My Uncle Oswald

14

THE STAGE WAS SET. Yasmin and I packed our bags and left for Madrid. We had with us the vital liquid nitrogen suitcase, the smaller case containing glycerol, etc., a supply of Prestat’s best chocolate truffles, and four ounces of Blister Beetle powder. I must again mention that in those days the examination of luggage by customs was virtually nonexistent. There would be no trouble with our curious suitcases. We crossed the Channel and travelled to Madrid via Paris by wagon-lits. The whole trip took only nineteen hours. In Madrid, we registered at the Ritz, where we had booked separate rooms by telegram, one for Oswald Cornelius Esquire and one for Lady Victoria Nottingham, using the name and title I had recently conferred on Yasmin.

The next morning I went to the Oriente Palace where I was stopped at the gates by a couple of soldiers on guard duty. Waving my envelope and shouting, “This is for the King!” in Spanish, I reached the big main entrance. I pulled the bell knob. A flunkey opened one of the doors. I then spoke a Spanish sentence that I had committed to memory, which said, “This is for His Majesty King Alfonso from King George of Great Britain. It is most urgent.” I walked away.

Back at the hotel, I settled down with a book in Yasmin’s room to await developments.

“What if he’s out of town?” she said.

“He isn’t,” I said. “The flag was flying over the palace.”

“What if he doesn’t answer?”

“He’ll answer. He wouldn’t dare not to, after reading that letter on that notepaper.”

“But can he read English?”

“All kings can read English,” I said. “It’s a part of their education. Alfonso speaks perfect English.”

Just before lunchtime, there was a knock on the door. Yasmin opened it and there stood the manager of the hotel himself with a look of importance on his face. He had a silver tray in his hand on which lay a white envelope. “An urgent message, my lady,” he said, bowing. Yasmin took the envelope, thanked him, and closed the door.

“Rip it open!” I said.

She ripped it open and took out a letter handwritten on magnificent palace notepaper.

“Simple, isn’t it?” I said.

“What does he mean we?”

“All monarchs refer to themselves as we. You have three hours to get ready and be at the palace gates,” I said. “Let’s fix the chocolate.”

I had obtained from Prestat a number of very small and elegant boxes, each holding no more than six truffles. Yasmin was to give one box to the King as a small present. She was to say to him, “I have brought you, sire, a little present of chocolates. They’re delicious. George has them specially made for me.” She was then to open the box and say with a most disarming smile, “Do you mind if I steal one? I simply can’t resist them.” She pops one into her mouth, then she picks up the marked chocolate and holds it out to the King delicately between forefinger and thumb, saying, “Try one.” The poor man will be charmed. He will eat the choc just as A. R. Woresley did in the lab. And that will be that. Thereafter, Yasmin will simply have to carry on nine minutes of flirtatious small talk without getting entangled in any complicated reason for her visit.

I got out the Blister Beetle powder and we prepared the fatal truffle. “No double doses this time,” Yasmin said. “I don’t want to have to use the hatpin.” I agreed. She herself marked the truffle with small scratches on the surface of the chocolate.

It was June and very hot in Madrid. Yasmin dressed with great care but wore the lightest possible clothes. I gave her a rubbery thing from my large stock and she put it in her purse.

“For God’s sake don’t fail to get it on him,” I said. “That’s what it’s all about. And hurry back here with it quickly afterwards. Come straight to my room next door.” I wished her good luck and off she went.

In my own room I made careful preparations for dealing with the sperm as soon as it arrived. This was my very first time under actual field conditions and I wanted to get everything just right. I will admit I felt nervous. Yasmin was at the palace. She was giving Blister Beetle to the King of Spain and after that there would be a good old wrestling match and I only hoped she would handle things properly.

The time went slowly. I finished my preparations. I leaned out of the window and watched the carriages in the street below. Once or twice a motor car came by, but there were not so many here as in London. I looked at my watch. It was after six o’clock. I made myself a whiskey and soda. I carried it to the open window and sipped it there. I was hoping to see Yasmin stepping out of a carriage at the hotel entrance. I didn’t see her. I got myself a second whiskey. I sat down and tried to read a book. It was now six thirty. She had been gone two and a half hours. Suddenly there was a loud knocking on my door. I got up and opened it. Yasmin, with cheeks afire, swept into the room.

