A Royal Mess

by Tyne O'Connell

  Portia and Alison left me alone with her – Alison to tell some Italian boy she’d pulled what was happening, and Portia to get more water. I was left alone with Jenny, who was quite sweet when she was drunk, really. Apart from smelling like toilet water and being cross-eyed. At least she wasn’t death staring me.

  I stroked her hair and said some nice soothing things, and then she started to laugh. ‘Sucked in!’ she cried, sitting up as straight as you like. Then she punched the air triumphantly with her fist.

  I stopped my soothing talk and death stared her, but all she did was shrug. ‘I just wanted to see how far I could take it. No biggie.’

  ‘Erm, take what, exactly?’

  ‘You and your stuck-up friend. Lady High and Mighty. Think you’re all that with your entourage of Eades boys flying out to play with you.’

  I was wrong. Jenny was as bad as Honey. Maybe even worse. Not even Honey would stoop to sticking her head in a toilet bowl for attention. Like Delilah cutting off Samson’s hair, Honey would get someone else to do it for her.

  I stood up as imperiously as I could, walked over to the basin and washed my hands. Then I stepped over Jenny and all her mal-ity and left the loo. Let her deal with Bell End, Portia, Alison and the rest of the team and grownups, who were no doubt running themselves into a conga line of feverish madness to save the situation.

  I passed Portia as I walked through the club. I took the water from her hands and walked back into the loo and threw it over Jenny. Then I grabbed Portia’s hand and led her out, briefly filling her in on our anti-girlfriend’s pathetic scheme.

  ‘So what should we do?’ Portia asked. ‘I mean, Bell End’s having kittens. He’s charged off back to the pensione for electrolytes and …’

  ‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We can leave Jenny to sort out her own drama and enjoy ourselves. I’m going to pull Malcolm and you’re going to pull Billy.’

  ‘But we’ve broken up.’

  ‘Only in England. We’re in Italy now, the country of good food, good clothes and good loving.’

  Then I walked up to the table where Malcolm et al. were still debating the origins of ‘by-your-leave.’ And without a by-your-leave or a how’s-your-father, I unceremoniously sat on Malcolm’s lap and kissed his lips off.

  TWENTY-NINE

  The City of Amore and Melodramas!

  While kissing Malcolm was pure la dolce vita and I should have floated home on a cloud of bliss, I couldn’t help taking a wicked pleasure in Jenny’s downfall. I still stunk of toilet water. I have no idea what Malcolm must have thought, but either he was too polite to say or couldn’t smell me over the fog of his own smoke. I was glad I took Portia’s advice on spurning that particular vice.

  When the fencing team found out about Jenny’s prank, there was an unspoken agreement that she must be sent to Coventry. Dear little Sister Regina couldn’t get her lovely nunnish head around Jenny’s motivation for pretending to be drunk.

  ‘She’s more Honeyesque than any of us realised,’ I explained to her as we tottered back to the pensione that evening.

  ‘Oh but Calypso dear, what a nasty, mean trick. I’m sure I just can’t understand such wickedness, child,’ Sister Regina murmured while fingering her way through her rosary.

  Sister Bethlehem was snoring happily, slung over Bell End’s shoulder in her now familiar fireman’s lift. She didn’t contribute to the discussion per se, but I’m sure she’d have been devastated had she been awake. Nuns aren’t built for such worldly wickedness.

  Portia and I heard Jenny getting told off in the courtyard as we were preparing for bed, and we stuck our heads out the window so we didn’t miss the brouhaha. Biffy warned her that ‘another stunt like that, Frogmorten, and you’ll be off the team. Quick smart!’

  Then Bell End had a go at her. ‘Yer bloody idiot, Frogmorten. What did want to pull a stunt like that for? Eh? Eh? You’re part of the Great British fencing machine, yer big girl’s blouse. We’re ‘ere, in Italy, playing the game of games! And you’re fooling around like a bloody toddler with its nappy over its head!’

