A Royal Mess

by Tyne O'Connell

  ‘Well, I did,’ said Star. ‘I told you I wanted to start the year with a clean slate, darling,’ she reminded me, referring to the New Year resolutions we’d made together in her bedroom wing while her parents and their celebrity friends rock-and-rolled the night away.

  My resolutions were the normal unrealistic goals of a teenage girl; stop picking at my spots and develop more savoir-faire and va-va-va-voom. To that end, I was going to start littering my sentences with loads of foreign words and bon mots. I was also harbouring deep hopes of doing well in my GCSE exams and wowing them with my fencing prowess in Italy, where I would be participating in my first international tournament. I’d had a letter about the Italian trip over the break, but with Christmas, my birthday and my parents’ constant canoodling, I hadn’t had a chance to get properly excited about it. Especially as Freds wasn’t on the national team, which meant even more time I wouldn’t get to spend with him.

  ‘I thought you meant stuff like, erm, taking those blue extensions out of your hair and perfecting your French accent,’ I told her. ‘Not dumping perfectly good boyfriends!’

  Star scoffed. ‘Calypso, don’t you ever wonder if there’s more to life than boys?’

  ‘No!’ I blurted. ‘I mean, of course I wonder that all the time.’

  ‘We’re still young, darling. Don’t you think we should be focusing on our dreams rather than spotty boys?’

  I decided not to say anything lame about how Freds was my dream – well, my dream boyfriend anyway. But he is. And he is not in the least bit spotty!

  And then in the car driving up to Kiltland, the padre said much the same thing. ‘I know you want to impress Freds and his folks, but don’t you think taking a trunk of outfits for a weekend stay is a bit over the top?’

  ‘You really have no idea, Bob,’ I told him, and then I brooded about whether he was right. I mean, I didn’t want Freds or the king and queen to think I was desperate to impress. Even if I was.

  TWO

  The Collision of Parental Culture Shock

  As the ’rents drove our car of shame up to the castle, we had to pass a large crowd of royal watchers. I call it the car of shame not just because it’s not a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce like all my other friends’ cars. No, it has a bumper sticker that reads – this is true, by the way – HONK IF YOU’RE IN LURVE!

  Trés, trés mortifying.

  The fans were keeping vigil in the rain in the hope of spotting their beloved royals. Quite a few of them were holding placards with WE LOVE YOU PRINCE FREDDIE! printed on them. I had to give quite a few death stares to the more brazen girls whose signs promised all sorts of indecent pleasures to my lovely Freds.

  Bob and Sarah, on the other hand, felt compelled to give the hussies a little wave as security ushered us through. My ’rentals are soooo delusional. It was as if they thought they were royalty or something.

  I would have ducked down on the floor of the car of shame if I wasn’t so afraid of ruining my outfit, which was too feverishly stunning for words. Unfortunately, Freds had seen it before, because my cruel padre had refused to hand over his precious plastic. ‘You don’t ever give a boy the idea you care too much’ was his excuse.

  To ensure I’d fit in amongst the royals at Harthnoon Castle, I’d been practising my regal walk over Christmas. I wished I wasn’t so freakishly tall, though. I know I prayed for a growth spurt a few years back, but honestly, it was getting ridiculous. I was seriously worried my long blond-ish locks would get caught up in low-hanging chandeliers.

  Freds told me that he loves everything about me, but I’m sure I’ve grown ten feet since he last saw me two weeks ago. It would be a great test of his love if he could still care for me once I started swinging from his family’s chandelier by my hair during afternoon tea.

  As someone wonderfully good and great in the Bible, or another heavy book, once remarked, ‘so many problems, so few solutions.’ Or maybe that was, ‘so many people, so few fish’? I was cramming so much knowledge into my brain for my GCSEs at the moment, my head was about to explode. That would teach the examination board a lesson or two.

