Falling for Prince Charles.

(A Very Different Kind of Romance).

Lauren Baratz-Logsted.

For Laura Duane:.

Thank you for bringing Prince Charles to life.

1999.

A Very Good Year, All Things Considered.

... The daisy, by the shadow that it casts.

Protects the lingering dewdrop from the sun.

"To a Child" (Written in Her Album).

~ William Wordsworth.

Part I.

It's All Down the Drain.

A fool must now and then be right, by chance.

"Conversation"

~ William Cowper.

April, 1999.

1.

As Daisy Silverman squatted in front of the toilet bowl, first depressing the flush lever and then watching as the milky outgoing spiral removed the mildew and replaced it with fresh water, the thought occurred to her for at least the thousandth time that if the fickle hand of fate hadn't cast her as a cleaning lady, working in wealthy households and offices in Westport, Connecticut, she would have made a perfectly lovely Princess of Wales.

This was a fantasy that Daisy had entertained off and on since 1981, the same year that the late Princess Diana had first become Princess Diana. And to this day, eighteen years later, whenever she thought about it, Daisy still thought that she could have done the job better.

Oh, sure, Daisy had loved the late Princess, would have said that she loved her more than anybody. Well, even Daisy was aware enough not to say that; she did know that Diana's family and friends had surely loved her more. But Daisy could legitimately claim to love her easily as much as anybody who had never met her, and that was plenty. So if Daisy felt a little competitive with a dead princess that she had loved beyond reason, what matter that? After all, there were some compelling reasons for making a comparison between the two women.

Just like the woman who had possessed the most photographed profile in the world, Daisy had a genius for making the kind of seemingly interested, throwaway comment that left others feeling a little cheerier about their own lot in life. Although even Daisy had felt that the Princess had been pushing things a bit several years back, when she had blithely informed a widow on the dole with a flat full of small children, "Oh, yes, I just love those microwave pizzas too. Whenever the Heir and the Spare start to look a little peaked, I just nuke a couple of them in the palace micro, and we're all set to go skiing in Klosters or windsurfing on Necker."

Amazingly enough, however, the Dole Woman had failed to take offense at the patronizing lie but, rather, had caved as totally to those unbelievably blue eyes as had hundreds before her.

"Cor, tha' one's such a charmer, she is," the woman had reportedly told her neighbors after the Royal visit. "An' it's simply loverly to think tha' she's got the same problems we all do. I tol' 'er, I says, 'If that little 'un, 'Arry, gives you any troubles-cause tha' one do look like 'e'd be a caution, don't 'e?-you do what I does with me Darren: you thrash 'im one good with the fry pan. Works for me, it do. An' Darren don' seem any the worse for it.' Yeah. Tha's exactly wha' I tol' 'er, I did. An' wouldn'cha know it? She just kept smilin' away, that smile of 'ers just gettin' bigger an' bigger all the time."

Sharing the same birth week in 1961-the first of July for Diana, while Daisy's was a jingoistic Fourth-only added fuel to the mental fires that kept telling Daisy that the two of them had been separated at birth. It was just too bad that the separation had landed one of them in palaces, while the other was doomed to a life inhaling cleaning fluids.

Truth to tell, the Silvermans, all prototypical underachievers, had always been involved in the septic business. In fact, the claim could be defended that, at any given moment in recorded human history, there had been at least one Silverman somewhere on the face of the planet who was up to his or her elbows in some form of toilet water.

But while her late father, Herbert, had been the founding genius behind Silverman's Stupendous Septic Service-or SSSS, for short-Daisy's own misguidedly independent, septic-seeking running shoes had led her to become a lower-echelon employee of an enterprise called the Klean Kottage Klub. In a fast-moving society, where a need to make abbreviations for the sake of saving time was often of paramount importance, the resultant acronym of KKK often caused Daisy to experience the imaginary heat of flames on her face and to worry that she was somehow aiding an Aryan cause. Not to mention that the recent vast proliferation of businesses across the land exhibiting that worrisome triple K in the shingles hanging over their doors made her think that perhaps the Neo-Nazi movement in the country was even larger than anyone suspected.

Actually, though, when Daisy thought about incidents such as the one involving the Dole Woman, it reaffirmed the idea in her mind-similar to assembly-line workers at Chrysler assuming that they could market rings around Lee Iacocca-that, if given the opportunity, she could make a far better go of it than the Princess had done.

Following the shifting of the royal spotlight during the events of December of '92, Daisy's own sentiments concerning the Princess and her then-estranged husband had undergone a gradual but equally seismic shift of their own. Where previously she had been in a state of complete empathy with the world's favorite beleaguered blonde, the ensuing years had altered this somewhat. Gone was the image of the poor waif, tossed in a turbulent sea and borne along by unfriendly currents beyond her control.

