A Royal Mess

by Tyne O'Connell

  ‘You mean the big earthquake? Well they’d be right, because this all feels pretty damn cataclysmic to me.’

  I didn’t know what she was talking about for a minute, but then I remembered that Los Angeles is on a fault line.

  ‘I thought you left him because his penis is too small, darling,’ Honey said, fluttering her eyelashes, which were almost long enough to do herself an injury.

  Sarah looked momentarily horrified by what Honey had just said, but then she started to cry again, not in a sobbing, wrenching way, though, but more in a crumpled little girl sort of way, which made me feel even more helpless. Honey started dialling someone on her phone. ‘Oh my gawd, darling, you have got to get down here and fast. The American Freak’s mother’s turned up. She’s a bigger freak than her. She’s clearly from a long line of ancestral freakage….’ This was rich coming from a girl who only two weeks ago was gadding about with an iron beak on her nose.

  I grabbed her phone and threw it across the room. ‘Get out,’ I told her with an authority I barely knew I had off the fencing piste.

  ‘You can’t talk to me like that!’ she shrieked, flicking her long, blonde expensively streaked and straightened hair over her skinny tanned shoulders.

  ‘Just leave now,’ Portia added in her grandly aloof way, and Honey, seeing herself outnumbered, retrieved her phone and sauntered into the corridor, checking her reflection in her Chanel compact as if it had been her own idea to ban herself from her own dorm room. For those of you who’ve not met Honey, she’s not the sort of girl to miss a scandal – she’s the sort of girl to start one.

  ‘Look, I’m sure it’s just a bit of a tiff,’ I soothed, rubbing her back, unsure of what to do or say. I gave her a cuddle, and as I wrapped my arms around her I noticed some strands of grey hair mixed in with her lovely natural fair hair.

  She struggled free. ‘A tiff? A tiff? Is that what you think this is? Do you think I’m so shallow that I’d walk out on the man I love over a tiff?’

  Stupid, stupid, stupid Calypso! Why did I blurt that stupid word ‘tiff? It sounded like a cleaning product. I slapped my forehead. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to say that. But if you love him, why –’

  But Sarah was on a roll. ‘You try living with a man who’s self-absorbed in an ever-growing mountain of script. I hardly ever see him. And he’s making no money, as I was just explaining to Portia earlier. I’m holding everything together.’

  Well, you can’t hold things together if you’re here, though, can you?’ I reasoned.

  ‘Yes, I can. Remember I am still a British citizen,’ she said, holding herself upright in an imperious sort of way. For a moment I feared she was about to burst into a chorus of ‘God Save the Queen.’ ‘I’ve got a job on Gladesdale in fact.’

  ‘Gladesdale?’ Gladesdale was probably the chaviest program on television, a sort of bad soap opera for teens.

  ‘And taken a house in Clapham.’

  ‘Clapham!’ I yelped. Clapham, was not the place girls from Saint Augustine’s spoke of. Clapham was where people who couldn’t afford a big house in Chelsea lived in delusional gentrification and, more important, it was south of the river, and south of the river soooo wasn’t part of my friends’ world. Between Gladesdale and Clapham, I was going to be massacred.

  I could hear Honey giggling in the corridor. She shrieked out the words ‘Clapham’ and ‘Gladesdale’ with the relish of a hound dog baying for blood. The writing was already on the wall for me now. From this moment forth I would be known as the Girl from Clapham, or probably the Clap, for short. And just when things were going so well.

  Sarah hugged me to her tiny bosom. Won’t it be lovely to see more of one another, darling? You can have sleep-over parties with your friends. I can buy marshmallows and fish and chips.’

  I tried to smile back. ‘Sarah, I’m not five anymore, and the next six weeks are really, really busy for me. I’ve got the Nationals and before that the Regionals and as well as that I’ve got three other tournaments. And GCSEs to study for.’

  Miss Bibsmore’s tap, tap, tapping was drawing closer.