  Everyone knows how divinely fit and marvellous my prince is, so I won’t bang on too much about His Royal Handsomeness. I’ll just mention that in the beginning, I had to pinch myself that I, Calypso Kelly, onetime Queen of the School Losers Association at the toffer-than-thou English girls’ boarding school I attend, was pulling a prince. All the other girls at Saint Augustine’s live in a world of total freedom, Daddy’s plastic, mummy’s contacts, personal manservants, chauffeur-driven Rolls Royces, bodyguards, society pages and titles that go back hundreds of years. Whereas I have a family that can trace itself back to Kentucky, Sarah and Bob, a car of shame, curfew rules and a fixed allowance.

  Then again, I was the one going out with the prince.

  Sometimes I even pinched myself when I was kissing him and screamed out: ‘Ouch!’ Freds found that a trifle weird. Mind you, he found a lot of things about me peculiar. But he was perfection itself, and I honestly couldn’t imagine ever breaking up with him.

  Okay, so there was one teensy weensy fly in the ointment of our perfect love, and when I say teensy weensy, I mean smaller than an iota, so strictly speaking it’s not even visible under a microscope. The scoop is … he’s pretty, erm, normal, really.

  Yes, normal, as in just like a regular non-royal-type person. Not a bit mad or even mildly eccentric in the least. But that’s a good thing, right?

  Well, you try telling Star that!

  I know what you’re thinking, he’s a prince, he can’t be boring. But it’s true, the most shocking secret about the royals is just how boringly, boringly ordinary they are. And I say that with the utmost love and respect. Seriously, not only do they wander about the palace without their crowns and magisterial robes on, they do things like eat toast for breakfast! Ordinary old toast! Can you believe it? I couldn’t.

  When Freds first told me this shocking news regarding his family’s penchant for toast, I had to grip onto him to stop fainting. I imagined they’d eat special royal-type food specially developed by royal scientists and organic health experts. But no, they ate normal food, chatted away about the weather and watched television like everyone else. And, oh my giddy aunt … they don’t even have cable!

  I would die without cable.

  The one slight worry I had on receiving my invite to Harthnoon was how to get out of shooting things. Freds and his family love nothing better than a good shoot at the expense of some poor creature. I’m not a big fan of shooting things, as Freds knows perfectly well. But I figured I was on display, so I had to devise a cunning plan to escape the shoot without upsetting the symmetry of this longed-for weekend.

  Star warned me that if I told his family I didn’t like killing things, they would think me freakish. I feared they thought me freakish anyway after my ‘rentals, Sarah and Bob, tongue-kissed one another when they dropped me off in Scotland around noon. What if the king and queen were soooo normal they did things like peer out the curtains? I thought. Quelle horreur!

  Am I wrong to wish that Bob and Sarah wouldn’t tongue-kiss in public? They thought I should be pleased that they were back together after their six-week separation last term. I was pleased. Of course I was pleased. They were hopeless without one another. All I was asking was that they stop slobbering over each other all the time.

  Of course that’s exactly what they did on our arrival – kiss. What if the tabloids got a shot of my parents kissing like teenagers at the castle?

  ‘Stop that, you two,’ I scolded. ‘What will the royal family think of you?’

  ‘Chill out, Calypso, they’re just people like us,’ Bob said.

  ‘Just people!’ I squawked like a madder-than-mad thing. ‘Like us?’

  Even the liveried footman, who was getting my trunk out of the boot, looked shocked. I was close to certain that the king and queen don’t pull in public – if they even pull at all.

  ‘Heck, do we tip th
is guy or what?’ asked Bob, pulling out his wallet. He actually talks like that too. Words like ‘gee,’ ‘swell’ and ‘hip’ litter his every sentence. When I was younger and more vulnerable, I used to walk on the other side of the street from him or sit in a different booth in diners. I’m a lot stronger now.

  ‘Erm, no,’ I told him with the authority of a person who gets her information on the royal family from Google. ‘Just give me some cash,’ I said firmly, wrestling with his wallet. ‘You’re meant to leave your tip after your stay.’ Well, that is the deal for country house stays – according to www.englisheysnobs.com – and this was sort of like a country house, just a really, really big one with turrets and a moat.

  ‘But we’re not staying,’ Sarah pointed out reasonably enough. ‘We’re heading off for our romantic weekend after luncheon.’

