by Trevor Veale
Slamil was already on the platform when the Gorm contingent entered the auditorium, and he glared at them with undisguised venom.
“Not very cheerful tonight, is he?” Anton said.
“Aren’t you a little overdressed, Dad?” Catheter teased Godfrey, pointing to the gold braid and rows of glittering medals on his uniform, as they marched into the hall.
“Not in the slightest,” he said proudly. “People appreciate a good rig. They like their president to look like the commander-in-chief.”
The audience was buzzing with excitement. Some of the People’s Party hacks were passing around brandy flasks and wine bottles and the aroma of booze hung in the air. Between swigs all eyes were on the great screen overhead where the results would be displayed. It read zero as the Gorm party wound their way to the podium.
There was a sudden hush as a bell loudly rang and the Chair of the balloting committee took her position before the microphone.
“The polls are closing all over Melloria and counting will now begin,” she said, and a smattering of cheers issued from the tipsy audience.
“Here is the first count, just in, from Ward One in the City. Are you there, Ward One?”
The screen cleared and a man’s bearded face appeared, looming over the audience.
“Here is the count from Ward One,” the bearded man said, then lowered his eyes to consult his paper. “For Paul Slamil 1,010 votes. For Godfrey Gorm 2,030 votes! Long live the king!” he shouted the oath spontaneously, and immediately the screen went blank.
Archbishop Lepager leaned over to Godfrey and whispered behind his hand: “We’re on our way, Mr President. They can’t stop us now.”
“Let’s hope they all come in like that,” Godfrey murmured.
The next six counts were all for Slamil. The People’s Party intimidators had done their work well.
Station by station, the results mounted, as did the tension. Soon Godfrey and Slamil were neck and neck.
“This election is most fraying on the nerves!” Godfrey groaned. “It’s driving me to drink.” He pulled out his pocket flask and, after several hearty swigs of brandy, he was his old self again.
There were now only four polling stations to go. “Are any of those ours?” Godfrey whispered to Lepager.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve completely lost track.”
First Slamil led, then the votes favored Godfrey, then on the next to last result Slamil pulled ahead by seventy-five votes.
“You should have done a better job of trashing Slamil,” Catheter said.
“Or shot the bastard,” Anton added.
“This is why I hate democracy,” Godfrey said. “One never knows the final result until the very last vote.”
“Here it is, voters of Melloria,” the chairwoman said, “the result from Crapula in the Northern Region, the very last result!”
A new face filled the screen overhead, and everyone looked up in anticipation. A man, mustached and lantern-jawed, was clearing his throat.
“It is my solemn duty to bring you the final ballot from the village of Crapula,” he said in a slow, lugubrious northern accent. The audience murmured – this was the moment of truth, and both Godfrey and Slamil were bursting with tension.
“…the final count is…just a moment, I have the figures here.”
“That man should be shot!” Slamil muttered, and Godfrey nodded his agreement.
“Yes, here it is. It is my, uh, pleasure to report that for Paul Slamil, Crapula has awarded eight hundred and nineteen votes.”
“That puts us eight hundred and ninety-four votes behind,” Lepager whispered, staring at his calculator.
“It’s still not too late to shoot Slamil,” Anton said.
“…and for the other candidate, Godfrey Gorm, there are a total of… My goodness!”
His eyes bulged and he looked as if he’d died and was in purgatory. “I must report that he has…eight hundred and ninety-four votes.”
The crowd erupted in pandemonium.
Slamil looked hatefully in Godfrey’s direction and mouthed a silent curse. Godfrey stood firm on the platform in his showy uniform, waving at the TV cameras, clenching his fist, bending and kissing Dawna and hugging his sons. He shook hands with Lepager, gave a tentative glance toward Slamil who was shaking his head in despair, then stepped forward to the microphone. He had to stand there for five minutes with his hands raised before the audience exhausted its turmoil. The cameras were all trained on him as he spoke.
