Saving the Queen (29 page)

“Fascinating,” said Caroline. “I suppose they could concoct an authentic instrument of abdication for me, right?…
I
,
Caroline, do hereby abdicate as Queen of England, and relinquish all titles, deeds, and appurtenances that go with the office of the sovereign. Caroline, Regina.
”

“I should think that logically you would have to sign that, ‘Caroline, ex-Regina.'” Blackford smiled, accepting a glass of port from the anonymous butler, who was then waved out of the room by the Queen and did not reappear.

“That is a problem of metaphysics,” Carolina said. “After all, only the Queen can give up being Queen, but in the instrument in which she gives up being Queen, she must necessarily assert Queenly authority, and this she can only do by signing her name, Blankety-blank, Regina. What do you have to say to that, Mr. Oakes? Why don't you stick to bridges?” Suddenly her voice became a little husky. “By the way, how do you build a bridge?”

“From where to where?” Blackford asked.

“Well, say from America to England.”

“You wait for England to take the initiative,” Blackford said.

“Why?”

“Because,” said Blackford, his heart beating, “if America took the initiative, it would appear an act of aggression, because America is so strong nowadays.”

“England is not exactly defenseless.”

“Certainly not at Windsor Castle,” Blackford smiled.

“Windsor Castle has not been impregnable for four hundred years,” Caroline countered.

“I should think then that Windsor Castle's reputation for hospitality would long since have outweighed its reputation for impregnability.”

“But so far, it hasn't.”

Caroline looked at him, sitting on the sofa next to her, the man-boy American, loose, bright, shining with desire and desirability, his port and coffee at his side, and she felt something she had never felt before—this she knew. What she didn't know was whether, in other days, in other circumstances, she would automatically have checked such an impulse before it possessed her. It could be that her assumption of office had encouraged her not to bridle her passions, as—she had read—persons of great power customarily do, or at least are supposed to do; but, instead, to give them freer rein. But this was all the thought she would give it at the moment.

“Blackford”—her voice quivered now, and she had to clear her throat to restore her authoritative accents—“I shall ring, and a footman will come in. Bid me good night after he comes in. I shall be with you within the hour.” She pressed a bell twice.

“Ah. Jason, Mr. Oakes is retiring. Please lead him to his chambers. He is not yet familiar enough with the castle to make his own way.”

Blackford stood. “Good night, Your Majesty, and thank you for a very pleasant dinner and of course for the ride. I hope you find the last chapters of
The Caine Mutiny
as exciting as I did. I shan't let on as to the verdict.”

“I think I can guess it. Good night, and if you need anything, just ring. Masterson will bring you your breakfast in the morning.”

Blackford filed after Jason, his mind reeling with excitement and apprehension, his body aching. He did not say a word to Jason, in his absorption with the moments that lay ahead of him, until, suddenly, Jason stopped.

“Here you are, sir,” he said, opening the door for Blackford.

“Thank you. Thank you very much, Jason. Thank you. Good night.”

He opened the door, shut it, and leaned back against it, his head raised as if for air. My God, he said, the fucking Queen of England. I mean, I'm—somewhere in the back of his memory, in one of those disorderly trunks of unfiled information, he fished out the law that specified the remaining crimes for which hanging was stipulated and recalled something dating back to the Treason Act in the fourteenth century about “violating” a royal figure. Great God, thought Blackford. What about when you—he could not bring himself even to think of the word under the circumstances—do it with … the goddamn Queen herself!

He sat down and, briefly, began to laugh.

OAKES
, Blackford. Foundation official. Born, Yellow Springs, Ohio, December 7, 1925. Schools: Scarsdale H.S., Yale ('51). Executed, 1952, for viol, fornication provisions of Treason Act of 1351.

