by Kate Johnson
“Right.” His voice was heavy. “Why else would a black guy be at a student party.”
“There were drugs there,” Sharon said defensively.
“I didn’t bring them!”
Silence fell again. Clodagh felt for Jamie’s hand as she studied the man who might be her father. She hadn’t inherited his height, that was for sure, and her skin was much lighter, but then her mum was pretty white. His eyes, though, they were the same light brown, almost amber, as her own.
“You teach at SOAS?” Jamie said into the silence. Force of habit, she supposed. Next he’d be asking her maybe-dad if he’d come far.
“Yes. I worked in the City for a while, then went back to school and got my doctorate. Still do some consultancy. Brings in the pay.” He hesitated. “I have two kids to put through university.”
“You do?” Clodagh said. Oh great. More siblings.
He nodded and swiped through a few pictures. “There. Rose, she’s at Aberdeen studying pharmacology. And Andrew, he’s just got a conditional offer from Oxford. History of Art.”
She stared at the two smiling faces. Andrew had eyes like her, and Rose had her mouth.
“Their mum?”
“We divorced five years ago. Fairly amicable. I, uh. I understand you’re applying to Cambridge?”
Clodagh nodded vaguely. It had once seemed like the most important thing in the world, and now she hadn’t even been able to pick up her Access to HE diploma in person.
“Yes, when applications open in September,” Jamie said, as Clodagh continued to stare at her half brother and sister. “Clodagh just got her diploma.”
“That’s great. Well done. We get quite a few students entering with Access diplomas,”said Kingston, leaning forward. “What’s your subject?”
“History,” mumbled Clodagh.
“Oh, you’ll get on well with Andrew. It was a toss-up for him whether to do history or art, but in the end he split the difference.”
Clodagh looked up at him, and then at her mum, as if she could blur their faces into one to make her own.
Kingston cleared his throat. “I, uh. I understand this is probably a shock. It was for me, too. I haven’t told the kids. That is…”
“Oh Christ,” Clodagh found herself suddenly laughing. “That means I’m one of eight!”
“Maybe,” said Jamie. He straightened up. “Not that I doubt anyone’s story here, but I’m sure you’ll understand this is an unusual position we’re in. As we’re currently in a hospital, would you—both of you—mind giving a blood sample? I’m sure we can get the results back fairly soon. I’ll pull some strings. Where’s Sarah—?”
Geraint went to find Peaseman’s assistant, Sharon started flirting with Kingston, and Jamie peered at Clodagh’s face. He frowned, then said quietly, “It won’t take long, I’m sure, and then we’re back in the car and heading home. Lasagne for tea tonight?”
She blinked at him. “Wait a minute,” she said.
“What?”
Perhaps a pineapple. “She knew. Your grandmother, she knew.”
“How could—” He glanced in the direction Geraint had gone. “For crying out loud. No secrets,” he said in exasperation.
“Crest of Jamaica,” Clodagh said. “She told me, didn’t she?”
Jamie started laughing. “She’s probably already had it designed.”
As it turned out, he wasn’t far off. At some point during the full time job that planning her wedding had become, Clodagh found herself being driven to the College of Arms near St Pauls. Slightly to her disappointment, Garter King of Arms turned out to be an ordinary man in a suit, but he was polite and friendly and explained the decisions behind the drafted coat of arms she was to be granted.
Clodagh fiddled with one earring and tried not to giggle with sheer incredulity. A coat of arms. It was insane.
“The pineapple, ma’am, to represent your father’s heritage.” He didn’t actually say the words ‘now that the DNA results have come back’ but Clodagh figured it wasn’t a coincidence her appointment was for the day after.
Garter gestured to a rather excitable-looking display where the shield was flanked by a man and woman wearing little grass skirts and not much more. “As you can see, the pineapple features on the arms of Jamaica.”
“So do bare breasts,” Clodagh said. “And an alligator.”
“A crocodile, as it happens. Now, we have also incorporated the seax—”
“I know that one!” Clodagh said, because they’d done a school project about it when she was a kid. “The Saxon knife. From the Essex flag.”
