by Mark Helprin
Fredericka had been running her finger over the carpet, tracing a pattern in the way children do when they have learnt something overwhelming and are moved, but cannot say so. Freddy expected her to look up, with tears, and that in this moment she might have begun the long and arduous process of becoming a queen. She was so beautiful. To embrace her now, with high emotion flowing from her physical majesty, was all he wanted in the world. Her finger stopped moving, and she turned her eyes to him.
“Freddy?”
“Yes?” he answered.
“What’s raw egg? I read a recipe in She that called for a cup of raw egg. What is that?”
After a long silence, Freddy asked, “Which part of the formulation escapes you? Egg? Raw? The link between the two?”
“The two what?”
“Fredericka?”
“Yes, Freddy?”
“Would you like to go dancing?”
“Oh, yes, Freddy!”
“Come, then. We will.”
THOUGH FREDERICKA did not seem . . . rapier-minded, Freddy had from time to time been unsettled by her mysterious ability to come up with instantaneous answers to the most arcane questions. For example, once, she was doing her nails (checking them, actually: she had legions of nail-doers) while Freddy was flipping through the television channels. Thinking to irritate her, he settled on a university courses programme in which a professor of mathematics, who looked like an insect with a lot of hair, asked one of his students to write on the board the Cauchy Integral. “That’s easy,” said Fredericka, without looking up, “∫c f(z) dz = 2πi ∑.” The student wrote exactly that.
Stunned, Freddy asked, “Have you seen this programme before?”
“I don’t think so, Freddy. It’s a live broadcast and I don’t have a time machine.”
“Then how did you know?”
“Know what?”
“That integral.”
“I don’t know. It just seemed obvious.”
Perhaps she was protected by angels. Probably they had been with her all her life, and were the agents that had delivered her to the Prince of Wales. The logic of angels is not always apparent. At first, he loved her—as one can love paintings, views, or houses—purely in response to her ravishing beauty, which was such as to suggest that she might have elicited the protection of angels because she had once been one of them, before falling away by accident, plummeting to earth, and bumping her head. Had she been injured in any other way she might have done well enough on her own, but an angel who strikes her head must be attended at every moment, and this is what the other angels did.
Because he had eyes, Freddy knew she was exquisite, but he underestimated the rest of her continually and to his detriment. He was fairly sure that she would quickly alienate the press and, through it, the public, and for this reason be forced to see her position in a light closer to that which illumined his own, which would bring her closer to him as she deepened in spirit and intellect. That, with Lady Boylingehotte on the side, would have been perfect. The thing about Lady Boylingehotte—Phoebe—that he could not do without was that she was crazed with lust for him, as Fredericka and the rest of the world were not. Too many more years of this and he would be dead, so he envisioned that when he was in his late fifties and Lady Boylingehotte had reached sixty, they would cut their throbbing engines and coast quietly through the rest of their lives as friends or acquaintances, and that, after he had given her a plumper title and some lands out of gratitude for their many decades of molten couplings, she would not write a book. He thought that even at sixty she might be quite fetching, what with modern creams, injections, surgery, diet, and spas. Fredericka, because of her unique and splendorous constitution—Freddy had once described it as more impressive than the Constitution of the United States—probably would not have to revert to such things until her middle seventies, and then who knew what would happen, or to what measures she might resort, she who thought that the best remedy for asthma was roast beef, osteoporosis was an island in Greece, and stuttering could be cured, as she delicately put it, “by fucking.” (Freddy had made sure that he and not she had become the patron of the League of Scottish Stutterers.)
Despite her lack of medical knowledge, Fredericka did not, however, alienate either press or public. Say what she would, it would pass through the invisible trumpets of angels. In fact, this was getting to be a problem not only for Freddy but for all the Finneys, who, with the possible exception of the queen, were not protected by angels.
One autumn afternoon almost a year before Craig-Vyvyan met Craig-Vyvyan on Skye, the Prince of Wales was in his offices at St James’s Palace at work on a study of the philosophy of history. Unlike most academics or public intellectuals, who in his view were just glorified peasants, he had no need to write, and did so only because of his genuine interest, which, in shining through, afforded him great advantage. Nonetheless, those whom he threatened professionally linked their pitchforks and viciously attacked him, but he relished it because it was a fight with consequences.
The sun was weak and the traffic of London sounded like surf or wind. How he loved it when an electric lamp shone in a room just on the edge of darkness, for then the light was mobile, its condition like a sunrise or sunset, the relative strengths of room light and lamplight changing in infinite gradation, at first the lamplight unneeded and then the only thing left, having become a sun. It was four o’clock, just at the point of balance after which the war of the lights would intensify.
He was dressed in high riding boots, khakis, a military sweater, and brown velour tie. That morning as London awoke to tabloid layouts of Fredericka resplendent in blue, in images that stopped pedestrians and held them in place, he had run, ridden, and swum. He was as fit as, indeed fitter than, the soldiers half his age who stood outside his open windows to protect him from terrorists. Surrounded by books, dark wood, and richly coloured works of art, he was in his princely element, and had forgotten that his head was wrapped in a bandage and his arm was resting in a sling. At polo just two hours before, Sir Battiscombe Finwit had backhanded his mallet far too high and struck the Prince of Wales in the temple, knocking him from his horse. “At least,” Freddy had told Sir Battiscombe, “you generously granted the gash on my head the companionship of the sprain in my arm.” He carried these wounds with some pride, but because he thought it unmanly to look in mirrors and hardly ever did so, he did not know that they profoundly affected his appearance.
