by Trevor Veale
The woman’s voice issued furtively from her headphones with a hint of defiance. She said her name was Sharon and that she worked in the royal household.
“What are you offering?” Arabella said.
First off, I want to know what you’re prepared to pay,” the voice hissed.
“Depends what it is.”
“Can’t you give me a hint?”
Arabella waited out the long silence.
“Okay,” the voice whispered. “I can tell you for a fact the queen takes anti-flatulent lozenges that she keeps under her pillows. That’s one reason the king and queen have separate bedrooms.”
Arabella’s mouth began to twitch. She wondered just how unprofessional it was to giggle during a negotiation.
“Are you saying that the lozenges don’t work?” she asked.
“They do, but she only sucks them for a minute or two. Then she takes ‘em out of her mouth and sticks ‘em under her pillows. I know, because I sees ‘em in the morning when I’m doing the beds.”
Arabella began giggling helplessly – the woman was priceless! She was toying with the idea of including the tittle-tattle in her weekly column Trumpet Blast, a gentle tilt at the monarchy.
“I’ll pay you a hundred moons, Sharon,” she said when she recovered her composure. “Come to the front desk of the Bugle and you can sign a chit for the money.”
“A hundred!” The voice almost choked. “That’s chicken feed – I bet you paid Lucinda a lot more than that.”
“Lucinda had an incredible story,” Arabella replied.
“Well, so have I.”
“Like what?”
“Like the fact my son’s King Godfrey’s love child!” the woman screamed.
Arabella’s throat went dry. She felt her skin prickle as she absorbed the woman’s tone. It didn’t feel like the woman was some eccentric greedy crone. Rumors abounded that the king had sown enough wild oats during the first two decades of his reign to sire a bevy of bastards, yet so far no one had claimed their offspring was of royal blood. It was assumed that either infertility or a vasectomy had protected the king’s reputation.
“Come to the front lobby right away,” Arabella said. “I’ll meet you – just tell the receptionist who you are. I think we can talk serious money.”
The woman hung up after a brief muttered thanks. Arabella felt her palms dampen as she laid her hands on her lap. Her instinct told her the woman wasn’t blowing smoke up her butt. Wow, she thought. This could well be the scandal of my career!
Sharon lost no time in setting out for her appointment with Arabella.
She wanted to get it over and done with before she had to pick up Craig from his reading class so she decided to take the subway rather than the bus. The rain continued in a steady downpour as she trudged toward the station. In spite of the rain and wind ripping at her, she threw her head back. Her eyes were brimming with long-suppressed exaltation, she was so happy she was almost crying. Serious money, Arabella had said! The only thing that could stop her now was if the king himself were to leap out from behind the potted palms in the station foyer and beg her to be his queen. Fat chance! So what if people thought she was cashing in on the king’s good name – she’d kept her shameful secret long enough, and at great personal cost, she might add. She realized what a fool she’d been, believing his lies that he’d look after her and the boy. Well, a fifteen thousand a year maid’s salary didn’t look after much!
People who passed her on the escalator seemed limp and devitalized, as if they’d been smoking Saint. On the platform, waiting for the train, the crowd looked bored and slouchy. It’s because no one except me knows what a secret I’ve got – the biggest, most explosive in Melloria! I’ve got enough dynamite to blow up the kingdom. The next moment a wave of exhilaration crashed over her, quickly followed by a spasm of terror. Who am I to decide the fate of the monarchy? She thought. Even if I’ve been wronged. Her next thought chilled her to the marrow. How would all the money I’m getting ever protect me from the queen’s wrath?
She knew what a terrible temper the queen had - she’d experienced it first hand when she’d blundered into the queen’s bedchamber at an inappropriate time and been almost blown out through the door. It was something all the servants feared. The thought of Queen Letitia on the warpath after reading what she had to say in the Bugle made her hang back from the other people when the train arrived. She would have to ask Arabella for complete anonymity, otherwise her goose was cooked.