“Thank you, my friends and fellow Mellorians,” his voice echoed round the hall. “By voting for me and my party in sufficient numbers, in spite of obstruction and intimidation, you have thrown us a lifeline. We must now go to final victory in the elimination poll to be taken a week from today, under Mellorian election law. I urge all Mellorians eligible to vote to turn out for the forces of honor, faith and dignity, and bring us a resounding victory!”
Everybody heard the shot. It came from high in the building, from one of the small windows at the rear of the auditorium used by technicians. The impact of the bullet hurled Dawna backwards, so that she was lost to view by the audience, and a crash was heard on stage.
There was a moment of absolute silence, then all hell broke loose. In the confusion of shouts and screams, two more shots were heard, but Godfrey, his army training kicking in, instinctively flung himself to the floor, dragging Catheter and Anton – both of whom he’d been hugging – down with him. As fate would have it, Letitia was resting, fittingly, in bed at the time of her daughter-in-law’s shooting. The other people on stage were reeling about, their faces ashen.
Catheter was the first of the fallen to get up, and he rushed over to kneel beside his wife, cradling her in his lap. He took hold of her hand, feeling for her pulse, and squeezed the feeble grasp she offered.
“I’m here, don’t worry,” he said, his voice faint with shock. Her eyes were closed, but her hand gave one last tremor as it tightened on his. An instant later it went limp.
The paramedics were quickly on stage, jostling him aside and rolling Dawna’s body onto a stretcher. They were soon bearing it through the churning crowd in the auditorium.
“It can’t be!” Catheter cried, and many hearts went out to him when his anguished face appeared on a million TV screens. “Not dead – not now! Oh my God, this is a catastrophe!”
The paramedics slowly struggled out of the auditorium while police guarding the hall hurled themselves through the crowd, fighting to reach the stage and seal the building’s exits.
“He’s up in that window, high up in the back!” Anton said to Godfrey, pointing. Godfrey saw a flash of movement that vanished as he looked.
“I’ll kill the swine responsible for this!” he said, glancing at Slamil who visibly shrank.
“You have to admit, it was a damn good shot,” Slamil’s bodyguard, a thickly bespectacled man whose muscles bulged inside his black uniform, muttered to him. Slamil shoved him away.
At the front of the building, police were running up the stairs, trying to locate the room where the shot had come from. A mob of people from the audience joined in the chase. Eventually the police found a high-velocity rifle and some cartridges in an empty room. They emerged from the building, one of them holding the long-barreled rifle, as the huge crowd in the street pressed around them and tried to see what was happening. TV reporters were gabbing into their microphones and cameras were held up to catch a glimpse of the assassin’s rifle. Police car doors were flung open and the officers from the search piled in.
On stage, officials rushed about, and Catheter was helped into his chair. He looked down in horror at his wife’s blood on his hand. Reverently he took his handkerchief from his breast pocket and pressed it to the stains. Then he carefully refolded the linen to preserve them. The handkerchief was later displayed at the restored Calliper Palace, inside a glass case filled with formaldehyde to preserve the fabric. It stood beside the case holding the crown jewels.
/> Leaving the building by a rear exit, Catheter, Godfrey and Anton were driven by Simpkins to the hospital where Dawna was lying. Trembling and dazed with grief, Catheter sat beside his wife, while the others waited outside the room, surrounded by starched and startled nurses and their incoherent tears and curses. Everyone waited, numb with sorrow, until the doctor pronounced her dead.
Catheter sat in the back of the campaignmobile, between his father and brother, lost in the thought that if she’d lived another few weeks, she would have divorced him. As it was, he was an unblemished widower, free to marry the woman of his choice. With a dim, unsteady but increasing intensity, the realization of his good fortune filled his heart with a savage guilt. The nagging notion that he and his family had played a part in her death, by exposing her to danger, and were now benefitting from it, grew like a tumor in his despair-drenched brain, and he was helpless to stem or restrain the tears that coursed down his face.
