Untold Story

by Monica Ali

  She slipped it on and sat next to Rufus, who had made a nest for himself at the bottom of the comforter. She used a compact mirror to do her makeup, then swept her hair off her shoulders and fixed it in a loose chignon.

  As she stood before the full-length mirror, Lydia shivered. Despite the dark hair, despite the surgeon’s knife, despite the wrinkles wrought by the years and a permanent tan, she saw a ghost looking back at her that had long been consigned to the past. Slowly she turned and gazed over her shoulder. The dress scooped low to the waist. The flesh sagged, not much, just a little, beneath the shoulder blades. How horrible that would look in a photograph, where no blemish was ever forgiven, where you were only as strong as your weakest point.

  When the dress was hung away in the closet and she had got dressed properly in jeans and a crisp white shirt, Lydia opened a can of food for Rufus and held his bowl in the air.

  “I have a question for you,” she said as he stood with his front paws on her leg. “Do I have to stop seeing Carson? He’s asking so many questions. It’s getting to be a pain.”

  Rufus panted eagerly, and tugged at her jeans with one paw.

  “You’re getting your dinner. But answer me first. Bark once for yes and twice for no.”

  Rufus barked three times.

  “Oh, useless,” she said, setting his dinner on the floor. She gave him a pat. “You are a silly spaniel. And I’m talking to a dog.”

  Chapter Three

  Grabowski had stopped for a Coke and a hot dog at a diner just off the highway when his cell phone rang again. This time he took the call.

  “Listen,” he said, “how am I supposed to get any work done when you’re on my back the whole day?”

  “Hello, mate,” said Gareth. “I love you too.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I’ve left you like a million messages. And you never ring me. Just want to know how the book is coming. Getting all the peace and quiet you need in—where is it—Pig Poke, Illinois?”

  “Arse Wipe, Arizona. I left a week ago.”

  “Not peaceful enough in Arse Wipe? Where are you now?”

  “On the road.”

  “Go back to Pig Poke or Arse Wipe or wherever, lock yourself in your room, and don’t do anything else, don’t even breathe, until it’s finished. Please.”

  Grabowski drained the Coke can and belched. “Can’t,” he said. “That place gives me the shits. Got to find somewhere else.”

  “Don’t drink the water, then,” said Gareth. “Drink bottled water. Don’t fuck around sightseeing, don’t turn it into a road trip.”

  “I’m not going back there. It gave me the creeps.”

  Gareth sighed. “Look,” he said, “as your agent I have to advise you to get yourself back to London and get a bloody shove on with this book. Forget the big skies and desert and contemplation and all that artistic stuff. Just get it done.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “easy. Just like that.” He signaled the waitress for another can of Coke. Arizona had worked like an enema on his brain, cleaned it out completely. Since then he’d been driving around, looking for the perfect place, stopping to take photos sometimes, writing so easily in his head, losing the words again when he sat in front of a keyboard instead of a steering wheel. No, he didn’t want big skies and deserts, he wanted an ordinary little town, somewhere without distractions. But there were so many to choose from that he just kept on driving through.

  “No one’s saying it’s easy, mate,” said Gareth, wheedling. “But think about it. We need this book to come out for the tenth anniversary. Eleventh anniversary doesn’t cut it, eleven’s got no marketing pull.”

  At the next booth a mother looked out the window while her toddler chewed through a packet of NutraSweet.

  Gareth went on. “Don’t get hung up on the writing—you know what they want. Few anecdotes, the first time you clapped eyes on her, tricks of the trade, all the old war stories you pull out in the pub. To be honest, no one’s going to give a toss about the text, as such. It’s the pictures everyone wants—‘never-before-seen images of the Princess of Wales, taken by the man who knew her best.’”

  Grabowski snorted. He shook a toothpick out of the dispenser and broke it in two.

  “All right,” said Gareth, “not that line exactly. The publicist will cook it up. ‘Never-before-seen images of the Princess of Wales, from the private archive of the photographer who snapped the very first pre-engagement picture and documented her life and work.’ That’s a bit long.”

