Falling for Prince Charles Read online

  But, no matter how uncertain or circuitous the approach—no matter how long she spent, suspiciously taking in the lay of the balls with one eye squeezed shut, as she swayed on those high-heeled boots like a metronome—when she finally bent over to shoot, it was as though the aging cycle queen had been flash-frozen in space and time, the nanosecond of lucidity elongated just enough to ensure that she would hit her mark with deadly precision.

  And now, here was the Queen Mother, who could also bang balls like nobody’s business.

  “What are your intentions with my grandson?” the Q.M. asked, slamming another shot home while, at the same time, yanking Daisy back from Reverie Lane.

  “Intentions?” Daisy echoed, her confusion brought about by a combination of factors, those being that a) she was not now, nor had she ever been, the type of person who had ever intended anything in life; and b) the fact that she was herself now drifting off somewhere, floating out to sea on an ocean of whiskey.

  “What are your plans for him?” the Q.M. reiterated, accompanying the surprisingly crisp enunciation of each word with a bang of the cue stick on the floor. But the look on her face gave away the fact that the banging resulted more from an eager anticipation to learn the answer than it did from any presumptions of the right to make imperious demands on Daisy. “What do you want from him? What is it that you see in him?”

  Having no clue as to how to properly execute a plan, even if she did have one, Daisy ignored the first question. And, never having been the sort who wanted anything from anybody, she also bypassed the second, thereby mentally leapfrogging her way to the end, where she landed somewhat uncertainly at the base of the third.

  “His ears?” Her response, were there a keener observer in the room, could have easily been described as answering a question with another question.

  “How splendid!” exclaimed the Queen Mother, evidently relieved that now she was able to understand everything. “I fell in love with his grandfather in exactly the same way. What extraordinary coincidences the world so often seems to be made up of!”

  Daisy had found, since arriving in London, that whatever meager interest she did possess for introspective examination of her own motivations had been placed indefinitely on hold. And she had no desire—at least, not at the moment—to resuscitate them.

  “What was the war like?” She virtually hiccupped the question, hoping to draw the Queen Mother away from the brink of the subject of Charley by substituting a relevant topic from her own reading of the Q.M.’s past.

  “Which war?” came the bemused reply from one who was clearly stumped by the frequent obscurity that was Daisy. Surely, the American girl didn’t believe that she was old enough to fill her in on the details of the altercation between George and the colonists, did she?

  “Why, World War II, of course.” Daisy, like the vast majority of her countryfolk, believed that there had only ever been one good, true, and real war (the one where their involvement had mostly been reinvented by Hollywood and writers of fiction), while all of the others had merely been the product of grim historians with less than vivid imaginations (with the only other notable exception being the Civil War—at least, in the vividness department).

  The Q.M. still failed to see how the question was in any way germane to what they had been discussing, but she found, suddenly, that she no longer cared for relevance in the slightest. It was such a novelty these days, when the press only seemed interested in the doings and opinions of younger generations, to be asked a sincerely felt question of any kind. In fact, the only thing that anyone really seemed to ask her about anymore was how she had managed to stick around for so long. People were always regarding her with unconcealed surprise at the prospect of finding her alive, looking at her as if to say, “What? You’re still here? Well, if you’re not going anyplace, the very least you could do is fill the rest of us poor slobs in on how you’re not doing it, so that we might have a go at it as well.”

  “Actually,” began the Q.M., hoping to strike the right tone now that she had an audience, “it was quite a pleasant time, really. Oh, one doesn’t mean the actual bombing, per se,” she hastened to add, seeing the startled expression on Daisy’s face. “The Blitz was hardly a day at the polo grounds. But rather, it was so…” and here she paused, leaning on her cue stick as she searched the high ceiling for the right word, “nice to feel as though one were needed, do you know? My husband, the King, and I used to go out to see the people after the bombs had fallen. And for some strange reason, our just being on the scene seemed to make people feel better about it all, safer, as though we were the British version of your American Marines or something of the sort.” She sighed heavily. “Now all that anybody wants from me is to find out what kind of magic dust I’ve taken, as if the only object of anything were the ability to stay at the party longer than anybody else.” She paused, considering again. “And the only one that the people have seemed truly interested in for the past two decades was of a much more recent generation, and her not even really one of us.”

  Daisy would have liked to offer something reassuring here, but her tongue had grown too furry from the whiskey. And besides, the only potentially reassuring thing that she got the chance to say was, “Well, it doesn’t really matter all that much anyway, does it? I mean, you mustn’t miss the bombs so much. After all, just so long as someone is making the people feel better, does it really make that big of a difference who is doing it? Or why?”

  Because, before she could get her tongue to perform any more tricks, the Queen Mother had done her wobble-walk across the room, and had taken Daisy’s hand impulsively in her own.

  Daisy noticed for the first time, that the Queen Mother smelled… not precisely like a food item, but rather, more like a person’s most favored garment; one that had been stored away in mothballs until almost forgotten and that now, rescued just in the nick of time, had been brought forth in all of its former glory, but this time comfortingly enrobed within a cumulous cloud of whiskey.

