Lost Autumn

by Mary-Rose MacColl

  The moment passed. “I’m really fine,” I said when Helen stood and made to catch me if I fainted. “Just tired.”

  Dickie came into the dining room then to say that he and H.R.H. were playing tennis and did Helen and I want to join them?

  “Oh God, Maddie, let’s,” Helen said. “I’ll start seeing double if I have to read another newspaper story about the flowers on the table at the banquet last night.”

  “Why?” Dickie said. “What was wrong with them?”

  “They were flowers native to Western Australia and apparently that’s important.”

  “I don’t remember them,” Dickie said.

  “No, but that doesn’t stop the newspapermen noting them.”

  Like Helen, Dickie didn’t remark on my absence the night before. Perhaps, I decided, my attendance the first night had been the aberration and they didn’t expect me to have been invited. I wondered if the prince had told them what had happened. Perhaps they all knew, I thought.

  When we went outside, the prince was already on the court serving balls to no one. He was dressed in his usual sports attire and he smiled and said good morning. It was the first time I’d seen him since that night in his room, and it was as if nothing was different between us. And yet, everything was different.

  My thoughts were a jumble. I had told myself I loved him and he loved me and it was our love that had led to what happened. But the moments of fear I felt had no home in love, and love surely was not full of shame, I thought. The way he had been, animal and frightening. Surely that wasn’t love.

  We played a set. I don’t know how I managed. I kept looking at the prince. He had once been so kind. I kept searching for a sign, some acknowledgment of what had passed between us, but he gave none. There was nothing of the boy about him now to my eyes.

  The prince partnered with his cousin. Helen and I were no match for them. Dickie suggested we split the teams. “I’ll take Helen. You can have Maddie.”

  “No,” the prince said. “I’ll have Helen.”

  Dickie looked at him and then came to my side of the court. I didn’t understand how the prince could do this.

  Dickie was terribly kind to me, I noticed, although I wanted the prince to be kind, not his cousin. And then the prince caught my eye once and he smiled sheepishly and gave me a little wave, and I thought perhaps we’d be all right.

  Still, I was terribly confused.

  Mr. Waters came by on his way from the garages to the office. He was dressed in his suit pants, shirt, and vest, his tie around his neck was not tied.

  “Welcome back, stranger,” the prince said. His voice was very loud.

  Mr. Waters looked over.

  “Your turn for tennis, Rupert,” the prince shouted. “You can play with Maddie and I’ll play with Helen. Dickie needs a break.”

  “No, I don’t,” Dickie said. “We’re fine, aren’t we, Maddie?”

  “Actually, sir, I have things to do,” Mr. Waters called and kept walking.

  “Oh, come on, man, are you scared of losing?”

  “No,” Mr. Waters said. “I just need to see the admiral about something.”

  “Is this about the King?”

  Mr. Waters turned around. “Yes, sir, I’m afraid it is. There’s been a further cable about India. Please don’t concern yourself. We’re still hopeful.”

  The prince laughed, more a sneer. “Come on, Ruples. Play tennis instead. My father’s not going anywhere.” He was drunk, it occurred to me then. Something was not right about him.

  Mr. Waters had stopped. “I’d love to, David. Just not now.” And he resumed walking toward the main house.

  The prince was standing at the edge of the court now. I watched as he took a ball from his pocket, tossed it high in the air, then slammed it toward Mr. Waters. It hit him in the back with considerable force.

  Mr. Waters hardly flinched. But he turned and said, “You have to learn to control yourself.”

  He kept walking toward the house.

  Helen didn’t go after Mr. Waters. None of us did. We all just stood there.

  “It was a joke,” the prince said finally.

  No one spoke for a few moments and then Dickie said, “David, you have to say sorry to him.”

  “Why?”

  “You hit him with the ball on purpose. Why would you do that?”

  “He lied to me. He wrote to his father about me. And he’s a liar.” The prince was looking at Helen and then at me.

  “He’s your most loyal man and you know it,” Dickie said. “Now, go and say sorry.”

  “‘Loyal’?” And he looked from me to Helen again. “Ha! Let’s play,” the prince said.

  “Not me,” Dickie said. “Not until you’ve made up for that. That was beyond the pale.”

  “He didn’t care.”

  “If you think he didn’t care, you’re blind, old chap. Of course he cares. He’s your man, David.”

  * * *

  We left Perth that afternoon to travel overnight to Pemberton. I was feeling even more wretched as what I’d done settled in my consciousness. I was sure that my telling the prince about Helen and Mr. Waters had angered the prince and increased his rage toward poor Mr. Waters.

  I spent the afternoon in the office with Mr. Waters, pretending to be drafting letters, but my mind wouldn’t focus.

  Mr. Waters looked over his spectacles at me. He was very tired, I thought.

  “It seems I need to speak with you, Maddie,” he said.

  The winter sun was slanting through the window, illuminating in deep red the leather armchair and the dust motes above it before heading out the other window to soften the view of the trees.

  I felt guilty, as if I had let Mr. Waters down, as if he knew what I’d done.

