The Slipkin Papers: 3. Regina Monologue

Daylight filtered in through a gap in the heavy curtains, sending thin harsh beams onto the bed covers. All was silent in the bedroom except for the sound of heavy regular breathing. Eventually one of the shafts of light fell on Slipkin’s face. He grunted, rolled over and flung out an arm to embrace a crumpled pillow. From the smug smile on his still unconscious features, it was clear that he expected something, or rather someone, a lot more receptive than a pillow. His arm flapped about in search of silken flesh. In vain: he was alone in the bed. He rolled onto his back out of the sunlight and opened his eyes wide.

Somehow, waking up in the bedroom to which he had been shown by Martin Bormann the previous evening was final confirmation that the events of yesterday had really happened. Before that, his journey into space in his Citroen, his encounters with Prince Charles, Hitler, Philip and the rest, the mad hatter’s dinner party, had been so obviously completely impossible that part of his mind had stood back and watched what was happening with a bemused smile on its face. But now he was awake once more and this strange dream had not vanished and HE HAD SLEPT WITH QUEEN VICTORIA. Not just slept: he winced as his fingers traced the parallel scratches down his ribs. It had been quite a night with Her not-so-late Majesty. Every part of him ached: one in particular. It was difficult to associate the tigress that had leaped on him last night with the dumpy little lady in black on old photographs, or even the dumpy little lady in black leather who had whizzed up on the motor-bike yesterday.

There was a discreet tap on the door and it inched open. Slipkin hastily pulled the sheets up to his chin. He was expecting Bormann or Hitler, but it was a new face that peered in.

“Ah, you are awake sir. Good morning.” It was a man in butler’s garb, but not the Fuehrer. He came into the room bearing a tray with a coffee pot, cup and boiled eggs. He reminded Slipkin more than a little of Bing Crosby, but his accent was English. He put the tray down on the bedside table and glided across to open the curtains.

The Butler bustled over and lifted the tray to place it on Slipkin’s lap. Carried away by events, Slipkin struggled into a sitting position, handicapped by his attempt simultaneously to hold onto the sheet covering his chest.

“I allowed you to sleep in as I understand you have had a very tiring time sir,” said Bing (as Slipkin thought of him for want of his real name) “But I should mention that your appointment is at ten-thirty.”

“What time is … appointment? Who with?”

Bing looked as if he would have given a lot to correct Slipkin (“ ‘With whom’ sir”).

“It is now nine-thirty sir. Your appointment is with Mr. Grunting of Skillet and Dunaway of Chancery Lane. Your lawyers sir” he concluded in response to Slipkin’s blank look.

“But I don’t have a lawyer. Why would I need a lawyer? I haven’t done anything.”

Bing placed the tray squarely on Slipkin’s throbbing lap and stepped back. He didn’t seem unduly surprised at Slipkin’s display of ignorance. “I understand that there are some documents that require your signature sir.” The butler recognized goggling incomprehension when he saw it. “Regarding the inheritance and property transfers sir.”

“Oh right. And I’m supposed to know all about this am I?”

“I really couldn’t say, sir.”

Not wanting to look a total and utter idiot at this early stage in their relationship, Slipkin changed tack. “And how is this Mr… Mr…”

“Grunting sir”

“This Mr. Grunting getting here?”

“By train sir. Jenkins has gone to collect him in the Bentley.”

“The Bentley flies as well does it?”

Bing smiled kindly at Slipkin. “Perhaps I could run your bath sir?”

Slipkin nodded distractedly.

“And, sir, if I might make so bold as to suggest that you cease trying to understand what is going on for the time being but just… ah…go with the flow as it were.”

“Do you know what’s going on?”

“Not as such sir, no.”

“You’ve never seen me before have you?”

“No sir.”

“Look, I know this is a silly question but…where exactly is this place and what’s it called?”

“Stormcroft Hall sir” said Bing impassively “In Cumbria, just outside the charming town of Brough sir.” The Butler was clearly too well trained to show any surprise at such basic questions.

“Where’s Hitler got to? Is it his day off?”