  “You know, dear, speaking of making people feel better, Charley has been so changed of late—” the Q.M. began.

  But before she could go any further, the gentleman just named entered the room in a burst of energy.

  “Ah! Daisy! There you are. I have been looking for you everywhere.” With a loving nod of acknowledgement towards the Q.M., he added, “I sincerely hope that Grandmother has not been filling your head with a lot of silly stories about what a wretched child I was. Come,” he added, with a twinkling smile of expectation, taking her other hand, “you must rejoin the party.”

  And Daisy, who no longer trusted her own desires around this man, especially not when under the intoxicating influence of whiskey, entwined her fingers in his and allowed herself to be silently led away.

  • • •

  Daisy decided that the Queen Mother had the right idea. It was really difficult trying to deal with these affairs without benefit of additional alcoholic support, and the natural byproduct of the New Puritanism—a Garden Party with tea being the most radical beverage on offer—was beginning to take its inevitable toll.

  Upon returning to the tent she had found, much to her horror that, if anything, the crowd had swelled in her absence, with people swirling closely around her to the point where she felt as though she were the wedding ring finger on a particularly fat person with a sodium intake problem. The presence of one too many titles was beginning to make her nervous; and in order to stave off the oral gratification vacuum created by the lack of any more whiskey, the most polite way that one could put it would be to say that she literally pounced on the circulating dessert tray.

  Daisy helped herself to something that looked vaguely meringue-y and that had absolutely no odor whatsoever, and three or four more items that were most definitely chocolate by birth.

  “Why, Daisy, have you no self-control at all?” Charley asked, clearly charmed.

  “Zippo,” she replied, popping some more chocolate into her mouth. All previous
resolutions cast haphazardly to the four winds, she was once again eating in front of the Prince. “I can always run tomorrow,” she added, thankful that the twisted ankle had long since healed. She considered for a moment, postulating a new personal theorem. “And besides, even if I don’t use them myself, I’m a definite product of the credit card age. Why pay in advance, when you may not live long enough to enjoy the prize?”

  “Well,” he replied, “it would appear that, at the moment, my prize has got herself all covered in chocolate.”

  He removed the silk handkerchief from his pocket and wiped her hands with it.

  Well, it’s a good thing that one of us is always prepared, she thought. Although it did seem, at times, that she compelled him to spend an awful lot of time cleaning her up. Still…

  Quite suddenly, it occurred to her that the ordeal of meeting his mother still lay in wait in her immediate future, and that there was a residue of whiskey sloshing about in her brain, and, for all she knew, chocolate stains on her dress. How in the world was he ever going to get her cleaned up in time for that?

  Daisy felt as though an arctic wind had just blown through her entire being.

  Seeing her shiver, and believing its source to be the combined effects of a summer dress with a drafty tent, he took her right hand, rubbing it between both of his for warmth.

  “My, Daisy, what a rough little hand you have.”

  Daisy sought to retrieve it and, reflecting on all of the toilets that the hand in question had cleaned, she snatched it away. Casting about, she tried to come up with a believable alibi for why it was the way it was.

  “It comes from tending my garden,” was the best that she could come up with on such short mental notice. “I like to help things grow where I can.”

  “Never heard of gloves, then?” He shrugged. “No matter. I adore this hand. It has such character. Such a welcome change from the mashed-potato ones that one is forced to grow accustomed to.”

  At the mention of mashed potatoes, Daisy’s feelings of dread cranked up yet another notch. The Queen would never mistake her work-roughened hands for soft vegetables. She would know right away that Daisy did not belong with her son.

  Watching, as Daisy shuddered anew at the prospect of what she believed would be her certain exposure, the Prince grew concerned that she would catch a serious chill.

  “Here,” he offered, solicitously, “let me get you something warm to drink.”

  Left to her own admittedly suspect devices, Daisy tried to maintain some semblance of calm. But she grew restless in about the time that it would take to locate something warm to drink at a normal-sized party. And, as she began to wander among the crowd aimlessly—catching sight of the Queen’s husband here, stumbling on a glimpse of the Queen’s sister stumbling there—the level of her anticipatory anxiety grew by leaps and bounds.

  “Dai-SEE!”

  What?

  As far as Daisy was concerned, the doctrine that stated “that which does not kill me makes me stronger” had only ever really applied to cockroaches. And, unless her sense of hearing had flown straight out the window—taking along all of her other faculties of reasoning with it—then the possessor of the voice that she was now being subjected to was definitely going to kill her, sinking all of her hopes dead in the water.

  Miss Silverman was about to learn that it was indeed true what everybody said about these afternoon affairs: They did let just about anybody into them.

  “Dai-SEE!”

  Daisy considered running away, but people were jammed in too tightly: if she ever made it through the other side, she’d emerge looking like a crepe. She considered hiding under one of the food tables, but that wouldn’t do either: the damp earth would undoubtedly ruin her dress, leaving her to look like a muddied American ballplayer.

  It was fast becoming apparent that she couldn’t run and she couldn’t hide.

