Marrying Up

by Wendy Holden

  His path along the street had been so far unimpeded, but now someone appeared to block it. ‘Your Royal Highness!’ Fear leapt in Max’s chest – another lunatic? In his arms, Beano lifted his sick head and managed a weak growl.

  ‘Your Royal Highness!’ repeated the person. An ancient crone, Max saw, looking down about three feet below him. Stooped, dressed in black, with white hair in a bun and a tanned, wizened face. She was beaming at him toothlessly. He responded with a strained smile. He could not rush off. Duty – damn the word – forbade it. One of the unwritten rules of Sedona was that anyone could stop the royal family in the street if they had something particular to say to them. Accessibility was central to Engelbert and Astrid’s monarchical style.

  ‘When’s it going to happen, then?’ the crone cackled.

  Beano tried now to yap; Max tried to soothe him. ‘What?’ he asked reluctantly.

  ‘You getting married.’ The crone’s wagging finger reminded Max of a well-cooked sausage. ‘You got a lovely girl now,’ the old woman hectored, her cackling voice echoing horribly round the narrow, peaceful street. ‘Lady Alexa! Very nice. So when you going to name the day, then? Eh?’

  It seemed to Max as if the whole of Sedona was listening. He muttered something polite, clutched the still-yapping Beano close and hurried off as fast as he could.

  Etienne examined Beano immediately. He came out of the X-ray room, his face drawn with distress.

  ‘Bad news, I’m afraid, my friend. There is a large tumour.’

  Max bowed his head. He had suspected as much. He met Etienne’s sympathetic brown eyes. ‘There’s no chance?’

  The vet bit his lip and shook his head.

  Irrationally, suddenly, Max remembered his first date with Polly.

  It was moving, seeing the demonstration of a relationship like that. The love a person had for their pet, thousands of years ago.

  Like you say, people aren’t all that different. I’d probably want to be buried with my dog.

  But Beano was going before him to the happy hunting ground. May there be lots of tasty bits from the celestial kitchens, Max bid his pet silently.

  To Etienne he said, in as steady a voice as he could manage: ‘Well you’d better do it then.’

  Almost the worst of it was that Beano loved Etienne. As the vet approached him, he stood up on his shaking legs and licked him, waving the tail that had once been so magnificently plume-like.

  Etienne glanced at Max. ‘You want to stay?’ He was filling up his syringe, and his voice was gruff with controlled emotion.

  It was not a case of wanting, not exactly, Max thought wearily. ‘I’ll stay,’ he said.

  He saw Beano hold out his paw trustingly to Etienne and then glanced away. Once the syringe was empty, he picked his dog up for the last time. Beano nudged his nose reassuringly with his own, and looked into his eyes. Don’t worry, Master, I’ve had a good life, the eyes seemed to be saying. Then he slumped in his arms and was gone.

  A quick, awkward squeeze of the shoulder from Etienne and Max walked away, his arms empty. His heart, however, was full. How could something so small leave such a huge absence? Nothing would ever be the same again.

  Life as he had known it had ended, all the fun and friendship had gone. What happened now – Alexa’s visit included – was a matter of supreme indifference to him.

  Chapter 62

  On the morning of Lady Alexa’s visit, Astrid rose early. She had slept very little the night before. The laboratory had promised that the results would come today; what would they tell her?

  Getting mouth swabs was not the easiest of businesses. After much mulling over potential pretexts, none of which seemed remotely convincing, Astrid had concluded that night-time, while her targets slept, was the only opportunity. As Engelbert, fortunately in this respect if no other, slept with his mouth open, she had been able to insert the cotton bud with minimum fuss. Giacomo and Maxim had been trickier.

  Bending over Max, whose mouth was also slightly open, Astrid was struck by the beauty of his face in repose. Lately it had been rare to see him without a scowl or a frown; the smooth, unlined look of his face in the shadows reminded her of the sunny-natured small boy he had once been. How long ago it seemed.

  As she hovered over his mouth with the bud, he turned and opened his eyes. Shocked, Astrid stepped back; realising then that he was still asleep, she came forward again and dived in with the bud. ‘Polly!’ Max said.

