“That’s something that will be dealt with at the proper time,” Lord Finfall said. His tone conveyed that he would be the one deciding when it was the proper time.
Marlowe locked eyes with him. She had come to dislike the old fossil. She couldn’t imagine the man dealing with a wife or daughter. She wanted to ask him if his wife had ever had an orgasm.
“It’s something that needs to be dealt with now,” she said, “before we step into a courtroom and discover we are all pulling in different directions. Is there any question in anyone’s mind about putting on a case in which we show the late Prince of Wales as an abusive husband?”
Seven stone faces. She could have been talking to the faces on Mount Rushmore.
Trent gave her the professional smile of a funeral director telling a grieving widow the price of a casket.
“Naturally, we will follow the princess’s instructions on that matter.”
Now, what the hell did that mean?
Tangled, tangled webs.
All the misery, unhappiness, and loneliness she had felt ever since her wedding-day seemed to flood over her in an agony that was unbearable.
She sank down onto the floor, and still cuddling the doll in her arms bent her head and wept so hard that her whole body shook.
—BARBARA CARTLAND, THE PROUD PRINCESS
41
Tower of London
Six months after the wedding, pregnant with my first child, I threw myself downstairs.
I stared at the words I had written and wondered how I could explain to the American lawyer why I threw myself down a set of stairs in an attempt to kill myself when I was pregnant with a future king.
How would I explain it to my son someday? What words do I use to explain to a child that I was so sick, confused, and desperate that I tried to harm myself at a time when my first duty was to protect the child I carried?
In some ways, hiring this attorney was a mistake. I was already seeing that. Unlike my British lawyers, who were too polite to make me take the scabs off my hurts and expose my wounds, she insisted upon making me confront the past. It would be difficult for someone like her, who had worked so hard for success, to understand how being addressed as “Your Royal Highness” was not an instant formula for happiness.
She had asked me before she left our last conference to make a list of the things that occurred during my marriage.
Loneliness. I was surrounded by people but all alone. There was no one I could share my miseries with. No one I could talk to. Family, friends, they all wanted the fairy tale to work, they didn’t want to hear that it was a nightmare for me, and so I didn’t want to burden them. When I hinted at it, probing for an opening to let them know how terribly lonely I was, they sped right past it and would babble on about how wonderful it must be to be the Princess of Wales and have the world at your feet.
Crying. Behind closed doors I cried my eyes out, wiping my tears and powdering my red nose before showing my face in public. There were days I just couldn’t handle, the pressures were phenomenal and I just broke down. I felt a duty to perform and not let people down.
Sick. Physically feeling ill was the worst of it, knowing that there was something the matter with me. And there was something wrong. I’m just beginning to realize what damage the bingeing-vomiting cycle did to me, to my body and my mind; it ripped holes in my thinking, my thought processes, holes that aren’t filled even now.
What happened after we returned from our honeymoon?
I guess one of the first things was that my bingeing and then bringing it all up came out of the bag—in a manner of speaking. I tried to talk to my husband about it, but he just stared at me. He had heard of such a thing, but had no comprehension that it was done by “normal” people. And his wife, a future queen, had to be “normal.” There was no room in his vision of the world, in his entire experience, for his wife to be anything but absolutely normal. Bingeing and vomiting were not in the royal vernacular. Maybe no one had ever been sick before.
One evening when we were dining, after he had been on a hunt, he looked at me as I took a bite of pheasant. “Is that going to reappear later? Pity, my gun handler thought I had brought it down with quite an excellent shot.”
“You are a shit!” I exploded. He gaped at me—his server, who was about to place a piece of bread on his bread plate, also gaped at me. In his entire life, no one had raised their voice to him. I swept my dinner plate off the table and stormed out of the room. The moment I was out of his sight, my anger turned in on me and I raced for the loo to deposit his excellently shot bird.
* * *
MY THOUGHTS HERE WERE interrupted by a servant telling me that my American attorney had arrived. As we sat over coffee and tea once again, I told her about the pheasant incident.
“It was the first time I called him a name. He was profoundly shocked, but things got worse after that. He gave me no sympathy, no understanding, not an ounce of compassion for my hurts and fears. Just before the dinner incident, we had been at a public appearance together. We were standing, watching children do a dance, when I suddenly felt faint. I leaned against him and passed out. Later, he was in a fine fit. Rather than having sympathy for the fact I had fainted, he told me I should have done it in private.”
Marlowe nodded. “Keep the dirty laundry out of sight?”
“Exactly, show no weaknesses, no emotions, no tears, that stiff-upper-lip thing. Everything in the public eye was to be staged, arranged, like you set up a display of historical objects in a museum.”
“You were being treated as an institution rather than a person.”
“Yes, exactly that, an institution. And that’s how he dealt with me, at arm’s length, never really getting in close. At first I responded with fear and was evasive toward him, not wanting him to know I was bingeing and throwing up, keeping my emotions all bottled up, but one day the lid blew off and after that things were increasingly hostile, my outbursts became more frequent.”
“He exploded with anger at you, too?”