  If only the fickle hand of fate had seen fit to introduce her to the Duke, she could have hit him up for the name of some poisons that she could employ to either do away with her problem or do away with herself (which might actually be the same thing at this point). But since that undoubtedly cataclysmic event was still sometime in her future and not yet a part of her past, there was nothing left for it but…

  Slowly Daisy turned, step by step, inch by inch, as if she were expecting to find the ghost of Bela Lugosi just on the other side of her shoulder, only to be faced with…

  “Why, Dai-SEE Silverman, whatever in the world are you doing here of all places? The last time I saw you, you were cleaning my toilet. But, before I even knew what was happening, that lovely Ms. McKenna that you used to work for calls me, and tells me that you won’t be coming anymore and that I have to get used to somebody else. Well, I tell you…”

  Mrs. Reichert’s considerable bosom heaved against the snug fit of her Union Jack patterned silk muumuu. She flung her long blonde-from-the-bottle tresses over her shoulders, flaying the Duke, and—having fortified herself with a single sustaining breath—plowed on.

  “When Dr. Reichert, my husband, told me that he had won some kind of silly award for inventing some sort of ridiculous device that would improve people’s chances of surviving open-heart surgery—like such a thing would ever make my life any better. I mean, really, I ask you… Don’t you think that it’s a lot more likely that someone like me’ll keel over long before I make it into the operating room?—I told him, ‘That’s nice, dear.’ And then, when he told me that the AMA was sending him to London to give a speech before the Royal Surgeons something or other, and that they said he could bring his wife, I said, ‘Even better.’ But then, when we got to London, and Dr. Reichert told me that we would also be continuing on to Edinburgh, and that I was going to get to meet the Queen, who wanted to thank him for, oh, I don’t know, making the world a better place with that stupid device of his or something, well, then I said, ‘Hey.’” She heaved some more. “But I never thought, not in my wildest anything, that I’d be running into you here. Why, little Daisy Silverman, whatever are you doing—”

  It was getting to be high time that little Daisy nipped this muumuu-ed moron in the bud.

  “I cannot tell you how pleased I am, Madam,” she broke in, adopting the arch accent of a truly blue-blooded Brit, “to learn of your poor dear husband’s undoubtedly well-deserved success, after what must surely have been an entire lifetime filled with trials and errors. I mean that strictly from a medical point of view, of course. But, what is most unclear to me, is why you are continually referring to this Silverman person, for I haven’t a clue as to who you might be speaking of.”

  Mrs. Reichert examined the woman before her more closely, speed-living through the emotional triangle of disbelief, confusion, and disappointment. She was experiencing the very common feeling of social letdown that one felt when one found that the only person at a party who was their certain social inferior, for one reason or another, wasn’t.

  “But you’re the woman who used to clean my toilets in Westport. You’re Daisy Silverman from Danbury,” Mrs. Reichert persisted, reluctant to let her social edge die so quickly.

  “I assure you that I am not, Madam,” Daisy replied, rhyming her ‘not’ with ‘caught’ to make ‘naught,’ so that there could be absolutely no doubt remaining as to her country of origin.

  “While it is true that I have been to Westport,” Daisy continued, unconsciously sensing perhaps that it would be easier later on to remember near-truths (no matter how bizarre) than one-hundred percent man-made fabrications, “I did not travel there with the express intention that you ascribe to me.”

  And here, Daisy was lost for a moment, unable to recall why anybody went to Westport if it wasn’t to clean toilets. But then, she put herself in Charley’s late ex-wife’s size tens—just to see how they fit—and all of a sudden, she had no trouble at all thinking of other reasons to go to the lovely waterside town.

  “I went there for the shopping,” were the words that came tripping off her
tongue. “They have those perfectly lovely stores on Main Street, and the prices are quite reasonable there, I think.” What else might The Other One have noticed? “I also went for the bookstores.”

  No, Daisy shook her now very internal head like a dog at her own stupidity. The Other One wouldn’t go to a town for its bookstores. But, now that Daisy had sent her there—or, more accurately, sent herself there as being someone like her—she had to quickly figure out what she might notice there.

  She began pedaling as fast as she could. “The bookstores had lots of children’s books, and lots of books on social issues and for helping people with their problems. Not much about clothes, really, but I did find that they had perhaps one too many books on me. But then, isn’t that always the case?”

  Seeing the startled look on Mrs. Reichert’s face, she hastily amended, “That is to say, on us, er no, I mean on the Royal Family, er, oh you know, that’s just a way of talking here: me, us, Royal Family, all of England… If it’s about them, then it’s about us too, right?” Daisy gave a Solomon-like shrug. “I think that it really is possible sometimes for people to carry an obsession much too far.” She was hoping that the very silent Mrs. Reichert was not by this point mistaking her for either an impostor Royal or a complete royal ass.

  “And as for your mention of the city of Danbury before… I mean, Hat City, really…” And here, Daisy bestowed upon Mrs. Reichert a most condescending look, as she indicated the perfectly made summer hat that she was wearing on her own head. “As anyone can very well see, we are quite capable of coming up with our own perfectly good creations right here.”