A Royal Match

by Connell O'Tyne

  ‘You have to put your seat belt on now,’ the flight attendant warned as she woke me. ‘We’ll be landing at Heathrow in a moment.’

  Okay, it was only a dream, but it was kind of spooky actually because all summer I’d been txt-flirting with Freddie and Billy. I know it sounds bad, but you can’t blame me. We are talking about two wildly fit boys here – even by Eades standards – and after taking so long to pull a single boy (fourteen years), I now had two boys txt-flirting me. What girl is going to resist that? How was I ever going to choose between Freddie – heir to the British throne – and Billy, captain of the Eades sabre team, who had rescued me from the jaws of a girl-eating attack dog before we broke up for summer?

  My two best friends, Georgina and Star, both found the txt relationships of my summer hugely entertaining. I forwarded them every txt, even though a part of me wanted to keep some of them all to myself. Like the one where Freddie said his parents wanted to meet me.

  Me, Calypso Kelly, a complete nobody from America! No title, no money – not even new money – and yet the king and queen of the United Kingdom and all its other territories wanted to meet me. I could have swooned with the excitement of it all, only then Freddie went on to say how of course he’d never put me through that, because apparently it would mean spending a weekend at Bardington with his gran’s Labradors, who are elderly and quite nippy.

  I sent a txt back telling him that I wouldn’t mind being nipped to bits by royal Labradors. I was madly restrained, in fact – deleting the bit about how I’d happily be mauled by them if it meant staying a weekend in one of his family’s castles.

  Freddie sent back a txt saying:

  ha, ha, ha! Freds x

  You see, my fear of dogs is legendary at Eades ever since news got out about my attempted escape from school to go clubbing one night last year. I was chased up a tree by one of the school’s attack dogs. That’s how I met Billy. He had helped me down while the girl-eating dog licked his hand.

  Freddie knows all about my shameful stuck-up-a-tree experience, though he doesn’t know about the wobbly feeling I felt in my tummy as Billy helped me down and held me in his arms. And he definitely doesn’t know I’ve been txt-flirting Billy all summer.

  I’d already pulled Freddie, but everything between us got complicated because Honey O’Hare, the most toxic psycho-toff ever, sold a camera-phone snap of us kissing in the bushes to the tabloids. It all ended in a bit of a messy misunderstanding, which is why I got mixed up and started flirt-txt-ing Billy.

  Only now Billy’s txts were getting progressively steamier, and I knew I couldn’t go on flirting with two boys from the same school without it all blowing up in my face. So while my predicament may have made my holidays in LA and the prospect of returning to Saint Augustine’s exciting, I was going to have to sort my feelings out by the end of the week when I faced them both on the fencing piste. It was that or – quelle horreur! – risk having no boy txt-ing me at all! Just like the old days.

  Even as my taxi dropped me at school, the thrill of having two fit Eades boys txt-ing me was beginning to feel more like pressure than a flattering thrill. And guess what? Mental telepathy really does work because no sooner did this thought flash through my mind than my txt alert sounded:

  Can’t wait to see your navel piercing … Freddie x

  I txt-ed him back immediately!

  Can’t wait to rinse you at sabre x Calypso

  I didn’t really feel like confessing that I’d been rinsed by my parents, Sarah and Bob, and made to remove my navel ring. I quite fancied the idea of Freddie thinking of me as this madly cool, wild-child American girl who did her own thing and made her own rules. Sadly, nothing could be further from the truth.

  TWO:

  It’s Hard Teaching Your Parents Where Their Dreams End and Yours Begin

  I will turn fifteen on the fifteenth of December. Just ten days before Christmas. This explains a lot about me. Firstly, it means my parents are Catholic and didn’t practise birth control. They’ve never admitted this (the lack of birth control thing), but I ask you, what sort of unfeeling parents would purposefully elect to bring their child into the world at Christmas? Who do they think they are, Mary and Joseph?

  Secondly, it explains why I am quite cynical. By the age of ten, I knew that when people said, ‘I just opted for One Big Present for Christmas rather than two small presents,’ they were definitely lying. What they were really opting for was the economy of one regular-sized gift.