  I felt afraid too, for I knew what had happened to Ruby Rivers. “Mr. Waters, I’m very sorry. It wasn’t—”

  “What?” he said. He was looking at me. “What on earth have you done, Maddie?” He was smiling. “I only wanted to tell you that H.R.H. is busy working on his remarks for Tuesday, so he’s asked me to go over the letters with you on this trip.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry. I was thinking of something else.” During the sea journey from Sydney, the prince had taken to talking directly to me if there were changes to the letters I’d drafted. I only involved Mr. Waters now if I had concerns. The prince was using Mr. Waters to avoid me after what had happened.

  “Mr. Waters, can I ask you a question?” I said then, desperate to understand what I’d done, fueled by my shame and worried now that I had hurt poor Mr. Waters.

  He put his pen down, nodded. “Yes?”

  “Do you know why the prince hit you with the ball this morning?”

  My voice was unsteady. Mr. Waters regarded me carefully.

  “Maddie, you are a certainly one to ask difficult questions, and that is no exception.” He sighed. “The prince is under enormous strain. And we have all this.” He gestured toward the papers on his desk.

  Mr. Waters frowned. He wasn’t one to take drink, but he’d taken drink that afternoon, I noticed. The whisky decanter was out on the table and there was a glass on his desk.

  He looked sad then, staring out the window as the trees rushed by.

  “When we were boys, my grandfather—my mother’s father, that is—made me a rocking horse,” he said finally. “He carved it himself from a single piece of wood. It was for my birthday. He painted it black and white, after the racehorse that had won for the King at Ascot.”

  He smiled. “I’ve never sculpted myself, but ever since, whenever I see a tree stump or a big log I think back to how he created a horse from that lump of wood. He carved its legs and body and head. He made a horsehair tail and mane and real leather reins. He mounted it on rockers.

  “On the day of my birthday he couldn�
��t be there. He was a doctor and he had surgery. He left it for me and I thought I had never seen a thing so beautiful. I think I didn’t get off for the whole day.

  “The next day, David and Bertie came for my birthday party. They gave me a picture atlas, I think. David got on the horse. He could see how much it meant to me, how proud I was.

  “‘I want it,’ he said. He was five or six at the time, and I suppose a five-year-old might say that, mightn’t they? But after he left, my father said it would be a lovely gesture to give David the horse. Even his nanny had said, ‘David, you can’t have his horse,’ but my father served the King. He knew what our responsibilities are.

  “So I gave it to him. I did what Father said. My grandfather was honored, he said, that the prince would have the horse. My parents said I’d been such a good friend.

  “Do you know, I don’t think I ever saw David play on the horse? It sat in the nursery and then went up to the attic.”

  He smiled again sadly.

  “Once, when we were boys, he told me my father was the most stupid person he’d ever met. And you’re just like him, he said. He didn’t mean it. He said it to wound me, for I was older, and he didn’t like that I could do so much more because of age.

  “This may seem strange but I have always thought he would trade places with me if he could. It’s not something I would say about the King, and perhaps as H.R.H. grows into himself, it will be less the case. There is a steeliness in his father I haven’t yet seen in the son. I was frightened of the King as a boy, and I was never on the receiving end of his temper. I used to imagine growing up with that. I often thought perhaps that’s why David . . . Oh, I don’t know.

  “His life, Maddie.” He had put his pen down now and he was looking across at me. “We were in France together. I never saw him shirk a difficult task. He needs me. You know?”

  He looked crestfallen. I didn’t dare say anything.

  “Helen doesn’t understand that this is what I have to do,” he said. “Ned’s a different kind of man. But I was born to this. Helen doesn’t see value in that, not in any way. If only she did . . .”

  I had all but forgotten the story I’d planned to write, my stupid, childish Autumn Leaves, but I looked at Mr. Waters now and I understood what had happened to tear them apart. It was this, his sense of duty, his most endearing quality, that was also a terrible weakness. It meant he was unable to act when Prince Edward lashed out that morning. And he was also unable to act to show Helen she mattered to him more than the prince. And perhaps she was right; perhaps she didn’t.

  I also knew now that there would be no way Mr. Waters would take my part if the prince decided against me. I was all alone with what had happened. That was the truth.

  “I think H.R.H. will bring change,” Mr. Waters was saying. “I think he will change the way we see the monarchy. But that’s not the question you asked. The answer is, I don’t know. Every now and then, he just gets angry with me. I do my best to ignore it.”

  “He’s a cad,” I said, my voice angry, not at what the prince had done to me but at the way he treated poor Mr. Waters.

  “He’s the Prince of Wales,” Mr. Waters said, collecting himself. “We’ll speak of him with some respect.”

  All lives are conscripted. If there is divinity, if those Jehovah’s Witnesses and Latter-day Saints and Pentecostals are onto something, then God either has a nasty sense of humor or a penchant for cruelty.

  Thirty-seven

  LONDON, 1997

  It was the following Saturday now, the day of Diana’s funeral. Victoria arrived home after lunch. She used to love this walk from the station up to the flat in the afternoon, the smells of cooking coming down from the houses, making her wish for the warmth she imagined lay within them. It was what she once thought marriage might be, one of them cooking dinner for the other, sitting in the kitchen sipping red wine.

