Christmas at the Palace

by Jeevani Charika

  Since they were already married, they had dispensed with the marriage ceremony, but the lighting of the lamp was retained.

  The kapuwa looked at his watch, waited for the auspicious moment and signalled that the drummer should start. Amma handed them a lit taper. Kumari took it in her right hand and Ben put his own right hand around hers. When the kapuwa, his eyes fixed on his watch, gave them the signal, they lit one of the wicks in the lamp together. A symbolic lighting of the way for their life together. The small choir of three sang a traditional song of blessing. Something Kumari had only ever heard at weddings.

  Once they had lit the lamp, Kumari and Ben put their palms together and bowed in front of her parents and his father. Finally, the Prince of Wales broke into a smile and said, ‘Welcome to the family, Kumari.’

  Kumari grinned back. Now, it was done.

  Making Merry

  Chapter 30

  (Present day)

  Prince Benedict and Kumari prepare for their first Christmas together

  They’ve been married for seven months now and the Duke and Duchess of Westbury, Prince Benedict and his wife Kumari, seem more in love than ever. The couple were spotted last week buying Christmas decorations at London’s famous winter market in Hyde Park.

  Prince Benedict tried on a novelty Christmas hat and Kumari bought several sets of wooden ornaments made by the Southall Woodturners’ Guild.

  ‘She was really interested in how they were made,’ said Terry Smith, who was running the stall that day. ‘All our ornaments are handmade using wood from broken or abandoned furniture. She particularly liked the traditional wooden baubles and bought three full sets of them.’

  Kumari was well wrapped up against the cold in a Lucy Squire coat and matching hat and gloves from Burberry. She completed the outfit with a pair of comfy boots. The swing-style winter coat concealed the Duchess’s waistline, sparking speculation that she might be pregnant.

  Photo caption: Prince Benedict makes Kumari laugh by trying on a Disney Anna hat, complete with plaits.

  Turn to page 12 for a selection of the best wooden Christmas tree ornaments.

  First Light News

  Kumari, Duchess of Westbury, opens new neonatal wing

  The Duchess of Westbury, known to most as Kumari, will have one of her rare solo engagements today when she opens the new premature baby unit at St Kildare’s Hospital. Since marrying Prince Benedict earlier this year, Kumari has taken on more and more active royal duties.

  Despite initial scepticism in some parts of the media, the thirty-one-year-old British–Asian former doctor has taken to public life remarkably well. She seems to be popular with the public, particularly in her native Yorkshire where she is rumoured to be in the running for Yorkshire Woman of the Year.

  There were those who predicted that an institution as old and revered as the monarchy would not be able to cope with a senior royal who was not white, but Kumari and Prince Benedict have navigated any difficulties with grace and charm. No one who has seen the two together can doubt that they are in love. Millions tuned in to watch their wedding and the royal family remains more popular than ever.

  As she opens the neonatal unit today there is much speculation whether the fact that she is attending this event by herself, rather than in support of another senior royal, is a hint of pregnancy news to come.

  Photo caption: Prince Benedict and his sisters HRHs Princess Helena and Princess Ophelia arrive at the US Embassy reception last week.

  Kumari pulled on the tasseled cord to a smattering of applause, and formally opened the new ward. As she did so, she couldn’t help but reflect on how much her life had changed over the last year. From Letsho to Los Angeles to London, from a doctor living in a small flat to a princess in a palace, at times she almost didn’t recognise her life. She’d like to think she was getting used to this princess thing, but the last seven months had hardly been smooth sailing. Some days she missed her old life desperately. She was used to doing things directly, which the new rules governing her life no longer allowed. The rules drove her crazy. How many times had she burned to speak her mind, to declare herself for a cause . . . To say what she actually meant for a change, rather than being carefully diplomatic at all times? She stifled a sigh. Frustrating though all this was, it was what made it possible for her to be with Ben. And Ben was worth it.

