by Mark Helprin
“One percent, in advance, on the barrel head.”
“A hundred thousand fried chickens?”
“I’m being entirely reasonable, am I not? One percent?”
“I can’t give you even one fried chicken in advance.”
“How about a drumstick?”
“Nor that.”
“You aristocrats are all alike. All you do is talk.”
Freddy lunged for the derelict’s pillow, with the intent of taking it from him by force to make a loincloth. They fought and tumbled, contesting the pillow until in one particularly savage exchange of pushes and pulls the pillowcase broke in half and a mass of yellow-white down was laid bare to the sun . . . and wind. “Oh no!” Freddy cried out as a sudden puff of air lifted the feathers and they flew toward him. Instinctively, he covered his face, but they would not have stuck to his face. And then he turned, remembering that, dorsally, only his posterior had tar. “Now you’ve got them on your arse, too!” the derelict said in triumph. “Look at you, you look like a giant white chicken! I’ve never seen anything like you. No one has, no one in the world!”
“Bugger off,” said Freddy, fully aware of what he looked like. “And give me that box of chicken.”
“Do you want a drumstick or a thigh?”
“I want the box, to hide my face, damn you.”
After using his thumbs to punch holes in the box, Freddy put it over his head and set out the long way around to the palace mews. From having looked at the schedule that morning, he knew that a German television crew was going to be filming the Changing of the Guard, and of course tourists were always at the main gate, with cameras. Loping along, he began to feel better. Most probably everyone was, indeed, looking at him, but they didn’t know who he was. The farther he travelled the more hopeful he became that he would emerge from this unfortunate episode unscathed, but then he saw a police car coming down the road, and when it reached him it jammed on its brakes.
The window went down, and as the police car paced him in reverse Freddy heard the call. “This is P-Seventeen, Grosvenor Place and Duke of Wellington. We have a large, male, possibly RC Three—it’s very hard to tell—running south on Grosvenor Place. Please send gas, nets, and crowd control goo. He is without doubt very fit and very crazy.”
Freddy turned back and ran so fast that the wind lifted his feathers until they were parallel to the ground. The police couldn’t follow him on the tar, and didn’t, but this route channelled him to the main gate just as the guard had begun to change. He had thought for a moment that he might be ignored, but the German television crew swivelled its cameras and began to eat up the scene. Tourists as well ignored the magnificent ceremony in favour of the tarred and feathered nude runner with the fried-chicken box on his head.
When Freddy got to the first gate the police converged upon him, having come around the palace. He turned to go back, but was hemmed in. Why, he wondered, were people shrieking and shouting? They seemed to be afraid of him. A palace guard in a bearskin helmet pointed his automatic rifle at Freddy as if at a terrorist. Presumably he was doing this to protect, among others, Freddy. What is that sound, Freddy wondered like a man surrendering to sleep, that lovely, peaceful, summer sound? It was like crickets. But why crickets? Then he realised that it was the sound of camera shutters.
“Slowly, nut thing. Slowly. Remove the box from your head,” the soldier commanded.
“May I speak to you privately?” Freddy asked.
“No, you may not.” The soldier’s adrenaline was flowing as if in combat. “Take the bloody box off,” he said, bracing himself alarmingly as he tensed around his rifle.
Then an idiot tourist said, “Is there a bomb in the box?” despite the fact that, obviously, Freddy’s head was in the box, and people began to scream, “He’s got a bomb! He’s got a bomb!”
“Take the box off!” the soldier ordered in the particular voice that comes before pulling a trigger.
“Serjeant,” Freddy implored, as he looked at the world through sad, greasy holes, “the only thing in the box is my head. Why don’t you just arrest me, but leave the box on. Please remove me from public view.”
“I’m going to count to five, and then I’ll fire.”
“I’m going to count to four,” Freddy said, “and then you’re fired.”
“Just a moment, Serjeant,” one of the police said. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Do what, count to five and fire, or let him in?”
“Neither.”
“He does have to let me in,” Freddy said. “I live here.”
