An African Comedy. Part Three.

I have made fleeting reference in these pages to the renowned “build”, shall I call it, of the African male, but feel it necessary, at this point, and with due apologies to lady readers, to make a comparable note with regard to my own scaffolding. Suffice it to say that no one laughed at me in the showers at Harlequins Rugby Club. I do not pretend I compared with the more prodigiously mounted of Africans, but, on that occasion at least, I certainly had Queen Arsolina's full attention. As far as the British Empire is concerned, I think I can say that I did not let the flag down at that moment. It is no mean feat to salute when your hands are tied behind your back, but I managed it, I tell you.

“Queen Arsolina,” I piped up, with as much dignity as a naked man covered in dust and grime, his hair tousled for want of a comb, can muster in such circumstances, “It's all been a terrible mistake…”

Looking me straight in the groin, the Queen raised a hand and began gabbling with her eunuchs in Bumonese. The latter clustered in a group as they talked, glancing up now and then to appraise me with pursed lips, as if deciding on a dress in a department store. If I hadn't been an ex-member of the Household Cavalry I would have blushed.

After several minutes of this, in which I stood naked before the eyes of the two hundred ogling members of the court, the Queen rose to her feet and turned her back on me with a dance-like motion. I had a horrible feeling of deja-vu as I was pulled towards her, though I clung to a faint hope that the Queen doing the preliminaries for a burst of the Charleston. My worst fears were realised, however, when she pulled up her skirt, stuck out her backside towards me and told me to get kissing and make it snappy. She was wearing a large a pair of white cotton knickers that would have made a serviceable for a Boy Scout, which I was now compelled to inspect at closer quarters than was, strictly speaking, polite in a well brought up man. Then I felt a hand behind my head and my face was forced forwards deep into the Queens buttocks, where it was held in place so firmly that I wondered if I was going to pass out due to breathing difficulties. Dimly I could hear drums and the screams of approval from the crowd behind me. When I was finally extricated, the Queen smoothed down her skirt and twisted round to look down on me with a dominant smile.

I did not smile back. For my attitude to her had only been hardened by what I had been through.

“Congratulations, Andrew,” she said, speaking to me in English for the first time since my return to court.“You are now my one hundred and forty first husband.”

Well, if there is one good thing about that day it is that I was shortly afterwards given a very satisfactory wash and brush up by the eunuchs. I was not delighted about my moustache being shaved off, but I must say I received a decent haircut, and, after an extended bath, a very tolerable rub down with scented oil. If nothing else those eunuchs knew how to do a good job, and would have made good bat men, I believe, at Westminster Barracks. Their ministrations were certainly a welcome relief from my experiences in the cage, which would have been scarcely bearable by a sardine.

However, the upshot of all this was much as I feared, for I was placed like a Christmas turkey on a golden tray and carried into the Queen's bedroom to fulfil those duties identified the world over with wedding nights. I soon lay there enwrapped in the pink sheets awaiting her majesty with some trepidation, while that personage was being prepared in the next room by her assistants to the accompaniment of giggles.

When she finally made her entry she was wearing a frilly see-through garment that I mistook at first for a large mosquito net with bits on.

“Your Majesty…” I began.

“Don't I look gorgeous, Andrew?” she trumpeted, giving me a twirl.

“Well, yes, Queen Arsolina, but…”

“Call me Arsy, my darling.”

“O.K.fine, but look, erm, Arsy, dashed if I know what's going on, and all that, but I thought I'd made it clear once that I, you know, wasn't really game for this kind of a lark…”

I paused as the Queen visibly frosted over, but then soldiered on to the denouement of my rambling protest:“So, if you wouldn't mind terribly, your majesty, I'd like to return to my room, please, as I'm in need of the winks, if you know what I mean.”

The Queen was no longer smiling. And when she spoke again it was in a low, tight-lipped voice.

“You don't seem to realise, young man, that your position here is no longer what it was. All males captured in war become the possession of the Queen. That is the law of Bumoni. You deliberately defied my warning and entered Pujimbo. A guest of the Pujimbi is my enemy. As a prisoner-of-war you are my property. In short, Lieutenant, you have made your bed and you must lie in it. With me!”

All I remember is opening my mouth briefly to shape a retort before there was a sudden darkness, as the Queen dived on top of me with an athleticism remarkable in so large a woman, and began, if you will pardon the term, to give me a jolly good working over. The fact that the bed showed no signs of collapsing at any point leads me to believe it must have been substantially reinforced in advance.

Questions of engineering aside, it was a long night. After doing what I had to as quickly as possible, in the hope of being allowed to withdraw at that point to the haven of my boudoir, it became apparent that my premature accomplishment was to be regarded as merely an aperitif. It sunk in thereafter that not only was a repeat expected at regular intervals throughout the night, but diverse auxiliary services provided in the necessary intervals. Services I shall not describe here for reasons of delicacy. I will just hint that they were of such unnatural intimacy as to make my earlier facial encounter with the Queen's gusset seem a handshake between Aunts in comparison.

