by David Smith
traumatic birszing she lost her muzzer, yah?
The King nodded again.
‘Und zen she voz taken from zer voom manually, yah? After a period of ogzygen starvation?
The King nodded a third time – he was getting to be quite the expert.
‘Zen it iz, as I zay, zimple. Your daughter haz known nuzzing but lozz. She lozt her muzzer, she lozt zer zafety of zer voom, she almozt lozt her life along viz zer very ogzygen she needed to zuztain it…. Phhhhhhttttzzzzzzzzzzzzz…’ (He made a shooing gesture with his hand)… ‘nuzzing but lozz from day vun.’
By this time King Sidney was beside himself, weeping copiously for both his daughter’s and his own catalogue of loss.
‘But what can I do? What can I do to make it better?’ he wailed.
‘It iz zimple, yah, you must give her everyzing…’
A few days later King Sidney received Doctor Von Blotto’s report. It emphasised the underlying themes of loss and separation in the Princess’ life, and reiterated the need for constant reassurance and consistency to re-establish her “trust” in the world and her security within it. In the simplest terms, the good Doctor advised that everything should be done to provide the Princess with everything she ever wanted or asked for, to compensate for all the things that were missing in her world. The Doctor even coined a term for his newly discovered condition, based on the events leading to its manifestation. Not A Good Start syndrome, he called it, or N.A.G.S. as it came to be known.
III
A few days later the Princess and King Sidney were eating their dinner. The Princess, following the consultation with Dr Von Otto, had expressed her extreme dislike for cutlery, which she found difficult to grip, and after several trial runs with specially adapted, wide handled implements had elected to eat with her fingers. The soup starter was making rather a mess of the tablecloth and Princess Gladys’ beautiful clothes, but she seemed happy enough.
As the soup bowls were cleared away new dishes of steaming vegetables were placed in front of them, along with a gleaming salver of sliced venison and a large boat of herb enriched gravy. A servant lifted the lid on the bowl closest to the Princess.
‘Urrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!’ she cried, screwing up her nose in distaste, ‘what are those disgusting looking objects?’
The King shifted slightly in his seat to peer over the edge of the bowl.
‘Why, they’re peas’ he said, ‘Yum yum. We haven’t had those in ages – you used to love them when you were a baby. We must ask cook to do them more often.’
‘Pooh, yuk’ said the Princess, ‘More often? I’m not eating them – they look like mouldy rabbit’s turds!’
‘No, honestly, sweetheart, they’re delicious – just try one.’
‘Shan’t. Take them away before I’m sick.’
But then, just as the servant moved to cover the bowl and whisk them away, a wisp of pea scented steam wafted into the Princess’ nostrils.
Hmm, hmmm, she sniffed. Then; Hmm, Hmmm, Hmmm. And then her eyes widened and her lips drew back in a huge smile and…
‘MMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmm,’ she cried, ‘they smell delicious!’’ and she thrust her hand deep into the bowl, scooped out a large handful and shoved them greedily into her gaping gob.
Handful followed handful, the Princess slobbering and almost choking as she shovelled them into her mouth. Between the chomping and gasps of air she managed to speak;
‘More! More!’ She commanded, ‘Bring me MORE. I’m never going to eat anything else ever again!’
At first King Sidney was delighted to see his daughter so enjoying her food; she was normally quite apathetic whatever was on the menu. As his attempts to entice her to add meat and potatoes to her plate failed, though, he started to feel a little less happy, and when she dismissed the cook’s delicious spotted dick and treacle in favour of even more peas that initial unease turned to a full-blown sense of foreboding.
Over the next week Princess Gladys ate so many peas that the cook had to send a carriage all the way to the docks to buy up fresh stocks straight from Captain Bert Sigh’s boat. On the Royal cook’s orders he despatched his entire fleet of trawlers off to the pea fields of Iceland, in anticipation of the coming demand. Peas for breakfast, peas for lunch, peas for dinner and supper – the Princess would accept nothing else and flew into a rage at the slightest suggestion of “accompaniments” or even gravy.
