Van Gogh's Room at Arles (19 page)

(Sid, “I’ve reserved a seat for you!” not “I’ll reserve a seat for you.” Sid?)

There was a press conference of sorts, ad hoc, shouted out, summary as an encounter with prime ministers or presidents on the way to their helicopters. The Prince’s unexpected announcement of his engagement was the proximate cause, but it was only my appearance with him on that provisional reviewing stand, or rostrum, or stage, or, considering the occasion, pulpit or hustings even, that the reporters started to call out their questions.

It was to me, not Larry, they called.

“Miss Bristol! Miss Bristol!”

“Miss Bristol?”

“Miss Bristol, over here. Over here, Miss Bristol.”

“Louise? Oh, I say, Louise.”

The Prince squeezed my hand, but thinking he must know me, I’d already acknowledged whoever it was that used my Christian name.

“Yes?” I said. “You, the one standing. Off to the side.”

“The Prince says he obtained the King’s and Queen’s prior consent. Have you met their Royal Highnesses then? And I have a follow-up.”

Out of the corner of my eye I could see how troubled Larry was, but he needn’t have been. I’ve already said that about duty and loyalty. It’s what they say about heroism, too. That you don’t even think about it. That it comes second nature or not at all. That you fall on the grenade or jump in front of the oncoming car to push the child away without thought to the consequences. I was already answering the man’s question.

“Not actually
met
them,” I said, “but I’ve heard so much about them. What is your follow-up?”

“Would you show us your engagement ring?”

I extended a finger with a loud, fussy-looking costume- jewelry ring on it.

“That’s it?” said a female reporter crouched in the front. “That bauble? That’s what he gave you?”

Smiling, I looked over at the Prince. Who seemed discomfited. To put the best face on it. To say the least.

“Yes,” I said, “hardly the Crown Jewels, but isn’t it sweet? It has incredible sentimental value.”

“Oh, I
do
love you, Louise!” the Prince curling me to his side whispered in my ear. Then he spoke into the microphones.

“When we get back to London we’ll run up to the Tower and Miss Bristol can have her pick of a proper jewel,” he volunteered shyly.

“Sir? Oh, Sir?”

“Over here please, Sir.”

“Yes, then,” he said, “last question.”

“Sir, Miss Bristol referred to the ring’s sentimental value. Could you describe for us, Sir, what were some of the circumstances under which such meaning come to accrue about a ring what is so obviously a piece of cheap jewelry?”

There was this long, complicated, almost squeezed look of helpless discomfort in the Prince’s eyes. “I won it for her at the fair?”

Because I think I was starting to love him then. Well, not actually love him of course. Not yet. Not so soon. But certainly the beginning of some such feeling.

I stepped forward.

“He’s so modest,” I told them. “Do you remember when the Prince was in New Guinea?” I was speaking directly to the chap who had put the question. Vaguely, he nodded. “It was a gift from a Cargo Cult there. Who had it, according to the beliefs of its members—— from God. Hence, as you see, its sentimental value.”

“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so very much for coming,” said the Prince.

(A lot of this is in the public record. I know that. I haven’t even begun to budge those fifty thousand pounds yet, have I, Sid? I’m giving you my side. If you think that doesn’t count for much, wait, be a little patient please.)

Then, suddenly, his retinue reappeared—— that magic, show-biz retinue of royal retainers, equerries, and handlers, that sworn corps obliged not just to the Realm but to each other as well, so professional you didn’t even see them coming. One moment they weren’t there (or you weren’t conscious of them), the next moment they were. Not even noticeably swelling the crowd but almost like actors in some cleverly staged play who merely by taking up a prop or altering their position somehow manage to change not only their character but their actual roles. I even spotted Colin— or, no, not Colin, Colin was heavier, but Colin’s stand-in— the one who’d gone into the shop earlier and paid for the fateful wreath while the prince carried the fateful aloe.

