Mrs Midnight and Other Stories (7 page)

King Kyril was a tall, imposing man in his early seventies who might have been reckoned handsome if his face had not been so marked by sadness and disappointment. I have learned not to read too much into physiognomy, but this was an exception to the rule. The history of his life was etched onto him with heavy, unequivocal lines. Here was a man who had lost a country and failed to find a role.

His courtesy of manner compensated a little for the gloom of his aspect. He began to ask me about my friendship with Princess Helen in London and appeared pleased by my glowing reports. I noticed that this line of conversation was making Fafner and Fasolt uneasy and they started to try to divert the talk onto more general topics. Their methods were clumsy and once, when Fafner interrupted the King, he was given a stern regal look. Then the Contessa, who seemed to be acting as backstop to the giants, entered the conversation.

‘I have met the dear Princess many times in London, of course,’ she purred. ‘Such a
charrming
person. So devoted to her charities. Now, tell me young man,’ she said, turning to me. ‘You are here, as I understand to assist our friend the King to write his biography?’

Her eyes were fixed on me with such ferocious concentration that I was in no doubt that she intended to intimidate. I nodded.

‘And what approach, may I ask, do you intend to take with this biography of yours?’

‘That depends upon His Majesty. I am merely helping him with his autobiography.’

The Contessa grimaced and closed her eyes, as if to imply that my answer had been feeble and cowardly. Further interrogations from her were forestalled, however, by Fafner who asked me how much I knew about the I.P.H. The Contessa shot him a look of anger and contempt, presumably because she thought his blunderings had robbed her of her prey. I told Fafner cheerfully that I was wholly ignorant of the I.P.H. activities and would be very glad if he could enlighten me. Fafner, assisted by Fasolt, then subjected me to a string of ponderous generalities about what they called ‘The Work’. I noticed that the King was watching our exchanges intently, though how much he understood of it was hard to tell.

During all this we were being served with food: lentil soup followed by a chicken dish, nourishing and plentiful but bland. I noticed that at most other tables some sort of self-service system was in operation. It was only at a few select tables nearest the window like ours that waiters, or rather I.P.H. volunteers acting as such, were provided.

Towards the end of the meal, I remember the Contessa once more fixing me with her burning eyes and saying:

‘We must arrange that you meet with Mike who is heading up our work. I believe it is very important that you should meet with Mike.’

‘Is Mike here?’ I asked, glancing round the room.

‘Mike’s work never ceases,’ said the Contessa. ‘He is with us everywhere.’

III

The following morning I started to help King Kyril with his autobiography. In many ways he was extremely easy to work with. He was quite willing to place himself in my hands and, up to a point, answer any question I asked him. He was unbothered by tape recorders, or note taking. He never spoke anything except his own mind, but if there were parts of it into which he did not want me to intrude, he told me so directly.

For example, I wanted to know what he was doing with the I.P.H. but he would say very little. I asked if he had met Mike and gathered that he had been on very close terms with him until about ten years ago but that since Mike’s ‘withdrawal’, he and Mike had only communicated through intermediaries. Further enquiries as to Mike’s withdrawal yielded a little more information. Some ten years ago Mike had for a brief while become ill, since when, though he had apparently made a full recovery, he lived in the St Germain Palace isolated from the majority of his followers, seeing only a chosen few. I expressed surprise that King Kyril had not been one of those chosen.

‘I have been assured,’ said the King, ‘that there will come a time when I shall meet again with Mike.’ With those words he made a little cutting gesture with his hand to indicate that this particular topic was no longer to be discussed.

Despite his general amenability, I encountered two main difficulties in ghosting King Kyril’s autobiography. His Majesty had a touching faith in my expertise: ‘you are a writer,’ he would say, ‘you know best,’ and I began to see what he meant. The King had no feeling whatever for what might interest the ordinary reader. He had a phenomenal memory for facts and dates, but if asked to describe an event or a personage he seemed barely to understand what I meant.

‘What was your father like?’ I might say.

