by Wendy Holden
The King sensed that confessing it came from a public relations consultant would be ill advised. He chose to ignore the question.
‘You must come back,’ he repeated, as if the mere act of saying it again and again would get the desired result. ‘That girl Polly is not suitable.’
‘But how do you know?’ Max asked, still more confused than angry. ‘You’ve never even met her.’
‘I don’t need to. She’s not appropriate, that much is clear. She’s obviously a gold-digger,’ the King invented wildly. Astrid, listening keenly from the corridor outside his office, shut her eyes hard. Engelbert had handled it badly from the start. But this was disastrous. Of all the stupid things to say . . .
Now, finally, Max was furious. ‘There’s no way – no way,’ he exploded, ‘that Polly is a gold-digger. She’s the least avaricious or snobbish person I’ve ever met.’
‘Only interested in you because you’re a prince, a future king,’ the King continued. ‘Sees herself on the throne . . .’
‘I haven’t even told her I’m a prince,’ Max cried, trying to smile as Polly, sitting up on one elbow, waved to him from the rug. He raised his hand with two digits sticking up. Two minutes, he mouthed.
‘Haven’t told her?’ the King gasped. ‘Why ever not?’
‘Because I didn’t want her to know. Because, as you so rightly point out, she might see me differently then.’
The King had by now recovered both his equilibrium and his seat on his high horse. ‘Well, it’s irrelevant how she sees you, because she’s not a princess. Not an aristocrat. Nothing else will do for a prince of the blood.’
Max fought the urge to smash his fist into the metal side of his vehicle. ‘God, it’s so . . . so . . . medieval.’
‘Medieval’s exactly what it is,’ the King agreed. ‘We go back to Maxim the Ugly, who—’
‘Took over the kingdom in 1459,’ Max parroted resentfully. ‘There’s been an unbroken line of de Sedonas on the throne ever since then.’
‘Precisely. And you’re not going to be the one to break it.’
‘But what if I am?’ Max demanded passionately. ‘What if I refuse to marry this appropriate person you’re going to find for me? What if, I marry who I like? For love?’
There was a brief, horrified silence on the other end of the line. ‘Then you’ll have to abdicate. Renounce your right to the throne.’
It was music to Max’s ears. Such a simple solution. Why had he never thought of it before? ‘Great, well why don’t I? It’s the answer to everything. I could do the degree I want to, marry who I want to . . .’
‘If you do,’ the King broke in hysterically, ‘you will bring shame on the family. Sedona will be a laughing stock. Could you really be so selfish? Destroy me? Destroy your mother?’
Max stared at the heather stretching away before him. He was stung. This was a low blow, if ever there was one. ‘Mum?’ he flared. ‘I don’t believe for a minute she has anything to do with this.’
‘Well that’s where you’re wrong!’ Engelbert raged. ‘Your mother is completely behind me on this.’
Behind him, Max thought bitterly. Where Astrid had always been, in other words; a meek step to the rear of her despotic spouse.
‘And,’ the King added, ‘she will be as devastated as me if you refuse to cooperate.’
‘Cooperate!’ Max began. What was he, a prisoner? Then he pictured her sweet, mild face swollen with tears, her big blue eyes red-rimmed. He felt guilt and resignation, then bitterness and outrage. How dare his father demand he come back? And for such crazy reasons. Had he gone mad?
But of course he had, Max realised with a rush of relief. That was his parents, ground down by worry and exhaustion. Obsessed as they always had been by royal duty, they could not see the wood for the trees. Shut up in their palace, in their time-warp kingdom, they did not realise that what they were proposing was impossible and unreasonable in the real world.
He took a deep breath of relief. Even so, on the evidence of this exchange, there was no point in trying to persuade them over the telephone.
Max thought hard. If, on the other hand, he returned to Sedona as requested, he could see his parents face to face. He could reason with them and calm them down. His mother and father were fundamentally sensible; they would see his point. It shouldn’t take more than a few days. Then, once everything was sorted out and smoothed over, he could come back to Polly.
‘OK,’ he said to his father reluctantly. ‘I’ll come back.’
