The compliments about the dinner more than justified the manpower of making it. As Speck went to see the Royal Family away to the drawing room, draped over the various furniture as though they had just fought some tremendous battle, Jon went back to the upper kitchen and made himself up a small dinner from the leftovers, eating it while rinsing the plates and admitting that it was rather good – no matter the strange manner in which it was assembled. He also made one up for Speck, and he did indeed give the security man his sprouts. That was the kind of man he was, and he wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad thing.
He remembered that there had been a period, when he’d first arrived under the King’s rule, where it did not look as though his new employment would pan out. The King, although pinching him from Caribbean Plaza, enjoyed British cuisine more than he had first conveyed, and Jon had had an intense period of adjustment, learning aspects of cooking he had never even considered before. He was aware that he was losing the root of himself, but it was a root that had never felt that strong anyhow. These days he sometimes wondered what his Gran would think, but he would never know – she had passed years ago in her sleep. It was months later before one of his cousins thought to look him up on the Internet and inform him.
After his hunger was sated, he made his way back to the drawing room – slipping inside without any of the Royal Family noting his arrival. Tony Speck noted it gleefully, however, dashing off to parts unknown before the door had time to close. Jon decided at that moment to cease to be amazed by Speck’s rejection of his plight. He hoped Speck enjoyed his sprouts though – Jon gave him the overboiled ones.
The family had seemed to collectively recover from their food-induced fatigue and were far too busy embroiled in distributing Christmas presents to note anything around them. The King was sitting in his high-backed chair by the fireplace (the very same one David had resided in that morning) and the others seemed to radiate from him. Marjorie and David were sitting in chairs of their own. Maud, Matthew, and Martin were squashed onto the small chaise, while Thomas Crockley stood behind it. The small coffee table in front of them was the home of an ever-building stack of presents, and Emeline was retrieving them one by one, placing them on the larger chaise with the air that this was an important royal duty – which in the very purest sense it was.
So many years he had seen similar scenes – watching this family gleam in front of his very eyes. Jon experienced such a wide gamut of emotions at these sights: honour at the privilege of being a part of them, pride at how far they had come, and in the deepest darkest corners of his heart he felt a seething jealousy at being so much a part of them but having to stand to attention and hold a silver tray of drinks, as they went on without him.
As the presents were opened and the usual cavalcade of expensive knitwear, novelty items, and appliances destined for a single use (if they were lucky) were laid to rest on the table, Jon started to think of his family in Barbados. He was unsure whether they would think of him at all, or what they would be up to at this moment – as he so rarely thought of them, he could not blame them. He barely remembered Bajan Christmases, he only remembered glimpses – dancing colours, his Gran’s laugh, platters of food.
If not for the King, Jon’s Christmas would now have been spent alone in his house in Camden. He barely spent any time there as it was, so had no need for friends, or family, or even pets. His life was consumed by his career, and it was forever true that Christmas was the time of the chef. He had not had a Christmas Day off in all of his time working for the King, and would not wish for it to be any other way.
He surfaced from his roaming thoughts to see the last present being plucked. David unsheathed a Blu-ray box set of The Monarch. (‘Is this some kind of joke?’ David murmured. ‘Well,’ Maud laboriously explained, ‘we knew you’d surely be watching a certain episode coming up, and we would hate for you to be lost.’) Marjorie laughed, a reaction fuelled by alcohol, while everyone else in the room assessed whether the exchange was actually funny, deeply sad, drearily dark, or some morose combination of all three, and by the time they had found an answer, the time for a response was well and truly gone.
David thrust himself upwards, throwing the box set onto his modest pile of gifts with a tremendous clatter. His face was thunder, and for a moment Jon thought that the aged Prince might actually launch himself at his niece. In the face of a threat, albeit from within, Jon cast his eye around the room.
He was saddened to see that there was no salvation to be found. He imagined that Speck had started another circuit of the castle grounds in his precocious parka – trudging along in search of assailants who, in all likelihood, were not there. They definitely had not been on Speck’s thermal-imaging readout. Maximum effort at doing minimum work – or at least that was the way Jon saw it.
Thomas Crockley stood in Speck’s stead. ‘Now, come on. Just a bit of jest, you understand.’ Crockley’s accent was fluctuating wildly in a sea of wine and was completely undermining his point. He caught David’s shoulders with the ease of a leaf being caught on the autumn wind.
‘There is nothing jestful about this, Maud. These heinous lies will be the undoing of me, the undoing of us all.’
‘David,’ the King commanded. He still had the power to silence a room. ‘Please, not at Christmas.’
David rounded on his brother. ‘You had no trouble speaking of it earlier. Raking me over the coals and then presenting me with your foul question.’
‘That was in private, and it shall remain as such. Jon, I believe we are in all in need of a top-up.’
Jon was just grateful he could put down the tray as he served everyone their tipple of choice. David’s spirits seemed to lighten once he had a fresh drink in his hand, and it seemed that the scene had concluded. That was until Eric sidled over to the Christmas tree.
‘And what is this?’ Eric said, reaching down with surprising nimbleness to pull out a neatly wrapped box. The label – a garish thing in the shape of a Christmas tree had ‘Eric’ written in nondescript capitals. ‘One last present, and for me, eh?’
Jon looked around at the other members of the family to see who the giver was, but he couldn’t tell. No one was giving anything away.
‘No sender. I do love a mystery.’ Eric was checking the label, and greedily pierced the paper with his nails. His excitement at every present was infectious – a true high point of the season. In no time at all, the paper had been ripped from its prize beneath and Eric sat holding a wooden box. ‘Curiouser and curiouser. What do you think of this, eh, Martin?’
Martin goggled at whatever was inscribed on the front of the box. ‘What does that mean?’
Eric placed the box down on the table, so the others could view the title. Jon tried to appear as though he was not interested, but really he was as curious as every other set of eyes in the room.
The front of the box gave little away. It was a puzzle box – one of Eric’s favourite pastimes. Puzzle boxes at their simplest only had one mechanism to work out to open, but the boxes that Eric fascinated himself with often had upwards of one hundred components to figure through. This box appeared misshapen, with mechanisms piercing the sides, gears lining the face, and even a smaller box jutting out of it, much like the towers of Balmoral. When placed, as it was, among the other presents of the day, there was no comparison – this was the winner.
It was the name of the puzzle box that seemed to be drawing most of the attention, however. Carved into the face of the box in uniform letters was the foreboding title.
Interregnum.