Lost Autumn

by Mary-Rose MacColl

  Helen looked at Colonel Grigg. The colonel just shrugged.

  She scanned the field. “The band, sir! Why don’t we go over there to the band and you can climb up to the conductor’s stand so the children can all see you? You won’t be going among them but at least they’ll all get to see you properly. They’ll love it!”

  “Perfect,” the prince said. “You are my champion, Helen.”

  And that was what he did.

  He stood there waving and smiling for at least ten minutes. The children waved back and cheered wildly. It was a delightful scene and the newspaper photographers snapped picture after picture.

  After the display was finished, we quickly returned to the car, which waited on the ground.

  When we were away, Helen said the Many Happy Returns was odd. “Perhaps it was originally scheduled for last week,” she said.

  “It’s because it’s my birthday today,” the prince said.

  “Oh, I didn’t know that,” Helen said.

  “No, neither did I,” the prince said, smiling sadly.

  “Why did we celebrate your birthday last week?” she asked.

  “Because it’s what we did,” he said.

  “Happy birthday then, dear David,” Helen said warmly, and leaned over and kissed his cheek. She held his hand in both of her own for a moment and I saw there were tears in her eyes.

  Colonel Grigg leaned forward then. “Steady on,” he said to Helen.

  Helen just kept smiling, a tear rolling down her cheek.

  “Thank you, Helen,” the prince said. “You’re the only one who treats me like a person, not a relic.” There were tears in his eyes too, I saw now.

  “I’ll kiss you too, if it will help,” Colonel Grigg said.

  It wasn’t funny, what the colonel said, especially after Helen’s tenderness.

  * * *

  Next, we were taken to the University of Sydney, where the prince was to receive an honorary doctorate. I knew that for the prince and Colonel Grigg and Helen these places were ordinary, but for me the Great Hall was a wonder, those large stained-glass windows, the enormous space filled with members of the colleges in their colors.

  In the robing room where Helen and I would wait, the prince was dressed by a valet in a gown of red and purple and gold. It was quite a complicated affair. I heard him ask the chancellor if the gown had been made specially for the occasion, as he couldn’t imagine anyone wearing it willingly. The chancellor said it wasn’t. Then the prince made a joke about how many honorary doctorates he’d been given.

  “It’s like when I served in France,” he said. “I was never allowed to truly serve, and now I am honored with a degree I haven’t truly earned.”

  An uncomfortable silence fell, as if the dignitaries didn’t know how to respond.

  The prince himself redeemed the moment then by going on to speak about the small good even the most humble person could do for his fellows. “Yesterday, I met a young soldier who had lost his two brothers in the fighting. I was able to thank him on behalf of His Majesty and, while it could never ease his burden, never, I hope it made some small difference. We can all do this,” he added. “All of us. We must. Because it’s what we can do.”

  It was such a heartfelt thing to say, I thought. Even the crusty old chancellor was moved.

  Helen and I waited at the back of the hall with the newspapermen while Colonel Grigg and the prince went to meet the returned soldiers who were graduates. One of the pressmen asked Helen about the evening before. “I hear he danced with Mollee Little all night, and Lady Margaret is none too pleased.”

  “Well, that’s just the silliest thing I ever heard,” Helen said. “There was no dancing at all. The prince had the bank dinner.”

  To me she said, “He had the night wrong. It was two nights before that David acquainted himself with Miss Little. They didn’t dance though. Rupert wouldn’t let them.”

  This must have been the dance the prince had invited my mother to. Mr. Waters had stopped it going ahead after all.

  “Who’s Miss Little?” I asked.

  “Oh, I’ll tell you later.”

  We were soon back in the car—not before the prince shook the hands of many in the crowd—to return to Government House.

  Even more people lined the route along George Street now. The prince, glad that the “stunts,” as he called them, were over until the evening, waved out the window at people with his left hand, nursing his right on his lap. You could see the bruises livid on the top of his hand.

  “We’ll get some ice back at the house,” the colonel said.

  Helen was telling a story about the children who’d wandered away from the display at the cricket ground and had to be herded back, and the prince was laughing. I noticed Colonel Grigg watching her as she spoke and I thought she was right: he had feelings for her.

  * * *

  We were about halfway along George Street when I noticed that the police on either side of the road had thinned out in numbers and the crowd had spilled out onto the roadway in front of us.

  The prince kept a smile on his face and waved as Colonel Grigg turned to the driver, who was slowing. “We mustn’t stop. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the driver, a young officer, said. “But there’s nothing I can do. The police aren’t keeping them back. I can’t run them over.”

  “I don’t see why not,” the prince said.

  I must have looked as horrified as I felt, for the prince then said, “Just a little joke to lighten the mood, Maddie.”

  Helen had laughed. She didn’t seem worried about the crowds, but I was feeling apprehensive. There were people everywhere and they were closing in on us now. Some were running next to the car and in front, forcing the driver to slow to a crawl. Suddenly, a young man jumped onto the running board of the car. “Your Majesty, give us a handshake, would you?” he shouted.

  The prince smiled before Colonel Grigg half stood and leaned out the window and shoved the fellow off.