Garter looked pleased. “Yes. It’s quite an ancient coat of arms, you know. Very rare to have no supporters, crest or motto. Very recognisable.”
He unveiled a painted oval divided into four with some knives and pineapples on it. “Accordingly, your blazon shall be: Quarterly, first and fourth Azure a pineapple, second and third Gules three seaxes in pale to sinister.”
He looked at her expectantly, as if this wasn’t gobbledegook. Clodagh felt her gaze sliding to Sarah, who gave her a helpless look.
“His Royal Highness has been sent a copy, of course.”
“Of course,” she said. “Has Her Majesty seen it?”
“Yes, ma’am, the pineapples were her idea. Now. This shall only be your arms until your marriage to His Royal Highness, of course—”
“Of course.” She could almost do this with a straight face now.
“—when it shall be impaled with his.”
“Impaled?”
“A heraldic term, ma’am, for combining the two. It will look something like this.”
The simple quartered oval with its two plain devices vanished, to be replaced with an insanely busy coat of arms. It had lions and unicorns wearing crowns, and feathery flourishes at the top, and a lion wearing a crown on top of another crown.
If she looked closely enough she could make out her seaxes and pineapples squished into one half of the shield, which itself seemed lost in the middle of all that finery.
“Ma’am?”
Clodagh realised she was staring. This was it. The symbol of this whole mad thing, this drunken daydream she’d been living in since she’d looked up and seen Jamie there asking for a pint of Carlsberg. The three knives of Essex next to the three lions of England. The Royal Standard, nestling cosily beside Jamaican pineapples.
She pinched herself. Nope, it was still there.
The Royal Standard, and some Essex knives, welded together. Jamie and Clodagh, side by side.
“Ma’am?”
“Yes.” Clodagh tried to sound like she was paying attention. “That all seems… very… good.” She glanced at Sarah. “Can I get a copy of that?”
“It has already been sent to your private secretary, ma’am.”
“Jolly good,” said Clodagh, and then wondered when she’d become the sort of person who said ‘jolly good’.
She thanked Garter King of Arms, shook his hand, smoothed down her pretty expensive dress and picked up her tiny expensive handbag to walk out on her beautiful expensive heels.
She patted her expensive hair as Khan opened the car door for her.
“Ma’am?”
“Didn’t I used to be Miss?”
He shrugged. “You’re a Ma’am now.”
“I was Clodagh once upon a time,” she said, and he smiled at her and ushered her into the car.
She had a meeting with a textile designer next, to go over fabric choices for The Dress. Probably there would be pineapples. Or banana leaves. Christ, what do they have in Jamaica? Am I going to have a lace design incorporating Usain Bolt?
When Annemarie got married, she had a tulip design worked into the lace on her veil, as well as white tulips in her bouquet. She’d worn jewellery belonging to the Dutch royal family. Part of her dress incorporated lace from her own mother’s wedding dress, which was something Princess Victoria had also done. At least four people had begun to suggest this to Clodagh, before pau
sing awkwardly as they realised her mother had never been married.
Victoria, the only daughter of the Prince of Wales, had a fleur-de-lys design incorporated into her gown. She wore a tiara belonging to her grandmother the Queen. Her bouquet had included white roses for England and thistles, from Nicholas’s family coat of arms.
Clodagh had been told that all royal brides carried a sprig of myrtle in their bouquets, from the tree Queen Victoria had got hers from. Personally, she figured following the wedding traditions of a woman who spent most of her life as a widow was a bit of a daft idea, but the Family were firm about this.
There was a text waiting from Jamie. “Pineapples, huh?”
“And knives,” she texted back. “The arms of the royal pina colada maker.”
“What flowers are native to Jamaica?” she asked Sarah, who began googling.
“Er, the lignum vitae. It’s a sort of bluish purple.”
Well, that was out, as she’d been told royal brides had white bouquets. White dress, white flowers, white white white. “Anything white?”
“Hibiscus can be white. They grow in Jamaica.”