  A pair of teenagers, girl and boy, spun through the door and slid together onto a red vinyl bench, tight as a slipknot. At the counter a trucker flicked out six dollar bills and tried to tuck them in the waitress’s blouse.

  “I’ve got to go.”

  “Do you have something to send me?” said Gareth. “Send me whatever you’ve got.”

  “I’ll send you a postcard.”

  “Deadline’s in a month. Don’t let me down. Don’t let yourself down. You need the delivery money, remember. Divorces don’t come cheap.”

  “Thanks for reminding me.”

  “Where are you going? Are you coming home? You needed a rest, it’s good, you had a holiday, now come on back to work.”

  “What?” said Grabowski. “I can’t hear you . . . Gareth, you’re breaking up.”

  The trucks that thundered down the highway made the hood of the Pontiac tremble as Grabowski unfolded and laid out the road map. He studied it, running his finger along the lines between the towns as if a picture might be revealed, like one of those dot-to-dot drawings. A low-slung customized Harley pulled into the lot, the biker a hard case in sleeveless denim, inked from shoulder to wrist. Grabowski reached into the passenger seat for his camera and fired off some shots. The biker ruined it by starting to pose.

  Grabowski turned his attention to the map again. Abrams then Havering, Gains, Bloomfield . . . there was no way to choose. Kensington, Littlefield . . . He ran his finger back. Kensington. He smiled. He folded his map, stowed his camera, and got into the car.

  Chapter Four

  1 January 1998

  One pays a premium for a sea view but on days like today I wonder why. Those tight-lipped waves rubbing at the pebbles, that mean gray emptiness beyond. A crashing surf, a raging sea, can lift the spirits. This blank indifference is always the worst.

  2 January 1998

  Patricia came down for New Year’s Eve. I tried to persuade her to stay in London with John and the kids but she wouldn’t be put off. I opened a bottle of champagne and we sat on the balcony wrapped in blankets staring into the dark. She said, “Brighton’s lovely, isn’t it? Sea air’s probably doing you good.” I said, “For God’s sake, Pat.” Then she cried. I apologized, of course.

  She wants me to move back up to London and live with her. John’s in favor, apparently, as are my niece and nephew. I blamed the work, said that we historians, we writers, need our splendid isolation, need to be alone with our thoughts. That seemed to cheer her up.

  I’m not getting much done.

  4 January 1998

  Yesterday I worked all day and had little enough to show for it. Two hundred words on the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty and some light revision of the Belgian Indemnities Controversy paragraphs. My mind is elsewhere.

  5 January 1998

  Illusions of Conflict: A History of Anglo-American Diplomacy, by Dr. Lawrence Arthur Seymour Standing. How does that sound? Stuffy enough?

  My magnum opus. My legacy. My only begotten child.

  Nine years in the gestation, and doubtless it will be a stillbirth. If birth there is to be. Tom came down in December and took me out to lunch. I told him the manuscript is running at seven hundred pages and counting. He didn’t blink. “It’ll be great,” he said. “We’ll throw a party at the Carlton, no, at the Reform. Maybe the Garrick, whatever you want.” The bastard. He’s hoping I’ll die before it’s finished and that he won’t have to honor the contract.

  6 January 1998
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  Have been working on my “bio,” as Tom insists on calling it.

  Lawrence Standing was born in Norfolk in 1944 and educated at Marlborough College and Trinity College, Oxford, where he received a First Class Honours in History. After graduating he joined the Foreign Office and served in numerous foreign postings, including Turkey, Brazil, Germany, and Japan. (Should I spice it up a bit by talking about my brief innings as a spy?) In 1980 he left the Foreign Office to take up the role of Private Secretary to the Princess of Wales, a position he held until 1986. He continued to act as her informal adviser until the princess’s untimely death in 1997. In 1987 Lawrence returned to academia, completing a PhD in Anglo-American History and becoming a Senior Lecturer at University College, London. Lawrence was a keen sportsman, taking a blue in cricket at Oxford and running nearly every day of his life, until he was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor in March 1997. He died in 1998. He died in 1999. (Delete as appropriate.)

