A Royal Match

by Connell O'Tyne

  ‘Aaah yes, civil. Civility can cover a multitude of sins, darling, we both know that.’

  ‘Well, she started it.’

  ‘Started what?’

  ‘I don’t know what.’

  ‘Well then why don’t you stop it. Talk to her.’

  ‘But that’s just it. You can’t talk to her. She’s seriously …’ I struggled to find the phrase I needed – something other than stuck-up.

  Star helped me out by suggesting words like ‘nice,’ ‘decent,’ ‘respectful’ and ‘loyal.’ ‘Look, Calypso, I saw you fencing with Portia the other day, going for her like you were Zorro or something. What were you thinking?’

  ‘You were there! In the salle? Why didn’t you tell me?’ I shouted angrily.

  ‘Calm down. Look, I came to see you, okay? If you want to know the truth I felt bad about everything. Dropping fencing, not spending enough time with you, everything. And then when I saw you going at Portia like that, I couldn’t believe it was you!’

  I dropped my head. ‘I know,’ I replied quietly.

  ‘Why, then?’

  ‘Everything’s changed, Star,’ I told her, and as I heard the words came out of my mouth I felt like Pandora opening up the box that would change the world forever.

  Star ignored me for a bit, so I pushed the point. ‘Come on, Star, you know it has. You’re always with Indie now.’

  She looked annoyed, and Star can look wildly scary when she’s cross. ‘Nothing’s changed, Calypso,’ she insisted in a voice that brooked no argument. ‘Nothing, apart from your attitude.’

  I made a decision not to push the point, but the gulf between us was palpable in that moment. I knew both of us could feel it, just as much as we could feel our own hearts beating. And then Star said, ‘Shall we have another pet trick competition, then?’

  And the gulf closed as quickly as it had opened. At least for the time being.

  ‘You do realise,’ she said on Sunday as we prepared to head back to school, ‘that we haven’t left this room, other than to go to the kitchen to steal food, all weekend?’

  Our small weekend bags were already packed, Brian was wrapped around Star’s neck and Hilda was peeping out of her blazer pocket. I was cuddling Dorothy as I looked around the bomb site of the room. It wasn’t pretty with all our sweet wrappers and pizza boxes and DVD cases strewn about the bed and floor, not to mention the animal droppings.

  ‘I think it’s called growing old,’ I said, cuddling Dorothy into my chest and kissing her wriggly little nose.

  ‘No wonder my parents take drugs! Look at what we’ve become, Calypso!’ She marched over to her bed and left a fifty-pound note on the pillow for the cleaner.

  ‘We are disgustingly lazy,’ I agreed.

  ‘Even Daddy’s been quad bike riding most the weekend,’ she pointed out.

  ‘True,’ I agreed. ‘Also your mother’s been having her charity meetings.’

  ‘So, basically at the tender age of fifteen we’re already worse than drug-taking rock and rollers! We didn’t even drink any Jim Beam from the Jim Beam feature in the chill room! We’re boring slobs, and now I don’t even smoke anymore,’ she said as we clambered into one of her father’s Range Rovers, where Ray was waiting to drive us back.

  Just then, Tiger and one of his friends pulled up beside us on their quad bikes.

  ‘Coming for a quick rage round the ranch, babes?’ Tiger called out to us over the roar of the engines.

  We looked at one another, left our bags with Ray and jumped on the back of the bikes. I got on with Tiger and held on to his leather jacket tightly as we pelted at breathtaking speed out into the fields across the streams and trout-filled river, through the woods and rocky crags. The wheels churned up mud, splattering our clothes, our faces and our hair. Tiger’s friend rode beside us with Star. Even though we’d ridden the quad bikes on our own at the same breathtaking speed, we screamed and screamed and screamed like terrified children.

  An hour later, caked in wet mud, we climbed into the Range Rover. I felt soooo deliriously happy, like a child coming off a fairground ride. I looked at Star, but instead of saying something relatable like ‘Wow!’ she said, ‘Why don’t you like Indie?’ in the tone of voice you might use if you were asking why someone didn’t like Brussels sprouts. Ray shut our door, and Star fumbled around to find the seat belt.

