by Trevor Veale
He stepped close to her, his pants around his ankles. “What is it?” he whispered.
She put her hands up to his face, careful to avoid touching his flimsy beard.
“I can’t.”
He touched her arm. “Lollipop.”
“Poopsy darling, it’s going to be very difficult once you – perhaps we should start… restraining ourselves.”
He looked crestfallen and pulled his pants up.
She now felt terrible. It was like refusing a dying man his last wish. “Look, darling, I – “ she started to say.
He turned away and zipped up his pants. “Excuse me, I need to make sure I’m decent, before I go back.” His voice was choked.
They stumbled back down the slope to the car, hand in hand. Catheter slammed the driver’s door and they drove back in silence. As they neared the city they glimpsed the distant turrets and battlements of Calliper Palace. At the sight of them Catheter tore off his beard and glasses and cursed.
Chapter 10
The Wedding
Midway through the ceremony of her son’s wedding, Queen Letitia yawned. While others were watching the cathedral doors for the bride’s triumphal entry, she found herself gazing at the forest of gigantic stone pillars hung with faded banners that rose above the stone-flagged nave. Her mind, no longer anxious or indignant, took on the dull ache of boredom. Her nostrils twitched – the sour, musty air was infused with clouds of incense swung in her face by an energetic altar boy – and she had to pinch her nose to avoid embarrassing herself by sneezing. The billows from the boy’s censor increased as he made another pass alongside her and the build-up to the sneeze became almost unbearable. Her face reddened and trembled as she pinched her nose ever more tightly and held herself rigid. She didn’t feel bad about yawning, but a sneeze would never do.
To distract herself, she listened to the thin, reedy voice of Thomas Lesot, the Archbishop of Melloria, intoning the opening prayers of the wedding service in preparation for the arrival of Her Blessed Loveliness. The archbishop was a roundish balding man who stood in front of the high altar in his white and gold surplice and his voice fluttered about the nave as he led the chants that the other priests were obliged to follow. His dirgelike drone, periodically joined by the muffled response, echoed like the sound of some strange Amazonian monkey-cries in the rainforest.
This auditory resemblance so tickled the queen that she began to imagine that the intricate tracery of carved stone on the pillars and windows were vines, ferns and mosses and that the pillars themselves were giant trees. This image reminded her of her walled-in garden at the palace, her favorite outdoor spot. She mentally basked in its rose bushes, now in bloom, and the rockery, sundials, small fountain and fishpond. Among its trellises and arbors she found a comfort and joy that she rarely found between waking up and bedtime.
She had planned to install miniature grottos that would be lit at night, so that her flowerbeds would twinkle and she could gaze at them through the windows of her bedchamber before retiring. When it was moonlit, the mystery of the silver light glimmering on the fountain and reflected in the fishpond would be practically magical. She believed that by positioning halogen lights in the new grottos, the spectacle would become extraordinary. Never mind Queen Ada and her grottos, rock pools and classical sculptures in the Porcellan gardens. Soon she too would have something to boast about.
These pleasant thoughts kept her occupied until the sound of herald trumpets from the entrance brought everyone back to the moment. Princess Dawna, on the arm of her father, King Hector, was sweeping up the aisle toward her jittery bridegroom, and everyone rose to greet her. Sitting next to his wife, King Godfrey gave her a sidelong glance. He had been enjoying a reverie of his own while waiting for the bride’s arrival. He had been remembering when, as a young prince and officer cadet. his father, King Egbert, had sent him and some other young Mellorian officers to Italy for some godforsaken reason – certainly not to learn how to fight – and he had been on furlough, strolling along a beach and ogling the young female sunbathers. A young English girl caught his eye and he found a reason to talk to her by picking up a seashell and asking her, in broken English, what she thought it might be. Her name was Lettie and she was on holiday with her mother, Glo, who had been recently widowed.
