by Trevor Veale
Outside the carriage, a swarm of people in holiday mood ignored the mendicant monarchs. These are not our people, she thought, there are no desperate-looking men in cheap clothes, no children in rags, no old women in anonymous peasant black – they’re tourists! The sight of these decently-clad visitors strolling about the grungy streets of the city, free to come and go as they pleased, made the tawdriness of their carriage-ride especially galling. I’m a prisoner, Letitia thought, a prisoner in a poverty-stricken country, doomed to spending the rest of my days trundling back and forth in miserable processions!
So the queen awoke, her depression only slightly mitigated by a quick half-dream of a long sandy beach trimmed by a gleaming expanse of ocean, with white flecks on a sparkle of cobalt blue. Wind, spray and the roar of breaking waves filled her eyes, ears and nostrils. Godfrey stood beside her as she gazed out across the glittering arc of sea and sand. There were people in sun loungers sprawled like seals in front of them. A woman in a tight swimsuit reared up to oil herself before flopping down and complaining to her well-oiled neighbor that she never had time to read her book.
Why not get one of your servants to read it for you, and tell you the plot? was the thought that went through Letitia’s mind.
She was amused to think that these lounger-seals had not yet learned the trick of doing nothing for themselves. Some of them were hauling themselves up from their sunbeds and turning them to soak up the sun.
Nouveaux riches! She thought. She would never have bothered her head with moving her own lounger. There were servants on hand to move her and her lounger at the slightest flick of her hand.
Then she was truly awake, with a catch in her throat and her eyes filling with water as salty as the rolling breakers she remembered. She was wracked with the unbearable sadness of knowing she would never enjoy the bliss of lazing on a beach with all her royal duties behind her. Monarchy was a job for life. Beneath her tears was a white rage. Why shouldn’t she and Godfrey be able to spend their golden years in blissful retirement? They were prisoners of tradition and it was all so bloody unfair!
She shook her head and stared at the patch of sunlight gilding a gap in the heavy drapes covering her windows. What’s the matter with me? She asked herself. Why am I in such a damn funk? The shivers and headache returned, along with a feverish awareness of the phrase a mismatched marriage, and she groaned. Even the arrival of Agatha Armstrong-Pitt, Duchess of Dimchester, the second lady of the Queen’s Bedchamber, did little to dispel her gloom. A woman of excellent birth, background and breeding, the duchess was prone to moments of extreme absent-mindedness, when she might as well be a million kilometers away. She knocked briskly on the door and sailed in, brandishing a copy of the Bugle.
“You won’t be happy at what’s in the paper today, Your Majesty!’ she announced. “Her Highness the Princess of Bulimia has stolen your thunder and used it to feather her own nest!”
Well, she’s as welcome to it as you are to your mixed metaphor, Letitia thought, while snatching the Bugle from the duchess and scanning its pages. When she came to the gossip column, Trumpet Blast, she gave a gasp and rolled over in the bed, letting the paper drop to the floor. It lay there face up, describing the sartorial rivalry between Letitia and Princess Dawna. Letitia had attempted to match the modish retro look of the young princess by wearing genuine old-fashioned clothes to a function, only to draw the scorn of the columnist who thought her floral print dress better suited to a chintz armchair. Meanwhile the oversize clip-on earrings with matching semi-precious stone pendant which should have been a joke but which looked sensational on Dawna had sparked a stampede in Mellorian society for enamel and paste jewelry.
A different page of the Bugle was being firmly grasped by King Godfrey, sitting up in bed in his somewhat austere bedchamber. He was frowning over a report of the huge political demonstration in Constitution Square the day after the revelries surrounding the arrival of Princess Dawna. It had been organized by a radical outlawed movement called the Mellorian People’s Revolutionary Party.
