by Mark Helprin
“Christ.”
Fredericka opened a compartment and withdrew a set of image-stabilised, low-light binoculars. With practised skill, she scoured the streets below, calling out: “Red Jaguar . . . brown Mercedes . . . yellow lorry . . . Citroën, can’t see the colour . . .” to which Freddy’s response was to call out points and keep a running tally.
“Army truck!” she screamed.
“Ten points!” Freddy cried.
“I see an American car, I don’t know what kind.”
“You have to know the type or it doesn’t count.”
“I think,” she said, straining her neck to follow as they left it behind, “it’s an Old Mobile or a Cat Alack. They have such strange names for their motors.”
“Which is it?”
“I don’t know. It’s a UFO.”
“That’s all right. Keep at it.”
Even before they began to trace the illuminated ribbon of the M11 they had racked up 160 points, which put Freddy in such an excellent frame of mind that when they landed at RAF Moleturd on the weald near Moocock, he agreed to address a contingent of French air force cadets, who wanted not to hear him but to gawk at Fredericka. They were assembled in a brilliantly lit hangar, looking, with their moustaches and sideburns, like a group of small, physically fit bartenders. Even as the Prince of Wales spoke, they did not move their eyes from the princess. For his part, Freddy casually improvised in what the Foreign Office wincingly called “Freddy French.” His accent was perfect, which made everything that followed seem exceedingly strange, for someone had once told him that the French language exists virtually without rules or restrictions.
Bon soir mes petites grenouilles aériennes, le bon Prince des Baleines vous adresse. Moi vous conclerez, et vous me semblez toujours trop poufaites. Au clou du poisson, la dégasse faible exprime offensement le Maroc. Contre rapetassage restent les hommes d’état et les cuillers. Pour moi et pour vous, brugnons ensemble, il faut seulement éclabousser. Vivent la France, le droit, et le roi. (Nous, nous ne tuons pas nos rois, merci beaucoup.)
Little speeches like this had puzzled the French for years. Had they known what he was trying to say, or even had he known, or had they had a written text for their linguists to try to decode, a crisis would undoubtedly have ensued. But no one had the vaguest idea of what was coming out, and the cadets had the look of puzzled rapture seen occasionally in the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, having been glued with Gallic urgency upon the sight of Fredericka while Freddy turned the tables on them and ravished their language.
AT MOOCOCK, an informal dinner awaited and a lively fire burned in cool air fresh with the scent of flowers. “It’s very romantic,” Fredericka said.
“I’ve never understood what it is,” Freddy replied, “that moves women to think that a bunch of burning paraffin sticks and some flowers have anything to do with that awful word, romantic.”
“Then what would you call it?”
“Elegant and appropriate.”
“Ah,” she said. “Look at this. It’s so . . . appropriate.”
At the shake of a bell, Sawyers served the dinner: consommé, petit pain and pâté de mer, green salad, poached salmon, New Guinea potatoes, a rare white Haut-Brion, a chocolate-ginger torte, and Champagne. They were absolutely alone at Moocock, with only fourteen servants, and could talk privately.
“Fredericka?”
“Yes, Freddy?”
“Pretty good, a hundred and sixty points, in semi-darkness.”
“We’ve done better,” she said, uninterested.
“Only two UFOs. That’s marvellous. Usually we have six or seven.”
“That’s because I’ve learned all about BMWs. Did you mention tonight’s game to that officer?”
“Yes. I always do. He’s very keen on the UFOs.”
“I don’t think you should. The press, Freddy, the press.”
“Major Fattiston is completely reliable. Good family, shot throughout my father’s regiments and my own like sprinkles of gold. He assured me that as long as he remained in the RAF he would keep our observations entirely under his hat. His word is his bond.”
“As long as he remained in the RAF?”
“For goodness’ sake, he’s a career man, a professional. What would he do outside the RAF?”
“Be an airline pilot,” Fredericka said.
