A Royal Match

by Connell O'Tyne

  ‘Oh my god, darling, you’re a genius. That sounds soooo perfect!’ Georgina gushed.

  ‘Oh my god, a proper party with champagne and caviar, you mean?’ Clemmie chimed. Clemmie had taken to reading House and Garden and other domestic design magazines. She’d decided she wanted to be an events coordinator, which is a fancy way of saying party planner.

  ‘Vintage all the way at Chez Dirge, darling,’ Star joked. ‘Well, Jim Beam and Coke anyway,’ she added. ‘Actually, guess what! Daddy’s installed a Jim Beam water feature in the chill room.’

  ‘Oh my god, how cool! Is it actually a fountain that spurts out Jim Beam?’ Georgina asked.

  ‘Better. It’s this amazing statue of the Black Angel of Death that pees out Jim Beam into this Japanese black rock pool. Soooo typically Daddy.’ She shook her head at her mad father the way most fathers shake their heads over their mad daughters.

  ‘Oh, I adore Jim Beam,’ Georgina moaned rapturously. ‘It’s so rock and roll. Like caviar.’

  ‘Jim Beam, caviar, and boys on ice,’ Arabella sang in a sultry accent.

  Star added, ‘We could even invite some fit boys from the local village. It could be really wild, actually. Maybe Daddy will buy some more quad bikes – think how cool that would be! We could have an all-week-long mad party screaming about in the mud.’

  Everyone looked so thrilled at the prospect of not going to the ball that I wanted to be sick. Then there was an almighty crash of pots and pans in the kitchen, and for minute I thought it was the sound of my dreams crashing around my feet.

  ‘But what about our outfits?’ I asked, trying not to sound hysterical. ‘Our cashmere tops?’ I reminded the girls. ‘Our shoes!’ My voice was beginning to screech.

  Star threw a pea at me. ‘What about them, silly? We can wear them at our house party. Actually I’m kind of bored by the whole ball thing anyway, it’s soooo Year Nine – even the Year Eights go now.’

  So Year Nine. Her words seemed to sum up my life. It was all right for Star and Georgina to be blasé about the ball; they’d been to squillions of them. And Indie had her own royal ball to go to so of course she wasn’t fussed. But I’d been waiting all my school life for this.

  As I looked around the table at the excited faces of my friends, the only person who looked as underwhelmed as me by the whole idea of Star’s party was Honey, who definitely wouldn’t be invited as Star unashamedly loathed her.

  I never imagined the day would come when Honey and I would feel as one about anything, but then again she had covered for Portia. And, she had also taken Dorothy out for a little run. Maybe Honey had changed?

  ‘Of course you’re invited too, Portia,’ Star called down to her end of the table.

  ‘Thanks so much, Star, but unfortunately I have a prior engagement,’ Portia called back.

  ‘A prior engagement?’ I repeated. She had used the exact same phrase as Freddie had used, in the exact same casual, it’s-so-not-a-big-deal tone.

  ‘You too?’ Indie asked. ‘The Annual Euro Royal Bash Thingamee?’

  Portia groaned as she nodded. ‘Don’t you just loathe them?’

  ‘What can you do, though?’ Indie groaned. ‘I’ve got to go too. Daddy said there’s no way I can get out of it.’

  ‘At least Freddie will be there,’ Portia added, looking at me as she said it. And I decided then what his message must have been. He must be taking Portia to the ball, I told myself as I listened to these girls chat about the horrors of attending balls I would never in my wildest dreams get a chance to go to.

  ‘What about your brother?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course Tarkie will be there, but he’ll never dance with me.’

  Then the image of Portia and Freddie dancing together royal cheek to royal cheek flashed into my head, and I couldn’t even bring myself to look at her.

  SIXTEEN:

  An Emotional Game of Chess

  Saint Augustine’s fencing salle was pretty impressive for a girls’ school – especially given that loads of the girls only took fencing as a way to meet the boys at Eades. We had three pistes, all with the latest electrical point scoring systems, and a salle d’armes covered in old photographs and fencing memorabilia along the walls. We had once also been fortunate enough to have one of Britain’s top fencing masters, Professor Sullivan.

