“Disasters happen to kings, and then they must put them to rights,” Mr Neil stated, sounding perfectly reasonable. “What do you think happened to Hank the Second when his pet monkey tore up all his private papers and notes? Sent to conquer Africa, that’s what. And what do you think happened to the monkey?”
“Where shall Freddy be sent?” asked the queen, as if inquiring after a diplomatic posting for a wayward viscount. She was so calm. It made Freddy livid.
“He must be sent,” was the answer, “to find a New Caernarvon in the most savage, strange, and unconquerable region of the earth. There he will either subject it to his rule or fail in his quest. It cannot be an easy place like the Land Beyond the Sea of Snow. No. It cannot be empty, like the summit of Cairngorm. It must be inhabited by fierce, clever, and industrious creatures—monsters. It must be a vast place where power arcs from point to point like the whiplash of sparks. It must be as smoky as hell, as bright with fire and sparkling with dangerous things as the land even the Norsemen dared not mention. In fact, it is that land, the most unconquerable, savage land on earth. Aaah Hooo!”
“Bless you,” said Pimcot.
“That was not a sneeze. It was the horror of such a place coursing through my body and jumping from my lips.”
“You have found such a place, Mr Neil?” the queen asked.
“The very place.”
“Pray tell, is it in Africa?”
“No, no, not Africa.”
“The Amazon?”
“Too much litostis in the Amazon, Your Majesty.”
“What is litostis, Mr Neil?”
“Solidified thegram of tekla, much like West Egyptian gruth.”
“I see. Is it in Asia?”
“Asia is a very civilised place. I summer there.”
“The poles?” asked the queen.
“No, Madam, their cuisine is too deadly.”
“I mean the earthly poles.”
“Theirs too.”
“Icebergs,” the queen said, with urgency rather than irritation.
“Not there.”
“Then, where?”
“I have looked long in my scrolls for such a place,” said Mr Neil. “Three marginicidal kings have perished there. It is beyond the dissilient cliffs of pure water that cleave the great ocean and fall through infinite tunnels of mist. It is where the vast stinking body of the expired Dragon of Penrith was laid to rest, only to vapourise and disappear immediately upon contact with the white-hot ground. Oh, devils! Oh, God forsaken! Oh, darkness, stench, and flame!”
“Oh, get out with it,” said Freddy, breaking discipline and taking what he wanted from the dessert table. “If I’m going to go there, I should know where it is, shouldn’t I? What is it called?”
“It is called, Your Royal Highness,” Mr Neil said quietly, using the noble form of address for Freddy for the first time, “New Jersey.”
“I’ve flown over that,” the queen said. “I didn’t know there were people in it. It looked like it was on fire.”
“New Jersey?” Freddy asked. “Am I supposed to conquer New Jersey? I told you, Mother, that he was mad.”
“New Jersey is but a tile in a land so vast that, as far as anyone knows, it has no name,” Mr Neil said in a mad whisper.
“Yes it does, you idiot,” Freddy told him. “It’s called the United States of America.”
“It is this, then, that you must conquer.”
Certain that Mr Neil was indeed an escaped inmate of a perhaps no-longer-extant asylum, Freddy relaxed and sat down with his tea and chocolate mousse. Fredericka followed, relieved, because she could see that he felt the game was his. And he did think so, because obviously neither his mother nor his father, nor the prime minister, nor the leader of the Opposition would require him to go nude into New Jersey and conquer (whatever that might mean) the United States.
“Is he an actor?” Freddy asked his father, who was known for staging elaborate practical jokes. “He appears to be asleep.” Mr Neil had once again run short of power. Jaws aslack, mouth open, and eyes closed, he slept as he sat, most pitifully.
“Don’t joke at a time like this, Freddy,” his father whispered.
“What do you mean, ‘at a time like this’?” Freddy responded, very loudly, startling Mr Neil back into consciousness.
