King and Joker (12 page)

Chapter 8

I
n some ways the stifling calm of the Yorks' house, Purling Park, was a good place to spend that weekend. Old Cousin Ted doddered and muttered all day round his croquet lawn. Occasionally Aunt Tim, mountaineering over her rockery, would look up and wave a friendly trowel at him, and if he noticed the signal he would wave a friendly mallet back, but that was quite a lively conversation by York standards. Some fool (Aunt Eloise Kent, probably) had once told poor Cousin Jack that he was doomed to marry Louise, and although he'd left Eton at the end of last half and was waiting to go into the army, he still blushed whenever he looked at her. It was lucky none of his five elder sisters was there, or they would have reproved him each time.

Louise felt that nothing could change, no progress could be made, in that valley of sleepers, so she allowed the hours to drift past without thinking about what had happened to her. She went for two long rides with Jack, and took it into her head to be specially friendly and forthcoming; it was almost as though she felt she would never see him again. And she did her homework with particular care and neatness, because now it was nobody's business but her own. But perhaps the lull made Monday at school worse than it might have been. Boring geog, boring math, boring hist, boring PE. A headache. Jerry in love with a girl in the Fourth Year. Julie, who'd normally have noticed there was something wrong and been nice about it, too busy teasing Jerry with hints that the frightful, posturing, busty mascaraed blonde he'd picked on was only pretending to be interested in a boy two years younger than herself because she wanted to be able to tell people that she went around with Princess Louise. Sulks. McGivan at the gate. Vile little dusty wind blowing up Church Street Knot of tourists outside antique-shop—nudges, stares, cameras, public face.

Not any more, thought Louise, lengthening her stride. I'm out of that now. I'm ordinary. I'll tackle Father tonight—no, hell, he's in Durham—tomorrow. Another foul day to live through, and then I'll be out of it. At least it gives me time to think. Why can't I think?

The trouble was she couldn't imagine any kind of life other than the one she knew. It was quite easy to think of going away and living in one ordinary house with only five or six rooms in it and no servants, and having to make her own bed and all that. But she couldn't put people into the house. She couldn't imagine Nonny becoming Mother—no, Mummy—and leaving … leaving Aunt Bella? Ugh! Anyway, she won't come—but they can't make me stay. They can't, they can't!

“Will Your Highness be coming in front?”

McGivan was holding the door of the Triumph. For some reason he'd not left it at Granny's but parked it near the Embassies, where she'd met the red-headed man. At least it wasn't so far to walk.

“I'll go in the back, please. I've got a headache.”

“Aye, it's the weather, nae doot.”

She didn't smile at him as she climbed in. McGivan at best was a very moderate driver, with a tendency to move the car in a series of swoops and brakings, and today he wanted to talk, turning his head from the road as he did so.

“Her Majesty's back from Finland,” he said.

“Good. Is she all right?”

“Not a care in the world, and Miss Fellowes looking ever sae bonny with her.”

No need to answer that, but McGivan's snuffle implied that she should have.

“Ye'll all be taegither again the morn,” he said. “It's grand to see a family so fond of each ither. It makes working for ye a real pleasure.”

“I'm glad it does,” said Louise. “But I'm sorry, Mr McGivan, I can't talk, My head's very bad. Could you get me home as soon as you can?”

Snuffle. A wild swoop and a violent halt at the Albert Hall lights. Louise hardly noticed. I can't go, she thought, because there's nowhere to go, and I can't stay either. How could they do this to me? I thought I loved them. I thought they loved me. How could they? Suddenly she remembered Father, kneeling on the Palace grass, unnecessarily easing soil round the roots of a rhododendron for the sake of his own internal honour, when all the time it was a lie, all the time he was pretending to like a bush for which he didn't care two hoots, and which Mother actually hated. And it's the same with me. When he talked to me on Friday he only used the word “Mother” once, not counting when he was talking about Granny. “It was the early days of the pill and your mother got her sums wrong.” Otherwise he called them Bella and Nonny all the time. I bet if I could remember every word he said there wouldn't be a single lie in it—except that it was all one lie. I'm not going to live with it, I'm not. They can't make me.

