A Royal Mess

by Tyne O'Connell

  It’s true, apart from being the fittest boy God ever breathed life into, Freddie kisses like, well… like a very good kisser. In America we say hot! Thank goodness he isn’t like those sloppy kissers you see on movies that look like they want to swallow one another’s faces and make slurpy slushy noises with their saliva. Star had a sloppy kisser at her house party. I think he was from the village. Clemmie pulled him and then regretted it because his lips roamed all over her face. Luckily Star spotted him and pulled him off to her father’s chill room, where Jim Beam poured out of an angel of death fountain onto a Japanese rock pool.

  Star’s father being a madly famous rock star has made their whole house an homage to the rock-and-roll lifestyle as seen on MTVs Cribs. I love staying with Star, and even my stricter-than-thou parents are cool with it on account of how Bob is a huge fan of Dirge – that’s Tiger’s band. Tiger is Star’s father, and even though he’s perpetually stoned and calls everyone ‘man’ and goes into unconscious stupors on the floor so that you have to step over him to get your breakfast, he’s wildly cool. As Star says, ‘He’s incredibly bright and wise occasionally, you know, when he’s more or less conscious.’

  But back to Freddie, he of the glossy, short sticky-up black hair that doesn’t need gel or mousse to make it gorgeous. Freddie of the smooth, long-fingered hands and soft lips – well, you get the picture, FIT – although I explained to my mother that he was HOT in fear of her thinking he was some sort of exercise steroid-taking freak. Even though he will one day be the King of England, he’s not in the least bit grand or pretentious about it. He sends me lovely txt messages all the time, and although he hasn’t said anything official, I just know he’s serious by the way he supports my neck when he kisses me and smells all lemony.

  After living in England for four years I am fully aware that the term ‘dating’ is considered gauche by the English, and to use it would make one the object of derision and disgust. No one here does dates. They catch up, meet up, see one another and pull – pull like no other nation on earth. But the word ‘dating’ isn’t in their lexicon. So while Freds and I are not actually ‘dating,’ it’s sort of understood that we are boyfriend and girlfriend – especially after the half-term week which we spent quad biking around Star’s enormous Derbyshire estate, pulling one another’s lips off and micro-studying one another’s backgrounds.

  And even though half term had now sadly come to an end, Star, George, Indie and I were going out on a high. Or at least we were until Star spotted Ed, the boy Indie had pulled at Star’s house party, talking to some girls from Cheltenham. We could tell they were from Cheltenham because … well … because of the subtle tribal things that suggested it.

  ‘Darling, check out Eds and his mateage,’ yelled Star as we were stalled at the lights. Who are those Cheltenham slappers he’s talking to?’

  Without anything needing to be said, we all stuck our heads out the window and hissed and jeered. Then, just as Eds turned around, we bobbed on the floor of the cab so he wouldn’t see us. We hated Cheltenham girls, for, erm, well, because they are … okay, for no particular reason whatsoever, actually. Apart from the fact that they aren’t Saint Augustine girls. And how dare they fraternise with Eds, whom the most stunning girl in our year had pulled and txt-flirted with relentlessly all break!

  Indie was txt-ing furiously before we’d even wound the window up, which we did because it was autumn and bloody freezing and we were all wearing the skimpiest clothes we could feasibly get away with without dying of hypothermia. ‘How dare he!’ she said with a fearsome amount of feeling. ‘Bloody boys. I am soooo never, never, never …,’ she ranted before running out of steam.

  What are you going to say to him?’ Star asked, looking slightly worried. Indie can get quite hotheaded – just like Star, really.

  Who the hell are you talking to and why the fruup didn’t you tell me you were on the KR?’ she replied, holding up her phone so we could read the words for ourselves. Then she pressed ‘Send’ before we could discuss the matter further.