  ‘I don’t hate Indie,’ I said with a little too much force. After all, I didn’t hate Indie. How could anyone hate Indie? It was just that unlike me, she was so much like Star. They both loved their minor chord compositions, they were both brave and fearless, they were both self-possessed and cool.

  ‘Good,’ she agreed with an edge of warning to her voice. ‘It would really piss me off if you did.’ Then she gave my hand a squeeze as if everything was okay.

  EIGHTEEN:

  A New Kind of Enemy

  Back at school, the teachers ratcheted up the pressure another notch. But that was cool because with all the GSCE course work I didn’t even have the time to monitor my lack of txt messages. My parents relied on e-mails to communicate, and the rest of my friends were here with me at school, so apart from Billy and Freddie there was no one left to txt me. Still it was dispiriting, especially when Portia’s message alert was going off incessantly.

  The longer I left it to patch things up with her the worse it became. I knew that, but I avoided the issue by hanging out in Star, Georgina and Indie’s room.

  I didn’t want to make an enemy out of Portia, I really didn’t. I’d never had an enemy like Portia before. Honey, now, she was my idea of an enemy. Lady Portia Herrington Briggs, though, was far too magisterial to express her feelings about someone as lowly as me.

  The most powerful weapon Portia had in her arsenal was my own guilt, and that included how I felt about the photo of her family by her bed. Every time I looked at that photograph I wanted to make up. Even without the reminder of her loss, I actually liked Portia and I desperately wanted to sort things out with her. Before finding out that she was going to the ball with Freddie, we’d become close friends. But like I said, that was then.

  Her wariness hovered over me like a cloud, darkening my every waking hour. The worst thing about it was that she wasn’t even a bitch towards me. She remained civil and decent to a fault, which was much harder to bear than Honey’s open nastiness. I’d never done anything mean to Honey, but I was totally responsible for Portia’s wariness of me. I could have sorted it all out with a simple apology, but I was too jealous and bent out of shape over Freddie to do even that. Especially as day after day, my mobile remained silent and hers merrily rang and beeped with messages.

  Indie and Portia barely mentioned the ball again – only insomuch as it meant they couldn’t attend Star’s house party and what a bore it all was, but how at least they’d have each other. But as far as I was concerned, the Annual Euro Royal Bash Thingamee was still there, just like Portia’s title, just like her dislike of me, a constant niggling reminder that I would and could never be like her or part of her world, which, when it came down to it, was Freddie’s world too.

  Freddie might like me, and I really think he did, but he was a prince, and I was an American nobody. Unlike Indie, I was as close to being a nobody as he was ever likely to meet. I was like a random stranger trying on the glass slipper. ‘Close, but not close enough,’ the Prince’s enquiries would say.

  As I lay in my bed night after night with Honey smoking herself stupid with the fake weed on one side of me, and Portia serenely reading on the other, I waited for my txt alert to sound. Checking I had a signal every few minutes, I finally convinced myself that Freddie probably only liked me for my wild-child Hollywood credentials – and even they were fake. I was about as wild as my pet rabbit, Dorothy, whose most reckless act to date was dropping her lettuce in her water.

  ‘Many txts from Freddie and Billy today, darling?’ Honey kept asking, sometimes even adding, ‘It must be hard for Billy.’

  ‘What?’

>   ‘Well, I expect you are going to the Royal Bore with Freddie, darling,’ she said breezily, even though she knew as well as anyone else that I wasn’t.

  ‘Oh, that’s right, I keep forgetting, he’s going with Portia isn’t he,’ she’d add. ‘Silly Honey.’

  Then one evening when Honey and I were alone and Portia was having a shower, Honey remarked, ‘Portia and Freddie seem pretty tight now.’

  I flicked a page of Nun of Your Business as if I was actually reading it and replied nonchalantly, ‘Really? Why do you say that?’ Then I flicked another page just to punctuate the point that I wasn’t the least bit interested in Freddie and Portia. The magazine, now run by the Year Tens, had gone downhill, and I was considering speaking to Sister Constance about it. It was meant to be a satirical look at Saint Augustine’s school life but had become a boring gossip rag. Oh my god, was I turning into Ms Topler, our English teacher, complaining about the state of modern-day writing?