  But those days were gone.

  I was really going to miss Professor Sullivan. I liked to think I was his favourite pupil, based mainly on the fact that he gave Star and me a lift to Star’s place in London one exeat. That, and the fact that he said he thought I’d ‘go far.’ I quite liked the idea that someone thought me capable of going far, as opposed to ‘going too far!’ which is what Bob is always telling me.

  There were plenty of younger girls coming up in sabre, but Portia and I were the only two actual sabreurs left in the school now that Star had dropped out. That meant we’d have to rely on Emille from the épée team to fence sabre in interschool matches. It wasn’t ideal. We’d had a few practise bouts over the past weeks, and Mr Wellend warned us that he’d be stepping up the pressure in earnest this week. I was quite happy for him to step up the pressure. The BNFTs were coming up after half term, and if I wanted to be included on the Olympic team for 2008, I was going to have to make the Nationals.

  I’d had to force myself to be civil to Portia ever since she’d told me she was going to the ball with Freddie. Okay, I know she hadn’t actually said she was going with Freddie, but I was uneasy about the situation just the same. She’d passed on Freddie’s message eventually, and while it wasn’t the bombshell I’d imagined, it was a massive letdown. ‘Tell Calypso I’ll txt her.’

  I’d had plenty of time to brood about everything, and my brooding, coupled with the fact that the only txt message I received from him since Windsor was the one in which I replied by telling him to bugger off (or rather Star had told him on my phone) made me desperately worried.

  As I attached Portia’s back to the electrical cord that ran up to the recording device, I was fully aware that I didn’t have the cool head, the sang-froid that Professor Sullivan was always on about.

  We have to check that all parts of our electric kit are working before play begins, which you do by tapping your sabre on your sword guard, glove, the lame metal jacket and the mask before the salute. Even as Portia and I tapped our weapons, I felt the rawness of my emotions begin to take over, which manifested when I ‘tapped’ her blade clean out of her hand.

  While sabre is a combat sport, it’s also highly intellectual and requires a great deal of balance. Emotion has no place on the piste, and I was one big ball of emotion as Bell End called the words ‘En garde! Ready! Play!’

  The attacker in sabre is at an advantage because she can vary her footwork and her method of delivering an attack. Whereas defending at sabre is more difficult as right of way is initially given to the attacker. Although the arm starts moving first, it doesn’t straighten quite as fast as with a thrusting weapon, so even with the electrical recording stuff, it is difficult for the referee/president overseeing the bout to decide who has the right of way. Basically, he’ll be looking for the first person to straighten her arm, which in a nutshell means that you can play dirty.

  The object is to make cuts with a hit that registers on the recorder, but not hard enough to hurt your opponent. But if you deliver strong cuts from the elbow, say, you can inflict a lot of bruising. Most sabreurs deliver actual cuts from the wrist because it gives them more control and accuracy with their weapon.

  I could feel my anger towards Portia taking total control of me. I did try and get a grip as I advanced with crossovers down the piste towards Lady Herrington Briggs, with her aloof demeanour and her royal ball and possibly my Freddie. As much as I knew I needed to clear my head of these thoughts, my heart just wouldn’t let me. What I couldn’t say to her in words, I was going to explain with my blade.

  I knew the way Portia thought on the piste. I knew her inclination for speed and accuracy,
and she knew my skill for aggressive cuts and my well-known talent for elegant prise de fer. We had joked only last week in fact that we could play one another’s game as actors to perfection because we knew each other’s form so well.

  I think she knew what was coming when our swords were in line and she first threatened my target area. I stepped forward rapidly without straightening my arm, engaged her blade and as I took it with a classic circular parry of tierce, we were so close it might have looked to an onlooker like a lovers’ embrace. But all the wrong emotions were in that embrace – I was not paying attention to my footwork. As I made another attack, I lost my footing and fell.

  Bell End went ballistic. ‘I told you, think with your brain, move with your body, slam ‘em with your blade, Kelly. That’s slam your opponent, not the bloody floor, ya idiot.’