Because I couldn’t see Jane, because I couldn’t see Marjorie. And me musing along: Why, he was ripe! (“I’ve reserved a seat for you!”)
Not
not just any woman, any woman owning up, any woman owning up to what she put there and then what he put
there.
And not just any prince but this shy, diffident, earnest one. That explains it. It could as well have been Jane, it could as well have been Marjorie. That explains it. All the biff-bam of our encounter. Explains his fire, explains his lust and abandon on the frond-strewn clothing-carpeted floor of our unwinding wicky-up.
This
prince, this shy, diffident, earnest, and virgin prince. It was only a question of being in the right place at the right time, a serendipity, some upside-down, inside-out For-Want-Of- A-Nail thing. He was the conscientious one, the one with the character. That’s why I say fateful. That’s why I say it could have been Jane, it could have been Marjorie.

On shipboard or boatboard, or whatever it’s called when it’s the Royal Yacht and the distinctions still aren’t clear in a working girl’s head, he asked how I knew he’d been to New Guinea and that he’d actually seen a Cargo Cult.

“Why, I thought you’d been everywhere, Sir.”

“I have been everywhere.”

“Oh, my,” I said, “this isn’t to be another of those Poor- Little-Rich-Prince conversations, is it? Filled with languor and acedia and lots of lecturing about how one mustn’t judge until one’s plunked down one’s behind on another man’s throne.”

“Louise!”
shocked the Prince.

“You’re not going to make me play How-Heavy-Hangs- the-Head again, I trust.”

“I’m sorry if I bore you.”

“Bore me? You don’t bore me. How could you bore me? When you suddenly up and announce I’ll be Princess of England one day, and that when you succeed to your succession I’m entitled to walk a neat two or three steps behind you. You lead, I follow. Why, we’ll look like one of those silly, overdressed couples that show up on the telly during the International Ballroom Dance Competitions. I think the only thing you left out is who gets to wear the number on the back. So, no, you don’t bore me.”

“You didn’t turn me down, Louise. You spoke up to those reporters.”

“Yes. Well. There you have me, Prince. Suddenly I thought you needed defending. It was like doing my National Service. My British passport was practically burning a hole in my purse.”

“You don’t love me?”

“Excuse me, Sir. I figure you can easily enough get yourself out of whatever it is you think you’ve gotten yourself into. That whole business this afternoon could have been something you made up on the spot to detract attention from coming late to your own ceremonial. It certainly wasn’t to make an honest woman out of me.”

“What if it were?”

“Well, it would have been too late, woul’n’t it? You can just drop me off anywhere you think it’s convenient.”

Was I fishing? Haven’t I already said I was starting to feel something for him?

“Louise,” he said, “we’ve been intimate!”

“I was right,” I said, “you were a virgin!”

“Where would I have found the time?”
he demanded. Yes, Sid, demanded. He was angry now. His face was red and he wasn’t blushing. He might almost have been that battle prince out of history he’d seemed to me that morning. (That morning. My God, was it still the same day?) For all I knew he could have thought it convenient to throw me overboard then and there. I think I may have flinched. I saw him make a deliberate effort to calm down. “Where would I?” he asked again, softly. “These sailors are some of the same people you saw with me on shore this morning. They were at the proceedings this afternoon.” He lowered his voice still more, speaking in a register so deep it could have been amorous. “Your eyes were shut,” he said.

“What?”

“I’m under a sort of constant surveillance. Well, not surveillance exactly. No one actually spies on me. It’s just my nature, Louise. Even in public school at the Royal Naval Academy when the other boys had no trouble doing number two in front of each other in the open stalls I had trouble doing even number one.” He looked away. Abashed, he gazed down at the deck. “I’d wait until they were asleep and then I’d get up in the middle of the night … I was always costive,” he admitted. Then, his resentment apparently not leveled at me this time, he altered his tone again. “Well I’m going to be their King one day, aren’t I? It isn’t seemly. A king oughtn’t to be seen in his throes. It isn’t seemly. Noblesse oblige. Kings must set an example. Forgive me, Louise, I know it must sound mad to anyone not in my position but if it ever got out that kings f--t and p-ss and shi-like other people it could destroy their reigns. That they vomit or mas---bate or have fantasies about women g--ng d--n on them, or are sometimes too ravenous at their food, could go bad with them. I know it must seem mad.”

“Too right.”

“So how could I?” he said as if he hadn’t heard me. “Because except for the odd birthday party when I was a child and ran about doing naughty things to my cousins at the bottom of the garden, messing their frocks and playing silly games with them, playing Harley Street, playing Spin the Jar, playing Postbox, where
would
I have found the time? And I’m always so tired, and—— ”

“So you do mean to tell me your troubles.”