  Honey turned to face me, blew a billowing stream of smoke rings and smiled. ‘Well, they’re txt-ing one another like mad. I imagined you would have noticed?’

  Then, as if set off by satanic forces, Portia’s txt message alert went off. She was still in the en suite, and Honey wasted no time in grabbing the mobile. I didn’t even bother to stop her. For one, Honey isn’t the sort of girl you rein in, and secondly, I was madly curious as she opened the message and shrieked, ‘Oh, look, Calypso, it’s from Freddie.’

  She passed it over to me to read for myself in case I didn’t believe her. I didn’t want to believe her, and there were a thousand reasons why I shouldn’t. It’s not as if Honey has a close relationship with the truth, after all. So I ignored her offer and turned another page of the Nun. I began scanning an article I had written about fencing in a transparent attempt to suck up to Bell End, forcing myself to ignore the prickling sensation in my hand, which was itching to grab the phone and read the txt for myself.

  ‘Oh my god, darling, you have to read it now, it mentions you!’ she urged.

  I looked her in the eye as she sucked hard on the last of her faux weed fag. She must have sensed my weakening conscience because the next thing I knew, the phone was thrust in my hand and my magazine was cast to the floor. Honey was right; if it was about me, I had every right to read it!

  Can you tell Calypso …

  But before I could scroll down further to read the rest of it, the phone was snatched from my hand.

  I looked up and saw the look of hatred on Portia’s face.

  She didn’t say anything. She wouldn’t. She merely placed her mobile on the bedside table next to the photograph of her family, plugged in her hair dryer, and started drying the wet tentacles of her long black hair.

  My face was burning. No, not with shame, not with guilt at reading another girl’s txt message, but with fury, because all the half-formed suspicions I’d been harbouring about Portia and Freddie now seemed fully warranted.

  ‘I believe you have a message for me from Freddie,’ I told her, raising my voice above her turbo dryer.

  Portia carried on drying her hair in front of the mirror as she replied quietly, ‘As you appeared to have read it yourself, I deleted it.’

  Honey was lying on the bed, flicking through the social pages of the latest Tatler, looking for photographs of herself.

  I winced. ‘I didn’t actually get a chance to read the whole thing,’ I admitted as I began to acknowledge how wrong my behaviour actually was. Say sorry, say sorry, say sorry, my better self pleaded with my wicked self. But I couldn’t apologise. I folded my arms and gave her a filthy look.

  Portia eventually turned to me and, smiling serenely, said, ‘Perhaps it would be better if you spoke to Freddie yourself, Calypso?’

  I flopped on my bed. That was the whole point. I couldn’t call Freddie to whine about only half reading a txt he hadn’t sent to me. Portia knew that. I guess it was the toff equivalent of telling me to lock myself up in the Tower of London and throw away the key.

  NINETEEN:

  When Your Obsessions Become Obsessive, a Nemesis Can Prove Very Handy

  I didn’t tell Star I’d peeped at Portia’s message when she dumped her books in the booth beside mine during study period later the next evening. Star’s jaundiced feelings about Freddie were one thing; her feelings about me sneaking a look at Portia’s private messages from him would be another matter entirely.

  At boarding school, you might share makeup, sweets, fags, phone listens and messages, but you didn’t just help yourself to other people’s phones without asking. I was in the wrong and I knew it and I didn’t need anyone else to point it out to me – especially my best friend. So I sat in my study booth, poring over my Latin books as if I cared deeply about conjugations of verbs.

  Honey felt differently about sharing my shame. I reddened as I heard her telling Georgina, ‘Did Calypso tell you, she stole Portia’s phone and read a message from Freddie telling Portia to tell her …’

  That was the end of my focus. The examiners may as well fail me now, I decided, as my face went through every shade of red before finally settling on a nasty shade of heliotrope.

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ I protested.

  Star looked disgusted. ‘Calypso?’

