The True Story of Maddie Bright

by Mary-Rose MacColl

  He’d laughed then, a loud belly laugh that stopped only when he caught sight of the housekeeper, whose visage would wipe rust from steel, as my father might have said.

  He’d smiled again as I left. ‘Well, Maddie, thank you for coming to see us.’ He glanced at the housekeeper. ‘I don’t think we’re in a position to … All the best, at any rate.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ I said.

  ‘When it comes to H.R.H. himself,’ Helen Burns said now, taking a seat at Mr Waters’s desk and gesturing for me to sit at the other desk. ‘Well, the truth is … I couldn’t say I know how to accurately describe him.’

  ‘I saw his hand,’ I said. ‘I came in with my family the first day he arrived.’

  ‘Good for you,’ Helen said.

  ‘It may have been someone else’s hand.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Quite possible. I should say at the outset that I’m not like the rest of them. I’m not born to love him or anything. No King and Country for me. Frankly, I wasn’t a fan of the prince. I wasn’t in his circle, like Godfrey, or his father’s idea, like the admiral, or the P.M.’s voice, like Ned. And I have no stupid loyalty to the throne like Rupert, I can assure you.’ She paused, lit another cigarette, taking time to strike the match. She inhaled deeply. ‘I’m here because I was summonsed to the palace, as it happens.’

  ‘By the prince?’

  ‘Yes, by the prince. He’d read a piece of mine about the treatment of soldiers after the war, darling. Beastly, it’s been in Britain. That’s one reason I wasn’t a fan. He was part of the empire that did all that. Anyhow, he saw my story, apparently. Frankly, it’s hard to believe Mr George is still in office. That’s what the prince said to me, a journalist! It amounted to a rift in the separation of powers or something and I could have written it, as we were not officially off the record. Wouldn’t it have caused a stink!

  ‘He said that the Prince of Wales couldn’t say those things I wrote, and if I worked for him, I couldn’t say them either, but we could think them, he said, and we could act on them without saying them. Did I understand his meaning? he asked. He looked at me with those eyes of his that could melt the polar ice cap. I thought I did understand, although he hadn’t offered me a job at that stage.

  ‘Actually, he quite impressed me, which I hadn’t expected. I have reason to dislike him specifically.’ She looked around as if someone might be listening. ‘Perhaps he’s not terribly bright. Perhaps you just end up on his team out of curiosity and then you come to know him and like him and you forget what you disliked him for. You start to see what others see in him, I suppose. Now I’m even fond of the dear little fellow.

  ‘Anyway, by the time he said he wanted a woman who could handle the newspapermen on future tours of the empire, I was more than willing.’

  ‘So the prince asked you on the tour?’ I said. Helen was so very glamorous to my mind, and held such an important role, telling newspapermen what to do! I couldn’t imagine it.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, as if still surprised, ‘and here I am.’ She paused then. ‘And there,’ she said finally, ‘when I arrived …’ she lit up a cigarette, took a deep draw ‘… was Rupert.’ She made a little hmph noise and smoke came out her nostrils, like a dragon. ‘The prince didn’t tell me that part, that Rupert was coming on the tour.’ Her face hardened. ‘Although I suppose I should have known. Anyway, I report to Grigg.

  ‘Truth is,’ she went on quickly, a tight smile now, ‘H.R.H. is difficult to refuse. Rupert’s his favourite whipping boy, as you’ll see. He always takes it back, though, because he knows he needs Rupert. I think he knows he has no real compass without Rupert.’

  ‘Compass for what?’ I said.

  ‘Living morally for a start.’

  ‘So Mr Waters knows the prince well?’

  ‘He and Rupert are like that.’ She crossed her fingers, a bitter smile on her lips. ‘They grew up together. Rupert’s like the big brother David never had and badly needs. He’s the only one of the lot of them who’ll take David on when he’s in one of his moods.’ She looked hard again then, like she’d looked when Mr Waters found us.

  ‘And who’s David?’ I said, feeling stupid.