He thought, suddenly, of Dr. Chase. The piquancy was more than he could bear. Dr. Chase! And Rufus. “Well, Rufus, sir, I got in about as far as I could get, and …” He started to laugh again but stopped himself and became briskly efficient. He drew the curtain. He stripped, took a shower, and put on a dressing gown. He lit the light in the bedroom, left the door slightly ajar, and turned out all but one light in the living room. He reached into the ice bucket always left out for him and pulled out a bottle of champagne, which he decorked, taking two glasses from the cabinet just as he heard the faintest knock. He moved swiftly to the door, which was unlocked, opened it, and Caroline, fragrant, walked by, wheeled about, and kissed him passionately as, with his right hand, he slid the safety latch on the door. They went hand in hand to the sofa at the end of the room. “Light the fire,” she said, and he did so, and came back to her with the glass of champagne, which she
took
, looking him always in the eyes, and sipped at it until it was half empty, when she put it down and said, “England has taken the initiative.”

He rose, extended his hand, and brought her silently into the bedroom. She pulled away the covers, dropped her yellow gown, and lay on her back as with her left hand she turned off the bedlight. The flames from the fireplace lit her body with a faint, flickering glow. She arched back her neck and pointed her firm breasts up at the ceiling, and he was on her, kissing her softly, saying nothing. Her thighs began to heave, and she said in a whisper, “Now.” He entered her smoothly, and suddenly a wild but irresistible thought struck him, fusing pleasure and elation—and satisfaction. He moved in deeply, and came back, and whispered to her, teasingly, tenderly, “One.”

And a second,

And third,

Fourth,

Fifth,

Sixth—her excitement was now explicit, demanding, but he exercised superhuman restraint—

Seven …

Eight—she was moaning now with pain—

And, triumphantly,
nine!

And they collapsed into each other's arms in silence, with animated sobs coming from deep in Caroline's throat. Blackford drew out, and in a voice kind, but gently stern and mocking, he whispered to her:

“Courtesy of the United States, ma'am.
”

They lay together in silence, but Caroline kept her eyes on Black, and when the fire began to die down she told him to put in another log. Getting out of bed, Black reached instinctively for his dressing gown.

“No,” she said, “go as you are.” He did, and her eyes shone with pleasure as she watched his lithe body walking into the living room, lifting a log, inserting it deftly, and stirring the embers—his rhythms, Caroline thought, were never disharmonious, in talking, in walking, in bed. He turned around to come back to her. She opened her arms to him again and, this time wordlessly, took over, and guided his erection; after which Blackford, excited, but also amused, remarked to her softly, “England has recovered the initiative.”

“Britannia, Blackford, still rules the waves.”

They lay there, studying the changing shapes of the fire-shadows on their bodies, when she said to him, “Blackford?”

“Yes.” He could not, then, call her ma'am; to call her Caroline could, just could, ruin it all.

“Blackford, you know all about this hydrogen bomb business you were talking about yesterday. What is the Teller-Freeze Bypass?”

Blackford's heart stopped beating. Suddenly his fondling of her breasts and haunches was mechanical, and he had to force himself to put life into his fingers.

“Whoever asked you about that?” he asked teasingly.

“I asked the P.M., and he said he had never heard of it, that he would ask Sir Edmund Hawkins, but he told me today that Sir Edmund never heard of it. I think it's one of those secrets the Americans are keeping from us.”

“How
did
you hear about it?” Blackford worked hard to make the words sound casual, accompanying them with a flirtatious pinch on her buttocks.

“Oh,” Caroline replied quite openly, “from Perry, a week ago. He tells me he hears that it is the final breakthrough they're looking for. And you know Perry—well, you don't really—but Perry always wants to know things firsthand, so he asked me to find out specifically what it was: What does it actually accomplish? Of course, the P.M. never asks me how I find out about these things—he's constantly being surprised. He would be less surprised if he would start reading something besides the
Times
, the
Telegraph
, and the
New Statesman
. I have been reading the
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
” Caroline said proudly, “and Perry has got so he can explain to me passages in it I am curious about but don't understand, and of course sometimes I ask Sir Edmund, though, poor dear, he is becoming vague, and I don't see him so often.”

