Long Live the King

by Fay Weldon

  ‘Go as far up as you like,’ observed Isobel, ‘there will always be someone grander than oneself.’

  ‘Just give up trying,’ said Robert, cheerfully. ‘Just be glad you have Minnie of Chicago for a daughter-in-law. There can be no competition there.’

  Isobel was. She had never herself been a daughter-in-law, Robert’s mother, the seventh Countess, having died when he was six, giving birth to her fifth baby, a little girl. He never spoke of her, and so neither did she.

  Robert took Isobel’s hand while he sang in his deep tuneful voice. There was O Little Town of Bethlehem and O Come All Ye Faithful, and his Majesty swayed a little as he stood and was brought a chair. Alexandra looked anxious. Then there were little presents for the children. Isobel wondered what Christmas Day at brother Edwin’s rectory at Yatbury was like, but it was hard to envisage a place she had never seen. She hoped Adela was pleased with her present. Isobel had chosen it with great care. Something else at the back of her mind; something she had forgotten? Oh dear, ah yes, the missing invitations. She must get the staff to search for them when she got back; but there was lots of time to worry about that. The Coronation was months away, and so much could happen between now and then. And Lordy, as Tessa O’Brien might say, was she tired! Being in royalty’s presence was exhausting, as one watched one’s Ps and Qs.

  On Boxing Day

  Eric Baum waited until eight-thirty on Boxing Day morning to impart the bad news to his Lordship. It was Saturday, Shabbat, so Naomi made Jane the shiksa maid-of-all-work lift the telephone and dial the call. He wished Naomi would relax; their religion was not so threatened that the slightest infringement would make their whole lives come tumbling down. So much surely was owed to convenience and necessity. Jane was good with the children and he suspected taught them the odd Christian prayer before sleep, while Naomi looked the other way:

  Four angels round my bed,

  Two at foot and two at head,

  Two to guard me while I sleep

  And two all night my soul to keep.

  It could do no harm, and if Naomi allowed herself this indulgence surely he could be able to switch on a light or make a phone call on a Saturday without being reminded it was the Sabbath? Jane, thank heaven, was amiable enough about what she saw as her employers’ eccentricities but then she was given the whole day off on Sunday to make up for it.

  He had not yet told Naomi about the invitation to the Coronation. He was waiting for the right moment. She would be beside herself with pleasure: she so deserved acceptance: she was such a clever girl, had given up so much for husband and family. To be seen to sit amongst the peers and peeresses of the realm – Mrs Eric Baum the financier’s wife would now be lionized by every Society hostess in the land.

  When the girl Jane realized she was calling the royal palace at Sandringham her eyes opened wide and she looked at Eric with an expression he wished he saw more often on Naomi’s face – one of awe, almost reverence. She was a pretty girl, he noticed for the first time, with generous lips and long eyelashes, which fell on a creamy pale complexion. The telephone rang in an office at Sandringham and when it was answered, Jane handed the receiver to him with a pretty white hand that trembled ever so slightly.

  The minion at Sandringham said that his Lordship was unavailable; he was out shooting with the King. Mr Baum kicked himself. Of course, the clocks were famously set half an hour fast. They would be up and out early, dressed in the strange ritual clothing they used for slaughtering birds. This was what the English upper classes did; they fought and died for their country and they got up early to shoot birds. If they shot each other by mistake they did not complain. They certainly did not, Mr Baum had observed, waste time thinking about their womenfolk. It seemed to be their conviction in their God-given superiority, their belief that God himself was an Englishman, which gave them this immense influence over the peoples of other nations. Disraeli had said their power derived from their desire to talk politics after dinner where others talked about their wives and families.

  Mr Ponsonby, the King’s private secretary, was called to the phone and Mr Baum said the purpose of the call was not trivial, but to pass tragic news to his Lordship of the death of his brother in the most unfortunate circumstances. Mr Ponsonby was courtesy itself but said the wisest course was to wait until lunchtime when the shooting party was expected to return to the house; he would let his Lordship know without delay and his Lordship would no doubt return the call. Or perhaps Mr Baum would care to speak to Lady Isobel, who to the best of Mr Ponsonby’s knowledge had not joined the shooting party.

