Untold Story

by Monica Ali

  She has always been a press junkie, particularly a tabloid addict, right from the early days, and that was both a strength and a weakness. I would have denied her access to her swan song had she not countermanded, but would that have been right? In any case, the coverage probably penetrated even to the darkest jungles of Borneo, and my shielding would have been partial at best. I took as much as I could reasonably carry along with my clothes.

  Her initial response, on riffling through the newspapers and magazines, was as I had expected. I may have “saved” her from watching it on television but the pictures were there in full-color spreads. The boys walking with whey-faced bravery behind the hearse; the coffin, which was said (though no palace official confirmed it) to contain one of her outfits, chosen by them; and on top of the casket, a single word, spelled out in white flowers—Mummy.

  Is it possible to die of grief ? Apparently not. Were it possible, she would have achieved it that day.

  26 January 1998

  Her overwhelming grief. I record it for the sake of this process. And this process now does seem entirely necessary to me, this fleeting document more essential and sustaining than the array of pills in my bedside cabinet. I record it but I shall not dwell on it, just as, when she was able to hear me again, I pressed on her repeatedly the importance of not dwelling on their pain. The young do heal and mend. I said, You mustn’t track their progress incessantly, you mustn’t stalk them from afar. If you do, I told her, don’t feel resentful when you see them happy, smiling and thriving in the fullness of their lives. She bristled at that, as I knew she would, the idea she could be so selfish; but I could see also that it hit home: they would be fine without her.

  It didn’t end there, of course. It went on, cyclically. I could have recounted, in my mandarin manner, the reasons that led to her cataclysmic decision and led me to aid and abet the same. But it wasn’t the time. Why try to staunch an unstaunchable wound? I let it flow, and when I felt that it was ebbing, I made whatever poor and inadequate interventions I could.

  I apologized. That helped a little. More than I could have predicted. I talked briskly of the boys’ futures. That pulled her up a bit. More than anything, I tried to hold my nerve and remember the times when she was so seemingly out of control that I feared nothing would bring her back to terra firma again—the screaming, the hurling of heirlooms, the bingeing and vomiting, the cutting of her arms and her legs. There are very few aspects of life that remain private from a private secretary.

  She did survive those times. That which does not kill us makes us stronger, as they say. That’s a little glib for my tastes. Yes, she is tough, the toughest. But certain materials, as they harden, are always in danger of shattering. She knew it, and I knew it: she had had enough, more than anyone should be expected to endure, and it was my duty, my privilege, to help her escape—if I may resort to a cliché—the gilded cage.

  Amid the heartbreak, her life strewn out in column inches across the floor, it has to be said, there was some comfort and strength to be drawn. I was supposed to be in Washington, continuing the research for my book. I spent two weeks with her and day after day she sat, or sometimes lay, reading the cuttings and weeping. And eventually she began to take a little solace: she was loved.

  Whosoever had loved her previously had not loved her enough. There were many. I count myself among them. Although I escaped even temporary banishment from her circle (one of the few to be thus distinguished) I can recall some sticky moments when the fierceness of my attachment, my devotion, my unwavering loyalty, my willingness to talk on the telephone at three a.m., was called into question, subjected to her obsessive scrutiny. Many employees were sent to the guillotine (not, perhaps, as many as the press implied), severed not so much for any misdemeanor as for failing to take her fully inside their hearts. Friends fell by the wayside, cut off by the simple expedient of changing whichever of her private numbers she had given them. The causes, ostensibly, were wide and varied—a hint of betrayal, a perceived slight, a boredom setting in—but the underlying cause was always the same. A lack, as she saw it, of their true and undying love.

  As for the lovers. Well. As for them. They did not always come up to the highest standards. I think I may safely say that without jealousy clouding my judgment. I seek neither to excuse nor condemn them, but merely to observe the extraordinary difficulty of their task. Her need for love is as wide as that sky out there and as impossible for an unwinged mortal to fulfill.

