Chapter Two
Back then
Benton had a gift for making even the most agreeable engagements sound like hostile-terrain briefings.
“The visit is scheduled for half ten,” he said, scrolling through his tablet as James’s car idled through the Tuesday morning traffic on the Mall.
“You’ll arrive before the Princess Royal and greet the headmistress at the main entrance.
The children will be assembled in the playground for the petting zoo, which I’m told will include goats, rabbits, and a miniature Shetland pony called Brian. ”
“Brian,” James repeated.
“Brian, Sir. There will also be a tortoise, though I’ve been given no name for it.”
“Perhaps the tortoise values its privacy.”
Benton’s mouth twitched, which was as close as he ever came to laughing while he was on the clock.
He continued. “After the petting zoo, you’ll join the Year Threes for a reading session in the library.
Princess Caroline will take the Year Fours.
Gifts will be exchanged, the children have made cards, and you’ll depart by twelve fifteen, unless you’d like to stay for lunch. ”
“What’s for lunch?”
“Fish fingers and mushy peas, Sir.”
“Then I’m staying for lunch.”
James liked this particular engagement. Briar Lane Primary was tucked behind a housing estate in Lewisham, and he’d been visiting since he was fourteen.
Back then, Caroline had done all the talking while he stood beside her with his hands clasped behind his back, sweating through his collar, and trying hard to remember the headmistress’s name.
It was the first patronage they’d shared, given to them by their father as a test of temperament.
Benton swiped to a new page and paused. James caught it because Benton had been with him for two years now, first as his equerry and lately as his Private Secretary, and could, by a comfortable margin, be classified as his longest-lasting relationship.
“There is an additional guest,” Benton said. His tone didn’t change, but his lips pressed together. “A Mr Tristan Whitlock. An unexpected addition to the event.”
“Unexpected how?”
“The Princess Royal met him at the Hargreaves dinner last month and extended an invitation on account of his—” Benton glanced at the tablet, verifying the next word. “His popularity.”
“Popularity with whom?”
“Children, primarily. He’s an American actor.
Twenty-four. Best known for a Disney Channel programme called Silas Speaks, in which he played a young man who moves to an animal reserve and discovers he can communicate with the wildlife.
” Benton’s eyebrows drawing tightly together said it all. “It ran for four seasons.”
James watched the traffic crawl past the window. “And Caroline invited him?”
“She did, Sir.”
James turned to Benton. “Have you got something against former Disney child stars?”
Benton looked up from his tablet. “Not as a class of people, Sir. But they do have a documented tendency to flame out in rather spectacular and public ways, and I would prefer that this particular variety of spectacle not occur within arm’s reach of the Princess Royal and a playground full of seven-year-olds. ”
James considered this. “Noted,” he said. “I’ll keep him away from the tortoise.”
“Sir, if I may.” Benton tucked the tablet under his arm. “I would suggest focusing less on the tortoise and more on keeping Mr Whitlock away from the Princess.”
“Caroline will be fine,” James said. “She’s got a harder shell than the tortoise, after all.”
Benton’s mouth twitched again. Twice in one car journey, which was practically a standing ovation for his wit.
They pulled through the school gates at twenty-eight minutes past ten, and James stepped out into pale March sunshine that made everything look overexposed.
The headmistress, Mrs Ong, was waiting at the main entrance with her deputy and a small delegation of staff, all of whom had clearly been standing there long enough to have run out of things to say to one another.
The greeting followed the usual choreography.
Handshakes, thank-yous, a brief tour of the new mural in the corridor that the Year Fives had painted for Black History Month.
James asked the right questions and listened to the answers.
Listening was the part of the job he’d always been good at, and Mrs Ong ran a primary school in south-east London, which was considerably harder than a king ‘running’ a country.
A child materialised at his side between the mural and the playground doors.
A girl of around six, with bunched plaits and a cardigan buttoned one hole off.
She reached up and slipped her hand into his without asking, and James closed his fingers around it.
