The Servant and the Sovereign: A Tale in Five Parts, by Frank Curren

The Servant and the Sovereign: A Tale in Five Parts

Part I, Footman’s Folly

In Which Lord Byron Admits a Boy For Exhaustive Study; a Pot of Tea is Left Undrunk.

Byron reclined, knee over knee in his humungous chair, with only the stag’s heads, mounted fowling pieces and the mischievous fire for company. His haughty smirk betrayed the amusing lines that played about his head, and the awaited pleasures soon to come, his supple plume idle in the inkwell. Three raps sounded on his hardwood door, the sound of knuckles stiffened by years of rapping. The oblong gait creaked staccato on the tortured floor, and then was muffled on the rug. Jeeves Whitticker X, aged bald scion to a nine-strong line of balding butlers, wordlessly placed his silver tray on the desk beside scrawled scrolls, and turned away. His footsteps sounded again, exactly in reverse. The old servant’s sinewy legs probably had strength for a hundred more trips to the teakettle before he dropped into his awaiting plot in the back garden; there was no retirement plan for the massive service economy of Old England. The contents of the tray: one bejeweled chalice, and one piping hot pot of fragrant foreign tea, fruit of the trade routes. The master mused a moment more, before moving to pour, when four knocks rapped again against the old mahogany door. They were spritely knocks from tender skin, and Byron’s shrill voice sounded impatiently, “come in.” Jeeves Whitticker XI, middle aged footman, brown hair just beginning to recede, ascendant in the ranks of servants being groomed to take his rightful place among the exalted line of Byronic butlers, entered the room. Firm steps knocked rhythmically on the complaining wood, and then sounded slightly through the rug. “The Child Harold is here for his lessons, my liege.” Harold was the boy from the town, whom Byron himself so charitably “tutored.” The subject for today: Hermeneutics. The lesson: Genesis 19, Sodom and Gomorrah. “I’ll see him in my study,” intoned the libidinal Romantic, and rose, and left, imagining all the lewd and wonderful things they would do in their hours together. Jeeves Whitticker XI, cleared out the room, bringing the neglected tray back to the kitchen. Being young and not yet trained in the ways of Butlery, accidentally placed the teapot in the toothbrush cupboard among cobwebbed bristled relics, there to steep long undisturbed. (As you know, a good Brit would rather share a pint with a red-faced Eire than fuss about in there.)

Part II, The Plummeting Piano

In Which the Press is Made Ecstatic and the Populace Quite Sad

A momentous day indeed, screamed the plaid-clad drooling press. Prince William’s first ride ‘round the Green, and all the royal family gathered from far and wide to watch. Limousines pulled up at the Hampton Court Gates. Cameras bound in neck slings whirred and flashed. Parasols fluttered in the breeze. The fine white stallion trotted beautifully under the boy’s sure reigns. A picture the garden; piano reception to follow in the sunroom. Blanched smiling faces and chestnut hair, gathered in neat rows. Smile, smile, snap, snap. Directly above in the widely windowed room, the Pianist to the Queen cracked his celebrated fingers and checked that the enormous grand piano was suitably in tune. Stiletto heels grated behind against the buffed and rebuffed tile floor. The busty Waitress to the Queen, his consort during many court, was bringing in the biscuits, Harrod’s Biscuits, the best bloody biscuits in all the bloomin’ world. “Come here” he said, “the old dodgers’ll be at least a half hour more, and plenty of time to prepare.” So she came to him, and his celebrated fingers, the toast of music-loving London, began to explore regions less regal and far more remote. The two bounced together happily on the piano stool, and forgetting themselves a spot, fell into the pianos waiting keys. It swung back on its well-oiled wheels, (which no one had remembered to lock), and sounded a requiem fughetta in surprise as it gathered momentum across the well-polished floor. The two lovers watched from their Bench of Vice in horror, as the piano sailed off to the races towards the window, crashed through the glass, and plummeted full fathom five, crowning royal heads below. Seeing what they had done, the blackguards darted through the servants’ entrance, down the dumbwaiter, and escaped into the Orient or possibly Australia. As the news cameras faithfully recorded, the instrument of their demise smashed each and every one of their fatally arranged skulls to smithereens, a timbrous note tolling their illustrious doom. Jeeves Whitticker XVII, (whose family had, by ardently sweating their servile brows, risen in our modern meritocratic environment to become Junior Lemonade Pourers to the Queen,) stood by and ejaculated his exclamatory name.

