by Mark Helprin
“Who is Mr Neil?” Freddy asked of his father. “You mentioned him in your letter. I can’t place him. Is he a privy councillor? Who is he?”
“Freddy,” the queen said, “you shall know in time.”
“But who is he?”
The duke stood. “Get about it, Freddy, and while you’re here we’ll do some physical training and drop a stone or two of fat from your whale-like corpus.”
“It’s not fair. I haven’t got an ounce of fat on me.”
“Nonsense. You’re a hippo.”
“He’s not a hippo, he’s a hare.”
“No he’s not, he’s a rhino.”
“He’s not a rhino, he’s a rattlesnake.”
As this continued—both the queen and Paul knew a great deal about animals—Freddy walked off into the long halls that were to be his prison.
AFTER A LONG CONFINEMENT in which Fredericka read and reread every extant issue of She, and Freddy ran so many circuits of the grounds that had his course been a straight line he would have reached Madrid, the Prince and Princess of Wales very nearly dropped from the news. Psnake and Didgeridoo were aware that, though they had not shot their last bolt, without something fresh their campaign would fail and might possibly backfire. But because the two principals had been cooped for weeks within the palace, completely out of touch, there was nothing fresh. Once in a while, like Mao Tse-tung, they appeared in the distance to let the world know they were still alive, but in the main the royal public relations gnomes promoted a period of tranquillity during which Freddy was said to be translating Latin epigrams, and Fredericka carrying out botanical experiments on arugula.
Despite huge headlines speculating upon their reasons for withdrawal—“Is Fredericka With Heir?”—they held their own. When The Noon Behemoth implied that Freddy had contracted leprosy, that Fredericka refused to nurse him, and that both had converted to Hinduism, public sympathy began to flow toward the royals and away from the obviously mendacious Behemoth and other like and gigantic organs. The queen was happy. She thought the battle might turn. After all, this was the throne of England, which had prevailed throughout history, starting earliest, rising most high, and lasting through. Freddy was no blowsy, dissolute, intoxicated, Eurotrash flea.
To the contrary, he was eloquent; perspicacious; a fit officer in the SAS reserve, who knew five modern languages, Latin, and Ancient Greek, and was the author of well received historical studies and essays on historiography. Apart from Lady Boylingehotte, whom he had now dropped, he did not womanise, he drank little, had no experience with drugs, and had exactly the grave, devoted, sacrificial temperament appropriate to a monarch.
But Fredericka, though statuesque and golden, was narcissistic in the extreme, astoundingly superficial, and totally uncaring. That is to say that although she was known throughout the world for emoting about endangered pandas, the wives of African political prisoners, people with various diseases, and whales, she actually cared very little about anything. This they had discovered by her behaviour and in conversation.
How much could she have cared about anything but Fredericka and not known where the North Sea was? No, Manitoba was not the African chief who killed and ate Rudolf Hess, and electricity did not come from rabbits rubbing together. Vladimir Lenin, she had told the Soviet ambassador, had done some of the greatest guitar riffs she had ever heard. All Fredericka cared about, really, was being adored.
And she was the darling of the world. Although she could seem less intelligent than garden mulch, this was not because she was dumb, it was be-cause she had a way of gliding through things, and spent no more energy than was required to drift along in silken orbits, adored by masses of people who were in many ways just like her and not at all like Freddy. The queen understood such popular appeal but was not yet ready to believe that the practice of looking up to exceptionalism and virtue had been supplanted in power by the idea of worshipping the lesser, the least, the mediocre, the vacant, and the corrupt.
FREDDY WAS AN EARLY RISER, monastic by temperament, and quite happy with their new routine. Fredericka was not. With no ribbon cuttings, trips, state dinners, or even the slightest public contact, she did begin to go slightly mad, especially after many hours of listening to Freddy practising hearty Japanese phrases that ended with many exclamation points. So she made him play a lot of tennis and she did a lot of stretching. In fact, during Freddy’s four-hour Aikido–Japanese Language study period each day, seven days a week, she stretched.
