Someday My Prince Will Come

by Jerramy Fine

  “Marmalade.”

  “What was Diana’s nickname for William?”

  “Wombat.”

  “What is her shoe size?”

  “U.S. or U.K.?”

  “Um, U.S.”

  “Size nine.”

  They could rarely stump me. I’d been reading about her for nearly twenty years and the answers just flew off my tongue. If only I had the same capacity for things I was actually meant to be studying!

  Still, I found the entire exhibit to be very emotional. I drifted through the displays of old letters, old passports, and old family photo albums; I peered into glass cases filled with her old school reports and well-loved stuffed toys; and I watched countless screens showing never-before-seen video footage from her childhood. It was heartbreaking.

  I eventually reached a large room that held dozens of Diana’s celebrated dresses and suits—many of which I had seen before when they first went on display in Kensington Palace. What always struck me about seeing her clothes on mannequins instead of in photographs was how very ordinary the pieces actually were. It instantly becomes clear to anyone standing before her empty dresses that it was Diana, not the designers, who filled the garments with such magic and vibrancy; it was Diana, and Diana alone, who made them worthy of the catwalk.

  Toward the end of the exhibition stood Diana’s famously beautiful wedding dress. I hadn’t expected it and I nearly cried when I saw it.

  People make fun of that dress and its 1980s meringue-style puffiness, but when I was a little girl I thought that ivory silk taffeta with its big bow, giant puffball sleeves, sparkly embroidery, never-ending layers of tulle, and its magnificent twenty-five-foot train was the most magical, most romantic fairytale dress I had ever seen. (Even now, I secretly kind of want those very same puffball sleeves when I get married. I don’t care if sleek wedding gowns are all the rage.)

  As a dreamy four-year-old watching Diana’s royal wedding for the first time, never in a million years did I think I would one day get to see that storybook wedding dress in person. And then with a sad twinge it occurred to me that the only reason this wonderful exhibition existed was because Diana no longer did.

  Finally, I entered a special area devoted to Diana’s ground-breaking charity work. The walls were covered with enlarged photographs of the tireless and eternally beautiful Diana engaged in her endless work with land mines, palliative care, families of prisoners, refugees, and asylum seekers. There were also colorful displays detailing the ongoing efforts of the newly established Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund61 and all the ways that the fund continues to champion the causes she held most dear.

  I stood for a long time in that section. For this was the thing I loved about Diana more than anything else. More than her stunning beauty and more than her royal title, I loved that Diana genuinely understood the importance of utilizing the unique and far-reaching power of being a princess.

  Wherever she went, for better or for worse, Diana knew the press would follow—yet she had the principles and the courage to use this incredible power to draw the world’s attention away from herself and toward those that needed it most. I often thought that if I were blessed with the same dazzling status, I could only pray to also be blessed with the same selfless courage.

  Somewhat shaken, I left the exhibition and headed to the house itself. With its stark Corinthian columns and classic façade, the exterior of Althorp was slightly imposing, so I was surprised to discover the inside of the house to be so warm and welcoming.

  I shuffled in behind the few other visitors, and began to marvel at the antique furniture, marble busts, crystal chandeliers, and the unbelievable collection of paintings—Rubens, Van Dyck, Reynolds, and Gainsborough, to name just a few. But despite all its grandeur, Althorp felt very much like a real family residence, almost like a real home.

  Eventually, I plucked up the nerve to venture outside through the Plea sure Gardens and toward Diana’s grave. Diana is buried on an island in the center of an ornamental lake known as the Oval. A path lined with thirty-six oak trees (marking each year of Diana’s life) leads you to it and nearby is a small arboretum containing trees once planted by Prince William and Prince Harry. It’s been reported that Earl Spencer once had a dream in which four black swans swam in the lake, acting as sentinels and guarding the island, but I didn’t see any black swans that day so I don’t know if he ever followed through on that vision.

