“Go!” Yasmin shouted. I got the car into gear and let out the clutch and off we went.
There was a street lamp outside the Shaw house, and when I glanced back I saw Mr. Shaw capering about on the sidewalk under the gaslight, white-skinned all over save for a pair of socks on his feet, bearded above and bearded below as well, with his massive pink member protruding like a sawn-off shotgun from the lower beard. It was a sight I shall not readily forget, this mighty and supercilious playwright who had always mocked the passions of the flesh, himself impaled now upon the sword of lust and screaming for Yasmin to come back. Cantharis vesicatoria sudanii, I reflected, could make a monkey out of the Messiah.
24
BY NOW Christmas was nearly on us and Yasmin said she wanted a holiday. I wanted to keep going. “Come on,” I said, “let’s do a royal tour first, kings only. We’ll nobble all the nine remaining monarchs of Europe. Then we’ll both take a good long rest.”
Romping with the royals, as Yasmin called it, was an irresistible prospect and she agreed to delay her holiday and spend Christmas in wintry Europe. Together we worked out a sensible itinerary which would take us, in the following order, to Belgium, Italy, Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, Rumania, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. I checked over all nine of my carefully prepared letters from George V. A. R. Woresley refilled my travelling liquid nitrogen container and supplied me with a new stock of straws, and off we went in the trusty Citroën, heading for Dover and the cross-Channel steamer, with the royal palace in Brussels our first stop.
The effect that the King of England’s letter had upon the first eight monarchs on our list was virtually identical. They jumped to it. They couldn’t wait to please King George, and they couldn’t wait to get a peek at his secret mistress. For them it was a fruity business. On every single occasion Yasmin was invited to the palace only a few hours after I had delivered the letter. We had success after success. Sometimes the hatpin had to be used, sometimes not. There were some funny scenes and one or two tricky moments, but Yasmin always got her man in the end. She even got seventy-six-year-old King Peter of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, although he passed out at the end of it all and my girl had to revive him by throwing a chamberpot of cold water over his face. By the time we reached Christiania (now Oslo) at the beginning of April, we had eight kings in the bag and there was only Haakon of Norway left. He was forty-eight years old.
In Christiania we booked into the Grand Hotel on Carl J ohan’s Gate, and from the balcony of my room I could look straight up that splendid street to the royal palace on the hill. I delivered my letter at ten o’clock on a Tuesday morning. By lunchtime Yasmin had a reply in the King’s own handwriting. She was invited to present herself at the palace at two thirty that afternoon.
“This is going to be my very last king,” she said. “I shall miss popping into palaces and wrestling with royals.”
“What’s your general opinion of them,” I said, “now that it’s nearly over? How do they measure up?”
“They vary,” she said. “That fellow Boris of Bulgaria was terrifying the way he rolled me up in chicken wire.”
“Bulgarians are not easy.”
“Ferdinand of Rumania was pretty crazy, too.”
“The one who had distorting mirrors all around the room?”
“That’s him. Let us now see what revolting habits this Norwegian chap has got.”
“I hear he’s a very decent fellow.”
“Nobody’s decent when he’s had the Beetle, Oswald.”
“I’ll bet he’s nervous,” I said.
“Why?”
“I told you why. His wife, Queen Maud, is King George the Fifth’s sister. So our fake letter was supposedly written to Haakon by his brother-in-law. It’s all a bit close to the bone.”
“Spicy,” Yasmin said. “I like it.” And off she bounced to the palace with her little box of chocolates and her hatpin and other necessary items. I stayed behind and laid out my equipment in readiness for her return.
In less than one hour she was back. She came flying into my room like a hurricane.
“I blew it!” she cried. “Oh, Oswald, I did something frightful--awful--terrible! I blew the whole thing!”
“What happened?” I said, starting to quake.
“Give me a drink,” she said. “Brandy.”
I got her a stiff brandy. “Come on then,” I said. “Let’s have it. Tell me the worst.”
Yasmin took a huge gulp of brandy, then she leaned back and closed her eyes and said, “Ah, that’s better.”