“How can you stretch for four hours a day?” Freddy had asked her.
“How can you study Japanese and Aikido for four hours a day?”
“I’m honing my body and mind.”
“That’s nice, I’m stretching mine. Where is it written that honing is better than stretching?”
“In the book of the world.”
“Show me this book.”
“You are in the process of being shown the book. You aren’t even on page one.”
“No, I’ve seen a great deal of the book, and I have yet to see where it is written that honing is more godly than stretching.”
“Perhaps if you had honed more and stretched less, you would have seen it.”
Despite a continuing undercurrent of domestic friction, things were on the mend. By May the newspapers were out of stories, having repeated themselves so many times that the public was shagey-eyed. Psnake and Didgeridoo had always known that the royals were clever. The press lords had their plans, but no matter. Freddy and Fredericka did nothing to supply fresh grist for the mill.
In early May, Fredericka insisted upon more tennis than ever, having read in She that this was the best way to utilise anti-oxidants. Freddy was only too willing to oblige, and each day at the end of Japanese and stretching they played for two hours. They had a good tennis court, hidden away. Except for the roar of traffic, somewhat muted by the massive wall that enclosed the palace grounds, they might as well have been in Arden.
Freddy had inherited and learned his noted thrift (he preferred to sleep on the floor, wrapped in an aged army blanket; he happily ate rations straight from the tin; and his favourite jacket was twenty-nine years old and looked it) from both his father and his mother, but especially from his father. Paul was so thrifty that he saved used matchsticks, cut off the heads, and sent them as gifts to children with hamsters. Once, his gift to the eight-year-old grandson of Field Marshal Montgomery had been switched inadvertently with his present to the president of the United States. The puzzled little boy had received a large humidor of the finest cigars, and the president a box of used kitchen matches, with a note that read: “From HRH Prince Paul, Duke of Belfast, for the little fat one with a broken tooth, affectionately known as Hermann Göring. Have fun, because when you grow up you may become a statesman, and all fun will cease.”
Like his father, Freddy didn’t like to part with things, even tennis balls. “I like playing with dead balls,” he said one hot day at about the midway point of tennis with Fredericka. “You have to move faster and hit harder.”
“I don’t,” she said, “not at all, especially when they come over the net and just flop down.”
“You’ve got to run them.”
“Which is why you have that waffle-print on your cheek.”
“It will go away.”
“Freddy, we need new balls. We can afford them.”
“We’ll get some tomorrow.”
“We need them now. We’re playing tennis now.”
“We don’t have any, and it would take too long to send for them.”
“I don’t understand. You just received a huge package of Dunlops from Lord Mewshaw.”
“We can’t use those.”
“Why not?”
“They’re imprinted with photographs of Psnake and Didgeridoo. If one were to go over the wall, all these months of confinement would be for naught.”
“Then we won’t hit them over the wall.”
“I don’t hit them over the wall, Fredericka,
you do.”
“We’ll switch sides, and I’ll play with my back to the wall. Really, Freddy, I’m tired of playing with tennis balls from the forties. I simply will not ever touch them again, full stop.”
“Most of them are from the sixties,” Freddy informed her. He paused, hoping that this might satisfy her, but it didn’t, because they were more than thirty years old and some of them didn’t even have any fuzz left.
As Freddy left to get the Psnake and Didgeridoo balls, he worried. Not to worry. If Fredericka had her back to the wall, what could happen? In the tennis pavilion he drank some water, seized the box of imprinted balls, and started back, energised for another match. Fredericka was a good tennis player, with long arms, long legs, and distracting blue eyes. Her shorts were short and her shots were hard. Sometimes they went wild, but he loved the intense way she bore down on an incoming round.
