All right, Sid. I know. I still haven’t earned it. A tuppence of toilet humor don’t make a dent in fifty thousand pounds.
We went back to the wicky-up.
“Now I know what all that aloe is for. You weave wicky- ups, don’t you?”
“How would you know about something like that?”
“Oh, I’ve been around,” he said.
“You?”
“I bivouacked in plenty of places like this when I set up for a sailor. It wasn’t all Dartmouth and Greenwich at Dartmouth and Greenwich. The Royal Navy was never any respecter of persons. The British Empire depends on its Fleet even if it ain’t the British Empire anymore. I may as well have been a cabin boy as a prince for all the difference it made to my warrant officers. So, sure, I’ve woven plenty of walls from these sharp, saw-toothed fronds. We called it ‘sewing houses.’”
“That’s what we call it!”
“We?”
“My roommates and me. Jane and Marjorie. I think they’re actresses.”
“So, certainly. I’ve swept up many a peck of sand in my time, and taken what comfort I could from what aloe I could get whenever I could get it. Of course,” he said, “it isn’t supposed to be as important for a man to have smooth, creamy hands as it is for a woman, Louise.”
He took both my hands and held them in one big, smooth palm.
“Yech,” he said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Nothing,” he said, “I was just thinking about all the times I beachcombed sandfruit for breakfast, and how it gave me the runs.”
I withdrew my hands.
“What?” he said. “What?”
“It gives Jane the runs, too,” I told him coolly.
“Look,” said the Prince, “didn’t you just ask whether I was one of those Let’s-Trade-Places sort of princes? Well, I am, Louise.”
“A commoner in every port, is it?”
“No,” he said, taking back my hands and pressing them to his lips. “What, are you kidding me, Louise,” he muttered his demurrers, looking up, “you know me better than that.” He took me in his athlete’s arms. It was thrilling, Sid, thrilling. Well, he was handsome. And all those months in the States living one’s life like a more-or-less nun. And him with all his dark good looks. I tell you I felt like a nurse in a novel.
So, what with this and what with that, we were soon enough rolling round down on the sandy floor of the wicky-up enjoying a bit of the old leg-over, so given up to passion I didn’t realize what happened when we crashed into the hotel bellman’s cart Jane and Marjorie and I used to hang up our clothes and was all we had for wardrobe or even for furniture in that tiny hut, spilling the clothes, tumbling the coats and shifts and dresses and gowns down from where they hung on the rack, Prince Lawrence so excited and lusty I could almost believe his earnest demurrers of just three or four minutes before.
(Was I naïve, Sid? Who’s to say? Anyway, I don’t think so, for what was the morning line on this prince while his two younger brothers and two younger sisters were off sowing their wild oats and getting their names in the papers, making it into the gossip columns with their famous scrapes and muddles that had always the faint air about them of throwbacks to different, gayer times— like ne’er-do-wells running with a fast crowd, and fortunes lost gambling; careless Sloane Rangers sent down from Cambridge or Oxford, or come away with dubious seconds and thirds; his siblings excused or explained away or even written off by their place in the birth order? Only that, baby-boomer prince or no baby-boomer prince, in the curious reign of the peculiarly marked incumbency of these particular sovereigns he was conscientious, notable for the advantage he took of photo ops — and why not with his beauty? — and for his solicitous gestures, his polished idiosyncrasies and special relationships with all his inferiors — well, I was an example, wasn’t I? — and that he might be too good to be true, right down to the impression he gave of having just stepped out of a trailer on locale somewhere, of being this, well, film star got up as a prince, not a hair out of place, all perfected and rested while a stand-in stood on his mark taking the heat for him while the crew got ready, setting the lights, fussing the sound, till they sent a gofer to the trailer to fetch him— “Five minutes please, Prince”—and he stepped out, majestic and grand as you please, his jacket and tie and collar as perfectly in place as they’d be on some little girl’s cutout of a jacket and tie and collar that she tabs on a doll that she’s punched from a book.)
So excited and lusty that at the moment of truth he neither called on God nor made the customary noises and growls and oh! oh! oh!s of satisfaction but shouted out: “IT WAS THAT ALOE THAT BROUGHT IT ALL BACK!”And from somewhere deep within his seafaring engrams and naval neurals actually began to sing— “On the road to Mandalay,/Where the flyin’-fishes play,/An’ the dawn comes up like thunder outer China ’crost the Bay!”
“Good Lord,” he said checking his new watch and jumping up to gather his new things when we had done, “just look at the time, will you! They’ll be waiting for me! Hurry, Louise, but don’t rush. I’ve reserved a seat for you!”
So as least I didn’t make a complete fool of myself, and either luck was with me or I’d had the unconscious foresight to be dressed for the occasion when Larry called me up to stand beside him on the reviewing stand. Even though I was still uncomfortable. And I’m not only referring to my state of mind when I say that — though, as I’ve said, it was out of vestigial patriotism that I was up there at all — but literally, too. Physically uncomfortable. Well, there was sand in my high-heeled shoes, in my stockings and in the dress I was wearing. And though it doesn’t come through well on the videos (thanks to that flower print I had on), not even on that special high-resolution tape the Frenchmen were using for their documentary about Larry, if you know where to look you can almost just see the aloe stains and vague patches of chlorophyll on my dress from when the Prince and I were rolling around in abandon on the frond-strewn clothing-carpeted floor of the unwinding wicky-up.
(Sid, “I’ve reserved a seat for you!” not “I’ll reserve a seat for you.” Sid?)
There was a press conference of sorts, ad hoc, shouted out, summary as an encounter with prime ministers or presidents on the way to their helicopters. The Prince’s unexpected announcement of his engagement was the proximate cause, but it was only my appearance with him on that provisional reviewing stand, or rostrum, or stage, or, considering the occasion, pulpit or hustings even, that the reporters started to call out their questions.
It was to me, not Larry, they called.
“Miss Bristol! Miss Bristol!”
“Miss Bristol?”
“Miss Bristol, over here. Over here, Miss Bristol.”
“Louise? Oh, I say, Louise.”
The Prince squeezed my hand, but thinking he must know me, I’d already acknowledged whoever it was that used my Christian name.
“Yes?” I said. “You, the one standing. Off to the side.”
“The Prince says he obtained the King’s and Queen’s prior consent. Have you met their Royal Highnesses then? And I have a follow-up.”
Out of the corner of my eye I could see how troubled Larry was, but he needn’t have been. I’ve already said that about duty and loyalty. It’s what they say about heroism, too. That you don’t even think about it. That it comes second nature or not at all. That you fall on the grenade or jump in front of the oncoming car to push the child away without thought to the consequences. I was already answering the man’s question.