“I wish he had, I would have been able to deal with it better, but mostly he treated me like a parent would—no, more like a schoolmaster dealing with a rebellious child. He was disapproving rather than sympathetic. He continued on with his own life as if he were still a bachelor, and I’m sure he would have been much happier if he had stayed single. One can’t truly understand the frustrations I felt. Even after my … my attempts to harm myself, after experiencing a painful labor carrying my first son, my doctor decided labor had to be induced. But the birth was not done immediately because we had to find a date that would suit my husband’s polo schedule. There I was, in great discomfort, emotionally distraught on top of a troubled pregnancy, and we had to schedule the birth of the next heir to the throne to fit my husband’s polo practice.”
“You became more and more frustrated when you couldn’t break down his wall of calm, cool disapproval.”
“Yes, that was exactly it. I shouted for understanding, for him to deal with my fears and pains, and his response was to frown and tell me to get myself together, not, ‘Is there something I can do?’ It was always just, ‘Pull yourself together, don’t disgrace the family.’”
“Did you tell him you were angry and frustrated at his lack of concern?”
“I shouted it, I begged for understanding. Finally I began to throw things, vases, dishes, anything I could get my hands on. Once I smashed a Ming Dynasty piece. I wanted to wipe that smug frown off his face, but he would just shake his head and tell me I was a child. ‘Oh, what is the matter now?’ he would ask. Finally, I couldn’t take it any longer, I didn’t want to live.”
“You tried to kill yourself?”
“I don’t know what I was doing, my mind was spinning. No matter what I did, he condemned me rather than show any sympathy.”
“From what you’ve told me, your husband’s own emotions were lobotomized by his upbringing, hardly being held, trained not to show emotions, trained not to have emotio
ns.”
“Yes, that was the thing, he was able to smother his feelings, or not to have them, I suppose, but mine stuck out all over me.”
“We can take your husband’s attitude even a step further. He was indoctrinated that having emotions were defects in character. You were doing things, expressing sentiments and emotions, that were not just alien, not just contrary to how he had been raised to act, but that he had been programmed to view as character flaws.”
“Yes, I can see that, that’s why he ran back to her, she was more like him, another one of those lobotomized people. Acting out my anger by throwing things and shouting at him, that came later. In the beginning, months following the honeymoon, I kept it all in, all the hurt and pain. I didn’t strike out—instead, I cried a lot. I got pregnant and soon discovered that my role in life was to suffer in silence while my husband played polo and enjoyed his friends and lover.”
“She was still in his life?”
“She was never out of it. As soon as we were back from our honeymoon, he was getting together with her, inviting her for rides and hunts. I was stunned, shocked. He had flaunted her at me on our honeymoon and kept up his relationship as soon as we were back home. I had terrible nightmares about her. He rejected me, put me into a corner, and told me to stay there until I was needed for the next public appearance. It was duty! duty! duty! smile and be happy before the cameras even if I’m crying inside, while my husband did what he damn well pleased. You understand, it was his father, the Prince Consort to the Queen, who was at fault for my husband’s attitude. His father told him before the marriage not to be concerned if he didn’t love me, that it was permissible for him to take a lover.”
“When was the first incident in which you tried to harm yourself?”
“It was five or six months after we were married. I was pregnant and horribly depressed. I was married to a man I had been raised to idolize, a man I loved, but I was rejected by my husband and made to feel that the only reason he had married me was to be some sort of cow to produce an heir. I can’t tell you how I felt, I was suffocating. I felt terribly rejected, my husband bringing another woman into our marriage, I believed everything was my fault, that I was a failure, that I had disappointed my husband as I had once disappointed my parents. I turned it inside and it boiled inside me, the knowledge that I had failed everyone, that there was no reason for me to live.”
“So you threw yourself down the stairs while you were pregnant.”
“Yes, I did that.” She locked eyes with Marlowe. “That bothers you, doesn’t it? I understand you lost a child. Are you going to be able to deal with the fact that I was so distraught I risked the life of my unborn child?”
Marlowe’s face flushed. “The question isn’t whether I can deal with it but how other people will. I’m wondering how women on the jury will react. You didn’t just put your own life at risk, you risked the life of the child you were carrying, a child now that is heir to the throne.”
“It wasn’t like that, it wasn’t as if I thought about it and said, Okay, now I’ll throw myself down some stairs and kill myself and my child. If you have never been there, to that dark place in your mind where you become lost and you lose your sense of self-worth, you won’t understand that you can get to the point where life seems so much more painful and frightening than the peace of death.”
“I have to understand,” Marlowe said. “We are going to have a jury with men and women on it who have to be told the story in such a way that they won’t judge you guilty of your husband’s death because they have been prejudiced by other acts.”
“Why should that incident upset jurors? My child wasn’t harmed.”
“Some people have strong religious beliefs or are simply pro-life and would find it morally wrong for a mother to destroy a fetus—”
“Is that what you think I did? That I tried to murder my child?”
“I don’t think any—”
“You killed your husband because of that, didn’t you? I mean, he hit you and you lost your baby.”
“I lost more than my baby. I lost the chance to have any more children.”
