A Royal Match (5 page)

There were only about twenty girls who fenced at Saint Augustine’s and only three were on the sabre team – Star, Portia and myself. None of the willowy cool girls took fencing that seriously, which made the fact that I was the captain a badge of shame. Tennis, lacrosse or riding were the sports that were taken seriously by Saint Augustine girls. The other girls only did it because, aside from drama, it was the only opportunity to have contact with boys during school.

I couldn’t help myself, though. I loved fencing. I was fifth in Britain in the under sixteens – and I wasn’t even fifteen yet.

It was my mum’s idea that I take up fencing when I was a little kid at the Lycée. In those days I didn’t realise I could have a say. Now that I was almost fifteen, I could have stand-up screaming matches with her if I wanted, but
it was too late for me to chuck it in now and make a fool of myself on the tennis courts.

Actually, forget that. What am I saying? It’s never too late for me to make a fool of myself.

In Year Seven, Star had a tragic crush on our fencing master, Professor Arthur Sullivan. Neither of us mentions it anymore, although I suspect that Star still carries a torch for him. I mean, he’s a nice guy and everything (although there is a rumour that he once wore a cravat), but he’s at least thirty-five or something ancient like that. He’s extremely grand and only teaches fencing because of his love of the sport. He’s absolutely loaded and drives four Jaguars (not all at once, obviously) – a racing green one, a powder-blue one, a black one and a silver one. I like the powder-blue one best.

Professor Sullivan always spoke to us in French during fencing training because he thought it made us think harder. ‘Fencing is a physical form of chess, an intellectual debate between two bodies.’

He was always telling us stuff like that … only in French.

Once he drove Star and me to Star’s house on an exeat (in the powder-blue Jag) and for a brief nano-moment we were the envy of all (being driven to London by a teacher conferred a special status, especially if the teacher was even mildly fit).

As it turned out we had the whole house in Chelsea to ourselves because Star’s parents forgot to show up. Star said it was probably because they were too stoned. I guess
she was used to it, and anyway it meant we could do anything we wanted!

I’d like to boast that we threw a wild party with fit boys and alcohol, but we were only twelve and largely friendless so we just ate loads of sweets while Star enjoyed the luxury of smoking cigarettes without spraying herself with Febreze.

On the Saturday night we went out to the cinema covered in make-up and managed to talk our way into a 15. Later we wandered down the Kings Road, which is where boarding school kids went to pull on exeats. They do a sort of promenade up and down the street, trying to look cool, checking one another out and trying to get into pubs. All Star and I managed to do was strike up a conversation with a homeless guy and his bedraggled dog, Ralph, whom we patted and fed Jelly Babies to.

I would have loved to have a dog, or any pet, for that matter. We are allowed to keep rabbits and hamsters and things in the pet shed, but then we have to take them home in the breaks and I can’t exactly take a rabbit back with me to LA all the time. Also customs would confiscate the poor little thing and shove it in quarantine.

Star had a pet rat called Hilda and a python called Brian. Even though we weren’t officially allowed to keep snakes they made an exception for Star after her dad donated loads of money to build a new music wing. Georgina and Honey were always threatening to sue if Brian so much as hissed at their rabbits, Arabesque and Claudine.

I wasn’t too keen on Hilda and Brian myself, but out of loyalty to Star I always made a huge fuss of them when we went up to see them and asked if I could hold Hilda.

‘I’m worried Hilda’s got a cold,’ Star told me as we were doing our warm-ups in the fencing salle. The salle or rather
salle d’armes
was the latest addition to our sporting complex. It was like a squash court only far, far bigger. The floor was sprung, there were three pistes and the surrounding walls were flanked with fencing masks, weapons and ancient photographs of Saint Augustine’s teams triumphing at tournaments.

‘Poor Hilda,’ I said, in my best fake-sympathy voice.

Star was always paranoid that the rat had picked up an infection even though Hilda was the healthiest pet in the pet shed. She fussed over it all the time, treating her as if she were a gentle, nice animal like a hamster or a bunny instead of a vicious rodent with beady eyes.

We always had to give Hilda vitamin drops in her nasty little mouth and she would sometimes bite me while I tried to part her yellow teeth so Star could squeeze the dropper in.

‘Yaah, she had a little sniffle when I went in to visit her at lunch,’ she said sadly as she lay on the floor doing her leg raises.

‘Oh no. Poor Hilda,’ I sympathised as I stood up and moved on to my stretches and my lunging exercises.

The Eades College boys were here for an interschool tournament, but most of the Saint Augustine team girls
were too busy flirting to bother with warm-ups, so it was left to Star and me to make fools of ourselves with our sidelong leaps down the fourteen-metre piste while the others looked on sneeringly. Like I said, the other girls mostly only did fencing as another way of meeting boys – also I was pretty sure they weren’t immune to the fact that the all-white fencing outfits made tall, thin, gorgeous girls look even more stunning.

The Eades boys were mostly there for the girls too (rugby is the serious sport of Eades), but there were a few who were serious about the sport. Eades is
the
most exclusive boys boarding school in the country – maybe even the world. Royalty and rich people from all over the world send their sons there for a pukka British education. So do lots of ordinary rich people, some of whom made their money in their own lifetime (slightly tragic by Eades standards), doing not-so-pukka things.