Godfrey saw in Lettie a girl who looked lovely, young and self-confident – all qualities he was looking for in a wife. Her quiet sense of dignity disconcerted and charmed him, and when he ran out of things to say about the shell his next line was: “Let’s go for a stroll on the beach so I can see if your swimsuit matches the sand or the sea.” Her response was to giggle and stammer: “Let me find my sandals.” He smiled at the recollection. They had taken their stroll and later began dating. After months of communicating by letter and long-distance phone, he finally – with his father’s permission – asked her to marry him. And now their older son was about to marry. Continuing to gaze at his wife, who was watching the bridal procession, he realized he still found her attractive. True, the intervening years had taken their toll: the fine geometry of her face was sagging and her eyes had lost the piercing blue urgency they had when he first met her thirty-nine years before. Her hair, though mostly gray under its auburn sheen, was still springy and lustrous, and he noticed that her back still descended in a pleasing arch to the delightful hillocks of her rump. This feature had especially aroused him as a young man and he thought of her then, stretched out on her beach towel, with her pert breasts, smooth legs and delicious buttocks. He now felt thoroughly aroused, even as he sat witnessing this sacred ceremony, and only by planting his hymn book in his lap was he able to conceal the erection stretching the folds of his dress pants.
He speculated whether his wife would concede him his marital rights after the reception was over, and mentally phrased a request to be allowed to discharge his conjugal duties. He knew she was still interested in sex, palace gossip emanating from the Ladies of the Queen’s Bedchamber told him as much, it was his own staying power that was the problem. He remembered the last time they had done it, on the occasion of their wedding anniversary after they’d stayed up late watching 9 ½ Weeks. “Sorry,” he said afterwards, breathing hard and rolling away from her. “I’m short-winded tonight.”
“Don’t worry,” she said to console him. “I’m not about to place a personal ad for a prince charming.”
They both laughed and he smiled at the thought. I wonder if I’ll get lucky tonight,” he thought. Then a twinge of pain in his lower abdomen brought him back to earth. The twinge became a sharp pang that made him forget his erection and shift in his seat uncomfortably. Silently cursing, he reached into an inside pocket of his tunic for his painkillers and zinc tablets. He swallowed them and endured the remainder of the service stoically, his mind wandering to erotic fantasies about his daughter-in-law as the ceremony wore on.
If Letitia had known what was going through Godfrey’s mind during their son’s solemn nuptials, she would have given him a sharp kick. Her own mental wanderings ranged from thoughts of her garden to dwelling on how strangely Agatha Armstrong-Pitt had acted recently, wearing increasingly garish clothing and dashing about the bedchamber in the morning with a clatter and fuss that gave her a headache, to the layout of the banquet at the reception. She had planned on a formal champagne and foie-gras lunch, with traditional Mellorian roast duck with brown cabbage, cheese-and-potato dumplings, edible toadstools, poached salt venison with onion broth, as well as oysters and caviar. Her Delicate Stomachness had scotched the idea of the trad feast (with her mother’s connivance) and insisted on Chinese fare, in accordance with her I Ching divinations and Feng Shui consultations, and she feared they would all be slurping noodles and won tons and chewing bok choi, with not a crumb of wedding cake in sight. In the event, reason and the influence of Dawna’s father had prevailed. In spite of his airy-fairy ways, Hector was a trencherman and the wedding feast would be a mixture of traditional Mellorian and Bulimian delicacies.
&
nbsp; The reception for the newly-wed prince and princess was held under cut glass chandeliers and huge oils in the banqueting hall of Calliper Palace. Everyone ate fruit cake and trifle at the end of the banquet, and some of the guests even braved the Mellorian national pudding, cacah, which tasted like damp pumpernickel soaked in sugared vinegar. The only hitch, as far as Letitia was concerned, was the humiliation she suffered during the Presentation when she was shunted aside as a mass of people swarmed to congratulate the princess. Her deliberate silence completely failed as a retaliation. Dawna was too busy talking to a gaggle of fashion designers to even notice. The gala ball that followed was hardly any better. Letitia and Godfrey felt passé as they joined the twirling pairs of dancers on the ballroom floor. Everyone’s eyes were on the prince and princess, the latter almost impossibly glamorous from her startling blue eyes to her gold lame heels.