It was warm and damp, and held a lolly that had recently been in her mouth.
The lolly was now pressed against his palm, the stickiness bonding itself to his skin.
James kept smiling through it all, knowing that Benton would ply him with hand sanitiser the moment he was safely enclosed in the car.
The school’s playground had been transformed.
A section of artificial turf had been laid out near the climbing frame, fenced off with low wooden barriers, and inside it, a small menagerie was arranged.
One of the goats had got hold of a laminated worksheet and was chewing through it methodically.
Brian the Shetland pony stood at the centre of the enclosure, motionless, staring at the middle distance with the flat expression of a creature on its ninth school visit of the term.
James, who was on his fourteenth public engagement of the fortnight, commiserated.
He spotted Tristan before anyone pointed him out.
Tristan crouched beside the rabbit pen with a cluster of children around him, and the first thing James registered was that he was not the sort that Caroline usually brought home.
Caroline’s taste ran to broad-shouldered rugby internationals with cauliflower ears and the emotional vocabulary of a teaspoon.
Tristan Whitlock was slight, dark-haired, and pretty in the way of those pop stars whose posters wallpapered the bedrooms of eleven-year-old girls. He was beautifully unthreatening, with a faultlessly symmetrical face and the complexion of someone who exfoliated and moisturised on a schedule.
He looked very American.
The enclosure was supervised by a woman in a Briar Lane polo shirt.
The headmistress gave a little spiel on each animal as she steered James towards it.
The goats were from a city farm in Deptford, the rabbits were Year Two’s class pets, and Brian the miniature Shetland was on loan from a therapeutic riding centre in Kent.
Tristan held a rabbit against the side of his head, his face screwed up in concentration as though he was receiving a very important telephone call. A girl stood in front of him with her hands clasped under her chin, watching him.
“He says…” Tristan adjusted the rabbit against his ear. “He says he really loves your braid. He thinks it’s the best braid he’s ever seen.”
The girl beamed. “Thank you,” she whispered to the rabbit.
Tristan put his face in the rabbit’s fur and made a series of small snuffly sounds. The rabbit’s ear twitched. The girl giggled with such force that she had to sit down on the nearest hay bale.
Mrs Ong touched James’s elbow and eased him forward. “Mr Whitlock, Sir.”
Tristan stood, still holding the rabbit to his chest. His eyes went wide and he stuck out his free hand before seeming to register that his other arm was full of rabbit.
He completely forgot the bow, though James knew for a fact that he would have been briefed on the proper way to receive him.
Tristan’s handshake was brief and slightly diagonal, conducted at an angle that favoured the rabbit’s comfort over any constitutional propriety.
“Your Majesty. Hi. Sorry. Bunbuns and I are in the middle of something.”
“So I see.” James glanced at the rabbit, who was chewing contentedly on Tristan’s lanyard. “Don’t let me interrupt you.”
The rota photographer took a few shots of James with the goats, Tristan with Bunbuns, Brian standing motionless in the background, and then the headmistress led them both across to a wooden crate where she introduced them to Winston the tortoise.
“Winston,” James said, looking down at him. “That’s rather a lot of name to live up to, for a tortoise.”
“I think he’s nailing it.” Tristan crouched beside the crate. “He’s got the whole vibe. Total authority. Zero interest in what anyone else thinks.”
James did the same on the opposite side. Winston sat between them, ancient and unmoved, like a rugged green bureaucrat who had seen governments come and go, and found them all wanting.
“Do you think he knows his name?” Tristan asked.
“I think Winston knows everything and chooses to share none of it. It’s part of his mystique.”
Tristan grinned. It was slightly crooked, and it rearranged his whole face in a most appealing way. “Okay, but scientifically. Does Winston have ears?”
“Winston, like all tortoises, has internal ear bones. So he can perceive vibration, but I’m not sure he’s capable of parsing the finer points of nomenclature.”
