Lost Autumn

by Mary-Rose MacColl

  Like the rest of the carriage, the bathroom was on its side. It was lined in white marble, and what was once a wall was now the floor. I took a monogrammed towel, which was still hanging from the rack that was now on the ceiling. I turned on the faucet—the water ran straight onto the floor, not into the sink—and soaked a corner of the towel in cold water. “Here,” I said. “You wipe your face and I’ll find your shoes.”

  “Maddie,” she said in a broken voice.

  “Yes?”

  “Do you hate me?”

  “I could never hate you, Helen,” I said, and I meant it. I hugged her then as tight as I could. I felt so much. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had. Ever,” I repeated and did my very best to smile.

  I went back out to the prince’s bedroom and managed to find Helen’s shoes, a toe sticking out from the upturned bed. I knew I had to get her shoes on her and get her out of the chamber and back into our office.

  I could still hear voices above us.

  The prince: “I can’t let anyone in there until Rupert has cleared the sensitive papers. But we’re all fine. What about the carriage aft? Have we counted the government men?”

  This would buy us a few minutes at most. I went into the bathroom and said, as gently as I could, “They’ll be here soon. We need to get to the other side of the door.”

  Helen nodded meekly, let out a tight sob, closed her eyes, and began to pull a shoe onto her foot.

  Forty-one

  LONDON, 1997

  When Victoria arrived at the flat, she didn’t feel nervous. Ben would have calmed down, she was sure, although thoughts of his face at the window as she’d run, the focused determination in his features, could still make her heart race.

  She was glad Claire had insisted Ewan and Mac come with her now.

  “Harry says we’re going to cover you at home for a couple of weeks,” Ewan said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think we’re going to give you a bodyguard,” Ewan said. “Can you sing like Whitney?” He started on the long wail of the chorus from the movie The Bodyguard.

  Victoria smiled. “That’s ridiculous, Ewan. I won’t need that.”

  “Ben has power, Victoria, and money. Guys like that . . . We’re going to get you through this,” he said. “We’re all going to get you through this.”

  It was this kind of talk from Ewan, from Claire, that unsettled her most. It was as if they knew something she didn’t.

  Victoria told Ewan and Mac to wait outside the door to the flat, which she’d leave ajar. “If you come in, it will just make it worse,” she said. She realized she was speaking quietly so that Ben wouldn’t hear.

  Ewan started to object, but Mac put his hand on Ewan’s arm and said, “I’m right here, Miss Byrd, you understand?”

  She nodded.

  “Let her do it her way, Ewan,” Mac said. He was the perfect person to have here, she realized.

  But Ben was contrite, gentle, sorry for what he’d done. There would be no violence from him, Victoria was sure. It was hard to believe there ever had been any. Perhaps she’d imagined it, she thought, or perhaps she really was so stubborn she would drive anyone to fury.

  At any rate, she hardly needed Mac and Ewan. He didn’t know they’d accompanied her. She wished now they hadn’t. She could do this on her own, she thought. If only everyone would leave them alone, perhaps they’d be all right. It was the photographers that had made this so difficult.

  “I’m about ninety percent what she gave me,” he was saying, talking about his mother. “But there’s the other ten percent.” He sat down, drank from his water glass.

  She watched his Adam’s apple rise up and down with swallowing.

  “And it’s the ten percent we gotta be scared of.” He was opening and closing his left hand in a loose fist on the table. She noticed that and felt a moment of fear; it passed. He wasn’t that other Ben anymore.

  “I haven’t been back on set,” he said. “I’ve just been here thinking about what I did. I’m so sorry.” Tears ran down his cheeks as he spoke.

  Victoria thought she understood now what it felt like to know a person and not know them at all. He was Ben, the boyish film actor she’d fallen for. And he was someone who hit women. If she tried to concentrate, to keep those two thoughts in her mind at once, she couldn’t. His smell. His smell was a smell she loved. It confused her now.