“You shut up,” the policeman said. And then, to the guard, “The net’s here. After we fire it at him at forty miles per hour, the box will come right off.”
“Enough,” said Freddy, who already had a waffle-print on his cheek. “I’ll remove the box. Oh God,” he sighed. Then, in the obverse of Napoleon crowning himself, he raised his two hands, gripped the chicken box, and lifted it from his brow.
Shutters clicked into a frenzy until they sounded like surf. The Germans with the television camera stepped back as if pushed by a wave, but they kept on recording. Finally, the guard, now near tears, inquired of the Prince of Wales, “I didn’t know it was you. What are you doing? Sir, what’s going on?”
Freddy spoke gently. “I was practising,” he said.
“For what?” the guard asked, not impertinently, but from pathos.
“I don’t know,” Freddy said. “I think I hit my head. You see, Fredericka refuses to play with my balls.”
THE SPECIAL SOLVENTS used to remove the pitch were very painful and turned Freddy blazing pink. His father would not see him, which was not a problem, because Freddy himself would not see anyone, not even Fredericka, who was so contrite that she went without having her hair done for an entire day. And though he faintly wished that his mother would come to his sickbed, as of old, she did not. Days passed, and except for occasional communications with his doctors he spoke only to Sawyers, who brought him caviar and chopped truffles, his comfort foods.
“Sawyers,” Freddy asked eventually, “where are the papers?”
“I brought you the Journal of the Royal Services Institution, and several monographs about computational warfare.”
“But where are the papers?”
“You might not want to see them, sir.”
Freddy winced as if jabbed by a knife. Then he stiffened. “Right. Carry on.”
Never in the history of journalism had newspapers sold in such volume all over the world. People who had long since ceased to read suddenly began to buy ten different newspapers a day. And repetition seemed not to blunt their appetites. Front pages were filled with three genres of photograph: Freddy standing, tarred and feathered, with the box on his head; without the box; and walking dejectedly into the palace, feathers at the rear.
For the first genre the school of headlines included: “At It Again,” “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” “Peekaboo!” “It Is Who You Think,” “2000 Years of Inbreeding,” “What Hath God Wrought?” “Rule, Britannia,” and “Let’s Play Chicken,” among hundreds of others in every language, such as the magnificent French headline, “Poulet Royal!” The second, of Freddy’s face exposed, was slightly more subtle: “Practising for What?” “Mater Said There’d Be Days Like This,” and “Kidnapped by Aliens.” The third group’s headlines tended to the overtly political: “Just Go!” “Can Pimcot Survive?” “Walking Toward the Palace but Away from the Throne,” and “Sun Sets on British Empire, Chicken Style.”
Freddy did not need to see these. He knew. And he had no idea how to turn things around. He doubted very much that Mr Neil, whoever he might be, could restore to him the dignity that he had squandered. But for the time being Mr Neil was his only hope.
Five days after what Freddy had come to call “the incident,” his father appeared. Freddy could hardly look up. “They found the tennis ball, too,” Paul said, “with Psnake on it. His papers now suggest that the House of F
inney be abolished and Fredericka take the throne. Your mother is not very happy. She hasn’t been as upset since the war.”
“What about the Commons?” Freddy asked.
“Pimcot’s government may fall on a vote of confidence scheduled for tomorrow. In that case the Greenham Common ladies will run the government while Apehand spends most of his time in Bermuda in the company of women who have wasp-thin waists but are otherwise so buxom that the laws of physics would have to be abridged for them to get their heads wet.”
“What did Pimcot say?”
“When?”
“At the audience.”
“He could hardly speak. Mummy did most of the talking.”
“Pimcot unable to speak?”
“He suspects he’s finished. That’s enough to shut up even him.”
“I understand.”
“No, you don’t. He wanted you committed to a mental institution. He said it was the only way to save his government and the monarchy as well. That’s the order he put them in, too, the bugger.”
Freddy looked at his father anxiously.
“Your mother told him that mental institutions don’t take people as overweight as you, and that in any case we wouldn’t have it.”
