Lucy Gordon - Princess Dottie

“Shouldn't he be looking after you?”

“We look after each other, we always have, ever since we were at school. On my first day, someone knocked me down in the playground and he picked me up and stopped them doing it again. And I helped him with his sums.”

Yes, Randolph thought uncharitably, the bumpkin looked like someone who would need help with his sums.

“Is that all you want out of life,” he asked, “to settle down with a garage mechanic?”

“What's wrong with him being a garage mechanic?” she fired up.

“Nothing,” he said hastily, reading dire retribution in her eyes. “I just thought you might have been a bit more ambitious.”

“Why?” she asked, honestly baffled.

“Because a girl as pretty as you could take her pick of men.”

“Do you really think I'm pretty?”

“Ravishing,” he said, adding shamelessly, “With that tiny waist and those smoky blue eyes, you could be a model.”

“You are a white slaver,” she said triumphantly. “I must tell Mike. He said you could have me for three camels.”

Randolph felt all at sea. Nothing in his previous life had prepared him for a woman who turned everything into a joke.

“Why does he want three camels?” he asked, grasping at straws.

“When he's sold them he can afford the deposit on a garage.”

“I'm not sure how much three camels would fetch,” he mused, keeping gamely up with her.

“Well if it's not enough we'll throw Brenda in as well, for another two.”

“Only two?”

“Well, she's not worth as many as me,” Dottie said with such indignation that he laughed. “He's not just a mechanic,” she added. “He's going to be an owner.”

“And who'll do the sums?” Randolph asked, touched by her eagerness.

“Me of course. Mike's genius is in his hands.”

“And did you, by any chance, put the idea into his head?”

“I may have done.”

“And who found the garage?”

“Well, me.”

“And who's been talking with the bank? Mike?”

Dottie crowed with laughter and thumped him on the shoulder in a familiar way that nobody had ever dared do before. For an instant he stiffened, but then he remembered he was incognito and forced himself to relax.

“It's no use you trying to make me think Mike is thick.”

“I can see that,” he murmured wryly.

“Anyway, I don't care. He's mine.”

The sudden softening of her voice, and a glow in her eyes made Randolph ask quietly, “You really love him, don't you?”

“Heaps and heaps,” Dottie said with a happy sigh.

“So you wouldn't be interested in my nefarious intentions?”

“Nef- What?”

“It means 'up to no good.' That's what you think of me?”

“I've got to, while you're in that posh gear,” she said cheekily. “The last bloke who came in here dressed like that was arrested as he went out the door. Got five years for fraud.”

“Then since my clothes have given me away, you'd better tell me something about yourself so that I can decide whether you're worth three camels.”

That made her crow with laughter, and to his ears it had a pleasant sound.

“My name's Dottie Hebden,” she said, unwittingly sinking his last hope. “It's short for Dorothea. I ask you! Fancy saddling someone with a name like Dorothea!”

“Perhaps it's a family name.”

“Funny you should say that because as a matter of fact it is. According to my grandpa, anyway. If you believed him we come from a grand family, years and years ago.”

“Did he ever tell you anything about this family?”

“I'm not sure. The trouble was, he was a terrible man for the drink, and when he was tipsy everyone stopped listening. No, it was just Grandpa spinning pretty tales.”

“Haven't you ever wished that they were true?”

“Heavens no! What, me? Swanning about in a tiara and acting grand? Don't be funny!”

Her smile died as something attracted her attention. Randolph followed her gaze and saw that Mike was talking into a mobile phone, looking as annoyed as his good-natured face would allow. He finished the call, shrugged helplessly at Dottie and rose to his feet.

“Sorry, love,” he said, coming across. “Gotta go out and see to a breakdown. Important customer. It sounds like a long job, so I won't see you tonight. Never mind. Tomorrow's half day. Meet you in the park as usual.”

He kissed her cheek and departed.

“Oh heck!” Dottie sighed. “Just when we're about to close. Brenda, come and help me clear up. Brenda? Brenda?”

“I'm afraid she's gone,” Randolph told her. “She slipped out straight after Mike.”

“The lousy, rotten… She's not supposed to leave until I say so. You wouldn't believe it, but I'm supposed to be the manageress here.” Dottie stood in the middle of the floor, raised her fluffy head to heaven and cried, “I am Authority, with a capital A. Underlings tremble when I talk to them.” There was a cheer from the other customers, evidently used to this, and she reverted to normal. “But for all the notice she takes of me I might as well be the dogsbody. In fact,

I am the dogsbody, because now I've got to clear up on my own.”

“I'm afraid that's the price of scaling managerial heights,” Randolph said sympathetically.

Dottie pointed a sausage at him. “You can hush!”

She went around the tables collecting money, and the café slowly emptied. As she started the washing up a wall phone buzzed. Under cover of taking his crockery to the counter Randolph shamelessly eavesdropped, but it gained him little. Dottie's face, full of exasperation, was more revealing.

“I'll strangle Jack,” she said, hanging up. “Someone called Holsson made a reservation for tonight and Jack forgot to tell me, so I've got to get his room ready before I go. Oh blast Jack. I hope his milk curdles and his socks rot. And the same goes for Mr. Holsson, whoever he is.”

“I'm afraid you have to go now,” Dottie said. “I'm locking up.” “Can't I help you clear away to atone for my crime?”

“Crime?”

“I'm the awkward Mr. Holsson,” he confessed.

“Oh heck!” She clasped her hand over her mouth, looking so much like a guilty child that he had to laugh. “Me and my big gob! I'm always doing it.”

