Midnight in Westminster Abbey

by Sean Dennis Cashman

His words sprang a sharp needle of exasperation into the heavy hearts of the two childless queens, both tortured by inner emptiness. So keenly did they feel Charlie’s unintended reproof that choked and paralysed their throats so they could not speak. Instead, it was their derided second cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, who answered unkindly, “You should have thought of them before you put them in dark danger. To ease your mind—though you don’t deserve it: they are both safe after the exertions you have put them through—you—not us. They will respond to you when we dead are ready.”

  And with that, together all three queens bared their teeth like hunter tigresses before prey. Three sets of such chipped and stained teeth set in the slits of Venetian masks—well, it was not a pretty sight. This time when she showed off her Italian, Elizabeth I spat out words about prick and nibble: “Pungi, spilluzzica.”

  The effect on Charlie, however, was not to intimidate him further but to strengthen his resolve for whatever trials might lie ahead. Then someone switched off the light. Charlie was in utter darkness.

  A CAT CAN LOOK AT A QUEEN

  High in a mighty unsafe tower block in the royal borough of Kensington and Chelsea the eternally delightful Caroline of Anspach turned away from the spectacular night view of high rise buildings, churches with spires and streets teeming with cars. She was subletting a room in the apartment from an immigrant family that needed every penny she could give them. The sublet bedroom was cold. Alone, offstage and away from her admirers, Caroline shuffled her ample frame into a shapeless woollen pullover.

  A tiny black cat looked up at her with a, “Miaow.”

  Caroline answered, “Ah, sweet little pussy—my dear familiar! You’re clambering over my papers. I can’t get rid of any of them—not until this next novel is published. Be patient.”

  Caroline lifted the tiny cat and put it on the grubby floor. She knew she had to keep her wits about her if she were going to be successful planning the immediate future of the Westminster royals. She knew conniving Pippa had led the dear little New York family down the primrose path of expectations in Westminster Abbey. And she knew why. Caroline and Pippa wanted the other royals to use Charlie Chancer’s IT expertise sure enough. Then Caroline wanted to let him and his kids go free; also, to keep him in mind for future use.

  So Caroline’s next task was to persuade the royals in Westminster Abbey that her advice was good and that Charles II’s contrary intention to use Charlie and then eliminate him and his family was wrong. To do this, she decided to play what she termed the love card—capture the royals’ hearts. Then she had to convince them that commodities trader Charlie Chancer was himself a precious commodity. But she—and they—needed to find out more. Caroline felt she was clutching at straws.

  “I’m all over the place. Scatterbrain, that’s me. Let’s see what we can find here.”

  And so, Caroline opened up her laptop PC and typed first, ‘Charlie Chancer’ and then ‘Parental Alienation’ into her search engine. The results of her web searches tumbled out on the screen and excited her. What popped up were press reports, mainly from local newspapers in the area around New York.

  “So,” she said aloud to sum up what she had read: “Trader Charlie Chancer has been embroiled in a long-running and emotional legal battle with his ex-wife, Honey Pharaoh, about how, when and even whether he can see his young son Georgie at all. He believes she has undermined his relationship with the little boy.”

  Caroline smiled and said, “Etcetera, etcetera.”

  She went back to texts on the screen. One newspaper story read:

  “In bitter custody battles, it is usual in the US for individual states to require that the children have their own separate legal counsel to be paid for by both parents. Sometimes the court appoints what they term a reunification therapist. Because the Chancer-Pharaoh custody battle has been so rancorous, Charlie Chancer had to seek a specific court order to require Honey Pharaoh to follow the recommendations of the court’s reunification therapist. The appointed therapist has testified that she could not be effective because she didn’t have Honey Pharaoh’s support.”

  To relay her findings to the little community of late royals in the abbey, Caroline knew she needed to use a spirit messenger.