  There was only a moment when she saw that other Ben. “Were you at Claire’s?” he said coldly.

  She didn’t answer.

  Victoria probably wasn’t the first woman he’d hit, she thought now, and she wouldn’t be the last. It had taken a while for her to believe that. This was the insidiousness at the core of violence, she’d read in a story Claire had dug up for her. It was about funding schemes for domestic violence, and Claire had written it when she was with The Eye. You start to second-guess yourself, one woman said. You think it must be you. And when they look at you with those eyes you fell in love with, you believe them. And your own confidence is so smashed by the blows that you just believe them, whatever they say. Claire said it explained everything.

  It didn’t.

  “I know all that,” Victoria said now. “But you have to leave, Ben. I’ll make you leave if I have to.”

  She was trying to be kind.

  “You and whose army?” he said then—not angrily, just trying for his old humor, she thought. His eyes were pleading, if anything. Please don’t do this, they were saying. I love you.

  “My army.” Mac was standing in the doorway to the kitchen. He and Ewan must have been worried by what Ben said. Strangely, it hadn’t worried Victoria. Was she blind to what he could be like? she wondered. Again she wondered: Were they all seeing something she couldn’t?

  Mac moved closer. Ben stood and Victoria could see what would happen next.

  “Don’t!” she said.

  Mac stopped where he was. She looked at Ewan, who’d come in behind Mac. “This is not what I wanted,” she said. “This is not fair. He . . .” She was crying, she realized. “Ewan, I want you to wait for me downstairs.”

  “I won’t,” he said fiercely. “You can’t think I will.”

  “Please,” Victoria said. “Mac, you go with Ewan. I’ll be down directly.”

  “Victoria . . .”

  “Please,” she repeated.

  Before he left, Ewan turned to Ben. “One hair on her head and I’ll kill you myself, slowly, and using every bit of power I have as an editor. I know you understand me. I know you understand that, you cunt.”

  “Fuck off,” Ben said. But he was calm, Victoria knew. The fact she’d asked Ewan and Mac to leave meant he wouldn’t hurt her, not now, not again. He wouldn’t. She was sure he wouldn’t.

  Was that what it took, bringing Mac along, a physically stronger presence? Was this all violence was, a show of strength? Surely not, Victoria thought. Surely we’ve evolved further than that.

  After Mac and Ewan went outside, Victoria went and sat at the table opposite Ben. He refused to meet her gaze. His eyes were full of tears.

  “So,” she said. “This really is the end of our road.”

  “Were you scared of me? Is that why you brought those guys?”

  He looked up and she saw what she’d loved in him at the beginning, that softness.

  She still felt the pull. “I brought them because I did. You have to get help, Ben.”

  “Of course I will. If only—”

  “No,” she said, tears running down her face. “You have to get some help.”

  “Please, Victoria. I’m going to change. I promise. Please give me a chance. Just one chance. I love you so much. I will be better. I promise I will be better. It was my dad. It was how he solved his problems. It’s not me. I can change.”

  Later, when she thought back, she wished
that she hated him. It would have been so much easier. But she didn’t hate him. She even loved him still that day. She loved him still and couldn’t bring herself to stop loving him, not now.

  “All right,” she said. “All right.”

  Forty-two

  PERTH, 1920

  I’m sorry I let you down,” I said. “I wish I’d slapped him.”

  Helen laughed out loud. “Is that all you did?” she said. “Failed to slap the heir to the throne? It’s hardly a crime, Maddie. I did ask you, when we first met, not to turn out a Fenian.”

  “I wish I’d stood up for you,” I said. “I should have.”

  We were back at Government House. We’d left the train and had gone back by motorcar. The overturned carriages would be unhooked, their contents packed into the remaining upright carriages, and the train would return to Perth once the track was repaired. The track had subsided in the rain, someone told us, because the carriages were too wide and heavy for the bend.

