Lost Autumn

by Mary-Rose MacColl

  “You think that? You really do?”

  “Yes, sir, I do. And I don’t know your father the King, sir, and I know it’s very bad to say anything against him and I wouldn’t do that, but I can’t imagine he would ever be as kind as you were with those soldiers. I can’t imagine anyone could do that as well as you do, sir.” I had tears in my eyes as I spoke, and I’m sure he noticed.

  “Is that right?” he said, smiling tenderly.

  “It is, sir, and—”

  Just then Helen came in.

  “Your Royal Highness,” she said. “I am so—”

  “Stop,” he said, smiling. “Please. I am the one who’s sorry, Helen. You are terribly good to me and put up with an awful lot. Don’t think I don’t know what you gave up to serve me. And yet I find myself unable to laugh at a joke that really was rather funny. I am sorry, Helen, and I will be a better little prince from here. And I may even learn to be book-read.”

  Helen’s face softened. “No, sir. I was entirely in the wrong.”

  “Well, perhaps you were,” he said, “and if I were my father the King I might have your head chopped off. But as I am not, I want to apologize for going off in the middle of a game I am sure Maddie and I were winning for our team.”

  Helen smiled. “Yes, you were,” she said. “Consumption?” She looked at me and laughed.

  “Well,” the prince said, “I must get on to my laps for the day. Goody good.” And he was gone.

  Later in the day, the weather calm, Mr. Waters and I were working through the correspondence I’d drafted replies for and a few letters I was unsure about. There was a very difficult letter among them from a boy whose father had died in France and his mother had died since the war. The boy was twelve and the oldest. He had written and said the children were to be split up now and put in homes. He wanted them to stay together and wondered could the prince help. Mr. Waters wasn’t sure how we should respond to him either.

  Mr. Waters hadn’t mentioned Helen again and I hadn’t broached the subject with him, fearing the worst, that Helen was right and he really was angry with her. I felt he might be as Helen believed, inflexible, and once you’d done your dash with him, your dash might stay done, like Mummy’s father who had cut off his own daughter.

  “What to do?” Mr. Waters said to me in relation to the letter. He sighed. “It’s clearly very difficult for this poor lad. Let’s talk to H.R.H.”

  The prince came down to the office mid-afternoon and Mr. Waters told him about the boy’s letter. “Oh, that’s terrible, Waters. Will we have the opportunity to meet him?”

  “I don’t think so, sir. He’s from Melbourne. He brought his brother and sister in to see you when you arrived.”

  “I want to find out how I can make a donation to their estate.”

  “Yes, sir—though I’m not sure that there is an estate.”

  “Well, find out what to do. I’m sure there’s a way we can set up a trust that ensures they have food and lodgings until this boy reaches his majority. From my personal funds, mind, not the government’s, or Grigg will tie it in knots and the boy will never see a penny.”

  I was stunned by his generosity.

  “Yes, sir,” Mr. Waters said. “The thing is, the boy is twelve. His majority is a decade away, sir.”

  “Of course it is,” the prince said then. “You’re right. What are they to do? We can’t let three children starve to death because of my family’s war. We will not.”

  After he left, Mr. Waters looked at me, beaming with pride.

  That same afternoon Dickie came down to ask Helen and me if we would care for a game of volleyball. “It’s officers against the prince’s men,” Dickie said. “Or me against David. Anyway, it would be awfully grand if the teams included girls.” He grinned. “By order of H.R.H., I’m afraid.”

  When we got up to the main deck, I saw they had rigged the net to run from the lifeboats to the main guns and drawn a court in chalk.

  The prince smiled. “I’ll be Maddie’s partner. Helen, you can have Dickie, which is a big advantage given his sporting prowess.”

  “Ha!” Dickie said. “Come on, Helen. Let’s make short work of these two and then we can have a drink.”

  Dickie served the ball to me, figuring I was the team’s weakness, I’m sure. It was a long way back from the net and I had to turn and run but I knew I was closer than the prince. Still, I saw he looked as if he might try to return instead of me.

  I yelled, “Mine!” as I would with any other player, forgetting for a moment who he was. I hit the ball with my upturned wrists. I was still facing backward and so didn’t know if I’d got it over the net.

  The first I knew of it the prince was clapping as his cousin had missed the return. “Well landed, Maddie,” he said. He turned to me then and smiled. “You are quite the extraordinary young woman, in more ways than one.”

  “Sir,” Helen said then.

  “Yes?”

  “Are we playing volleyball?”

  “Possibly,” he said, still looking at me.

  And then we all stopped because the little wallaby Digger appeared at the top of the ladder to the lower decks and then hopped all the way across our court. I didn’t know how he knew not to jump into the ocean.

  The prince laughed. We all joined him.

  The sun was low in the sky and the sea was burnished bronze and moving softly beneath us. I thought I would never be in a more beautiful place in life. The prince’s face, ruddy with the sun, broke into that smile when he saw Digger. It lit up the entire world as far as I was concerned. I smiled back, so proud of myself right then.

  He was still smiling as he served the ball. Before he moved to the other side of the court, he said quietly, so only I would hear, “I want you on my team, Maddie, always.”