“I did it!” she cried, waving her handbag at me like a flag. “I’ve got it! It’s in here!”

“Give it to me quick,” I said.

There were at least three cc’s of royal semen in the knotted rubbery thing Yasmin handed to me. I put a drop under the microscope to test it for potency. The tiny royal squigglers were squiggling madly all over the place, supremely active. “First rate stuff,” I said. “Let me get this into the straws and frozen up before you say a word. After that, I want to hear exactly what happened.”

Yasmin went to her room to bathe and change. I set about the business in hand. A. R. Woresley and I had agreed that we would make exactly fifty straws of semen for each person. More than that would take too much room in our travelling sperm freezer. I set about diluting the semen with egg yolk, skimmed milk, and glycerol. I mixed it. I measured it out with a graduated eye dropper into the little rubber straws. I sealed the straws. I put them on ice for half an hour. I exposed them to nitrogen vapour for a few minutes. Then finally I lowered them gently into the liquid nitrogen and closed the container. It was done. We now had fifty doses of the King of Spain’s semen and strong doses at that. The equation was simple. He gave us three cc’s originally. Three cc’s would contain approximately three thousand million sperm and those three thousand million, when divided up into fifty doses, would produce a potency of sixty million sperm per dose. This was exactly three times A. R. Woresley’s optimum figure of twenty million per dose. In other words, the Spanish royal straws were of prime potency. I was elated. I rang the bell for service and ordered a bottle of Krug on ice.

Yasmin came in looking cool and clean. The champagne arrived at the same time. We waited anti! the servant had opened the bottle and filled the glasses and left the room. “Now,” I said, “tell me all.”

“It was amazing,” she said. “The preliminaries went exactly as you said they would. I was ushered into an enormous room with Goyas and El Grecos all over the walls. The King was at the far end sitting behind a huge desk. He was dressed in a plain suit. He stood up and came forward to greet me. He had a moustache and was not a bad-looking little fellow. He kissed my hand. And my God, Oswald, you should have seen the way he fawned all over me because he thought I was the King of England’s mistress. ‘Madame,’ he said, ‘I am enchanted to meet you. And how is our mutual friend?’

“‘He has a slight touch of gout,’ I said, ‘but otherwise he’s in splendid condition.’ Then I went through the chocolate routine and he ate his little truffle like a lamb and with a good deal of relish. ‘These are magnificent,’ he said, chewing away. ‘I must have my ambassador send me a few pounds.’ As he swallowed the last bit of chocolate, I noted the time on my watch. ‘Pray be seated,’ he said.

“There were four big sofa things in the room and before sitting down I examined them carefully. I wanted to choose the softest and most practical of the four. I knew that in nine minutes’ time the one I selected would become a battlefield.”

“Good thinking,” I said.

“I chose an enormous sort of chaise longue covered in plum-colored velvet. The King remained standing, and as we talked he strolled about the room with his hands clasped behind his back, trying to look regal.

“I said, ‘Our mutual friend has asked me to tell you, sire, that if you yourself should ever require any confidential assistance in his country, you could rely upon him absolutely.’

“‘I shall bear it in mind,’ he said.

“‘He sent you another message as well, your Majesty.’

“‘What was that?’

“‘You promise you won’t be cross if I tell you?’

“‘Certainly not, madame. Tell me what else he said.’

“‘He said, “You tell that good-looking Alfonso to keep his hands off my girl.” That’s word for word what he said, your Majesty.’ Little Alfonso laughed and clapped his hands and said, ‘Dear lady, I shall respect his wishes but only with the greatest difficulty.’

“Yasmin,” I said, “you’re a clever little bitch.”

“Oh, it was such fun,” she said. “I loved twisting him around. He was madly curious about my so-called affair, but he didn’t quite dare to mention it. He kept putting leading questions to me. He said, ‘I presume you have a house in London?’

“‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I have my own London house where I entertain in normal fashion. Then I have a small, very private place in Windsor Great Park where a certain person can call on me when he is out riding. And I have a cottage on the Sandringham estate where again that certain person can pop in for a cup of tea when he is out shooting pheasants. As you probably know, he adores shooting.’

