“Now, Karil,” she said, “here is the program for the day: math and French with Herr Friedrich as usual, then history and Greek with Monsieur Dalrose. At luncheon you will sit next to the Turkish ambassador’s wife — she has asked to meet you because she has a son your age, and you will talk to her in French. Your fencing lesson with Count Festing is at the usual time, but your riding lesson has been put forward to allow you to change for the inspection of the new railway station at which you will accompany your father.”
“Are we riding or driving?”
“You are driving. Your father will be in the Lagonda; you go in the next car with the Baron and Baroness Gambetti.”
Karil tried to hide his disappointment. He saw his father so seldom — rarely before dinner and often not then. Days passed when he did not see him at all. Even though he was not allowed to chat in the royal car, it was good to be beside him. His father was a stern and conscientious ruler, and he seemed to care for nothing except his work. Sometimes Karil felt that his father had really turned into that bewhiskered, solemn person — King Johannes III of Bergania — whose pictures hung in the schools and public places of his country.
But the countess was still scolding. “And I don’t want to have to tell you again that your manner to Baron Gambetti is not satisfactory.”
“I don’t like him.”
“Like him? Like him? I hope you don’t imagine that princes of the blood can have likes and dislikes. You are entirely above such things.”
“He wants us to give in to the Nazis. And his wife sleeps with a picture of Hitler under her pillow.”
“I beg your pardon? I dare not wonder how you have come by that piece of tittle-tattle. Now hurry up and get dressed.”
Breakfast was taken in a room that overlooked the moat and had a view down the hill to the town and the river which wound through it. Karil had it in the company of his Cousin Frederica and three ladies of the bedchamber, who were also the king’s aunts: plump turnip-shaped ladies with big bosoms and short legs, like roots, on which they tottered around the palace giggling and gossiping and finding fault. Karil’s uncle Fritz was also at breakfast: a vague-looking man with long silver hair and dreamy pale blue eyes. Nobody had known quite what to do with him, so the king had made him minister of culture. It was a job he took very seriously, organizing singing competitions and literary events and folk festivals. The politicians in the cabinet laughed at him behind his back, but Karil was very fond of him.
The king never breakfasted with his family. He had a tray sent to his bedroom and started to work on state papers as soon as he woke.
Conversation at meals was supposed to be “improving” and to show Karil what was happening in the world and today there was plenty to discuss. Hitler had again sent envoys to Bergania asking the king to allow troops to march through the country in case of war, and the king had again refused. Bergania had always been neutral, he said, and neutral it would remain.
“It was very brave to refuse a second time,” said the oldest lady of the bedchamber, slicing the top off her egg. “Very brave indeed.”
“Perhaps a little foolhardy,” said the second lady. “Hitler is not to be trifled with.”
“And look at what happened to poor Zog,” said the third.
All three ladies shook their heads, thinking of poor Zog of Albania, who had lost his throne and was now having a miserable time in a villa in Spain without proper drains.
“There were other demands,” said Uncle Fritz. “Hitler wanted all the refugees returned — the people who had fled Germany and come here, and that’s quite out of the question. The leader of our orchestra is a German Jew and the best musician we’ve ever had.”
Cousin Frederica broke her roll in half with her bony fingers. “Herr Hitler has might on his side.”
Karil looked at her across the table. “But my father has right on his.”
It was not a big procession — opening a railway station is not as important as signing a treaty or welcoming a foreign ruler. All the same, the schoolchildren were let out of school early, people lined the streets, there were flags and bunting among the flowers in the window boxes, and at least five cars filled with various dignitaries stood ready to set off.
Karil had hoped to get a chance to talk to his father before the procession left, but the king was flanked by the prime minister and the mayor and escorted to his favorite car, the Lagonda, with the royal pennant fluttering on the bonnet. Following in the Rolls-Royce with Baron Gambetti, Karil tried hard to be civil. Gambetti was a thin man with a yellow skull, sneering lips, and a pointed beard like a goat’s stuck on the end of his chin. Everyone knew that he was trying to persuade the king to give in to Hitler and that the baroness egged him on. Trying to be polite, trying not to wave too enthusiastically to the children lining the route, kept Karil busy till they reached the station and there it all was: the red carpet, the officials with their chains of office and their medals, the band of the Berganian Rifles breaking into the national anthem…
A small girl in a white dress came forward to curtsy and give the king a big bouquet of lilies, and an even smaller girl was pushed forward and gave Karil a posy of sweet peas — and then the speeches began.
Karil had liked the old wooden station, with its single waiting room hung with posters of Italy and Austria and Spain, and a black iron stove. The new one was of brick, faced with yellow stucco, and had a fanciful blue roof, and the architect who had designed it was presented to the king and made a speech and so did the mayor and the director of railways.
Karil found it difficult to concentrate on the speeches; they always seemed to be the same, whether it was a railway station being opened or a football team being presented or a bishop being buried, but he managed to stand up very straight and not to blow the ostrich feathers out of his eyes even though a breeze had sprung up and they were tickling him badly. Then the king cut the pink ribbon stretched across the platform and declared the station open, and everyone got back in their cars for the drive home. As they made their way along the promenade beside the river Karil noticed some workmen putting up bell tents on the level ground at the edge of the park.
“What are those for?” he asked Baron Gambetti.
“Oh, some nonsense of your uncle Fritz,” sneered the baron, who made no secret of his contempt for the minister of culture.
“A folk-dance festival or some such thing — children coming from all over the place.”
“I hope they will behave,” said the baroness. “There are some from one of those free schools in England. They will carry on like savages, no doubt.”
Karil looked at the tents, imagining them full of busy children from all over the world. But it wouldn’t help him. Maybe one child would be scrubbed clean and presented to him for a few minutes, but he would never know what was really going on in their lives… or make a friend.
When he was younger and had read fairy stories, Karil had always been angry with all those goose girls and milkmaids who wanted to marry a prince.
“Don’t do it!” he had wanted to shout at them. “Don’t go and live in a palace. You’ll be bored and bullied, and everybody you meet — absolutely everybody — will be old!”
Back at the palace Karil changed out of the detested uniform, but the working day was still not over. A professor came from the College of Heraldry to give him a lecture on the different methods of saluting and showed him pictures of the exact angle of the hand in relation to the lobe of the ear. This was followed by the visit of a sculptor who wanted to measure Karil’s head for a bust which the Youth Center had ordered for their sports hall.