“Oh.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you. The press is an octopus. It sucks up everything, catches everything that falls, seizes everything that floats.”
“Fredericka, I didn’t know you could speak that way.”
“I believe that’s from a song by Elton John.”
“Who?”
“Never mind. The press, Freddy, is too powerful, too omniscient.”
“You’ve done very well with it.”
“Yes, I know.”
“You could be more retiring.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely. In fact, both my mother and father are rather upset about the inordinate amount of press attention you get.”
“It’s their game, after all,” she said, “isn’t it?”
“A game they don’t like to play, whereas you seem to enjoy it.”
“Perhaps they might enjoy it, too.”
“They hate it, don’t you see? And, being new to it, you don’t. All they ask is that you pull back a bit, and become a little more private.”
“Will you be private with me, then?”
“Yes,” he said, unconvincingly.
“I don’t believe it, and I don’t want to be private all by myself.”
“We can be private, Fredericka. That means that we don’t have to go to restaurants every night, or to so many parties.”
“But I like parties. You can be private and go to parties. I used to go to parties alone.”
“I hate them, as you know, and I very much want to be private with you, except that you seem to think that privacy excludes reading. Every time I pick up a book or a journal, you sigh in pain.”
“What am I supposed to do while you’re reading?” she asked, woundedly.
“You could do the same.”
“Sit for two hours and read about exchange rates in Namibia? No, thank you.”
“You read She, especially when you’re on the cover.”
“I like to do things.”
“As you get older, you will naturally become more contemplative.”
“Does that include water-skiing?”
“Not really.”
“Freddy, I want to live my life.”
“You must learn to live the life of the mind.”
“And talk to plants?”
“Do you know why I talk to plants, Fredericka?”
“Why?” she asked.
“They listen.”
“Rot.”
“Indeed not, but let me state something bluntly. Someday, I am to be king of England. People find that endlessly intriguing, even if I do not. If I chose to, like some princes of Wales, I, too, could draw the spotlight from the sovereign. I could be like Edward the Seventh, who with horses and hounds chased a deer into the precincts of Paddington Station, killed it, and galloped off with his retinue into Hyde Park. But I’m not. I could become a dissolute, epicene, hermaphroditic, deracinated, drugged-out user of catamites. But I don’t. I could become ferociously political, and by proxy run three quarters of the Tory Party. But I don’t. Even in my youth, I knew. Do not upstage the monarch. Do not upstage the third-oldest surviving institution in the world. Do not upstage the queen of England. And,” he said, raising his finger, “with a bosom, no less.”
“What?”
“Your bosom.”
“Why do you say that, Freddy? Why do you talk that way?”
“Because,” said Freddy, with the urgency of a huntsman who has got his fox in a barrel, “it is a fact in brilliance that you upstage the queen, the duke, me, my brother, my sister, the monarchy itself, indeed, the whole bloody country, with—what?—a boso
m?”
“A bosom?”
“Yes, a bosom.”
“But Freddy, why do you say that? You know I’ve got two.”
This shut Freddy up like a stun grenade. “Two what?” he finally said.
“Two bosoms.”
“No you don’t, you’ve got one bosom. One, only one.”
“No I don’t, I’ve got two,” she said proudly, holding a hand up to cup one breast, and then another. “One here, and one here. Sit down, Freddy. Sit down there.”
Freddy complied.
“Okay,” Fredericka said, as if talking to an agitated hospital patient, “look at me.”
“Yes?”
“Now, Freddy,” she said, pointing to her head, “how many heads do I have?”
“That’s ridiculous!” Freddy protested.
“How many heads do I have, Freddy?”
“You have one head, Fredericka.”
“Good. Now”—she lifted up her blouse, exposing her navel—“how many boutons de la ferme do I have?”
“What are boutons de la ferme?”
“That’s what the French call farm buttons.”
“What are farm buttons?”
She pointed at her navel.
“Since when is that a farm button?”
“It’s always been a farm button. The question is, how many do I have?”
“One,” said Freddy, derailed.