They switched sides, and before play Freddy ostentatiously calculated the ballistics. With Fredericka’s back to the wall and the wall’s height and distance from her, he claimed, no matter with what force she connected, a ball she hit could not leave the palace grounds. Even were she to slam it supernaturally, which sometimes she could, the ball would not have anything flat enough or hard enough from which to ricochet. “Hit it as violently as you please,” he said, lobbing a Psnake-imprinted ball her way. She did. In fact, she had been hitting decades-old dead balls with such extra panache that she failed to make the adjustment and smashed this first shot so hard that, striking Freddy flat in the centre of his forehead, it knocked him both down and out.
“Freddy! Freddy!” Fredericka cried out as she jumped the net (which she could do from a standstill). “Oh Freddy! Freddy! What have I done?” He was still out, so she ran to the pavilion and seized what she took to be a red pitcher of cold water, which actually was a clear pitcher of the juice of American tomatoes. Though he had revived and was lying with his eyes open, wondering what had happened, she emptied half a gallon of tomato juice onto his face. He sputtered, choked, and rose. The first thing he did, in disgust, was to take off his soaked shirt and toss it away.
“What happened?” he asked.
“You were hit on the head with a ball and knocked out.”
“A dead ball from the sixties?”
“No, the Psnake ball.”
“The Psnake ball, the Psnake ball,” said Freddy, still woozy from the blow. He tried to think things out. “Where is it?”
“It bounced from your head and went sailing back over the wall, just as you said it couldn’t. So much for ballistics.”
“We have to get it.”
“How? The gates are locked from the inside as well.” They were, so that they could not be opened for terrorists.
“I know where the key is,” Freddy said.
They hurried to the wall, where Freddy retrieved a key from behind a loose stone.
“Freddy,” Fredericka cautioned, “you can’t go out there. You’ll be seen.”
“Not a problem. There’s no traffic. They’re tarring the road. I can get the ball and pop right back in.”
“This isn’t a good idea.”
“What, to step beyond the wall of the palace? Don’t be ridiculous.” He turned the key in the massive lock and smoothly retracted the bolt. The door opened on oiled hinges. Freddy leaned out and pulled himself back in. “I’ve made a reconnaissance,” he reported. “There isn’t a bit of traffic. The road is covered in fresh tar and the workmen are gone. A derelict is lying in the high grass, eating a box of fried chicken. He may not even see me, and if he does, so what?”
“I don’t like it.”
“Nothing to fear. I’ll be back in a minute.” As he stepped out, he remembered that he had to give the key to Fredericka so she could let him back in. Pivoting to accomplish this, he inadvertently slammed the heavy iron door shut on his foot and his shorts. The pain propelled him outward. “No!” he cried, to the sound of shredding fabric. Losing his balance, he realised that he was naked and about to fall into a bed of fresh tar.
By lifting his head and pushing his arms out before him, his front was tarred only from instep to neck. But while struggling to his feet, he fell back into the tar in a sitting position. When finally he managed to stand, he stood completely naked except for a pair of blackened tennis shoes and a partial appliqué of glistening pitch. He stumped angrily to the door. As he reached it he heard the derelict squealing. “Look! He’s got a black arse! Look! Look at it!”
Turning to him with an obscene gesture, Freddy screamed, “Rot in hell!” Fredericka, whose feelings had been wounded when Freddy had so abruptly slammed the door, thought this was directed to her, which made her cross. When the key came flying over the wall, she picked it up, tossed it into a bank of pachysandra, and stalked off to an appointment with one of her hairdressers.
“Fredericka? Fredericka?” Freddy called. “Fredericka? Fredericka!” When, after a minute, she didn’t answer, he began to bang on the door.
“You rot in hell, that’s what I say!” the derelict squealed. “Now you know what it feels like to be on the outside with people like me. Going around naked. You rot in hell!”