“Funny how we never hear any of the noise these demonstrators make,” he said aloud. Considering it a tribute to the stout walls and reinforced windows of the palace, he yawned and turned the page. Steam from his morning cup of coffee curled as he chuckled at the gossip column that had so offended his wife. Skimming a crabby political piece by the liberal-leaning editor which made his blood boil, he smiled at the prim etiquette lesson by Miss Manners – today’s instruction was on the correct from address for members of the clergy – as he raced toward the racing pages. The news page he gave barely a glance – that was all political stuff better left to the prime minister and his palace advisers, Sir Michael Pest and Clive Fatsi. He preferred to place bets on outsiders and enjoy his dark Colombian coffee.
At the same moment the king was sizing up the winner of a steeplechase, Princess Dawna stood on the small round balcony of her bedchamber and stared sleepily at her Android. She had been hoping to watch a tiny movie on the phone while her maid ran a bath, but she hadn’t reckoned on Melloria being the blackest of cellphone blackspots, and had to content herself with reading a text her friend Tori had sent a few days earlier. When she backpacked across Europe on her way to see Dawna in Bulimia, she had stumbled into Melloria. She chuckled at the wicked way her friend ran the place down.
‘…the hostel in Mell City is dreadful unles ur ok with no towels soap bog paper or bathplugs. The food is unspeakabl. Brekfast is millet bun on cabbage in vinegar & all u get in the market is pulpy toms & wormy apples. Yeh ther’s meat if u don’t mind big black flies all over it. The Mells hav a saying A Mell always eats well as soon as he leavs Melloria. Poor u having 2 marry ther Prince Charming. Not! Don’t worry I’ll b ther 4 the wedding. I’ll smuggl Nutella 4 r millet bunz!’
Dawna powered off her phone and stepped back into the bedchamber. Beyond the palace lawns and the railings that surrounded them, she could hear the early morning hubbub of the city. She closed the doors firmly. It was a pleasant day in May and her wedding was less than a week away. Her stomach lurched. My wedding! She had invited all the people she considered to be her friends to the ceremony and she hoped that one at least – Tori, her only real friend – would be brave enough to face the rigors of Mellorian hospitality.
Chapter 5
Catheter’s Formative Fumblings
In the week leading up to his wedding, Prince Catheter, Crown Prince of Melloria, Heir Apparent to the Mellorian throne, scion of the ancient family of Gorm, felt like he had just jumped out of an airplane at 10,000 meters – with no parachute, only a voluminous pair of loon pants, making his descent and inevitably agonizing landing slow enough to give him time to enjoy – probably for the last time – his two most passionate pursuits.
His first love, indeed his lifelong obsession, had been sound. Ever since he could remember, he had been fascinated by the noises that surrounded him. When he was just a toddler, he discovered a little Panasonic portable recorder in a discarded cardboard box in the gift room. He dug it out of its stryrofoam casing and when his nanny tried to pull him away from it, fearing she would get into trouble for letting her young charge wander into the gift room, he screamed blue murder. The nanny retreated and left him to feast his attention on his exciting discovery.
When his parents learned of his new obsession, they were amused enough to indulge him by giving him a tape recorder every Christmas and on his birthday. It was his father’s idea of a joke – the future king of Melloria as an amateur sound engineer – but the joke backfired, and Catheter couldn’t seem to get enough of sound-recording machines. He carried each machine around with him, like other children might carry a pet hamster, and with each new upgrade he packed the previous model away in his toy cupboard. At night he always kept a recorder under his bed.
On his first day at kindergarten, an entire wing of the building had to be evacuated after the humming recorder he had left in the coatroom was mistaken for a bomb. For this, he was severel
y reprimanded by his father but nothing seemed to stop him. He developed a talent for being able to rewind or fast-forward any tape to the exact spot he wanted, without using the counter. His parents would amuse themselves over this by asking him to play a song from the middle of the tape, hoping to catch him out. He would sit on the big Persian carpet in the drawing-room and put his ear next to the tape deck. His face would light up when he reached the right spot and he instantly pressed the Play button. The chosen song would start up, perfectly timed from the beginning. He never missed an opening bar, even when his parents tried to distract him with yells, whistles and sarcastic comments, and he always screamed with delight at his success.
