24
BY NOW Christmas was nearly on us and Yasmin said she wanted a holiday. I wanted to keep going. “Come on,” I said, “let’s do a royal tour first, kings only. We’ll nobble all the nine remaining monarchs of Europe. Then we’ll both take a good long rest.”
Romping with the royals, as Yasmin called it, was an irresistible prospect and she agreed to delay her holiday and spend Christmas in wintry Europe. Together we worked out a sensible itinerary which would take us, in the following order, to Belgium, Italy, Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, Rumania, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. I checked over all nine of my carefully prepared letters from George V. A. R. Woresley refilled my travelling liquid nitrogen container and supplied me with a new stock of straws, and off we went in the trusty Citroën, heading for Dover and the cross-Channel steamer, with the royal palace in Brussels our first stop.
The effect that the King of England’s letter had upon the first eight monarchs on our list was virtually identical. They jumped to it. They couldn’t wait to please King George, and they couldn’t wait to get a peek at his secret mistress. For them it was a fruity business. On every single occasion Yasmin was invited to the palace only a few hours after I had delivered the letter. We had success after success. Sometimes the hatpin had to be used, sometimes not. There were some funny scenes and one or two tricky moments, but Yasmin always got her man in the end. She even got seventy-six-year-old King Peter of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, although he passed out at the end of it all and my girl had to revive him by throwing a chamberpot of cold water over his face. By the time we reached Christiania (now Oslo) at the beginning of April, we had eight kings in the bag and there was only Haakon of Norway left. He was forty-eight years old.
In Christiania we booked into the Grand Hotel on Carl J ohan’s Gate, and from the balcony of my room I could look straight up that splendid street to the royal palace on the hill. I delivered my letter at ten o’clock on a Tuesday morning. By lunchtime Yasmin had a reply in the King’s own handwriting. She was invited to present herself at the palace at two thirty that afternoon.
“This is going to be my very last king,” she said. “I shall miss popping into palaces and wrestling with royals.”
“What’s your general opinion of them,” I said, “now that it’s nearly over? How do they measure up?”
“They vary,” she said. “That fellow Boris of Bulgaria was terrifying the way he rolled me up in chicken wire.”
“Bulgarians are not easy.”
“Ferdinand of Rumania was pretty crazy, too.”
“The one who had distorting mirrors all around the room?”
“That’s him. Let us now see what revolting habits this Norwegian chap has got.”
“I hear he’s a very decent fellow.”
“Nobody’s decent when he’s had the Beetle, Oswald.”
“I’ll bet he’s nervous,” I said.
“Why?”
“I told you why. His wife, Queen Maud, is King George the Fifth’s sister. So our fake letter was supposedly written to Haakon by his brother-in-law. It’s all a bit close to the bone.”
“Spicy,” Yasmin said. “I like it.” And off she bounced to the palace with her little box of chocolates and her hatpin and other necessary items. I stayed behind and laid out my equipment in readiness for her return.
In less than one hour she was back. She came flying into my room like a hurricane.
“I blew it!” she cried. “Oh, Oswald, I did something frightful—awful—terrible! I blew the whole thing!”
“What happened?” I said, starting to quake.
“Give me a drink,” she said. “Brandy.”
I got her a stiff brandy. “Come on then,” I said. “Let’s have it. Tell me the worst.”
Yasmin took a huge gulp of brandy, then she leaned back and closed her eyes and said, “Ah, that’s better.”
“For God’s sake,” I cried, “tell me what happened!”
She drank the rest of the brandy and asked for another. I gave it to her quickly.
“Lovely big room,” she said. “Lovely tall king. Black moustache, courtly, kind, and handsome. Took the chocolate like a lamb and I started counting the minutes. Spoke almost perfect English. ‘I am not very happy about this business, Lady Victoria,’ he said, tapping King George’s letter with one finger. ‘This is not like my brother-in-law at all. King George is the most upright and honourable man I’ve ever met.’
“‘He’s only human, your Majesty.’
“‘He’s the perfect husband,’ he said.
“‘The trouble is he’s married,’ I said.
“‘Of course he’s married. What are you implying?’
“‘Married men make rotten husbands, your Majesty.’
“‘You’re talking rubbish, madam!’ he snapped.”
“Why didn’t you shut up right then and there, Yasmin?” I cried.
“Oh, I couldn’t, Oswald. Once I get going like that I can’t ever seem to stop. Do you know what I said next?”
“I can’t wait,” I said. I was beginning to sweat.
“I said, ‘Look, your Majesty, I mean after all when a strong, good-looking fellow like George has been having rice pudding every night for years and years, it’s only natural he’s going to start wanting a dish of caviar.’”
“Oh, my God!”
“It was a silly thing to say, I know that.”
“What did he answer?”
“He went green in the face. I thought he was going to strike me, but he just stood there spluttering and fizzing like one of those fireworks, those bangers, the ones that go on spluttering for a long time before the big explosion comes.”
“And did it come?”
“Not then. He was very dignified. He said, ‘I will thank you, madam, not to refer to the Queen of England as a rice pudding.’
“‘I’m sorry, your Majesty,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean it.’ I was still standing in the middle of the room because he hadn’t asked me to sit down. To hell with it, I thought, and I chose a large green sofa and draped myself along it, all ready for the Beetle to strike.”
“‘I simply cannot understand George going off the rails like this,’ he said.
“‘Oh, come on, your Majesty,’ I said. ‘He’s only following in his dad’s footsteps.’
“‘Pray what do you mean by that, madam?’
“‘Old Edward the Seventh,’ I said. ‘Dash it all, he was dipping the royal wick all over the country.’
“‘How dare you!’ he cried, exploding for the first time. ‘It’s all lies!’
“‘What about Lillie Langtry?’
“‘King Edward was my wife’s father,’ he said in an icy voice. ‘I will not have him insulted in my house.’”
“What in God’s name, Yasmin, made you go on like that for?” I cried. “You get a really nice king for once and all you do is insult the hell out of him.”
“He was a lovely man.”
“Then why did you do it?”
“I had the devil in me, Oswald. And I was enjoying it, I suppose.”
“You simply cannot talk like that to kings.”
“Oh yes I can,” Yasmin said. “I have discovered, you see, Oswald, that it doesn’t really matter what you say to them in the beginning or how angry you make them, because the good old Beetle always rescues you in the end. It’s always them that finish up looking silly.”
“But you said you’d blown it?”
“Let me go on and you’ll see what happened. The tall King kept pacing up and down the room and muttering to himself, and of course I kept watching the clock all the time. For some reason the nine minutes seemed to be going rather slowly. Then the King said, ‘How could you do this to your own queen? How could you lower yourself to seducing her dear husband? Queen Mary is the purest lady in the land.’
“‘You really think so?’ I said.