This whole extravaganza of banquets and balls is outrageous, Letitia thought bitterly. The socialists are right; they ought to be abolished.
The final act in the wedding drama took place in the bridal suite. Catheter contemplated it as he stood at the sink of his bathroom and gargled his hydrogen peroxide. Then he rinsed his mouth with warm water and grimaced at his mirror image.
“Well, here it comes,” he said to the haggard thirty-seven-year-old face, its lips speckled with toothpaste. “The first night of the rest of my life.”
From the adjacent bedchamber, the tinkling of Balinese space-clearing bells and Tibetan gongs mingled with the swirls of sandalwood incense that so niggled his senses. He knew his bride of a few hours was in there, flitting around raising the chi, and it depressed him. He wished he had had the guts to stand up to his parents when the subject of a royal alliance was first raised. He also wondered how Lucinda would be spending the evening. He imagined her sitting disconsolately at her dressing-table combing her hair. In his mind he glided to her and scooped her up in his arms. He would carry her outside where the palamino and the splotchy gray mare were saddled and waiting.
At that point in his fantasy he realized the futility of going any further in their imagined flight and, dropping his paramour in mid-scoop, he turned and plodded into the bedchamber. What followed was a barely endurable horror in which he seemed to plunge into a maelstrom of lusting agony, where the only redemption was his body’s anticipation of an ejaculation. After some tentative sparring beneath the sheets, the two bodies in the bed writhed in sweaty abandon while piercing screams rent the night. He emerged from the ordeal to find his bride flushed and gasping, her head pressed into the pillow, her limp hand clutching a blood-spotted tissue.
Chapter 11
The Exposure
Cather’s assumption of where Lucinda was on his wedding night was way off beam. Far from staying at home moping, she was taking care of her financial needs by sitting in a crowded pub just off Constitution Square and pouring out her heart to a journalist. Outside the open doors, people in outrageous costumes were partying to the point of exhaustion. Many had painted their faces in black and yellow, the Mellorian national colors, while others wore their country’s colors in diagonal stripes on T-shirts and pants to proclaim their allegiance. The colors festooned the barroom and hung above the table where Lucinda nattered with Arabella Scott-Natterson, the royal correspondent of the Bugle.
“Of course I’m happy for them both,” she said between sniffs into a tissue. “It just makes me choke up when I think of how much happier he would have been if they’d let him – “
“– marry the woman he loves?” Arabella offered, looking up from the notes she was tapping into her iPad.
“Well, yes, since that would have made him happy,” Lucinda agreed.
“And you are that woman?” Arabella prompted.
“Yes, I am the woman he loves and I love him. Catheter and I have always been an item, and we always will be – “
The noise around them suddenly increased as a group of revelers burst through the entrance.
“When did you find out he was getting married?” Arabella yelled above the din.
“Oh, it was that horrible day he flew back from Bulimia,” Lucinda said, her voice tight and teary. “He came straight from the palace to my flat, looking devastated. I cried when he said the words ’royal alliance’ and he wrapped his arms around me and squeezed my face into his chest, trying to stop the tears, He held me really tight while my tears flooded into his shirt. My shoulders were shaking – “
Arabella popped some of Lucinda’s phrases into her tablet. Not bad, she thought. She must read a lot of romantic novels. Her mind began wool gathering, as she teetered between Nick Sparks and Danielle Steele as Lucinda’s fav read. Then she was brought back to the moment by Lucinda’s next comment.
“He was mumbling something about having to do it just to please mummy and daddy. Oh, he was in such pain!”
“Did you try to talk him out of it?” Arabella asked instinctively.
“Talk? I begged him!” Lucinda shouted. “Catheter, please,” I begged, “don’t make yourself unhappy just to please them!”
“What did he say then?”
