Page 14 of The Rest is History
‘Yeah. You met him already?’
I grimace. Awkward. ‘We work together. He’s actually my boss. He mentioned they were looking for an Anne.’
She looks me up and down and grins as if something has really tickled her.
‘Did he, now?’ She takes a long drag. ‘Well, isn’t he a clever boy? Very good, Charlie. Very good.’
‘Meaning…?’
‘Meaning you look exceedingly pretty. Sly old Charlie, bagging himself a stunner to hang out with. Is he as much of a pompous arse at work as he is here?’
I’m relieved. For a moment there, I thought Charlie had a totally split personality. Still, I should be discreet. He is my boss, after all, and I don’t know this woman (even though I already like her).
‘He’s pretty quiet,’ I hedge. ‘He keeps himself to himself.’
There. That’s about as far as my diplomatic skills stretch.
‘He definitely thinks he’s the smartest person in the room at all times,’ Shelby agrees, before taking another desperate drag from her vape pen.
I nearly laugh, because she’s just nailed Charlie’s personality in one line. Instead, I nod my approval. ‘Yep. Pretty much.’
She cocks her head. ‘It’s kind of sweet. Tess, who plays Catherine of Aragon, has a PhD. She specialised in the Henrician Reformation, but you’d never know it from the way Charlie lords it over her and the rest of us. When he gets too far up his own arse I just squish his face until he shuts up. And because he’s so pretty, we all let him get away with far too much.’
Not sure I could think of anything scarier than squishing Charlie Vaughan’s irritatingly ‘pretty’ face.
Curiouser and curiouser.
She gestures. ‘Come and meet the rest of the harem. Charlie’s Angels, we call ourselves. And when we’re done, we’ll take youacross the road to The Mitre and get you drunk until you spill the beans about what he’s like at school. I bet his students hate him.’
I follow her dutifully, gearing up for the trip down the rabbit hole to a parallel universe where Charlie Vaughan allows an army of women to tease him and squish his face.
As I go, I make a mental note to hit PhD Tess up for some tips if I ever get to teach this period in history again.
I feel even less like myself as I process from the little changing room. Yes, process.Walkis too pedestrian (pun intended) a verb to reflect the elegance, the stateliness of my route. We pass through portrait-lined corridors and wind up in the Great Hall, with its crazy vaulted ceiling and walls rich with tapestries.
Objectively, I find the Baroque wing of the palace far more beautiful, with its stunningly symmetrical exteriors and gracious lines and huge, square rooms. But these older rooms are far more atmospheric. The weight of human joy and suffering and sacrifice is more tangible here, from overthrown statesmen to miscarried babies to executed wives.
The walls of these rooms are thick with stories, and it’s impossible not to be affected.
Touched.
The first time I understood that history was a continuum rather than a series of old, dusty misdeeds by people far less sophisticated than our generation was during a school trip when I was in sixth form. We took the tube to Charing Cross so we could visit the Dynasties exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.
I’m pretty sure I failed to appreciate at the time how incredible a collection it was, full of jaw-dropping borrows from the most important museums in Europe and beyond. But one portrait stopped me in my tracks so abruptly that I’ve never forgotten its power.
It was the portrait of Anne of Cleves. You know.Theportrait. The one Henry sent Hans Holbein the younger to paint. The one whose pretty, dark-haired subject convinced Henry to bring her over to be his queen.
The one that, as we understand, Henry found to be totally inaccurate when she set foot on English soil.
It’s an iconic portrait known the world over.
But here’s the thing. Its diameter is a couple of inches, max.
It’s a miniature.
And not only that, it comes in a tiny ivory case, carved as a Tudor rose, with a matching carved lid. And this is what got me.
Henry VIII carried that thing around with him.Like, in his hand.
