Although she was got up as a sort of latter-day flapper— fringe swayed at the bottom of her too-short skirt like the fringed, beaded dividers that separated backrooms in the décor of thirites-era movies, or plays set somewhere in the Orient, from the low taverns and bars on the ground floors of whorehouses, places where sailors are shanghai’d or slipped Mickey Finns — with dark, wide eyes immensely open and sketched in with eyebrow pencil, and her red, fire- engine mouth had been painted into a pout at once as cynical and cute as someone about to cry, this flapper- cum-ingenue seemed hyperactive as a kid at a slumber party.
“Why, Larry, she’s adorable! You’re adorable, Louise! Isn’t she adorable, Father? Isn’t she adorable, Mother? You’ll make just the most brilliant Princess, Louise. No wonder even an old pooh like Larry lost his heart. Well, I should think so. Here, sweetheart, here are some things I bought you. (That’s why I was late, Charlotte dear. So there!) I just guessed at your sizes, but don’t fret if nothing fits. We won’t even bother to return it, we’ll just give the stuff away to our servants or those absolutely smashing Mounted Horse Guards in Whitehall to offer to Oxfam. Then we can go shopping for all new things!”
As she spoke she produced one exotic garment after another from her various boxes and bundles. I recognized the names of boutiques all along the Kings Road, some so chic I’d supposed they’d shut up shop years ago. I couldn’t have told you the function of some of this garb or, had the Princess not held a few of the pieces against me, have identified more than the general area of the body they were supposed to cover. Of the material of which they were made I could have told you nothing, only that much of it must have been experimental.
“Oh, Louise,” she said, “you look quite fabulous in that!”
She was enjoying herself and, to be frank, I was too. Despite the public character of our performance, I felt comfortable, somnolent, spoiled and at ease as a teen having a makeover.
In the end, however, she discarded almost all of it, dropping stuff on the floor, kicking it away, a bit disappointed in both of us because we’d both failed to live up to some vague, preconceived image she had of me which her gifts represented, but pleased, too, because now we could go shopping for new things, just, as she put it, “us two girls.”
She paused a moment, then retrieving a sort of turban, held it out toward my head. “Never mind,” she said. Carelessly, she dropped it again. “Of course,” she said, “we won’t really know until we do something about that hair.”
She began to bat at my hair rather as if it were on fire.
When I continued to flinch Charlotte at last intervened. “Oh do stop, Denise, you’re alarming her.”
“I’m only trying to help, Mother! I’m only seeing if it can be fixed. If you’d only stand still, Louise! So I know what to tell the hairdresser before us two girls go shopping again.”
“For goodness’ sake, Denise,” said Prince Lawrence, “stop carrying on about ‘us two girls,’ why don’t you? It’s ‘us two girls’ this and ‘us two girls’ that. ‘Us two girls,’ indeed. How can you speak so? You’re a Princess of England.”
“I was putting her at ease.”
“Oh please,” the Prince said. “Louise is my fiancée. One day she’ll outrank you.”
“Oh, Lawrence,” said the Princess, “we’re all of us only these accidents of birth, so why must you be so stuffy all the time? It really is too boring. Anyway, it isn’t even true. Dear, adorable, brilliant, fabulous, and absolutely stunnin’, charmin’, smashin’, and perfect for you as she quite so most obviously is, I am the daughter of royalty, after all, and darlin’ Louise here is only a common commoner. So what do you mean she’ll outrank me? She never will, will she, Royal Peerager?”
“Scissors cuts paper, paper covers rock, rock smashes scissors,” the Royal Peerager said.
“What do you mean?” Charlotte said. “I never understand what you mean when you say that.”
“Me t’ know … you t’ fin’ out,” he muttered, sulking.
“Really, George,” Charlotte objected, “listen how he speaks to me. Do I have to put up with that? A proper king wouldn’t stand for it. I daresay a proper husband wouldn’t.”
“It was a joke, Your Royal Highness,” the Peerager said. He turned to my mother-in-law manqué. “It’s a joke, Your Highness.”
King George sighed. “Well,” he said, “I suppose she is dear and adorable and brilliant and all the bloody darlin’ rest of it. I only wish Their Royal Caterers and all the Holy British Empire’s Florists and Band Leaders would just get on with it so we could have the damned wedding and retire. If she’s all right with you, she’s all right with us. Your friend passes muster, Prince,” he said as though I really didn’t.
“Where’s Alec?” the Princess broke in. “I thought Alec was coming. He promised he would. He should have been here by now.”
“I told him to come, I spoke with him just this morning. Oh my,” Charlotte said, as if remembering something she’d forgotten. Troubled, flesh-is-heir-to things played across her features, plain, ordinary as a sneeze, and, quite suddenly, she ceased to look regal, bereft of even those vestiges of bearing left to her in even only her theatrical ways. “Oh my,” she said again, worriedly. “Today’s the seventeenth.”
“That’s right,” Denise put in, “tomorrow’s the time trials.”
And now Charlotte was possessed of a flustered, lashing, unfocused anger, her rage oddly, ineptly maternal, like the helpless, confused rage of a woman just back from hospital with her first child. Even before I understood the reference of her anger I understood the reference of her anger. “He collected his new Quantra today!” she cried. “He’s off testing his damned limits, isn’t he, George! He’s off pushing his damned envelope!”
“He’s a perfectly capable young man, Charlotte, You mustn’t coddle him. The boy knows what he’s doing.”
“Oh, George,” she said, “if only he did. I wish he did.”
“It’s just an automobile. He’s been driving a car since his eighth birthday.”
“Too right,” she said, “the day he swerved to hit the gillie to avoid hitting the gillie’s dog.”
“That was an accident, Charlotte.”
“The man will never walk again, George.”
The King nodded. “I know,” he said, and for the first time that evening neglected his posture. “Look here, Ropes,” he said. “Look here, London Intentioner, Royal Peerager. Look here, Royal Taster, look here all. I’m sorry,” he said. “I am so really very sorry, but the Queen, worried as she is regarding our Alec, is a bit out of sorts this evening. Now our revels all are ended, thank you very much for coming.
I started to move off with the rest but Prince Lawrence motioned me to stay. Princess Denise, patting the broad piano bench on which she was seated, indicated I should join her.
“He’s crashed the car,” Queen Charlotte said. “I know it, he’s crashed the car.” Unexpectedly, she turned to address me. Denise, very softly, was picking out a tune on the piano, providing a sort of quiet background music behind her mother’s speech. She was very good. “He’s probably had one too many. He’s fond of surprising people in their local, Prince Alec is. He loves it when they fall all over themselves to buy him drinks. And him a prince,” she said, giggling, taking up another role. “Not once has he ever volunteered to return the favor, Louise. He brags on this as if the most wonderful service he can render them as a Prince of the Realm is to let them stand him drinks.”