  Her gaze still fixed on the screen, her wrinkled fingers clasped on the desk, Caroline used her skills as a medium and called out, "Katherine, dear Katherine, are you there? Dearest Katherine, sweet Katherine, you and the other Westminster royals need to hear this. Yes, I know you’re busy on this night of nights but you need to hear this. It’s just like a tired old New World pundit once said ‘The medium is the message’. Well, I am the medium and I am the message. Katherine, I hear the wind around this dangerous tower block. Are you keeping warm in the cold abbey?

  “Humans who seek support from mediums (like me) expect the mediums to use a spirit messenger (like you) to make contact with the spirit world. But in this case, it’s the other way around. The spirit world needs you and me to convey human needs to them. In this way we can advise the spirit world how best to use this talented man.”

  As Caroline’s appeal reached the abbey, Katherine of Valois stirred from a nook behind a pillar in the nave. She was a king’s widow, sure enough. But then she had become the partner of a commoner. So she had to remain a spirit messenger. She could speak to the outside world through Queen Caroline of Anspach who had escaped Westminster Abbey and had then become a medium. Now Katherine listened intently to the insistent words of this queen who had escaped.

  "Yes, we all know mediums are supposed to go into trances. We also know that human audiences—animal audiences, too—expect us to pour forth our utterances like mysterious ectoplasms. I love the little animals like my dear little cat, don’t you? But tonight we haven’t time for all that performance art. Besides, I’m alone. You’re with your extended family and there isn’t an audience.

  "Yes, I am your preferred royal medium. Like I always say, it’s a gift. But there’s no harm in double-checking facts from sources to hand. We can find out about our clients—and our tools—by eavesdropping on their conversations or searching the worldwide web and scanning newspaper reports for their back stories. This is what I’m doing now. Katherine, listen carefully to this. It’s from one of the Chancer family’s local American newspapers:

  "Although he may have been stymied by his ex-wife’s intransigence, Charlie Chancer was not witless. Far from it. And he was not what the English call a ‘good loser’.

  "When you travel along American highways, thruways and interstate routes—as we all know—you see giant advertising billboards. These are paid for by commercial companies. They strike deals with the highway authorities to lease the billboards. They advertise their products for specific periods. Of course there may be gaps between when one advertising contract ends and another begins.

  “Yes, Katherine, I know this part is boring. Bear with me and you’ll see how it all fits together,” Caroline continued to Katherine of Valois. Turning back to the press item on her laptop screen, she read on:

  "Someone Charlie knew in the Manhattan gym he goes to suggested he strike a special deal with the highways and billboard companies—to lease the billboards at a cut-price rate on a roving basis.

  “This meant he would pay for the billboards at a peppercorn rate during any stopgap periods when there was no regular advertising. The companies would move his advertisements around their sites to where the highways had spare billboards. Charlie’s ads were always about parental alienation. And they always took the moral high ground from the father’s point of view. This meant that travellers might one week see his ads as they crossed from Connecticut to New York. The next week they would see a similar ad as they travelled from New Jersey to New York. The permutations were extensive—etcetera, etcetera.”

  Again, Caroline used that old tired phrase from the tired vocabulary of Caroline’s poor old husband.

  “Katherine, this means we were right. Before Edward I, Charles II and the oth
er snobs dismiss Charlie Chancer as a hapless sap they can use for their own ends and then exterminate, consider this: Charlie struck back against his ex-wife in a most effective way with his billboard campaign. He never mentioned his wife by name or pointed the finger at her new boyfriend. But people guessed whom Charlie was targeting. They got the unstated message loud and clear with Charlie’s sweet little extra statements such as, ‘My Son Doesn’t Want a Wicked Stepfather’. People who didn’t know the particular backstory story got the basic moral message about fathers being dispossessed of their children by vengeful former wives.”

  Caroline read on.

  "Listen: Charlie hit another target: the university hospital of Milhous College where his ex-wife’s new boyfriend works as a doctor. His name is Dr Ray Zoltan. Charlie would end his tart commercial slogans with some zippy putdowns clear to insiders. Most telling—from the point of view of the university—was one that read, ‘An American Tragedy. But at Milhous, who cares?’