“Hibiscus. Good.” Clodagh made a note, as they were taken towards the converted warehouse in Shoreditch being used as a secret HQ for The Dress.
The basic design of the dress had been approved, from a list of designs approved by the Palace by a group of designers chosen by the Palace. White, with a big skirt and something to cover the shoulders and upper arms. Apparently strapless wasn’t the order of the day. Clodagh, who was still a normal adult human shape and not a fatless wonder like her sisters-in-law-to-be, didn’t mind that development so much. She’d naively asked about wearing a proper bra and been told, somewhat patronisingly, that corsetry would take care of all that.
“So my choice of fabric is white lace, white lace, or a different kind of white lace,” she said, looking at the samples.
“No, no, ma’am, they’re very different…”
Olivia had taken one look at her and proclaimed that if anyone put her in ivory she’d have their hides. “White, with your skintone, darling. You’ll dazzle. Poor Victoria should have had something warmer, bless her, but dear old Mummy was calling the shots on that one…”
She wished Olivia was here now, instead of finalising bridesmaid choices. They had at least agreed that having Clodagh’s sisters would be a car crash, and that her nieces couldn’t be relied upon to do anything other than throw a tantrum. Jamie’s godchildren were being carefully sorted through for well-behaved and photogenic poppets instead.
I should probably tell Oll she’s the maid of honour, Clodagh thought idly, staring in utter boredom at the white lace.
This wedding was getting away from her.
No one was even really paying attention any more, the dress designer and the textile designer in deep conversation about technicalities. Sarah was making notes.
Clodagh, the reason they were all there, got her phone out and wondered if anyone would notice.
“Does everything have to be white?” she texted Jamie.
“That’s the tradition. Oll says white would suit you?”
Clodagh tried to think back over her life and wondered if she’d ever worn white voluntarily. It wasn’t flattering and it wasn’t practical, so she doubted it. “The only non-white thing in this wedding is me,” she texted him glumly.
And Jamie, the dear sweet man that he was, texted back, “Then wear mustard yellow if it makes you happy. There are lots of shades.”
The mustard choice. Oh God, she’d thought that was extravagant once.
A few seconds later he added, “I could wear my House Windsor t-shirt. It’ll be awesome. Look, it’s your damn dress. Don’t let them push you around.”
She frowned at that. He was right. It was her damn dress.
She straightened. For fuck’s sake, Clodagh, you’re going to be a duchess soon. You’ve got a coat of arms. You’ve just begun proceedings to set up a charity to give advice to pregnant teenagers. You’re applying to Cambridge. Don’t let your own bloody wedding get away from you.
She thought about the gypsy weddings she’d been to as a kid. Brides drowning in acres of frothy meringue, flowers in their hair and riots of colour all over. They’d been brash and loud and glorious, their one shot at being a princess for the day. Clodagh used to think that was what she’d look like when she grew up and got married.
“I don’t like any of these,” she said, and the room suddenly went silent. “It’s boring and it’s not me.”
“But ma’am, it’s traditional—”
“Yeah, you know what’s traditional in my family? A bridal boutique next to Aldi where diamanté is considered classy, and that’s if you actually get married. Look, I grew up in a Romany camp and a council estate, and everyone knows it. Why are we trying to pretend I was born a lady?”
There was an embarrassed silence.
She squared her shoulders. “Right. Where are those sketches? This bodice needs to be more streamlined. No lace all over it. I don’t actually like lace. It’s like wearing a doily. What’s that stuff where it’s sheer netting with stuff embroidered on it?”
“Illusion lace?” murmured the textile designer’s minion.
“Yes. That. The same colour as my skin, so have fun making that. We’ll have that for the sleeves and shoulders with little flowers here and here, and how about some gold? I’m from Essex after all. Bling it up for me.”
The dress designer, an intimidatingly middle class woman, gave her a patronising look. “Ma’am, gold is not trad—”
“Still don’t care. The Roma consider it lucky.”
“Ma’am—” began the textile designer.
“Who’s going to be a royal duchess here? Me or you?”