“He didn’t answer – he just turned away, shaking his head. Shortly after, he left.”
“Awesome!” Arabella bellowed. “This is going to make a fantastic story.”
She put her tablet on the table and motioned to their empty glasses.
“Would you like another Cosmo, Lucy? I’m absolutely gasping myself.”
Lucinda shook her head and Arabella gave the merest shrug. Then she pushed past the knot of revelers that blocked her way to the bar. When she reached the bar she sat down and laid her purse on the counter. She waited for Larkin the barman to mix her Cosmopolitan, while studying the cavorting cavalcade all around her.
“Ain’t seen you around here lately,” he said, setting down the brimming glass.
“Yeah, time flies, doesn’t it?” she replied. She felt buoyed, sipping the drink and delighting in Lucinda’s recent confession. “Here,” she said, extracting some bills from her purse. “Have one yourself, Phil.”
“Thanks, Bella,” Larkin said, slipping the bills into his pocket.
“Here’s looking at you!” She lifted her glass, draining it at a gulp.
“So what’s going on?” Larkin said. His attention was almost immediately distracted by the noisy demands for beer from carousers who surged up to the bar.
“Oh, you know – same old scandals. Always some rumpus going on at the palace.”
“Oh yes?” He pumped two liters simultaneously, shoved them at their owners and snatched their money. “Hey, there’s a rumor going round that the king and queen are gonna retire.”
Arabella looked up so abruptly that the stool she was on gave a wobble.
“Where did you hear that?” she asked.
“From the horse’s mouth. Amis the PM was in here last night and you know how he likes to blab. He swore blind Cathy and his missus will be wearing crowns inside a year.
Chapter 12
The Retirement Rumor
The rumor that Amis had been spreading arose from a dinner-table exchange between Queen Letitia and King Godfrey the night Princess Dawna flew in from Bulimia. Under gigantic brown oils of hunting scenes in their tarnished gilt frames, Letitia, Godfrey, Catheter, Anton and Dawna chomped on tough venison and overcooked vegetables by candlelight in the big, gloomy dining hall. It was during the dessert course that the queen dropped her bombshell, criticizing the princess’s decision to arrive at the palace a full week before her wedding and sleeping a mere two wings away from her future husband.
“It would never have been allowed in my day,” she said dismissively.
Catheter looked nonplussed. “Why the fuss, Mummy – it’s only a week! What’s the harm in our sleeping in the same palace?”
Letitia looked at her son in a severe, uncompromising manner.
The others looked on, logy after several platters of tough, stringy venison and now lingering over the cacah. Daw
na kept her head meekly down, attempting to swallow a morsel of the soggy dessert, but Catheter, jaws working, appealed to the row of satiated faces.
“Am I missing something here?” he said.
“Letitia’s eyebrows began to quiver. “Yes, you are,” she said. “The protocol of how a betrothed couple are supposed to behave.”
Catheter snorted and swallowed his cacah with a loud vulgar sound. Dawna shook her head, attempting not to giggle. Anton barely stifled a snicker.
Godfrey frowned at the three young dissenters. “Let’s have some better manners at table,” he demanded.
Catheter flushed. “I was merely voicing an opinion,” he said.
“Opinions like that are best left unvoiced. Your mother has spoken – you should heed her words.” Godfrey was nearing the end of his patience.
A shadow crossed Catheter’s face. He was well aware that while he lived in his father’s palace he was subject to his father’s will.
“Then I’m withdrawing for the night,” he said. “I might as well go to my room if I’m so lacking in manners.”
Wishing his parents goodnight, he rose abruptly and went to leave the dining hall. The servant who opened the pair of oak doors for him just managed to overhear the king and queen’s ensuing spat.
“Really, Dear, there’s no need to get worked up over a matter of protocol,” Godfrey began.
“That sounds like the pot calling the kettle black – your whole life is ruled by protocol!” Letitia parried.
Somewhat taken aback, Godfrey returned a thrust. “But of course – tradition is the warp and woof of the monarchy.”