  And then Biffy started off on a four-year rantarama about how he wouldn’t tolerate insubordination in his ranks. Portia and I got bored at that point and fell asleep.

  The next morning all the grown-ups had hangovers, which was très, très funny. Oh, how we laughed. Especially at Biffy, who, far from being on patrol at six, didn’t surface until ten! He even had the nerve to complain to the Signora that her knife made too much noise scraping the butter onto his toast. She gave him a look that would melt any knife.

  The nuns weren’t up when we left. Bell End thought it best not to disturb them in case they got upset. I sincerely doubted we’d see Sister Bethlehem’s eyes open again for the rest of our stay. But anyway it was not permisso to have spectators at the pools.

  Even though the salle didn’t look far away on the map we studied at breakfast, Bell End had a go at Biffy for being disorganised and not arranging transport. But Portia and I were delighted to be exploring the streets of Florence. Apart from having to lug our fencing kit over three million miles.

  Bell End roared when Jenny moaned.

  ‘What’s the matter with you, yer big girl’s blouse? Yer young, you can take a knock.’

  I actually think he had a point. I loved strolling through the streets – kit or no kit. It was like being in a museum of beautiful people and designer shops. As we walked across the Ponte Alle Grazie bridge, Portia and I stopped to lean over the Arno River and scream out mad things. I don’t know what it is about bridges and mountains. They just seem to have that effect on young minds, don’t they? Perhaps it was brought on by the shop-fest on the Ponte Vecchio bridge opposite, where finest designer delights of the world nestled tightly against the river, awaiting the most awesomely sophisticated shoppers outside of Milano.

  While we had our heads down, I asked Portia about Billy, hoping for a straight answer. All she did was smile enigmatically, which set us off chortling like mad things again. Billy and some of the boys caught up with us and asked us what was so funny.

  ‘Just the foolish madness of teenage girls,’ I told Billy while Portia composed her blushes.

  The boys Billy was hanging out with were quite nice for a bunch of shorties. One was an épéeist and the other two were on the boys’ sabre team like him.

  ‘That Jenny’s a bit of a lunatic?’ one of them remarked conversationally, but no one said anything. I, for one, was over Jenny, although she’d already had a go at me at breakfast about using all the hot water. We mostly talked about Bell End and Biffy and argued the merits of their respective levels of madness, and then we mused about what the Italian team would be like. Probably fearsomely brilliant.

  I found our developing camaraderie magical.

  As we walked along, Billy and Portia paired off, and as I watched them chatting away together and pointing out buildings and fountains to one another, I couldn’t help thinking how sweet they looked. Billy blond and fit as all get-out and Portia with her aristocratic features and rich chocolaty tresses – they were a match made in heaven. Well, made in Windsor at least.

  The salle was beside a Medici chapel, and something about the decaying beauty of the building made me walk more reverently. The Italian team was already there doing stretches, but that didn’t stop the Italian boys from ooh-la-la-ing the English girls’ team as we wandered in.

  ‘Pappagaillo alert,’ Portia whispered to me. ‘Parrots,’ she explained.

  ‘But what are they saying?’

  ‘The usual.’ She shrugged. ‘How beautiful we are, what lovely figures we have, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Oh, aren’t they sweet!’ I squealed.

  Portia shook her long brown tresses. ‘No!’

  But as a freakishly tall blonde with fluffy little horns of hair that won’t stick down however much gel, wax or other fixative I use, I take my compliments where I can.

  Then my eyes clapped onto our old fencing master, Profe
ssor Sullivan; the most sauvé, debonair gentleman in the fencing world. I nudged Portia, and gave Professor Sullivan a little wave. He smiled and nodded, but that was all. He was always very minimal in his gestures, so I didn’t take his lack of hoorahs to heart. Still, I wanted to run up to him and gush about how we’d won our place on the British national team and how Star had chucked fencing for her music, but Professor Sullivan wasn’t one for idle gushing. From the looks of things, he was coaching the Italian team now, which meant we were the enemy, so I wandered aloofly alongside Portia and reigned in my gushing side.