Take all of the furor about Charles's purported dalliances, for just one example. Some people reacted to this as if it were in some way out of the ordinary, a big surprise, the stuff of scandals. And while Daisy, having been reared with as fine a sense of values as the next person, didn't condone wholesale infidelity, a large part of her had begun to wonder: Just what exactly did some people expect? After all, if you were willing to live in a country that still chose to refer to itself as a monarchy, it seemed unreasonable to demand that you be treated to a fair and equitable lifestyle. It seemed to Daisy that the British Monarchy was the ultimate pyramid corporation, and that all of Diana's problems had started with the erroneous assumption that she could blithely leapfrog her way to the pinnacle, when even peasants, even commoners, even Americans like Daisy knew that there was only ever one person at the top of any pyramid-and that in England, that person's name was Queen Elizabeth II.

For some reason that she couldn't quite put her finger on, over the years Charles and Diana had come to put Daisy in mind of Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. And while Daisy had always loved and even idolized Lucy's spunk, it had been Ricky whose plight had commandeered the lion's share of her sympathies.

It could be argued that Charles, unpopular as the concept might be, had performed a lot more graciously under circumstances that had afforded him a lot less choice. Daisy was constantly amazed when someone would comment on one of Charles's spoiled-seeming behaviors as if it were somehow surprising or proof of something. The only thing that really amazed her about him was that, with his upbringing, he did not run through life harum-scarum, waving a sword and demanding beheadings right and left.

And it must be perfectly awful to have to go through life with the belief that no one would ever like, let alone love, you if it weren't for the sheer accident of your birth. Which brought her back to- "Dai-SEE!"

Just like those old black-and-white movies, Daisy thought, when Henry Aldrich's mother used to scream, "Hen-REE!"

Daisy was just giving the sunken tub a final swipe-preparing to engage in her all-time favorite fantasy where it was her winning smile that was making the masses feel temporarily more satisfied with their lot-when she heard the strident punches of Mrs. Reichert's voice shouting to her from the master bedroom. Straightening stiffly, Daisy caught sight of herself in the wall-to-wall mirrors.

The mirrors were of the expensive kind that only the truly wealthy could afford, the kind that took a good ten pounds off of a woman's figure without having to go on any punishing extensive stays at a spa. This had the unfortunate funhouse effect of making Daisy, whose height had never attained a full five feet or her weight triple digits, almost completely disappear. Still, she could just barely make out the salient features of the head that was perched atop the stick figure.

A practical wedge of a very impractical auburn shade of hair was her undoubted crowning glory; brown eyes, closer to brick than black, that some saw as warm and friendly while others viewed them as intelligent and frightening; a typical mouth, but a makeup-free complexion that was resultantly clean of blemish; and a nose, genetics' plaything, that could be termed "ethnic" at best, but not much worse.

"Dai-SEE!" the summons came again.

Daisy yanked open the door and a woman, for whom no amount of distorting mirrors could ever make appear slim, all but fell into the room. A relative newcomer to the KKK, Mrs. Reichert was as wide as Daisy was tall and only a hairsbreadth taller. A muumuu by any other name is still a muumuu, no matter how much money you've spent on it. And all of the money in the world couldn't keep a woman like Mrs. Reichert from committing the colossal fashion boner of wearing a twenty-seven-year-old's long blonde tresses attached to her own fifty-something body.

"Didn't you hear me calling you?"

"The water was running," Daisy quickly covered.

"Well, your boss is on the phone. Says she needs to talk to you."

Daisy formed a mental picture in her mind's eye of MindyLou McKenna, founder of the KKK, clutching the phone receiver, her blood-red nails manicured to talon-like perfection at Kuttingly Kute Kuticles. Only to herself did Daisy ever refer to her boss as the Bottom-Feeder.

Now she found herself wondering, with a nod and apologies to Dorothy Parker for wasting her wit on some presumably mundane thing, what fresh hell was this?

"I can't believe you people," Mrs. Reichert was panting with angry effort.

Daisy thought she might have missed something here.

"Don't you realize that this is my time? I'm paying your boss for you. From twelve until three you're supposed to belong to me. I would think that would mean no phone calls."

Daisy ignored the blatant images of slavery, choosing instead to focus on what she knew about Mrs. Reichert, with the hopes of finding just the right thing to say to make her feel better.

Mrs. Reichert was married to a cardio-thoracic surgeon, who spent what little time when he wasn't at the hospital hiding out at the golf course. What more did a person need to know about another person in order to sympathize?

Daisy hoped that she was sending a message of warmth through her eyes. "You seem to be having a particularly tough time with things today, Mrs. Reichert."

"What?"

Daisy bestowed on Mrs. Reichert's plump shoulder a reassuring caress. "It must be dreadful at times, having to go through life as not much more than a walking appendage to a much more valued human being."

"What's the matter with you? Are you nuts?" Mrs. Reichert shrugged the offending hand off of her shoulder, her expression one of unvarnished horror. "The last cleaning lady I had used to get high from sniffing the tile cleanser. I had to let her go."