  That smile of his, that boy’s smile, would melt the hardest heart and my heart was anything but hard.

  My heart was as soft as the down feathers on the crow outside my window, as soft as the eyes of Digger the Wallaby.

  We are all doomed, probably.

  * * *

  That night in bed, I wrote to Daddy.

  Firstly, Prince Edward is nothing like you thought he might be. He is not a dandy or a flibbertigibbet. Mummy may actually be right about him. He is enormously kind to those who have little. Wherever we go, he makes a beeline for the injured soldiers and the grieving families, and he just listens to them. He seems to understand people’s suffering and I think he takes it all onto his shoulders. I would say he feels terrible about the war and the suffering.

  The big news from me is that I have an idea for a story. Helen, who you met in Sydney (she was the one who worked for Vanity Fair and knows your poetry) knew Mr. Waters during the war when he was injured in France and she was an ambulance driver in a hospital. They are like the heroes from a novel. He is like Mr. Rochester, although she isn’t as loyal as Jane Eyre for some reason, so might prove difficult to figure out. But she is heroic. I’m sure she is. I just need to get to the heart of the story to be sure.

  I haven’t started writing yet, and it may not go anywhere but I find myself liking Mr. Waters and Helen immensely.

  Anyway, I’m not sure I’ll ever write it but it strikes me as a story people might actually want to read!

  I hope you are feeling well, Daddy, and the boys are looking after you in my absence.

  With all my love,

  Maddie

  * * *

  The weather turned bad the next day and everyone was sick except Dickie and me, who were more fish than human, as Dickie said. We had rough seas from around ten in the morning and we shut up the offices and spent our hours in the main deck lounge watching a fierce battle the ship fought to overcome the sea. The prince remained in his stateroom and then moved to Dickie’s room because the motion bothered him less there, Dickie said.<
br />
  In the night, I woke to hear a mighty groan of metal and then what sounded like a loud slap. I thought the ship had cracked in two. I rose from my bunk, put on a gown, and left my cabin and went to the bridge. It was a difficult journey owing to the motion of the ship. I looked at the deck and saw no one was out there now. The ship was not in two pieces at least.

  “What are you doing here, miss?” the first officer said to me when I came up the stairs to the bridge.

  The admiral turned to me. “Get her below, Ensign.” He looked angry.

  “I thought we’d stopped,” I said.

  “Green water on the deck, sir,” I heard one of the sailors say, his voice nervously loud.

  The ensign took my arm to escort me from the bridge. “The admiral ordered the engines cut,” he said quietly. Even the young ensign looked afraid. “It’s the only way we’ll get through. But I’m sure we’ll be all right now that he’s on deck, miss.” He smiled weakly. “Neptune wouldn’t dare sink us while the admiral’s awake and staring him down.” His eyes widened. “Though even the admiral’s not seen seas this big, he says.”

  I told the ensign I could find my own way back down to the sleeping cabins.

  The prince himself was coming up the stairs to the main deck as I was going down. He must have been woken by the noise too. “Well, here’s the weather,” he said, looking quite relaxed, if pale. He’d been sick all day, Dickie had told me. “Don’t worry, Maddie. The old salt won’t let me drown. My father would bring up his body from the depths just so he could cut off his head.”

  He kissed me on the cheek and smiled.

  “Sir,” I said.

  * * *

  By the next morning, the sea was so calm you wouldn’t believe the night before had happened. In the far distance, I could see the cliffs of the coast. I hadn’t slept again until the weather settled at around four, and then I’d woken with the sun and found Mr. Waters already at work in our office—Helen was there too with Colonel Grigg as water had got in and ruined the press office overnight.

  Colonel Grigg looked up cheerily enough to greet me. “Maddie, dear girl,” he said. It was the first time he’d addressed me since we’d set out.

  Mr. Waters and Helen had their heads down. They were like blocks of ice that would break if they came together. There seemed little hope they would ever resolve their differences. I still didn’t even understand what the differences were.

  Colonel Grigg stood suddenly. “Helen, darling, we’re supposed to be up on the bridge to help him with the weekly address,” Colonel Grigg said. “Quick.”

  They left. Helen hadn’t said a word.

  “Are you quite all right Mr. Waters?” I asked after they were gone.

  “Of course, Maddie,” he said. He looked anything but all right, his face grave.

  “You don’t look yourself, sir,” I said, genuinely concerned. “I know it’s none of my business but, Mr. Waters, Helen didn’t mean to hurt the prince’s feelings.”

  He looked confused for a moment, and then said, “Oh, the other night. Of course she didn’t. That’s of no consequence.”

  I nodded.

  “The fact is, we can probably all celebrate.”

  “Sir?”

  “Helen. It’s confidential at the moment, but Ned told me early this morning that he’s proposed to Helen and she’s accepted his proposal.”

  “I beg pardon?” I think I said but Mr. Waters didn’t answer, just made his face smile and went back to whatever had been totally consuming his attention on his desk.

  Twenty-six

  PARIS, 1997

  On the way back to the city from the aerodrome, Mark drove to the Pont de l’Alma tunnel on the right bank.