  Amazingly, I was the only visitor near the Oval at that time. I sat on a bench at the edge of the lake and gazed at the water lilies surrounding Diana’s sacred, wooded island. It was a very sad and very surreal moment. And in retrospect, I’m glad I had it all to myself. Diana’s presence is what had balanced my personal universe. She had always been there, in my mind’s peripheral vision, for me to turn to when I began to question my own goals. And as I sat there, meters away from her resting place, the heartache I felt was overwhelming.

  I thought back to the first time I saw her walk down the aisle of St. Paul’s Cathedral to the first fairytale kiss she shared with Charles on the balcony of Buckingham Palace to the evening my silly college keg party was interrupted by the shocking news of a car crash in Paris. I thought about the fierce devotion she held for her two sons, and how she effortlessly mixed the glory of motherhood with sexual glamour—knowing that, as a woman, there was no need to downplay either one. I thought about her endless quest to alert the world to the plight of those infected with HIV and to the suffering of the homeless, and how she shined most radiantly when she was reaching out to those in need.

  The poverty I witnessed in India still plagued me and I often wondered what she would have done in that situation. Would she have stopped her chauffeured car to comfort all those children living in their cardboard homes? Would she have hugged that leper? Would she have postponed her New Year’s Eve celebrations to talk with the ragged villagers? I think she would have. And again, as I sat there, I made a silent plea that one day I might achieve Diana’s maturity, Diana’s grace, and Diana’s unearthly ability to look beyond herself in every situation.

  I thought about the tragic night of her funeral, the silent mournful crowds that filled Hyde Park, Tony Blair’s poignant reading, Elton John’s unprecedented performance in Westminster Abbey, and the wonderful, comforting words of Earl Spencer’s perfectly crafted eulogy. And slowly, as I watched the lake ripple and sparkle in the early summer sunshine, I began to feel at peace. And on some bizarre synaptic level, I knew that Diana was too.

  I’d been at Althorp for nearly four hours, and emotionally, I was exhausted. I was also famished. I decided to grab something to eat at the little tea house, quickly wander around the gift shop and bookstore, then begin my two-hour trek back to London. And so I began to meander leisurely back through the Plea sure Gardens, not really wanting to leave such a spiritually peaceful place, but knowing that I should.

  As I inched toward the stable block, I saw a tall, sandy-haired figure talking to one of the gardeners. I didn’t take much notice at first, but as I moved closer, I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was Earl Spencer himself! Diana’s own brother!

  Without thinking, I walked right up to him, introduced myself and began to tell him how much I admired his tribute to Diana. As we walked along the path, I told him how I had once written a paper for my speech writing class on how wonderful it was, how his words were so in tune with his grieving global audience, how it was perhaps the only thing that comforted me during that terrible time and how it has become a piece of writing that I have turned to repeatedly ever since.

  Then I caught my breath. What on earth had I just done? With all my royal research and supposed training, you’d think I’d be slightly more calm and collected when it came to impromptu meetings like these. But to his credit, Earl Spencer had listened politely to the entirety of my frantic American ramblings and never once made a move to escape.

  “Thank you,” he said graciously. “That’s very kind of you to say.”

 
I breathed a sigh of relief. You really had to admire him for not having me escorted off the premises by security.

  We had reached the entrance of the bookshop by then and he was instantly greeted by a retail-manager-type person who clearly needed to speak to him about something.

  “Lovely meeting you, Miss…”

  “Fine,” I answered.

  “Indeed. Lovely to meet you, Miss Fine.” And he disappeared into the back office.

  I floated around the bookstore in a daze. I had just spoken with Peter’s aunt’s brother. Coincidence? I think not.

  My trip to India had left me practically bankrupt, but I decided that I simply had to buy a bound copy of Earl Spencer’s speech. The tattered newspaper copy that had been taped to my makeup mirror for the last three years was hardly going to last forever.

  As I brought the speech up to the register, Earl Spencer appeared again.

  “Would you like me to sign that for you?” he asked. The cashier looked surprised.