At first, the King would add small amounts of other foods to her plate, but these were always ignored and then became an issue in themselves. Initially, problems only arose if the peas touched anything else on the Princess’ plate, but then she started to insist that nothing else should share the plate at all. Then she started to complain about the sight of other foods on the table, so the King took to eating his own meal behind a small, specially constructed screen so that she didn’t have to see his plate. Eventually, even the smell of other foods would make the Princess nauseous, and her nose was so hypersensitive that she could actually smell the food the villagers were eating outside of the castle walls.
In the end there was only one solution, and the King delivered a proclamation that peas were the only foodstuff permitted within his Kingdom. Anyone caught eating anything else would be charged with high peason, and find themselves incarcerated in the castle dungeons until they swore on their grannies’ deathbeds never to do it again.
At first the Punters resisted, but as more were arrested and locked away talk of rebellion gradually subsided. Besides, they all felt so weak and puny living on a diet of nothing but peas that they really didn’t have the strength to argue any more.
Over time, in the same way that flamingos are affected by the beta-carotene in their diets, the skin of the people of Punt started to take on a mild green pallor, which made them look even more sickly and weedy. In the neighbouring hills mothers of ferocious man-eating dragon’s made jokes about raiding the village to ensure that their offspring ate enough “greens”.
All of the arable land for miles around was converted for pea farming, and eventually even the few farm animals that remained in the village (just a handful of milk producing goats and cows as all meat products were banned) turned green on their pea-rich diet, and the watery fluid that dripped from their udders tasted more like pea soup than cream.
IV
With time, the Princess’ various sensitivities grew more and more acute, and as the king responded to her increasing demands life in the once happy Kingdom changed dramatically. All domestic pets were destroyed – their fur set off Gladys’ allergies – and all the birds were gassed in their nests during the night hours, as their chirrupings were like fingernails on a blackboard to the Princess’ ears. Fingernails had to be manicured twice weekly, and all blackboards were burnt on a huge bonfire in the village square. Smoke from the bonfire irritated the Princess’ eyes, so the flames were quickly doused and a proclamation delivered to ban outright all fires and barbecues (the latter wasn’t too much of a problem – few of the villagers enjoyed barbecued peas, but the former created all sorts of leaf-related problems come the autumn falls).
A curfew was placed on the village, lights out and silence after eight o’clock at night, and the village cockerel had his voice-box removed by the local vet as insurance against rude awakenings. The Town Crier was sacked, and a town whisperer employed in his wake, and the local cobbler was charged with the task of tacking sponge soles to the shoes of the entire population. Blind people were carted en mass to the next village – the tappy-tap-tap of their white sticks on the street cobbles too much for the Princess’ delicate ears – and hearing aids were taken from the partially deaf as they encouraged shouting. Sign language and lip reading were allowed, but not in the presence of the Princess who found them distracting. Wheelchairs were clamped and impounded pending squeak-checks by the newly created Department for the Reduction of Annoying Noises.
In tandem with these changes in the village the Princess too changed beyond all recognition. She
developed an aversion to combs, shampoo and hairdressers, and her once beautiful locks became tangled, lice ridden and greasy. Working carefully at night, twice a year a local gardener would attack her with shears, specially silenced with liberal applications of pea oil so that no unusual smells or noises would awaken the Princess from her slumbers. Her teeth rotted in her head – toothpaste and brush being out of the question on so many levels I wouldn’t know where to begin (smell, taste, texture, pain… oh, okay, so I would know where to begin – but I wouldn’t know where to finish!), but as peas are quite suckable it wasn’t too much of a problem apart from the smell of decay, which – oddly – never seemed to bother the Princess.
She took to wandering everywhere naked, as clothes irritated her skin, and while the King was initially worried about this he soon relaxed as she became so encaked in mud (hated baths!) that nobody could see anything “naughty” anyway. Truth be told, after a couple of years living like this it was unlikely anyone would want to look too closely. It was hard for the King to reconcile this green-skinned, wasted, smelly, repulsive little goblin of a creature prowling the castle grounds with the beautiful daughter he had once rocked in his arms, but he loved her unconditionally, so accepted that this was how it had to be.
Late one