by Mark Helprin
THOUGH IMPRESSED by Freddy’s and Fredericka’s presence, and by Freddy’s knowledge of things like map reading and the staging of firefighting crews (which was similar to deploying infantry), Lucia was suspicious. When queried about the operation of the military radio, Freddy had said, “I’ve been using this for years: I have one in my American helicopter.”
“I don’t understand that,” Lucia said. “I don’t understand that construction.”
Periodically Freddy was unable to speak, drawn as if by a tide to Lucia’s ineluctable beauty. She had mistakenly worn a single gold bracelet—with her sapphires, which stopped the clocks—and Freddy could not take his eyes off of it as it bounced gently near her extraordinarily beautiful hands. With Freddy temporarily speechless, Fredericka jumped in to answer Lucia’s question. “You’ve heard of Doctors With Wings?” she asked, thinking of an Australian television programme, aired in Britain during her youth, about medicine in the Outback.
“No,” Lucia answered, under the impression that Fredericka was alluding to people with wings.
“Not everyone saw it,” Fredericka went on, further puzzling Lucia. “It was on Gorilla,” Didgeridoo’s independent station broadcast from a gorilla-shaped blimp moored over Pangbourne, “and Didgeridoo is partial, of course.”
Lucia was completely lost. “Of course,” she said. “Didgeridoo is partial. Why didn’t that occur to me?”
“We’re dentists,” Fredericka continued, “and Ahlahbahmah has so many on the dole that no one in the place can afford a motor. In our entire town we have only a Belisha or two. So, to get to our patients, we have helicopters. Most are Brazilian or Japanese, but one is American. That’s what Freddy meant. Isn’t it, Desi?”
“Indeed,” said Freddy.
“Where did you go to dentistry school?” Lucia asked.
Thinking that she was trying to trap him, Freddy thought of a place that he knew and she probably would not. “The University of New Guinea,” he said.
“New Guinea?”
“Yes.”
“They have a dental school?”
“Why not? They have teeth. It’s absolutely first class, too. You get to practise on macaques, who stay very still after the banana liqueur enemas administered by the Anti-Fox-Hunting League in off-target practice of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”
“Shut up, Freddy, this is not the place.”
“Well they should,” Freddy said, forgetting about Lucia, “the bloody self-righteous prigs. They eat beef, chicken, lamb, pork, and fish, and then they throw eggs at Mummy’s train. Does that make sense?” he asked, turning to Lucia.
“I really can’t tell,” Lucia said. “Did you go to dental school in New Guinea as well?” she asked Fredericka.
“Yes,” Fredericka answered, somewhat apprehensively.
Realising that Fredericka had not been to New Guinea, Freddy determined instantly the most exotic country she knew passably well, and said, “No, Popeel, you went to dental school in Egypt.”
“Egypt?” Fredericka asked, in surprise.
“Yes. You remember. In Cairo, at Forshaatu Asnan University.”
“I did?”
Freddy nodded.
Attempting to deal with this, Fredericka said, “I did graduate work there, Freddy. My undergraduate dental degree was somewhere else.”
“Where?” Lucia asked.
“Burma,” Freddy answered.
“Burma?” Fredericka asked. “Are you mad?”
“That must have been my first wife,” Freddy said, which precipitated an argument between the two of them, during which they called one another Desi, Freddy, Popeel, and Fredericka, and referred to smouldering resentments and half-forgotten things. “At Moocock,” Freddy said, “every time you toasted my bap it came out of the Aga looking like a piece of anthra.” At the end of half a dozen completely mysterious impassioned tirades, they remembered that they were not alone, and Fredericka turned to Lucia to ask, “Have we offended you?”
“No,” said Lucia. “You haven’t offended me.”
“Right,” said Freddy, continuing a previous comment that, to Lucia, had been incomprehensible. “Why don’t they just leave us alone? Even when you go to the beach they use five-thousand-millimetre lenses to get close-ups of you that are so blurry they make you look like a cross between Isadora Duncan and Hosni Mubarak. You try to say the right thing at the right time, and they distort it to make it seem as if you’re insane.”
