‘I will deal with this affair of Cumberland,’ he said sternly.
‘Do you mean you will summon him to an audience?’
‘I will deal with him,’ said the King finally.
Charlotte looked disappointed. It was humiliating never to be able to voice an opinion. She would not have believed all those years ago when she had come here from Mecklenburg-Strelitz that she could have been relegated to such a position. She had been quite a spirited young woman when she arrived. But of course she came from a very humble state to be the queen of a great country and that had overawed her a little, and just as she was growing accustomed to that she had become pregnant – and she had been pregnant ever since.
So she accepted the snub as she had so many others, and, sighing, thought: It is no use trying to change it now. If she attempted to it would anger the King; it would upset him; and the most important thing to her now was not to upset the King. At the back of her mind was a terrible fear concerning him. At times he was a little strange. That quick method of speech, the continual ‘eh’s’ and ‘what’s’. He had not been like that before his illness … that vague mysterious illness, the truth of which his mother and Lord Bute had tried to keep from her. But she had known. During it George’s mind had become affected. It had passed but he had never been the same again; and always she was conscious of the shadow hanging over him. Sometimes … and this worried her most … she thought he was haunted by it too.
So the last thing she wanted to do was disturb the King.
The King changed the subject to the Prince of Wales.
‘I think the people liked to see the Prince with us at the theatre.’
‘I am sure they did,’ replied the Queen, glad to see him more easy in his mind again. ‘It was a splendid evening. I thought the players very good. That actress who played Perdita was very pretty.’
‘H’m,’ said the King. Very pretty, he thought. Too pretty for comfort. He had seen a young man flirting with her in the wings when she was waiting to go on stage and he believed the fellow was attached to the Prince’s entourage. He didn’t want young profligates who flirted in public with actresses about his son.
He went on: ‘The Prince should be seen more often in public with us.’
‘I am sure that is so.’
‘But I am not sure that I like to see those play actresses parading themselves before young men. I would prefer something more serious. Some good music.’
‘I am sure,’ said the Queen, ‘that would be an excellent idea and far more suitable than a play.’
Now the King was happier. He could settle down cosily to arrange an occasion when it would be most suitable for the King, Queen and Prince of Wales to appear in public.
The Queen smiled contentedly. After all, she had accepted the subservient role all these years, why complain about it now?
She folded her hands in her lap; she would never complain, she vowed, if only all the children remained in good health, her firstborn did nothing to offend his father and the King remained … himself.
The King had sent for the Prince of Wales and when young George faced his father the latter thought: He is handsome. Looks healthy too. A little arrogant. But perhaps we all are when we know that one day we will wear a crown.
The King cleared his throat. ‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘I hear you’ve been meeting your uncle Cumberland in the Park.’
‘We passed while taking the air, Sir.’
‘H’m. And your uncle stopped and behaved very affectionately, I hear.’
‘He behaved as one would expect an uncle to.’ Just faintly insolent … as insolent as he dared be. Resentful too. No doubt imagined he was a man already. Well, he was not. His eighteenth birthday was months away – and even then he was not fully of age. The King started to wonder as he often did in his eldest son’s presence why there was always this tension between them, as though they were enemies rather than father and son. When had he ceased to regard the Prince as one of the greatest blessings in his life and seen him as one of his greatest burdens? He kept thinking of the pink chubby baby who, everyone declared, was a bold young rascal. Spoilt from his birth, thought the King. The lord of the nursery, charming everyone with his good looks and his laughter and his arrogance … yes arrogance even in those days. But how they had doted on him – he as well as Charlotte. This Prince who, he thought then, had made marriage to Charlotte worthwhile. He had been almost as foolish about the child as Charlotte, gloating over that wax image she had had made of him and which she still kept under a glass case on her dressing table. In the Park people had crowded round to look at him, to adore him; and he had accepted all this with a cool disdainful gaze of those blue eyes as the homage due to him but of which he had such a surfeit that it bored him.
And then the others had come along and they had begun to realize that the Prince of Wales was headstrong, liked his own way, screamed for it, cajoled for it – and, the King thought grimly, invariably got it.
The result: the handsome dandy who now stood before him, seeking to discountenance him because he was young and handsome and George was old and looked his age … because he was a prince who would one day be King and perhaps resented the fact that he was not already.
There he was working up a hatred of the boy before he had done anything to aggravate him, except to stand there with insolence in every line of his – the King noted – slightly too fat body.
‘Your Uncle Cumberland is not received at my Court,’ said the King. ‘Therefore I find it unfitting that he should stop to speak to you in the Park.’
‘The people seemed pleased that he did.’
‘I have refused to receive him at Court.’
‘Yes,’ repeated the Prince, ‘the people were pleased. They are not fond of family quarrels.’
‘Your uncle Cumberland has shocked the whole country by his behaviour.’
‘I don’t think they hold it against him. Perhaps they were amused.’
How dared he stand there and say such a thing! He was trying to behave as a man of the world. Why, he was not out of the nursery yet!
‘You should take more exercise,’ said the King. ‘You’ve put on weight.’
The insolent eyes swept the King’s figure and the King was unable to prevent himself straightening up, holding in his stomach. In spite of all his efforts he did have too much flesh there.
‘I would not wish the people to think I was starved as well as treated like a child,’ murmured the Prince.
‘Eh? What?’ demanded the King.
‘I said, Sir, that I should not wish people to think I was starved.’
‘H’m.’ The King changed the subject. ‘The people were pleased to see us at the theatre together. It was a pleasant evening.’
A dreamy look came into the Prince’s eyes. ‘A very pleasant evening, Sir. One of the pleasantest I have ever spent.’
‘The play was well done, though it was Shakespeare, and not as good as some.’
‘They do other plays, Sir,’ said the Prince eagerly. ‘There is Sheridan’s School for Scandal, and er …’
‘I don’t much like what I hear of that fellow Sheridan.’
‘Sir, he’s a brilliant playwright.’
‘A bit of a profligate, I fear. He has a beautiful wife and I’m sorry to see her married to such a man.’ It was the King’s turn to look sentimental. Elizabeth Linley with the golden voice. He had heard her sing several times in one of those concerts her father arranged. A beautiful voice … the best he had ever heard; and she looked like an angel herself. One of the most beautiful women I ever saw, he thought. I’d set her side by side with Hannah … or Sarah.