  "It seems that the powers that be in this Ivy League college—and it’s one that prides itself on being understated in conducting its affairs—were furious. They fumed in impotent rage at Charlie’s implied smears. They could not reply without publically identifying the college in a story about a hospital doctor interfering in the life of another man’s son.

  “Ingenious, don’t you think?” Caroline added. “Scandalous!”

  Turning back to the press story but explaining it rather than reading more of it aloud, Caroline said, “You see for Charlie there were distinct advantages in having a particular ad moving around and cropping up almost anywhere in the region. This gave the subject of parental alienation more extensive—wider—coverage than if the ads had been restricted to two or three sites only.”

  Returning to her objective—persuading Katherine of Valois to argue for getting Charlie to do what the royals wanted and to use his special skills rather than intimidate him—Caroline added to the invisible spirit messenger, "You see, Charlie’s got the PC skills, the imagination we need—not to mention the nerve. And as dear old George II would say ‘the balls’ but I’m not so coarse.

  “Katherine, dear spirit messenger, just get roly-poly George II (who can usually see reason) to switch on one of the computers in the abbey. And get him to search for ‘Charlie Chancer’ and ‘Parental Alienation’ and take stock, like I have.”

  ****

  Duly apprised by Caroline’s good advice, Katherine of Valois corralled the said roly-poly George II. She found him trying to read a drama about the court of Philip II of Spain by the German playwright, Friedrich Schiller.

  “Such stuff!” George I said to Katherine. This was more in exasperation at his inability to follow Schiller’s masterly unfolding of court intrigues than a just criticism of the great play Don Carlos.

  Katherine knew how she would get a warm reception from George II, about Caroline’s advice. To George, this meant Katherine had news of Caroline. For George really could not do without his late wife. Now at least there was the possibility that she was somewhere nearby if outside in the ether. And she would surely come back to—what?—retrieve—that was the word—retrieve him. Or so George hoped. Katherine sensed that she could use this faint prospect to get George II to fall in with any plan that Caroline proposed.

  “Liebchen, you spoke to dearest Caroline? Really? Tell me true. Is she well? Is she doing well?”

  His questions tumbled out. Before Katherine could answer, he had a fifth—more pressing than the first four.

  “Can I hear her voice? Will she speak through you?”

  “Dearest many-times grandson, what you ask is impossible. In ordinary spiritualism the spirit messenger—that’s me—brings the spirit world to living humans through a medium—that’s Queen Caroline. Humans like to hear the medium mouth—summon up—the voice of the human’s beloved dead husband, wife, lover, parents—or whomever. But in this scenario we are doing it the other way round. Yes, Queen Caroline, the medium, is among live humans outside Westminster Abbey. And you and I are the spirits inside the abbey. We need her. She won’t embarrass herself—or you—with a ventriloquist’s cheap conjuring trick, such as having me—a Frenchie—manipulate a German voice from within my Gallic throat.”

  Sensing George’s disappointment, Katherine tried to console him by saying, “But Caroline’s words are sincere and her advice is the best.”

  George could certainly believe that. He said, holding back furtive tears, "She was the most wonderful wonder woman—so constant to me and my interests against first my plug-ugly father and then our reprobate son—whatever my own indiscretions on the side. With her gracious personality, she persuaded the great British public to accept us Germans. Forget Maria Theresa of Austria and her pragmatic sanction. Forget Catherine the Great of all the Russians and her stallions. My dear wife was the greatest woman politico of our century.

  “And she had such courage! When our last child was born, Caroline suffered an umbilical hernia. She soldiered on for thirteen years. Then her womb ruptured in 1737. She was bled, purged and operated on—without modern anaesthetics—but it was too much.”

  Seeing him so moved, Katherine held her many times over grandson’s trembling hand.

  “You know that when she was buried here I arranged for the side of her coffin to be removable—as mine was to be. And when I joined her in the grave, the sides were indeed removed. As our bones crumbled our ashes would mingle.”

