by Trevor Veale
As for the rest of the palace, she let her imagination run riot. There would be lots of porcelain, fine wood, beautiful tables, large sewing boxes and lovely pictures. The dining table would be covered with big silver bowls and candlesticks. Her bedchamber would be decorated in pink Jane Churchill with matching curtains, duvet and wallpaper, and Godfrey’s would be striped and peppermint green. They would be able to see the garden from their window, even Catheter, whose bedroom would be flowery and primrose yellow. She imagined Catheter sitting at his desk, looking serious, with Angus racketing around the room. The thought of Angus made her stop. Who was going to be a mother to Angus, now that…?
A sharp knock at the door and Sharon’s voice: “Breakfast will be served in half an hour, ma’am!” made her start. She didn’t answer, just turned over and continued to speculate. What if that awful Lucinda woman were to be Angus’s step-mother, as she was sure to be since Catheter would have to marry her? How would that sit? To Letitia it was a dreadful thought that a commoner would now have claims on the House of Gorm, but the shameless hussy was three months pregnant, and she supposed that was what democracy was all about.
She got up quickly and went into the bathroom. How she missed not being waited on in bed, but Sharon was too busy serving at the breakfast table. She reminded herself to put an ad in the personal column of the Bugle, pleading for Mary Sedeekly and Agatha Armstrong-Pitt to get in touch with her. After showering, she dressed and went downstairs. Glancing around the drawing room she noted that no one else had entered. Breakfast had become an erratic affair since Godfrey’s election.
She tasted the oatmeal in her bowl and grimaced. It was lukewarm, having had to traverse the vast distance between the kitchen and the west wing drawing room without the benefit of the heated serving carts that the servants had used before the revolution. She looked at it for a while, then gingerly bit a slice of buttered toast. Her hunger had disappeared and she swallowed the piece of toast more from abhorrence of waste than genuine desire to eat.
Godfrey entered wearing a blue presidential blazer with the Church Party logo on his breast pocket and a copy of the Bugle tucked under his arm, and sat down. He opened the newspaper, greeted Letitia and began reading.
Letitia noticed the envelope on the salver beside her plate. Sharon had brought the mail in, just before breakfast and laid it on the table. When she saw where the letter came from she breathed in sharply. She glanced at Godfrey who was deep in his Bugle. The letter was from a Barbadian realter, whom she’d written to about a suitable retirement home for herself and Godfrey, and she had not expected to receive a reply so soon. There was a paper-knife on the salver. Letitia picked it up and sliced the envelope open. The she gasped with joy as her eyes took in the letter.
Godfrey looked up from his reading and grabbed a slice of toast. “Don’t you want to see the post?” she asked.
“Why, is there something important?”
She reached across the table and gave him the letter. He frowned at its contents, then tossed it aside and returned to the paper.
‘We can’t afford it” was all he said while Letitia stared in disbelief and Sharon brought them both a fried egg and two slivers of bacon.
Catheter came in, with Anton a few steps behind. Catheter wore a suit and tie and carried his briefcase in his hand, while Anton entered scratching his head. He was wearing a sweatshirt and sweatpants that he’d obviously been sleeping in. The sweatshirt bore the message: RESPECT ALL AND FEAR NONE. That clearly doesn’t include self-respect, Letitia thought testily. “Morning all,” he said sleepily. Then he sat down heavily. When Sharon came in with more fried egg and bacon, he asked for scrambled egg. Meanwhile he took a piece of toast from the rack and buttered it with his fork.
“You might think of using a knife,” Godfrey grumbled from the head of the table.
“Knives are for nerds,” Anton mumbled. Godfrey glared and Letitia glanced sympathetically at him.
“You’re getting on your father’s nerves,” she said to Anton, then in an aside to Godfrey: “He’d get on them less if we were in Barbados.”
Godfrey lowered his paper and gave a slight smirk of disdain.
“Very true,” he said. Turning to Catheter he added: “And what are you up to today?”