  That’s where my third skill comes in handy – my precocious gift for being able to keep my disappointments to myself – because you can’t really challenge people about the One Big Present Lie without sounding ungrateful, can you?

  But that’s okay because cynicism and the ability to suppress disappointment help you survive the single-sex boarding school system of England. And those two aspects of my character are what I relied on the first day back at school as I scanned the dormitory list to discover with whom I’d be rooming.

  My cynicism prevented me from hoping that I would be sharing with someone lovely and fun. And cynicism soon gave way to suppressing the disappointment that I didn’t have a valet to lug my seven-thousand-ton trunk up the ancient, narrow, dimly lit, winding stone staircase that leads to the dormitory rooms.

  My parents, who insist I call them Sarah and Bob (what can I say, they still listen to Bob Dylan and eat tragic brown food), live in LA and had long since given up accompanying me back to school each term. Now that I was about to turn fifteen, they thought they were off the hook.

  That’s the other thing. I was almost a full year younger than anyone else in my year – Year Eleven – something my parents took a sick pride in. They are always bragging to their friends about me, as if being the youngest, most physically immature girl in my Year is something to boast about. They weren’t the ones having to stuff their bra with toilet paper throughout Year Nine. By the end of that year I was even lying about having my periods so that when I finally started to menstruate and discovered that I had blood on my white fencing breeches, I was so relieved I forgot to be embarrassed.

  This summer I sat my parents down and said, ‘Look, Sarah, Bob, I know you love me, and you know I love you, but you have got to stop living vicariously through me!’ Star put me up to it, although she suggested I just say ‘get a life’ because Sarah and Bob still think I should have the same aspirations I had when I was six and wanted to be the next Marie Curie. Actually, let me put that more accurately: they wanted me to be the next Marie Curie, and I went along with it so they’d make a fuss of me.

  My best friend, Star, always says, ‘It’s hard teaching your parents where their dreams end and yours begin.’ Although as far as I can see, her parents, Tiger of Dirge and Tracey the commensurate Rock Star Wife, are perfect parents – mostly because they’re always stoned, I guess.

  There was no sign of Star’s or Georgina’s friendly faces in the mad scrum of toff parents, toff valets, guardians and girls (all dressed in the tragic Saint Augustine’s uniform of maroon pleated skirt and green ruffled shirt) clustered around the notice board. I scanned the lists of dorm rooms, hoping I’d be sharing with Arabella or Clementine, two of my other friends. But instead a cold band of fear tightened around my heart as I read the name on the list with mine for the Saint Ursula room: Honey O’Hare.

  I was literally shaking as I backed my way out of the braying adults and girls squealing with delight or groaning with disappointment. As I turned around, I slammed straight into the culprit herself – or rather, the culprit’s new manservant.

  ‘Watch out, you American Freak!’ Honey shrieked in her special shrill way as she stepped out from behind the man. The poor fellow stumbled a bit under the weight of her heavy Louis Vuitton trunk and other assorted designer luggage, including a mauve Prada pet carrier no doubt containing her designer pet of the term.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I apologised, trying in vain to make eye contact with the poor guy I’d bumped into. He was two
hundred and ninety if he was a day.

  Then Honey added darkly, ‘If you damage my manservant, your parents can buy me a bloody new one and pay to have him shipped out and processed through immigration.’

  Honey is your classic psycho toff. In other words, she has all the characteristics you might imagine spoilt aristo-girls – also known as Daddy’s Plastic Girls – to have, only thank goodness for me they usually don’t. But Honey does. Unbridled, unrestrained horribleness exudes from the tips of her platinum card-breaking, Nicky Clarke-personally-coloured hair to her designer French soles. And mostly her horribleness is turned on me, who as an untitled, ordinary American is a classic sitting duck.

  Last term she laced my dinner with laxatives and as I mentioned sold a photograph of me kissing Prince Freddie to the press, which almost destroyed my life. It created such an international brouhaha that my parents flew over from LA to be by my side. Actually it was Sarah and Bob who discovered that Honey was the culprit, for which Sister Constance had her rusticated for a week.