“That’s right,” said Lucia, edgily, “they do.” Then she laughed nervously, and asked, “Who are they?”
“To hell with them,” Freddy said. “Would you like to stay for dinner? We’re going to shish-kebab some smoked mutton. It’s been marinating in duck urine.” Duck urine was what Freddy had always called white wine even if other people didn’t. In restaurants, he often stunned sommeliers, who, not wanting to offend or contradict the Prince of Wales, would sidestep the query, “We’ll be drinking duck urine tonight, can you suggest a good one?”
Lucia explained that she could not remain away from her tower that evening, but invited them to come to her at the end of the week. They accepted.
Fredericka sensed that this was dangerous. Freddy had been lost in Lucia’s eyes and she in his, although both had attempted to avert their gazes (which made them seem particularly awkward even though both had inborn grace). The next step, as sometimes could happen with royalty (at least with Henry VIII), would be a Freddy-Lucia marriage, and Fredericka would be left alone with his child, the advent of which she knew but he did not. Even had he been more observant than he was, it would have made no difference. In school he had been sick during the unit on the female reproductive system (the source of a number of his problems, such as the famous television interview in which he had expressed shock that he did not have a uterus). Perhaps had Fredericka not been with child she would not have had the fortitude to recognise that Freddy was in fact falling in love with Lucia, and to do something about it.
Although Lucia had long before disqualified herself from love, and knew that Freddy was married, she walked back to Centennial Six as if God had forgotten to create gravity, with her heart full and each inhalation of mountain air an intoxication. She knew that nothing would come of it, but she was in love with Freddy, because, among other things, she felt that he could see her for what she was.
And as for Freddy, his thoughts in the days and nights that followed, in clear sunshine and beneath processions of stars, were complicated and painful. What if he took her as a mistress? That was always possible for kings, except that Fredericka had laid down the law about such things and would be a savagely possessive queen. And except that, unlike many kings (for whom women were nothing more than were cars or horses) and like the great-uncle they had always warned him about, Freddy was one to fall in love. He almost enjoyed the war within him between duty and passion, but not quite. And passion and duty notwithstanding, he knew that Fredericka would win, but he didn’t know how.
At Lucia’s, Freddy and Lucia often found themselves locked in the oblivious-of-the-world-young-courting-couple gaze, the Launcelot-and-Guenevere trance, the Tristan-and-Isolde longing, and whatever else it is. Fredericka appreciated the delicacy of what she was about to shatter, and though she empathised deeply with Lucia, she did not regret that she was going to win the battle.
During a dinner of fresh brook trout that was taken from an olive-oil-and-wild-berry marinade directly into a glowing sear pan, and then served with wild salad and new potatoes, Freddy was his most charming self. His anecdotes about horses alone were captivating enough, but when the subject turned to painting, his passion and erudition were irresistible. All her life, as Fredericka had not, Lucia had read. To her, Freddy—the physical Freddy, the completely unself-conscious Freddy, the unbelievably gauche Freddy, the brilliant and learned Freddy, the inexplicably self-assured Freddy with his striking peculiarities and traits—was the end of loneliness, the salvation of her line, her last chance for love and life,
because, somehow, as if he were a king, he could approach her with confidence that she had never seen in any man except in an egomaniac, which Freddy was not.
“Freddy,” Fredericka told her husband, “why don’t you go up to the roof and look at the sky while Lucia and I clean up, and we’ll call you for dessert.”
“Oh, I can do it,” Lucia said, noting that Fredericka had called him Freddy again.
“I’ll help,” Freddy volunteered.
“No,” Fredericka said. “We’ll do it. You go to the roof.”
After Freddy had left, Lucia and Fredericka cleared the table in total silence, hardly looking at one another. When the dishes were done, Lucia looked up, and that is when Fredericka said, “Will you sit down for a moment so that we may speak?”