From the rug where she was lying, Polly heard the Land Rover door slam. As Max came towards her, she saw that, for all his efforts to smile, he looked tense.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.
‘Oh, nothing. Just that I . . . er . . . have got to go away for a bit.’ His voice, she thought, sounded strained, as if he was struggling to keep it light. He was not quite meeting her eyes.
‘Go away?’ A thousand sword blades of terror jabbed Polly. ‘Go away where?’
‘Oh, just home.’ He looked at her. For a wild moment, he wondered if he could tell her the truth. For a second, the wonderful prospect of unburdening himself hung tantalisingly in the warm, heather-scented air.
But then, slowly, the prospect receded. It was too much of a risk. She might think he was mad, that he was making it all up. And what she had said about princes earlier had not been encouraging either. Would she still be interested in him if she knew?
Max racked his brains. Polly saw him swallow and knit his brow, and felt more worried than ever. Was something terribly wrong?
‘Parent trouble,’ he said eventually, ruefully. ‘They need me. I have to go and talk to them.’ Well, it was true, if not the whole truth.
Polly was all concern. ‘Oh, poor you.’ She felt, however, secretly relieved. His face had hinted at something much worse than mild disagreement between his mother and father.
He shrugged. ‘I won’t be long. It should be repairable. I’ll be back in a week, with any luck.’
Chapter 21
. . . request the pleasure of your company
at the wedding of their daughter
Lady Beatrice Clementine Annunziata Augusta
Trevorigus-Whyske-Cleethorpe
to the Marquess of Dymchurch
on Saturday 31 July at 11.30
at Westchester Minster
and afterwards at Willoughby Hall, Gloucestershire
On Saturday 31 July Alexa had been awake since dawn. Today was the day! The day when, as one of a clutch of glamorous, privileged and titled guests, she would finally knock Ed for six with her beauty and vivacity. The day she would force him to demonstrate before a gathering of high society including his mother that she was the girl for him.
Yet in the midst of her feverish plotting, Alexa now picked up a strange sound. A wailing. It sounded as if it were coming from Florrie’s room.
She hurried along the passage. Her flatmate, out all last night with Igor and his bottomless pockets, lay in bed, red-eyed and wailing.
‘I really do need a Nurofen, darling. Go and get them, would you? They’re in my bog.’
‘Your bag?’
‘Bog. Khazi. Thunderbox. Shitter. Whatever,’ Florrie shouted. ‘Just get them, will you?’
Going obediently to the larger of the flat’s two vast marble bathrooms, Alexa tried not to panic. What if Florrie was too ill to go? Lady Annabel would never allow Alexa to attend the wedding alone. As it was, she had only been admitted on the grounds that she would serve as Florrie’s dresser before the ceremony.
‘Come on,’ she urged Florrie as she returned with the pills. ‘You must get up. We’ve got Beattie’s wedding to go to.’
As Florrie’s face clouded, Alexa’s heart thumped. Sometimes, and particularly if she was in a bad mood, her flatmate resented her use of private family diminutives. She could be mercurial like that; it was a window that could be slammed shut at any moment.
Today, however, it passed without comment.
Florrie, it seemed, had other matters on her mind.
‘Wedding!’ she groaned. ‘I can’t. I’m not going. I’m too ill!’
‘But it’s your sister’s,’ Alexa gasped. ‘You’re a bridesmaid.’
‘So what?’ Florrie pushed out her enchanting lower lip like the adorable five-year-old she had once been, and still essentially was. But Alexa was finding her anything but cute at the moment. Fury and fear were roaring like a furnace within her. What if Florrie refused to go? She was more than capable of spurning, on a whim, an event on which Alexa was pinning every hope.
‘You’ll feel better once you’re up and about,’ she soothed.
‘No I won’t,’ Florrie declared stubbornly. ‘I’m not going.’
‘But who’s going to stay here and look after you all day?’ Alexa urged sweetly, dandling her flatmate’s frail hands with every appearance of deep affection.
Florrie propped her long, slim body up on her elbows and stared at Alexa with wide violet-blue eyes in which nothing but an engaging innocence could be seen. ‘Why, Lexie, darling,’ she beamed, her smile lighting up her face and showing a row of small, even pearly-white teeth, ‘you, of course.’