  “Dear grandson many times over, keep thinking about Caroline by taking her side against Charles II in the royals’ pending dispute over Charlie Chancer. We royals need to persuade Charlie to get money to Queens Caroline and Philippa outside the abbey—and then let Charlie and his children go free.”

  Katherine thought it would ease George II if they concentrated on the task in hand. Together George II and Katherine of Valois looked at the very same items on Charlie and parental alienation on an abbey PC as Caroline of Anspach had done. What neither Caroline nor Katherine knew was that when he had played at being a psychiatrist, toying with Charlie, George II had already learnt that this common man—a New York ‘yeller’—had outsmarted his nasty second wife by taking his little boy out of the United States and bringing him to London and Westminster Abbey.

  Reading the press stories, George II told Katherine, “It seems that both Honey Pharaoh and her new boyfriend were livid when they saw their story plastered across the New York area. And they could only get Charlie to stop his billboard campaign about parental alienation—and their horrible part in it—if they came back to the bargaining table with the lawyers about the little boy.”

  Then from the ether, George and Katherine heard a sweet voice:

  “George, dear roly-poly, can you hear me? Do you still love me as you used to? If you do, go on reading. It’s worth your while.”

  George II was jubilant at the faint prospect of Caroline returning to him. He read the next section of the press report aloud: “Thus among the conciliatory agreements between both parents in the Chancer-Pharaoh dispute was one that stated, ‘The two parties agree not to engage in public or private disparagement of each other’.”

  Now George II and Katherine of Valois heard a plaintive melody played by a few instruments.

  “That’s it, that’s it!” exclaimed George. “Someone’s playing our tune. I recognise it—I distinctly recognise it.”

  “What’s it called?” asked Katherine who was trying to get him to calm down.

  “It’s by our fellow Hanoverian, Georg Frideric Handel, I’m sure of that. He’s buried here, you know. But can I place it? It’s either from his Water Music or his Music for the Royal Fireworks. It has a special significance. It means Caroline is coming.”

  Katherine said, “It sounds eerie—not like the Handel I know and love.”

  “That’s because it’s been arranged for a glass harmonica. It makes the music sound supernatural—and scary to humans. It’s an American invention.”

  And from somewhere withi
n this eerie sound, Caroline’s voice became clearer.

  “George, dear George, I am here. I’m all around you.”

  George looked around helplessly. Before he gave up, Caroline spoke again.

  “We can do it—make me reappear. But all three of us have to keep faith. Dear Katherine will help us. Look over the next section on the PC page. Let’s try and read it together. That will show our solidarity in death as in life. It will prove all three of us are on the same wavelength.”

  Instinctively, George II and Katherine of Valois grasped hands. Timorously, they began to read:

  “The two parties have also come to an understanding—”

  And at this point, Caroline’s voice joined in:

  “—not to use this new agreement about visiting rights for the father as occasion or pretext for any publicity.”

  “Sacre bleu!” said George II in French as he held Katherine’s hand tighter.

  They heard Caroline’s voice again, this time more insistent as she said, "Even when the divorced couple had come to an official understanding, the stubborn ex-wife knew she could not trust Charlie not to take advantage in some way and manipulate the situation against her.

  “And this is the point we need to take from these humans’ absurdities: Charlie Chancer is ingenious and shameless. He can take whatever we throw at him. And he’s the one who can help all of us—not just tonight but also in future.”

  The music died down. And Caroline suddenly appeared to George and Katherine—a shimmering figure in a pale pink crinoline embroidered with sparkling flowers. George stood up and moved impulsively towards her but he was held back by filmy, plastic wrapping (just like Charlie Chancer had been earlier). As George tried to paw and scrape the film down, the vision disappeared. George II wanted more—to go on communicating with Caroline even by means of a third party.

  But Caroline was now very tired from her super-human exertions. After all, she was a very old lady. Back in her Kensington flat, she closed her laptop, suppressing the sympathy she felt towards George and the inner turmoil she had caused her late husband.