On the train she pressed herself against the sliding doors and kept behind the other passengers’ backs. She told herself not to feel guilty – she’d suffered in silence long enough. It was time to do what was right for herself and Craig. I’ve always been considerate of the king’s reputation, she thought, but if I don’t make a move now I’ll spend my old age in the poorhouse.
She kept her face to the doors, even when the train lurched and bodies slammed against her. She felt a sharp pang of regret as the train came out of a tunnel and the rain-washed city she loved drifted by the glass. As soon as she got the money, she and Craig would have to leave. How could they stay in a country where she would be denounced as the king’s whore and her son as his bastard? She knew her wish for anonymity was unrealistic – in a country as small as Melloria her identity could never be concealed. She twisted her body so that she kept her face away from the window, and as she turned a loud, rending sound made several people look at her. She kept her head down, and from the corner of her eye she could see that she was being stared at. What the fuck was going on? She looked down at her legs. The seam of her right pant leg had split from cuff to knee. Nearby, a boy of about ten looked guiltily away. His foot had pressed down on her hem when the train lurched and the sudden turn of her body had caused the tear.
She felt both embarrassed and annoyed – she couldn’t meet Arabella looking like a crazy slut with a giant rip in her pants. Yet she was also relieved. Events had intervened to prevent her awful secret being divulged. She smiled at the boy – she couldn’t blame him, he looked about Craig’s age and was clearly contrite. The torn garment gave her the excuse to follow her doubts and overrule her burning desire for redress. She got off at the next station and went to collect Craig from school.
Chapter 16
Letitia Finds Refuge
The atmosphere at Calliper Palace during the summer months was benignly torpid. Queen Letitia carried out her round of royal duties as graciously as she could, although since the story in the Bugle about her retirement she felt emboldened in complaining to a small circle of intimates of the burdensome tasks of monarchy. Whenever she felt the insufferability of a particular duty or engagement, she developed the habit of wishing she were back in bed.
Pretending she was snug in bed, the quilt under her chin and Mary or Agatha – in her fantasy she didn’t mind which – bustling about with her lemon tea and morning paper was her way of protecting herself from the hysterical, shouting mob that assailed her at every turn. Thus she distanced herself from the demands of her role and was able to attend to her duties with an outward sang-froid. Truly, the early morning was her favorite time of day.
One of her less arduous assignments was judging the annual children’s poetry competition. Poems were sent to the palace from schools around the country and were passed to the queen for scrutiny by her secretary. Her comments were then relayed to a nominal panel of judges, and the child whose poem was judged the best was rewarded with a scholarship to Stanislaw Crust High, Melloria’s only fee-paying school.
This year the majority of the poems were about Princess Dawna, which set Letitia’s teeth on edge. She baulked at the idea of awarding a prize to any of them. Picking up one of the submitted entries off the pile, she read:
“To the lovely graceful princess who lights our way.
We watch you grow more beautiful with each passing day.
We’re glad you’ve come to live with us and we hope you’ll stay,
But if not, w
e’ll say adieu and wish you godspeed anyway.”
Letitia read it twice, because she couldn’t believe her eyes, and added the comment: “I think the last line shows much promise.”
As summer progressed into early autumn, the weather began to shrivel up the leaves. Stiff winds bombarded the grimy streets of Melloria City. Letitia found herself caught in just such a wintry blast as she stepped out of the Bentley to perform the opening of a Women’s Refuge in a poor quarter of East City. Against the stinging wind, she and her small entourage trudged to the front of the building which flapped with flags and bunting. The building stood in a narrow street, flanked by impoverished retail businesses. On one side was a crude beauty shop with three seats and tin basins, and on the other a dowdy produce and meat market. In its wind-rattled display windows pathetic scraps of merchandise rotted in musty silence.