Part III, The Professors Ponder a Pressing Problem

In Which Distinguished Scholars Suffer the Indignities of a Diet Comprised Exclusively of Indian Take Out

The green echoed with the bleating sirens and the surgeons’ shouts. The ghastly clip was played and replayed in the networks: one moment smiling tuxedos, the next cracked keys, and dripping blue blood among the splinters that pierced the soul of England. All through the land, neighbors rung up neighbors: “By Jove, have you seen the telly?” “By Jove, I have.” Newsmen rolled up their sleeves and smoked their cigarettes all the way down to the butts before flicking away the precarious ashes, clicking away on keyboards long into the night. Grimy faced news urchins twisted on the street corners of Liverpool Town, crying their sensational headlines at the tops of their much abused lungs. Turbaned Moslems with large bazookas issued videotapes taking credit for the adroitly placed concert-piece. Bankers’ wives and the ladies who scrubbed their floors forgot their own problems and wailed alike. Dowling Street appealed for calm. Backbenchers rose in fury to take the floor, “Mr. Speaker, we must have a King” they cried, “The commoners are all in a frightful tizzy.” The Peers of the House of Lords bobbed their powdered wigs askance. “Mmm, it is most unseemly,” they added, and their customary drawl was slightly quickened with excitement. Even the greengrocers were in turmoil, their warehouses piling full of unwanted spotted dick: most people had quite lost their appetite. It was clear a King must be found, and found soon, but whom to choose? The question was pondered by all the professors of Oxbridge, but even with all their furious beard-plucking (and even spectacle-wiping), they remained indubitably bewildered. It seemed that every known royal relation, no matter how distant, was not distant enough to be distant from that piano. Finally it was decided that they should be cloistered in the reading room of the British Museum, under lock and key, with unlimited boxes of takeout Indian food and dusty genealogical records. Twoscore and fourteen days hence, they emerged, fatigued, flatulent, harboring the smell of intestinally reprocessed curry, and without an answer. “But,” they announced, their formidable flatulence filling the air with the spices and scents of the Far East, through breaths constricted by the gutswalloping revenge of the colonized orient, “We have a plan!” “The Scholars Have a Plan,” screamed the newsboys on their corners, their urchin cries jackdaw-like on the nation’s windy wet lanes.

Part IV, the Unsightly Scholar

In Which MI-5 Goes for a Drive and Housewives Entertain Unlikely Hopes

The next day a most illuminating scholar appeared on the telly. He was so illuminating that the illuminative brainwaves emanating from his baldhead seemed to have melted the skin of his face, which oozed in bulbous folds off his jawbone. This oozing instantly ensured that he was trusted by the television watching public. The worse the physical form, the better the intellect: this immutable physical law runs throughout the entire spectrum of human existence, from Jessica Simpson to Stephen Hawking. Plus, they well knew, no television producer would ever let such a hideous man appear on screen, unless his overwhelming knowledge overwhelmingly necessitated it. “Science,” he boldly announced, “will deliver us from the enigma before us,” and once they understood what he meant the people were filled with relief. Science had given them birth control and the microwave oven, and now it would give them a King. Who needs the will of the people, Parliamentary consent, or even Divine Right, when one can be blessed by Science? Elementary schools throughout the realm were appropriated and became sampling centers where the nation queued up to be tested by a slight swab of the saliva of the inside of their willing cheeks. Husbands awaited their wives downstairs, ready to go to the clinic of hopes and dreams, knee over impatient knee, the Sunday Times unfurled across the table and a half a mind to call the whole demmed thing off. Housewives lingered upstairs, dressing in their Sunday best for the occasion, caking their faces with powder and seeing a princess in the mirror. To their immaculate peers of the line, they passed the whole thing off as a joke. Nevertheless, they entertained fanciful notions of illicit love affairs and long-lost cousins, amnesia-stricken royalty that wandered the shires and villages of merry old England, spreading their Sovereign seed. Then, before anyone knew the results were in, dashing men in black ties and jackets left the MI-5 office in pairs, driving black sports cars, and criss-crossed the nation at speed. Police officers intuitively seemed to know not to stop these dark demons weaving through the road, and when they did attempt to effect a ticket or arrest, the agents would not pull their cars over, but would merely wait for the cop to drive up alongside them and then press a badge against the window. Each of them had a name committed to memory, and they found the person who bore that name. If their quarry was locked puking in the lavatory of the grimiest pub in Wales, there was a knock on the door of that lavatory; if he was in bed with his wife, there was a knock on that bedroom door. They were terse men, without a spare word: “Are you so and so,” they would ask, and then “would you like to be considered for the position of King of the Realm?” If the answer was yes to both, they would hustle the confused prospective royalty back to their car without so much as a word of goodbye, saying, “everything will be provided for you.” When the nation woke up the following morning, they received with their coffee, tea, and jam, the news that Science had found forty-two very distant relatives of the Windsor family, but was unable to determine who had the strongest claim to the throne. It was reported ominously that further tests would be conducted on live broadcast the following Saturday to finally determine the rightful heir to the throne.

