“…at any rate, as far as I am aware, there is no legitimate claimant to the British throne.”
“That’s right,” Green said, nodding. “It’s a worry for us.”
“There’s absolutely no reason for that! Why not follow France and establish a republic? Yes, the Federated Republic of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It’s entirely justifiable, since the king died on his own, and wasn’t sent to the guillotine like ours was.”
Green shook his head slowly, and then in the manner of an adult, said, “No, my dear Pierre, that would be unthinkable, both today and in the past. Our feelings about the monarchy are different from yours. It’s a spiritual support for the British people.”
“You’re too conservative. That’s the reason why the sun eventually set on the British Empire.”
“You’re too eager for change. The sun set on France, too, and on Europe. Could Napoleon and Wellington have imagined a world congress like this held not in London, Paris, or Vienna, but in the crude, rude country of cowboys? Forget it, let’s not talk history, Pierre,” Green said, shaking his head sadly when he saw Davey.
“But reality is just as hard. Where will you find a queen?”
“We’re going to elect one.”
“What?” Pierre gave an ungraceful yelp, attracting the attention of more people. Their conversation had circle become the largest at the banquet.
“We’re going to get the prettiest, most adorable girl to be queen.”
“And her family and lineage?”
“None of that matters. Simply being English qualifies. But the key is that she’s got to be the prettiest and most charming.”
“That’s fascinating.”
“You French like revolutions. This might count as one.”
“You’ll need to find candidates.”
Green pulled a sheaf of holograms from a pocket in his evening jacket and passed them to Pierre. Ten candidates for queen. The French president flipped through the holograms, sighing in admiration at each one. Practically every child in the hall gathered round to pass the photos, and they sighed in admiration along with him. The girls in the photos were like ten little suns in their radiant beauty.
“Gentlemen,” said the band conductor, “the next song is dedicated to these ten queens.”
The band struck up “Für Elise,” and in its hands the gentle piano tune remained as touching as ever, even more absorbing than the piano version. Awash in music, the children felt that the world, life, and the future would be as beautiful as those ten suns, and as adorable.
When it finished, Davey asked Green politely, “So what about the queen’s husband?”
“Also decided by election. The prettiest and most adorable boy, of course.”
“Any candidates?”
“Not yet. There will be once the queen is elected.”
“Oh, right. You’ve got to listen to the queen’s opinion,” Davey said, nodding in agreement. Then, with that particular brand of American pragmatism, he said, “One more question. How can such a young queen give birth to a prince?”
Green snorted rather than answering, as in contempt for Davey’s lack of breeding. Few of the other children present were well-versed in the specifics, so they all just pondered the question and for a while no one spoke. Eventually Pierre broke the silence: “I imagine it’s like this. Their marriage is just, well, what’s the word, symbolic. They’re not going to live together like adults do. They’ll have kids after they grow up. Is that it?”
Green nodded, as did Davey, to show he understood. Then Davey cleared his throat, seeming suddenly shy. “Um… about the pretty boy.”
“What about him?”
Davey tugged at his white gloves and gave a self-conscious shrug. “I mean… there’s no candidate yet.”
“That’s right, there isn’t.”
Davey crooked a finger back toward himself and said, “So how about me. Do I qualify?”
The surrounding crowd tittered, to the annoyance of the president, who barked, “Quiet!,” then turned back to Green and waited patiently for his response. Green turned slowly toward the banquet table and picked up an empty glass, and then made a subtle motion for a refill to the server beside him. When his glass was full, he carried it over to Davey and waited until the surface was still. Then he said, “Why not see for yourself?”
The group burst out laughing. The laughter spread until even the servers and army band members were cackling uncontrollably at their president, chief of staff Benes the giddiest of all.
In the center of it all, the president’s face contorted. In point of fact, he wouldn’t have been found wanting; what disqualified him was his lack of British citizenship. The international mockery annoyed him, of course, but he was most irritated by Green. As he had met with the heads of NATO countries for the past several days, it had been the prime minister who had bothered him the most. No sooner had he arrived in the United States than he began asking for things—steel, oil, and above all, weapons. Three five-billion-dollar Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and eight two-billion-dollar ballistic nuclear submarines, in one fell swoop, as if angling to re-create the Royal Navy of Admiral Nelson’s time.
Even worse, he wanted land. Just the return of a few former colonies in the Pacific and the Middle East at first, but then he rolled out a stinky old seventeenth-century parchment, a map with no lines of latitude or longitude, nothing at all at the north and south poles, and brimming with errors in Africa and the Americas.
Pointing out areas of the map, Green informed Davey of all the places that once were England and remained so (only omitting any mention of North and South America prior to the revolutionary wars). He felt that due to the special relationship Britain had with the US, even if the US was unwilling to aid it in recovering those lands, it should at least permit it to reclaim some of them, since the measly territory it now occupied was tremendously disproportionate to the immense contributions it had made to Western civilization through the ages. The United Kingdom had been a cherished ally of the US in two world wars, and in the second had exhausted its national power to protect the British Isles and prevent the Nazis from crossing the Atlantic, only to suffer such a precipitous decline as a result.
Now the cake needed to be redivided; surely Uncle Sam’s children would not be as stingy as their fathers and grandfathers! However, when Davey made the demand that once conditions were ripe, NATO would place a dense installation of medium-range ballistic missiles in Britain to prepare for an advance to the East, he immediately turned as tough as the Iron Lady and declared that his country, and all of western Europe for that matter, would not become a nuclear battlefield. No new missile installations; as a matter of fact, he was going to dismantle some existing ones.
Now on top of that, making jokes at the expense of the president of the United States, in the manner of a fallen aristocrat who can’t resist grandstanding like a fool. Davey’s anger bubbled over at the thought, and he threw a fist into Green’s jaw.
The sudden punch sent the skinny prime minister, smugly holding a wineglass up as a mirror for Davey, tumbling backward over the banquet table. The hall erupted into chaos. Children pressed around Davey shouting angrily, and the prime minister managed, with some help, to get to his feet. Ignoring the caviar and mayonnaise on his clothes, the first thing he did was straighten his tie. He was helped up by the foreign secretary, a brawny boy, who made a dash for Davey but was held back by the prime minister. Even before he stood up, Green’s mind had made the transition from overheated to cool, and he understood that now was not the time to lose sight of the bigger picture. Amid the chaos, he was the only one who retained an enviable calm. With aristocratic grace, he extended his right index finger and said to the foreign secretary, in a tone entirely unchanged from usual, “Please draft a diplomatic protest.”