  We had slowed to a crawl now. They were everywhere, banging on the roof of the car and the doors. Colonel Grigg had turned the keys to lock the doors and pulled up the windows, but I worried the banging would soon smash them.

  The prince looked over at me. “Oh, Maddie, the look on your face, you dear little thing. Please don’t worry. The police will catch up eventually.” He seemed terribly cool about it. “Won’t they, Grigg?”

  “I’m sure they will, sir.” But the colonel was looking over his shoulder to see what Helen and I could see, the mob behind us moving quickly now to overtake the car. “Oh dear,” he said. “The fellow I pushed off the running board is coming back with a few friends. We might have to defend the women, sir.”

  “I’m your man,” the prince said. “It would have to be better than standing on that dais shaking bally hands again.” He shook his right hand and I noticed the palm was bruised too.

  Just then, we heard whistles, and police on horseback trotted up to flank the car, and they were soon joined by others on foot. They cleared a path, using their batons liberally, and we sped up again and left the melee behind us.

  I was relieved and so was everyone else in the car, I was sure. But judging by the responses of Helen and the prince, it wasn’t the first time this had happened.

  By the time we arrived back at the house we were laughing about the predicament we’d found ourselves in.

  “When I try to brief the Home Office on what this is like, they simply don’t understand,” Colonel Grigg said to Helen. And to the prince: “It’s like you’re a god, sir.”

  “Well, if they really knew me, they’d know differently, eh, Ned?”

  We were still laughing as we all climbed out of the car.

  “Maddie looked as if she thought they were going to crush us,” the prince said.

  “We
ll, we shot your uncle, so anything’s possible,” I said.

  Colonel Grigg looked shocked by what I’d said and so did Helen but the prince laughed loudly. “And, Grigg, you were no help, pushing that fellow off. What if he’d caught up?”

  “I was ready for him,” Colonel Grigg said, taking a boxer’s stance, his fists up, moving from foot to foot.

  Mr. Waters was standing at the top of the steps watching us, I saw now.

  “Oh look, it’s old stuffed shirt himself,” Colonel Grigg said.

  Helen laughed loudly, that hard laugh of hers I didn’t believe was truly her. But even the prince giggled. Mr. Waters looked down and while he didn’t hear what was said, I was sure he knew they were laughing about him.

  I couldn’t join them. Mr. Waters looked so sad I couldn’t make fun of him. And I couldn’t understand how Helen could. She saw my reaction, stopped laughing, shrugged a little. I saw pain there in her features then, and it occurred to me that I didn’t actually understand anything at all about what had happened to Helen and Mr. Waters.

  Twenty-one

  PARIS, 1997

  Mark Staple was waiting at Gare du Nord. He’d taken the first flight that morning, he said. “Been up since four.” He’d been sending images back all day. He smiled wearily.

  Victoria had always liked Mark. His wife, Kerry, called their four young children their tribe. “I better get this tribe out of here. Come on, tribe. We’ll have the tribe with us. Is it okay if I bring the tribe?” Whenever they arrived at staff parties, chaos ensued.

  “What’s happening at the hospital?” Victoria asked.

  “Charles. He’s come over to collect her body, with the sisters.”

  “Oh God,” Victoria said. “It makes it so real.”

  “It sure does. Nathan got spat on today. He was shooting the flowers around the palace and someone spat on him.”

  “Gee,” Victoria said. She might not mind Nathan getting spat on, she decided. “Well, maybe we are to blame.”

  “I’m not the guys in that tunnel last night,” Mark said, anger in his voice.

  “No,” she said. “You’re not. Of course you’re not. Maybe I meant I am.”

  “Danny Brown told me that Nathan earned two million pounds last year,” Mark said. “Two million.”

  “Really?” Victoria said.

  He didn’t respond straightaway.

  “I saw her on the street a few years ago,” he said then.

  “Diana?”

  He nodded. “I’ve been thinking about it all morning. Shot of my career.”

  “Where?”

  “Charing Cross Road. Can’t even remember why I was there, but I had a camera so I must have been on a job. She came out of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. She was on her own, no security that I could see, no friends, no one.”

  He took a breath in and held it a moment, then exhaled. “She had tears in her eyes, so it was perfect. She looked . . . She looked beautiful, Victoria. I was quite overcome for a moment.”

  “You didn’t get the shot?”

  “No.” He smiled sadly. “I know. I should have. I’d been retrenched from The Sun after the takeover. I was freelancing for a bit. Prices for pictures of her weren’t what they are now, but still.

  “I watched her and I’m thinking about the shot, the light, and then she saw me and, I don’t know if she recognized me or saw the camera, but her eyes just pleaded. She shook her head no, a little shake. I just stopped and held the camera there against my chest and nodded.

  “No,” he repeated. “I didn’t take the shot.”

  “Did you regret it?”

  “Huh?” He looked at her as if he’d been somewhere else momentarily. “You kidding? Of course I did. Kerry said she’d have killed me if I’d done it. Then she said she should kill me for not doing it.” He sighed. “Life would be a lot easier for us now. I wouldn’t be getting up early for Harry Knight for a start. And the boys would be in a better school.

