Midnight in Westminster Abbey

by Sean Dennis Cashman

  Psy George was firmly from the old school of spare the rod and spoil the child. He was genuinely taken aback by Charlie’s evident distress—distress that he thought too emotional.

  “Was there anything more to it?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Charlie answered again. “Oh, yes,” he repeated. “Honey hit her so hard that she damaged Ginny’s hearing. That’s why Ginny wears a hearing aid.”

  Psy George was completely outside his comfort zone. He knew little about parental affection, nothing about hearing aids beyond ear trumpets. And the whole concept of what he knew was coming—divorce—was also foreign to him: alien. His own cruel father had bundled his unwanted wife away in secret and that was that.

  Yet Psy George knew he had to tread cautiously with this distressed modern man.

  “So this crisis, did it lead to divorce?”

  “What do you think?” Charlie answered with spirit. “Without any scruple about cutting the knot, Honey cut the best divorce deal she could. During the divorce hearings the judge, impressed—no, taken aback—by Honey’s demands and her financial acumen, asked her lawyer if she was an investment banker.”

  Charlie sensed that Psy George wanted him to go further. His gut instinct told him it would be a mistake to do so—that somehow this ghostly psychiatrist would use any more information against him. Indeed, Psy George, his nostrils quivering at the blood scent of deep psychological wounds, was willing Charlie to go further—provided this did not touch any tender nerve of his own. Psy George was also surprised. For, although this pretend psychiatrist had no patience with the moderns’ obsession with psychological causes underlying their misdemeanours, nevertheless he wondered how this Honey Pharaoh—who must, by modern standards have been guilty of child abuse—could somehow have wheedled a law court to excuse her cruelty.

  Psy George next asked Charlie, “What did you do then?”

  “I did what I had always done. I plunged even more into work. I was driven emotionally and financially and I knew I was getting older than my years. When my parents died—probably of exasperation as much as devotion—I snapped. Ginny was my responsibility. Honey couldn’t touch me there. Nor did she want to. But there was Georgie as well and he was my son as well as hers.”

  Like many parents, Charlie would always say he loved his two children equally. But he knew in his heart he loved both his children differently. And these two loves exerted painful as well as lovely memories. By her face and figure and her generous disposition Ginny reminded him of her mother, Genna, his first and most lasting love. This love had been torn away from him by a deranged psycho. He could never look at Ginny’s adorable face without remembering the savage murder of Genna and the bitter anger he felt over her death.

  Georgie’s angelic face showed he was also the child of Honey Pharaoh, who had been lovely on the outside but had a heart of implacable selfishness. After the divorce, Honey had tried to keep Georgie from him—in fact, to steal his son as cruelly as a wicked queen in a malign fairy story. So each time Charlie looked at or held Ginny or Georgie, great pain cast a pall over the pleasure.

  Turning to face the ersatz psychiatrist, Charlie said, “You think a ghost story with two children gives readers an extra turn of the psychological screw but for me the extra twist of the screw is that I’ve lost two children a second time.”

  “How so?”

  “Before tonight, I lost Ginny when I married Honey. I lost Georgie when we got divorced. And tonight, they’ve both disappeared.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Before tonight, I already knew I had to turn myself around if I was ever to be a true dad to my kids. I asked for three unpaid months off work.”

  Despite his straightforward answers, Charlie was telling himself that he did not have to reply to or justify himself to this weird psychiatrist. Besides, this ghostly psychiatrist seemed to be operating a system that was years—no, decades—behind the times. It was beyond parody that the psychiatrist was obviously German and that he spoke guttural English with a mixture of bluster and conniving charm. However, Charlie also sensed that the psychiatrist himself was being manipulated by unknown forces. But the tug of his bitter memories burst through Charlie’s feeble attempts to rationalise the situation. Now he could not stop talking.