  ‘Oh, I see. So what you’re saying is, you’d rather I go back to Bob and his Big One and live in a perpetual twilight of unhappiness?’ my mother asked as a solitary tear ran down her mascara-stained cheek.

  ‘Yes,’ I blurted before I had time to shove my pillow in my mouth. ‘No, of course not. I meant no. No, that is, I don’t want you to live in a perpetual twilight of unhappiness, but, well, I don’t want you and Bob to break up, do I? You guys love each other. You said so yourself.’

  ‘Ha!’ my mother scoffed. ‘Callow youth. What do you know about love?’

  I managed to stop myself from saying, Well, quite a lot, actually.’

  But I did say, ‘Sarah, for the last time, will you stop calling his script the Big One! Just call it his, erm, Opus or something.’

  ‘Oh, an’ wot ‘ave we got ‘ere then, eh?’ Miss Bibsmore asked, her odd little form leaning on the doorframe, looking none too pleased at the sight of my mother sprawled on the bed.

  ‘Miss Bibsmore, this is my mother. She’s, erm, she’s visiting from America.’

  Miss Bibsmore took in the scene. The panda-eyed, tear-streaked face of my mother, the looks of worry and concern on the faces of Portia and myself, and the shadowy presence of Honey peering in from the corridor. Well, I’m pleased to meet you an’ all, I’m sure, Mrs Kelly. Miss Kelly ’ere is a good girl, no trouble from her. Not like some,’ she added darkly, turning to eye up Honey. ‘Always polite is Miss Kelly.’

  ‘How kind of you to say,’ my mother replied. ‘We tried to teach her manners and, well, I’m an old girl myself, actually.’

  Miss Bibsmore put her hands on her hips. ‘I’m not old! What do mean coming in ’ere and calling me old. I’m in my prime I am, an’ all. “Old” indeed!’

  ‘No, no, no, you misunderstood me, Miss Bibsmore,’ Sarah said. ‘I was a Saint Augustine’s girl myself many years ago.’

  Miss Bibsmore humphed. ‘All the same, be that as it may, it’s time for visitors to be off innit. Parents or no parents. Old girl or not. Rules is rules.’

  My mother nodded obediently and gathered up her large handbag and a pale blue pashmina I’d never seen. As she kissed both cheeks she said, ‘I’ll call you on your cell, but if you need me, this is my number.’ She passed across a card with an address and phone number on it.

  She already had a card? This was serious. Sarah really had left Bob!

  She didn’t look at me as I took the card, and I felt that I’d failed her somehow. Maybe I should have joined her in attacking Bob and his Big One, but the truth was I just didn’t believe something like this could happen to my parents. I gave her a proper cuddle, and the familiar smell of her musky Keils perfume made me feel like crying myself. She seemed so small and I felt so strong and tall as I stroked her hair the way she used to stroke mine.

  How could this be happening? How could my good, decent, liberal, loving parents have come to this? Bob and Sarah? Sarah and Bob? Even their names sounded right together. They thought with one mind, their hearts beat to the same political ideological pulse, and they backed one another’s madness to the hilt. If that isn’t love, I don’t know what is.

  But now here we were, Bob on one side of the world and Sarah, living in Clapham, of all places. I couldn’t begin to imagine what Bob was going through. I mean, he can barely pour his own granola without Sarah. I imagined him lying in a heap of despair, living under piles of pizza boxes, too weak to work, too despondent to go on. Surely he’d be on a plane begging her forgiveness and tearing his script to shreds. Okay, so there’d be a back-up copy on his Zip drive, but at least it would be a gesture.

  Sarah was the love of his life. He was always saying that (much to my embarrassment). He’d even told my headmistress, Sister Constance. Surely he’d be on the first plane over. But what if Sarah was right? Maybe he hadn’t noticed she’d even gone, buried as he was under his, erm, Opus.
>
  Before Sarah left, I agreed to go and see the house in Clapham with her on Saturday. It was the least I could do. It was only after she had said her tearful good-bye that I remembered I’d agreed to see Freds on Saturday. And then I felt conflicted. Was it really shallow of me to put the joy of meeting my boyfriend above spending time with my mother in her time of need? I was pretty sure the answer was yes.

