by Trevor Veale
Chapter 67
Island Life
Godfrey and Letitia soon experienced the culture shock of living on a tiny island in the Caribbean whose largest town, Scarborough, was even smaller than Mellinda. It began for Letitia the first time she and Godfrey went down to the ocean on a breezy day in June. They set out from Castara, a lazy fishing village, and along Englishman’s Bay Road which rose into mountains and on to the Atlantic Coast. At the highest point, they stopped and gazed out across the bay. A band of fog was streaking the green hills into a white haze, and the glittering vastness of the ocean gleamed with white flecks, which turned into rolling breakers that hurtled toward the shore. The noonday sun glinted off the wake of a yacht, jetskiers with sinuous aplomb steered their craft across the inpouring rollers and fishing boats dotted the whitecapped sea.
Godfrey, one arm around Letitia’s shoulders, lifted a hand to shield his eyes.
“My God, it’s a different world!” he exclaimed.
She looked at his face – the whole ocean was clearly a revelation to him.
“It’s our world now,” she said firmly.
They strolled down to the beach, past gnarled and whitened driftwood and watched the rolling breakers coating the sand with a white sheen, then retreating into a messy brown wash, hissing and sighing before dying away.
“What a place – I can’t believe it!” Godfrey yelled.
Lost in reflection, they stopped and stood looking at the ocean. Lunging waves lifted up and crashed down, spilling out their whitecaps, in a splashing, thrashing extravagance.
“I don’t think I could live in a land-locked country again,” Letitia said.
“But Melloria isn’t…Oh well, I suppose it is now,” Godfrey mumbled.
Godfrey was so taken by the sea that he tried swimming in the surf, but the white walls of ocean hit him like rows of brandy barrels and sent him tumbling on his backside, his mouth filled with gritty salt water.
Letitia stubbornly refused to soak her ankles, never mind the rest of her. She preferred to watch the waves rise, gather into crests and topple haphazardly into grumbling curls that stopped well short of her sandaled feet. Unlike Godfrey, she craved no involvement with the water. Strolling lazily along the white sandy beach in her red swimsuit, she was satisfied.
After his bruising encounter with the waves, Godfrey was at a loose end. The long stretch of sand, so white it reminded him of snow trails, held no more interest for him, and he walked to the far end of the beach to watch the fishermen haul in their nets. As the sun sailed higher into the sky, a few local families ambled onto the beach and a group of boys played soccer. There was a wooden shack of a bar selling grilled fish and Carib beer. Godfrey gravitated toward it, and was soon talking to a couple of big game fishermen. Letitia stayed where she was. She had come to Tobago to relax, after long months of oppressive struggle, and she wasn’t about to give up her hard-won repose.
As a result of their day at the beach, Godfrey was invited on big game fishing trips, which he took to like a duck to water, while Letitia, who thought that they had paid an exorbitant amount of money for their villa, decided to use it to the full and rarely went out, except to the garden. The garden was like a calm green cave, full of ferns, palms, bamboo, lilies and coconut shells carved with the Gorm family crest. A wrought-iron round table and five green chairs were somehow squeezed in under the plantain trees. For Letitia, after all the upheavals of the last year, it was a more than adequate oasis.
Coming from an island nation, Letitia soon grew tired of the sea. Apart from yachts and fishing boats, there wasn’t much of a view, and it left her garden windburned and in need of constant maintenance. Their handyman was a white-haired, ebony-skinned islander who everybody knew as Daylight Jones. Daylight slept for most of the daylight hours, appearing unpredictably in the late afternoon, so Letitia didn’t find him particularly handy.
In the evening they visited the local grandees or, on rare occasions, went to a calypso concert where louche, loud and suggestive music formed a background to jerk chicken served by black girls in tight tops and skintight white pants. They appealed much more to Godfrey than to Letitia. With almost no other white people present and having to stay till midnight when the taxi came, Letitia was not favorably disposed.
They once took a trip to a small fishing town which became a party town at night, and where the streets were hot and crowded, with every sort of loud music throbbing wherever they went, perfumed with the smoke of barbequed fish from a hundred stalls. Long lines crowded each stall: people queued for tuna steaks, flying fish and dolphin.