  “Honey and I had joint custody of Georgie. But once Georgie started grade school, I noted that Georgie’s attitude to me began to change. He resisted kisses goodbye after our weekends together. At first, I put this down to the fact that Georgie was growing up. But when Georgie started making excuses not to visit me—as relayed to me by my ex-wife—I got suspicious. I read articles on the world wide web about parental alienation.”

  “Parental alienation—let me be clear about this, liebchen,” said the ersatz psychiatrist. “It’s the term used usually by fathers who suspect their ex-wives are coaching their sons and daughters to stay away from them, etcetera, etcetera.”

  "Right. It can be done by subtle hints—that the mother’s food is better than the father’s food; that the mother’s home is nicer, more welcoming and safer than the father’s. Such ex-wives don’t do this to impose strict bans on children seeing their fathers. It’s more to program innocent children to think the way the mothers want. Outsiders might assume that a mother harried by being a single parent—and having to do the work of two—would welcome a respite from the all-consuming tasks of raising a small child or later the continuous need to supervise a growing youngster.

  “Surely, the respite provided by the father when the child is away for a night or a weekend every other week would be welcome? But no. The all-consuming mission of a manipulative ex-wife for total control obscures everything else—and that includes common sense. Honey Pharaoh wasn’t a sexual predator. Oh no. Far from it. She was a child snatcher.”

  Psy George could relate to this. He suppressed a low whistle for it had happened in his own German family with a whole series of fathers and sons coming to detest one another. But he kept his feelings under wraps.

  Charlie continued.

  “I felt bad for rejected fathers whom I read about on the Internet and in the press. Especially when they drew attention to their plight by stunts—climbing tall buildings, flying outsize kites with slogans and so on. The more I thought about them, the more I realised I was one of them. These fathers—we—were not self-disappeared men who hid away to avoid parental responsibilities. Far from it. They never missed alimony or child support payments and neither did I.”

  Once Charlie had started on this subject, there was no stopping him and the vigilant psychiatrist did not want to stem the flow. However, he did ask, “What did you do, liebchen? What redress is there for fathers who want—who need—to see their children? Does the law help?”

  “In the US, ex-wives are supported by women social workers, women lawyers and women child psychiatrists and even the legal system itself that assumes mother always knows best.”

  “What could you do, then?”

  “Two opportunities came together to make a third possible. Ginny had the opportunity of a student exchange in London. I encouraged her to seize it. She could stay with her aunt—Genna’s sister, my former sister-in-law Ruby King. I knew staying in London would widen and deepen Ginny’s interest in English history and English literature—interests that she and I shared. And I could travel to see Ginny—help her settle in.”

  “And Georgie? How did he fit into this scenario?”

  "Then came this second opportunity. My ex-wife, Honey, had appendicitis. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer person. She had not made any provisional arrangements for Georgie should she get ill. Typical. No arrangements for Georgie to be cared for by anyone else in an emergency. Bless her. There were complications in Honey’s condition. Not life-threatening but complications all the same so she would have to stay in hospital. What was left of her family in Florida, the Pharaohs, were a thousand miles away. Social Services provided the third opportunity. They had no option but to let me back i
nto Georgie’s life.

  “Taking a big risk, I took Georgie out of school for ten days. I brought him here with me to London. As I said earlier, it’s my attempt to bond with him. It was also for Ginny and Georgie to be together. Georgie’s ideas about London are few. His ideas about English kings and queens are non-existent. You might say skeletal. So for him, this trip is just a jaunt.”

  Charlie was almost in a reverie.

  “I wanted to deepen my relationship with both my kids in a charming environment, away from every-day cares—by enchanting them in the supposedly fairy tale world of the English royals. Of course, I remind myself that fairy tales have a dark side. In many cases, this is about loss—often loss of fathers and mothers. There are also dark foes. They may be outsize hungry animals but they can also be adverse forces of nature such as forest fires or storms.”

  “And you?”

  “I’ll be in trouble with the authorities for taking Georgie out of the country. It’s my risk. So I don’t want him seized upon by ghosts alive or dead.”

  Charlie followed his impassioned semi-threat with a more conciliatory tone.