  We were sitting on the bed together in Helen’s room. I hadn’t left her side. She was remarkably composed. I don’t know if I wanted to comfort her or if I wanted comfort from her. I couldn’t put it all together, but I was sure it was my fault, all that had happened. Telling the prince about Helen and Mr. Waters, going to his room instead of refusing. I blamed myself, for all of it.

  And now Helen had been with the prince.

  On the way up the stairs with Helen, who was still shaking at that stage, I had heard Colonel Grigg on the telephone, saying all was well and we were lucky that the train had been traveling slowly. “We went down an embankment where the ground was soft. Not a hundred yards farther along, there was a steep cliff. We’d have lost him if it had happened there.” I didn’t know who he was talking to. Seeing the colonel there reminded me that Helen and he were engaged, that she didn’t love him. And poor Mr. Waters, who loved her truly, who she loved truly, had now seen her with his prince.

  Life was altogether too cruel, I thought.

  The doctor had seen to Helen’s forehead. She had a bruise and a cut but the cut didn’t need stitching. Other casualties included the guard who’d come to explain the delay—he had been between carriages when we went over—and a government minister who’d been locked in the toilet when the train went over and whose ego was very bruised.

  James had been knocked unconscious in the office. Helen and I had found him and helped him out of the carriage.

  In truth, we were all still shaken up. By the time we came out of the train, the prince had already been escorted off to a waiting car. We hadn’t seen him since the crash. I heard one of the stewards tell the housekeeper that we would be delayed an extra day in Perth at least. The prince’s schedule for the next day had been canceled. The admiral had ordered a medical examination for him. I heard Dickie telling Colonel Grigg that the prince was furious at being made to submit to an exam when there was nothing wrong.

  “Helen, I wish . . .” I sobbed then, for I was thinking about myself, what had happened to me. I still hadn’t told Helen.

  “Are you all right, Maddie?”

  I nodded. “Are you?”

  “Of course,” she said. “What a nuisance this all is.”

  I didn’t understand. “So you are in love with the prince?” I said.

  “David? Don’t be daft.”

  “I saw.”

  “You saw what?”

  “In his carriage.”

  “You saw what?”

  “You were there.”

  “Yes.”

  “You and the prince.”

  “No,” she said emphatically. “David is a poor boy with no idea of what being a grown-up person is.”

  “So what were you doing? Pouring tea?”

  She laughed. “I don’t know if I needed to pour tea. He’s not like that with me. He was talking, but . . . he . . .

  “Hmm,” she said then. “How do I put this? David is a very odd person. You probably know a little of that. I still wouldn’t say I understand him. He’s not like that fellow in your cafe, but he’s nothing like Rupert. Nothing like Rupert. Rupert is so very . . . decent.”

  She smiled weakly. “What should I tell you?” She looked hard at me. “I should tell you the truth.” She lit up a cigarette, dragged an ashtray across the table, threw the match in, took a long draw, and breathed it out.

  “On the ship on the way to Australia, David had a breakdown. It’s all hush-hush and you mustn’t tell anyone because the Prince of Wales can’t possibly break down; of course he can’t. Rupert and the admiral very nearly turned around and went back to England because when I say he had a breakdown, I mean he entirely collapsed. And he’s the Prince of Wales. You couldn’t have had him do any formal functions the way he was. He would not come out of his stateroom. It went on for a week. He didn’t eat. I’m fairly confident he hardly slept. He looked like a ghost by the end of it, like the shell of a person.

  “It was Ned who refused to let them go home. He contacted the PM, who spoke to the King, and the King commanded the admiral to continue with the tour.

  “The prince was largely unaware of all this. But that’s why Rupert and the admiral are so careful with him. It’s very hard to understand if you haven’t seen him when he’s not well.