The school has been around for hundreds of years, so they can get away with their mad traditions, and with making the boys wear tailcoats and funny shirts with stiff collars and things called ‘ribbons’ around their necks.

Loads of the girls at Saint Augustine’s have brothers at Eades, which gives them extra status (but only if their brothers are older, obviously).

Honey said that Eades has gone awfully downhill since her father went there. She said it is full of plebs and the sons of East End gangsters, known collectively as kevs. My father asked me why we called these boys kevs and
then got all champagne socialistic and hot under the collar when I told him that Kevin was a lower-class name in England and so kev was an alternate word for pleb.

Honestly, I don’t know why he thrust me into this elitist world if he didn’t want me to pick up elitist slang!

Less than three miles apart from each other, Eades and Saint Augustine’s tend to share fencing and drama activities, so while not many of the pupils take the activities themselves seriously, they take the inter-gender aspect very seriously indeed.

The Eades fencing team is known to be totally rubbish, even though they have a huge pool of boys to pick talent from. Most of the team were chatting to girls, but a few of them (mostly the Europeans, and Billy, their sabre captain) were valiantly warming up on the piste beside Star and me.

I was surprised to notice that one of them was Prince Freddie. I mean, everyone knew he fenced, but he’d never struck me as being particularly keen on the sport. I’d figured he, like his mates, was only on the team to meet girls.

Freddie was second in line to the British throne, after his dad, Prince George, so naturally there were girls clustered about watching him. He was clearly loving the attention, even though he pretended not to notice them.

His security men were loitering with intent. They were dressed in polo shirts and chinos, as if they were just out for a stroll, but they so looked like bodyguards with their squaddie haircuts, massive muscles and little earpieces.

The security guys in the fencing salle weren’t all for Prince Freddie, though. There are more international royals at Eades than there are tiaras at a debutante ball. And then there are the regular famous people – a lot of them have scores of bodyguards. Prince Freddie seemed to be able to manage with just two. I quite respected him for that, especially given that he was always being hounded by the media.

Some of the security guys were hired by the kevs just so they could show off how wealthy they were – a bit like sporting a gold bracelet or a sovereign ring, according to Honey. Boys can be just as status-tragic as girls, I suppose.

You get used to seeing bodyguards hanging around Eades boys. A few girls had them at Saint Augustine’s, but they were made to keep a much lower profile. I don’t think the nuns are that keen on having them around.

So anyway, once the warm-ups were finished, the president started calling the bouts. I’d seen Prince Freddie fencing
épée
before and he hadn’t been very good, so I was surprised when our names were called together.

The president called Freddie’s name first, and as I watched him lope down the piste to the
en garde
line in this really sexy way, I couldn’t help but think he was fit. Not just fit, actually, but sooo fit. He’d grown a lot since last term and was now a good few inches taller than me. He was also much cooler-looking, as this time he wasn’t sporting a gross pimple on his forehead.

Even though I knew I was going to slaughter him on the piste, I started to feel a bit nervous. I was even blushing because he was so utterly … well, there’s no other word for it … fit. Thank God for the fencing mask covering my burning cheeks.

To fence sabre, you needed a metallic jacket worn over your plastic plastron, to register hits and to avoid serious injury to vital organs, sabre being the only cutting weapon used in fencing. Officially, you are not supposed to hurt your opponent too badly, but in practice sabre is a dirty
weapon. Sabre is the most aggressive and impressive type of bout to watch. Most sabreurs like to make the most of their weapon, and as a result we were usually all pretty bruised and sore by the end of a few bouts.

Our teammates had helped us hook up the backs of our jackets to the electrical apparatus that was linked to a box on the ceiling and registered our hits with coloured lights and a buzzer.

Freddie and I saluted the president first and then each other, casually lifting our blades to our lips and back down to the fencing position. Whenever I salute my opponent before a bout, I think how strange it is that there is this much etiquette involved before two people try to kill each other. But there we are, or as Sister Regina would say, ‘Diddley-dee.’

Then we put our masks on and waited for play to be called.
‘Prêts, allez!’

I advanced down the fourteen-metre piste first, figuring the Prince, being a bit of a wimp, would either retire or parry. But instead he riposted, attacking into my offensive, which took me a bit by surprise. I made my attack swiftly, though, scoring a hit. The buzzer rang and the president called my hit.

There’s this thing called a captor inside the sabre guard, which allows hits to be recorded on the electrical apparatus, but only if the blade arrives on the
lamé
by way of a cut or a point – any other hit is invalid in sabre. Sometimes, with everything happening so fast, you don’t really know if
your hit is valid or not until the buzzer sounds and the president calls ‘
Halte
’ or ‘Stop,’ at which point the clock is stopped until play is called again. A bout lasts for around five minutes of actual combat time, but it seems a lot longer.

Freddie scored the next hit with an obvious attack, provoking me into a parry of quinte (neck) by threatening me with a cut to the head and then disengaging the parry and rotating his blade to cut at my flank. ‘An old one but a gold one’ as Professor Sullivan likes to say (in French, of course, even though it doesn’t rhyme).