  Does the love of an entire nation suffice instead? “Lawrence,” she said, “all these people. All these people . . .” and could go no further. I could scarcely believe it myself, although I had borne witness to that scene. The sea of flowers, the poems and letters, the candlelit vigil at KP. I saw them, children and adults, of every class, every color, every creed. I saw a policeman wipe a tear away. I saw an elderly man in a wheelchair whisper a prayer. I saw a woman in a sari lay a wreath. I saw a man in a Burberry coat lean against a complete stranger and sob.

  I cannot say what I felt that evening, after the official declaration of her death, when I had flown back to London. That night I stayed up with the mourners, I walked amongst them, shared their flasks and their sorrow and listened, now and then, to the stories they had to tell—of her visits to the hospital, the hospice, the homeless shelter, the anorexia clinic. I could think only of one thing: how I had taken her from them all. And I found myself appealing, to a god in whom I do not believe, that I not be judged too harshly for my sin.

  27 January 1998

  Of course my critical faculties were somewhat impaired. I was drained from the previous days’ exertions, and overwrought with emotion and nerves. At some distance now, I perceive it differently. In a way she was not taken from the people but delivered to them. For she became that night a pure emblem, of goodness and suffering. A people can own an emblem, far better than a flesh-and-blood human being.

  Her “death” changed the nation, so the leader-writers and columnists averred. It consigned the stiff upper lip to the annals of history. The Prime Minister spoke of her with a catch in his throat. The Queen broke protocol and bowed to the coffin.

  The Queen broke protocol. How amazing it is to me to write those words.

  There was a witch hunt, of course. The press and the public identified the culprits. She was hounded by the photographers, the paparazzi, and they were the ones to blame. They drove her to her erratic and risk-taking behavior, which culminated inevitably in her death.

  She wasn’t slow to see the irony there. “Are the press blaming themselves?” she said.

  But she took strength from the outpouring, which reached far beyond the bounds of our shores. Two billion people, so it is estimated, watched the funeral.

  28 January 1998

  Did I act for the best? I have teased apart that moral knot so many times and still it tangles up. All I can say in the end is, I hope so. I hope I did not do wrong. Ultimately the answer lies with her. If she makes a life for herself then I was right to facilitate it. But I will not be around to see. On the other hand, were I not under sentence of death, I could not have done what I did. To carry the burden of secrecy and responsibility over decades would have made it unfeasible for me, and too risky for her.

  So it goes around. One would hope that closeness to death brings some heightened sagacity. Perhaps when I start to feel very wise I will know that the end is near.

  There are times when I wake in the night, as if from a nightmare. I can’t recall a single dream anymore. If I do dream of anything it is surely her. I find myself falling into daytime reveries. I find myself yearning to call. We agreed that we would not, except in some extreme situation, pick up the telephone. “Even if I have an emergency, Lawrence,” she said, “I know I’ve got to find a way to cope for myself, after all . . .” She did not finish the thought but we both knew what she meant. It wasn’t that she was embarrassed by the prospect of my—of any—demise. Death has been deemed a kind of perversion and has been suitab
ly sequestered from polite society. But not by her. “You’ve been the most terrific help already, you know.” She kissed me on my bald pink head and giggled helplessly. “Oh God, Lawrence, what can I say? Anything I say to thank you sounds so ridiculous.” It had, in fact, sounded as if I’d been awfully helpful getting the picnic packed, bringing the car around.

  She hadn’t her brown lenses in. We were sitting on the couch together in the little white wooden house in North Carolina, and I was wrapped up entirely in the ultramarine of her irises. Her eyes are worthy of a sonnet. They are the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen.

  “Are you afraid?” she asked me.

  I shrugged. I’ve been too distracted to think about it, I said.

  “I would be afraid,” she said. “Whenever I’ve thought about killing myself, I knew I’d never go through with it because I’d be too scared.”