Catheter reached out for a piece of toast and buttered it. “I’m off to a meeting with Fatsi and Pest at ten,” he said airily. “Then I thought I might do some research in the legal library at Government House,”
Godfrey nodded and went back to his bacon and eggs. As part of his presidential remit, he had pledged himself to encourage his sons to involve themselves in the process of government. Catheter had taken to sitting in the Legislative Assembly and listening to the debates, just as he’d done before the revolution. Lately, he’d begun spending more of his time examining Mellorian traditional laws, which Godfrey saw as slightly odd.
“What are you going to do about your girlfriend?” he suddenly asked. Letitia pricked her ears to take in Catheter’s reply, which was halting.
“Well, of course I’ll introduce her to members of the government and we’ll have talks with Archbishop Larry about our, um, marriage.”
“You know you won’t be able to marry until the year of mourning is over,” Godfrey said.
Catheter flushed. Godfrey had referred to the obligatory waiting period, according to Mellorian traditional law, that a widowed Crown Prince must undergo before remarriage.
“We know what we’re doing,” Catheter said, stung to retaliation, “or at least Lucinda does.”
At his utterance of the name Lucinda his face brightened. He floated off into a state of intoxication. The sight of her face, the sound of her voice, and the scent of her perfume – intertwined in his happiness – swam into his consciousness.
“Just as long as she realizes,” Letitia said, bringing him down to earth, “that she’s not marrying the crown, she’s marrying the man underneath.”
Chapter 59
Fighting the Fundamentalists
Leaving the palace in his chauffeured limousine, Godfrey had two pressing problems on his mind. The most immediate was what to do about the remnants of the People’s Party. Paul Slamil, currently under house arrest on suspicion of involvement in Dawna’s assassination, had asked for immunity from prosecution and security guarantees in return for giving evidence against Joe Steel and Caspar. The People’s Party was badly split – some of its members were under investigation for human rights atrocities and others were reeling from reports in the newly-reorganized Melloria City Bugle with headlines like Paul Slamil’s Reign of Terror and Hundreds of People Tortured and Killed which many people considered more than just examples of customary Mellorian hyperbole.
Godfrey was undecided whether to allow Slamil to seek political asylum in Slobodia (Slamil’s preferred choice) or put him on trial along with Steel and Caspar for political murder. He was not indisposed towards a reorganized People’s Party as long as it embraced the democratic process, and he visualized it evolving into the Mellorian People’s Social Democratic Party, a worthy opposition party to his own. By the time the limo swung into the precincts of Government House, Godfrey had decided that Slamil should be kept under house arrest, protected by a special guard with guns always drawn, until his departure for Slobodia. If he should meet with a grisly fate at the hands of King Slobodan and his gang, that was no concern of Godfrey’s.
His other pressing problem concerned the Church Party. He had managed to gather his former cabinet of advisers around him, but while Amis, Sir Michael Pest, Clive Fatsi and even Bunty, the Duke of Mellinda, were ready enough to take up their former posts, other contenders within the Church Party were clamoring for ministerial appointments. The strongest of these, and a rapidly growing thorn in Godfrey’s flesh, was the formerly-disgraced, newly reinstated Bishop of Mellinda, Martin Bribe. He was a pale, oily specimen, political and manipulative to the very depths of his soul. He had worked his way up through the many committees that me
t on dark, murky January days to deal with Melloria’s social problems.
Godfrey found himself detesting Bribe so heartily that it was giving him headaches. Unlike his episcopal predecessor, Larry Lepager, Bribe loved power for its own sake, and his enjoyment went beyond the pleasure of actualizing his ideas. He quickly outflanked Pest and Fatsi and became Revenue Minister, and it was clear he would like to take over Amis’s job as Prime Minister in Godfrey’s cabinet. The headaches, the responsibility, the lack of time for a life outside work, the complete absence of opportunity to broaden his outlook: none of these mattered to him. He had been close to the People’s Party during the revolution and had suffered for it, and, after his fall from grace, seemed to have made up his mind to acquire as much leverage as he could in the power process.