Even Bing looked puzzled at this one. “I’m afraid I couldn’t say sir. But I don’t think they get days off in hell sir. It would rather defeat the object of eternal damnation to my way of thinking, if one could just pop out for a break as it were.”

Slipkin ruminated on this. “And you aren’t Bing Crosby?”

“No sir, although I have been told on several occasions that I bear a passing resemblance to the Old Groaner. My name is Smith sir, but you can call me Smith”

“Eh?”

“A butler’s joke sir, now if you will excuse me I will run your bath.”

Thirty minutes later Slipkin walked along the corridor from the East Wing. A chambermaid was running a vacuum cleaner near the entrance to the hall. She looked up and smiled at him as he passed, but didn’t remind him of anybody. He went into the drawing room. The furniture had been completely changed. The serried ranks of Queen Anne had disappeared. In their place were a scatter of chesterfields and low tables. A large flat screen television hung on the far wall. There was no sight of Charles and no sound of Philip.

He walked out onto the front staircase and looked around. The Citroen was gone. The sky was overcast and the clouds had shadowed hearts that spoke of rain. Over the bird song only the dull rising whine of an approaching jet could be heard. Slipkin shrugged and went back inside. Then he dashed out again and stared up anxiously at the torn belly of the cloud layer. There was the plane; a dot growing swiftly as it skipped along the underside of the clouds like a stone on an inverted pond. Yesterday out here there had been no bird song, just a profound silence that he was aware of only now that it had been broken. It had been as if the whole world was holding its breath, and he had never, he realized, lost awareness of the stars encircling a bubble of make-believe. Today was different. All around normal life was pulsing. The ground felt firmer beneath his feet.

He spun round to look at the house. It was the same before, no more and no less real than it had been. But now it seemed more deeply bedded into the solid earth. Yesterday it could have been newly built or three hundred years old, today it was clearly of considerable age, though impeccably maintained. It reeked of old money that showed no signs of running out. Slipkin walked back into the hall. Yesterday there had been a stage-set feeling, as if behind every door was a character waiting to leap out. Today there was peace and solidity. The vacuum cleaner was droning far off down the corridor to the East Wing as he entered the drawing room once more and sat down in one of the Chesterfields. Yesterday he had felt a real person surrounded by wraiths. Today he felt like a ghost drifting in reality. What on earth should he do now?

One part of him wanted to go in search of his car and leaving this place far behind him. He could escape from this inexplicable situation and go back to… to what? To the strange lost animals and the sudden compulsive cake deliveries? He thought of Charles munching on the éclairs. Was there a ‘real world’ to which he could escape? What had Smith said? “Go with the flow…” That was what the other part of him really wanted to do. That was what he would do he decided: at least until he changed his mind again.

He heard a car approaching and going to the window saw a cherry red Bentley Mulsanne pulling up at the foot of the stairs. Soon there were voices in the hall. He recognized Smith’s; the other was deeper, though punctuated by a high-pitched, almost girlish, laugh. A few moments later Smith came in. “Mr. Grunting has arrived sir. I have shown him into the study.”

Slipkin rose uncertainly. “Yes. OK. Fine.”

He walked out into the hall trying to feel relaxed and confident, telling himself he would just go with the flow and see what he drifted past. The he stopped suddenly and turned to Smith. “Where’s the study?”

Smith pointed to a doorway across the hall.

Resisting the impulse to knock, Slipkin went in. Standing with his back to the door was an enormous ape-like figure, well over six feet tall, in a pin-stripe suit so sharply cut that it looked as if it should have warning notices on it. As he heard Slipkin enter, the visitor jumped and swung round. Grunting looked more like an ageing bouncer than a lawyer. As Slipkin looked up at his squared-off face, thick mat of greying hair, chin like the spade of a mechanical digger and nose that could have done duty as the bow of an atomic icebreaker, he was glad that Smith had, unbidden, followed him in.

“Mr. Slipkin?” boomed the man, in a voice that sounded as if it was coming from the bottom of a gravel-pit. “I’m Grunting.”

Briefly Slipkin was lost for words. His hand was grabbed and engulfed in a huge, but surprisingly gentle, paw.

“Grunting by name and grunting by nature!” continued the giant and then he gave that impossibly high titter that Slipkin had heard before.