Bending her scarfed head against the fury of the wind, Letitia was in a stew of agitation. Agatha, her most reliable source of gossip, had told her that morning that Dawna had been observed bingeing and purging by prying servants, a condition that had first been detected during her college days. Now that she was in the fourth month of her pregnancy – a pregnancy that was crucial to the survival of the monarchy – she was risking the baby’s health and even life by foolish eating habits that should have been shaken out of her by sensible discipline. As she battled the wind’s onslaught, Letitia was weighed down by anxiety.
Her first impulse was to call Dawna’s mother, Queen Ada, with whom she was barely on speaking terms. She wanted to have the little puker bundled off to Bulimia where she belonged. Then she dismissed the idea. Ada was herself a lifelong bulimic and had probably been colluding with her daughter all along. Letitia knew there was no one she could rely on, that it would be down to her to find some clinic or therapist to pack her daughter-in-law off to. But who did she know who could be trusted to be discrete enough to do the job? It was a new source of worry that she wished she didn’t have.
Refuge workers and residents stood in an awkward bunch, brushing their clothes and trying not to appear nervous as the queen stepped over the threshold. Staring eyes lapped over her and she eased her headscarf off. She glanced around the hall and wondered what kind of a place this was that desperate women would flock to live here. It looked clean and functional, if a little stark, and the staff looked competent. But something about the place made her shudder.
One of the workers who seemed to be in charge darted forward and shook the queen’s hand with a barely-observed curtsey. It seemed strange to be greeted by a woman without a proper curtsey, but Letitia put it down to changing customs and the influence of the internet. She gave a perfunctory nod, and suddenly resolved to send her daughter-in-law back to Bulimia, come what may. It would get her out of harm’s way at least.
The woman who had greeted her was telling her that some of the workers at the refuge were counselors whose job it was to let residents come and talk with them when they were unhappy or just wanted to. Their job was to listen to the client, help realign her disturbed thinking and help her find relief.
She herself was a qualified therapist who held weekly goal sessions with each resident to encourage her to set two goals: one she chose for herself and the other given as part of her rehab program. It’s a pity you don’t live in Bulimia, Letitia thought acidly, I could send you a client you could really get your teeth into!
Out of making-small-talk-habit, the queen asked the woman, who was now leading her upstairs, for an example of such a goal as she had described. The woman went into elaborate detail about creating worksheets to identify healthy or unhealthy coping skills, and Letitia wished she had kept her mouth shut. They were now inspecting the dormitory bedrooms and Letitia had to swallow against the fetid stench of recently-arrived residents and the implant of their bodies on the rumpled sheets.
“I’m afraid such is the level of demand for beds that we have to sleep six women in rooms designed for one or two,” the woman said. Letitia pushed down her disgust while struggling to frame a suitably caring question. “What on earth possesses these women to leave their homes in the first place?” was all she could come out with.
The woman mumbled some diplomatic reply and led her to another dormitory. Letitia’s mind was a million kilometers away, plotting Dawna’s therapeutic exile. Her first task would be to find a suitable therapist with a practice in Bulimia, and that, she felt, would call for all her resourcefulness. Meanwhile, the woman droned on, here and there introducing the queen to several of the residents. Letitia suddenly remembered the name of Spencer Drool, a creepy but inexpensive therapist who might do the job, and she immediately brightened.
“… that’s really the aim of our work,” the woman was saying, “helping each client to head out in the right direction.”
“Golly, you all sound like you’re ready to float off to the Magic Mountains!” Letitia said gaily. She flashed the woman a dazzling smile
“I know where they are,” a voice croaked from below. A woman, sitting on one of the beds, was rolling a Saint spliff.
“Really, dear, and where might that be?” the queen asked, disconcerted.
“In the fourth dimension.” The woman had a hollowed-out face that looked as though it had been stamped on by a heavy boot.
Hereupon, the woman in charge of the refuge intervened. “You know you mustn’t smoke any of that in here, don’t you?” she said.
The woman gave her a big, toothless grin. “I’m not smoking,” she said, “I’m rolling!”
This coded reference to the drug Ecstasy went sailing right over Letitia’s head, and she turned to the woman in charge.