“You must leave in three days,” Mr Neil said, as if to himself, “when the dark side of Venus will be at fourteen-degrees semi-perpendicularity to the plane of the Jovian orbital conjunction with Mars. That is when tree frogs make their most secret sex sounds, and, in Devon, the moon rises mauve and pink. It is the day when chalk cliffs crumble, and bellboys electrocute their fish.”
Freddy laughed nervously.
“The government will provide the requisite transportation, and any other services needed,” volunteered Pimcot.
“I suppose it will have to be a covert insertion,” said Paul.
“Thank you, Prime Minister,” said the queen.
“What!” exclaimed Freddy.
“It will be necessary during the prince’s absence,” said Paul, drawing upon his wartime experience, “to craft a scenario of deniability, and, I imagine, to convene a working group at the highest level to plan for the reaccession of the Colonies should he succeed.”
“This is why we brought you here,” the queen told Pimcot and Apehand, “in your capacity as privy councillors.”
“Your Majesty’s Loyal Opposition is in full and harmonious agreement,” Apehand said, smiling. “We ask only that, if the Colonies are reacquired, a strenuous effort is made to achieve a coordination of collective bargaining rules in the mother country and among the colonials.”
“All in good time, Mr Apehand,” the queen assured him. “We assume that, when they are informed, Mr Lamb’s Liberals will press for coordination of environmental rules. But we’re not going to inform them.”
“And why not, Your Majesty?” Pimcot asked.
“Because, Prime Minister, they cannot keep their mouths shut.”
Everyone was in agreement, and the air was charged as when a great ship is just about to get under way.
“Oh come now!” Freddy shouted, in disbelief.
“Quiet, Freddy,” his father countered. “You’ve been a very bad prince. Now you must go to New Jersey.”
“Naked?” Freddy asked.
“You will have,” said Mr Neil, “hracneets.”
“And what, Mr Neil, are hracneets?”
“Modesty panels of golden rabbits’ fur. They attach to the body with thin straps of green snakeskin.”
“It sounds like the bathing suits we saw at Cap d’Antibes,” Fredericka said. “I wish I could have one. Three little rabbits’ fur panels, and some lines of sexy green snakeskin.”
“You will have one, Princess,” Mr Neil said, eyes crossed.
“Oh! Lovely,” she said, and then blinked. “Why?”
II.
PARADISE LOST
ANGELS
THE LUMINOUS JUMP clock in a black C-130 droning its way across the Atlantic off the air routes had been set to Eastern Daylight Time. Thus, as icebergs scrolled underneath in the salmon-coloured light of the subArctic sunset, the Prince and Princess of Wales could readily see that it was eight o’clock in New Jersey, where at this time of year so close to the summer solstice the sun would set in another hour or so, blood-red from the noxious gases through which its weakening rays struggled to pass.
Wrapped in military blankets because their hracneets were insufficiently warm over ocean so close to Greenland, they sat on uncomfortable web seats, silently staring at their parachutes. Except for leather flight caps, aviator goggles, and hracneets, they would be naked when tossed from the aircraft into New Jersey. Neither shoes, nor clothing, nor a wallet, nor a watch would go with them, nor a pen knife, a cellular telephone, a toothbrush, nor even any feminine appliances.
“What if I need feminine appliances?” Fredericka had asked of Mr Neil.
“What are they???
?
“You know.”
“No, I don’t know, which is why I asked.”
“You’re ten thousand years old and you haven’t found out yet what feminine appliances are?”
“I have great gaps in my erudition, Princess. Perhaps you can enlighten me.”
“All right,” she whispered, blushing marvellously pink across the spacious top of her chest, “what if, what if it’s that certain time?”
“Springtime in Paris?” Mr Neil asked.
“No.”
“The mating season?”
“No.”
“Chestnuts roasting on an open fire?”
Fredericka looked at Mr Neil as though next she would kill him. She was at her most beautiful when her expression was fierce.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Mr Neil said, “and whatever you mean, no, no, no. Naked, naked, naked—except for hracneets.”