  Cameras flashed and Kumari smiled for them. The unveiled plaque announced that the new neonatal unit had been opened by HRH the Duchess of Westbury. She was fast becoming the go-to royal for opening hospitals. She didn’t mind. She felt at home in the clinical setting.

  She posed for the photos. The formal pose came easily now, after so many months of practice. Back straight, arms slightly away from body, tilt head, smile. She still had a way to go before she looked as natural as her sisters-in-law did, but she was getting there.

  The photos were important. Wherever she went, she took the cameras and the world’s attention with her. Thousands of people who had never heard about this unit would check out a page to see what outfit she was wearing and end up finding out all about the work they did.

  Her favourite part was when she got to talk informally to the staff at the end.

  One woman cheekily asked if she would be in need of maternity services soon. Kumari laughed it off without responding. The nation seemed to be obsessed with how soon she and Ben would have a baby. Let them obsess. She knew better than to comment, even in jest. Anything she said would immediately be reported in the national press and analysed in minute detail. She and Ben had agreed to leave it a year before they started trying. She was still getting used to the madness of being a public figure. She wasn’t ready to tackle pregnancy as well.

  *

  The whole visit lasted less than two hours, but being ‘on’ the whole time, watching herself every minute, was tiring. By the time she got back to her car, she was exhausted. Her personal assistant, Annie, and private secretary, Barry, were both in the car. Barry handled her diary and formalities. Annie made sure she was looked after personally.

  ‘Well done, ma’am,’ said Barry. He had been assistant private secretary to Princess Helena before taking up the post with Kumari. With a track record in the military and then higher education, Barry was a little intimidating, but also, Kumari had found out, a really nice guy under the thick eyebrows.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  Annie had come from the charity sector. Like Kumari, she was still learning the ways of the royal household, which was something Kumari found comforting. Annie handed her a glass of water, which she gratefully sipped. ‘That’s it for now, right, Barry?’

  Barry inclined his head. ‘Yes, ma’am. Would you like to go through the rest of the notes from today while we travel?’

  ‘There was a message on your phone, ma’am,’ Annie interrupted. She passed Kumari her phone, which was always left with either Annie or Barry when she was on formal visits.

  Kumari glanced at the screen. It was a message from Ben. Quiet night in tonight? Race you to the bottom of the pile of Christmas cards to sign.

  She smiled. There was a lot she hadn’t fully assimilated about being part of the ‘senior royals’. One of them was the sheer amount of correspondence involved. People wrote to her all the time. She loved reading the letters, which were always vetted by Barry to check for anything dangerous or abusive. The letters she actually got to see were wonderful notes from people telling her how she had helped or inspired them. Sometimes people sent in pictures their kids had drawn. She would have liked to write back personally to all of them, but there was so much of it that she had to let Barry’s team handle that. But she liked to scrawl a short note whenever she could.

  Lately, there had been a huge number of Christmas cards to sign. Previously, she had assumed that only a fraction of the pile were actually signed by the royals themselves, but it turned out not to be the case. She seemed to have been signing ‘Kumari’ on cards for days. ‘Netflix and cards?’ was a st
anding joke between her and Ben now.

  Other people got married and spent the first few years of their lives getting to know each other, slowly growing into each other’s lives until they were a unit. She and Ben didn’t have that luxury. They’d had a short honeymoon, but had been busy with royal engagements, and lessons – those endless lessons – for Kumari, ever since.

  Where other people bickered about who put the rubbish out and whose turn it was to do the shopping, they argued about the rules – which ones she had to follow, which ones she could bend. There weren’t many she could bend, really, but she tried anyway, because she hated being hemmed in the way she was. Ben was very happy with the rules now, but he hadn’t always been like that either. She thought he rather liked arguing the toss with her, teasing her and making her laugh. She certainly wouldn’t have had it any other way.

  She texted back You’re on, handed the phone back to Annie and turned to give Barry her full attention.

  He handed her a folder.