“Yes. Ha ha. Hello” stuttered Slipkin.

Smith was imperturbable as ever. “Would you care for some coffee? Mr. Grunting, Sir?”

“That would be lovely, just what I could do with. Early start you know,” gushed Grunting. Slipkin just nodded.

Smith withdrew.

Slipkin realized that the lawyer was nervous. “Have you, er, had a good journey?” he asked, realizing as he said it that he was no better at small talk than Charles.

“Yes thank you Mr Slipkin” said Grunting. Silence returned.

After a few awkward moments they ushered each other to the leather chairs before the desk. Grunting got out a sheaf of papers and began to explain a few things to Slipkin. Within moments Slipkin was too numbed with disbelief even to notice Smith returning with the coffee, let alone to drink it.

Two hours later, Slipkin and Smith stood on the front steps watching the Bentley disappear down the drive. No wonder Grunting had been nervous. It wasn’t every day you went to hand someone control of some sort of Swiss-based trust with assets of around fifteen billion euros. Not in nice multi-coloured pieces of paper of course, but in bank accounts, in stocks, property (including this house) in England and seemingly every other continent. Slipkin was certain that there had to be some mistake and had said as much to Grunting. This had brought on another falsetto laugh.

“No, I assure you Mr. Slipkin.” Hee hee. “No mistake: everything is quite in order. Sign here please, and here…”

Looking up, Slipkin had caught Smith’s eye as he hovered deferentially. One butlerian eyebrow quivered. Go with the flow was one thing: this was a tidal wave. But how do you refuse fifteen billion euros? Why would you want to?

“Were you close to your great uncle sir?” murmured Smith as the car passed from sight.

“Never heard of him before”

Then again Slipkin was reminded that he knew very little about his family – not even his real parents. He had never heard of ‘great uncle Oscar’. There was only Mrs. Holyoak and she wasn’t even a true relative: and Mr. Holyoak of course. Slipkin shuddered.

Misunderstanding, Smith said, “This must have come as rather a shock sir.”

“Where did you learn to do understatement?”

“All part of a butler’s training sir.”

Slipkin flapped his arms helplessly. “What am I going to do with all this money Smith?”

“You don’t have to do anything with it sir. I imagine that it will grow faster than you can possibly spend it.”

They walked back inside together.

“It’s just… just that it seems like such a huge responsibility”

“You will have plenty of help to look after it sir”

“I suppose so. No shortage of help when you’re loaded is there?”

“No sir, any personal banker would, as they say where I come from, crawl through broken glass to throw stones at your shit, sir.”

Slipkin thought about the humiliation he had endured to get a car loan for the Citroen. Now he could probably buy Citroen itself: or the bank. No wonder Grunting had come all the way from London to see him. When you were this rich nothing was too much trouble.

As he walked back into the hall Slipkin bowed his head and, for the first time he could remember, felt very alone. He felt as if every link to the life he had known had been abruptly severed. If this was the real world, it was no more explicable than the place he had spent the previous evening.

“Hi Eric,” said a familiar voice, “Come and tell me your news.”

He looked up. It was Vicky, in jeans and tight yellow T-shirt, leaning archly against the doorframe of the Drawing Room, her eyes set to smoulder.

It had been a long afternoon. At long last Vicky had sighed, rolled over and gone to sleep. Slipkin stared at the bedroom ceiling and tried to get his head straight. As he gingerly fingered the new sets of scratches that he had collected, he felt that whatever the reason for Prince Albert’s early death, he must have been glad of the rest.

There was so much he needed to understand. He was sure that somewhere in the months and years leading up to his skid on the A66 was some clue about what was going on. It was difficult for him to think clearly about the path that had led him here. In a way he had been following Smith’s advice about “going with the flow” all his life.

His earliest memories were of Ealing and the Holyoaks. His parents had died when he was very young and there was no other family that he knew of. (That made the inheritance even crazier. If they could trace him now to give him all this money why couldn’t they have done something twenty years ago?) There had been the shadowy time in care and then the Holyoaks had come along to adopt him. Thus had he arrived at 99 Fieldwood Road London W5, a comfortably shabby terraced house about a mile from Ealing Broadway. The Holyoaks must have been in their early thirties when Slipkin took up residence at the age of 18 months, but he always thought of them as elderly. Mr. Holyoak was a chemistry teacher at the local comprehensive school: Mrs. Holyoak always seemed to be at home.