After five minutes during which the still somewhat bleary Freddy, who thought he might be dreaming, stood at the door in the hope that Fredericka might open it, the road workers began to filter back to the head of the street. They put on their fluorescent vests and started to move cones and fire up their roller. Freddy knew that he was in a bad situation, but what could he have done? He was naked, tarred, and the wall was too high and too smooth to climb.
Suddenly, like Fredericka, he needed clothes above all things, and the only source of clothes was hatefully staring at him as it ate its chicken. Regretful that he had been curt with one of his mother’s subjects, Freddy approached him, and said, “Oh, hello there.”
“What’s in your hair, tomato juice?”
“Yes,” Freddy answered. “It is.”
“Why did you put tomato juice in your hair?”
“It was an accident.”
“It can be,” squealed the derelict, mysteriously. “You’re the Prince of Wales, you are.”
“I am.”
“Well, now you’re out here with me, only I’ve got the chicken!” He squealed like a hyena. “I’ve got the chicken! I’ve got the chicken! Chicken! Chicken! Chicken!”
Freddy sensed that perhaps this was not going to be easy. “Yes, you have. You have the chicken. I don’t want the chicken.”
“And you’re not going to get it!” the derelict screamed. “And not the box either! And not my pillow!” He held up a filthy down pillow.
“You can have those,” Freddy said as if he were a bank manager talking to a man draped in bandoliers of dynamite. “I don’t want those, but I’ll tell you what. If you give me your clothes, I’ll give you a hundred pounds and ten roast chickens.”
“I like my chicken fried.”
“Very well, ten fried chickens.”
“And what would I wear?”
“I’ll send you to Hobby and Richard for ten suits. Hobby and Richard will come to you. They’ll measure you.”
“It’s a trick.”
“It isn’t. As you can see, I need clothes.”
“What about me? So do I.”
“A thousand pounds, ten fried chickens, and ten suits.”
“Me mum always said don’t go ’round naked. It was a rule in my family.”
“Ten thousand pounds, a hundred fried chickens, and twenty suits.”
“I’ll get back to you.”
“I don’t have time for that!”
“And you don’t have any clothes, either, do you?”
“A hundred thousand pounds, a thousand fried chickens, and fifty suits.”
“Not good enough.”
“What do you want?”
The derelict grew focussed. “I want ten million,” he said, vessels throbbing across his forehead.
“Ten million pounds?” Freddy asked
, aghast.
The derelict shook his head to indicate that he did not want ten million pounds.
“Ten million what?”
The derelict smiled broadly and almost toothlessly.
“Ten million fried chickens?”
“With waistcoats,” the derelict said.
“What do you mean, ten million fried chickens with waistcoats?”
“I want each one,” he said, “to have a waistcoat. Before I eat them, I’ll take off the waistcoats, and put them in a Turkish closet.”
“You’re insane,” said Freddy.
“Oh,” said the derelict, “am I? I may be, but everybody knows about you for sure.”
“How can I possibly come up with ten million fried chickens?”
“You’re the Prince of Wales,” the derelict said, as if this answered the question.
“That’s every chicken in England, with waistcoats.”
“They don’t have to be fancy waistcoats. They can be basic black. Buttons, toggles, I don’t care. Chickens look good in waistcoats.”
“Fried.”
“Golden and crispy.”
“What about ten million pounds and a million fried chickens?” Freddy asked, feeling completely out of control when, just a few minutes before, he had been the prince inside the palace grounds, the envy of the world.
“What’s money to me?” the derelict asked.
“All right!” Freddy shouted. The construction workers were getting closer. “I agree.”
“Good,” said the derelict. “Payment in advance.”
“Madness,” Freddy said.
“Is it? The last time, the other Prince of Wales—I forgot his name—sank my boat. That’s why I have to be this way.”
“I can’t just create ten million fried chickens, with waistcoats.”
“I understand that. I’ll make allowances. I’ll take half.”
“I can’t do that, either.”
“Ah! Just to show you who’s dealing in good faith here, I’ll take ten percent.”
“A million fried chickens?”