  “I would love that,” I replied, more awestruck than ever.

  “What is your first name?” he asked, grabbing a blue felt-tip pen off the counter and turning to the first page of his speech.

  “Jerramy,” I answered, elated that we were already on a first name basis.

  “Jeremy?” he asked incredulously.

  “Yes,” I said patiently, “like the boy’s name. But spelled J-E-double-R-A-M-Y.” (Thanks again, Mom and Dad, for making so many moments in my life more awkward than they need to be.)

  To Jerramy, he scrawled, from Charles Spencer, 22nd July 2000

  It was proof.

  Proof in writing that I was moving ever closer to my royal destiny.

  And proof that perhaps Diana’s ghost was watching over me after all.

  Before catching my train back to London, I stopped at the newsstand and bought the latest issue of Vogue and a copy of Hello magazine. I really couldn’t afford such literary luxuries, but this day was Diana’s day and I knew she would have approved.

  The train began to move; I sat back in my seat, and with Earl Spencer’s autographed speech tucked safely in my shoulder bag, I began to casually flip though the pages of Hello. After all those months in the bomb shelter, I could always count on Hello to bring me a much-needed glimpse of civilization. There was something about seeing celebrities showing off their fabulous clothes and houses that instantly put me in the best of moods.

  Oh my God.

  I stared at the headline.

  PETER PHILLIPS GRADUATES UNIVERSITY. GIRLFRIEND ATTENDS.

  Girlfriend? Girlfriend? I quickly closed the magazine. I couldn’t handle it. Not then. And definitely not in public.

  What was going on here? What was it with me finding all this life-changing information in random magazines while sitting on trains?

  Still, I didn’t dare open that Hello for another three hours. I waited until I was sitting safely within the walls of my bomb-shelter bedroom. I locked the heavy dungeon door behind me and sat down gingerly on the bed. Then, ever so slowly, I opened to the article and made myself look at the photos.

  There he was—as handsome as ever in his black cap and gown.62 Just seeing his wide smile was enough to send my heart racing.

  Then I took a deep breath and willed myself to look at the girlfriend.

  This can’t be right.

  I looked again. I must have stared at her for a full minute.

  Then I started to smile. This was no stick-thin supermodel. This was no glowingly gorgeous blueblood that I couldn’t possibly compete with. Not at all.

  As I began to read the article, I found there was even more cause to rejoice. The girlfriend was American! He likes Americans!

  I was overjoyed. Not only did I not have to be ultrabeautiful to turn Peter’s eye (or “uberhot” for that matter, as Max predicted), I didn’t have to be an aristocrat! I didn’t even have to be English! It was the best royal news I’d read in years.

  Apparently, Peter and the American met at an English horse-jumping competition—the kind of civilized equestrian event where giant belt buckles and garish cowboy hats are nowhere to be found. And might I point out that if my parents hadn’t raised me in a town full of rodeo kings and queens, if they hadn’t raised me in a town where people put bumper stickers on their pickup trucks that said, “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowgirl,” if they hadn’t raised me in a town where young cowboys actually lassoed passing cars for fun—I might not have rejected horse riding entirely. Instead I might have taken a keen interest in the sport. I might have excelled at it. I even might have attended the very same horse-jumping show and met Peter Phillips there myself—saving everyone a great deal of time.

  The next day, I hurried to the LSE computer lab, scanned the photo and e-mailed it to my friend Charlotte in the U.S. We had met during my summer in D.C. and even with the five-hour time difference, she replied instantly.

  “Jerramy,” her e-mail read, “I’m in SHOCK.”

  (Charlotte had a thing about block capitals.)

  “The photo you sent me is UNSPEAKABLE. GRACELESS in every way.”

  You can say that again, I thought.

  “But no need to be upset with Peter,” she continued. “Don’t forget, he hasn’t met you (yet). He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. Love, Char.”

  A whole ocean away, I sat and stared at her words on the computer screen.