  ‘We thought you might like to respond to the top one personally.’ Annie grinned.

  Kumari opened the file, puzzled. On top was a cover note:

  Dear Kumari,

  Thank you so much for all you’ve done for us. Rita.

  PS: You might recognise someone on page 2.

  Below it was the first report from the Boost Her! project. Smiling, Kumari skimmed the first page – a description of the opening of the first Boost Her! health centre, there was a picture of the buildings, data on the number of patients seen already and the number they were expecting to cater for when they reached capacity. There was also an inset about the little cottage industries that had sprung up around the project – women who made extra money by providing lunch packets or laundry services for the staff and the trainee ambassadors. Boost Her! was already boosting the local economy simply by being there, which was an unexpected bonus.

  Curious about the cover note, Kumari flipped over to page 2. There was a photo of a local Lesotho girl, in a pristine Boost Her! project tabard, with a toddler on her hip.

  Kumari looked closer. She knew that smile. The last time she’d seen it, she had been a footsore volunteer. ‘Oh my goodness, is that Hopeful?’

  Hopeful, the original inspiration for the Boost Her! project. The little boy on her hip must be her son, Nimo. Kumari read through the description of how Hopeful was one of the first cohort of Boost Her! ambassadors to have completed her training. Nimo, the baby who had nearly died, looked happy and healthy.

  Kumari stared at the photo and felt a sudden visceral longing for her old life, where she got to work at the bleeding edge of a health crisis and see the difference her work made on a daily basis. Even working in A & E, every patient she stabilised, even injury she bound up . . . everything made someone’s terrible day a little better.

  In the past, she’d have gone to an event for supporting women’s health, or for the protection of battered women and she would have got involved, raised money for them, spoken out in the press about the cause, volunteered her services as a doctor even . . . but there was a rule for everything when one was a royal. Ye shall not support any one cause above the others was a pretty big one.

  She stifled a sigh and reminded herself that she was still making a difference. Only now, she was doing it on a much larger scale. Raising money in hundreds of thousands, rather than mere thousands; forging links between charities so that they could amplify their impact; giving a voice to those who would otherwise go unheard. The trouble with scale, though, was it also needed distance and took time. She missed being up close to her work, seeing the impact she made daily.

  She looked back at the picture of Hopeful and her son. At least with Boost Her! she could see the result of her hard work. She might not be able to head up the project like she’d originally hoped to, but the project was going great guns. She smiled. It was all good.

  *

  Even though it wasn’t late, it was dark by the time Kumari got back home to Kensington Palace. She saw Dave in the corridor outside their apartments and smiled at him. He nodded back to her. If Dave was here, then Ben was home.

  When they got married, Ben’s grandparents had offered him a set of rooms, bigger than the ones he’d had before and on the ground floor, so that they had a private garden. Like all the apartments in Kensington Palace, the rooms had high ceilings and huge windows that gave them a sense of vastness. Kumari strode along and reflected that the sense of space wasn’t just down to the high, decorated ceilings. It was down to the actual size of the rooms. It took several minutes to cross some of them.

  It had been suggested to Kumari that she should redecorate it to ‘make it their own’, but apart from having it repainted, she didn’t see anything wrong with it, so she’d left it alone.

  This meant that all she had to do was decide what furniture she wanted. The apartments had been empty when they’d moved in. It turned out, the royals didn’t buy furniture. They commissioned it, received it as a gift or inherited it. She had spoken to a designer and run through some ideas and the man had then produced a catalogue of likely pieces in the royal stores for her to choose from. Being still new to opulence, she had tried to choose the least delicate and most practical items, but her house was still full of priceless things. She had been paranoid about breaking something, until Ben had gently pointed out that there was a ton more of the stuff in storage and that everything could be fixed by expert restorers, if needs be. She was still a little obsessive about coasters though.