“‘I know that,’ Alfonso said. ‘And I hear he is the best shot in England.’

“‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And in more ways than one, your Majesty.’

“‘Ha!’ he said. ‘I see you are a funny lady.’”

“Were you watching the time?” I said to Yasmin.

“You bet I was. I’ve forgotten exactly what he was saying when the moment arrived, but the interesting thing is that he froze right in the middle of a sentence just as old Woresley had done in the lab. Here it comes, I told myself. Put on the boxing gloves.”

“Did he jump you?”

“No, he didn’t. Don’t forget Woresley had had a double dose.”

“Ah yes.”

“Anyway, he was standing in front of me when he froze and he was wearing tight trousers so I could see very clearly what was going on around there. At precisely that moment, I told him I collected the autographs of great men and asked him if he would give me his signature on palace notepaper. I got up and went to his desk myself and found the paper and told him where to sign. It was too easy. The wretched man hardly knew what he was doing. He signed and I put the paper in my purse and sat down again. You know, Oswald, you can make them do just about anything you want if you catch them right at the very moment when the powder first hits them. They’re so astonished and embarrassed by the suddenness of it all they’ll do absolutely anything. We’re never going to have any trouble getting their signatures. Anyway, I was back again on the sofa now and Alfonso was standing there goggling at me and he kept swallowing, which made his Adam’s apple jump up and down. Red in the face he was, too, and then he started taking deep breaths. ‘Come and sit down, your Majesty,’ I said, patting the place beside me. He came and sat down. The swallowing and the goggling and the fidgeting went on for about a minute and I could see this absolutely terrific letch building up inside him as the powder got to work. It was like steam building up in a boiler with nowhere to escape except through the safety valve. And the safety valve was little me. If he didn’t get little me he was going to explode. Suddenly he said in a choky and rather prim sort of voice, ‘I wish you to remove your clothes, madame.’

“‘Oh, sire!’ I cried, putting both hands on my breast. ‘What are you saying!’

“‘Take them off,’ he said, gulping.

“‘But then you will ravish me, your Majesty!’ I cried. “‘Please don’t keep me waiting,’ he said, gulping some more.

“‘If you ravish me, sire, I will become pregnant and our mutual friend will know something has happened between us. He will be so angry he will send warships to bombard your cities.’

“‘You must tell him it was he who got you pregnant. Come along now, I cannot wait!’

“‘He’ll know it wasn’t he, your Majesty, because he and I always take precautions.’

“‘Then take precautions now!’ he snapped. ‘And please do not argue with me, madame!’”

“You handled it beautifully,” I said to Yasmin. “So you put the thing on him.”

“No problem,” she said. “It was easy. With Woresley I had had the most awful fight, but this time it was as easy as putting a tea-cosy on a teapot.”

“Then what?”

“They’re pretty odd, these royals,” Yasmin said. “They know a few tricks we ordinary mortals have never heard of.”

“Such as what?”

“Well,” she said, “for one thing he doesn’t move. I suppose the theory is that kings don’t do any manual labour.”

“So he made you do all the work?”

“I wasn’t allowed to move either.”

“Now don’t be silly, Yasmin. You can’t have static copulation.”

“Kings can,” she said. “Wait till you hear this. You won’t believe it. You simply won’t believe this sort of thing could happen.”

“What sort of thing?” I said.

“I told you I had chosen a chaise longue covered in purple velvet,” Yasmin said.

“Yes.”

“Well, it turned out I’d picked exactly the right one. This damn sofa was some sort of specially constructed royal romping ground. It was the most fantastic experience I’ve ever had. It had something underneath it—God knows what, but it was some sort of an engine, and when the King pulled a lever the whole sofa began to joggle up and down.”

“You’re having me on.”

“I am not having you on!” she cried. “I couldn’t make that up even if I wanted to, and you jolly well know it.”

“You really mean there was an engine under the sofa? Did you see it?”

“Of course not. But I heard it all right. It made the most godawful grinding noise.”

“You mean a petrol engine?”

“No, it wasn’t a petrol engine.”

“What was it then?”

“Clockwork,” she said.

“Clockwork! It’s not possible! How did you know it was clockwork?”

“Because when it started to run down, he had to roll off and wind the thing up again with a handle.”