  Mr Baum said that perhaps it would be best if her Ladyship were gently informed by a close relative, and Mr Ponsonby agreed. If Mr Baum’s experience of her Ladyship was that she was hard as nails and twice as indestructible, he certainly did nothing to let Mr Ponsonby know it.

  His Lordship telephoned Mr Baum at one-fifteen and received the news with apparent calm. But then this was to be expected. If there was weeping and wailing it would be done in private. The relationship between the two brothers had not been good for many years. Mr Baum assured his Lordship that the deaths had been peaceful, the result of breathing in soporific smoke and fumes; that the girl had been rescued by a young local man before the flames could touch her and was safely in the care of the Bishop of Bath and Wells and his wife, Mrs Kennion.

  ‘Ah, Kennion,’ said his Lordship. ‘Know the man well. Ecumenical ass, voted against us over Gore, but on the whole sound. He’ll be responsible. Quite a shock for the child, I imagine, not that I’ve ever met the girl. What about the mother’s side? They need to be told.’

  Mr Baum explained the difficulty of finding anyone to tell, the mother having abandoned her faith and her family on marriage, and was of foreign lineage, Gotha-Zwiebrücken-Saxon royalty. The girl was a princess.

  ‘Papists, the lot of them,’ said his Lordship. ‘Poor as church mice, and everyone you meet a prince or a princess. Well, try The Times. Bound to be someone to take her in. So poor old Edwin. Gone. The Hedleigh vault at Dilberne will open up again. He’ll be at one with his ancestors and let’s hope he finds someone he can get on with. Perhaps you can set about organizing the show, there’s a good man? I’m quite busy down here. You should have seen the sky this morning! Couldn’t see the sun for flapping wings, at one point. Flying high, too.’

  Mr Baum explained that the deceased had specified he was to be buried in his own churchyard and that no family should be present. He left out the bit about no embalming: two days had already gone by: really had he burned the whole document everyone would have been better off. At least this even limited information made an impact, halfway between a choke and a splutter. His Lordship quickly recovered and was as urbane as ever.

  ‘Then my brother must have his own way, Baum. I’ll pay, of course. Least I can do. We shared a nursery after all. Very serious little boy. Could never make him smile. Well, too bad.’

  Mr Baum asked what should be done about the child, but his Lordship said vaguely to put everything in writing: he’d see to it when he had a moment. Someone called out to him from far away. He was needed. There was a click. He had gone.

  Jane, well trained, took the telephone receiver and put it back in its cradle.

  ‘Poor little girl,’ she said, ‘poor little thing! Orphaned, and at Christmas time.’

  She had heard every word that had been said. Well, all had spoken loudly and clearly, as one did, over such long distances.

  The Collect for the Day:

  ‘Almighty God, you have poured upon us the new light of your incarnate Word: Grant that this light, enkindled in our hearts, may shine forth in our lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever, Amen.’

  Mrs Kennion fetched Adela down to the kitchens to help knead the dough for the great Epiphany cake. It was called the Three Kings Cake and had a little bean in it which some lucky person would find and be blessed by the
finding. It was the kind of thing her father would have hated. Good fortune should come by hard work and not by happenstance. Adela pounded the dough with a will. She felt more at home here in the kitchens where women bustled about, and laughed and gossiped and even burst into song, than she did in the quiet grandeur of the Palace itself. Up there prelates bustled about like black beetles, but no one burst into song out of sheer good humour.

  Yesterday she had walked over a stretch of grass to the most beautiful cathedral in the land (they claimed) where she could pray for the souls of her parents under the famous scissor stone of the nave, and listen to the choir practising. The sound brought tears of wonder to her eyes, where tears of grief still refused to come. Once she had thought St Aidan’s impressive but compared to the magnificence of Wells, that stocky little church now seemed so small, dull and tame; the musicians’ gallery nothing in beauty and complexity compared to the detail of the Cathedral’s dozens of carved wooden misericords. And besides, all of her past was ashes.