“Are we supposed to eat dolphin?” Letitia asked Godfrey.
“Well, I’m eating this one – it’s dead and it’s cooked.”
For solace, Letitia began writing letters to Agatha and Mary. Describing her and Godfrey’s first visit to the ocean, she told Agatha: ‘it was a bracing, but thoroughly exhausting morning,’ and to Mary she declared, regarding their alfresco dolphin snack: ‘Our only complaint was that the only places to sit on while one ate were rickety wooden planks or concrete slabs, unless one squeezed onto a corner of scrubby beach and let the sea wash one’s toes.’
Mary and Agatha, in turn, wrote back to Letitia. Mary wrote a long missive telling her how things were slowly improving in the country. Inflation had started to come down, and an alliance between Melloria and Bulimia had stemmed the threat of a Slobodian invasion. Catheter, who had joined the Church Party and was rapidly rising through its ranks, led a caucus of moderate bishops which had brought about an end to the infighting for the time being. Agatha informed her in a chatty note of Anton and Hernia’s upcoming wedding in Bulimia and of Catheter and Lucinda’s joy at the birth of their daughter, Rhiannon.
Chapter 68
Morning Glory
Godfrey was the first to wake up. He turned to look at the clock. It said 6.45 a.m. This is ridiculous, he thought. I’m a retiree, I should be sleeping in. He looked in the next bedroom. Letitia was still dead to the world, mouth open, hairnet askew, hands clenched tightly into fists, the duvet pulled up around her ears. He wanted to creep up to her and kiss her softly on the cheek.
Instead, he went downstairs and put the kettle on. Placing the Tobago News on the kitchen table, he pulled two slices of bread from the plastic wrapper and stuck them in the toaster.
The noise of the post tumbling through the letterbox and landing on the doormat startled him. He groaned as he bent down to pick up the junk mail, mostly bills and fliers, and shuffled through them, looking for something as interesting as a letter. He found one. It was in a long, cream-colored envelope with the new crest of the Kingdom of Melloria. He opened it and read quickly, stopping to go back and read it again.
He went back in the kitchen and tipped some fresh coffee into the coffee maker. Then he looked around the kitchen and cursed. Mugs, glasses and plates were jammed in the sink, greasy splotches stained the stove and dust had settled over everything like a coating of soil, as if Letitia’s beloved garden were moving in with them.
Letitia’s going to be horrified, he thought. That’s the third time this week the daily help hasn’t shown up. These people are worse than Mellorians! He set about cleaning some of the clutter from the kitchen counter and making breakfast.
Letitia, very much awake, sat propped up on her pillows, and began awkwardly scrawling her reply to Mary’s last letter. She heard Godfrey stamping outside the door. A quick knock and he entered, the newly-arrived letter lying on the breakfast tray.
Letitia put down her pen and writing pad and stretched, while Godfrey placed the try carefully on the bed. She eyed the tea and toast and – more doubtfully – the pot of guava jelly. Finally she dipped a finger into the jam and licked it.
“How old is the preserve?” she asked. Godfrey shrugged. “I found it in the fridge – it didn’t look too moldy.”
He had clustered marmite, honey, peanut butter and blackcurrant jam alongside the guava jelly.
�
�We’ve been invited to the coronation,” he said. He indicated the letter on the tray.
“The coronation? Of whom?” Letitia was thunderstruck. She read the invitation.
“Well, I suppose we must go, royaute oblige and all that.”
She sighed.
He leaned over and planted a kiss on the side of her neck.
“Godfrey, mind you don’t knock that tray off the bed!”
She lifted the tray from the bed and placed it carefully on the nightstand. Only then did she allow him to continue with his affections. The tropical scents blowing through her window were seducing her as much as Godfrey’s touch.
She wriggled down into the bed until she was lying down. Picking up his cue, Godfrey lowered himself on top of her, smelling her hair and neck, touching her skin. Finally he unbuttoned his pyjama bottoms. The he whispered in her ear.
“It’s safer now that I’m firing blanks.”
She giggled before moaning at the stroke of his fingers on her nipples, all the while parting her thighs to make room for him.