“I don’t believe a word of this,” I said. “What sort of a handle?”

“A big handle,” she said, “like the starting handle of a motor car, and when he was winding it up it went clickety-click. That’s how I knew it was clockwork. You always get that clicking noise when you wind up clockwork.”

“Jesus,” I said. “I still don’t believe it.”

“You don’t know much about kings,” Yasmin said. “Kings are different. They get very bored, therefore they are always trying to think up ways of amusing themselves. Look at that mad King of Bavaria who had a hole drilled in the middle of the seat of each chair around his diningroom table. And halfway through dinner, when all the guests were sitting there in their wonderful, expensive clothes, he would turn on a secret tap and jets of water would squirt up through the holes. Very powerful jets of cold water right up their backsides. Kings are crazy.”

“Go on with the clockwork sofa,” I said. “Was it amazing and terrific?”

Yasmin sipped her champagne and didn’t answer me at once.

“Did it have the maker’s name on it?” I said. “Where can I get one?”

“I wouldn’t get one,” she said.

“Why not?”

“It’s not worth it. It’s only a toy. It’s a toy for silly kings. It has a kind of shock value but that’s all. When it first started up I got the shock of my life. ‘Hey!’ I shouted. ‘What the hell’s going on?’

“‘Silence!’ the King said. ‘Talking is forbidden!’

“There was a loud whirring noise coming from underneath the damn sofa and the thing was vibrating most terribly. And at the same time it was jogging up and down. Honestly, Oswald, it was like riding a horse on the deck of a boat in a rough sea. Oh God, I thought, I’m going to be seasick. But I wasn’t and after he’d wound it up a second time I began to get the hang of it. You see, it was rather like riding a horse. You had to go along with it. You had to get the rhythm.”

“So you began to enjoy it?”

“I wouldn’t say that. But it does have its advantages. For one thing, you never get tired. It would be great for old people.”

“Alfonso’s only thirty—three.”

“Alfonso’s crazy,” Yasmin said. “Once when he was winding up the motor, he said, ‘I usually have a servant doing this.’ Christ, I thought, the silly sod really is crazy.”

“How did you get away?”

“It wasn’t easy,” Yasmin said. “You see, with him not having to do any work except winding the thing up now and again, he never got puffed. After about an hour, I’d had enough. ‘Switch off,’ I said. ‘I’ve had enough.’

“‘We go on till I give the order,’ he said.

“‘Don’t be like that,’ I said. ‘Come on, pack it in.’

“‘Nobody gives orders here except me,’ he said.

“Oh well, I thought. I suppose it’ll have to be the hatpin.”

“Did you use it? Did you actually stick him?” I asked.

“You’re damn right I did,” she said. “It went in about two inches!”

“What happened?”

“He nearly hit the ceiling. He gave a piercing yell and bounced off onto the floor. ‘You stuck me!’ he shrieked, clutching his backside. I was up in a flash and starting to put my clothes on and he was jumping up and down stark naked and shrieking, ‘You stuck me! You stuck me! How dare you do that to me!’”

“Terrific,” I said to Yasmin. “Marvellous. Wonderful. I wish I’d seen it. Did he bleed?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care, but I was really fed up with him by then and I got a bit ratty and I said, ‘Listen to me, you, and listen carefully. Our mutual friend would have you by the balls if he ever heard about this. You raped me—you do realize that, don’t you?’ That shut him up. ‘What on earth came over you?’ I said. I was getting dressed as fast as I could and stalling for time. ‘Whatever made you do a thing like that to me?’ I shouted. I had to shout because the damn sofa was still rattling away behind me.

“‘I don’t know,’ he said. Suddenly he had become all meek and mild. When I was ready to go, I went up to him and kissed him on the cheek and said, ‘Let’s just forget it ever happened, shall we?’ At the same time, I quickly removed the sticky rubbery thing from his royal knob and marched grandly out of the room.”

“Did anyone try to stop you?” I asked.

“Not a soul.”

“Full marks,” I said. “You did a great job. You better give me that notepaper.” She gave me the sheet of palace notepaper with the signature on it and I filed it carefully away. “Now go pack your bags,” I said. “We’re leaving town on the next train.”