In the event, Florrie recovered. A sharp call from Lady Annabel helped concentrate what passed for her mind. Her own impressive stamina in drinking matters did the rest. And so, that afternoon, Alexa sat, after all, in the great aisle of Westchester Minster awaiting the entrance of Lady Beatrice Trevorigus-Whyske-Cleethorpe, soon to be Marchioness Dymchurch.
Alexa was struck by the extent to which the scene resembled her favourite dream. The Bach cantata coming from the great organ could barely be heard above the murmur of the crowd. The place was packed. Royalty was present, as well as the Lord High Sheriff and assembled nobles and notables from several counties around.
Alexa had planned her outfit carefully. Her short violet silk dress, fitted at the bodice and slightly bell-shaped in the skirt, was pure Jackie O, with its scoop neck and narrow bow just below the bust. Violet was Florrie’s family colour; the ancestral flag showed a boar’s head against a background of just this shade of purple. It had been intended as a subliminal message to Ed. She had swept her dark hair back into a chignon.
The air above Alexa smelt damp and cool. It was dancing with dust, which occasionally caught the slants of light from the great stained-glass windows. Painted shields and fringed banners dangled in the gloom of the vaulting, and the walls rioted with memorials. Some were pale and neoclassical, all urns and rippling marble drapes held by great carved tassels. Others were dark and Tudor couples in breeches and farthingales facing each other somewhat combatively over small prie-dieus.
At the front of the Minster, near the gold-draped altar groaning under the weight of ceremonial silverware and statement arrangements from a specially imported Knightsbridge florist, was a richly carved medieval tomb. Inside was what was left of the thirteenth-century queen promoted from the position of king’s mistress to monarch’s wife. They had married in this very cathedral. Had Alexa known the story, she would have been both interested and envious. Dead she might be, but she’d got her man.
As in Alexa’s dream, the glamorous young friends of the bride and groom occupied several pews in the middle of the nave. Long-limbed young men with artfully tousled mops, signet rings and inherited Savile Row morning suits lounged next to the girls. Everyone was yawning ostentatiously and repeatedly, as if the obligation to be up in the late morning to attend a lavish society wedding was as dull a one as could be imagined.
Alexa knew some of them. She had served them at din-dins or sat up all hours in nightclubs with them, admittedly in Florrie’s slipstream. But she could not catch a single eye now. A row of county worthies sitting in gold chains and robes along the pew in front separated her from the rest of the crowd. But Alexa had the unpleasant feeling this was not the reason why people did not look round.
Had everyone been warned not to talk to her? Or had there been some awful mistake with the seating?
Just over there was Lady Tara Shropshire, one of Florrie’s closest friends and a frequent visitor to the flat. Yet she kept her bony brown back in its flame-red silk strappy dress firmly turned. Alexa, staring at those skinny Cadillac shoulder blades, could hear her inane gabble from here. ‘Former hedgie . . . works in funding for Bollywood films . . . she’s got some pet ferrets and she’s had this little palace built for them, so sweet . . . Jenson Button . . . Boujis . . . Keith Richards . . .’
Ed Whyske, meanwhile, was five rows in front of her, his head turning animatedly to the side as he joked with the girl beside him. Lady Camilla Fish, Alexa recognised with a swoop of misery.
Alexa glared at the back of the Fish head, adorned with a simple circlet of daisies that made her own much-sprayed chignon feel suddenly silly and stiff. She glared at the celebrated tattoo of the Fish family crest, which Vogue had recently described as ‘witty’, on Camilla’s elegant bicep. The other bicep, Alexa had read in a Tatler profile, sported a line of Hindu script meaning ‘All titles, all wealth, they are nothing’.
‘Nothing!’ Alexa thought heatedly. Easy enough to say when, like Camilla, your father owned half of Hampshire! Camilla Fish, who was more than merely grand and rich, but also effortlessly cool. She was one of those willowy, alternative aristocrats, the sort that appeared on the front of the Daily Telegraph in Glastonbury week looking mud-spattered but beautiful in tiny shorts and Hunter wellies and hanging on to Kate Moss’s arm.