“Gangway! I’m coming in to land!” His voice had deepened into a rough growl.
He pulled off the blankets and knelt between her legs. Hooking his fingers beneath her knees, he dragged her toward him until her thighs were approximately in line with his ribs. Then’ panting with the effort, he lunged onto her body until she was pushed back toward the pillows and felt her head knocking against the headboard.
“Godfrey, you’ll have to show a bit more finesse,” she said, wincing.
He replied by pushing into her a few centimeters. His nostrils flared and she began to be afraid he would start sniffing her. His forearms were near her face, and she had to keep turning her head to avoid being smacked. Then his face brushed hers and she felt prickled by the stubble along his jaw.
His eyes were like hard brown marbles, shiny, unyielding, that could only be cracked with extreme force. His hips began driving like pistons now that he was well inside her and tremors radiated through her. She sucked in a startled breath as her inner muscles clamped tight around his burrowing organ. They were joined so intimately there was no going back, so she tentatively clutched his shoulders and locked her legs around his lower back to pull him closer and deeper.
“Brace yourself!” he hissed between clenched teeth. His body convulsed with the force of his explosion.
When the shuddering had subsided, they rested. His heart racing, his ragged breath moist and loud, he felt her trail her fingers along his shoulders to the damp hair at the nape of his neck.
“Well, that was a lovely surprise.”
Letitia smiled and curled up in the crook of Godfrey’s arm, lazily brushing a hand across his chest. She had forgotten how wonderful it had been to make love to her husband. The original passion, as stunning as electricity, had seared her until she was speechless. She thought it had disappeared, that she had only imagined it happening. Now she remembered, and rejoiced that it had returned.
After breakfast they went outside and watched the garden display its wild extravagance from the comfort of the verandah.
“Interesting how a verandah differs from a balcony, isn’t it?” Godfrey said, thinking of the balconies at Calliper, which they would soon be seeing again. He felt light-headed, almost spellbound. The fragrance of gardenias wafted across the lawn.
Letitia, moving alongside him, looked out into the garden where iridescent birds skimmed to and fro. “What’s that bird over there? The one singing like a lunatic. It isn’t a cuckoo, is it?”
“Damned if I know,” Godfrey said, looking into the distance.
Chapter 69
The Crowning
The coronation of King Craig the First of Melloria took place on a windy but sunny day in April. The boy king, all of eleven years old, was crowned in the transept of the cathedral by Archbishop Lepager, the Archbishop of Melloria. TV cameras zoomed in on the small figure, draped in ermine robes over his military uniform. His epaulettes of gold braid sparkled and his red tunic gleamed, and even Letitia felt her eyes prickle as the archbishop placed the crown on his head. She looked across at Sharon, who watched Craig being anointed and crowned, surrounded by a posse of bishops and an archbishop, and marveled that she didn’t cry, except once when she took a silk handkerchief from her Gucci bag and dabbed discretely. Letitia approved of Sharon’s demure apparel: a modest pink suit with a mass of pink and black organza atop a gigantic hat. A pair of opaque black sunglasses hid her face almost entirely, but Letitia did not begrudge her the desire for anonymity, even though she sat in the royal pew that she had once occupied.
Driving to the ceremony had been quite like old times. Letitia had enjoyed waving to the crowds milling around outside the cathedral, and part of her began to yearn for some aspects of her old life. In a country where the blazing sun didn’t frazzle her brain and she saw more locals than just gardeners raking leaves and maids making beds, where Godfrey wasn’t bewitched by dark-skinned girls who flitted across his vision by day and into his imagination by night.
After the ceremony the invited guests, royal and non-royal, were assembled on the forecourt of the cathedral, while a fleet of limousines cruised around Constitution Square like sharks, each awaiting the signal to scoop up its prey from the shoal of VIPs.