Godfrey and Anton shifted awkwardly in their seats. Godfrey, abandoning his disapproval of male tears, sat stiffly and upheld a sympathetic silence as his form of consolation. Anton, less inhibited, hugged his brother warmly.
Chapter 58
The Aftermath
When Godfrey, Catheter and Anton got back to the cottage, they found Letitia sitting in the living room with the TV off. She had dozed off during the election broadcast and missed the dramatic shot and its aftermath, but had been informed by phone from Archbishop Lepager of Dawna’s death.
When she first heard the news Letitia had been brutally shocked, but she soon froze into a doom-laden fatalism, grimly aware of the onrushing tsunami of grief that must be devastating her husband and her sons and would soon engulf the whole of Melloria. Although she had never been close to her daughter-in-law or spoken to her one-on-one (that was Godfrey’s domain), indeed she had bristled at her wayward antics and neurotic moods, she took no satisfaction now in knowing Dawna was no more.
The young man who cooked for them and who had arrived as soon as he heard the news, brought the four Gorms a tray of tea and biscuits from the kitchen and they sat in silence for a while.
‘What are the police doing to find the culprits?” Letitia finally said.
Catheter shook his head. “Too soon to know,” he whispered.
She clicked her tongue impatiently. “Well, someone had better be doing something or the trail will go cold.”
The others looked horror-stricken. Only Catheter relaxed his posture, relieved to see his mother behaving character.
Anton picked up the remote and switched the TV on. It showed a program about Dawna on a foreign channel. The sight of her soft white throat exposed, and her sudden, slightly husky laughter was too much for Godfrey. Having been so utter besotted with her, he was smitten by grief. His cheeks burned and he swore a vicious oath against Paul Slamil and any member of the People’s Party he could lay his hands on.
“Have a biscuit, Dear,” Letitia said to console him.
“I don’t need a biscuit, I need a shotgun!” he said.
“Cool it, Pops –they won’t let you be president if any of the bolshies get smoked!” Anton said.
The government clumsily attempted to divert the public’s mood of grief by declaring a national holiday on the day of Dawna’s funeral and setting off fireworks the night before. They misread the public’s anger toward the People’s Party, who were widely seen as responsible for Dawna’s death. On the day of her funeral in Bulimia, a mood of contrition settled over the country. Thousands poured over the border to attend the funeral, and in churches and temples packed congregations prayed, not only for the soul of the dead woman, but for their own redemption. Even the massed Slobodian troops, waiting for the order to invade, paused to observe the day of mourning.
On the day of the elimination poll, held a week after the assassination, immense crowds streamed into every polling station, forming long lines and being entertained by demonstrators, some in fantastic costumes, who paraded through the streets carrying placards and banners proclaiming: SHE DIDN’T DIE IN VAIN. Women wearing Dawna masks had bullet holes in their jackets and a coffin bearing the name of the People’s Party: MPRP, followed by RIP, was shouldered above the seething melee outside the People’s Party HQ and left on the steps as the polls were closing.
There were speeches by Godfrey, Archbishop Lepager and many people from public life who had known Dawna, a band playing traditional Mellorian music, and even a rap artist wearing a gigantic canary-yellow cowboy hat over an abundance of dreadlocks rapped about her and went about calling everybody “muthafucka.” He wore a 32-carat diamond pinky ring and was one of a marching, chanting throng who gathered from dawn to dusk outside the People’s Party Headquarters and who easily brushed aside the quarreling, wrangling party hacks who tried to disrupt them.
TV crews shooting newsreel moved among the crowds, and an inflatable Bouncy Castle was clambered over by children whose parents were voting in droves for the Church Party.
At the end of the day’s polling, Paul Slamil went under police escort through the immense crowd outside the opera house that had gathered to celebrate Godfrey Gorm’s victory’ As the TV cameras closed in, the People’s Party, thoroughly rattled by the upsurge of popular condemnation, quickly conceded defeat. Godfrey was declared the first president of the Democratic Republic of Melloria, and the first thing he did after thanking the Mellorian people was to declare Calliper Palace as his new presidential home.