  8 January 1998

  Another wasted day. Fiddled with the “bio.” Like writing my own obituary.

  12 January 1998

  Kept my appointment with Dr. Patel though I couldn’t really see the point. She said, “Apathy is a common symptom with frontal lobe tumors. Are you experiencing any aggression, irritation, loss of inhibitions?” I said, “Mind your own fucking business, bitch.”

  I didn’t, of course. I’m not sure Dr. Patel can take a joke.

  I gave her a full report on the headaches, sickness, a touch of blurriness in the left eye. I told her I can’t smell anything anymore. She made a note.

  13 January 1998

  All I want to write about is

  What else matters?

  What have I done in my life that matters, except that?

  14 January 1998

  What is it that prevents me? If I get it down (get it down then get rid of it straightaway) maybe I shall be able to concentrate again. Go on, Lawrence, you fool.

  16 January 1998

  I’m going to see her one last time, in March, before I’m too weak to travel. It’s all arranged. I fly to Washington to “continue my researches” and drive from there, or hire a driver if that’s what it takes. I said, “I promise you that if I don’t arrive on that day, it can mean only one thing.” She said, “Oh, Lawrence.” She held my hand. She’s had a lot of practice in that area. Holding hands with the dying—it never made her a saint, but it made her an angel in this world.

  Is it the tumor making me apathetic? I don’t know. I know I felt alive when I wrote that paragraph just now.

  Go on, Lawrence, go on. There’s no betrayal here.

  17 January 1998

  Cynthia comes in to clean. She would never touch my papers. She’s been trained. Friends I see only at restaurant lunches or, very infrequently these days, dinner at someone else’s house. They ask about the book, with such bloody tact, such solicitous low-voiced delicacy, as if the book were what is killing me. Gail has been to see me once. Hard to believe we were almost engaged at one time. Who else comes? Only Patricia who, it has to be said, might be tempted to read my diary, were she to find one lying around. Discover if it’s true what they say, what some say, that I never “came out.” She probably heard, too, the other rumor that was once in vogue, that when I was working at Kensington Palace, there was a period when I was sleeping with the boss. Not that Patricia would ever mention either possibility, not even in jest.

  She might sneak a look at a diary, but will she ever read seven hundred pages of manuscript while I am in the bath, or on the loo, and so stumble inadvertently upon this insert? Not a hope.

  Have you convinced yourself now? Given yourself permission? What are you waiting for?

  18 January 1998

  Six months to a year, Dr. Patel tells me, is my allotted span. Although, as she always says, it is impossible to make accurate predictions and, as I always say, I quite understand. That’s on top of the ten months I’ve had already so quite a good innings in the brain-tumor world. Only thirty percent of us get over a year. Fourteen percent of us get a full five. Some lucky bastards, the ten percent club, get ten whole big ones. My tumor is higher grade than that. I said to Dr. Patel, “Higher grade, that means a better quality of tumor, right?” She didn’t laugh.

  What will happen to this manuscript, in any case, after my death? Even if these pages were to remain here by some calamitous turn of events, it is vanity on my part to fear their being read. Tom, good old Tom, the clubbable viper, already has his regrets composed, and will be deeply sorry to be unable to publish what, very sadly, is only a partial manuscript.

  Patricia will pack it up in a box and put it in the attic. Perhaps she’ll take it into Tom’s office, slam it on his desk. Maybe she’ll throw it away. No, she won’t.

  But these pages won’t exist by then. I will make sure of that.

  19 January 1998

  I used to encourage her to write. Writing can be a form of therapy, but it was one of the few that she wasn’t willing to try. She had her own way of getting her story into print, more dramatic than the one I was advocating. She’s a high-stakes kind of girl. I remember, someone once asked her if she ever gambled. She said, “Not with cards.”