Their gazes dropped away. Clodagh drew herself up in satisfaction. “Gimme a pencil. Look. Gold here, maybe, and a bit on the skirt. Around the hem. I like the big skirt and the scalloped hem,” she said, as their faces few more and more alarmed, “but instead of little white flowers scattered, make them golden. And make some of them hibiscus flowers.”
The designers glowered. Their minions nodded.
Clodagh grinned.
“Yes. Good. Oh, and make sure that netting is silk, or it’ll play merry hell with my hair and I’ll be caught on camera detangling it in front of the whole country. What else?”
“The train?” asked the designer dangerously.
Clodagh checked the notes on the sketch. “How long is cathedral length, again?”
“Three metres.”
She considered. “It’ll do. Now, the veil—”
“The designs are here,” she was told sulkily.
All of them were sketched on a bride with an elegant updo. Clodagh’s hair didn’t do elegant updos. It did wild curls.
“We will of course wait and see which tiara Her Majesty lends you.”
Clodagh thought about Annemarie and Victoria. She thought about the gypsy brides with their riots of colour. She thought about hibiscus flowers.
“No,” she said. “No tiara. Sarah, how many colours do hibiscus flowers come in?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“I still look like a macaw,” Jamie said, as the mirror showed him in all his glory. The red jacket of the Coldstream and the blue riband of the Royal Victorian Order, the medals and stars, the braiding. He was only lucky he’d escaped aguillettes.
“You look splendid, sir, if I may say so.”
Jamie glanced at Vincent’s reflection and smiled, relaxing his shoulders a bit. “I do. Thank you, Vincent. You manage the impossible every time you turn me out.”
He shook the man’s hand, to his surprise.
“Has it stopped snowing?”
“I believe so, sir. The paths are being cleared. It’s very picturesque.”
Jamie looked out the window at the unbroken white expanse of the Long Walk. It was unspeakably beautiful, if one didn’t have a wedding to get to. “Does the Glass Coach have snow c
hains?”
“Stop worrying.”
That sounded like Annemarie. She stood in the doorway, elegant in pale pink, wearing the same blue riband Jamie had.
“That’s what Edward would have said,” she added, coming into the room.
Jamie looked at himself. There was a space beside him where Edward should have been, as Jamie had been beside him on his wedding day. “I know.” He cleared his throat. “She wanted the landau, but in this weather?”
“It will be fine. You look very handsome.”
Jamie tugged at his jacket. “Is it too much? I feel like a peacock. Clodagh gets to wear white.”
“Trust me, no woman finds white the easy option.” She hesitated, eyeing the medals pinned in their proper places on his chest and riband. “I hear you’re to be appointed to the Garter.”
“That’s supposed to be a secret.”
She raised her hands. “I heard nothing. But listen, there was one thing… I hope I didn’t overstep any bounds.”
Jamie narrowed his eyes. “What did you do?”
“I gave Edward’s garter to Clodagh. For her ‘something borrowed’. It felt like the right thing to do.”
Jamie felt tears come to his eyes. “Annemarie, that’s… it’s perfect. Thank you.” He took her hands, and then figured what the hell and hugged her. “Did you get Dai on the invites?”
“Yes. He will be with some of Edward’s other colleagues. I’ve promised he can visit the side chapel.”
“Good. That’s good.” He hugged her again, then straightened and let Vincent readjust his trimmings. “Right then, enough of this sentiment. We have a chapel to get to.”
They met Nicholas on the way, standing as Jamie’s supporter. He clasped Jamie on the shoulder, and they went to get in the Bentley taking them the short distance to the chapel. Usually, the Family would enter the Chapel through the Gilebertus door near the altar, but it had been decided that today Jamie would get his maximum exposure to the crowd, so they were driven round to the West Door.
The Lower Ward was filled with cameras and reporters and crowds of well-wishers. Jamie smiled as he remembered Clodagh sending him a text the night before. “Is there any mulled wine? Spare blankets? I don’t want people dying of frostbite on my wedding day.”