For the rest of the drive this single phrase battered round and round inside her skull. No other ideas emerged. Mother and Father and Nonny became just “they” and she was numb to their feelings and reactions. On the pavements, in buses, in other cars, the GBP drifted past, unreal, but ugly and demanding. You've got nothing on me now, she thought. Not any more. You can't make me either.

Sentries in scarlet came to the salute. The Triumph slid under the arch. Tacket, the porter, opened the door, Public face for the last time, ever.

“Thank you, Mr McGivan. Thank you, Mr Tacket.”

Neither of them seemed to hear. Had she said it at all? She ran across the hall and up the stairs, praying to meet no one. Her speed became a kind of flight, a panic rush through the nightmare ordinariness of the Palace, a yearning to escape from the servants, the carpets, the ghosts of dead kings. Only her own room was a refuge—hers, Louise's, the place where she became real and not a gadget invented for other people's convenience. She was panting hard by the time she reached the middle corridor but she raced along it, flung open her door, dashed in, slammed the door behind her and stood shuddering, safe in her known lair.

It was odd that Sukie hadn't made the bed, but somehow it made the room more personal than ever. When Louise bent to pick her yellow nightie from the floor only half of it came. Carefully she picked up the other half and discovered that it had been ripped in two, from top to bottom. And the bed had been made, but then someone had pulled it to bits.

She stood still for several seconds, afraid to turn, knowing that whoever or whatever it was crouched beside the door. At last she forced herself round.

In scarlet letters sprayed from an aerosol can the word marched across the wall. They had torn down her Led Zeppelin poster to make room for it. BASTARD. And a neat scarlet X.

Although she felt very cold she was steady now and able to walk round the room and look for further outrages. The word was on her mirror, in lipstick. The Two Towers lay on the floor; she flipped through the pages and found the word twice, scrawled right across the type with a red felt pen. She stood and looked round. It might be anywhere.

Slowly she crossed to the door, took the key from the inside, went out and locked the door behind her. Durdy. She had walked several paces before she saw that it wouldn't be fair on Durdy because she couldn't do anything. She felt her teeth clench as she thought of Father—it was his lookout, wasn't it? But he was in Durham and not back for hours. Mother had an opera, one of the sort that start at six, she'd be dressing, and it wasn't her fault. That wouldn't be fair either. Nonny—Mummy—it was her look-out too.

Louise turned and marched firmly back the way she had come, past her mined room, down two flights of the other stairs and along the lower corridor. At the fifth door she heard the fantastically rapid rattle of a typewriter, which meant that Janice, Nonny's own secretary, was finishing off the day's letters. She went into the sixth without knocking.

Nonny was sitting in the middle of the floor with her eyes shut, concentrating. She didn't concentrate on anything in particular, she used to say, because she didn't know how. She just sat still and concentrated twice a day because it was good for her skin.

“Nonny,” said Louise. She couldn't say the other word. Nonny looked up, not frowning—that was hard to imagine—but not welcoming. She stared for an instant before swinging nimbly to her feet.

“What's up, Lulu? Are you all right? I've never seen you look like that.”

“Can you come to my room, please?”

“Will it take long?”

“I don't know. Yes.”

“I'll just explain to Janice. She has this thing about catching the post, but there's nothing that can't wait.”

Louise led her up the stairs in silence. At her own door she suddenly backed out into the corridor and peered right and left on the off chance of catching a glimpse of someone skulking to enjoy the effect of his nastiness. Nonny stood waiting as though this performance, and the locked door, were normal protocol. Louise suddenly felt that she ought to warn her, but couldn't speak. She led her in and shut the door behind her. Nonny stared round.

“Oh dear,” she said.

Her softness, her acceptance of the obscenity, her distance from the pain of it, broke Louise's control.

“It's true. Isn't it?” she said harshly.

“Oh dear,” sighed Nonny. “What a way to have all this out. I'm sorry, darling—I truly am. I'd never have been a good mother anyway. Oh dear, what can I say? I do love you, and I was very happy when you were born … I'm making a mess of this. Lulu darling, do you mind if I go and fetch Bella?”