“I think we’d better get on with the opening ceremony,” she said. “I have to leave in ten minutes.”
Chapter 17
Managing Marital Miseries
Princess Dawna, anxious to ensure the continuity of the monarchy, spared Letitia the trouble of hiring a therapist for her. Through her contacts in the fashion world, she procured the services of a healer who treated bulimic models, and began flying to see him for weekly sessions. She also tried visualization to free herself from her eating disorder. Instead of making herself vomit in the bathroom at night, she took herbal remedies washed down with Evian and visualized herself as slim as a wand while sitting cross-legged with eyes closed.
Catheter was no help to her at all. Entangled in the complex arrangements he had to make to maintain his love life, he adopted an air of aloof detachment, occasionally chiding her for her weight gain. His abrasive criticisms drove her back to her old ways. She began hiding candy in her underwear drawer, almost to spite him. She ate it during the day and at night while he slept. At breakfast she was distracted and waited for him to leave for his round of royal duties before beginning her cycle of plug and chug, plunder and chunder. Returning from his engagements in the evening Catheter glared at every soiled plate and glass she happened to leave on the table as if detecting traces of infidelity, and at every meal they fought.
“Just look at you,” he said to her in front of the others at dinner. “That’s the third piece of hominy bread for heaven’s sake! When are you going to stop? It’s not simply that you’re eating for two, you’re putting on kilos. I can see it. You’ll be breaking your bed – pretty soon, you’ll be sleeping on a trampoline.”
Anton snickered at Catheter’s last remark, spewing morsels of food from the edges of his mouth. “Gone back to your old bed then, Cathy?” he gurgled. “So it’s true you only did it once!”
Dawna ran from the dining room in tears, and Godfrey was moved to remind his sons of the requirements of gentlemanly behavior. “I’ll help her,” Catheter said defensively. “I’’ll eat the same things she eats, and she can see what it does to me.” But his actions didn’t approach the determination and love that his words promised. In his heart he pined for Lucinda, and was continually looking for ways to escape. Indeed, the whole family was looking for a way to escape the awkwardness and tedium of each o
ther’s company.
And Dawna’s behavior toward each other merely showed this impulse in its most acute form. Catheter’s petulant outbursts, railing at his wife then pleading with her as she walked out of the room, Dawna’s continual hunger - she longed for Catheter to go to bed so she could get a candy bar from her nightstand and wished she could eat it in front of him while he nagged her. She considered the possibility of divorce – absolutely forbidden for the wife of the Heir Apparent – and the more alluring possibility of suicide. At other times she wished she could have the baby with her now, as an ally against Catheter and his hateful family.
Anton reacted to the gradual disintegration of his family by spending more and more time away from home. For a while he listened to lots of rap and consorted with hooded homeboys, then he got into the less angry world of Live-Action Role Playing. He took to it like a duck to water and was soon turning up at dinner in strange costumes with books like Dream Park or The Magus under his arm. His rapid rise to Game Master and his group’s all-night sessions in medieval clothes near the Slobodian border began to seriously worry his parents. The made efforts to steer him in the direction of marriage to Dawna’s sister, Princess Hernia – even inviting her to a stodgy birthday ball at the palace in his honor. Next morning the Bugle’s report of her appearance at the ball ‘looking menacingly sexy in a piss-tight denim mini, graffiti-sprayed torn top and a snakeskin belt made from a whole snake, complete with head’ made Letitia choke on her lemon tea.
At breakfast Catheter questioned Anton, who wore earphones throughout the meal and drank an Orange Snowman with his cereal, about his feelings for Hernia.
“Not exactly my type,” Anton said, “but okay in an aggressive sort of way. Her hair’s long and straggly now, sort of a female vampire look, which is better than when she was a slaphead, and she plays a good game of pool. We played in dad’s billiard room after the ball, must’ve stayed up till four – and she took me outside for a blow after I let her win a game.”