Slipkin had never taken his adoptive parents’ name, and they had told him about his real parents when he was about six. They were kindly enough in their abstracted fashion, but they had no other children and never quite got the hang of being parents. In many ways they had treated him like a short, mentally challenged houseguest. Mrs. Holyoak was thin and sallow, with scraped back straw-coloured hair. Her face in his memory was always strangely expressionless. He knew that her first name was Eve, but he always thought of her as Mrs. Holyoak because that was what he always called her, never Mum or Mummy or even Mother. That had caused many strange looks from other parents when she had come to collect him from primary school and he had shouted “Hello Mrs. Holyoak” as he ran out to her in the yard.

Mr. Holyoak was a mystery. Slipkin could recall only a shadowy figure, very tall and gangling, balding but with a drooping Zapata moustache that looked as if it had just fluttered up and clung to his upper lip. At home he spent most of his time in a small wooden shed at the bottom of the garden. When he had grown tall enough, Slipkin had peered in through the small cobwebby window to see his adoptive father hunched over a bench that was cluttered with glass tubes and bottles filled with a rainbow of coloured liquids. In Slipkin’s memory they seemed to glow and pulse strangely, although he couldn’t be sure that his memory hadn’t added that detail over the years.

One dismal Saturday morning in late autumn, when Slipkin was eight, a stupefyingly large explosion had awakened him and shattered his bedroom window. Mr. Holyoak had blown the garden shed, and himself, into a very large number of very small pieces. It was said afterwards that he had been conducting an experiment that had gone tragically wrong. It would of course have been very hard to argue that the experiment had gone right, unless Mr. Holyoak had chosen a very complicated, messy and noisy way of committing suicide. Slipkin remembered running in his pyjamas down the stairs and outside into the garden, nearly falling over as his slippers slithered into a charnel house of intermingled pieces of wood, glass and Mr. Holyoak. In a small space all alone was the moustache, slightly singed but otherwise unharmed. As he bent down to look at it he saw that it was still fixed to his adoptive father’s upper lip.

More animated than he could ever remember her before or afterwards, Mrs. Holyoak had rushed out and dragged him back inside. Then, reverting to type, she had patted him on the head in her kindly but distant way and sent him back to his room before phoning for an ambulance. When he got to his room, Slipkin noticed that in the puddle of broken glass that littered his floor was the back of Mr. Holyoak’s head. That incident had in some ways been the high point of his childhood – certainly the most memorable.

After the excitement of Mr. Holyoak’s abrupt departure, life had gone on as quietly as before. Mrs. Holyoak showed no sign of grieving. He had never been abused or neglected in any physical way, just allowed to drift. So he drifted through school doing only what interested him and the minimum amount of other things necessary to avoid getting into any trouble: just going with the flow.

Vicky stirred and rolled toward him, but didn’t wake up. There was a lazy lascivious smile on her face. Slipkin wondered what she was doing here. She belonged in that strange bubble that he had visited the previous day. This was the real world wasn’t it? But if yesterday had all been a crazy dream he would have woken up back in his little flat in Highgate not here. Yesterday had really happened, so why shouldn’t she be here? But if she was here, how did she get here and how could she, a sex-crazed, morphed Queen Victoria, exist in the real world? And if she could get here, so could any of them, couldn’t they? Including dear Adolf and his faithful Goebbels.

As if to escape from this troubling line of thought Slipkin’s mind wandered back to Mrs. Holyoak. Maybe, he mused, long before this he should have questioned the things that happened to him more – in the way he was doing now. Mrs Holyoak, for instance: her husband had disappeared in a flash and a bang, but she had just quietly vanished. Slipkin had landed his job with Mr Greenberg and decided that it was time for him to get a flat of his own. When he told her she had just nodded in her distant, abstracted fashion. A week or so after he had moved to Highgate, Slipkin felt duty calling on him to pay her a visit. When he got to Ealing he discovered that the house was standing empty with a board by the front gates announcing it was sold. Mrs. Holyoak just disappeared from his life. Slipkin had felt no sense of loss. He had never been close to his adoptive mother but only now did it seem strange to Slipkin that he had just quietly accepted Mrs Holyoak’s departure and then put her out of his mind.