  ‘Look, Honey showed me a message which was about me, and then Portia walked in and …’ That was as far as I got because Portia actually did walk in then and heard herself being discussed.

  I fled the scene and went into the computer room because I was about to burst into tears. I was struggling with my course work, at war with my closest fencing partner, and had no idea if I had a boyfriend or not. I decided a bit of self-pity was in order, but the teacher in the computer room didn’t agree. She told me to get back and do my study, so I did, only this time I sat amongst another group of girls from my year and logged on to my laptop to see if I had any e-mails from my parents.

  Unlike the other parents, who send postcards and letters, Bob and Sarah don’t believe in snail mail, so I have to settle for e-mails. Essentially this means I have nothing from my family to pin on my pin board, which makes me look like an unloved child.

  I was feeling very unloved at that moment.

  But there wasn’t an e-mail from Bob or Sarah – well there was, but I didn’t look at it, because right underneath there was one from Freddie.

  Dear Calypso, given your resolute refusal to respond to my txt messages, voice mails and phone calls this week, I am giving you the opportunity to communicate with me by e-mail. F.

  This set my mind racing. Freddie was trying to contact me. Maybe the problem wasn’t him? Maybe it wasn’t even me? Maybe it was my bloody ancient brick of a phone? I started typing rapidly.

  I’m sorry but I didn’t get any messages, I began to type, before immediately deleting it, deeming the message too seriously tragic. I tried again, but Soz darling … was also deleted. It sounded soooo Honey. In the end I settled on:

  Sorry, I am a wicked girl also I think my phone might be fruuped. x C

  He e-mailed me back immediately. He was online, I was online. If this wasn’t fate, I didn’t know what it was.

  Sorry about my previous engagement, I really would have rather gone to the La Fiesta Ball with you but there is no way I can get out of this. I promise, I would if I could.

  Best,

  Freds

  And I knew it was cheeky, but I immediately e-mailed back:

  In that case, any chance you can take a date to this Euro Royal Bash Thingamee? xx C

  I pressed ENTER before I could reconsider and an answer came straight back.

  Can I come back to you on that? It’s not that simple. I’ll see you at fencing Monday anyway, we can talk then, Freds.

  Two things stood out.

  1) He hadn’t sent me a kiss in either e-mail (note: I had sent him two!).

  2) He had used the special nickname I had given him.

  There was no way I was going to be able to concentrate on my course work now. I
logged off without even reading Sarah and Bob’s e-mail.

  I was half expecting what happened next. After lights out, when Portia and Honey were both asleep – actually even I was fast asleep – Star snuck into my room and woke me up.

  ‘I’m really worried about you, Calypso,’ she said as I made room for her under the covers. ‘Don’t you think this problem you’ve got with Portia is becoming, well … a bit insane?’

  Even though I thought she was right, I replied, ‘Not at all.’ And then to change the subject, I added. ‘Freddie e-mailed me tonight.’

  ‘Look, Calypso, maybe he does like you, maybe he doesn’t, the point is you do have other things in your life.’

  ‘I don’t understand what happened that day in Windsor. Freddie and I were really getting on well,’ I told her.

  ‘You mean because you shared a pizza with him?’ Star reasoned, her tone dripping with cynicism. I hadn’t told her about our kiss nor the txts I’d received when we were on exeat in Derbyshire.

  ‘The point is, as soon as I left, he met up with Portia and shared a pizza with her.’

  ‘Quelle horreur!’ she cried out silently, throwing her hands to her cheeks in mock shock. ‘That a boy might share two pizzas in one day!’

  ‘Seriously, Star! Is he just mucking about with me or does he think of me as a mate? And this sending messages to Portia about me – it’s all so demeaning. If he wants to give me a message why doesn’t he give it to me himself?’

  ‘You just told me that he e-mailed you.’

  ‘Yaah, but there were no kisses on the end.’

  ‘Mmmm. It’s a tough one. The only person who can help you though is Freddie, so unless you’re prepared to confront him personally you’ve got to drop this thing with Portia. It’s not her fault and she’s got enough to deal with, don’t you think?’