An Updated Classic
Perhaps it was the weight the mere word Queen laid on the room. All three interviewers straightened their clothes as one and quietly bowed their heads. The students still in the middle of the interview did the same. Jack and Benedict waited for whatever would come next, reverence written across both their faces.
"You would be young Jihun, I take it."
The man who had come on behalf of the royal household stepped toward me as he spoke.
"To seek a recommendation from Her Majesty herself. A thoroughly audacious notion."
"…"
"Fortunately, Her Majesty says she wishes to encourage even that audacity."
He had just moved to draw out the Queen's own letter.
"What is the meaning of this!"
Timothy's head snapped up, fierce.
"Her Majesty would never write a recommendation for a wretch like that—"
"Do you mean to sit in judgment upon Her Majesty's will, as you please?"
"That is not what I— No matter how I turn it over, it is simply not a thing that happens—"
"Then you are saying that I lie."
"N-not a lie, precisely. Some misunderstanding—"
"Are you prepared to answer for those words?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Professor Timothy Bell, of the Department of Art History at Oxford. Do you intend to kick away, with your own two feet, even the honorable retirement that was left to you?"
"What are you—"
"The spectacle you made, ranting of manipulated data and smashing the dignity of the nation! The reason the university forced its eyes shut! Will you truly pretend you do not know whose favor all of that was?"
"…"
"Shall I proceed strictly by the regulations? Is that what it will take to cool your blood?"
The wild-horse frenzy lasted only a moment.
"Henceforth, I would ask that you speak only words you are prepared to stand behind."
Timothy could do nothing but drop his head, the very picture of a man bitterly wronged. The resignation did not last. A tremor ran through him, fury he could not swallow, and then he went down with a heavy crash, as if he had fainted outright.
Even that earned nothing from the man but cold indifference. He turned to the staff conducting the interview.
"The time has come to deliver Her Majesty's will. Clear the surroundings."
A few days earlier, a painting was delivered to the Queen of the United Kingdom.
She was the sovereign of a nation. Not just anyone could press a gift on her merely by wishing to. This one, however, had come through none other than the holder of an endowed chair at Oxford, and so she accepted it readily enough.
The painting was simple. A sea opening between shabby buildings, and a young couple walking the shore. The Queen knew the setting at a glance.
Malta. Marsaxlokk harbor.
It was where she had spent her honeymoon—the last memory of an ordinary life, before she became queen. Malta, all the dearer for that. The couple, then, must have been meant as the two of them in those newlywed days.
She stood before the painting and let herself drift. That a single scrap of landscape could call up so many memories.
If this is not a true gift, what is?
A quiet smile had just touched her lips when she spoke.
"Was there not a letter as well?"
At her word, a member of staff brought the letter enclosed with the work. Who would send a painting like this? With a stir of anticipation, the Queen began to read.
The writer hoped to enter Royal School, and for that he needed the Queen's recommendation. In such a case one ordinarily bowed one's head and begged for grace. The letter, however, was rather peculiar.
I believe Royal School must change. It must change to suit the age.
……
But I expect you will not wish for that change. Britain is a nation that prizes tradition more than any other.
The Queen read the meaning hidden between the lines. What he wished to say, surely, was this: how fiercely must a country prize tradition, to keep a royal house even into an age like this? And yet there was no blame in it. That was why she read on.
The values Britain means, at the last, to defend by setting the Crown at their head are plain. They are duty and devotion. But what is it that the students who enter Royal School hope to obtain? Nothing but a distinction that sets them apart from others, and a privilege granted to them alone.
She read what followed as well.
Royal School has steadily produced the prime ministers of Britain. The Crown must find that fact most welcome. Prime ministers change with every season, but the Crown that produces them stands forever firm.
……
But what good, in the end, does it do this land to turn out prime minister after prime minister packed tight with a sense of privilege? Draw the sword of change. If Royal School changes, Britain can change.
The Crown, emblem of keeping and of holding the line—reborn, of all things, as the standard-bearer of reform? And the first step of that was to recommend a boy from foreign shores to Royal School?
I love the classics. Bach, above all. When a young musician plays Bach, I am the first to hurry over.
……
I still have not forgotten the joy of hearing Glenn Gould's Well-Tempered Clavier. Through a great performance, Bach's music has taken one more step forward even today…… An updated classic. Might that not be the very likeness of the Crown that all the world cannot help longing for?
An updated classic.
The Queen looked down at that sentence for a long while. So that was why he had sent a painting of her honeymoon. To set the day she first stepped forward in stark contrast against this today, lived crushed beneath a crown.
She said nothing. Long after that, she went on gazing at the letter.
Giving a thing its story was, of course, what I did best. The story I had set before the Queen was simple.
A queen who swings the blade of reform, so that she might live up to duty and devotion!
From the choosing of the ingredients to the cooking and the delivery, I had done every step myself. All she had to do was pick up a spoon and eat. The recommendation had arrived, which meant she had eaten well and was already through digesting it.
Sure enough, the man who had brought the Queen's own letter looked me in the eye.