“Does that prejudice you against me? If you were on the jury, would you think I was a baby killer?” The princess’s voice had risen.
Marlowe said calmly and quietly, “You are not a baby killer, your child was born healthy. I hate to use the word duty, but I have a duty to question everything so I can come up with the answers we need. You’re turning my questions into criticism and value judgments. We have to deal with the fact that you tried to kill yourself when you were pregnant—and the potential effect that will have on jurors.”
“I can tell you that I wasn’t thinking rationally. I wasn’t thinking about hurting my baby, in all honesty, and you will find this hard to believe, but I wasn’t even thinking about harming myself.” She looked away, staring beyond Marlowe, back at the past. “I was in that dark place in my mind. It was so painful, sad, I wanted to cry and cry, and I did, but there was no relief after I cried, the pain of living was still there, my nerves were raw, I felt so … so unnecessary, so confused, life hurt, that’s all I can tell you, life hurt and I wanted to stop the pain.”
“Did you talk to your husband about your feelings of wanting to kill yourself?”
“I told him how I felt. His contribution to my mental health was to lecture me on how I have to get control of myself. I bawled like a baby that morning and he asked that same question again: ‘Oh, what’s the matter now?’ I told him I didn’t want to live. He said I was crying wolf again and went to dress for his ride. I stood at the top of stairs and then … then a darkness washed over me and I fell down the stairs.”
“Can we say you fainted?”
“No, it would be a lie. I was distraught, confused, but I was conscious when I went down the stairs.”
“Were there any other, uh, incidents?”
“You mean did I try to kill myself? No, I didn’t go that far, but I did try to hurt myself. Did they tell you about the glass cabinet?”
Marlowe shook her head.
“I threw myself into it, into the glass.”
“You threw yourself into glass. Were you hurt?”
“Not seriously, just cut a bit. And then there was the penknife.”
I had been keeping my voice level, but I could feel myself slipping now. A tremble had come into my voice.
I looked away, ashamed. “I took his penknife and cut my legs.” I gasped for breath. “He just watched, just watched as I cut my legs and the blood ran down. Then he went out to play polo.”
The shock on her face turned my stomach. She didn’t understand, she was strong, she had never been to that dark place where there was no hope. I felt so stupid, so utterly worthless. My lunch expanded in my stomach and moved into my arms and legs, bloating them. I staggered away, hoping to get to the loo before my lunch made its second journey in my throat.
42
Soho
Dutton got out of a taxi and rang an apartment bell. He identified himself when the query came over the speaker and said, “Tell Lady Grey I’m here.”
She came out ten minutes later, a sexy woman, perhaps in her thirties, dressed provocatively, too much breast showing, too much leg—thigh—showing, whorish-red lipstick sparkling with glitter, all perfect for a night out on the town.
“Get your tush back upstairs, Henry,” Dutton told Lady Grey. “Get a coat to put over what little there is of your dress.”
“You told me to dress sexy.”
“I said sexy, not lewd. I want to get into a hotel room, not a jail cell. They’re not going to let us into a respectable hotel with your boobs hanging out and your dress up to your … whatever it is you have under that dress. Do you still have a bat and balls, or did they get chopped when you got the boob job?”
“You’re so coarse.” Lady Grey shook a finger in his face. “You promised me a full-page spread in Burn for my services. I’m playing the new La Cage show. I need coverage.”
/>
“Would I lie to you?” Dutton was happy the transvestite didn’t think too much about the question as Lady Grey went back up to get a coat.
He checked his watch as the taxi dropped them off in front of Marlowe’s hotel. The news conference the princess’s defense team was holding was scheduled to take place in an hour. Add a half hour for the conference and another half hour for the American lawyer to bail out and get back to the hotel, and that gave him at least two hours.
Plenty of time for a leisurely search of her room.
“Mr. and Mrs. John Grey,” Dutton told the check-in clerk.
“Lord and Lady Grey,” Henry said.
“Welcome to our hotel, Lady Grey.”
Lady Grey gave the clerk a grin and lewdly licked her lip. Dutton was tempted to stick the pen he was using to sign with in her eye.
“We want Mike the Bellman to show us up to our room.”
“Mike has been sent on an errand for a guest. We can have one of our other bellmen take you up.”
“We’ll wait for Mike. When will he be back?”
“Sir, we—”
“We’ll wait for Mike. It’s an old superstition I have.”
“We came here on our honeymoon,” Lady Grey interjected. Her tone and expression left no doubt that the honeymoon had been a threesome and Mike had been the third.
“When will Mike be back?” Dutton snapped.
“In about an hour.”
“We’ll wait in the lounge.”
He grabbed his “wife” by the arm and marched her toward the lounge, checking his watch on the way. An hour’s wait still left him plenty of time.
Mike the Bellman had provided tidbits about the extracurricular activities of celebrities and government bigwigs over the years. Permitting Dutton to use a hotel master key to get into the American attorney’s room was beyond the realm of what Mike would do for money. But Dutton had learned long ago that what people wouldn’t do for money, they would for sex. And Mike had a special prurient interest that Lady Grey could satisfy.
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