“Who’s going to do my hair?” Fredericka asked, not quite comprehending what was in store.
“The air,” said Mr Neil, neither cruelly nor kindly.
“Thir?” echoed Fredericka, mistakenly. “Wonderful. He’s Icelandic. I don’t know what I’d do without my Nordic hairdressers. My highlights are now in Spicy Lapp Tundra Permafrost Gold, with a touch of Stockholm Silver Sprat Delicious.”
Observing the expressions of pity in those around her, she finally understood that things were about to change.
In the aeroplane, Freddy, who was used to dropping from black C-130s and thought his seat rather comfortable, tried once again to comfort his wife. “Buck up,” he said. “If we don’t die on the way in. . . .”
“Die? We have parachutes. You told me that because they’re on static lines I don’t have to pull the umbilical cord. You said it was a ‘nothing jump.’ ”
“Well, yes,” Freddy said with military candour, “but the drop zone is undefined and we’ll be parachuting at night. One can drown, or be electrocuted on high-tension lines, or land in the path of a train or vehicle, be impaled on saplings or spikes, mangled in the trees, or hit the side of a cliff and suffer chute collapse. You can even have your limbs severed by man-made objects, or be blown out to sea. Then there’s quicksand, exsanguination, head trauma, internal bleeding upon too violent a landing, wild animals, hostile tribes, snakes, poisonous plants, pirana, infectious worms. . . .”
“Don’t be an idiot, Freddy. We’re going to New Jersey. I read about it before they took us to Northolt. Across the river Hudson from New York, New Jersey, the Garden State, is a bucolic flat land where vegetables are grown. And, besides, once we get there, we’re going straight into Manhattan to the Carlyle. I’ll need a bath, bed, and clothes, not to mention something to eat. As we won’t be able to go to a hotel until we can wire for money, do you know someone in New York who will shelter us?”
“Don’t worry, I’ve made provision.”
“You have?”
“I can pack a parachute as well as anyone,” he said, leaning toward her. For some reason, he wanted very much to kiss her, as if he never had, as if nothing had ever gone wrong between them. And though he didn’t, he did hesitate, in a kind of fume of desire, before he went on. “Last night, I arose at four, went into the parachute loft, and taped ten five-hundred-pound notes to each of our chutes. Keep the parachute after we land. With ten thousand pounds, at least we’ll be able to buy clothes, food, a car, and whatever else we’ll need to get where we’re going, wherever that may be.”
“Are you sure you’ve packed the parachutes properly?”
“I always pack my own.”
“And mine?”
“I let the monkey do it.”
“Really, did the jump master, or whatever he is, check it?”
“Serjeant Munchkin-Tito?”
“Who?”
“Serjeant Munchkin-Tito. Rex.” The jump master to whom Freddy referred was a rough-looking sort, with sharp features and very black hair. His father was Croatian and his mother from Didcot.
“Serjeant Rex Munchkin-Tito?” she asked. “You can’t even say it. Is he English?”
“He’s as English as I am.”
“Yes, but you’re German.”
“Let’s not get into that again.”
“Whatever happened to names like Smith, Abernathy, and Churchill?”
“It was like ships passing in the night,” Freddy said. “Now people who live in Ruthenia, Bangladesh, and Japan have names like Smith and Jones, and England is packed with Al-Waziris and Chongs.”
Darkness had fallen, and they sat close for warmth. There is something very soothing and dreamlike about flying over icebergs floating in dim seas. The sight of them drifting like imagined alps in an endless grey ocean is theological in nature. So white, clean, and fanciful, they seem to have no mass. And each has the virginal quality of an artifact fresh from the hand of God. No one had ever seen these particular vast dollops of ancient snow parading in the frigid sea like an invasion fleet or the dead souls of polar bears proceeding to a silent Valhalla after a long and alingual life.
“Serjeant,” Freddy asked.
“Sir!” the serjeant replied, saluting like a vibrating railway semaphore.
“Ask the pilot to go low over the icebergs.”