He turned over and looked at Vicky. How was she possible? Queen Victoria had lived, reigned, been unamused for more than sixty years and had then died in 1901. Judging by the way she looked now, Vicky was somewhere in her late twenties. She didn’t dress like a Victorian and she didn’t speak like a Victorian. Her athletic prowess also seemed pretty up to date.

Her eyes suddenly opened. She gave him a dazzling smile, swung herself out of bed stood up and, quite naked, stretched herself luxuriously. Slipkin felt his jaw dropping and could not for the moment remember how to close his mouth again.

“Well,” she smiled, “they say it’s the quiet ones you have to watch, don’t they?”

Slipkin made no answer, partly because he was having operational difficulties with his mouth and partly because he had never considered himself in any way attractive to the opposite sex. His experiences with women had never, up until this point, got beyond tongue-tied hopeless longing. He felt like a spectator at a football match in the park who had suddenly become a striker in the Premier League.

An hour or so later they sat in the drawing room nursing drinks provided by Smith, who had withdrawn with a respectful nod to them both. It seemed to Slipkin that the nod Smith gave him contained an element of respectful encouragement.

“Look” said Slipkin at last, “could you please tell me what on earth is going on?”

Vicky put down her drink and gazed at him. “How the hell should I know? I’m just a dead queen, remember.”

“But, but when I turned up here ... I mean not here exactly… you know, the other place just like this …Stormcroft…”

“Yes, I remember it as if it was only yesterday.”

“Well, when we first met you were… you were a bit different from the way you are now”

Vicky chuckled and treated herself to another luxurious stretch.

“Yes, I was, wasn’t I? Which version of me do you prefer Eric?”

Slipkin wasn’t ready to answer that question. He was afraid that a discussion of her transformation from dumpy deceased queen empress to hormone-fuelled man-eater might lead to a return visit to the bedroom and he wasn’t ready for that either.

“But weren’t you quite straight laced; all that stuff about not being amused?”

“What choice did I have? I never really lived. In fact I only started to have fun after I’d died. Death sort of frees you, helps you look at things differently.”

Slipkin thought about this. At length he said “Could you run that past me again?”

Vicky giggled. “Just go with the flow Eric, like you’ve always done. I told you last night you’d get used to things in time.”

There it was again, ‘Go with the flow’. Then Slipkin thought about the other part of what she had just said.

“What do you mean, ‘like you’ve always done’? How can you know anything about me?”

Vicky opened her mouth to reply, then frowned and closed it again. There was a long pause.

“I don’t know,” she said at last. “When you turned up with Charles it was the first time I’d seen you and yet I felt like I knew you, not your name or where you came from, just …you.”

Slipkin shook his head helplessly.
“When we met” he went on doggedly “I recognised you right away. At least I recognised you once you’d taken your crash helmet off. When did you start riding a motor bike?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said airily, “Time’s not the same once you’ve died. Things just seem to happen and people come and go and yet it’s all like one long present moment and I liked the idea of roaring around on a motor-bike so there I was whizzing about and…”

Vicky’s voice trailed off as she saw Slipkin’s deepening bewilderment. She smiled at him, almost sadly.

“Don’t expect me to explain everything to you. Dead queen remember, just a dead queen.”

Then, brightening, she said “All I know is I’m back in the real world and I feel like having some fun.”

Slipkin flinched. He felt incapable of providing any more fun for a while. Vicky smirked knowingly at him and sat back, cradling her glass to her bosom.

“You say you know all about me.” she said, “Tell me about you.”

Slipkin told her about his life, including the Holyoaks, his job with Mr Greenberg, the strange animals and the cake deliveries, right up to the moment he and his little Citroen had arrived at the river bank and been met by Charles. Vicky listened in silence. When he finished she said

“Tell me Eric, don’t you think that your life to date has been rather unusual? Compared to you I feel like nothing ever happened to me.”