The next day, he and Letitia drove up to the empty and abandoned palace, and a smile crinkled Godfrey’s face when, looking up, he saw above the ancient battlements the royal Mellorian standard with its crested coat of arms. Simpkins opened the door of the campaignmobile and they got out in the palace courtyard. The January day was cold and snow had dusted the flagstones as they walked to the front entrance with its Corinthian pillars. The smile on Godfrey’s face vanished when they saw the interior. It looked as though it had been devastated by a ravaging tribe of vandals. Every room had been stripped, leaving only the Palladian façade with its handsome stone porticos and the Gorm family crest – all of it chipped and scared by bullets. Every room had holes in its walls and floors where switches and lights had been removed, radiators had been taken out and wiring stripped. The faucets in the bathrooms were also missing and even the doorhandles were gone.
“My God, now I know how people feel when they move into a house the previous owners have stripped!” Letitia exclaimed.
The challenge was to restore the rooms to something like their 18th Century splendor. Also, the palace had last been rewired in 1927 and much of the plumbing was asbestos-lagged.
When they came to the queen’s bedchamber, Letitia uttered an exclamation of surprise and stopped. The room was as bare and vandalized as the others at the palace. All the tapestries had gone, including that of beagles worrying a great elk in the Forest of Gorm. Oh well, she thought philosophically, I never did like that wallhanging.
They looked around the other rooms as if in a dream. Their faces expressed disbelief; it was as if they’d died and gone to hell. Letitia broke the mood of despair by gesturing around the drawing room with a maternal sweep.
“Well, it’s structurally sound,” she said brightly. “All we need is furniture and a few servants!” The Gorms were obliged to vacate the cottage which Archbishop Lepager retained for the use of visiting church dignitaries, and move into the shell of a palace. Every day Godfrey went out very early to his presidential meetings, yawning and cursing his new office, and leaving Letitia to run the household and manage the staff. She was quickly able to rehire Simpkins, who brought his fiancée Sharon back as the queen’s maid, and through their connections they soon had an underbutler, maid, cook, part-time gardener and occasional driver. She supervised them all and did the accounts, a necessary task since everything had to be fitted within a tight budget. This she found especially difficult – she had been accustomed to some luxury during her years as queen, and found it impossible to cu
rb her taste for imported caviar and champagne that she considered intrinsic to the fabric of a civilized life.
After the first night in her old bedchamber, she woke up in the bonecold room sweating, having dreamed an unusual dream: she was standing by the seashore. It seemed a woman with white hair was standing with her back to Letitia, in front of a grave. A wave of pity and incomprehension swept over her. Looking closer, she saw the woman’s knotted fingers, pale with age, her body stooped and frail, her head bent, as if she were weeping. She couldn’t see the woman’s face or tell whose grave it was, but she had a sneaking suspicion as she surfaced into the waking state that the old woman was her future self, if she had to serve any more years as queen. Or as First Lady, she thought sourly as she caught sight of the familiar objects – few in number – in her room.
She looked around the room, and her eyes fell on the framed picture of her mother clutching a cocker spaniel. If only Mummy could see this, she thought. She’d be turning in her grave. Then her thoughts turned to the improvement she dreamed of making to the palace as she waited out the months and years of Godfrey’s presidency.
The first project would be her garden. Before the revolution she had looked on her garden with a quiet pride. She had been saddened the day before when, in the company of her new part-time gardener Berryman, she had inspected bushes and shrubs that looked burnt and shriveled. By the early summer, she hoped, it would be a different story: the grass rich, the gardenias creamy and fragrant, and a prolific blossoming of chrysanthemums. The rose walk would be scented in summer with the perfume of a thousand roses, there would be a swimming pool, lots of nooks and crannies and a lovely summer house where tea and cakes would be served at 4 p.m. By autumn, those burnt and shriveled bushes would be a blaze of gold and crimson, and her joy as a garden owner would be complete.