“And how many hands?”
“Two.”
“Nose?”
“One.”
This went on for a while until Fredericka paused dramatically, smiling because Freddy, like a circus horse, had counted flawlessly in ones and twos. “Now,” she asked, “tell me. How many bosoms do I have?”
“One,” said Freddy.
“You’re hopeless,” she said. “I have two. You used to be quite fond of them.”
“You have one, and I am quite fond of it.”
“Freddy, look,” she said tentatively, “just look. Two. Not one. Two. Two bosoms.”
“Sorry, Fredericka, but the fact is, and I know it for sure, and would stake my life on it, that you have only one.”
“The hell I do!”
“Yes. You’ve got one bosom, two teats (spelled t-e-a-t and pronounced tit), and two breasts. And that’s a fact.”
“Oh! So now I’ve got five!”
“Five what?”
“Five bosoms.”
“No, you’ve got only one.”
She narrowed her eyes and dropped her head in a position of exasperation. “Make up your bloody mind. Have I got one, two, or five? The papers are right, and I didn’t even know it. You go around in bizarre costumes and talk about UFOs. Everyone knows you’re mad. Who the hell are you to tell me I’ve got one bosom? Have you got the opposite of crossed eyes? Or can’t you count? No one ever told me I had one bosom, and no one ever told me I had five—no one, that is, but you, and you can’t even make up your mind. Is it five, or is it one? Or is that too difficult a challenge to take up?”
“Hardly,” said Freddy, in warrior mode. “It’s an easy challenge. And here, Fredericka, is a challenge for you.” He stood, strode across the room, took The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary from a shelf by the fireplace, returned, and slammed its blue-jacketed bulk on the dining room table so hard that not only did all the plates and utensils jump four inches in the air, but a fine mist of sawdust fell to the carpet beneath.
“Goddamned mealy-mouthed worms!” he shouted, upon seeing this. She hadn’t seen it, didn’t know what he was talking about, and was quite nervous because there were swords in the room.
“That,” he said, pointing at the still slightly vibrating dictionary, through air still ringing with the clatter-sound of silver and crystal, “is a dictionary. You might try, for once in your life, consulting it. To do that, I know, you must open it. And it is, God forbid, a book. But! It’s not the kind of book you read from cover to cover. No! You can just dip into it, like She. Try it! Try it for the word bosom. You might actually learn something: that is, how to speak in reference to the history of the speech of the world, rather than in reference to what you merely feel. It’s called exactitude. It’s called objectivity. It’s called classicism. And it has nothing to do, nothing, nothing whatsoever, with compassion.”
She glared at him. He glared at her. The fire crackled joyfully, as fires do during combat. And in the midst of the war of two worlds came a polite, indeed, an obsequious knock at the door: Sawyers’ knock, instantly recognisable.
They stood back to compose themselves. No matter that he had probably heard every word. “Yes?” they said, aristocratically and in unison.
He entered. “It was very quiet. I thought Your Royal Highnesses had left.” This was intended to assure them that their privacy was intact. Relief was visible in both their faces.
Sawyers cleared his throat. “I’m very sorry to say, sir, that the bosom has escaped.”
“The what?” Freddy asked.
“The dog, sir.”
“The dog, again?” Freddy asked with more exasperation than heat.
“I’m afraid so, sir. There’s nothing he can’t bite through, even the heaviest chain link.”
“Did you go after him with cheese? You scream ‘Cheese!’ and when he gets near, you lie on the ground and put the cheese on your face, leaving your arms free, so that, when he approaches, you—gently—clip a lead onto his collar.”
“We have the cheese, sir.”
“Well?”
Sawyers had a pained expression on his face. “Sir, the only person other than yourself who is qualified to do this—he is a pit bull, you know—is Douglas, his keeper.”
“Then get Douglas.”
“He’s in Basutoland, sir, with the queen. She asked if he might go along to help with the gift animals. You know what a terrible ordeal they had last time on the plane with the rhinoceros after it contracted diarrhoea.”