Lucia nodded, half in shame and half in sadness, knowing that what had not even begun was now at an end. She thought that Fredericka would flay her, but Fredericka, whose heart was of great capacity, and who had always in all incarnations known how to love, had no such intention. She grasped both of Lucia’s hands. Lucia was moved by that alone. “You are obviously a fine woman,” Fredericka said. “I have no animus for you. Everything I believe and feel tells me that you deserve what your heart desires. And if,” Fredericka continued, “if I were gone, I would be happy to see you with my husband, bearing his children, sharing his throne.”
Lucia looked up sharply. Still holding her hands, Fredericka said, “Yes, we are who you think we are, and I am carrying a child, recently conceived in the dust next to a railway track, a child who, I believe, is a boy, and who will be a king of England in his own time. Of a long and great line that even if imperfect has lasted a thousand years, two kings are here tonight. Assuming that all comes right in the end, you will have received two princes, a princess, a queen, and two kings.”
“That sounds like a poker hand,” Lucia said, laughing, as a tear dropped onto her cheek.
“It does, doesn’t it? The strange forms on playing cards, that people find so familiar and yet so offputting, are our family portraits. Kings. And queens,” Fredericka said, most sadly. “It is said that monarchy is no longer of any import, and that when it was, it was an injustice. Perhaps. But I believe in and credit the heart of man, and for a thousand years the heart of man has kept and created kings, who, when they were not selfish oppressors, have borne the burdens of their countries and often sacrificed themselves. My husband, though selfish from the ignorance of having been born to be king, is no oppressor,” she said. “There may come a time yet when Britain may need a king once more, as in the war not so long ago when a great king, despite and perhaps because of his modesty and simplicity, helped to focus the soul of the nation upon the essential task of survival.” She stopped there.
Lucia was hardly sure that all this was true, but the more it settled in, the more she realised that, as unlikely as it was, it was true, and that her first suspicions had been correct. Heartbroken, she had nonetheless been fulfilled, for the royal work was to direct attention, including the king’s, to duty, process, and the slow unfurling of history.
“It is true, isn’t it?” Lucia asked, not unmoved.
Fredericka nodded gently and briefly closed her eyes.
SITTING IN SWEATERS and wind shells, with much appreciated mugs of hot tea cradled in their hands, Freddy and Fredericka listened to the mountain wind rise and pass through the steel girders of Centennial Seven. They were just cold enough to be intently aware of what kept them warm, and to look forward to going to bed. They had dimmed the light, because a sweep was coming up and their eyes had to grow accustomed to darkness.
On the way back from Centennial Six, Freddy had been at his most dog-like and transparent. Fredericka had seen more than her share of men become that way when they were infatuated. She took a sip of tea. “Freddy?” she asked.
“Yes?”
“Something didn’t happen that was supposed to happen.”
He looked at her blankly.
“Well?” she asked, knowing that he was ordinarily quick of mind.
“Well what?”
“It didn’t happen!” she shouted, but, then, remembering her purpose, calmed.
“What didn’t happen, Fredericka?”
“Don’t you know?”
“Am I supposed to know?”
“You should.”
“Was it connected to world events?” he asked as if she had engaged him in yet another game of Twenty Questions.
“Yes, actually,” she said, not wanting to play but unable not to.
“Was it a threatened invasion that did not materialise?”
“No,” she replied, barely audible.
“Did Russia default on its debt?”
“No, Freddy,” Fredericka answered quietly. “It’s something that happens every month, and it didn’t happen.”
He thought. And he thought on. He talked to himself in a kind of buzzing. He counted on his fingers. Then he looked up. “The meeting of the Royal Historical Society?”
“No.”
“It’s the greyhound races, isn’t it?”
“No, Freddy, it has to do with us.”
“It’s not a banking matter, is it? Anyway, in our situation, how could you know? With us, with us. What?”
“I didn’t have my period.” She was moved, for she had just told her husband that his line would continue, and hers. Theirs. Heirs.
“Does that happen, sometimes?”