  She wrote a lot of thank you letters. As soon as she got home from an evening out she’d sit down at her desk in Kensington Palace with a card propped up in front of her with all the words she found difficult to spell and write one of her gracious thank you notes. People were always surprised at how she found the time. “Lawrence,” she said, “what do they imagine I’m going to do all alone in these empty rooms?”

  20 January 1998

  The last time I saw her was in November. When I left her in September she had been manic, hysterical with grief and fear, and one of the few things that calmed her was when I begged her forgiveness for what I had done, for what I had helped her to do. She sat without speaking until the tears dried on her face. “No,” she said, quietly and clearly, “I couldn’t go on. We both know that.” And indeed I had feared for her sanity the previous few months, when she had lost “the love of her life,” when her behavior had become so erratic it caused a tabloid furore, when she seemed to drift through too many of our conversations as if in a semifugue. Time after time, over the years, she had come out of the darkness (of her husband’s betrayal, of her bulimia, of numerous scandals) and dazzled the world. The deeper the darkness, the brighter she shone. Impossible to sustain indefinitely, and I had seen her teetering, finally, at the edge of the abyss.

  I said, and what about now? Now can you go on? And although moments before she had sobbed until she retched, choking on the impossibility of it all, she smiled that smile that she has, pure sex, and completely chaste, and said, “Oh, do give me a little credit, please.”

  But when I returned her mood was black. Two months of living in an unremarkable Brazilian suburb, working on her tan and roughing up her accent had perhaps already given her too much of the “normality” she thought she craved.

  That’s not a fair thing to say.

  She is not the first person on this planet to walk out of her life and “start over” as they say in her adopted homeland. She is not the first mother to leave her children behind. These things do happen, though they shock us when we hear of them.

  But her circumstances are extreme. What a dry formulation that is. Would that I could write of it, of her, with poetry and passion instead of my journeyman lettering. Were I able I would write not prose but an aria.

  So, yes, the circumstances are extreme and her depression, her bleakness, is natural and inevitable. We talked of it before as a stage that she would go through. Though, given the delicate state of her mind, she perhaps didn’t fully comprehend the finality of her actions, hadn’t accepted the loss of her boys as permanent. No, she couldn’t go on. But I didn’t doubt, I still don’t, that she will survive her losses. She is a survivor. She’s the toughest woman I ever met.

  “Real life,” though, must have come as something
of a shock. She always wanted it, or so she imagined. She fantasized about riding on a double-decker bus the way others dream about riding in a horse-drawn coach. When we were making our little plan (that’s how she referred to it; she is often droll though princesses are seldom credited with a funny bone) she would remind me how many times she had walked down a London street “and got away with it.” There weren’t so many times, we could count them, because usually a photographer, or several, blew her cover. The cover being that it couldn’t be the Princess of Wales in jeans and a sweatshirt browsing at the magazine stand. Other times she’d go out in disguise, a wig, dark glasses, once a policewoman’s uniform, something she’d done once or twice in the early days, high jinks with her sister-in-law, and later, in desperation, to make pay phone calls to some undeserving object of her love. Disguise, she already knew, could work.

  But the unrelenting day-in-day-out of shopping and cooking and cleaning and washing, despite her retention through the years of a touch of the Cinderella complex, has definitely been a bore. She hadn’t hired a cleaner when I saw her. By the end of November she’d had over two months fending for herself. It’s a point of pride on which she will eventually give way.

  She’s wearing a wig and dyeing her hair as well; never one to do things by halves. Her tan is deeper than I’ve ever seen it. Her eyes are dark brown and she complains that the lenses are a pain to take in and out.

  Back in September, when we went to have the “filler” put in her lips, a local clinic in Belo Horizonte (the town where she was holed away), she could hardly breathe all the way there in the car. She had spent the previous two weeks hiding in the house, curtains drawn, rationing out the food that I’d bought. “Oh my God,” she kept saying on the drive. “Oh my God.”

  I said, Might I venture a couple of observations, ma’am? First that we will be in and out of the clinic within forty minutes and that you can keep your sunglasses on if that would make you more comfortable. Secondly that truly nobody is looking for you. You are being hunted no longer, that is over, it’s gone.