“Don't worry. I won't tell anyone if you don't.”

“I'm not usually this disorganized.”

“It's not your fault if nobody told you.”

“Thanks. That's nice of you. Just give me a minute and I'll be over there to make you comfortable.”

Randolph felt that nothing short of a miracle could make him comfortable in this nightmarish place, but he held his tongue. He was growing to like Dottie.

She was loudmouthed, over-the-top and totally unsuitable to be a queen, but she had a rough good nature that appealed to him, and her ability to laugh in the face of her dreary life touched his heart.

She was just finishing the cashing up. “This is supposed to be Jack's job,” she sighed.

“But tonight he's giving you a wide berth,” Randolph reminded her. “That way you can't complain about his 'high crimes and misdemeanors'.”

“His whaters?” Dottie asked, her eyes on the till.

“His failure to pass on the message.”

“Oh, I see. Why not say so in English?”

“It is English,” Randolph said, suppressing a desire to tear his hair.

“Not where I come from.”

He drew a long breath. It was her language, wasn't it? If he could speak it, why couldn't she?

But he abandoned the subject as fruitless. “Since this is partly my fault, why don't you let me help you clear up?” he suggested.

She agreed to this readily, and within a few minutes they had finished. She vanished into a little room at the rear to remove her waitress uniform, and returned in a blouse that looked faded from much washing, and shorts that revealed a pair of dazzling legs.

He had a sudden aching memory of his much loved but erratic father, a “leg man” and proud of it. Gazing at Dottie's shining pins Randolph wondered if he had more in common with his wayward parent than he'd suspected.

She locked up, turned out the lights and together they went next door, where, despite Jack's promise about a porter, Randolph's bags were still standing in the hall where he'd left them. It was a measure of how far he'd traveled in the past hour that this didn't surprise him.

Room 7 came as a nasty shock. With his first step he had to hold onto the door frame as a loose floorboard wobbled underfoot. The wallpaper was a sludgy green that suggested it had been chosen to hide stains, the mattress seemed to be stuffed with cabbages. The curtains were too small for the window, and the drawers beside the bed didn't shut properly.

An inarticulate sound behind Randolph made him turn to see a pile of sheets and blankets walking around on Dottie's legs. He guided her inside and removed the top layer, unblocking her view.

“Sorry,” she said, dumping everything on the bed. “The furniture's a bit…a bit…”

“Yes, it is,” Randolph said with feeling.

“Jack buys it secondhand, you see. Never mind. It's clean, I see to that.”

“I believe you. Let me help you make up the bed.”

This wasn't a success, except that his efforts reduced Dottie to tears of laughter. “I'll do it,” she said when she'd recovered. “It'll be quicker.”

She proceeded to attack the bed in a wild frenzy of efficiency, punching seven bells out of the pillows until they took on some sort of shape.

“I still feel I should atone for making your life difficult,” he said. “Let me take you for a meal.”

“But you've just had a meal.”

He looked at her.

“No, I suppose not,” she sighed. “You didn't really touch it, did you? But you don't have to-”

“I should like to. Please.” When she hesitated he added shamelessly, “Just think of Brenda making up to your fiancé.”

“Right,” she said, setting her chin firmly. “Let's go.”

At his suggestion she used his mobile to call a cab to collect them in Hanver Street.

“Why Hanver Street?” he asked. “Is this a pedestrians only area?”

“No, but cabs don't like coming here because of all the one-way streets,” she explained as they stepped outside. “Hanver Street is just on the other side of Hanver Park.”

The little park was at the end of the road. A tiny place, just a stretch of greenery, a few swings and a little wood, it was an unexpected delight in this dingy neighborhood. It lay on a gentle slope, and as they descended the broad steps Randolph's attention was taken by two figures on the grass verge. They wore black jeans and sweaters. Their hair was completely covered by black woolly hats, and their faces were painted dead-white. Silent and mysterious, they were gravely miming a little scene. Their manner was gentle, and occasionally they smiled at the odd passerby who stopped to regard them. They might have been young men or young women. It was impossible to tell.

Randolph took out some coins, but the two performers threw up their hands in horror, seeming genuinely shocked.

“You don't want money?” Randolph asked.

As one, they laid their right hands over their hearts and bowed graciously, as if to say that it was their pleasure to give. Randolph was charmed. He would have watched them longer but Dottie had seen their cab at the far gate, and seized his hand.

Her eyes widened when he gave the driver their destination.

“I can't go to The Majestic,” she said, scandalized. “It's posher than the Ritz. I've never been anywhere like that before.”

“Then it's time you did.”

“Don't be daft, I can't go like this.”

“Get in,” he said, taking her arm and urging her into the cab.

It swept them away from the dreary surroundings and off to central London, where the store windows shone and the restaurants glittered. Dottie pressed her nose to the window, eyes shining in a way that made Randolph wonder how often she had any kind of treat.

He'd discovered so many new things that day that he regarded his horizons as fully enlarged, and was beginning to think there was no more for him to learn.

He was wrong.

The Majestic offered him an experience that he'd never known before and if he never knew it again until his last day on earth it would still be too soon.

As they pulled up before the luxurious restaurant the cab door was opened by a doorman in an extravagant livery. He bowed, his face wreathed in obsequious smiles that vanished when he saw Dottie.

“I am very sorry, sir,” he said, addressing Randolph as if Dottie wasn't there, “the restaurant has a dress code. Ladies must wear skirts.”

The habit of years made Randolph say impatiently, “Nonsense.”

“I'm afraid the rule cannot be broken, sir.”