“Mummy said I was overweight?”
“To save you, Freddy. She still suffers the illusion that you are not. Pimcot was suitably put off. But we did have to make up some rubbish to tell the press.”
“What rubbish? You do realise that whatever you told them will follow me long past my death.”
“Of course I realise it. It’s part of the price we pay. We said that you were in the care of several physicians who, consulting with Fredericka, would see you back to health.”
“Consulting with Fredericka! Do you know how much Fredericka knows about medicine? When Baron Florizel Beeston was stricken with appendicitis and had to be rushed from Henley Regatta in a water ambulance, she said, ‘Oh! It’s so horrible! To think of them opening up the brain to find the little appendicitis and then killing it before it gets a heart attack!’ ”
“I know, Freddy, but people think she can heal the sick and bring back the dead. We said that you would be confined indefinitely to Balmoral, and that you were to follow a regime of nature foods and Banlucopyroxidine Metasalicylate Tri-Arf-Popsiculine.”
“What was that?”
“Pimcot made it up.”
“Am I to stay at Balmoral for the rest of my life? I suppose I wouldn’t mind too much if I could go outside. Can I?”
“You’re not going to Balmoral. We are awaiting Mr Neil.”
“Who, exactly, is Mr Neil?”
“You know. You’re being coy, aren’t you?”
“No.”
“In that case, I can’t tell you. Only those who can by themselves discover who he is, know who he is. I think it should come clear when you meet him. We hope that he will appear. Your mother has never been in such straits. She must choose between her duties as queen—her obligation not only to millions upon millions but to history, her forbears, and her oath—and her son. She loves you very much, Freddy. I don’t think that any force can overcome the bond between mother and child if the mother’s love has been allowed to develop. Nor do I think it should. But, then, as queen she has a duty to God and country. Never have I seen her suffer so, and this, I believe, will bring Mr Neil.”
“Can’t she just summon him? Whoever he is, she is the queen of England.”
“Oh, no, Freddy, she cannot. Not even the queen can summon Mr Neil, but only hope that he will come.”
PARLEY AT WINDSOR
THOUGH IT WAS ANNOUNCED that Freddy would go to Balmoral, upon instruction from his mother he went to Windsor to await the puzzling Mr Neil. Neither Philippa nor Paul would speak of Mr Neil, and when Freddy did they lifted an index finger—left or right, it did not matter—to their closed lips to signify that they would say nothing.
Freddy ransacked to no avail every biographical reference he could find. “Is he a marriage counsellor?” he asked one evening at dinner. “He isn’t registered as such. Nor is he listed anywhere as attached either to the royal house, the government, the universities, or elsewhere. I found many a Neil, but none appropriate.”
“How would you know?” Paul asked.
“Perhaps I was rash, but I ruled out hydrologists, economists, barristers, solicitors, surveyors, ships’ captains. . . . It is a common name.”
“Precisely.”
“I looked in your address files.”
“Did you ask my permission?”
“I’m your son. I take certain liberties.”
“You may be my son, but that doesn’t give you the right to look in my address files. What next, using my toothbrush? Borrowing my cufflinks? Sitting in my chair if you could fit? Mr Neil isn’t in any address files, mine or anyone else’s.”
“To calm you, Freddy,” said Philippa, smiling nasally, “I’ll tell you a fact about Mr Neil, a person to whom we will trust the fate of the monarchy, and to whom the fate of the monarchy has been entrusted before. But only if you promise to leave off about him until he comes—if he does.”
“One fact?”
“His profession. To restore your confidence in our judgement.”
Freddy said, “I agree. What does he do?”
The queen looked at Freddy. Fredericka, who had pushed her dessert aside, was listening raptly. “Mr Neil,” the queen said, “at the moment, at least, is employed as a mould maker in a rubber sex toy factory in Naples.” Then she and her consort chortled royally and went back to their chocolate mousse.
After some time, Freddy said, “That isn’t true, of course.”
“Yes it is,” said the queen. “It is true. It is literally and precisely true.”