The words filtered through Blackford's mind and in the daze of the experience he could only come up with vaguely plausible acknowledgments. If Rufus was right, then Blackford's mission was completed. He stared back at Caroline, whose eyes were closed now, and said finally, languorously, “Never heard of it. Must be something brand-new.” Caroline's interest apparently lapsed, and now she was talking about how she wished she didn't have to return to London in the morning, and how much longer would Blackford be staying at Windsor?

“I should be through the first part of my work by midday,” he said; “but I would love to come back later, to catch what I missed.”

“You can come back anytime, whether to study bridges or to build them,” Caroline said, rising, and kissing him lightly on the lips.

The telephone rang in his bedroom while he was having breakfast. It was his father, calling from Brussels.

“Thanks for calling back, Dad.”

“Good to talk to you, Blacky. Anyway, I've got news for you, so I was about to call your mother to track you down when I got your cable. I didn't know you were taking up permanent residence at Windsor Castle!”

“Dad, there's an Englishman here, a close friend and a second cousin of the Queen. I made him something like a promise, and maybe I shouldn't have, but I hope you'll help me out. He was a terrific flyer during the war, and I told him about the new Sabre—and found myself saying I could get permission for him to fly it.”

“You don't mean Peregrine Kirk?”

“Well, yes! What made you think of him?”

“Well, he's probably the best fighter pilot who survived the war, and the English have decided tentatively they want him to demonstrate their new Hunter. He had an accident and has been out of commission, but they want him to go up on Sunday, and if he's in good shape, to fly the Hunter at the big deal on Monday. Half the generals in Europe will be there, and probably half the civilian spectators will be Russian agents. Now,
my
news is this: The Sabre people want the very best out of our ship. There's a billion dollars riding on this one, Blacky, and I was pretty bucked up when they got me yesterday and told me
I
had been selected to fly the plane, against Kirk in the Hunter.”

“Gee, Dad, that's great! Life begins at fifty!”

“Hell, Lindbergh's five years older, and he could fly the pants off me or anybody else. But now listen, Blacky, I called up Averill Hubbard—do you know who he is?”

“No.”

“At Sabrejet he is (one) chairman of the board, (two) chief executive officer, (three) largest single stockholder; and he is (four) brother-in-law of the chairman of the joint chiefs. He's flying over for the Monday contest. And here's what I told him—that you would do a better job of flying the plane than I would.”

Black whistled.

“I'm not saying this on account of paternal pride, and Hubbard knows me well enough to know that. I want that plane
sold
, and that means I want the
best
demonstration of it, especially up against the Hunter, I can get. I saw you do things with that plane the other day after an hour that are as good as and better than what I can do with it. Put three or four hours in between now and Monday, and you'll handle that plane as if you designed it.”

Black was excited. “Okay!… But what does that do to the invitation to Kirk?”

“Tell him this: that I have okayed the invitation. But that for reasons he would be the first to understand, we couldn't let him fly the plane until after the air match on Monday. Anytime after that—Tuesday, if he wants.”

“When will you be back, and when will we start working out?”

“I'll be back tomorrow, late. But I've already spoken to Ace Simpson, and Hubbard has confirmed my cable. The plane is yours—exclusively—from now until Monday. Simpson or one of his engineers will ride with you and take notes. On Sunday afternoon, Hubbard will be here, you'll take it up, and Hubbard and his people will watch. If they like what they see, you're on. Otherwise it's agreed I'll take it up on Monday myself.”

“Okay, Dad. I'll be leaving here this morning, and you can get me at my flat, or by leaving a message there. It's a deal.” He slapped down the receiver animatedly, then picked it up again and asked the switchboard operator to get him Viscount Kirk.

“Peregrine, good morning.”

“Good morning, old chap. How are the bridges?”

“The bridges are coming along fine, thank you, but I've got news for you. My father called me just now and told me about the big deal on Monday.”

“Did he tell you who is slated to pilot the Hunter?”

“Well, yes, he did.”

“I hope you know, Blackford, that I wasn't aware of this when we spoke the night before last. The selection was made yesterday—I think rather impulsively. They pushed me through the doctor yesterday morning and he okayed me. I'm to go up this afternoon and work out over the weekend. As it stands, I'm slated to go if my reflexes are up to snuff.”