‘My father King Bogdan, had a moustache, I remember, which was grey, but, in photographs I have seen of him as a young man, it is black. He was born in 1885 and his mother was a Princess of Hesse, connected on
her
mother’s side with the Dukes of Weimar, and she often wore these little crocheted gloves—’

‘But do you have any special memories of him?’

‘He had a dog, as I remember, an Elkhound called Rolf who was black with white under the chin. . . .’ And so it went on. The notion that a human being might possess a personality which could be conveyed to the reader was quite alien to him.

Like nearly all royalty, and most aristocrats, the King had a passion for genealogy and could recite his ancestry back to the Dark Ages, sometimes further. This was not unhelpful, as the intersecting lineages of royal houses have their own fascination and historical value. But he would often say to me something like:

‘Ah, Yes. My Great Great Aunt Amélie was of the Archduchy of Saxe-Meiningen-Darmstadt, and her stepmother had been married to the Grand Duke Rudolph—or was it Frederick? I am not sure. We must establish this.’

Fortunately, he told me, he had an archive of documents and letters back at his apartment in Lausanne which could confirm such details. These, I hoped might contain more colourful information than the facts with which he daily bruised me. But here I came across a second problem. After my first few days with him I began to suggest that we adjourn to Lausanne where I could study his archive, but something always seemed to prevent it.

Though in the mornings he was largely at my disposal, the afternoons were taken up with what he called ‘meetings’. This at first suited me because it gave me the opportunity to type up and collate the information I had received from him, but these meetings puzzled me. I knew that much of the activity of I.P.H. members was taken up with them, but tactful enquiries yielded no useful information as to their nature or purpose. I could see what the meetings looked like because in fine weather they were sometimes held out of doors on the hotel’s terraces.

A group of about twenty men and women would sit in a rough circle, all with notepads and pens on their knees. A leader would do much of the speaking, and after he had given his address, there was much industrious note-taking. Frequently he—I saw no female group leaders apart from the Contessa—would solicit contributions from the other members. I noticed also that, when the leader spoke, his words would often be greeted by uproarious laughter, but this would never happen when anyone else said anything. More than that, I could not tell. Several times I tried, on an afternoon walk, to sidle up and hear what was being said, but invariably I would be headed off by an I.P.H. member who happened also to be wandering in the vicinity. It made me wonder if I was being shadowed.

Several times my ‘shadow’, as I began to call them, was Hans. Once, when my attempt to eavesdrop had almost succeeded, he caught up with me and plucked me sharply by the sleeve.

‘This is not for you,’ he said, ‘but you are clearly interested in our meetings. If you like I will try to get you in to one of our beginners’ development seminars.’

I shrugged to show my indifference.

‘I will see what I can do,’ he said.

The King seemed to regard his meetings as something sacrosanct which took priority over all else, and this meant that for the first week or so, he would not consent to go down into Lausanne to consult the archive. I was aware too that external forces were also lending a hand. Once at lunch he mentioned the possibility of a trip into Lausanne that afternoon. (We sat always at the same table, with the same people.) The Contessa was onto him at once.

‘But my dear Kyril,’ she said, ‘we want you to lead a big meeting this afternoon in the main hall on “Strategies for Spiritual Government”. Your contributions to this important topic will be most valuable.’

‘That sounds interesting,’ I said, ‘Can I come too?’

‘Certainly not!’ said the Contessa with a hiss of barely contained rage. ‘This is a meeting at the highest level of our Psychic Development. You are totally inexperienced in such matters! Your presence could be very destructive.’

The King seemed shocked by this outburst, but he remained silent. The following day we were in his suite when the lunch bell rang, and he said: ‘Let us go this afternoon into Lausanne to look at the archive. I think we will not mention this to the others at lunch.’ As we drove away from the hotel that afternoon, I noticed that Fafner was watching us go. I think King Kyril noticed too, but he said nothing. We drove all the way to Lausanne in silence.