  I figured Bell End would puff himself up and go mano a mano with his predecessor, but I think he was too hungover, because he just slumped on the first bench he came to. Biffy went over, though, and the two shook hands amiably.

  The British team members peeled off into their respective changing rooms to get kitted up.

  ‘Okay, now I am nervous,’ Portia told me as we opened our assigned lockers. Then she did the most uncharacteristic jig.

  ‘I know, and can you believe Professor Sullivan is here?’

  ‘I used to have the most enormous crush on him,’ she confided. ‘I’m worried that my nerves will throw my game.’

  ‘Was I the only girl on the fencing team not to have a crush on Professor Sullivan?’ I asked, and then for some unfathomable reason we chortled madly until we both felt sick. You had to be there, really.

  We stopped our laughing when Jenny walked in. Not just because she sneered at us. She’s one of those girls who has the ability to suck the fun out of a room. I know you’re probably asking yourself how much fun can there possibly be in a girls’ changing room – even in Florence. But you’d be surprised. Changing rooms are where you say all those confidential girlie things and get to check out one another’s knickers and bras – not in a pervy way – just so you can check you’re en trend. Also, it was our first Italian changing room and we were all talking in Italian accents, which sounded feverishly sophisticated. I would have to remember to ask the ’rents if there was any Italian blood in our Kentucky/English lineage – the Kellyisimos, perhaps?

  The trick to speaking Italian – or rather sounding like you speak Italian – is to accentuate or add a vowel on the ends of words, like ‘telephona’ and ‘lippo-glosso.’ Within about ten minutes of practice, I swear no one would ever know we weren’t born and bred in Florence. Which was a bit worrying actually, because I didn’t want anyone mixing our teams up. Luckily we had GBR emblazoned on our kit.

  It was molto exciting changing into our GBR fencing gear for our very first international match. Oh yes, before Jenny walked in, the room was packed to the rafters with la dolce vita.

  ‘Oh my God, did you see how fitisimo those boys out there were?’ Alison said in her newfound Italian accent.

  ‘Italian boys do seem to have a genetically higher fitisimo level than English boys,’ I agreed in my own excellent accent. ‘But I don’t think it lasts,’ I added sagely. ‘Did you see those chubby old chappos with their medallions at the discotheque last night?’

  ‘I don’t mean the Italian boys. I mean those Eades boys out there filming,’ she said – completely out of accent.

  Jenny groaned. ‘You’re all so stupid,’ she sneered.

  ‘You mean stupido,’ I corrected her.

  ‘Idiots,’ she sneered lamely.

  I decided she wasn’t worth wasting our accents on.

  We all agreed to walk out into the salle together. Portia had braided my hair like a horse’s tail, so I did a bit of a trot. All of us looked sleek and groomed. Even Jenny Frogmorton was looking spiffy.

  As I pushed open the door to the salle, I walked straight into Malcolm’s camera.

  ‘Ow!’ I cried, holding my nose.

  ‘Bugger, sorry, darling, sorry.’

  But before I could give him a piece of my passionate Italian mind, the Italians all started applauding us. The girls and boys and even Professor Sullivan were all in an orderly line, clapping for us like we were superstars. I knew it was only the team because they didn’t allow any spectators at the pools, but still it was flattering and made us feel welcome and loved.

  I forgot about my sore nose and gave our fans a little wave as I walked as elegantly as possible onto the piste.

  Biffy blew his whistle, and then for no reason at all, Bell End blew his. Officially, Bell End was only here to chaperone Portia and myself, but unofficially I figured he had scores to settle. He usually did.

  ‘On behalf of the Italian National Under Eighteens team, we’d like to welcome our friends from Great Britain,’ Professor Sullivan announced, first in English and then in Italian. Then he bowed ever so slightly. Now there was a man who had élan. Not a single loon-cell in his brain. I hoped Bell End was taking notes.