“That’s why I loathe the fellow so much,” Godfrey had once told Lepager, “the bounder’s a damn workaholic!”
Godfrey opened the door of the limo just as the February sky, black with clouds, disgorged a torrential downpour. The rain swept across the façade of Government House and added a deep pool to the hole in the middle of the sidewalk.
“Bloody weather!” he grumbled.
He got out of the car, his briefcase covering his head. The doorman who had been lounging in the porch of the building, opened an umbrella and stepped out – but was a few seconds late.
“Bloody fool,” he muttered, and trod heavily into the pool, the doorman’s umbrella bobbing futilely over his head,
Stumbling through the glass doors, he squelched toward the elevators and nodded in a preoccupied manner at a security guard.
His suite of offices occupied most of the top floor. On the ride up he recalled his first frightful encounter with the militant wing of his party. He had gone with Archbishop Lepager to the Central Committee to plead for non-churchgoers like Fatsi, Pest and Amis to be allowed their places in his cabinet of advisers. While there, he listened to speeches by two of his bishops who made up the bulk of the committee. The first was a short, plump man with shortness of breath, and his words tumbled out in jerky crescendos. His breathlessness gave the impression that he was choking with emotion.
He gave the audience the most stirring, inflammatory speech Godfrey had ever heard, far removed from the anodyne sermons old Lesot used to give. His anxiety and frustration called for strong measures against the forces of materialism. Their religion was in danger, and the barbarians were at the gates: the materialists who worshipped money and sex, the pederasts who pleasured themselves with those of their gender in ignorance and sin. “Let them do what they want to in their dens of filth!” the bishop had cried. “But God can see what is happening. They have brought their beastliness to the very precincts of the House of God, and will soon be smitten asunder!”
The other bishop was a placid, good-natured, bland-featured man whose speech nevertheless excoriated those who turned their backs on the House of the Lord. Bloody hell! Godfrey had thought, I’m a member of a party of extremists and fundamentalists. His request for Amis and the others to be accepted in his cabinet had almost been defeated and only the persuasive arguments of moderates like Lepager had allowed it to carry the day.
One of his strongest opponents that evening, Godfrey recalled, was that damned Bribe. He seemed to carry a chip on his shoulder, a grudge and a desire to settle scores all at the same time.
Godfrey, by contrast, was neither a politician nor a theologian: he was a family man at heart, and even enjoyed basking in the dour routine that Letitia loved. He looked forward to the day when Catheter ascended the throne, albeit with Lucinda as his queen, and sealed the succession with another son. He was determined not to remain in office a moment longer than was necessary to achieve that end. His presidential salary was modest, as befitted the head of state of an economically depressed nation, but he intended to save enough money by the end of his term to afford the small villa in Barbados or Tobago that Letitia hankered for. He no longer cared about title or prestige – the experience of imprisonment and exile had knocked all that out of him – but he wanted to see certain things done to bring his country back to health, and he believed his job was to help get them done.
Apart from upstarts like Bribe, Godfrey had to contend with health problems. He continued to have respiratory difficulties that forced him to reduce his workload, and he began delegating more and more of it. Lepager, Fatsi, Pest and, increasingly, Catheter were his mainstays. As well as chronic headaches, the pressures of his job were disturbing Godfrey’s breathing and causing him pain and incapacity. At Letitia’s insistence, he cut down his brandy intake to two glasses a day and dispensed with as much strenuous activity as he could.
That still left him chairing committees where Martin Bribe was an insidious presence, sliding his proposals to the top of every agenda, shaking off all opposition with the force of his arguments and sinuously achieving his goals. Godfrey found himself recoiling at the man’s sickly pallor and his snakelike persistence. Bribe really was getting under his skin in a way that guaranteed a confrontation.
The confrontation drew nearer after Bribe worked to kill the Restoration of the Monarchy Bill, which had passed the inquiry stage and the first reading and was now winding its way through the committee stage at the Assembly. The bill was close to Godfrey’s heart, as it involved the peaceful transition of Melloria from a republic to a constitutional monarchy, and Bribe’s proposed amendments would set it back another year at least.