  She was so right.

  He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.

  Fifteen

  “Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you.”

  —JOSEPH CAMPBELL

  My gazillion-page dissertation on funding higher education (a subject quite close to my heart considering the size of my student debt) was finally finished and I found it quite comical that I, the least scientific person on the planet, was about to be awarded with a masters of science.63

  Neither Max nor I bothered to attend our formal graduation ceremony, but when our LSE degrees were finally delivered to the bomb shelter, Max was irate.

  “They call this a diploma?” he bellowed. “It looks like it was done on a dot-matrix printer. And frankly, I’ve seen better seals at the Bronx Zoo!”

  I laughed. As usual, he kind of had a point.

  Max was returning to America that afternoon and it was harder for me to say good-bye to him than I expected. In a weird way, I’d come to rely on all his brutal and twisted insights.

  “Jerramy,” he said, as he hugged me in the bomb-shelter lobby, “I’m gonna miss you. But I’m sure as hell not gonna miss anything about this backward country. Call me if you’re ever on the Upper West Side, because you won’t find me back in London ever again.”

  And so far, he has been true to his word.

  Tragically, I had to face the fact that my extended stint as a professional student had ended and that the time had come for me to find some sort of a grown-up job. I had kind of hoped I’d be married to Peter by now and wouldn’t have to worry about such things, but alas, things were moving slightly slower on that front than previously expected.

  Granted, I had several flattering offers to work on Capitol Hill—but as much as I adored the thrilling world of American politics, my English adventure was far from over.

  As usual, everyone told me I was crazy. No British company was ever going to jump through all the legal hoops required to hire some twenty-three-year-old American girl fresh out of college. But as usual, when faced with such closed-minded pessimism, I was hardly deterred.

  With only two months left on my student visa, I turned that bomb-shelter bedroom of mine into a bonafide cover letter factory, and by the time I was finished I had sent my CV to nearly four hundred U.K.-based companies. (I know this because I paid for the postage.)

  Remember when I mentioned that one of the key princess criteria was a brilliant career? Well, with immigration rules being what they were, that criterion was going to have to be prioritized toward the bottom of my Princess To-Do list. Because at that poi
nt, any career would do as long as it meant I could stay in England.

  Much to my surprise, within days of blanketing Great Britain with my résumé, the calls for interviews came pouring in. I interviewed at banks, technology firms, consultancies, magazines. I even happily maxed out one of my remaining credit cards with all the shopping I did for interview suits. But the instant prospective employers discovered that I needed a U.K. work permit, the interview was cut short and I was politely asked to leave.

  Then I tried a new strategy: I wouldn’t tell them I needed a work permit until the very last second. This worked well in the beginning. If they didn’t ask for the information, I simply wouldn’t offer it. And a week later I had two London job offers! I could choose to work as a public relations assistant or for a company that organized academic conferences. I was ecstatic. England and I would be together forever, just like I knew we’d be! I decided PR was more my style and the next day I was assigned a desk, met everyone in my department, and was told to come back the next day to sign my contract.

  All was going swimmingly until my phone rang that same evening. It was a woman from the PR company. “Jerramy, I have some bad news. HR has decided that pursuing your work permit is too difficult…. I’m sorry, but I have to revoke your job offer. Believe me, I’m as upset as you are…but you know what the Home Office64 is like…. Really, I am sorry…. If only you were English…”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. If only I were English? I was more English than 90 percent of English people! I understood the rules of hereditary titles! I knew why some family crests had unicorns and some had lions! I could tell you who was tenth in line to the throne! I could name the Home Counties! I could name the former colonies! I could quote Churchill and Shakespeare and Austen and Brontë until I went blue! I actually knew the lyrics to “God Save the Queen”! I liked milky tea with sugar, I enjoyed wearing tweed, and I even understood65 the rules of cricket! Didn’t the Home Office realize this? Didn’t they realize how much I loved England? Didn’t they realize how much I belonged on English soil?