  I would have to txt Fred, although maybe calling him would be better. I was sure he’d be sympathetic, or was it too early in our relationship for me to start burdening him with personal problems? Oh God, it was all so complicated.

  Portia came over and sat on my bed with me. ‘I’m really sorry about your parents, Calypso. But I’ve seen Bob and Sarah together, when they came to the school after Honey sold those photographs of you and Freddie to the tabloids, and –’

  ‘I did not sell them,’ Honey snapped indignantly, stepping back into the room. ‘I just gave them to them. There is a difference you know, it’s not as if I needed the money –’

  ‘Oh shut up, Honey. No one was talking to you,’ Portia said calmly. ‘Seriously, Calypso I’m sure they’ll work it out….’

  I nodded, because in the summer, Portia had watched her mother killed by a car on Sloane Street, and I knew she wasn’t just offering polite words of comfort.

  Yes, poor Boojie. But at least you’ll have your mumsy close by you in lovely gentrified Clapham,’ said Honey as she admired her false talons. ‘But just think of all the sleepover parties you can have in Clapham. Won’t it just be super, darling!’ she squealed, in a scarily good piss-take of my mother’s accent as she clapped her hands with fake glee. ‘I wish I could be more like you, Boojie,’ she taunted me.

  Well, why don’t you start by helping yourself to a little less Botox – it’s clearly gone to your brain,’ Star sneered as she entered the room with Indie. ‘It’s about time you started showing Calypso some respect. She’s probably the most talented person you know. She’s going to be a writer, and the pen is mightier than the post code. Apart from writing the lyrics for our album’ – she looked over at Indie and put her finger to her lips – ‘she’s entering the Inter-school Essay Competition. She’ll definitely win it,’ Star announced with enormous authority. They’re publishing the best three in the Telegraph, Honey.’

  ‘So, why would I care about a sorry little essay?’ Honey asked with a little less bravado.

  ‘Because the sorry little essay has to depict personal suffering, and I’d say Calypso has been through quite a lot of personal suffering at your hands, wouldn’t you, Honey?’

  Honey was uncharacteristically quiet.

  It was the first I’d heard about either lyric writing or essay competitions, but I trusted Star and loved the way it had shut Honey up, so I nodded with smug vigour.

  Later that night, I crept into Star’s room to ask about the competition. She dug about in her drawer and found a pamphlet advertising a £1,000 prize for the best essay. I read and reread the rules. The essay, which had to be 3,000 words in length, was to be an autobiographical account of the most painful experience of a teenager’s life. The traumas suggested were growing up as a victim of abuse, coming from a broken or violent home, bullying and the struggles of being an immigrant.

  I might not be the richest girl in my privileged world, but it was a privileged world. And while I was American, I didn’t think the judges would rank me as a struggling asylum seeker. True, I had faced the toxic trauma of living with Honey, but would Post-it notes slapped on my back classify as serious abuse? Was there anything in my decent dull life that would bring a tear to the eyes of the judges? No, was the answer.

  It was soooo not a competition for me.

  But Star was insistent. ‘Of course it is. Your writing is brilliant, Calypso.’

  ‘But I’ve never suffered, well, not in that sort of way,’ I told her, pointing to the pamphlet. Then I thought about the problems I was facing. Saturday for example, and how I’d told Freds I’d meet him and how now I was going to have to tell him that my mother had left my father, which would make me the Complicated Girlfriend even if he was really sympathetic. Oh god. Maybe I should think up some elaborate lie about not being able to make it to Windsor.

  Star interrupted my problem-solving plans. ‘Darling, we’ve all suffered. Even me, even Honey. Anyway, you do actually come from a broken home now, remember?’