  ‘But he might know them!’ I blurted. That’s what I do; blurt things like that when emotions are running high and the last thing people want to hear is my blurt, even if it is vaguely reasonable. I don’t know why I do it. Bob, who is soooo PC and wholemeal it’s a wonder he hasn’t turned into a bowl of granola, says I need to be more grounded. He’s very big on grounding, is Bob, bless him. But seriously, for all their mad liberal ideas, I really do love my parents and miss them dreadfully when I’m over here at school.

  I’d sent Bob and Sarah loads of e-mails during half-term break, but I hadn’t heard much back, which was unusual because they are normally delirious e-mailers. For all their foibles and mad LA theories, I am rather proud of my parents for being so kind and lovely and obsessed with me. Of course we’ve had our ups and downs, but compared to lots of my friend’s parents, like poor Georgina, whose father ran off with someone called Koo-Koo and barely ever sees her, Bob and Sarah are totally cool. And more important, they are always there for me.

  Well he can bloody well un-know them,’ Indie said, replying to my reasonable suggestion about Eds – only she was smiling as she said it. Indie is fearsome when she’s cross. Thank goodness she’s never been cross with me. Yet.

  Well, I didn’t like the look of them,’ Star told her supportively as we climbed off the floor of the cab and sat back up on the seats. They looked very slutty to me.’

  ‘Nor did Dorothy,’ added Georgina. ‘Madly unimpressed,’ she told us as she held Dorothy up so we could inspect her unimpressed expression. I suspect Dorothy was just cross because she hates going in cars, but Indie was sold. She rubbed her nose against Dorothy’s. ‘Dorothy, you are soooo wise. If you say I should dump Eds here and now, I will. Wiggle your nose for “no” and flap your ears for “yes,” okay?’

  Dorothy wiggled her nose, but actually I don’t think she’s ever flapped her floppity ears in all her life, and I think Indie knows that very well.

  A txt alert sounded, but it wasn’t Indie’s, so a mad scramble through tiny handbags for still tinier mobiles ensued, which resulted in all our handbags being emptied on the floor of the cab.

  It was mine.

  missing u alrdy. I’ve got a gorg photo of u on my laptop. U R distressingly stunning Kelly. No wonder scouts R after U! Freds xxx

  How sweet and psychic was that? I bet our planets were trined. I’d only seen him, well, yesterday, actually, and already he was missing me. He had to go to some shoot thingamee. Most of my friends like shooting things, apart from Star. She’s a mad anti, only she can get away with it because she’s a proper rock royalty eccentric. Unlike me, who’s just an opinionated PC liberal American with misguided opinions about field sports and country pursuits, which is what the English call killing foxes, grouse, deer and pheasants.

  Freddie had been very sweet when I’d lectured him about the killing of things wild and winged. He ruffled my hair and kissed my nose and promised to try and aim poorly. I hope he’d just aimed poorly, remembered me, and sent me the txt. How wildly romantic would that be!

  I had the best boyfriend in the world. I had to keep pinching myself to stop screaming it out loud at the top of my lungs for all the world to hear.

  Missing you too, xxxx C I typed into my mobile before thinking better of it and changing the four x’s to three.

  Missing you too, xxx C – yes, that was much better. If he sent me three kisses, I should follow suit. I didn’t want him to think I was planning our wedding or something tragic like that.

  Then I added a PS: hope you are missing all things winged too!

  His response was immediate. Want to meet up in Windsor on Sat? F xxx

  I didn’t need to even think about my answer.

  Defs! xxx C

  TWO

  ’Rental Meltdown

  Back at school we all clambered up the narrow, dimly lit ancient stairs of the main building of Saint Augustine’s. I was rushing a bit, keen to get back to my
own dorm room to catch up with my roommate Portia, so we could stress out and strategise about our upcoming fencing tournaments.

  Portia and I have had our ups and downs, but the downs were mostly my fault, like, well, erm, wrongfully accusing her of trying to steal Freds. I know now that my suspicions were mad, especially as she was actually pulling Billy. But we’d made up and were now very much on an up. Portia was as keen as me to distinguish herself at the Nationals, but before that, we had our regional and three other tournaments to place second or first in. For the next six weeks we’d have to have our sabres practically glued to our hands.