His greatest joy was making his own recordings, and he carried his recorder whenever he went outdoors. He loved being left alone in the palace gardens, even for just a few minutes, so that he could make recordings of birdsongs or the rustling wind or even Berryman the gardener coughing his lungs up. He progressed from these outdoor sounds to recordings of himself talking in different voices or acting out war scenes that were full of screeching shells, booming cannon and whirring helicopters. Later he grew adept at mimicking various animal sounds – whinnying horses, bellowing elephants or the droning of a hive of bees. He eventually began incorporating these noises into dramatic productions he made up and he stored the results in his tape cabinet. These dramas soon involved human voices, and even little scenes of interactions between himself and his parents, or between other family members, which involved frequent snarls, arguments and slamming doors.
His enthusiasm for creating sound effects tempted him to dream of a career as a movie director. He knew that his position as Heir Apparent, plus his tendency to neglect things like plot and character in his dramas, made the dream seem increasingly unlikely and the hopelessness he felt, as his dream dwindled, added to his already melancholic temperament. Whenever he played one of his dramas to his mother – his father treated his son’s hobby with ill-disguised contempt – his tendency to jump from one loud noise to another without explaining why and rushing through the dialog to achieve another sensational sound made her convinced that he should be thoroughly shielded from Hollywood and its “action movies.”
“Why can’t I hear what anyone is saying?” she once pointed out in exasperation. “I’m sure that last bit wasn’t even a proper word.”
“But if it wasn’t a proper word,” he argued, “why did I just say it?”
As he progressed through adolescence and young adulthood, Catheter took to carrying his tape recorder in a waterproof ziplock, even when swimming. He attached it to his trunks, so that he could record underwater sounds. Unfortunately, he often failed to seal the bag properly and the waterlogged tape was wasted. At night he always played his recorder while he slept and kept the windows open, to record night sounds. The machine he used, black and silver and shining, was one he loved so much he was later to stash it under the bed on his wedding night and record the consummation.
Prince Catheter’s other great passion was, of course, the love of his life, his soulmate Lucinda Limehouse-Blewit. They met on the polo field (Catheter and his jeering younger brother Anton being required by Mellorian law to be adept at the sport, as was their father), although not as team mates or adversaries. Lucinda had been taken on as a groom by the master of the Royal Horses, and the first time she met Catheter was when he was trotting back to the stables on his palomino. She took the bridle of his mount confidently, although only a girl, and intrigued him by showing no nervousness at his rank. After the horse had been put in his stall, they sat together sharing a can of cabbage and burdock – the Mellorian national cola – and engaged in some light banter. Lucinda’s own gray mare (the one she was allowed to ride as part of her job) was stabled in the same row as Catheter’s palomino and they found themselves getting slightly light-headed as the conversation turned from horses to sound recording, which Lucinda said she found fascinating.
At first Catheter saw Lucinda as a little crazy – she was a girl, after all – but he was too fascinated by her and the amazing feelings tearing through him to retreat into his usual shell. No girl had ever spoken to him so freely and he hardly knew what he was saying, although he was saying plenty. Plus, he liked the way she looked. She wore jodhpurs like himself and a tight jumper that accentuated her girlhood. Her hair was loose and carefree-looking and she had a lopsided smile that he couldn’t help wanting to look at. They quickly made arrangements to go for a ride together when the paddock was empty.
He felt like he was in a dream while they walked, then trotted, then walked their horses again, and when the ride was over he dismounted quickly and offered his hand to her. She touched it to acknowledge his chivalry, then immediately sprang off her horse and startled him with a kiss. At first, he gagged at the completely unexpected mouthsuck and she convulsed into laughter.
“For goodness sake, relax!” she said, still shaking with laughter at his awkward reaction to her kiss. He felt himself flushing hard, his confusion mixed with the delicious sensation of sexual arousal. He suddenly felt anger at his predicament, and directed it at her for making him feel so incredible.
“How dare you!” he blazed. “You’ve no right to kiss me – you’re a commoner.”
“So what?” she replied, unfazed. “Nobody’s perfect.”