  I set about doing my warm-up stretches and tried to ignore Malcolm’s lens, which remained fixed on me the entire time. It was molto, molto off-putting, I can tell you.

  Eventually Biffy and Professor Sullivan called out the names for the pools and directed players to their respective pistes. It was hard not to be aware of Malcolm’s camera, glued as it was to moi. So much for his claim that he wanted footage of Billy.

  My first opponent’s name was Carlotta. She had a slightly androgynous beauty, as if she’d just walked out of a Caravaggio painting. She had perfect raven curls that hung loose around her shoulders and eyelashes so long they could have been weapons in their own right.

  ‘Ciao,’ she said, and I ciaoed her back as we each wired the other up and checked that our electrics were working. ‘How you say, good luck?’ she asked, batting her lashes for Italy.

  ‘Erm, well, good luck, actually! Or bon chance,’ I joked. She looked at me like I was pazzo.

  I was morbidly conscious that I towered over her like some freakish white bird. She was a good foot and a half shorter than me, and I remembered Bell End’s barbed remark about Biffy – the bigger the target, the more there is to hit.

  Professor Sullivan was presiding over the bout, and so it was his job to call ‘play.’ Back when he taught us at Saint Augustine’s he always spoke French. But now he called us to the en guard lines in his sauvé 1930s English accent. I suspected it was a secret code for, ‘Good luck, my countrymen and women.’

  Carlotta and I saluted. My salute was the usual English casual tipping of my blade, but Carlotta actually kissed her blade and slashed it in a feverishly stylish and slightly terrifying way. The noise cut through my soul like ice as the realization hit me – I was representing Great Britain. I wasn’t equipped. I didn’t have a fancy salute. I wasn’t even British!

  We masked up and ‘Pretes! Allez! Avanti!’ was called.

  My Caravaggio opponent advanced down the piste like a demon. Her footwork was faultless and even before she lunged I knew I was out of my league. Though I tried to summon the spirit of Jerzy Pawlowski, the greatest sabreur who ever lived, all I heard from the president was ‘Priorite a ma droit,’ which means priority to my right. I must ‘fess up and tell you there were ever so few ‘Priorite a ma gauche.’

  I was gauche… in more ways than one.

  Actually, I was fencing very well. It was just that Carlotta was blindingly good. She was in a league of point and priority grabbing excellence such as I’d never witnessed. At the end of play when she tore off her mask, spraying the sweat from her hair everywhere, all I could do was say, ‘Bloody hell, Carlotta, you’re good. I mean, bene!

  She beamed, not smugly, not grandly. She just looked happy to hear my praise and of course for her win. I beamed back. Not even sweaty hair could dim her Renaissance loveliness. I looked over at Malcolm. His camera was still glued to his face, the lens still fixed on me, but I wondered, was he comparing Carlotta and me? I know I was. Freakishly tall, pale blonde girl versus voluptuous, stunning, glowing brunette.

  And then I wondered something else. Was I jealous?

  Over the course of the next two hours, I won a few bouts and lost a few more. I barely performed well
enough to survive the cull from the pools, but I did survive. That meant I would get to play in the tournament tomorrow. Unlike Jenny, who had been culled.

  I know it was shallow of me, but it made me feel that justice existed after all. Sometimes, bad things do happen to mean girls.

  Professor Sullivan came over afterwards and asked, ‘So how does it feel to be on the national team, Miss Kelly?’ – only he asked in French of course.

  ‘Yaah, it’s really cool, basically, but these girls are, like … Well they’re really, really good, aren’t they? Do you think I can ever be that good?’ I asked in my best approximation of a French accent.

  And then he smiled. It was a smile that lit up the entire salle, and then something miraculous happened. He spoke to me in English for the first time ever. ‘Most definitely, Calypso. Without a shadow of a doubt, in fact. There is one thing I have always had infinite faith in, and that is your ability to be as good as you want to be.’