  ‘But I don’t want to come from a broken home, Star,’ I suddenly cried. And then the floodgates opened, and I couldn’t stop crying. ‘I don’t want Bob and Sarah to split up!’

  ‘It’s okay, darling,’ she soothed. We’ll fix it. I promise. Bob and Sarah were made for each other. Even a fool like Honey can see that.’

  THREE

  The Fascism of Creative Endeavours

  On Star’s suggestion, I fired off an absolute stinker of an e-mail to Bob. She was of a mind that the short, sharp shock worked best with men. ‘Stick it to him,’ she told me. ‘Make him writhe with guilt.’ I was inclined to trust Star on these matters.

  Whenever her father went off the rails, her mother wasted no time pulling him into line. ‘Men are blameless, brainless creatures, darling. In my opinion, Sarah’s only come out here to frighten the bejesus out of Bob. You Americans love all that shock-and-awe business. Sarah’s probably counting the minutes until Bob turns up in England on his white charger and carries her back to Hollywood. But the truth is that men are like quad bikes – they need to be driven.

  I decided on a formal tone, which would leave him in no doubt as to what he needed to do.

  Dear Bob,

  I am forced to write this unpleasant e-mail because you don’t ‘believe’ in snail mail [although that would have taken longer anyway, and this is an emergency]. But I think not believing in snail mail points to a madness within you because snail mail [like plastic] blatantly does exist. All my school life spent over here I have watched the other girls receive post from their parents and lovingly pin it to the pin boards above their beds as a statement to all that their madres and padres love them.

  But I digress. The real reason I am writing to you is to insisit that you stop this macho obsession you have with writing the Big One and get yourself a nice soul-destroying job like Sarah and the rest of the world have to put up with.

  Creative endeavours are all well and good, but not when they come at the cost of the people you love, e.g., Sarah and your daughter [me]. Also, I know you wouldn’t want to tear asunder what God glued together the day you wed Sarah on that beach in Hawaii. Nor do I mean to sound selfish, but this marital drama has come at a very inconvenient time for me [yes, me, your little girl whom you said you loved more than life itself]. In case you have forgotten, I am trying out for the Nationals, which you once said was all you lived for!

  And poor Sarah is beside herself. She thinks you care more about your script than her! I know that isn’t true. I know you love her and this is all just a gigantic misunderstanding. I know what you are like when you write. You go into your own world, but in the process you’ve made Sarah feel like you don’t care about her. Also, this script is taking an awfully long time. I’m sure it will be very good and meaningful and you MIGHT even sell it for loads of money, but maybe you should take a break for the sake of your marriage and come to England to show Sarah how much you love her? It is blatantly obvious to everyone that you are made for one another. The point is you need to nip this in the bud before it goes any further. Sarah has already got a job and is renting a house in CLAPHAM, which, in case you don’t know, is where ‘the clap’ comes from due to the density of prostitutes that once lived there. At least that’s what Honey told me, and although she’s a compulsive liar, you told me even liars tell the truth sometimes.

  Is this what you really want for the mother of your child? Is this what you want for your wife – working on some plebbie show she really, really hates! Burying her creative yearnings alive. [I’d made this bit up, as we hadn’t actually spoken about her new g
ig on Gladesdale or her creative yearnings, but I felt it might strike a chord just the same.] Maybe to prove you love her you will have to go back to your old job writing dramadies like / Hear Laughter, which I actually think was very good, even though it did win the Worst Dramady Award three seasons running. So just get a job for a bit and make things right with Sarah so she can go home. You must be wondering where the granola is kept by now anyway.

  Your loving daughter,

  Calypso

  I was very pleased with my e-mail. I was convinced it had been both sympathetic and insistent. Star agreed. We had no doubt that Bob would be charging off to his agents to discuss getting back on a new show as a staff writer before he even read my sign-off.

  Instead, I’d hardly pressed ‘Send’ when he e-mailed a response.