And now she was next to Ed! How, Alexa asked herself in panic, could she compete? On any level? Camilla Fish was long-legged, long-throated, long-haired and equipped with the longest of aristocratic lineages. Her cheekbones were as high as her social position and she had the type of breasts that supported themselves (the only part of her that did).
Alexa felt as if she would explode with frustration. There was not the slightest doubt in her mind that Ed and Camilla were purposely placed there, right next to each other. Just as she was placed here, next to no one. Well, there was a person there, but she was obviously no one, a fat woman with red cheeks and an unflattering yellow outfit. She looked, Alexa thought, like a pig in a suit.
Yes, there had obviously been some mistake. And that mistake, Alexa guessed bitterly, was to assume that Lady Annabel would place her with the social lions and not the inconsequentials at the back. Alexa had seen Lady Annabel pass earlier; she hadn’t favoured her with so much as a glance. Her toned arm had been lightly threaded through that of her estranged husband, with whom hostilities had evidently ceased for the service, in much the same way as the two sides in the First World War had played football on Christmas Day. Alexa had noted the manic pride in Lady Annabel’s tanned face as she stalked by in high pink stilettos perfectly matching the rose-coloured sleeveless shift dress that ended bang on the knee. The only positive thing to emerge from her humiliation was that Barney van Hoosier did not appear to be present to witness her humiliation.
Now came the rattle of ancestral carriage wheels, the jingle of polished harness, the clip-clop of proud, high-stepping horses.
‘I think the bride’s here!’ Next to her, the fat woman shifted eagerly in her seat and looked excitedly round. Alexa clenched her fingers over the clutch bag that matched her violet dress. The sight of Beatrice coming down the aisle would, she knew, make her want to throw up. She fixed her eyes in despair on the vast cathedral organ with its Victorian-Gothic-patterned pipes, ranged above the carved stone choir screen that was Gothic from the first time round.
She felt the fat woman next door’s spare tyres ripple with excitement as the future Marchioness passed the end of the pew. ‘Oooh, doesn’t she look lovely.’
‘Gorgeous,’ Alexa snarled, thinking it was amazing what diamonds could do. Beatrice, who was perfectly acceptable-looking anyway, was elevated to goddess level by the wall of solid carbon otherwise known as the Dymchurch tiara, beneath whose blaze her features appeared in a wildly flattering glow.
Alexa rais
ed her chin and squinted towards the distant altar end. She could just about see the Marquess of Dymchurch, the future husband, staring up the aisle, an expression of characteristic blankness on his strangely flat face.
And now here came the bridesmaids; four of them, all daughters of the nobility. Florrie was the tallest and noblest. As she passed the end of the pew, pure perfection in her close-fitting white satin dress, Alexa was unable to believe this was the same girl who had been poleaxed by a hangover only a few short hours before.
As she came down the aisle, Florrie was giggling and waving to acquaintances as if she were in a nightclub rather than the nave of a cathedral. She was pointing at her head, grinning and turning her eyes up, presumably to convey the severity of the hangover. Spotting Alexa, she even made being-sick gestures, but these were swiftly replaced by a look of puzzlement. ‘What on earth are you doing sitting there?’ she demanded deafeningly. ‘You’re in the public bit with the oiks.’
Alexa, recognising her chance, leant forward. ‘Yes. I know. I think there’s been a mistake.’
Florrie’s enormous violet-blue eyes widened. ‘But Mummy did all the cathedral seating herself,’ she exclaimed, before adding with a shrug, ‘Oh well, never mind. Who cares anyway?’
Chapter 22
After the service, Alexa, the pig in the suit and the others at the rear of the Minster had to wait for those at the front to exit first. Very possibly, she realised, this was another part of Lady Annabel’s strategy: allowing all eligible men to be snapped up by other, more socially elevated single women before the likes of Alexa were released from their pens with the rest of the common herd.
When she finally emerged, blinking, into the heat and brightness of midday, the cobbled parvis in front of the Minster could barely be seen beneath the mass of moving pastel, nodding fascinators and tanned flesh, punctuated by flashes of expensive jewellery as the wedding guests exclaimed excitedly at each other and exchanged handshakes and air kisses.