  I heard voices in my room, which made me curious, as apart from Lady Portia Herrington Briggs (not that she was so tragic as to use her title), my only other roomie was the Honorable Honey O’Hare (who has her title written on her stationery). Portia and Honey barely maintain civilities. But as I entered the room I had a hallucination and completely missed my bed, falling instead in a heap on the floor.

  ‘Whoops-a-daisy,’ my mother, Sarah, said in a baby voice and laughed.

  Yes, my mother. Sarah Kelly, who should have been tucked up in Hollywood with my father, Bob, eating granola, reading Variety magazine and bemoaning the lack of art house and foreign movies up for awards these days. I wish it had been a hallucination, but no, it really was my mother, in all her wholemeal glory, sitting on my bed as large as life.

  ‘Come and give your mumsy-wumsy a huggle, Boojie.’ Her accent was halfway between Freddie’s mother’s and Hillary Clinton – a bit like Madonna used to sound when she was going through her Anglophile stage.

  And what was with the baby talk?

  Honey, who was pretending innocently to listen to her iPod, started making the noise she makes when she laughs, sort of like a hog snuffling through rubbish. She can’t actually laugh because she’s had soooo much Botox she’s running a serious risk of botulism poisoning.

  ‘What are you doing here, Sarah?’ I demanded, climbing off the floor.

  ‘I’ve run away,’ she said, as if she really were a little girl who’d run away.

  ‘Run away? Run away from what?’ I felt like adding ‘at your age?’ but I held back.

  ’Rents are such hypocrites – if I were to run away, they’d track me down, probably with tracker dogs and social workers, and lecture me from here to eternity. I felt like giving Sarah a lecture and telling her what a naughty madam she was and how she was going to be grounded for life – only not here in my dorm, obviously. They don’t condone the presence of parents at Saint Augustine’s apart from speech day or Sunday Mass.

  I gave her a very, very, very stern look before realising I was still wearing my tiara. I chucked it on my bedside table. I needed to be taken seriously, and a purple tiara would limit my aspirations in that department.

  ‘What do you mean, “run away”? You can’t run away, Sarah. What will Bob do without you?’

  ‘Humph!’ was her response to that. ‘It’s your father I’ve run away from, Calypso.’

  ‘What about my father?’ I asked, realising this was bad. Sarah has never called Bob ‘your father.’ That’s how divorced parents talk in movies. But then I guess my parents do live in Hollywood.

  ‘Yes, your father. Bob and his Big One. Oh, Calypso, I’ve had it up to here with his Big One!’ she cried, holding her hand several inches above her head to demonstrate.

  More smirks from Honey.

  ‘You know what he’s like. All he’s gone on about these past two years is his Big One. I supported him all this time in his creative endeavour, but the last month has been intolerable. He’s barely surfaced from his study. And then when I told him I’d had it up to here!’ – she held her hand above her head again – ‘he asked me if I wanted him to trade his soul for an unfulfilling job on some godawful soap like me! Well that’s it! Finito! My godawful soap has supported us all these years, so I told him to take his Big One and shove it where the sun don’t shine.’

  I looked over at Portia. Her inscrutable dark long-lashed eyes were bug-eyed with horror – only I couldn’t be sure what she was horrified by exactly.

  ‘It’s his script,’ I explained hastily, lest she think my father’s Big One was, well, you know what. ‘He’s writing his Big One, the script that will carve his name in cinematic history.’

  ‘And currently brings in no money,’ Sarah added pointedly. ‘Can you believe it, girls?’ Sarah asked, playing to her audience. Well that was the last straw. I packed my bags and decided to come where I was appreciated – here.’

  ‘But you can’t stay here, Sarah!’ I told her, horrified.