The following morning, as I knelt busily between her legs while she had her hair combed by the Eunuch Of The Bedchamber, Queen Arsolina announced herself only partially satisfied with my efforts and had me returned to the Palace Eunuchs' quarters to be brought up to standard with special exercises and the sort of nutrition calculated to improve my efforts. Unfortunately, that meant a very great deal of rice pudding and fried grasshopper.

So it was that my new life began in earnest. If I had been a real Pujimbo captive I daresay I would have been happy enough with my lot, for the alternatives were indeed grotesque. However, as a citizen of the British Empire, and a man with a best-selling book to write, I chafed somewhat at my lot. My duties consisted of nightly ministerings of the type described above, plus regular appearances in court for the Queen to sit ceremonially on my face in front of her people to remind them who the boss was.

This latter duty, while uncomfortable at first and giving rise to concern about air supply, was rendered more tolerable for me by the attentions of the eunuchs to my “Jasper”, as they termed it. And once I had learned to take in oxygen through the corner of my mouth in the manner of the Blue Suckerfish of the Upper Volta, I was able to use these occasions for some shut-eye after the sleeplessness of the nights.

For the rest of my hours I was pampered exquisitely by the eunuchs at my room in their quarters. They were under instructions to treat me will all the respect becoming to a royal husband, though I sensed resentment in their ranks about my privileged status, especially when I mocked them for their lack of the usual block and tackle. More than once they suggested I make the best of cloud cuckoo land while it lasted.

Such prophetic remarks provided the only dark cloud on my horizon, for the fate of Semnimbe had not escaped my attention. With my insertion in his place, the Queen lost interest in him, poor gentleman. I heard he perished after a week on the slave farms, through a combination of malnutrition and melon poisoning.

As it was, my own fate was entirely different. Nourished by concoctions of baked insects, elephant tusk powder and toasted owl droppings, and groomed by the eunuchs as if they were entering it for Crufts, my jasper expanded remarkably in size in a short period of time, and with it my capacity for sustained contributions in the marital bed. Which was just as well, really. The Queen pronounced herself most satisfied with the raising of my standards and the eunuchs told me none of her three hundred and forty previous spouses had endured so long in favour. Unfortunately, this golden period came to an abrupt end with the arrival of one Nobeki Ezekulini on the royal scene – or “Nobby” as he came to be known lightheartedly.

I was unable to witness for myself the expression on Arselina's face when Nobeki emerged from his cage, as I had my face up her skirt at the time. However, I sensed from the way she was wiggling on my nose that something was as good as up. The eunuchs told me later that it was as if her jaw had dropped, hit the floor and rolled along for a few yards before coming to a stop with its tongue hanging out. When he was brought into the eunuchs' quarters later that day I could see why Nobby had produced this reaction. To say he was well endowed would be like saying that the Empire State Building was bigger than a matchbox. So great was that jasper of his that you had to check twice to be sure he wasn’t wearing a puffer snake on his belt as an ornament.

Nor was this equipment Nobeki's only selling point, for he possessed the most beautiful face, with eyes like peeled almonds, atop a slender body that would have made Michelangelo's David give serious thought to going on a diet. Plus he had a degree from the University Of Cambridge in Agricultural Science and had danced Swan Lake at the Met two years running.

“Andrew, my dear boy,” were the Queen's deceptively friendly words to me that morning when I entered her room after my first night alone for many weeks. She was sitting in front of her dressing table while some assistants arranged her hair into a plaited replica of the Metropolitan Opera House and she did not look round as she spoke. I could see in the mirror she had a smile so big it was like a clothes hanger fixed under her nose. I recognized that smile - half kiss, half leer - and I knew with a sinking feeling in heart that it was not inspired by me.

“Come here, Andrew,” ordered the Queen.

I stepped forward to her side and she swivelled to look me up and down for a brief moment, before continuing.

“I have married again,” she said dreamily.

“Yes, your majesty.”

“You've met Nobby?”

“Yes, your majesty.”

“You know what I do with my ex-husbands, don't you?”

The Queen's eyes inspected mine mirthfully.

“I'd miss you,” she said, touching my arm. “Your wit, your repartee, your encyclopaedic knowledge of brass rubbing.”

I raised an eyebrow in a remote flickering of hope.

“So I have decided to make an exception and keep you on…”

I raised my other eyebrow, which began to dance a short fandango with the first .

“As a eunuch!”

The eyebrows halted in mid-fandango and retreated to the side of my face to have a think. Meanwhile my jaw rotated pensively, as if I was trying to chew a block of toffee with nails in it.

“I have a vacancy for a keeper of the Queen's Underwear. I had to put on my own brassiere this morning, do you realise that? We can still have our little talks while you do up my suspenders and things stuff. Petals will show you the ropes.”

I noticed the chief Eunuch-In-Waiting smiling nastily.

“We haven't had a castration for a couple of days, and I'm feeling a little bored. So I've booked up the priests for this afternoon. I could do with a laugh, so I'll see you then, darling. Bye.”