  “If you know where he is, please tell me. Please get him and Ginny back to me.”

  “Liebchen, dear little Georgie is with the old Tudor queens. Pathetic glittering old souls. They won’t harm him. They may tease him; unnerve him with their constant bickering. But they won’t hurt him, I assure you. Besides, they love the idea of trying to turn what they suppose is a young man’s fancy into selfless devotion. They never learn,” Psy George added as an afterthought.

  Even in such desperate straits, sharp-witted Charlie could think of two things at once. While immersed in his personal crisis, he surveyed Psy George anew.

  “Of course,” Charlie thought: “Going into battle; fathers and sons falling out—just like the Hanoverian dynasty; grieving for a lost wife who died before him; an eighteenth-century king.” On impulse, Charlie asked insistently, “You’re George II, aren’t you?”

  “You’re too clever for your own good!” was George II’s terse reply.

  Then Charlie heard a whirring noise and next muffled clattering like Venetian blinds or shutters descending abruptly and ending with a bump. He could not see anything different. George II had gone. Charlie was back in the nave of after-hours Westminster Abbey with its sepulchral gloom punctuated by noises outside—taxis purring along and halting at traffic lights. Through the immense ornamental Gothic windows came shifting patterns of light reflecting variable shapes outside, briefly flashing amber lights from the upper decks of London buses along nearby roads. It would have been a diverting kaleidoscope except that Charlie wanted to find his children. He did not want to call out in case that would attract unwanted inspection from any night-time custodians.

  Then Charlie found he could only move six or seven paces in any direction. He sensed he was being held back by a glass curtain wall—perhaps not glass since it was soft to the touch. It must have been the sound of this ‘curtain’ coming down that had sounded like a clattering bump. But it would not let him pass. Although it was not like a hard metallic obstacle, there was this invisible supple but unyielding curtain.

  Charlie did not know what to think. There was no one about. But then came an insistent, dread realisation: his children had somehow entered a different world—perhaps two worlds—secret worlds of the English royals, alive and restless after they themselves had passed from the mortal scene of human time.

  Suddenly, a shadowy version of Ginny shimmied into view accompanied by two faces hidden in shadow. There was a keen smell of lavender. Charlie moved towards it and the vision disappeared. A man with a wheedling voice and what Charlie knew was a lisp was speaking with the same tired old putdown: “I don’t think I should like America.” And Ginny responded with the prepared smart-assed retort. “I suppose that’s because we have no ruins and no curiosities.”

  “No ruins?” replied the man. “You have your plastic surgery.”

  Then a second man said sharply, “No curiosities? You have your Jerry Springer—not to mention your Fox News.”

  Charlie heard the voices of the two unseen men who had just interviewed Ginny now speaking alone. One said, “She’s a bright little minx, finds correct solutions right away to whatever she’s asked to do.”

  “Yes. But so far, she’s faced easy questions—just like they have on TV quiz shows—easy ones first to soften contestants up. That way it misleads them into thinking it will all be hunky dory. And another thing—she doesn’t yet understand that she’s in a test about game theory.”

  Charlie was more startled than ever. Game theory? Harder test questions? What was this?

  As his eyes grew better accustomed to the gloom, Charlie started to detect distinguishing characteristics of the two unusual environments. Through the glass (or whatever it was), he sensed that he had already seen Ginny in some other world with a gloomy greenish light. It seemed large. But the space that held Charlie was different. The light was bluish. As Charlie felt its impregnable walls with the palms of his hands, he guessed that it was round but not evenly round. As he looked upwards, Charlie saw it got narrower. Now he knew he was trapped in a cone. At its pinnacle, he imagined a hand with fingers clasping down some top quite firmly. He sensed that he was now one of the little people, trapped in this cone that was like an upturned glass. Was he being moved around like a dice, or a pebble or a tiny nut just like the tiny tools mischievous street hawkers played with on 42nd Street in Midtown Manhattan or in the streets around Covent Garden in London?