  She can be as frank as a child.

  “But you must be afraid,” she said.

  I conceded her point. Yes, when I allow myself to dwell.

  She talked to me then of the old times, with such fondness that it felt like good-bye. We traded stories of our first meeting, of how when I had bowed to her, she had curtsied in return, that glorious spark in her eye.

  After a while she grew serious again. “I’d be too afraid to die, Lawrence. Now I don’t want to be too afraid to live.”

  29 January 1998

  The night that she swam out to her new life she was raw, wild, magnificent. I had sat in the boat for nearly an hour before I spotted her, wondering if it could be possible that she had changed her mind, wondering after that if the whole “little plan” had existed only as a kind of delusional seizure of my malfunctioning brain. Then the still dark waters broke and her arm lifted up and she waved. She swam steadily toward the boat while I looked nervously around, checking for the millionth time on the possibility of being seen. The Ramesses was the only yacht this far from the harbor, keeping that royal distance to preserve her privacy.

  I reached out my hand so that she could climb into the rowing boat. She nearly pulled me out; she had the strength of a tigress, if she had roared then it would have seemed natural to me.

  I asked her if she was sure. “Row,” she said.

  But she was too impatient with my method, the near-silent slicing of the waters, the technique that I had honed, and when she had struggled into the jeans and sweater I had brought for her, she elbowed me aside.

  I asked her if there was a possibility that anyone had noticed her get up (I meant, of course, her beau, although we had discussed how they would frequently take adjacent cabins because of his propensity to snore). She said that there was not. I asked her if there were any chance that one of the security team on night watch had spotted anything. “That poor oaf,” she said. “Asleep. I checked.” Even in the moonlight I could see the high color in her cheeks.

  She had given up her royal protection long before, fearing—at best—that the officers were used to spy on her. Her beau’s family had elaborate security arrangements, high cost, high tech, and hopelessly executed. It was a boon. The security cameras on the Ramesses were never turned on, her beau had ordered it, in case it should take his fancy to lock the door of, say, the dining quarters and tickle his princess (or one of her predecessors) on the table or the floor.

  She stood up suddenly and the boat rocked. “I’ve done it,” she said, so loudly that I automatically said hush. She laughed at that. It must have been many years since someone other than her husband had ordered her to pipe down. “Do you believe it?” she said. “I’ve done it. I really have.”

  30 January 1998

  I had flown down to Brazil a few weeks earlier to conduct the “recce.” The difficulty was knowing which one of the Pernambuco beaches would be closest to the Ramesses. After a few days with friends in Buenos Aires, they had flown to Montevideo to board the yacht and begin the sail up the coast of Uruguay. The superrich do not plan their vacations like mere mortals, like a page from a catalog. It was impossible to be sure of their exact schedule. So I scouted a few of the beaches, hired boats for a day in three using false identification, one can never be too cautious. I called her on her mobile when I was back in Washington and told her my preferred location, not the main beach, certainly. I told her—or tried to tell her—my reasoning, both strategic and tactical, in planning the retreat, first from yacht to boat, then from boat to land, and from the point of disembarkation to the interior. She swatted it all aside.

  “What shall I do if he proposes?” she asked. I said I didn’t know, but that she might have to accept. “Oh Lord,” she said. I said that naturally she must speak as her heart dictated but if she turned him down and thus curtailed the holiday it would also bring about the end of the plan. “Well,” she said, “it wouldn’t be fair to string him along.” It didn’t seem to occur to her that she had already been doing that.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, “I’ll make sure he doesn’t ask me.” I enquired how she meant to achieve this aim. “By using my feminine wiles, of course. You know, hints about the best way, the best place, to propose, keep it just out of reach for now.” All those cheap novels of hers may have come in useful after all.

  She was certain she could make the mooring at the exact location that I thought best. “I’ll work it in . . . what’s the word . . . subliminally. I won’t make it a big deal.” I hazarded that her wish was her beau’s command, or words to that effect. She said, “Lawrence, you know my trouble with men is . . .”