Part V, the Incredulous King

In Which the Archbishop of Canterbury Hastens a Rather Arduous Ceremony

That momentous and much-awaited Saturday, the candidates were dressed to the nines and trotted out to take tea in the grand ballroom of Buckingham Palace. The room was set with a great table at which the candidates were seated, facing an enormous set of oaken doors beyond which all were sure awaited some kind of test or trial. Theories had abounded across the nation and in the hearts of each potential king as to the nature of what was to come. If the fatefull reunion represented the flower of British chivalry, this gathering could most politely be characterized as the weed. Roughhewn country squires, fat, mannerless, and most likely inbred, dominated the table alongside stuffy old colonels in their Second World War uniforms and idle aristocratic twits. Harrow was wrapped up with shame at only sending thirteen of the old boys to the event instead of Eaton’s seventeen; admissions dipped precipitously to the shamefully unkingly institution the following year. Servants shuffled about, pouring tea into each porcelain cup, and then something strange occurred. The tea sent forth a queer odor with its upwardly licking tentacles of steam—it was richer, more full-bodied, and potent to the point of discomfort. Forty-two eyes peered down the curving slopes of forty-two querulously sniffing noses and perceived the blackest tea that had ever been brewed. The confines of each small cup seemed to contain the unpoetically starless urban night sky, the unfathomable deep of a tempestuous sea, a tunnel dug past China to the depths of Hell, the very Heart of Darkness beating loudly with their pettiness, their sins, and their wanton, obvious unworthiness. Hands stumbled about the table, groping for milk with which to dilute the terrible teacups. No such condiments were present. “There must be some mistake,” they cried, “what is the meaning of this hogwash?” Some tried a sip, but their throats rejected what their minds had tried to force—they succeeded only in producing an unsightly dribble down their horrified chins. And then, a single word rose above the din: “Smashing!” All were silent, and all looked for the source of this strange opinion. It was Jeeves Whitticker XVII, who had taken up a scorned cup that he had just poured, and gulped it down with pleasure. He was quickly surrounded by guards and hustled to the front of the room, where our old friend the Scientist began to speak: “Realizing that we could not discern a hierarchy of claims from the faint traces of Windor-ness that we found in your blood, we decided that some other tests would be necessary. The tea each of you just refused was originally brewed for George Gordon Byron over two hundred years ago. It has been steeping ever since. Within our labs we analyzed its contents, purified it of any germs, and reproduced it so that there would enough for one cup for each of you. Only the rightful King would be able to drink such black tea.” “But,” one of the twits rose and protested over a hardly suppressed chortle, “the man who liked your silly old tea was just the butler. Certainly you won’t make him king. We shall have to figure this out some other way.” “On the contrary madam,” the Scientist rejoined, “it seems that a daughter of Ethelred the Unready carried on a consummated flirtation with her butler, Jeeves Whitticker I. Indeed it seems his line is as royal as any of yours. He initially refused to take part in the selection, protesting that he is only a butler. Was only a butler I should say.” With that, the Archbishop of Canterbury stepped towards the confused Jeeves Whitticker XVII and bid him kneel. The Lord Steward produced the crown atop a velvet pillow. Seeing the flustered demeanor of his docile Dauphin, the Archbishop dispensed with the elaborate oaths and simply intoned before rolling cameras and unbelieving eyes, “It is my proud duty to name you, Jeeves Whitticker XVII, Jeeves the First by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Our other Realms and Territories King Head of the Common Wealth and Defender of the Faith, Long may you reign.” The whole nation roared with joyous surprise the uncommon name of the Butler-turned-King.