  Even when she returned to school and realised how evil everyone thought she was, she was totally unrepentant. All she said was ‘Soz,’ which is Sloane for ‘sorry’ and translated in Honey’s case to ‘So sorry your misery has impacted my life.’ Because you see, horribleness comes naturally to Honey, a bit like photosynthesis comes naturally to plants.

  The other name on my room list was Lady Portia Herrington Briggs. Of course she didn’t go about referring to herself as Lady Herrington Briggs. That would be considered vulgar at Saint Augustine’s. Naturally all the girls and teachers were fully aware she was the daughter of an earl and treated her accordingly – apart from the nuns, that is, because they think the only title of merit is ‘Saint.’

  I sort of knew Portia, but not as well as I should, given that she was on the sabre team and I was the captain. I suppose ‘enigmatic’ would be the word for Portia. I love the word ‘enigmatic.’ I’ve tried to be enigmatic all my life but I can’t seem to stop this awful habit I have of blurting things out. Portia would never blurt something, in fact the word ‘blurt’ probably isn’t even in her vocabulary.

  In the past I’d been more interested in her talent on the piste than in her grand ancestors, and to be fair she’d never pointed those out to me. But I could well imagine that with Honey in our room, my American-ness and lack of pedigree would go against me.

  Honey isn’t titled – well, she is an Hon., thanks to her new stepfather, but not a real one. It really grates on her that of all the men her society It Girl mother has married, none of them has done his duty in bringing a truly grand title to the marriage table. Her latest stepfather is a lord but he’s only a life peer, so while she gets to be an Hon., she’ll never assume the title she really covets, that of Lady. However, on the plus side, her new father gave her Oopa, a manservant to fetch and carry after her.

  At Saint Augustine’s School for Ladies you get to request the girls you want to share a room with. I’d opted for Clemmie and Arabella. But as our head nun, Sister Constance, is always remarking, ‘There are no guarantees in life, girls!’ I’m cynical about that too because there is one guarantee; if you share with someone one term, you won’t be sharing with them the next. This policy is meant to tackle bitchiness but all it really does is stick you with people who have the capacity to make your life miserable. I wished I was sharing with exactly the same girls as last term, my best friends Georgina and Star.

  The people you share a room with at boarding school define your term. Popular, fun people = popular, fun term. Anything else is merde, as our ghoulish French teacher would say. If she hears us say how merde her French class is, though, she showers us in blues.

  Most of my terms at Saint Augustine’s have been merde, but last term was the exception and I honestly thought my popularity had turned a corner. I was finally out of the cul-de-sac of loneliness and isolation that had marred my previous years in England.

  The reason my school life got so much better during that term of Year Ten was that I’d been roomed with my best friend, Star, who is rock royalty, and the Honourable Georgina Castle Orpington and her opinionated teddy bear, Tobias. Yes, we are talking about a teddy with his own custom-made miniature Louis Vuitton trunk in which he stores his designer teddy bear wardrobe. Even madder, Georgina’s father actually pays full fees for Tobias to attend Saint Augustine’s! I used to think it was just a rumour, but it soon became clear that it was true, which is probably why the school adores Georgina so much.

  Despite being friends with Honey, Georgina turned out to be far less grand than I’d always imagined. Star and Georgina and Tobias had even come to Los Angeles and spent two weeks of the summer holidays with me – although Tobias couldn’t go out in the sun because he burns easily.

  My parents were horrified when Georgina told them about Tobias being a full fee-paying student. My mother declared it tantamount to a bribe. Georgina told her not to be so mad and explained that Tobias happened to be exceedingly bright and what’s more did ALL his course work and hers. She said it with such conviction that Bob and Sarah didn’t know how to respond. Even living in LA, they’d never met anyone as self-possessed and truly grand as Georgina before.

  ‘Besides, Sarah,’ Georgina had added sweetly. ‘You’ve been lovely enough to set a place for Tobias at dinner every evening during our stay so you must see how special he is.’ This was true, and Sarah and Bob were forced to acknowledge that Tobias was no ordinary bear.