  I wished they’d stop banging on about their ‘romantic’ weekend. I really didn’t want to imagine what they planned to get up to.

  ‘No, but I’m staying,’ I hissed, not wanting the lurking footman to hear. ‘So give it to me.’ I tugged the wallet out of Bob’s hand, deftly relieving it of a bunch of readies.

  Bob gave me one of his “one day you’ll go too far, Calypso Kelly” looks, but Freds had come out by that point, so Bob didn’t say anything. I know this sounds shallowand culturally small-minded, but I was quite pleased that Freds wasn’t wearing a kilt. Not that I don’t love a kilt on a boy, it’s just, well, it makes me feel like grabbing his arm and doing the Gay Gordons or some other loony reel.

  But Freds was sans kilt and his black hair was doing that wildly wonderful sticky-outy thing I loved so much. His eyes looked bluer than blue too in the Scottish air. It was a crisp, bright day, and he looked soooo fit in his regulation navy blue Ralph Lauren thin knit jumper over pale blue Ralph Lauren shirt, neutral-coloured trousers and some sort of hiking-type boot, which my mother pointed out. Trust Sarah. The boy is a god and all she could say was, ‘See how sensible his shoes are, Calypso?’

  Seeing Freds resplendent in all his worshipful beauty, I was glad I’d pulled out all the stops on my own outfit. I was wearing no makeup (apart from six inches of lip-gloss and lashings of mascara), because boys really go for the natural look. I had also splurged on a new brown corduroy miniskirt from Top Shop, and the green cashmere jumper Star had given me for Christmas matched my green sequined slippers perfectly. To think that Sarah had actually tried to make me change into Wellington boots before we left! Yes, Wellington boots.

  ‘Believe me, his parents will respect you for it,’ she’d said as I was dressing to leave. ‘Scotland can be very wet and boggy.’

  I didn’t even know what boggy was, but I’m sure the royals don’t muck about in it. So hoping to silence Sarah with my royal knowledge, I asked, ‘Who thinks Wellington boots are suitable footwear for lunch with the royal family?’ I asked, and then I said, ‘Mr and Mrs No One. That’s who.’

  You’d think that would have silenced the mad madre, but no, she went on and on for another ten million years about the virtues of Wellington boots over sequined slippers. I have no idea how she ever pulled Bob if her idea of seductive footwear is a pair of rubber boots.

  To tell the truth, I don’t want to know.

  I pretended to faint just to shut her up, only coming to when it was time to get in the car. My new swooning/fainting strategy had proved an invaluable weapon in this war against parental insanity.

  My parents had been invited to “take luncheon with Their Majesties,” which sounds madly grand, but as it turned out, luncheon consisted only of nasty cold meats, a selection of peculiar cheeses that smelt like a hiker’s sweaty socks and some horrible old red wine.

  Bob and Sarah seemed totally at home with Queen Adelaide and King Alfred. And being Bob and Sarah, they were calling them Addie and Al by the time they left. I was mouthing ‘don’t’ and waving my hands to stop them all through lunch, but they refused to acknowledge me. Apart from Bob, who mouthed ‘paranoid’ back at me.

  As I stood beside Freds to wave them good-bye, they kissed one another again. I decided that was soooo going to be the last time I took them to meet a boyfriend’s parents. Not that I planned on having another boyfriend or anything. No, Freds was the perfect boyfriend for me. Although I wouldn’t mind if he grew a few more inches.

  THREE

  The Most Spectacular Fib

  Actually, Freds’ parents had taken a shine to Bob and Sarah. Me, on the other hand? Well, apparently they thought I was ‘sickly and sniffly.’ Okay, so I had forced Freds to tell me what they thought of me. I just think he could have put it a tad more kindly.

  ‘I think it was the runny nose,’ Freds added, by means of explanation.

  Oh yes, my cold. My genius excuse for not going on the shoot the following day. It was really a most spectacularly elaborate fib. I’d even gone to the trouble of cunningly rubbing a handkerchief with chili oil to produce the glassy-eyed, runny nose effect. It was a tip I’d picked up at Saint Augustine’s to get out of a class.