  Polly? The name was new to Astrid. Who was this Polly?

  She had lingered a few minutes, but as Max said no more, she had stolen out of the room.

  Poor Max. Alexa was due today. The Queen’s fists clenched. She had to help him.

  Normal palace procedure was that the royal post, delivered to the back door in grey Royal Sedona Mail sacks, then went straight to the offices of the royal private secretary. Here it was sorted, placed on silver salvers bearing the individual crests of royal family members and taken out by footmen to arrive at the royal breakfast table at a moment precisely timed to be after the eggs and immediately before the final rounds of toast.

  But this, the Queen knew, would be a good two hours after the original arrival of the post. She had therefore decided to get up especially early and be at the chateau’s main rear door when the grey sacks first arrived. No one was likely to question her right to find her own mail; if, indeed, anyone was there.

  Even as the Royal Sedona Mail van roared out of the chateau’s cobbled rear courtyard, Astrid, with the help of a rather surprised cleaner, was dragging the two sacks into the service area by the back door. It was a space filled with boxes and cleaning supplies in which the Queen, with her smooth hair and her pearls, presented an incongruous sight. She took little notice of her surroundings, however, occupied as she was with emptying the post bags out on to the black and white lino tiles and scrabbling frantically through the contents.

  On her knees amid the envelopes and slithery plastic piles of junk mail, Astrid looked up at the sound of a familiar voice. ‘Yo, Ma. Whassup?’

  Giacomo had clearly just arrived back from a night out. His eyes looked as red as his face, his tail coat was creased and his white tie noticeably grubby.

  ‘What happened to you?’ she asked.

  Giacomo shifted from foot to foot. ‘Had to walk. Left the key in my car, and when I came out, the damn thing had gone.’

  ‘Your new Maserati?’ Astrid gasped.

  ‘Yah. The very same. Bloody silly, isn’t it?’

  ‘Very silly.’ But perhaps the silliest aspect of all was the makers presenting it – for reasons best known to themselves – to Giacomo in the first place.

  ‘I mean,’ Giacomo hiccupped, ‘you’d think the person who got in it would have realised they were in the wrong car. Some people, eh?’ He walked unsteadily away.

  Astrid tried not to be sidetracked. There would be trouble about the car later, but for now she must concentrate on the job in hand. The first grey post bag contained nothing from the laboratory, and neither, to her disappointment, did the second. She helped the cleaner stuff the post back in the bags and went slowly up to her room.

  Some hours later, Max stood outside the front of the chateau. Outwardly he was composed; within, numb. The recent awful events had endowed him with a sense of distance, of unreality. He felt uninvolved in what was to occur; he would move, he would open his mouth. But he would not, in any meaningful sense, be there.

  But wasn’t that the entire trick of being royal? Distance. Detachment? Did that not cover all the skills? He felt an urge to laugh manically.

  While Alexa’s visit was not a state one, there was nonetheless more ceremony than might have been expected. The usual practice was that visitors were received in the privacy of the Great Hall. But today the royal family had been ordered by the King to be out in the front courtyard to meet the limousine bringing Lady Alexa from the Hotel des Bains. It was, Max understood, to be a semi-public occasion.

  Accordingly, a num
ber of press had been allowed in through the chateau gates. Crowds of onlookers had gathered on the other side, alerted by both the photographers and the distant view of the ruling family.

  Blue sky stretched above the pointed towers of the chateau. A stronghold, Max found himself thinking sardonically, built to protect the royal line. And yet just one girl seemed about to conquer everything without so much as a drawbridge being raised. The royal standard hung limply against the white flagpole. It looked, Max thought, as defeated as he felt himself. He lacked the energy, any more, to rail against what everyone said was his destiny. He was broken; he would submit.

  ‘Cheer up,’ hissed Giacomo beside him. ‘You look as if you’re at a funeral.’

  Max said nothing. It was nothing like a funeral; not at all like the one he had held in a corner of the castle gardens for Beano. He had been the sole mourner; he had dug the small hole and buried his dog with his favourite collar and ball and a bag of dog treats for the afterlife. Afterwards he had climbed up one of the towers and stared hard at the sea.