“Is that what you wish, sir, or, on account of the princess and all, would you prefer some happy median?”
“As low as possible, and bring me about fifty feet of line and a vehicle chock.”
“Right off.”
“What are you going to do, Freddy?” Fredericka asked. “I sense that this is the kind of thing of which your father would not approve.”
“He’s not here.”
“Nor would Mr Neil.”
“Mr Neil,” said Freddy, “is a lunatic who thinks he’s ten thousand years old. I don’t have to follow his instructions and neither do you.”
“If you don’t have to follow his instructions, what are you doing in a rabbits’-fur-and-green-snakeskin bikini, about to parachute into New Jersey?”
“That has nothing to do with him.”
“Of course not.”
“Not at all. The government and my parents have forced us. They follow the lunatic’s instructions, and we follow theirs. That makes it bearable. You’ve never been in the army so you wouldn’t know, but it’s always easier to follow an insane order from someone who hasn’t originated it. It spares your dignity if you know that the person relaying the order shares your perplexity and disdain.”
“In regard to orders,” she asked, “where are we supposed to go? What are we supposed to do?”
“You were there,” Freddy reminded her. “We are to find the live ash circle and conquer the United States.”
“But what is the live ash circle?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t know if we’re supposed to find it and then conquer the United States, or conquer the United States and then find it. That’s half the fun of a quest, isn’t it, not knowing what you’re looking for? The other half is not knowing where it is.”
“Whatever it is, we’ll never find it.”
“Of course we’ll find it,” Freddy said, perfectly confident.
“How can you possibly think so?”
“Because for a thousand years my bloodline has been victorious and supreme. I don’t mean to be immodest, but, for a Finney, this kind of stuff is old hat. As Queen Elizabeth my grandmother many times removed once said, ‘I thank God I am endowed with such qualities that if I were turned out of the realm in my petticoat, I were able to live in any place in Christendom.’ I have never yet heard of a king who did not succeed in a quest. It’s what kings do.”
“But what about your grand-uncle? And all the others that Mr Neil named, who did fail?”
“I was just making an allusion.”
“To what?”
“To William the Second, who, upon putting to sea in a storm, said, ‘I have never yet heard of a king who was drowned.’ My unfortunate grand-uncle and the others were not destined to be
kings. They did not know how to carry on the royal line through unprecedented danger, as I do.”
“How do you know that?”
“It’s in the blood.”
“You’re cracked,” said Fredericka. “Your whole family’s cracked.”
“We may be cracked, but we have ruled Britain and much of the world for a millennium. Don’t discount this. I’m royal. I have good vibes.”
“You have what?”
“Good vibes, the American equivalent of royal blood. An American of great hereditary merit is said to have them.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve committed a number of Americanisms to memory. You, too, should learn them.”
“Where did you find them?”
“In ‘The American Language As It Is Really Spoken.’ ”
“Who wrote it?”
“It’s a manuscript that is yet to be published.”
“Who wrote it?”
“My father.”
Fredericka drew back. “What does he know?”
“He’s been there a number of times.”
“So have you.”
“Yes, but when he goes, he speaks to academics. I go to turkey farms and furniture factories.”
“Freddy, I don’t think your father really knows how to speak American English.”
“But he does, and it’s all been checked by some professor in a redbrick, who’s also an MP, I think.”
“Not Swindon Michael Worry,” Fredericka said.
“I don’t think so. No, no, it’s all on the up-and-up. Guess how they say ‘How do you do?’ ”
“I don’t know.”
“‘Vus machs die, meshuganeh?’ And if you want to say ‘Fine, thank you,’ you say either ‘Like a bird from a crisp corn pie,’ or ‘Straight up, bro.’ ”
“Are you sure?”
“Certainly. I now know lots of these phrases. We’ll blend right in. For instance, do you know how to say, ‘I’m famished’?”
“How?”
“You say, ‘Amaw make me a date wit da colonel.’ ”
“It does sound American.”
“Absolutely. Do you know what they call bobbies?”