“Do I have to do this again?” Freddy asked.
“If Your Royal Highness doesn’t,” Sawyers said, with perfect logic, “the dog will remain loose and may kill someone.”
“Very well,” Freddy told him. “I’ll change while you bring the cheese around.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Freddy stormed upstairs, with Fredericka following. “Obviously, he was listening,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“How will you find my doggy?”
“He always goes toward one village or the other.” Freddy pulled on his boots. This was unpleasant after a full dinner. “It’s your blasted dog,” he said. “I hate it.”
“You’re the only one it won’t bite. You have a royal way with dogs, like your mother.”
“You mean, ‘as does your mother,’ ” Freddy growled.
“Yes, that’s what I mean,” Fredericka averred, innocently.
“I don’t like having a pit bull lick Gorgonzola off my face, if you don’t mind. I also don’t like pit bulls. He should have been destroyed.”
“I couldn’t.”
“Just because his master died of AIDS?”
“He didn’t die of AIDS, he died of malnutrition.”
“Your nutrition counsellor died of malnutrition?”
“So?” Fredericka asked indignantly.
“He was some piece of work.”
“What are you driving at?”
“Perhaps you would expect,” said Freddy, “that someone who dispenses advice about nutrition would be able to eat well enough to keep himself alive.”
“It was an accident.”
“Fredericka, one does not die of malnutrition by accident.”
“Oh Freddy, he was always so melancholy. It’s difficult for Chinese people in London.”
“But you didn’t have to name the dog after him.”
“Who should I have named the dog after, François Mitterrand? He wasn’t François Mitterrand’s dog, was he? If the master dies, you name the dog after the master. It makes perfect se
nse.”
“Well, fuck him.”
“No, Pha-Kew.”
“Yes, I know.”
Another polite knock. “What!” Freddy screamed.
“Sir,” Sawyers announced upon entering, “Melody is waiting by the front door with the Gorgonzola. She can’t hold out much longer. Besides, Pha-Kew may be halfway to Glasgow by now.”
“Sawyers,” said Freddy, bitterly, “I always find him, and he always gets the cheese.
“Thank you, Melody,” Freddy said to the gagging servant as he took a kilo of semi-spoiled Gorgonzola and walked into the night. He doubted that Pha-Kew would be on the grounds, so as he walked across the lawns and through familiar hedges and fields he was silent. As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness he felt calmer. The silky lawns in the cloud-blinkered moonlight seemed purple and soft. It was cool, but not cold enough to kill scent, and a hundred different aromas—of plants, soil, water, and Gorgonzola—came at him on the wind, like regiments passing on parade. Along the canal he seemed to glide on the towpath, the black water on his left half the time shimmering in moonlight and half the time as infinitely dark as death. Leaves floated on the surface, as curled and dry as potato crisps. Every now and then, he called the dog’s name, and every now and then, he called out, “Cheese!”
When he reached the village, he thought he might simply take a tour in hope of finding the dog purely by luck. Having been misunderstood on several previous occasions as he passed through Pestwick-on-Canal or Brooms Hoo shouting the dog’s name, he was wary of active measures, so he hiked-up his collar, bent his head, and tried to be unobtrusive. At least this time he would not be chasing after Fredericka’s late blue-eyed Savoyard Gabinetto, Taxi. In one distressing incident, Freddy had walked through Brooms Hoo for an hour, screaming: “Taxi! Taxi! Taxi!” This, naturally, brought out the otherwise dormant Brooms Hoo fleet of taxis, both of which sped to oblige.
“I don’t need a taxi,” he had told them.
“Oh,” they said, and pulled away.
“Taxi! Taxi! Taxi!” he shouted an instant later.
They rushed up again. “Changed your mind, Your Majesty?”
“No,” said Freddy, looking at them scornfully, “not at all.”
“Oh.”
“Tell me,” Freddy went on, “have you seen Taxi?”
