Yes, he’s still up. But how is he supposed to feel? It was humiliating. The whole thing. He should have been processing down the Mall, preceded by a display of military might, not making the short walk from the Castle to the Hermitage, jeered at by these ghastly indigenes, inbred, not even bloody French, pressing against the police cordon or volleying dross from their boats…
He hates it here. He hates the smaller roads, the smaller life; hates that even in Grouville the exiled faithful hold their kids when he’s around them. How can it be evil? The touch of a King is a blessing. They should be honoured!
He hates watching the news, seeing their grotesque ‘DeCoronation’ unfold, the mass parade to Westminster, the Service of Thanksgiving for Deliverance. Deliverance! Giving away all the jewels they hadn’t yet returned, and breaking down the Royal Regalia. His! HIS! HIS Regalia! They have no right. They call them stolen. Stolen! They were given by a grateful people, as a token of their love, like Uncle Louis’ sweet brown boys in India. They sneer at Louis now. They aren’t grateful now, these people, these Albians. Something got into them. He blames council housing, pop music, modern buildings, poetry that dwells on filth and gossip and political envy and does nothing to ennoble the soul of the reader…He fulminates against them all in his weekly broadcasts, for all the good it does. He knows his pronouncements are mocked in the Albian press, along with lurid speculation on his family dynamics. They compare his dear boys to monstrous catamites from science fiction fantasies. How horrid! How dare they? Don’t they know he is the King? Is. He doesn’t become King after the Anointing with Chrism, he became King when his mother died. Hence vivat.
Oh, he wishes for the Scholars. The choir from La Preference are lovely kids, of course, delightful, but not up to Hubert Parry. And a brass band instead of the organ? As if he were some miner? It’s insulting. How dare they reduce him to this?
And the guests…all those washed-up remnants of old European monarchies, diminished or still spinning harebrained schemes, lending their imprimatur to get-rich-quick schemes, far right agitation, or what-have-you - are they his future? Is that what he is destined to become? They killed Sir James, they blew up Louis, but some days he feels like they got off easy, went out fast and noisy, not this death by a thousand cuts of cloth. Even Andrew’s American friends have stayed away. Some ‘special relationship’! Still, the Americans have their own situation, ever since the Albians played hardball, hung out a bit of what they dredged up from the private files and threatened to leak more unless the Yanks pulled out their nukes and didn’t treat us as an airstrip. They were supposed to be Utopian idealists. They weren’t supposed to learn the ropes so fast. Those damn Intelligencers…
It’s late now. Most of the servants are asleep. But he doesn’t feel like coddled eggs now anyway. He wants…what is it the people eat? One night, he remembers sitting up late with Sir James, cooking as a very special treat, young Mr Windsor, frying bits…chunks…chips of potato in bubbling fat…Chips! That’s what they called them. So coarse. So barbarian. But that’s what he wants now. Chips and vinegar. He can cook that. They call him helpless and pampered in their papers and web pages but he can do that, he remembers watching Sir James, being told how long to leave the spuds in. Spuds! Delightful word.
He sets the pan heating as he peels and chops the spuds. If they could see him now, those scoffers! Not like Diana, that bitch, creeping into the kitchen just to stuff her face with cake, a self-reliant man, unbowed by the humiliation they have forced upon him. A King! A true King, deep down in the soul, distinguished by a birthright they can never take away. Let this bubbling chip pan be to him as Robert Bruce’s spider! Here begins -
A whoooooosh. The fat is burning! That’s no problem though. The Sovereign need have no fear of fire. He fills another pan with water, then swings it like a tennis racket.
Game. Set. Match.
‘Maybe Savile should have done fire safety after all, not seatbelts.’ - Angel McKenna, ‘Good Morning Albia’, 02/5/1999
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