The King’s spacious and comfortable apartment was on the third floor of a modern block of flats. I might have said that it was in a respectable part of Lausanne, but this would have been superfluous: I have yet to hear of a part of Lausanne that is
not
respectable. It was furnished with some taste—his late wife, Kyril told me, had been a ‘connoisseur of antiques’—and, as was to be expected, there were royal portraits everywhere, some dating as far back as the sixteenth century. However, the place did have one unexpected feature. In the two principal rooms of the apartment the wall space not taken up by portraiture was occupied by shelves and glass fronted cabinets stretching from floor to ceiling. In and on them an uncountable number of model tractors was displayed, ranging from tiny toys to ones that could have been sat upon by a small child.

‘This is my great collection,’ said the King, with a sweeping gesture, as if he were pointing out his dominions on a map. The heaviness had lifted from his face, and for the time being he was young again. The next few minutes were devoted to a detailed survey of the science of model tractor collecting. Finally he pointed to a gleaming red machine about a foot high, obviously constructed with meticulous attention to detail.

‘This, I think, is my favourite. The Massey Fergusson. A fully working model.’

‘Have you always been interested in tractors?’

‘
Model
tractors. Yes. It began when I was a boy before the war at our palace in Brzny, I had a special miniature tractor which I would love to ride upon. Alas, it was destroyed or lost in the war, like so much else. It had been a present to me from the United Agricultural Workers of Slavonia. My father, King Bogdan would even let me ride up and down the palace steps on it!’ (Here at last, I thought, was a picturesque detail, suitable for the book.) ‘Now I correspond with model tractor collectors all over the world. In this circle I am regarded as a great authority on the model tractor. A friend of mine has humorously called me “the model tractor king”. It is a good joke, is it not?’

I acknowledged that it was an excellent joke, and did my best to laugh at it.

We did some work in his archives which were comprehensive and orderly to an almost obsessive degree. A whole room containing filing cabinets and a computer had been devoted to these vital relics and proofs of Kyril’s kingship. He seemed to take almost as much pride in these records as in his model collection and this was an enthusiasm I could share. At four the King sent down for coffee and apfel strudel from a nearby café, and, as we consumed these, I felt, for the first time, fully at ease in his presence.

Then, at about five the King began to be restless. He said that we needed to get back to St Germain for the evening meal. I suggested that if we stayed a little longer we might treat ourselves to dinner at a restaurant in Lausanne, but the proposal made him nervous. At the same time I could see how reluctant he was to leave his pleasant apartment. His hand strayed lovingly over the shiny red contours of his Massey Fergusson tractor model. It gave me an idea.

‘Why don’t you take the Massey Fergusson back to have in your suite in St Germain,’ I said.

‘Do you think so? Do you really think so?’

I nodded and received a rare smile in return.

‘Yes. I agree. It is a truly excellent idea.’

The King spent the next twenty minutes carefully packing his Massey Fergusson into a box to take up to St Germain. I meanwhile enjoyed some uninterrupted moments with his archives.

We arrived back late for supper and the Contessa was very stiff about it. She seemed to hold me chiefly responsible.

I tried not to be too curious about what went on at St Germain, but aspects of it necessarily impinged. For example, on the day after our trip to Lausanne, the King happened to mention at supper the fact that he now had the Massey Fergusson in his suite.

‘What is this Massey Fergusson?’ snapped the Contessa.

The King embarked on a long explanation but the Contessa cut him short.

‘But this is a toy tractor?’

‘Pardon, Contessa. Certainly not! A
model
tractor.’

‘Toys, models, what difference? Do you think we at I.P.H. concern ourselves with such things?’

‘His Majesty is a highly regarded connoisseur and collector of model tractors.’ I said, feeling only a little ashamed of my sycophancy. It was rewarded with a venomous look from the Contessa.

‘You! Who are you to enter this conversation?’ Then, turning to the King: ‘I wonder what Mike would have to say to such things.’

The King looked down at his plate and crumbled a piece of bread in silence.

I said: ‘Perhaps we should meet with Mike and discuss the matter.’

It was fully ten seconds before the Contessa regained full control of herself. I looked away so as not to meet her terrible eyes, but I took a certain fearful pleasure in what I had provoked. When she spoke again it was in a low voice, almost a whisper, as if conveying a secret message to me alone.