  CHARLIE

  Charlie concluded that he had been set inside someone else’s game. If he was ever going to get his children back, he had to work out what this unspecified game set by the royals was and what was the game theory behind it.

  One thing Charlie was sure of. The game would not be something like the Prisoner’s Dilemma. For that the unseen, offstage games masters would need two victims and two different cells to hold them. Surely, whoever they were, they would not be playing Ginny and Georgie off against him? Or his two kids off against one another as if they were bank robbers about whose joint heist the police wanted to get clear evidence? That would be too cruel, wouldn’t it? Charlie did not want to think how often kings and queens had done such things to royal children through the ages.

  Someone had left a pack of cards on the stone floor. Charlie knew this was not by chance. It was a clue. When he picked up the cards and flicked through them, the royal suites were not like the usual kings, queens and knaves of a standard pack. In this particular pack, the kings and queens had the faces of English sovereigns. Charlie could not ignore the joker at the bottom of the pack. It was his face taken from his morose passport photo. He felt sick.

  When he looked up, the space was bigger again. The cone had changed—no longer a translucent roundel shape but a square room with brown walls of evenly cut and sanded down stone and, above, a low ceiling.

  He saw a tall man with a short buzz cut and a razor thin moustache above a sneering upper lip. He would have recognised that lip and moustache anywhere: it was Mr Slime, the unfriendly ‘docent’ with the sinister invitation. The man gestured him to sit at the near side of a plain table. The unkind man sat at the other side. The man picked up the pack of cards and cut it, showing a king with an outsize wig of magnificent coiffed black hair and a razor-thin moustache above sneering lips. The man facing Charlie had a buzz cut hairstyle but his moustache and sneer were unmistakeably the same as the card portrait. So Charlie guessed his interrogator must be Charles II. But he knew better than to ask. He noticed in the shadows behind the table two soldiers in indeterminate khaki uniform whom, he assumed, must be bruisers.

  The man smiled and showed chipped teeth. Between such curling lips, his was not a nice smile. It was the assumed smile of a man who has endured much and learned to cover bitterness while planning future subversive things with an outward display of robotic courtesy.

  “What do you want of me ? ” Ch
arlie dared to ask.

  "You claim to be a royal supporter but you’ve come to spy on us in our sacred night, thinking you could recount everything later. ‘Kiss and tell’, isn’t that what you moderns call it ?"

  “But you enticed me,” Charlie said.

  “My, my, I don’t remember that,” Charles II said, curling his lip with utmost courtesy.

  This was neither the charming absent-mindedness of a favourite actor in a British film comedy nor was it regal disdain. It was simply the pretended incomprehension of a capricious ruler, indifferent and careless of anything but his immediate political whims. It was just like the high-handed disregard of his own legal undertakings by the fact-into-fiction king of Siam in the famous Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, The King and I.

  “Or,” said Charles II reading Charlie’s mind with disturbing precision, "I’m just like any American plutocrat from the nineteenth century onwards: the only thing that counts is the here-and-now as the plutocrat perceives it. Back stateside, you’re a player on Wall Street. Surely, you know the score.

  “Besides our main grievance, you brought your brats along.”

  “My kids, yes.”

  “Yes, your tender, not-so-little children whom you love dearly—or so you say.** You’re wondering about dear little Georgie aren’t you? You think that because Ginny is a little older and she’s what we used to call a tomboy that she can take care of herself. But Georgie, who’s younger, is more vulnerable. Is he alive or dead? Let’s take a look.”

  Charlie shivered but he was determined not to let the dread king see he was afraid. The king made a balletic gesture with his right hand. Through the glass darkly Charlie could see his son. There was a welcoming smell of wild summer roses. Georgie seemed to be talking to three women but were they really women? They were spindly. They shimmied. When they faced Charlie, they looked like sixteenth-century courtiers all right. But if they turned to the side, it was as if they were almost invisible, leaving only a swaying pencil thin line to imply their skeletal presence. Charlie could not work it out.