  Sarah and Bob were completely different people when Star and Georgina came to stay. Despite threatening to wear love beads and show my nudie baby photographs, they behaved themselves beautifully. Well, as beautifully as parents can be expected to behave.

  Basically, they let us hang out at the mall, just like real teenagers, and drive ourselves recklessly about the studio lot where my mom works on those little golf cart thingamees.

  They even agreed to allow me to go to my very first ball, the La Fiesta Ball, this term. La Fiesta is one of the Capital VIP balls that the posh schools all attend. Capital VIP run several balls and parties a year, including the Mistletoe Ball and the Valentine’s Ball. They have really cool bands and famous DJs and pop stars perform. All the boys go in black tie (Americans call them tuxes), which makes them look even more distressingly fit, and girls get to wear achingly cool clothes.

  Previously, Bob and Sarah had barred me from attending any of the balls, despite the fact that Tatler declared them ‘the most exclusive teenage parties in the world.’ I had even smugly directed them to the parent section of the Web site where it states: ‘For £40 ($70) we promise you that your daughter will be followed by jailors all night, besides which, we hardly let any boys in anyway unless they’re royalty or arrive by helicopter. Also, we totally guarantee to shoot on sight anyone caught with alcohol or drugs or attempting lip-attachment manoeuvres.’

  I’m paraphrasing, but you get the idea.

  Bob and Sarah said they thought these balls sounded ‘a bit too risky.’ Then again, brightly coloured cereal is ‘a bit too risky’ for my parents. It’s granola all the way with them. But even that all changed when Star and Georgina were staying. We had Oreo O’s cereal (miniature chocolate biscuits) and Lucky Charms. The Lucky Charms were a favourite with Georgina and Star, who thought the cereal shapes were madly rude – actually comparisons with testicles were made – and even then all Bob and Sarah did was laugh.

  So there it was. In two weeks Georgina and Star triumphed with my parents where I had failed for the past fourteen years. Everything they spoke of or suggested was met with delight. ‘What super fun these VIP balls all sound!’ Sarah announced one evening as we were drinking wine in the courtyard. Yes, even alcohol (in moderation) was given the green light by S and B while my friends were staying.

  ‘But you always said …,’ I began.

  But Sarah dismissed my interruption. ‘Of course you must go, Calypso, don’t be such a stick in the mud!’

  My eyes almost sprung out
of their sockets. They even gave me extra money so we could all buy our outfits together at a trendy shop on Robertson Boulevard. We were all going to wear sleeveless cashmere tops with beading and sequins, tiny, tiny mini-skirts and pointy-toed kitten heels – in different colours, of course.

  I was soooo excited, though obviously I acted madly blaseé about attending my first ball. Prince Freddie often attends them. I’d already txt-ed Freddie and Billy to say I would be there, which meant I would have to choose which of them I fancied the most because I didn’t want them to think I was a slut. Besides, I’m not a slut. Honestly.

  I was certain that as soon as I laid eyes on them at fencing I’d instantly know which of them I fancied properly, but at the time all I could think of was the excitement of it all. I’d been listening enviously to the other girls going on and on about these balls and all the fit boys they’ve pulled for the past three years. This time I would be going to the ball myself! Thanks to the influence of my two best friends on my parents.

  Star and Georgina kept saying, ‘Your parents are soooo cool, Calypso,’ and by the time we waved my friends off at LAX I had even started to believe it myself. Maybe my parents really were cool?

  THREE:

  Okay, So Maybe It Did Get a Little Bit Septic …

  Thank goodness I am cynical because my parents went back to their Draconian ways as soon as the plane was out of LA airspace and they noticed that I’d had my navel pierced. Being cynical and capable of harbouring secret disappointment doesn’t help you avoid crop-tops in the heat.

  The three of us had decided to have it done in a shop near the Beverly Center in Beverly Hills. Star said it was like having friendship rings, only more painful. But actually it was all madly hygienic, and the guy who did it was, like, soooo fit, we were all swooning so much that we didn’t even feel the pain.