  ‘Erm, well, actually, I don’t know what it means,’ offered
Clemmie.

  ‘It’s sort of a piss-take, isn’t it?’ Arabella asked, looking to me for comfirmation.

  ‘Exactly,’ I agreed. ‘A tease, really.’

  ‘There, so it doesn’t really matter whether people know what it means – we can simply ask them to do a tease,’ Georgina suggested. ‘Only cleverly done and fun, not nasty,’ she added, looking at Honey as she spoke.

  ‘Yes, funny rather than vicious,’ I added, thinking of Honey although I didn’t dare look at her.

  Honey groaned again and flopped back on my bed, her feet on my pillow.

  I rose above her – not literally, because I was lying on the floor – and suggested that we start with a reading from Nancy Mitford, the greatest literary tease of all time.

  I read out the part of the book where her father hunts the children with hounds and how all the locals thought him a total sadist. (Of course, all the hounds did was lick the children, but perhaps they imagined they tore them to pieces and ate them.)

  We muffled our laughter with our dressing gowns and then Georgina read a Dorothy Parker poem about being misunderstood.

  ‘It is awful to be misunderstood,’ Georgina said with a loud sigh at the end of the piece, as if she knew firsthand what being misunderstood was all about.

  Star was looking fidgety, so I asked her what was up.

  ‘Well, I just don’t think it’s fair to fine people who can’t write,’ she announced firmly.

  Everyone raised their professionally sculptured eyebrows (apart from me, of course, because I pluck my own). Fines, after all, were a part of life at Saint Augustine’s – like betting, smoking and selling listens.

  ‘Why, can’t you afford it?’ Honey asked cattily.

  Star curled her lip. ‘No – because we’re meant to be raising money for charity. I don’t think fining people is really the best way to go about that, do you?’