  Kumari let herself in, knowing that her own CPS officer, Danielle, would join the rest of the security team watching the CCTV of the corridor and other exits as soon at the door closed behind her. Being constantly under surveillance was another thing she’d had to get used to. At least the security team could be relied upon to be discreet.

  ‘I’m home,’ she called. She hung up her coat. One of the things that she and Ben had insisted on was that they had some privacy, or at least the illusion of it. The security team had no surveillance inside the apartment. Although they had a housekeeper who kept things ticking over, they only saw her at their allocated appointments in the morning. The housekeeping staff came in and cleaned and prepped rooms while they were out. They also made sure there were fresh flowers in the main rooms every day, with a different colour scheme each day. Today, she noticed the colours were yellow and pink. Beautiful.

  ‘I’m in here,’ came Ben’s voice. She found him lying on one of the sofas, his knees hanging over the arm of it. He had his glasses on and was staring at a tablet. He was still in a suit, but had removed his tie, leaving his shirt open at the neck. Kumari smiled. This was one of her favourite looks on him.

  She took a moment to admire him. Her husband. She had been aware of him for most of her life. But it had never occurred to her that she could meet him in person. If someone had told her a few years ago that she’d be married to him – Prince Benedict, grandson of the queen – she would have thought they were on hallucinogenic drugs. And yet, here she was. No longer a doctor, working long hours in A & E, but a duchess, married to a prince. Some days her life didn’t seem real.

  Ben looked up and smiled. Her whole world lit up in response. If this was a dream, she didn’t ever want to wake up.

  ‘Hello, you,’ she said, padding across the vast spread of Axminster carpet. The sitting room overlooked the garden and was cheerful in the summer. Now, with the heavy drapes drawn and the huge Christmas tree scenting the room with pine, it felt wonderfully homely.

  Ben lifted up his head and shoulders so that she could sit down, then laid his head on her lap. She kissed his forehead.

  ‘What’re you doing?’ Kumari peered at the screen.

  ‘Looking for inspiration. I still haven’t got any gifts yet.’ He sighed. ‘Harrods has nothing fun. I’m looking at John Lewis now. Cheap, cheerful and silly, that’s what we need.’

  ‘And you’re looking at John Lewis?’

  Ben tipped his head back.
‘I’ve tried a load of other high street places, thank you.’

  She grinned at him and kissed him again. ‘Sure you have.’

  He reached up and touched her cheek. ‘Good day?’ he said.

  She shrugged. ‘Yes. I think so.’ She reached for the tablet. ‘I have an idea, let me see that.’

  He passed it over. ‘Ophelia said she’s coming down to see us, by the way. I’ve told security to let her through.’

  ‘That’s nice.’ That meant that her sister-in-law would be showing up any second now. She tapped in the name of a website that she’d used when she’d needed to buy Secret Santa gifts, back in the days when she still worked at the hospital. That kind of normality felt like a lifetime ago now. ‘Here we go. Try this place. It’s very cheap and very tacky . . .’

  ‘Ah. Perfect.’ Ben took the tablet off her and scrolled through the gag gifts. ‘Wow. This is great.’

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ said Kumari. ‘It seems a little . . . disrespectful.’ She still couldn’t get her head around why a family who could afford almost anything, would insist on buying the cheapest, most ridiculous presents for each other.

  ‘Yep. It’s tradition.’

  When she said nothing, he lowered the tablet onto his stomach and looked up at her. ‘Think about it,’ he said. ‘If we were allowed to get expensive gifts for each other, where would it end? We’re a very competitive bunch. It would get ridiculous really fast. This way, we’re forced to think about what we buy, but in a good way.’

  Kumari smiled. ‘That makes sense.’ She trailed her fingers through his hair, the way she knew he liked. ‘Does this “cheap gifts only” rule apply to you and me?’

  He closed his eyes. ‘Do you want it to?’ he murmured.

  ‘I’d like . . . a thoughtful present from you. Not an expensive one. Just a thoughtful one will do.’