  All the girls looked at one another, no doubt embarrassed for me. Parents in England don’t share their problems with their offspring – well, not in my world. But Sarah was oblivious to her audience’s discomfort as she wiped a tear from her eye.

  ‘I mean, they don’t let grown-ups stay in dorms,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t mean here. I mean the land of my birth.’

  ‘But Sarah, are you sure? I mean, Bob can’t pack in a script he’s been working on for so long. He told me he had almost finished it, and besides, he does get some money from the Writers’ Guild, and you were the one who insisted he chuck his perfectly good job and focus his genius on his creative endeavours,’ I reminded her.

  ‘Yes, well that was before I knew his creative endeavours were going to take so long. No, I discussed it with Bunny. And last week I made the decision I should have made years ago and put my plan to leave into action. I’ve come home to London to be with you!’

  Okay, this was officially serious. Images of a frantic Bob pacing madly in search of his other half flashed through my mind. And who was Bunny? ‘Did you tell him you were leaving?’ I asked, my voice showing my panic. ‘He’s probably beside himself with worry!’

  ‘Huh!’ Sarah brushed this idea aside with a wave of her hand. I noticed she was still wearing her wedding ring at least. ‘He probably hasn’t even noticed I’ve gone. Last time I saw him he was head bent over his laptop waving away the dim sum I’d brought him for supper, you know the ones he loves with the …’ And that was when it got seriously scary. Her lower lip wobbled, she stretched out her arms for me to fall into and, reverting back to baby talk, added, ‘Bunny’s right. At least I’ll get to spend more quality time with my Boojie-woojems.’

  ‘Boojie-woojems,’ Honey mimicked. This time she did laugh, and her collagen-enhanced lips looked ready to explode with the mirth of it all.

  See, this proves the absurdity of ’rentals. You love them, you put up with their unreasonable demands, you patiently endure their weird food fads and cultural oddities. For years, you even obey them slavishly and look up to them like they’re veritable gods, but ultimately you start seeing through the disguise, right into the insanity and hypocrisy of who they really are.

  For starters, it was Sarah’s idea to pack me off to boarding school when I was eleven, promising me how it would be ‘super’ and how ‘you’ll make friends for life’ when for three and a half years it wasn’t a bit ‘super.’ It was a nightmare. And now that I actually was having a ‘super’ time and making friends for life, my mother pitches up and calls me a name she hasn’t called me since I was five and starts ranting about my father’s Big One. It’s perverse, that’s what it is. Even all this guff about Bob and his Big One, that was her idea too! She was the one who persuaded him to chuck his perfectly decent job at Warner and concentrate on his script. Okay, it was taking him a lot longer than she’d probably imagined, but still!

  Portia was looking at me sympathetically, or perhaps it was a look of helpless pity, the sort of look you give to mad teachers.

  ‘But surely you and Bob will work this out? You love each other. Who’ll finish off Bob’s sentences if you’re not there?’ I reasoned, stroking her hair like she was the child and I was the grown-up. ‘And who is Bunny?’

  ‘Oh, Boojie …,’ she said in a slightly hysterical baby voice as she attempted to wrap me in a cuddle.<
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  I wriggled away from her. ‘Can you stop calling me that!’ I snapped.

  Sarah looked as if I’d struck her, and I immediately felt bad.

  The room fell silent for a bit. I could hear the tap, tap, tap of our House Spinster Miss Bibsmore’s stick as she wandered down the corridor on her rounds, when suddenly Sarah began to sob, big heart-wrenching sobs. Portia gave her a tissue and I wrapped my mother in a big daughterly cuddle.

  ‘Bob’s Big One, what a joke!’ my mother remarked sarcastically.

  ‘Sarah, you’ve soooo got to stop saying that,’ I pleaded with her under my breath, handing her another tissue.

  ‘Saying what?’ she asked innocently as she dabbed at her mascara-daubed panda eyes.

  ‘Well … you know, Bob’s Big One. People might think, well they might get the wrong idea about what the Big One is, if you see what I mean.’