  Bell End may not have been as grand as Professor Sullivan, but he was bang-on in his assessment. I acknowledged this and tried to regain my lost sang-froid, but my humiliation after the stumble had only served to rattle me further. My form didn’t improve, and after the bout, Portia and I took off our masks and shook hands formally, but neither of us spoke to the other. She knew what I knew now. I had it in for her.

  Bell End was furious. ‘Never seen such a waste of electricity in me life. And you’re meant to be the captain of the bloody team, Kelly. One more performance like that and you can wave goodbye to your captaincy.’

  ‘Yes, Bell End, I mean Mr Wellend,’ I agreed as the tears welled in my eyes. I knew I was out of line … and worse, so did Portia. While we were showering and changing back into our uniforms, she didn’t so much as look at me. She wasn’t the sort of girl to have an argument. She was too regal and well brought up for that, and I didn’t have the mettle to engage with her off the piste.

  So there it was. Thanks to my own jealousy, I was now living in a dorm with two girls who hated me. I suspect Bell End was starting to think along the same lines as Bob – I was going too far.

  As I lay in bed that night I realised I had behaved badly and I wanted to apologise, but I couldn’t in front of Honey. And later when Honey started snoring and Portia was turning her light out, my shame only served to render me mute.

  She wished me goodnight, though.

  ‘Goodnight, Portia,’ I replied in a tone that suggested we were as close as we had been the first week of term.

  With Honey’s evil on one side of me and Portia’s disdain on the other, a sense of isolation engulfed me.

  SEVENTEEN:

  Nothing Changes, Everything Changes

  In our first week back, Portia and I had shared seditious asides about Mrs Obar and her lack of qualifications to teach Latin. We even told her we’d be complaining to our parents. But the truth was, Portia didn’t want to trouble her grieving father, and I didn’t want to trouble Bob and Sarah, who were always very busy trying to make the money to send me here. While they didn’t really understand what GCSEs even were, they were always madly impressed by my teachers whenever they met them.

  Of course the lay teachers behave wildly different with parents than they do with students – I call it the Hypocritical Oath. The female teachers are the worst. It’s really sick the way they fawn over parents and flirt with fathers – even Sarah agrees, although she’d probably adore Mrs Obar because she’s so old, not to mention married. Not that marriage would stop Mrs Obar from flirting with Bob. Portia and I once even caught her flirting with Bell End! ‘Oh, Mr Bell End, stop, you’re making me laugh!’ she cried. Only she called him Mr Wellend, and while her words said ‘stop’ as we peeped from behind the wall, she was stroking his muscles, yuk!

  ‘Slut,’ I’d whispered in Portia’s ear, which made her giggle.

  ‘Tart,’ she’d agreed, which made me snort with laughter – and then we got caught by Bell End, who’d chased us out of the salle and called us all manner of horrible names.

  But that was then.

  Ever since that practise bout we were unofficially not on speakers, as Nancy Mitford would say. That is to say, we still spoke, but only to maintain the barest of civilities.

  Now I sat alone in Latin, leaving Portia to sit next to Indie.

  ‘Thirty-seven long years teaching girls like you the whyfors and whereabouts of this and that,’ Mrs Obar rambled on, ‘well, it’s taken its toll on me, it has,’ she complained – which isn’t even proper English let alone Latin. All she ever wrote on the board were things that were in our textbook, but she never worked through any of the exercises we’d be questioned on in our exams at the end of the year, or anything useful like that.

  Just the same, because she was a teacher, we had to pretend to be madly awed. Otherwise she’d shower us in blues, and there are only so many times you can slack down a teacher and trail on down to the Year Seven dorms – which were in another building – and talk them into doing your lines for you. Also this year’s bunch of Year Sevens were incredibly mature and hardly worshiped us at all, bless them.

  Portia, true to her word, had persuaded her young cousin to do my French lines for me, but I obviously couldn’t count on her goodwill a second time.