  She dropped it. It’s too big a subject.

  We were away not long after three and she reckoned though she was normally an early riser they wouldn’t think to check her cabin until about eight o’clock, thinking that she had decided to sleep in for once. That gave us five hours, and three hundred kilometers’ distance. After that, the search would be concentrated on the water, the beaches, the reefs. In the car she put her feet up on the glove compartment and wound back her seat. I thought she was going to sleep but she didn’t. She talked. I hardly knew what she said, and perhaps she hardly knew either. She scarcely drew a breath. I was fitter then than I am now and the rowing had not been a physical strain, easily manageable even if she had not insisted on taking over. But the drive was a demanding one, on strange dark roads, with my strange load, gripping the steering wheel so hard it hurt my hands. After a few hours she insisted that we switch. She drove and talked, small news and gossip about the friends she had seen in Buenos Aires, also a girlfriend who had terrible morning sickness, a film she had read about. In the first light of morning she wanted to stop and have breakfast and even browse some roadside stalls. “What about those beads?” she said, slowing the car. “That stall there. Are they made of some kind of seed?”

  Perhaps the enormity of the situation was too much for her to comprehend. It may have been the only way she could cope. I do not know how to account for it, her preternatural calm. I took the wheel again for the short distance to the motel where I had planned to take a break. It was perfect. The Brazilian “motel” is rather different from its North American namesake. It is more akin to the Japanese “love hotel.” It is a place you can rent for a couple of hours or more, and where secrecy and discretion rule the day. In this establishment, which I had previously scouted, one drives up to a kind of sentry box, where the check-in, such as it is, takes place. Money, naturally, must be proffered but no ID is required. One then drives into the motel grounds, set within a high-walled compound, and looks for the apartment number outside the row of garages, each of which is hung with a thick, opaque vinyl curtain from ceiling to floor.

  She clapped her hands and hooted as she took cognizance of the setup. “My goodness,” she said. “Lawrence, look at this, a proper tryst!”

  I drove into our garage, lowered the window, and reached for the rope and pulley that closed the curtain behind the car. I explained to her that this type of motel is to be found all over Brazil, a country in which it is not uncommon for people to li
ve at home until they marry, and that extramarital liaisons are frequently conducted in such an environment. More wittering from me, I fear, at that point, an attempt to cover my too-evident embarrassment.

  “How fantastic,” she said, as I located the door at the back of the garage that led to the apartment. “They’ve really thought this through. Nobody sees you get out of the car, nobody can see the car—how absolutely ingenious.”

  Before we went through the antechamber to the bedroom I hesitated, because I wished to explain more, and excuse. Words, however, failed me and all I could do was press on.

  The large round bed was, naturally, the centerpiece of the room. By the window there stood a recliner with adjustable foot stirrups, set up as if for a gynecological examination. Two television screens played “adult” channels, which I rushed to turn off at once. I apologized profusely, of course.

  “Why, Lawrence,” she said, stalking the perimeter, “I’ve never seen you quite so pink.”

  She examined the minibar, the wall-mounted tissue dispenser, the lubricant sachets, and wore a puzzled expression as she inspected what looked a bit like a diving board, which was positioned to jut over the foot of the bed. “At least I understand this,” she said, pulling back the sheet to reveal the mattress’s plastic sheath.

  I said to her that I would rent another apartment for myself if she preferred and that I had prevaricated about whether that would be better for her. “Of course it wouldn’t be better,” she said. “You’re not going to leave me on my own.”

  Mother never got over her disappointment that the knighthood she believed was due me failed to materialize. She couldn’t understand that I was simply in the wrong royal camp. That day, however, was all the reward I needed. I slept, or tried to, on the recliner and despite the farcical aspect of the arrangements, I was sorely honored that I was the one to be there.