After that first encounter, they began taking rides together whenever they could, progressing from going at a trot to a canter to (on one occasion) a gallop to a spot on the far side of the paddock, where they let the horses graze. They then dismounted and settled down behind some hay bales, where no one could see them. There she could stroke his face and play with the hair curling over his ears. “You look so sad when you’re quiet,” she murmured. “It makes me feel sad, too.”
He felt the flush of shame after she spoke, and started telling her how his life had been mapped out for him from childhood on, and how he hated what lay ahead for him, yet somehow knew that if he managed to maintain a dignified front, he would be able to bear the pain. She responded by taking an old horse blanket from under the hay bales and spreading it out.
“I think it’s time your life took a turn for the better,” she breathed.
He watched hypnotized as she pulled him down beside her and brushed her lips against his. The reek of stale sweat and mold from the horse blanket seemed to fade into all the perfumes of Araby. “Um, this is my first time, you know,” was all he could say.
She nodded, then leaned back and motioned him to kiss her. When he did, his kiss was like that of a young boy, so she kissed him gently in return, the way an inexperienced girl would. He paused, then kissed her again. This time he pushed his hand under the small of her back and lifted her slightly. Then with his other hand he fumbled with the crucifix chain around her neck. She became afraid his tentative advance would go on forever and she would soak the blanket, but she held still. Finally his hand left her neck, slid over her T-shirted breasts and dropped down to touch the fly of her jeans.
“Catheter,” she sighed, “my Poopsy Prince!” Unable to restrain herself any longer, she arched her back, allowing him to release his hand and press it beside the other at the place between her legs. Bingo! she thought. “Oh baby!” she whispered. He squeezed gently and her whole body convulsed.
She hadn’t been handled this way before, not even during her short, disastrous affair with an older man called Simpkins, and she found Catheter’s hesitant fumbling a terrific turn-on. Nevertheless, she hoped his hesitation was merely a prelude to a wantonness she could hardly begin to imagine. As things turned out, her hopes were more than justified and after their first sexual encounter they began to meet clandestinely at her apartment in East City. The bed was narrow, but to the two lovers it was as sumptuous as a king. Alone and undisturbed, they explored each other’s bodies and Catheter eventually lost his nervousness as well as his virginity.
Now, alone in his bedchamber a week before his wedding, Catheter moped and relived the experience of desce
nding from a great height in a pair of billowing loon pants. It reminded him of the queasiness he felt early in his childhood when he was learning to use the high-diving board. The harsh parenting standards imposed by his father required that he climb to the highest board in the palace swimming pool. He then had to jump from it, even though he had barely learned to dive. He was traumatized, nevertheless his father insisted he go to the very top. There, with his feet planted on the board, he heard his father’s voice bellowing from far below: ”I want you to show some balls!” Catheter remembered waiting until the roaring in his ears had gone away, then – terror-stricken – he looked down at the water cruelly glinting in the pool below.
As his father’s insistent growl lacerated his ears, he nosedived off the board and plummeted toward the pool, his arms and legs flailing. His acceleration was hastened by his plump physique and, as the water zoomed closer, a scream burst from his lips. Then he slammed through the water with a gigantic crash. As he spun underwater, he felt like he had been dragged at speed through sheets of melting glass and he knew he would bear a terrific red welt on his stomach for weeks to come. Bursting through the blue surface, he saw his father sitting impatiently above him.
“Come on, Cathy, you can do better than that!” the king bellowed. “Try again!”
Catheter splashed to the side of the pool where his father sat like a statue. Coughing and spluttering, he opened his eyes. “You could have killed me!” he shrieked.
Chapter 6
Hunting The Snaggle-Tooth
Two days before his son’s wedding, King Godfrey decided he would take his two sons on a hunt for the rare Mellorian snaggle-tooth antelope. Even though it was the wrong time of year – hunting the snaggle-tooth didn’t officially start until September to allow the mating season to progress – Godfrey figured that, being king and consequently above the law, he was entitled to take a few liberties with the course of nature, especially since his older son would soon have little time for hunting, shooting and fishing (not that he did much of either) once married life took over.