“Well, I suppose some odd things have happened from time to time.” said Slipkin lamely.

Listening to himself he realised that of course, recovering wild animals from the homes of clergy and delivering cakes to random destinations was an unusual lifestyle choice. But he hadn’t really chosen it had he? In many ways it had chosen him. Not so different from Queen Victoria: her life had chosen her too.

Vicky seemed remarkably well informed about the real world when Slipkin touched upon it as he told her about his life. When he remarked on it she said

“It just seems to be one of those things. You just know who people are and what’s going on.”

The next few days were uneventful. At least they were uneventful outside the bedroom, where Vicky kept Slipkin both busy and increasingly inventive. There was a computer in the study and, as a distraction, Slipkin introduced Vicky to the Internet. She quickly got the hang of it and spent increasing amounts of time on it. Slipkin wasn’t sure what she was looking at, soft porn presumably– he was just glad to get some time to himself. He realised that he had been quite solitary all his life up till now. Even when he lived with the Holyoaks, he had spent a lot of his time alone. He hadn’t made friends easily, particularly since he didn’t share the usual boy’s passion for kicking a football around, or later for chasing girls and getting drunk. He had been content to absorb himself in reading and making plastic models of tanks and aeroplanes. In this time on his own, Slipkin thought more and more about what he was going to do next. Vicky might be content with life at Stormcroft but he felt that he couldn’t just abandon his past life without at least tidying things up a little.

One evening they had eaten a meal brought to them by Smith in the study. They didn’t use the Dining Room. It seemed ridiculously large for the two of them and Vicky said she liked informality: she had had too much formality both during her life and apparently even after it.

“Eric,” said Vicky “You know that Trust thing that’s made you so stinking rich?”

“Yes.”

“What’s it called?”

Slipkin crossed to the desk and rummaged among some paperwork that had lain there since Grunting’s visit.

“Some funny German name I think.” He peered at a document “Heilige Eiche Stiftung”

“Do you know what that means?” asked Vicky quietly.

“I thought it was just a name.” Slipkin replied, “Do you?”

Vicky snorted. “Just a name! It’s German isn’t it? I come from a long line of German monarchs Eric, all the way back to George I, and he could only speak German. The bloody useless English forgot how to sort out a decent king for themselves so the Welsh, the Scots, the Dutch and finally the Germans all had to do it for them.”

She paused in mid-tirade and smiled humourlessly. For a moment Slipkin had seen some Royal Impatience: once a queen always a queen.

“What that means,” she continued “is ‘Holy Oak Foundation’: Holy Oak Eric. Does that sound in any way familiar to you?”

Slipkin thought about Mr and Mrs Holyoak and his years with them in Ealing.

“It must be just a coincidence. The Holyoaks weren’t poor but they didn’t have heaps of money and they never mentioned this Swiss trust and…”

“Just think for a moment Eric. You may find that easier to do if you refrain from burbling. You said the Holyoaks adopted you? Just nod your head if you agree”

Slipkin nodded.

“But you are the beneficiary of the Trust.”

Nod.

“And your name is Slipkin not Holyoak.”

Nod.

“And on this basis you believe the Holy Oak thing to be just a coincidence?

Pause. Nod.

“and what did you tell me Mrs Holyoak’s first name was?”

Nod. Pause, “er, Eve.”

“Was she a po faced woman with straw coloured hair?”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I’ve met her at the other Stormcroft. Her name’s Eva not Eve: she spent a lot of time with Adolf.”

Slipkin sat in stunned silence.

“I haven’t been spending my time just looking at the dating sites Eric,” said Vicky. She crossed to the computer and clicked the mouse.

On the screen appeared a grainy photograph of a youthful Mrs Holyoak. She was sitting in an armchair, leaning forward and gazing lovingly at someone dozing in another armchair beside her. Adolf Hitler.

Vicky came and sat down beside Slipkin and put her arms round him.

“You know what darling?” she said, suddenly no longer the dead queen.

Slipkin looked round at her. What else was there to know?

“What?”

“I think it’s time we went shopping.”