“Internal ear bones,” Tristan repeated. “So if I talked to Winston the way I talked to Bunbuns, he’d — what? Feel it?”
“He might feel the vibration. Whether he’d feel the sentiment is another matter.”
“Winston,” Tristan said, in a stage whisper. “The King just used the word ‘nomenclature’ at a petting zoo for seven-year-olds. Is that a little wanky, or a lotta wanky?”
Winston withdrew into his shell.
“You see,” James said. “You’ve upset him.”
“That wasn’t me. That was your use of nomenclature. He’s a simple tortoise. He doesn’t need that kind of pressure.” Tristan glanced up, and his pale eyes caught the light. “You’re funny,” he said. “Nobody told me you were funny.”
“What did they tell you?”
“That you were tall, and that I’m not allowed to touch you first.” Tristan shrugged. “The standard royal briefing, I guess. Nobody mentioned you could do tortoise facts and banter.”
James looked down at Winston, who had re-emerged from his shell and was now chewing a piece of lettuce. “I don’t typically lead with it.”
They were still crouched there, close enough that James could smell Tristan’s cologne, when Caroline made her entrance.
She came through the playground gate in a sage-green dress coat with her hair pinned back, flanked by her equerry, apologising to the headmistress for the late start.
James watched Tristan register her. The shift in the younger man was immediate.
His shoulders drew back, and his smile reset brightly, like he’d noticed a camera locked onto him.
Caroline’s smile reached her eyes when she turned it on Tristan, which was worrying. Princesses should not light up at the sight of famously single American actors in school playgrounds, within sighting distance of cameras.
The headmistress made the introduction once more. Tristan got to his feet, shifted Bunbuns to his left arm, and extended his right hand. “Your Royal Highness,” Tristan said. This time, he dipped into a bow. “It’s really nice to see you again. Thank you for the invitation.”
“And thank you for giving us your time, Mr Whitlock.”
The line was standard for patrons. The delivery was not. Caroline’s voice had dropped into the register she reserved for people she actually liked, a short list that included James, Barnaby, Beauchamp, Vidal, and her favourite horses.
“Tristan, please.” He held up the rabbit. “And this is Bunbuns. He’s been providing emotional support to Year Two, but honestly, I think I need him more than they do.”
Caroline laughed, quick and bright. James watched her fingers unclasp from their regulation hold, her posture loosening.
“May I?” Caroline reached for the rabbit, and Tristan transferred Bunbuns into her arms without fumbling, his hand covering hers on the rabbit’s back as the animal settled, and staying there.
“He likes it if you scratch behind his left ear,” Tristan said. “The right one, he’s weird about.”
“Aren’t we all?” Caroline scratched behind the left ear, and the rabbit melted against her coat. “Oh, he’s lovely.”
“Right? I’ve been trying to negotiate custody, but apparently he belongs to Miss Singh’s class and they’re not open to offers.”
They were standing so close their shoulders nearly touched, angled towards each other, and James was on the outside of it. Tristan had gone from jokey to altogether more focused on Caroline, who was letting it happen right out in the open.
James stood by the tortoise crate with his hands behind his back, and experienced the novel sensation of being the least interesting person in a group.
It was educational. He was accustomed to being the gravitational centre of any gathering, and the sudden absence of that pull was disorienting.
Tristan hadn’t glanced back at him once. Neither, for that matter, had Caroline.
“Shall we go and see the goats?” Caroline suggested, and the two of them turned towards the enclosure, having forgotten that the head of state was standing just behind them.
James moved, falling into step between them, his shoulder near enough to Caroline’s that Tristan had to adjust his trajectory or collide with the King.
“I’ve been told the goats are from Deptford,” James said, pleasantly. “Apparently they have tremendous personalities.”
Tristan blinked at him like he’d appeared out of thin air, and James kept smiling. He’d been told he was difficult to forget, and he intended to make that true for Mr Tristan Whitlock. For the sake of his sister’s honour, of course.