  “She just smiled at me. Through her tears she smiled at me.” He shook his head slowly. “Choices you make, eh?”

  “Yes,” Victoria said. “Although it’s our job, Mark. It’s what we do.”

  “Maybe. Have you ever looked back at the video footage when they got engaged?”

  “No,” Victoria said. “But I remember seeing it at the time and thinking how lucky she was. I think every girl my age thought the same. They looked so happy.”

  “I pulled out some old tapes while I was waiting for the car at home this morning. Have a look before you write anything. Make sure you do. It really hit me how young she was. Frankly, she looked not much older than my eldest, and he’s an idiot.”

  “I think she loved him,” Victoria said, “or maybe loved the idea of him. I think she thought he’d make everything better.”

  * * *

  They arrived at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, which was where Diana had been taken after the accident. Mark was going to make his way up to a small rise to the left to get a shot of the arrival of Prince Charles.

  Victoria joined the throng of journalists at the gate, kept back by a line of police. She could see the steps leading up into the hospital. Other people were gathering in the nearby street behind makeshift barriers. The scene was somber, and the weather was doing its best to match, dark clouds forming above.

  This was where her body lay now, Victoria thought, looking up at the building. How had her story changed so quickly, this girl raised to organize country fund-raisers and shooting parties, who was now all alone in a hospital bed far, far from her home? How had she drifted so far from who she was supposed to be?

  In the middle of the fifth floor Victoria saw a window with a dark covering. That might be the room, Victoria thought. She looked back over at the hill where Mark stood. It was just a sea of lenses on a makeshift scaffold, photographers and their gear everywhere, ladders, boxes, camera bags. Victoria watched for a long moment as they trained their lenses toward the hospital. This had been Diana’s entire life, Victoria thought. Her most common social interaction was with a camera lens.

  A black four-wheel drive pulled up and then another. Prince Charles emerged from the first car and Diana’s two sisters from the second. They were like gazelles, one tall and willowy, the other smaller, and they were like Diana too, both of them. Charles stopped to greet the official party waiting at the top of the steps, the French president and his wife, a colonel from the French military, a priest. The two sisters walked past without stopping and went inside.

  It was only another twenty or so minutes before the party emerged, the prince first and, just behind him, Diana’s sisters, one of them crying, the other staring into space.

  French guards formed a line down the path. The crowd in the street was growing. Victoria had no idea how they knew where Diana had been taken or that she was now departing.

  Soon the priest was there—the hospital chaplain, Victoria assumed, Catholic—followed by four undertakers in suits and peaked caps. On their shoulders they carried the coffin, but it was all a bit shambolic. Even the group of undertakers looked stitched together hurriedly, their faces sad in the soft light. People were sobbing loudly. Someone screamed. It was unreal, as if Diana’s body emanated something of the woman herself, her essence, going from the world.

  The coffin was draped in the Royal Standard, Victoria realized suddenly. Someone had thought to bring the Royal Standard. Diana was going to be taken back into the bosom of the royal family, the family that had left her on her own for the years of her marriage and beyond, the family that, according to Claire, wanted to take her children away from her. Now, in death, they would claim her as their own.

  Charles stood with the president and his wife. He was swaying slightly, looked as if he might be sick. There was nothing of the confident young man who’d married Diana about him now.

  He avoide
d Diana’s two sisters, or they avoided him.

  The undertakers loaded the coffin into the hearse, a minivan with large windows.

  They were away quickly, Charles in a car behind, the Spencer sisters with him.

  As the hearse passed, several people cried out or moaned loudly. Victoria wondered if people would line the route all the way to the aerodrome.

  After the cars were out of sight, Mark found Victoria and said they should go. He wiped his eyes and then his nose with a handkerchief. “We’ll get some shots at the aerodrome. It’s outside Paris. I can get there before them.”

  At the aerodrome, they managed to sneak through an unguarded gate to the edge of the tarmac, hidden by a hangar. They could see the Queen’s Flight and the English guard standing at attention waiting, their white belts and dress uniforms perfect. There was no haphazardness here, no put-together-at-the-last-minuteness. It was British to the core, as if Princess Diana’s death had been planned for years.

  They’d been the ones to bring the Royal Standard, Victoria realized.

  Twenty-two

  BRISBANE, 1981

  Before he died, my father helped build the war memorial on Cooks Hill at Ithaca. We didn’t have money to contribute but he helped clear the land to make way for the cenotaph and plaque. It’s the only World War I monument that has a clock, and you can understand why there aren’t others. The dead don’t need to know the time. I don’t know why the town of Ithaca thought they might.

  I go to the service on Anzac Day morning every year and I notice the clock, which generally keeps good time. I don’t go for Edward, and I don’t go for my father, and certainly not to be thankful for anyone’s sacrifice, which they wouldn’t have made willingly. When the speakers talk about sacrifice, I close my ears. No, I go to mark death, to mark loss as the experience I’ve known most in my life.

  It’s in late April, the service, and the sun is starting its slow journey away from us and toward the northern hemisphere. Ed used to come with me, but today I couldn’t rouse him from his stupor so I came on my own. My leg is healed altogether and I walked up from home without even thinking, just a twinge when I stopped and started again.