  So, while the royals were off killing things, I sat in the library (just like at Saint Augustine’s only sans computers). Freds’ twinkly-eyed gran sat with me. She was quite sweet and very merry, knocking back sherry after sherry and prank calling the staff. We got on quite well in a drunken old duck/sober teenager sort of way. Unfortunately her two old Labradors kept nipping me. ‘That’s their way of saying hello, don’t you know,’ Gran had explained as they gnawed my legs off.

  Sarah’s parents had died in a car accident when I was small, and Bob’s parents lived in Kentucky, so I barely ever saw them. When I did, they obsessed about my milk intake, like I was some sort of calf or something. Freds’ gran, on the other hand, made me try a glass of sherry, which tastes like cough mixture. I think I may have got a bit tipsy, because I started calling her Bea instead of Ma’am. Also, I let Bea use my mobile to call the butler, who was refusing to answer her calls on the house phones after numerous pranks informing him of all sorts of scandalous untruths about what he got up to in his free time. Honestly, she was soooo funny I chortled my knickers off.

  I was still chortling away like the Laughing Cavalier in that famous painting that hangs in the Wallace Collection when Freds and his ‘rents came back from killing innocent creatures. The Laughing Cavalier in the painting doesn’t look like he’s laughing – he looks like he’s grinning in a knowing, pervy way if you ask me.

  So I suppose that didn’t look too good.

  Freds gave me a disappointed look as we all gathered in the drawing room, which looked out onto a lovely loch. I was peering out in the hope of seeing a monster or something fascinating like that when the queen asked, ‘How’s your cold, Calypso?’

  ‘My what?’ I replied, having completely forgotten my elaborate ruse.

  ‘Your cold?’ Freddie reminded me – a bit sternly.

  ‘Oh, that.’ I produced my handkerchief and took a deep sniff, which set me off coughing, which in turn set the Labradors off on another nipping attack on my legs. ‘A little better, I think.’

  ‘Oh marvellous,’ the king replied, slapping the arms of his chair with delight. ‘We wouldn’t want you to miss your mother’s marvellous show because of illness.’ Honestly, Freds’ ’rents were as bonkeresque as mine. First toast and now this!

  I’d love to have missed Sarah’s ‘marvellous’ show. I think Freds knew that, because he gave me one of his cautioning looks, which were becoming far too regular for my liking.

  ‘No, no, I can’t get enough of Harley Village,’ I told them with a great deal of feeling. I was getting scarily good at this lying thing.

  Harley Village is the most agonisingly dreary dramarama about a village in Yorkshire where a missing pig is frontpage news. It had been Britain’s highest-rated series for fifty years or something, and Sarah was sadly proud to have this new gig. I don’t know why she couldn’t have kept up her morning celebrity slot. The boys at Eades adored the madre’s morning show – which of course meant kud
os for me.

  Sarah could talk about how atmospheric Harley Village is until the cows came home, but as far as I was concerned, it was a show about miserable wet people arguing over whose umbrella was whose.

  ‘Splendid,’ said the king.

  ‘Excellent,’ agreed the queen.

  ‘Bollocks,’ blurted Bea. For a micro-moment, I actually thought the exclamation had come from me. Then Bea winked at me, and I had to snort so deeply into my handkerchief to smother my laughter, I almost passed out.

  That was the worst thing about the weekend: my fake cold. Once I’d faked the cold to avoid the shoot, I couldn’t exactly make a miraculous recovery without everyone becoming suspicious. It was merde! I had to sniffle and cough all weekend. And as it turned out, my cold was totally pointless.

  As I was having my good-bye kiss alone with Freds in one of the turreted towers that smelt of moss, I naively confided in him about how and why I’d lied about having a cold. He knew how much I hated shooting animals, so I thought he’d understand. Actually, I had hoped he’d laugh like a mad thing and spin me around in his arms, but all he did was give me another one of his disappointed looks. I hated his disappointed looks. Every time he gave me one, I felt myself becoming dimmer in his eyes. Then he said, ‘It was a clay pigeon shoot, Calypso. I am perfectly aware how anti you are.’