  The worms crawl in,

  The worms crawl out,

  They go in thin

  And they come out stout.

  Forget it. Better sing with the choristers.

  As yet we know Thee but in part;

  But still we trust Thy Word,

  That blessèd are the pure in heart,

  For they shall see the Lord.

  If only she could. There was a cathedral library, where she was told she could come and go freely, where she found rare illuminated manuscripts cheek by jowl with Temperance and Mothers’ Union tracts, Samuel Smiles and early editions of John Bunyan. She looked up ‘iniquity’ in the Oxford Dictionary but that it meant wickedness and came from the Latin root, iniquus, meaning unfair or uneven, told her very little. They let her take Samuel Smiles’ Self-Help back to the Palace.

  She no longer had to eat in her room, but had been suddenly translated to the Bishop’s table, where at dinner time a harpist in a pale green dress and a low neckline played most agreeably. The strange gnawing feeling she had lived with for so long had simply gone. Perhaps it had been hunger. The other guests seemed to be very old: a few had big stomachs and wives with big bosoms, most were thin and desiccated, like dried-out insects. No alcoholic drink was served. She kept quiet and tried to say little, and rubbed her eyes before she went down to the dining hall, with its great table and pewter plates and heavy silver, to make it seem as if she had been crying. ‘We must think about your future,’ they said, and she smiled and looked vague. She was happy where she was.

  Frank Overshaw was the only fly in the ointment – at least he was a youngish person; though he must be nearly thirty, twice her age if she were a year younger – and would keep gaping and gawking and trying to catch her eye. It was embarrassing. He presented himself as a kind of soulful fairy prince, but she had a feeling he might well turn into Rumpelstiltskin on the stroke of midnight. Once he had addressed her as ‘Your Grace’ and Mrs Kennion had frowned and shook her head at him. She was always shaking her head at him. What was that about? He was a colonial from Australia so she supposed he didn’t know how to behave.

  Mrs Kennion took Adela to listen to the Bishop preach in his white Epiphany robes and mitre – though not so simple that they were not threaded rather elaborately with gold. How the Hon. Rev. would have hated it. But Adela was enchanted by the procession of choirboys, now in their blue gowns and pretty white ruffs, each carrying their own little candle. If she became a nun she supposed she would never have children. That would be a relief – how such a thing as a baby got out of a body as small as her own she could not imagine. ‘In pain and sorrow shalt thou bring forth children,’ an angry God had said to Eve after she’d made Adam eat the apple, and no doubt it was true. And if you became a nun presumably you avoided the pain and the sorrow. Though why Eve should take the blame when Adam had actually done the eating Adela could not fathom. It was certainly like the way her father blamed her mother, or Ivy, or Adela herself when he spilt or forgot something (‘Now see what you’ve made me do, leaving a glass where I was bound to knock it over’); or having to go back to the Rectory when he’d forgotten to take his sermon – ‘See what you’ve done! You distracted me when I was busy!’

  One of the choirboys tripped over his robe and fell. Adela giggled. She thought of the most miserable things she could to stop herself, as was her custom. She had murdered her own father and mother. She was orphaned, alone and penniless.

  The worms crawl in,

  The worms crawl out,

  They go in thin

  And they come out stout . . .

  A beam of winter sunlight struck through the red and blue robes of the prophets on the ancient Jesse Window: she thought it was a sign from God and was elated. Had not Jesus come into the world to redeem sinners?

  Brightest and best of the sons of the morning, they were singing. Dawn on our darkness and lend us Thine aid!

  Well, she would show her belief and her gratitude. Like Ruth, in those few short chapters between Judges and Samuel, she would stay true to the faith of her fathers.

  Breakfast at Belgrave Square

  ‘If my brother does not wish to be buried in the family vault, so be it,’ Robert said. ‘I shan’t argue. If he wants to be buried in his poxy backyard, likewise. If he bars one from his funeral one is simply relieved one does not have to attend it.’