  The crowds at the gate now divided to let through a shining car. The gates themselves swung slowly inwards. Giacomo dug Max in the ribs. ‘Thar she blows!’

  Not wanting to watch the limousine as it advanced, juggernaut-like and unstoppable, Max looked about him. He stood at the top of a shallow flight of steps; beside him was his father in a uniform that seemed all buttons and epaulettes, and what wasn’t either of those was sash. Giacomo, meanwhile, looked as louche as ever in some naval get-up. Max too had been stuffed into uniform, and that he looked ridiculous, he had no doubt. But who cared? What difference did it make?

  Only his mother was not present. His surliness of late had hurt her most, he knew. But what could he have said to her? She, in any case, had sided with his father. With obvious reluctance, admittedly, but it was the siding that counted.

  The car glided up to the steps. The photographers, who had been keeping a discreet distance, now rushed over; there was an explosion of zooms and whirrs. Out of the car emerged a pretty dark-haired girl in a simple white dress, ballerina flats and a single string of pearls.

  ‘Demure,’ Barney had stressed. ‘Think Kate Middleton. Think engagement-era Princess Diana.’

  A wild cheer now arose from the crowd, and the press within the castle compound went completely crazy.

  Sun poured in through Astrid’s window as she looked down on the small knot of people gathered round the limousine in the front courtyard. The photographers were going wild. She could see Alexa posing for them, and waving at the crowd at the gates quite in the manner of the royal she so obviously aspired to be. Had she any idea what it involved? Astrid wondered. How could she? Being royal was like childbirth – you could imagine it, but you could never really understand until it had actually happened to you.

  She stood before the long oval mirror in the corner of her room and stared at herself. Her reflection, as always, was as calm as it was lovely. Possibly the grey coat she wore over a grey dress was a little severe, but the occasion, so far as the Queen was concerned, was not one for rejoicing.

  She stood patiently as her maid looked the outfit over for loose buttons and stray threads. ‘Perfect,’ Hortense murmured deferentially, having twitched a sleeve here and pulled a hem there.

  ‘Thank you, Hortense. You can go now.’

  Astrid dawdled on her way down the great oak main staircase of the castle. At the foot of it she paused, looking up, as if for the first time, at the vast ceiling frescoed with the de Sedona crest. Three big keys; they suddenly looked very jail-like to the Queen.

  Was there to be no escape for Max?

  The pretty dark-haired girl in the white dress turned on her long, slim, sheer-stockinged legs and waved a demure, white-gloved hand at the people who had come to see her. ‘Scrub up well, you do, for a commoner,’ Barney had giggled as he looked her over before departure. He was in the crowd now, Alexa knew, and willing her on in her moment of triumph. The triumph he had worked so tirelessly to create. He was her fairy godfather – in more ways than one.

  She looked the part, Max found himself thinking as Alexa bestowed dazzling smiles in every direction. She looked, in fact, perfect. Just the right amount of make-up, the right clothes, exactly the right note struck between girlish freshness and womanly sophistication. The crowd were waving and cheering. The press were fascinated; crouching, shooting, exclaiming superlatives. And his family, standing around him at the top of the stairs, were obviously charmed. The Queen had still not arrived, admittedly, but his father was smiling and Giacomo was whistling under his breath.

  Max found that he no longer felt angry towards Alexa. He felt weary and depressed. Her motives were so obvious, it was actually rather hard to hate her. He still had no clear idea of how she had got here, but that there had been subterfuge of some sort he had no doubt. And yet, what difference did it make? She was, after all, only doing what socially ambitious women had done for years, and with possibly more ingenuity than most. Why didn’t he just go with the flow and marry her? If he didn’t, some other ghastly woman would undoubtedly be produced.

  The real problem wasn’t even her fault. The issue wasn’t that he had been manipulated; it was that he had been born royal in the first place. He would never be free to marry who he wanted, to work as he wanted, and it had been madness to imagine otherwise. Never, it seemed to Max, had he felt quite so lonely, quite so alienated and quite so out on a limb as now.