Godfrey was so furious with Bribe’s actions, which he interpreted as being fuelled by malice – as most of the Church Party hierarchy were in favor of the bill – that he almost had an apoplectic fit when he received word of the bill’s latest setback. Bribe and other fundamentalist bishops had argued that the bill in its present form would encourage future Heirs Apparent to abandon their marriage vows and seek divorce (the bill had been drafted with Catheter and Dawna’s situation in mind). A doctor was called to attend to Godfrey, and he was advised to leave early and return to Calliper Palace for rest and relaxation.
Chapter 60
Lucinda Gains Acceptance
Lucinda rode her splotchy gray mare through the Forest of Gorm on her way to Calliper palace. She had received an invitation from the palace and was looking forward to meeting President Godfrey Gorm and his family, especially Catheter, whom she had rarely seen since he had left the mansion of Ferdinand, Duke of Melacholia, in King Hector’s royal Bentley. The early March day was frosty, but although she was four months pregnant she did not find the ride arduous and indeed enjoyed the slow canter through the silvery forest. As she rode she contemplated her situation. Although saddened, like most of the world, by the death of Catheter’s wife, part of her realized the new situation Dawna’s death presented was nothing less than a godsend. The fact that Catheter was free to marry her – once the year of mourning had passed – and was a widower, not a divorced man (an unexpected bonus), filled her heart with joyful expectation. Her own status as a mother-to-be might prove to be a problem, but they would cross that bridge later. For now, she hoped that her arrival at Calliper would enable her to prepare the ground for her acceptance by Catheter’s family and the Mellorian people.
She knew how much ground she had to cover. The Bugle, now restored to its liberal rambunctiousness, had begun printing articles about the late Princess Dawna which, although surprising in the tenderness, delicacy and compassion with which they treated her memory, implied that Lucinda had been a marriage breaker and a source of misery to the princess. Other more vicious tabloids, which had panned the princess as an image-obsessed airhead during her lifetime, now grovelingly made amends. Editorials that were appalling in lickspittle adulation that made their previous condemnation of her grotesque, reviled Lucinda as Melloria’s most unpopular woman and portrayed her as a scheming gold-digger. During her long phone conversations with Catheter she lamented that she had been made to look evil in the Mellorian press, and he had gallantly responded by obtaining his father’s permission for h
er to visit with him at the palace and even to have dinner with the Gorms.
She had joyfully accepted the opportunity to meet his parents and appear openly at his side, after years of tiptoeing around and meeting clandestinely. Her contact with him since his return to Melloria had been confined to long phone calls and webcams, which had undoubtedly helped him cope with his grief following the assassination. They had managed one clandestine meeting in Bulimia shortly after Dawna’s funeral, when he had invited her to join him and Angus on a visit to her grave, and she had watched him lay flowers while Angus crawled among the headstones and monumental masonry.
Her long calls to Catheter as well as enabling him to exorcise much of the pain of his guilt and grief, had allowed him to tell her how much he longed to throw himself into her arms with an even greater ardor than he threw himself into his public duties. The dual embrace – one public, the other ardently imagined and private – blurred the edge of his pain until the passage of time brought permanent solace.
On the canter toward the palace, Lucinda dwelt on her difficulty in winning public acceptance as Catheter’s bride-to-be. The Bugle’s articles, depicting her as a thorn in Dawna’s side, were not the only barrier in her path. Her unwed pregnancy was sure to be flung in her face the first time she and Catheter attended a premiere together in a blaze of flashbulbs.
Back at the palace there was work to be done. Letitia had been thrown into consternation by the sudden resignation of Sharon, her maid. Rescue came in the form of a phone call from Agatha Armstrong-Pitt, who along with Mary Sedeekly, had been waiting until the moment they thought it safe to contact their former queen, following Godfrey’s election. They were eager to resume their posts, now as ladies of the First Lady’s Bedchamber, and within a matter of hours they had arrived at the palace and been assimilated into the presidential household.