Which was to say: whether Timothy failed me or not, the Queen's own authority had already passed me.
Whew.
The science-high-school ending—dodged!
And with that, the interview stumbled somehow to a close. I had my stamp of admission; I could leave in a fine mood. The other two were another matter.
What about them?
They had been thrown into a group with me for no good reason, made to watch an ugly scene, and then had the interview itself fall apart halfway through. The interviewers would take that into account when they scored us, I was sure. Even so, I couldn't help feeling sorry.
"How about we get something to eat together?"
I was the sort who kept his distance, and I only forced the words out because of that.
But Benedict merely set off, his face perfectly calm.
"Sorry. I've a performance this weekend."
I had been sure Jack would answer in kind. Instead he only stared at me, blank as a board, and said nothing at all. It was our first meeting, and yet, strangely, the words came easily with him.
"Want to eat?"
"Adequate nutrient intake is essential to the maintenance of combat effectiveness……"
"So anything with plenty of protein, and you're good. That it?"
A nod. Another nod.
"Let's go, then."
In the end Jack and I came out of the corridor side by side and made for a steakhouse nearby.
During the interview I'd had no attention to spare, but with the tension gone, the middle name Tiger sat strangely familiar. A breath of a laugh escaped me. So that was where I had heard it. This was him. Tiger Grylls, the survival expert. Allegedly.
I'd landed on him now and then, flipping channels. The man who warned you an animal was dangerous and, in the very next shot, had a fire going and was eating it off a skewer. I had gathered, more or less, that he came out of the special forces. That he had applied to Royal School was news to me. There was no real tie between us, and still, somehow, I was glad to see him.
Jack, for his part, was nothing like me. He sat in silence and took on nutrients, as if what he feared was a loss of combat power—great working mouthfuls, the steak gone without a grain of salt, let alone sauce. Only when he paused for a breath did he look up.
"Why aren't you eating?"
"I'm pacing myself."
"Skipping meals is unacceptable."
Skipping meals. A turn of phrase I had not heard once since the day I was discharged. Had Jack ever imagined it—that the boy his own age sitting across from him was a former sergeant of the Republic of Korea Army?
If he knew, he'd be shocked out of his skin.
No. Shock would not be the end of it. He would spend a good half hour looking at me with reverence, and then the questions would start. What was the army like in Korea? The thought pulled a small laugh out of me.
"You're planning to apply for the special forces?"
Look at that. Bring up the army and his eyes change on the spot. Tell him I'd already served and there'd be a scene. A real one.
"Why the special forces, of all things?"
"Noblesse oblige. I've eaten well and lived well because my father's in Parliament. I ought to devote myself to the country."
"I don't think that's the only reason."
"Does it show?"
"Yeah."
"Awkward, if I'm ever taken prisoner."
Hardly the sort of worry a boy in middle school ought to be carrying. Ahem.
"If I'm honest, it might just be that it looks impressive."
"There's got to be a reason it looks impressive."
"Hmm……"
There are many ways to serve a country. You do not have to be a soldier, and you certainly do not have to be special forces. Only then did he set his fork down and sink into serious thought. Who knew how long passed.
"I think there's a romance to it."
"A romance?"
"The longing you feel when you see people thrown into the extreme, who claw their way through all the same and survive……"
"And the special forces are that, taken as far as it goes?"
"Maybe."
It held together. Judging by the way he taught survival in the wild after he got out—if you could call that teaching—the streak was plainly in him. What I wanted to know, though, was why the streak had formed in the first place.
Asking that the first time we meet would be rude, wouldn't it?
I was ready to let it pass well enough when he spoke.
"Your turn. Tell me about you."
"About me?"
"Where you came from. Why you applied to Royal School. How you even came to think of getting a recommendation from Her Majesty. All of it."
Fair enough. I had been the only one firing questions.
"I came from Korea."
"Wait."
"…?"
"South Korea?"
"Yeah."
The instant the answer left me, his eyes went round.
"I've never met a Korean in my life!"
"Is that really something to get this excited about?"
"Of course it is! I can hear stories of Korea from someone who lived them, instead of only from books!"
"What books have you been reading?"
"What books… War histories, obviously!"
Spoken like a true military obsessive.
"Normally I hate reading history. Open a book and it's nothing but a list of the thuggery Britain got up to."
"…"
"But the Korean War—that's one where even I can square my shoulders."
He was not wrong. After the United States, it was Britain that had sent the most troops.
"Study the Korean War, and you feel it. We did something for freedom, too. There's pride in that."
Then he began to rattle off everything he knew. Britain's contingent had numbered no fewer than eighty-one thousand. Among them he singled out the Gloucester Battalion of the 29th Brigade—British heroes, he explained, who had stood and fought to the last against the Chinese forces pouring in.
"What's Korea like now?"
The seed of liberty their forebears had guarded with their blood. Perhaps he wanted to know how it had sprouted.
"The books say it's much the same as North Korea. Is it still?"
Jack waited for my answer, eyes shining.