When she was young, his mother had been beautiful in her way, and had chosen his father, as Freddy would eventually choose Fredericka, by sight. Though these two had collided as Venus and Mars, they had produced an asteroid. Freddy was strapping, strong, and lean. Due to his many years of tortured thought and iron physical discipline, his face showed almost as much martial character as his father’s, and he was exceedingly graceful, in the royal way, in movement and expression, even if half of it was attributable to the simple trick of standing with one’s hands behind one’s back, the left hand loosely clasping the index and middle fingers of the right, accompanied by a barely perceptible three-degree lean forward. His presence overall was striking, and yet, an asteroid is an asteroid.
Though much obscured by character and resolution, the shape of his face was very like a potato. His eyes were miraculously close together—he could not use binoculars, because they did not fold in enough—and his ears, as immense as Pacific atolls, were, in shape, potato-like echoes of his face. Though sincere and endearing, his smile emphasised the spiny ridge of his nose. His was without doubt a most wonderful face, thoroughly endowed with kindness and character, but, nonetheless, on the day he was born God blessed the cartoonists.
One can always compensate, and he did, with the best haircut in London and clothing that fit with divine perfection. But with the bandage covering up his hair except for a sheaf-like tuft that spilled over the top, and the sling breaking the noble fall of his raiments, he presented quite a picture. One of his guards, using a nickname for h
im derived from his title, said quietly to another who had just joined him at the street entrance, “Have you seen Moby-Dick?”
“Have I seen him? I was just in there for two hours while he was writing his bloody article on Gibbon. He read parts of it to me and asked what I thought. ‘Your Royal Highness, I don’t know much about Gibbon.’ ‘Yes, but what do you think of the writing?’ ‘I think it’s beautiful, sir, very noble.’ Jesus Christ.”
“But have you seen him?”
“Of course I’ve seen him.”
“He looks like he just got off the barricades of the French Revolution.”
“You mean because of that thing on his head?”
“Yes.”
“He does, doesn’t he. But I think he looks more like that bloke Alfred E. Newman.”
“Is that the new Serjeant-Major of the Greys?”
“No, the American.”
“Who’s that?” A passer-by halted and put up his hands. “No, no. Keep going,” said the soldier, waving his HK.
“He’s in the magazine.”
“What magazine?”
“I’ll bring some in and leave them in the ammunition locker.”
“Has it got naked girls?”
The other soldier paused, and a smile crept across his face. “So to speak,” he said.
Up in the office the prince’s revery was cut short by the ringing of his private telephone. Probably Fredericka, he thought, wanting to know if she can waste another ten thousand pounds on a dress. Just as peasants are always yelling and screaming, Fredericka is always buying clothes.
“Hello?” he said, pulling himself away from a fifteen-clause sentence on the theological implications of Empire.
“Freddy?”
“Yes?”
“It’s Fredericka.”
“I know.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m working.”
“On what?”
“Gibbon.”
“The monkey? What do you mean, ‘working on him’? Are you giving him a massage?”
“No, I’m not giving him a massage, and it’s the other Gibbon.”
“The designer? He’s so out.”
“The historian.”
“Oh, I didn’t know there was one. We should have him to tea. Listen, Freddy, I know that you don’t like to do things on short notice, but a courier just brought over an urgent request from the Royal Historical Society. They’d like us to do an event.”
“When?”
“This evening.”
“This evening!” He looked at the clock. “It’s four-thirty.”
“It would be at seven. Do you have something to change into?”
“Say no.”
“I couldn’t. I’ve already accepted.”
“You’ve what?”
“I said yes.”
“Why didn’t you ask me? How do you know what my plans are?”
“I looked at your schedule.”
“Where?” He didn’t believe her.
“On your computer.”
“You don’t know how to operate it.”
“I just turned on the switch and started the honky disk drive, and then it showed a picture of what looked like a pork cutlet and asked me a lot of questions.”
“No. You don’t know the password.”
“I guessed it.”
“Really?” he asked, convinced that she hadn’t. “What is it?”
“Hippopotamus Boy.”
“How did you do that?”
“It just came to me. You had nothing for tonight, so I said yes.”
“What is it?” Freddy asked, resigned.
“It’s a symposium on Samuel Pepys” (which she pronounced not Peeps, but Peppies) “and they’ve asked me to give the main speech.”
“You? Not me?”
“Uh-huh, but they wanted you to be there, of course. All the press will be there, especially on account of the chairman of the RHS dying this morning. That’s why such short notice.”
“Lord Pipstoke is dead?”
“Totally. Heart attack. It’s his memorial, so I couldn’t say no.”
“But surely you’re mistaken. They want me to give the address.”
“No, me. It says so right here.” She began to read.
“I understand,” he interrupted. “Very well, I shall see you at the RHS at seven.”