Mrs. Reichert pushed her way further into the room and began inspecting things.

Daisy tried in vain to think of something to say that would perhaps strike more of a balance between sympathy and inoffensiveness.

"Just look at the rim on this toilet bowl! You call that clean? This isn't clean. You do it again right now. You can call your boss back after you're finished," Mrs. Reichert wound up, pushing her way back out through the bathroom door.

The Bottom-Feeder would not be amused.

So maybe Daisy wasn't always letter-perfect at saying the right thing. But she still believed that all that most people really wanted in this life was for another person to listen to them for just a little while. Even if there were those few exceptions who didn't know how to properly appreciate such a service.

She wished that she had the kind of life where there actually was time to listen to another human being and to have that person listen to her. But there were some days, like today, when it took forever just to make it out of the bathroom.

As she depressed the flush handle a second time, staring into the swirling toilet-bowl water, she commenced wondering idly what they were doing right at that moment.

2.

One wouldn't imagine that the reputedly staid archetypal Briton would go in much for a thing like playing practical jokes on April Fool's Day. But one who wouldn't imagine such a thing would imagine quite wrong.

All over the kingdom, little boys were waking up their mums by screaming that there was snow on the ground; teenage girls were causing their fathers to choke on their muesli by claiming to be preggers; and, just miles from London, a man who was somewhere in the vicinity of fifty years of age awoke in a bedroom in one of his mother's digs to find a breakfast tray beside him with a note on it, informing him that his presence would not be required at the embassy party that evening.

The man's name was Charles. His mother's digs were surrounded by fortified walls and just happened to represent the largest inhabited castle in all of Europe, and commonly went by the name of Windsor.

Up to this point, the Prince had been lolling about under the sheets, having grown oddly lethargic of late. But at this unexpected turn of events, he leapt energetically from the bed and, pressing a button that was discreetly hidden next to it, summoned Sturgess. The valet-slash-bodyguard-slash-confidant appeared immediately before him as if transported by light.

Standing at attention in front of the Prince was a man who, while at the present wearing his metaphorical valet's hat, looked as though he himself had first conceived of spit and had, likewise, invented polish. A gentleman, probably in his late sixties, he was of average height, with a reliably strong body that only reflected the beginnings of a comfortable paunch around the midsection. Blue eyes that danced no more often than one would like, and a nose with a pronounced bump in the ridge-where it had been broken during a childhood spent boxing-were the dominating features in a face whose complexion was otherwise curiously devoid of any markings of the passage of time. His pate, with a few sparse remnants of gray hairs ringing the central expanse, gleamed with a bright reflectivity that was only equaled by the shine on his shoes.

"Good morning, Sir. I trust that you slept soundly last evening," Sturgess said, beginning his day's address to his boss in much the same way that he did every day. Any evidence of his native Highland Scot accent were absent at this time in the morning. Present instead were clipped consonants and vowels that were so pear-shaped that one was tempted to eat them.

Glancing pointedly at the button that had been used to summon him, he said, "Was there something special you wished for me to do for you this morning?" He waited expectantly, one might even say eagerly, for instruction.

With an awkward hurriedness, the Prince donned a plush blue bathrobe, transferring the sheet of paper that he was still clutching from hand to hand as he did so. He waved the page in front of Sturgess's face.

"This!" he cried excitedly, his expression that of a mad scientist in the throes of inventive rapture. "This, Sturgeon. Is it true that my presence will not be necessary at the embassy party for the Polodni States this evening?"

The grin on Sturgess's face fled like a world-class sprinter. "Oh, that. Sir."

"What do you mean by 'Oh, that,' Sturgeon?" The Prince's own hopeful smile was much more sluggish than Sturgess's across the finish line, but it got there all the same. "I do not like the sound of this 'Oh, that.'"

Sturgess cleared his throat. "I merely thought it might represent a welcome change this year in the old routine, Sir, if you quite follow me."

"I have not a clue as to where you are trying to lead me, Sturgeon. But I am beginning to suspect that it is to somewhere that I no longer wish to go."

"It is not so awful, really. It is simply that I figured, rather than making a fool out of you yet again this year, that it would be a novelty to try to paint a smile on your face, for at least a short time instead. Sir."

The Prince slowly lowered his body to the edge of the bed, that listless feeling flooding his limbs again, the page hanging limply from one hand. "You mean to tell me that this was all a practical joke?"

"I'm afraid so, Sir."

The paper, like a feather that had been detached from a bird shot while in the midst of soaring flight, floated gently to the floor.

"And that would mean that I do have to attend the embassy party given by the Polodni States this evening?"

"That too, Sir."

Charles allowed his body to fall back onto the bed sheets, arms fully extended, as if he were only marking time until the nails were pounded in.

"Aargh!" The Future King of England screamed.

"I had been just a trifle worried that this might be your reaction, Sir."

3.