“No, it doesn’t happen, sometimes.”
“I see. Well, perhaps you’ll get two the next time.”
“Two the next time?” she repeated in astonishment. “Don’t you know what it means?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know about those things. Why should I? I trust you to take care of them. I don’t burden you about my prostatitis from jumping with a full load, do I?”
“Is that obscene?”
“You see? A full combat load. In a fast descent in hostile conditions, striking the ground with the weight of weapons and stores in addition to one’s own weight puts a great deal of sudden pressure on the bladder, which, because you can’t use the WC whenever you want while you’re waiting to get to the drop zone, is often quite full. The liquid acts as what is called a water hammer, on the same principle as hydraulic power, and the prostate is subjected to severe shock, which can then lead to inflammation and infection. If. . . .”
“It means I’m having a baby!” she screamed, having given up entirely on a poetic moment.
Freddy was silent for just a brief instant, and then he said, “It means you’re having a what?”
“A baby, Freddy, a baby.”
“A human baby?”
“I hope so,” she replied, feeling faint. And then, “Are you mad? Are you implying that I’ve had sex with animals?”
“No, no, no,” he said, sweeping the air in front of him with his hands. “I was just confused. In the laboratories that we visit they fertilise eggs in a dish. Sometimes a droplet can fly inadvertently across the room and a gorilla, for example, will be crossed with a yak. Unsuccessfully, of course, I hope. Can you imagine, a gorilla and a . . .”
“Freddy!”
“Fredericka?”
“Our baby. You fertilized my egg with your sperm on the embankment near the railway line.”
“Ah!” he said. “Oh, I see.” Now he was moved. “A king,” he went on, staring at Fredericka’s aerobic instructor’s abdominal region, “or perhaps a queen. It doesn’t matter. Even without a title at all, that child, that child is, for me—will be, for me—the centre of the world. I would throw over England for his sake, or hers. I would walk into fire. I’ve been made second before I’ve even been first, but never have I felt greater satisfaction.” It was true.
“That’s the way of the world,” said Fredericka. “I feel it, too. I feel content. I feel full of love.”
He took her into his arms.
“Be kind to Lucia, Freddy, but nothing more.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I had no intention of behaving badly, but I did. It’s all so confusing. Something’s in the wind.”
SOMETHING WAS INDEED in the wind, although they were unaware of it when they made their initial sweeps to scan the darkness in search of a spark or smouldering glow. Freddy awakened first, sighted nothing, and then, half an hour later, it was Fredericka’s turn, and so on, into the night. Though their interrupted sleep was difficult, their awakenings were gentle. They would roll off the foam mattress and out from under the table, stand up, seize the binoculars, and do the well practised scan, a restful traverse across a black void. After putting down the binoculars and sinking to their knees, they would roll quietly back into place, pull up the still-warm sleeping-bag, and fall immediately into an oblivion they had not quite left. And then, in another half an hour, a chime would sound and one of them would rise.
At four-thirty, when on clear days the east had already begun to brighten, Freddy got up to make a sweep. In his half-dream-like state, he thought the light on the horizon was the dawn. But dawn does not flicker, and dawn is confined to the east. The light he saw, though distant, dim, and sporadic, jolted him awake, for lightning lit the horizon in a complete circle as if the world were an artillery battle everywhere but in one dark lake.
“Fredericka, Fredericka,” Freddy called.
“What?” She had expected to sleep.
“You’d better get up.”
“It’s not my turn.”
“Something’s happening.”
She arose and looked out into what should have been black night but was a horizon-line of silent flashes such as she had never seen. Turning slowly, she soon realised that it ran all around in a ring. “What is it?” she asked.
“Lightning.”
“I’ve never seen anything like this. Have you?”
“The closest I’ve come,” Freddy said, “was in a flight over Africa, in a lightning storm half a continent wide. From the air you could see hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lightning flashes all at once. The farther away you got, the more integral it seemed. I imagine that from space a storm like this looks like muffled light.”