  “When he recovered, Rupert and the admiral settled down but Ned told me I was to keep a careful eye on the prince and report any signs of weakness. I had got to know David better anyway, just as you have. I saw him do some enormously wonderful things, showing this great generosity of spirit he has. We lost a sailor near Barbados. He came on deck as soon as the alarm sounded. He joined the search and, when it was in vain, he demanded the entire ship attend the funeral. He wired the sailor’s family. He will visit them when he returns to England, and see they are cared for. He will do things like that in a minute. There is this spirit in him that is childish in a way but still generous.”

  She took a draw on her cigarette, held in the smoke, breathed out. “He and I were working on a speech, probably Barbados actually, and he started to cry. I mean, really cry. He was sobbing like a child. It had something to do with his family. I don’t remember what exactly. But he looked at me and he talked in a very little voice and asked would I please give him a little cuddle. Actually, he said ‘widdle cuddle’ in a baby voice. It sounds odd to say it aloud to you, but it didn’t seem odd there with him, if you know what I mean.

  “Honestly, there was nothing except affection in it. It was like he needed a mother, like any child who’s feeling a bit lost. I gave him a cuddle, just as I might a child. And so, from time to time, when he felt the need, I would visit his chamber and he would just lie in my arms on the bed and cry his heart out. Half an hour of that and he would be fine. I didn’t mind. Afterward, he was always calmer, better able to manage the tour. Sometimes I’d even sing a lullaby, just as a mother might. It was really very sweet. I never said a word to Ned. I’ve never told anyone until now, not even Rupert.

  “Anyway, as you know, he was devastated when Freda wrote and broke it off. That’s why I was worried about you. I thought he might transfer his feelings for Freda to you. You even look a little like Freda, tiny with all that hair. She’s smart too, and young. You have such a future ahead of you, Maddie, and I thought . . .”

  She looked entirely undone. I didn’t know why. But I felt a stab, wanted to tell her the truth. “Helen?”

  “Yes?”

  I hesitated, then said, “Nothing.” I just could not make the words come out of me. “So that’s what you were doing in his room today?”

  “That’s right. Except . . .” She paused.

  “Except?”

  She grimaced. “Today, he tried to kiss me—a proper kiss. A man’s kiss, not a child’s.

  “Perhaps he was just lonely. Perhaps he was just seeing if he could. But I said we must stop. The look on his face, Maddie
. Such pain. I was afraid then, afraid of what I’d be asked to do, because I knew I didn’t want to do it.

  “Luckily for me, the train derailed. I didn’t have a teapot handy, as it happens, but I was saved by the narrow gauge.” She smiled bitterly.

  “So Mr. Waters is mistaken,” I said slowly.

  “Yes, he is.”

  “Well, tell him then.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “For one, he won’t believe me.”

  “Of course he will,” I said.

  I knew I wouldn’t tell Helen what had happened to me now. What happened to me hadn’t happened to her. She’d been alone with the prince many times and it hadn’t happened to her. She’d managed to make sure it didn’t.

  Helen was crying, I saw, her breath catching. “He . . . I shouldn’t have let him kiss me.”

  She paused then, her hand over her mouth, before composing herself once more. “I don’t think I can stay now, Maddie. I don’t think I can work with him anymore. And more than that, I have been here these three months, and the truth is that Rupert and I will never be able to resolve our past. His loyalty will always be elsewhere. If I didn’t know it before, I surely know it now. I had hoped so much that his goodness would be enough, but it won’t. And if I don’t leave, Ned will fire me.”

  “He doesn’t have to know about you and the prince. Also, you’re engaged to him. He can’t fire you.”

  She just looked at me. “Of course he’ll know. I’m sure Rupert will tell him. And we’re not engaged. I told him no.”

  “But he told Mr. Waters . . .”

  “I know. I did say yes to him. Stupid! It was after that night on the ship when Rupert was angry with me, and Ned came to offer comfort. He apologized for the way Rupert spoke. He was so very gentle with me and I thought, Yes, I could do this, I could marry you. But even before you spoke to me, I knew it was a mistake. I have told Ned no. Several days ago. He’s angry with me. He will love this as an excuse to fire me.”