King Hector and Queen Ada stood at the opposite end of the group from King Slobodan and Queen Latrina. Melloria had recently signed a peace treaty with Slobodia, conceding no more territory but allowing the Slobodians to keep Shekels and its surrounding coast as a gesture of good will. As his coronation present for the new King, and in reluctant acknowledgment of the powerful Melloria-Bulimia economic alliance, King Slobodan had written off Melloria’s outstanding electricity bill, and he stood beaming with self-satisfaction, Queen Latrina in slovenly attire by his side. Godfrey and Letitia glowered periodically in their direction as they waited for their limousine.
Letitia noticed Sharon offering Lucinda a cigarette, then lighting it and hers with an elegant silver lighter. The cigarettes seemed to bond the two women together, and Letitia felt excluded. They clearly need nicotine to see them through the day, she thought dismissively.
They continued to wait, and Lucinda, holding onto her vast hat in a gust of wind, glanced at Letitia and smiled.
Letitia smiled back and, while Godfrey chatted to Catheter, they exchanged snippets of gossip. Lucinda told Letitia about the long, thoughtful article on the new king by Arabella Scott-Natterson, entitled Born in Bastardy, Raised to Splendor, and they giggled over the headline THE ROYAL BASTARD in The Sun, a British tabloid newspaper that Letitia regarded as unspeakable. She complimented Lucinda on her amazing hat and how she’d managed to get her figure back so soon after the birth of her daughter, and Lucinda confessed she’d rather be on horseback wearing jodhpurs than in her white coronation dress.
After inquiring about life on Tobago, and offering up a compliment about Letitia’s tan, Lucinda started talking about Catheter’s new political role. Letitia’s pedestrian mind struggled to grasp the complexities, and she became bored.
Her attention wandering, Letitia cast a critical glance at Queen Ada. It’s obvious she loves being the center of attention, she thought, with her low-cut, elaborately beaded dress, glitzy diamond necklace and obligatory huge hat. Letitia had decided to go hatless, but wore an extremely expensive Hermes headscarf.
There was a moment of awkwardness when Letitia’s eye caught Sharon’s. She tried not to show her awareness of the woman’s former circumstances, nor the lingering resentment at what she saw as Sharon’s betrayal of her secret affair with Godfrey.
“Are you still single?” she asked Sharon.
Sharon reddened and stumbled out: “My fiancé and I were planning to get spliced, but he blew it after I heard he was seeing a maid at Calliper every chance he got.” “Also, he checked out of his twelve-step program and started drinking again,” she said ruefully.
“Well, I hope you and your son will be very happy,” Letitia
said. Then she smiled and moved on, as though she were going down the line at a premiere.
Lucinda patted Sharon’s shoulder and offered her another cigarette.
“She’s like that with everybody,” Lucinda consoled.
“Don’t I know it!” Sharon said. They both giggled as they lit up.
Looking back at them, Letitia caught a glimpse of Lucinda’s sparkling pearl and gold earrings. She’s acquired some taste at last! was her somewhat uncharitable thought.
When her limo arrived, Sharon dropped her cigarette and rubbed it out with the sole of her strappy high-heeled shoe. Letitia shuddered. Inexpressibly vulgar! She noted with approval that Lucinda had handed her cigarette to a servant to be extinguished – the proper form of etiquette.
The former King and Queen of Melloria continued having to wait, and Letitia wondered how long it would be before King Craig emerged from the robing room. She marveled that an illegitimate commoner could succeed to the throne, without marriage, and all perfectly legally. It was such an amazing feat that it seemed nothing short of a miracle. Thinking of miracles, she wondered if that Barry Trotter boy and his friends might be lurking somewhere in the crowd. She hoped she would see him before flying back and perhaps persuade him to get out his magic mirror for a prediction. But first she would have to drive back to the palace, and it seemed the limo would never come. At last, it did – a long black Mercedes rolled up to receive them.
Letitia, surprised, realized that the gray-suited chauffeur who opened the door was Simpkins. She remembered hearing from Lucinda that he’d been downgraded from palace butler to driver, after being caught once too often tipping the royal spirits. The former chauffeur, Andrew Motion (who wrote poetry in his spare time), was the new palace butler.
With the stately decorum of a cavalier, Godfrey gave Letitia his arm and they climbed inside the limo. A discrete cough from the engine and the vehicle glided forward. Godfrey settled down in the plush leather seat and turned to Letitia.