  It was a part of Paris you wouldn’t expect to find in Paris, all concrete and bitumen, softened only by the dozen or so bunches of flowers people had left on the roadway above. Other than the flowers, there was nothing to communicate anything gentle or beautiful; nothing of Diana at any stage of her life was there, except its ending. Nothing would warn you it was dangerous.

  Mark parked in an alley and then went to get some shots. Victoria peered into the mouth of the tunnel. The walls were lined with once-white tiles, now grayed with exhaust fumes.

  As she walked back out, she saw a copy of The Sunday Journal on the ground with a photo from weeks ago, a haunted Diana, those big kohl-rimmed eyes in that narrow face, looking as if she knew what was coming.

  Victoria was standing on the bank outside the tunnel, watching the cars. She moved back farther. It was a cool night, the earlier rain cleared. Looking up, she saw there, peeking up above the trees, the Eiffel Tower.

  Had she looked up and seen it? Victoria wondered. After the crash, had she known she wouldn’t live? Was she thinking of the two boys, longing for just one more moment with them? She was with strangers. She died with strangers, as alone, ultimately, as she’d ever been.

  Victoria found tears in her eyes again. If she indulged them, she thought, they would never stop.

  * * *

  When she checked in at the hotel, the receptionist gave her messages. Claire and Ewan had phoned.

  From her room—hardly space for a bed and tiny shower, but redeemed altogether by what she knew would be a view over slate tile roofs to the Luxembourg Gardens in the morning—she called Ewan first. “The vigil at the palace is getting bigger,” he said. “There’s been nothing from the family, though. Nothing at all after the first statement.” Ewan sounded a bit lost.

  “Charles was here.”

  “I know, but he hasn’t said anything. And there’s been nothing from the Queen. You know what they did?”

  “No.”

  “Sunday. Balmoral. They went to church.”

  “Well, it’s what they’d do.”

  “The rector didn’t mention Diana, Danny said. You’d think nothing had happened. He got a couple of shots of the boys.”

  Victoria felt queasy suddenly. The boys. They were photographing them. “The Guardian’s blaming the tabloids.”

  “Everyone’s blaming the tabloids,” Ewan said. “Even the tabloids. Harry says there’s no flag at half-mast at Buckingham Palace. He reckons it’s a story. Actually, there’s no flag at Buckingham Palace at all because the Queen’s not there, but he’s going to run it as tomorrow’s lead. I don’t think it’s a good time to do them over, but his instincts with them are better.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I just . . . I just think it’s all a bit sick now.”

  “It wasn’t us, Victoria. No one could have predicted this.”

  “I went with Mark. To the place.”

  “What was it like?”

  She looked out into the Paris night. “It was like nothing, in a way. There are flowers. The thing is, I don’t want to write any of it. I don’t feel objective. I can’t be objective,” she said.

  “You’re seeing everything. Just write that. Write what you’re seeing. It will be enough.”

  “Will it?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  Victoria wasn’t so sure.

  After she got off the phone and had a shower, it was nine p.m. She sat down to write, hopeful as always that the words would come and form themselves together to mean something.

  * * *

  When she looked up from her laptop screen, it was after midnight. She had written and edited, written and edited, and the time had flown. She didn’t want to read it over again. Her writing was changing, she knew, and she didn’t seem to be able to stop it happening. She had no idea if it was any good anymore.

  She stood in the mirror sideways and looked at her belly. Other than the test results, you’d never know she was pregnant. She was queasy, it was true, and nervous, perhaps more emotional, and no period, but other than those things, which could a
ll be placebo effect, she was exactly the same. Perhaps she wasn’t pregnant, she thought then. She’d get another test when she returned to London.

  Ben would still be on set in Bath. They were filming the night scenes there. He was staying overnight, he’d told her. If she was back tomorrow from Paris before he arrived home, he wouldn’t even know she’d gone, except Ewan had told him. He hadn’t called all day. Normally, he would have. He was angry, she assumed—angry that she’d gone at all, and now, as he’d see it, perfectly righteously angry because she hadn’t told him.

  She filed the story she’d written for The Eye with Ewan rather than the subs desk, hoping he was still awake to read it.

  She called Ben’s cell and left a message. “I had to travel after the news today. Talk soon. Love you.”

  He called back a minute later—between takes, he said. “What did you want?” he said. His tone was curt. She was right. He was angry.

  “I’m in Paris.” She was lying on the bed in a T-shirt and her underpants. She looked at her belly and felt like crying. She bit her lip.

  “Princess Diana?” he said. He didn’t mention the call with Ewan.

  She felt her shoulders hunch around her ears. “Yes,” she said. “They want me to cover it.”

  “Okay,” he said, although his tone suggested it was anything but.

  “I am sorry, Ben. Last night, today, not calling. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  “Okay. I’m sorry too.” His tone softened. “Marriage is a big change for anyone but this is even harder.”

  “In what way?” In truth, she’d been wondering the same thing. She loved him, didn’t she? He was everything she wasn’t: brave, larger than life, funny. She loved him. Didn’t she?

  “Because of me and what I do. I’m used to it, but I forget that you’re not. I’m going to do something about it.”