“We can talk about anything you want, Louise.”

“Why did you say we were engaged? Why did you tell everyone you’d obtained Their Majesties’ prior consent to the engagement?”

“Not just their consent. Their encouragement.”

“They don’t even know me,” I said.

“Well, I was ripe,” he said, echoing the term I had used to describe him to myself only that astonishing afternoon.

(And I’ll tell you something, Sir Sid. For the first time I began to regard it as a possibility. Not only the engagement, but the possibility of the Royal Wedding, too. For the first time began to think it might not be a bad tradeoff—— a life with a mad Prince and then another with a mad king. To be Princess of All the Englands. And he was handsome. Possessed, as I say, of almost a surfeit of beauty. And I would be one of the world’s richest women. And, too, I was starting to have these feelings for him. Tell me, my dear press lord, was he the only game in town or was he the only game in town?)

“Ripe?” I said.

“They too,” he said. “All of us.”

“Meaning?”

“They signaled their eagerness to abdicate. They’re ready to step down. It came in over the wireless. ‘Sparks’ passed on the message.”

“What are they like, your family?”

“Well, you know about my cousins.”

“Not your cousins. Your mum and your dad.”

“The sibs get their names in the papers.”

“You get your name in the papers.”

“The columns,” he said disapprovingly. “But you know that of course.”

“I’ve been in the States two years. They have their own distractions and preoccupations in the States.”

“Oh right,” he said. (You see, Sir Sidney? How our affair was proceeding? How at once whirlwind and old hat it must have seemed to the both of us? It didn’t seem possible to me it was still the same day. Larry had probably already forgotten those two years in the States I had told him about. We were like some old married couple. We couldn’t remember each other’s sizes.) “I love them. It’s not that,” he said. “It’s not even that they’re bad. They’re lively, they’ve very good hearts. But I’ll tell you the truth, Louise, they’re not fit children for the sons and daughters of royalty. I blame the parents.”

“You blame the parents?”

“Our crowd has a saying: ‘It starts in the castle.’”

He had me jumping. I couldn’t read him clearly. Now some girls will tell you the first thing they look for in a man is a nice smile, or a sense of humor; or they look at his hands, his teeth—— if he keeps them clean. His nails, his hair. Or see can they tell if he’s vulnerable, say. Something physical, something spiritual, six of one, half dozen of the other. But the very first thing that catches my attention about a man is whether or not I can read him clearly. If he’s mysterious, inscrutable. Well, it’s in the tradition. In my tradition. He had me jumping. I felt like a nurse again, Sid.

“They’re irresponsible, Louise. If we weren’t merely symbolic, what I’m saying would be treasonous.”

“They signaled they’re ready to abdicate, you said. Step down, let you take over. You’re the conscientious one.”

“Make me Regent before my time, you mean.”

“You’re twenty-nine.”

“Damn it, Louise, it’s not even their fault.”

“What’s not? Whose fault? I don’t follow. I’m not reading you clearly.”

“Alec’s, Robin’s, Mary’s, Denise’s. It’s not their fault. It’s George’s, our father’s fault. It’s Charlotte’s, our mother’s. Who introduced them? Who taught them to run with a fast crowd, rattle about in all that loose company? Who do you think leaked their names to the columns? Who lazied them down from University? Who coaxed them away with those dubious seconds and thirds? Two years ago? They weren’t like that two years ago. How could you know?”

Sunday, January 26, 1992

How I Was Received

Of course we were expected. They knew we were coming. They must have been waiting. They must have prepared the whole thing.

They looked like sovereigns out of Noël Coward.
He
might have been the actor/manager of his own touring theatrical troupe,
she
his principal player—— sixty if she was a day, yet still called on to do ingenue parts, sophisticated ladies.

Because it’s amazing how much can be kept from the public, how there’s spin on the spin control, these now-you- see-it, now-you-don’t arrangements.

There Their Majesties were, two conflagrant figures, Himself in a red silk dressing gown and seated on an honest- to-god throne with a yellow ring of gleamless crown perched light and rakish on the top of his head like the wavy concatenations on a suspension bridge or the points on the crown of some picture-card king; Herself in a gilt chair a few feet off to her husband’s side and chugalugging smoke through a long silver cigarette holder.