  When Victoria tried to imagine that scene now, she felt despair. She knew she needed to act. She just didn’t know what action to take.

  She’d planned to watch the funeral on the television at the Ainsleigh Arms with colleagues, but instead she’d walked to Hyde Park alone and, from there, she’d wandered the parks until she found a spot. She was on her own as part of an enormous crowd. It was strangely soothing.

  She could have been writing the story, she thought. She could have been covering this, the biggest news of her life, probably. At first, she felt the pull of it, that need to bear witness, to describe to others what she saw, stretching always toward the truth of a thing. She thought of phrases and words for what was around her, but she soon let them go and gave in to the experience. It was a relief.

  She was not in the front of the crowd but she could see enough as the coffin passed on its way to Westminster Abbey. She’d have been in the media scrum if she were still on the story. She wondered if that’s where Ewan was. He’d taken over from her and hadn’t once been resentful about it. He’d made a joke about putting Des on the story, but she knew he wouldn’t do that.

  When she opened the front door, she thought she was alone, and in truth she was relieved more than anything. She hadn’t seen much of Ben in the days that had passed since they’d fought again, and she had no idea what she would do now. The baby. That’s what kept coming into her head. They were having a baby. She’d made herself not think about it. She hung up her coat and slipped off her shoes and walked up the stairs to the kitchen.

  “The prodigal returns.” Ben was sitting in the kitchen.

  She jumped.

  “God, you startled me,” she said. “I didn’t know you were home.”

  He didn’t get up, didn’t turn his head to acknowledge her.

  “Ben?”

  “Yeah,” he said, still not looking at her.

  “I didn’t know you’d be home.”

  “Where have you been?” he demanded. He turned to her now, a grimace on his face.

  “Work,” she said. “Ewan wanted me to edit a piece for the magazine.” She’d had to cut down the Kate Winslet interview because it would no longer run as the cover story. “I went in early and stopped on the way home to watch the procession.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes,” she said, feeling guilty now, as if she had done something wrong. She wasn’t lying, but she felt as if she was. “The funeral . . . Diana.”

  He made a noise, almost a grunt. “I spoke to Ewan’s assistant today. Turns out you’re going to Australia next weekend, which came as news to me. It made me look like an idiot, Victoria. I’m here because of you. You think I want to be in that stupid movie?”

  She didn’t respond. She was about to say, I haven’t had a chance to tell you, but she didn’t.

  “I talked to Cal again,” he said.

  “About?” she said, not sure where this was going.

  “About us. He said I’m letting you get out of hand.” The way he said it. The words themselves. Did his lawyer actually say that? Victoria had never met Ben’s lawyer, but she couldn’t believe anyone would say that.

  “Ben?” She sat down opposite him and tried to make eye contact. She was finding herself afraid again. Without thinking her hands went to her belly.

  He noticed that but didn’t remark on it.

  “We’re moving, Victoria,” he said. “We have to.” He looked a little more like himself now, around the eyes at least. “I can’t protect you here. I thought if I told them we were getting married, they’d show you some respect . . .”

  “I wish you hadn’t told them,” she said, before realizing that would only make him more angry.

  He looked at her as if she didn’t understand the most simple thing. “I told them because Cal thought it would help. But it seems you’ve become interesting in and of yourself, Tori.” He handed her a copy of The Daily Mirror. “Page three. You’re the page-three girl.”

  She o
pened the paper and saw the picture. It wasn’t her face. It was her backside. They’d taken a picture; it must have been in the park at the top of the street. She’d been running and she was bending over in a stretch and her running shorts had pulled down enough to see her underpants. The headline was: HOT VICTORIA. Does boyfriend Ben know she trots it out at the park? the caption read.

  Victoria just stared at the picture. She couldn’t speak.

  “I told you to let me handle this. But you knew better. You wouldn’t move. You wouldn’t have security. Did you want this?”

  Victoria looked at the picture again. They’d used a telephoto lens. The photographer could have been mile away. No amount of security would change that. This had nothing to do with being rich enough to lock yourself away. She was about to tell him as much but something made her hold her tongue.

  She took a breath in. She thought she might be sick. It passed.

  “So now I’m in charge,” he said. “Enough fucking equality.” He was not himself. Or perhaps he was himself and the other Ben was the act.

  She didn’t know anymore.

  She only knew that now she was in danger.

  Her baby was in danger.

  “My bodyguards will take you to work tomorrow,” he said matter-of-factly. “You drive from now on, no public transport. I’ve asked Cal to buy the place I looked at while you were in Paris. We’ll move as soon as we can. You’ll just have to cancel Australia.”

  “Hang on,” Victoria said. “I don’t like this, Ben.” She gestured to the picture. “It’s me they’ve photographed here, not you. I don’t like it, but I’m not going to fix it by hiding.”

  “Fuck, Tori!” He stood then and took a step toward her and she thought she might faint. She saw his hand go up to strike her before the blow and she knew, suddenly.