  At the end of each class, Mrs Obar would pile us with work from the exercise book, which we’d then have to struggle with unaided as well as do our basic course work that formed part of our overall GCSE mark. It was a now in situation.

  It was like being on a treadmill.

  Wake up.

  Get dressed.

  Clean our rooms.

  Registration (so the school could check that none of us had escaped in the night).

  Go to chapel for prayers and school news.

  Attend classes.

  Fence.

  Eat grey slops.

  Attend more classes.

  Feed our pets and take them for a run.

  Clean out the pet shed.

  Do prep.

  Go to study.

  Go to the ref for more inedible grey slops.

  Do still more study.

  Shower.

  Go to bed.

  Read until lights out.

  Sleep – and in my case brood over my lack of txts from Freddie and Billy.

  We were all exhausted by the time exeat weekend came along, and because things had been so different between us, I was delighted that Star still wanted me to stay at her place in Derbyshire.

  In the limo on the way up I admitted that I was pleased she’d invited me. ‘Don’t be mad, of course you have to stay. You always have to stay. You’re my best friend, idiot.’

  ‘Well, we hardly spend any time together anymore, and …’

  ‘We spend loads of time together; it’s just that we don’t spend all our time alone together anymore thanks to you,’ she said, pinching me in the side to make me laugh.

  ‘Thanks to me?’ I exclaimed, fighting her off.

  ‘Yes, you’re the one who ruined our status as the school freaks, remember?’

  I pinched her back and dropped the topic. I didn’t want to mention Indie or her dropping fencing, because then I’d have to mention Portia, and I was too embarrassed to go there.

  We were in the limo on the way up to Derbyshire when my txt alert sounded.

  Is there life on Planet Girl? Freds x

  This time I didn’t show the txt to Star for fear that she might tell him to bugger off again. I waited to reply until we were at her estate and she’d gone off to the kitchen to steal some sweets.

  Where r u? x C:

  Windsor. & u? Freds x

  I imagined him in his castle with his parents, the king and queen, and thought carefully about how I should reply. In the end I opted for something more exotic than the total truth.

  About to go quad bike riding. x C:

  Alright 4 some! Freds x

  I was so pleased that he was impressed. Even though we didn’t actually go quad bike riding, it wasn’t a total lie. We did talk about riding the quads, and Star’s father, Tiger, was quad bike riding with friends all weekend.

 
; The truth was we were so tired from three weeks of hard work all we could do was laze about in Star’s enormous, king-sized, black-patent four-poster bed, with its heavy maroon drapery, eating sweets and watching DVDs. Star is so laid back she even told me I could keep Dorothy in the room. Even though most rabbits aren’t house trained, Star was positive Dorothy would do her wee and poos in the en suite, but of course she didn’t, so the whole room had to be sprayed with Febreze.

  Star even tried to train her by rushing her off to the loo and rubbing her paws in the wood shavings like you do when you train a cat, but it wasn’t wildly effective. Hilda and Brian stayed with us too, and all three seemed to get on surprisingly well, apart from when Brian slithered over me in the night and I woke up screaming and had to pretend I’d had a nightmare. Star would be mortified if she thought I’d screamed because of Brian.

  We kept talking about doing stuff, but neither of us pressed the issue. Even on Saturday night when a few bands and their flunkies turned up for a party, neither of us felt like going down or even playing our traditional pranks.

  I was just happy to be alone with Star, hanging out just like we used to. Neither of us touched on any subject other than sweets, movies and our pets. We had a pet trick competition, but as we were the only two judges, it always ended up in a tie. But we liked that.

  Star was trying to give up fags, and I was helping her by remembering to slap the nicotine patches on her.

  ‘Oh, Sister Nicotine, you’re such a good nurse,’ she said as I stuck a patch on her one evening.

  I had developed a special make-believe voice and old-dear walk for my part. ‘Come on, luvvie take your medicine like a good little dear.’ Then, out of the blue, Star confronted me about Portia.

  ‘So what’s up with you and Portia?’ she said as I smoothed the patch on her shoulder.

  ‘What do you mean, what’s up? We share a dorm; we’re perfectly civil.’