“Not at the RHS, at the Natural History Museum, on the Mammal Balcony.”
“On the Mammal Balcony at the NHM?” Freddy asked. “You know that will bring up complications.”
“Yes, but it has a wonderful blue floor that goes with my eyes. I said we would do it only if they moved it there, and they agreed. Go in through the main entrance, then push on through dinosaurs, reptiles, and fish.”
“What about dinner?”
“I’ve made reservations afterward at La Bonne Hottentote.”
“I don’t like eating little pieces of African snakes in mauve-coloured sauce,” Freddy said.
“They’re very healthy. Snakes are rich in anti-oxidants, and their venom reduces polyponimides and other forms of industrial pollution that cause wrinkles and cancer. And tonight they have fringe theatre.”
“Oh God,” said Freddy. She was winning every battle.
“Freddy, I do have a problem.”
“Dearest?”
“I’ve been doing a lot of public speaking, although just a few lines each time, and the press loves it.”
“I know.”
“I’m quite confident that I can do this well, but I don’t know a thing about Samuel Pepys [Peppies]. I’ve never heard of him.”
“I see,” said Freddy, eyes shifting rapidly. It was too good to be true.
“You must know about him, being a historian and all. Could you fill me in, so I don’t have to look in the encyclopaedia? They’re so heavy. I’m sure just five minutes will be enough.”
AFTER BRIEFING Fredericka on Pepys not for five minutes but fifteen, Freddy rang off and rather rapidly slipped into a kind of euphoria. Only Napoleon could actually work when euphoric. Freddy, like everyone else, was distracted from his labours by the feelings of pure joy that took hold of him and would not let go. For an hour or so he tried to work on Gibbon, but was distracted by his own chortling.
Staring as if into the distance, he thought painlessly for the first time of Fredericka’s glorious press coverage—the whole world had fallen in love with her: she could do no wrong—and contrasted it with his own. In the public mind, one of her smiles or one of her strapless gowns was worth a decade of his study and reflection. In fact, he was mocked by the press for being too private, too serious, too studious, and too grave, while she never failed to carry everyone after her as if on a rising wave. Half the planet was mesmerised by her breasts alone. He, of course, did not have breasts as such, not female breasts anyway, and even if he had, he would not have contrived with couturiers to have them carried in front of him half naked as if riding on a tray.
Little did it or they matter any more. The honeymoon was about to end, and if it would do so on the Mammal Balcony, so be it. She probably had chosen the Mammal Balcony not only because the carpet matched her eyes but to embarrass him. Freddy, who had many ideas that he was able to realise solely because he was the Prince of Wales, had long objected to the fact that most books are about mammals. Not an ideological complaint by any means, his object was to protest uniformity. So, in his late twenties, he had proposed to a publisher that he become the general editor of a series of books not about mammals, and because his offer had arrived on stationery with purple plumes, this had come to pass. In every bookstore in the United Kingdom one could see displayed the Not About Mammals series, edited by HRH The Prince of Wales. The first sentence of his general introduction read: “Though the volume that follows is by a mammal, it is not about a mammal, and a jolly good thing, too.”
Now he was about to claim his due, on, of all places, the Mammal Balcony. Inexplicably, this, too, elated h
im. In fact, he was so euphoric as he dressed that, like Napoleon invading Russia, he lost track of what he was doing. Not wanting to take his arm out of the sling, he threw on what he thought was a tartan robe, but which actually was a car shawl that said Schweppes in bright orange letters now hanging across his back. He whipped off the velour tie and quickly tied on the bow tie of one of his regiments. As he had taken it from the cupboard, another bow tie had come down with it in a tangle. This he threw behind his back to disregard, but rather than flying onto the shelf it hit the wall, bounced forward, and landed on top of his head, its weight borne by the bandage and unperceived. It was a fat, Churchillian, polka-dotted butterfly, and it now rested in the tuft of his hair potted and sheaved upward by the head wrap. Its two polka-dotted leads trailed behind him like pigtails; but, of course, he didn’t know this.
He thought that now, to hit the nail on the head, he would play a little of her game, bending a little her way as she went down. Wherever she went she was followed by fashion critics, all of whom dismissed his mode of dress as hopelessly staid, military, and boring. But not this time. This time he would liven things up by adding to what he believed to be his otherwise unremarkable costume two armbands of animal bones given to him on his last tour of Africa. This little touch would be his subtle bend in the direction of her bare bosom.
When he went out to his car, neither the guards nor the driver said anything. They assumed he was off to a fancy dress party, where he would once again be the recipient of the “Extremely Strange and Dowdy” prize. “To the Natural History Museum,” he told his corporal.
“Yes, sir.”
Halfway there, Freddy wondered if perhaps he should do without the bones. “Do you think these are too much?” he asked the driver, rattling them.
“Not in view of the overall context, Your Royal Highness,” the driver responded.
Freddy thought he was referring to the Natural History Museum. “Exactly!” he said, confidence soaring.
As he walked through the museum halls he thought he must have looked sharp indeed, because people were even more shocked by his presence than usual, and stopped short. “Splendid,” he said to himself under his breath. “This is my moment.”