“She'll be dressing,” said Louise in the same drab, rejecting voice. “She's got an opera. Ambassadors and people.”

“She'll come. You'll stay here, Lulu, won't you? Promise. Don't look at the mess—read a book or something.”

“They're written in,” said Louise, but Nonny was gone. She couldn't sit down. The defilement seemed to infect the room—the bed, the chairs, everything. She went to the mirror to start cleaning the lipstick away but was caught by her own reflection, paler than usual, large eyed, but calm as a crusader's wife on a tomb. That's the Nonny in me, she thought despairingly. Better not touch the lipstick anyway. She began to search systematically for other places where the word was written. It was like Sir Sam's trousers—a series of booby-traps waiting to blow up. The joker had been tidy where it suited him—it was only because Sukie didn't approve of princesses wearing coloured panties, and so always put white ones on the top, that Louise went through the drawer and found a pair with an aerosol B on their fork, half way down the pile. The logic of the search had begun to steady her, but this shook her like a fresh gust on a night of storm. She understood the violence behind the scrawl, the symbolic rape, and was still standing in a sort of shuddering trance by the shut drawer when Mother came in, magnificent in a long flame-coloured dress with a black velvet train sweeping cloak-like from the shoulders. Mother glanced at the word on the wall. For a moment her face whitened and hardened and then she was sweeping across the room with her arms held out and down in that remembered gesture of appeal Louise rushed to meet her, to be drawn by those cold arms into the private sphere of love, to melt into marvellous, painless sobs.

“Oh my darling,” whispered Mother. “Oh my darling.”

Somewhere around midnight the door of Mother's bedroom opened and Father came in. He put on his pop-eyed surprise-and-outrage face.

“Why aren't you at the opera?” he said. “I had to go to Durham to get out of it.”

“I had a stomach chill,” said Mother. “I had not had huone for three years, so it huas high time.”

“You'll have something else tomorrow if you and Nonny have drunk a whole bottle of my best champagne between you. I hope you've left some for me. Good God! There's another in the bucket!”

“Hue have been huaiting for you to come and open it. There is a clean glass on my dressing-table.”

Louise could see him thinking as he fiddled with the wires and popped the cork. He grunted and poured himself a drink.

What's up?” he said in a slightly altered voice. “Somebody's birthday?”

**That's right,” said Louise. “I'm having two birthdays a year from now on. I don't see why you should be the only person to have an official birthday as well as an unofficial one. And I want presents on both of them.”

“Right,” he said, going round with the bottle to fill the other glasses. “Health and happiness, Lulu darling. I wish Durdy was here. How did you find out? Was it something I said. I thought I'd been pretty canny.”

“It was the photograph. I was brushing my hair when suddenly I saw who it was like.”

“Mm. We're going to have to think about that. Who did you tackle first? You know, I'd have expected you to wait and tackle me. Not that …”

“Something else happened,” said Louise.

“I huill tell you later, Vick.”

“No, it's all right now. I can manage. Champagne's useful stuff, isn't it? I'm going to have it on all my birthdays. It was like this …”

Father listened, frowning. Louise in the mild daze of drink listened to her tongue telling the story, even explaining the nastiness of it, without having to recreate herself as the being at the centre of the shock. It was like a nightmare remembered on waking, apart from the reason why its foolish details were so frightening. She left out her own misery and sense of betrayal. That was over now.

“I see,” said Father. “You seem to have kept your head, Lulu. Well done. Now, we have two separate problems—the joker and the likeness. They may be linked, because the joker may have found out about Lulu's birth by spotting the likeness, though it isn't very strong …”

“But it's
very
strong sometimes, Vick,” said Mother.

“Let's show him,” said Nonny, eagerly.

Mother laughed and picked up the hairbrush. While she worked on Nonny's hair Louise slipped into one of the pink chequered blouses and white skirts which lay on the bed, then sat to let her own hair be put into a pony-tail while Nonny dressed in the other set. Standing in front of the long mirror they slid their arms round each other's waists and grinned inanely with heads bent to one side and legs in the pose of a comedy routine duo.