  He’d said that on the afternoon of Boxing Day when Isobel and he were in the restaurant car on the way back to London. The King had insisted that the Dilbernes stood on no ceremony and left for Dilberne Court at once, to be with their family. He even forewent his afternoon’s shooting to go with them to the station at King’s Lynn and wave them goodbye. ‘I know what it is like when a brother dies,’ he said. ‘My little brother Affie died only a year back. A great naval man but his spirit was broken by family troubles. We called him Affie because he was so affable, but amiability is no protection from death, is it, probably the contrary. I am thankful indeed to be in a happy marriage. It is natural for a parent to die, but when a brother or sister does, it feels like an affront. Part of one goes with them.’

  As it happened both were quite relieved to be free of another five days of Sandringham. Robert had been at pains not to outdo the King in the weight of his shooting bag: Bertie was a good shot but Robert was even better. Isobel found long days without male company, and little for the women to do but change their clothes – six times a day was nothing – to be wearisome. She could have gone out with the men, she supposed, but the rattle of gunshot and the sudden flurries of startled wings, not to mention the chill of the winter wind, made her shiver and shake uncontrollably. She marvelled at the difference between men and women: but then the men had been reared in unheated winter classrooms with open windows where hardiness of mind and soul was equated with hardiness of the flesh, and as a girl reared in a bohemian household, where the pleasures of the flesh were welcome rather than abhorred, she had had a softer upbringing.

  ‘For all his Majesty’s weight and girth and pomposity,’ she said to Robert, once on the train, ‘I see why the King is so attractive to women. He understands so much.’ But Robert did not pursue the matter. He was disturbed and upset by his brother’s death, and it showed itself in anger. They sat side by side in the squishy seats of the first-class compartment while a damp, wet landscape rattled by, and Robert railed against poor dead Edwin. Isobel wondered quite what Edwin had done and said to offend his elder brother; the outrage had evidently been mutual. But if Robert was reluctant to tell her what it was she would abide by that. Her own spirits had been wonderfully restored by the understanding that the invitations to the Coronation would have gone up in flames with the Rectory. Robert need never know. The Baums would have the vacant seats. Their presence was a small price to pay for peace of mind. And perhaps the third seat could now go to Rosina. Rosina let principle over-ride self-interest. It was not so bad a fault, merely an annoying one. And the girl had no husband, no children: if she found
a parrot congenial company perhaps it was not surprising. Many women parroted their husbands. Rosina, perhaps more man than woman, as Oscar Wilde had been more woman than man, kept a parrot in lieu of a wife. She, Isobel, must be more charitable. She just did not want the bird in Belgrave Square. It was smelly, musty and little insects hopped in and out amongst its feathers.

  ‘The Hedleigh vault is all the better for Edwin’s absence,’ Robert was saying now. The Pullman car had been attached at Cambridge, and they ate a late lunch: he had the steak; she had the sole. But he could not leave the matter alone. ‘If he does not want to lie with his ancestors, why should his ancestors want to lie with him? But it is a slap in the face. If he does not want us at his funeral, let him find others to pray over him. I will not.’

  ‘But Robert,’ said Isobel, ever the maker of peace, ‘he won’t have expected to die. Given time he might well have changed his mind and made another will. He probably wrote it on a bad day in a bad mood.’

  ‘He should have thought of that,’ said Robert, quite unreasonably. ‘No one knows when they are going to die. I find it outrageous that he used Mr Baum as his solicitor, having renounced the family in this spectacularly ill-mannered way.’

  ‘Robert,’ said Isobel dryly, ‘the poor man is dead.’

  ‘What, are you on his side now?’ he demanded. Isobel could see it was wiser not to persist, decided to drop the subject, but then like a dog with a bone went back to it.

  ‘But the daughter,’ said Isobel. ‘Poor little thing! We can’t just abandon her.’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ said Robert, quite shockingly. ‘The father did not want dealings with our side, so let the mother’s side look after her.’