  He saw how utterly at home Alexa looked as she walked gracefully up the stairs towards them. She exuded the kind of happy, relaxed confidence he personally had never come close to. She turned once more and waved at the crowd, her lithe figure twisting, her dark hair swinging out slightly with the movement. He saw the colour in her cheeks and the sparkle in her eye; that she was loving every minute was obvious. She bowed and waved to the snapping, exclaiming press corps and to the exultant crowd.

  Beside Maxim, Giacomo leant forward. ‘Talk about milking it,’ he muttered. ‘Jesus, she’s going to make a bloody speech.’

  Straightening up again, Alexa placed one hand to her breast and shook her head, apparently overwhelmed. ‘Thank you, everyone, so much,’ she said in a light, yet clear voice. ‘This has been the most wonderful welcome. A dream come true. I feel,’ she said, in an ardent, breathy voice, ‘just like a fairy princess.’

  Even the King started at this. Giacomo gasped. Max, meanwhile, just slowly shook his head. Clever old her, Hippolyte thought. That’s tomorrow’s headline written.

  The crowd remained silent, in case Alexa had anything else to say. Suddenly there came a cry from several rows back.

  ‘It’s her! I told you it was, Selwyn. It’s our Allison!’

  The girl now reaching the top of the chateau steps seemed to have heard. She turned a face grey with horror in the direction of the voice.

  A plump hand was waving above the heads of the crowd. ‘Allison! Coo-ee! It’s Mum! We’re just over on a coach tour. You look very smart. What are you doing here, love?’

  Chapter 63

  It had come. In the afternoon post. Finally, Astrid had the envelope with the laboratory stamp in her hand.

  Her knees were shaking and her breath was shallow and rapid. Eyes still fixed on her own address, she groped backwards to a chair and sat down.

  Slowly, carefully, she had opened the envelope and drawn out the letter inside. She read it. Her hand moved through the air to her mouth.

  She sat back gingerly in the chair. The letter fell from her hand and she sensed the devastating paper float to the carpet as gently as thistledown, rather than drop like the bomb it undoubtedly was.

  After the first shock, she felt an odd sense of relief. The result was, she knew, unquestionably right.

  Impressions whirled through her head. She caught the ones she could, examined and absorbed them. Gradually, the storm in her mind calmed down and she could think rationally.

  She had sent off her own, Engelbert’s, Giacomo’
s and Max’s mouth swabs for DNA analysis. And the conclusion of the laboratory was that while she was most certainly the mother of both boys, Giacomo and Maxim had different fathers.

  Only Giacomo was Engelbert’s son.

  The swabs had been tested three times, with the same result every time.

  Astrid clutched the chair arms. It was a dizzying feeling, knowing she held the fate of the family in her hands. She had suspected as much, possibly even hoped as much. But it was still a shock that His Royal Highness Prince Maxim, heir to the throne of Sedona and about to get engaged to be married, was not actually related to the King at all.

  She broke it to Engelbert first. His face, as she began to speak, had been white with horror. He had taken the news without comment and remained ominously silent after she had spoken, staring at the fire irons and avoiding her gaze.

  They were sitting in his gloomy study, she on a small, hard chair opposite him on the sofa. Nothing moved apart from the pendulum in the grandfather clock, glimpsed through a glass panel in the base. Watching it swing, listening to its deep, slow, unhurried tick, Astrid felt she was on trial – for her past, for her marriage, for her son.

  Waiting for the verdict, she twisted her hands in her lap. She had never liked the royal study, but it had been the only place private enough for the purpose. There were no footmen here. The white and gilt walls had ears everywhere else.

  As the silence wore on, fear gathered to a hard knot in Astrid’s stomach. She had expected him to be jealous and angry; shocked, too, that she had not been pure when he married her. Double standards, of course; he had had many girlfriends himself, by his own not infrequent admission. Presumably he had slept with some of them. But there had been no child – at least, not so far as she knew. And the child was the thing.

  Eventually, she put a hand out and took his. ‘You can divorce me if you like,’ she said sadly. She felt very sorry for him. Engelbert had been knocked for six already by the other events of the day. That Lady Alexa was a fraud from the English Midlands whose parents were coincidentally visiting Sedona on a bus trip had been shocking too. Even if, in Astrid’s private view, it had a certain comic aspect.