“But it is your way of telling us,” Freddy insisted, slightly losing his mental footing and beginning to slide, “telling us something in an indirect way, or metaphorically, is it not?”
“Metaphorically my arse,” said Paul, resplendent in a linen summer jacket that glowed against the ancient dark panelling. “He does that work, and don’t underestimate him.”
“Don’t underestimate him,” Freddy repeated. “Certainly not. Why would I be tempted to think any the less of a man to whom, evidently, I am to entrust the course of my life, just because he works in a rubber sex toy factory in Naples? That wouldn’t make sense, would it?”
“Freddy,” warned his father.
“No, really. Why bother with, say, the rector of a university, a former prime minister or Speaker of the House, a panel of Nobel laureates, a bishop, or a distinguished philosopher or historian, when you can get him. He doesn’t! Does he?”
“Yes he does,” said the queen.
“We’ve been waiting here a week for what reason, exactly? Why not send the ambassador in Rome to get him?”
“No more questions, Freddy. You promised,” his father reminded him.
“It’s not actually a question,” Freddy declared, holding up both his hands in a gesture that said, Bear with me as I continue, and do not interrupt me. “Not a question. Here we are, the royal family of England, waiting like supplicants for someone whom the queen cannot summon.” He interrupted himself. “You can summon the prime minister, the Archbishop of Canterbury. . . . You can summon just about anyone in the world except the Pope, who, perhaps coincidentally, also lives on the Italian Peninsula.”
“What is your point, Freddy?” the queen asked dryly.
“That you cannot, you cannot summon Mr Neil, who works in a . . . what? I don’t know, do I? I haven’t a clue, have I?”
“No,” the queen said. “Just wait.”
“I will,” Freddy assured her, relaxing his entire body into aristocratic submission, which somehow did not seem aristocratic. And then they adjourned for the after-dinner walk. Freddy and Fredericka went off into the park, alone together in the fading light.
“You know, Freddy,” she began, “when we married, I knew that the cumulative effect of
centuries of being king or queen would be detectable in a hereditary sense, perhaps even pronounced. But I thought that the privilege, rank, and amenities you enjoy would enable you to carry on, to muffle it, so to speak.”
“What are you driving at?”
“Forgive me, Freddy, but I really think something is wrong with your family. It’s not just you. It comes from them, doesn’t it?”
“It wasn’t that way—we were doing fine—until I met you.”
“Coincidence and excuse.”
“Perhaps it is,” Freddy admitted.
“Do you think,” Fredericka asked, “that they think we’re sexually incompatible, and that they themselves may have had such a problem at some time, and this Mr Neil solved it for them, with . . . ?”
“Don’t say it.”
“Well, do you?”
“They’re not idiots.”
“Then who is he?”
“Perhaps he served with my father and was his confidant during the war.”
“Do you think he’s a long-lost relative? A brilliant member of the family but with a huge hump?”
“Every Finney, Fredericka, is meticulously recorded and accounted for, even the fifth cousins who married Gypsies and run tawdry grocery stores in the former East Germany.”
“What about illegitimacy? What if King Harry had an illegitimate son, your mother’s brother, who’s, let’s say, a diving instructor or something?”
“No, he works in a factory, remember?”
“I didn’t say he had to be a diving instructor.”
“Were he my grandfather’s son, they would have taken better care of him, his name would not be Neil, and he wouldn’t have been allowed to work in a rubber sex toy factory in Naples or anywhere else.”
“Perhaps he’s out of control, as you’re supposed to be.”
“Then why would they consult him?”
Freddy and Fredericka went to bed that night while it was still light, though the light was faint. Surprisingly, they slept deeply. When finally the sky grew ink-black, the trees were visible only as their swaying branches blotted out the stars that crossed in blazing showers, as sometimes they do. The language of the stars, seldom read and heeded less, told beautifully and in silence of all the victories that had ever been won and all the defeats ever suffered. In uncountable lines of light across the widest sphere, the stars spoke of everything notable even down to a leaf blowing rhythmically in the wind.