  ‘The prince. That’s his name, or one of them. It’s the one they use at home. We all call him David. He asked us to. He’ll do the same with you. He doesn’t want to be a royal highness. He’s terribly informal. You’ll see. He’d prefer none of the pomp. Unfortunately, he was born into the pompiest pomp on earth. As I say, I feel as if I shouldn’t like him, but I find that I do.’ She gave a little sigh.

  ‘And here: the problem!’ she exclaimed suddenly. On the floor beneath both desks there were envelopes, hundreds of them. ‘Mail.’

  ‘Mail?’ I said. I was finding Helen a little overwhelming to be honest. My mother had said no one would notice me or speak to me. I would be a servant and that meant I was no one. ‘Do you understand, Maddie?’ she’d asked. ‘A servant is no one.’ She looked so sad. Yes, I said, I do understand, although in truth I didn’t know why it would make Mummy so sad. And now, to have Helen not only speak to me but take me into her confidence so fully was quite unnerving.

  ‘They are delivering it daily from Government House,’ she said. ‘This is all from Victoria. Sydney is just starting. They write to the prince and tell him their stories.’ She sighed again. ‘The war,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why they write to him. Perhaps they think it will help. There’s so much … unhappiness in the world.’

  I thought of my father.

  ‘Did you know someone in the war?’ I asked.

  ‘Who didn’t?’ she replied, and laughed lightly. ‘But all that is past. Now we are an empire united, happy in our glorious victory.’ She didn’t look happy. She looked almost teary. I imagined we both did. ‘And we have our prince, shining himself upon his dominions.

  ‘Rupert,’ she said quietly after another moment, her eyes glistening now. ‘I knew Rupert in the war.’

  ‘How?’ I asked.

  She narrowed her eyes. ‘Never mind.’

  From Autumn Leaves by M.A. Bright:

  France, 1918

  ‘You’re British?’ she asked, lifting the blanket that covered him. He felt the rush of cold air. Any sensation other than pain was welcome. He tried to focus on the cold.

  ‘Last time I looked, yes,’ he said, controlling the fear in his voice, which would explode into panic if he didn’t keep it in check. He could taste iron in his mouth.

  He would keep his voice even. No matter what, he would manage that.

  ‘What I mean is, what are you doing here?’ She spoke slowly. She wasn’t British, or she was British with something else. Canadian?

  He wanted something rough, not that sweet voice. There was no place for sweetness here.

  He looked up, squinted in the sunlight. He focused on her face, a silhouette at first and then as his own eyes adjusted he saw hers, a pale blue like the sky above her, her pretty face, hair tied back, strands escaping.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I was covered with a French overcoat, I think, and so they mistook me.’

  ‘And now a French blanket,’ she said. ‘So what’s the injury?’ He looked down towards his left arm, thought he might vomit, looked away.

  ‘Don’t look then,’ she said, patting his right shoulder gently. She pushed his fringe behind his ear. It was such an intimate gesture. He felt her touch warm him. The warmth stayed there. ‘You’ve hit your head too,’ she said.

  He could have watched her all day, he thought. It was the morphine, or the loss of blood. He must focus.

  ‘I’m the batman to the Prince of Wales,’ he said.

  ‘Well, bully for you,’ she said. ‘I’m the ambulance driver to Royaumont. I think I trump you right now, strictly speaking, as you need a doctor not a prince. And I couldn’t care less about batmen, much less about your jolly prince who got us into this mess. But I think we’re going to save that arm.’ She looked around. ‘Close your eyes.’
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br />   ‘Why—’

  ‘I said close them.’

  He did as he was told. He heard another voice, male, speaking French. ‘Driver, are you clear to go?’

  ‘I’m taking this one as well,’ she replied, also in French.

  Perhaps she was French. The Canadians were French, weren’t they?

  ‘He’s English,’ the man said. ‘He’s going to the C.C.S. at Soissons.’

  He had been out in the sun for hours, he knew. The longer he was out there, the less likely it was they could save his arm. He knew this too. He had seen the studies, the time between injury and aid being of critical importance. This was why they’d established the C.C.S. system, casualty clearing stations, so that the badly injured could get help. But no help had come so far, he thought bitterly.

  ‘What will happen to him?’ she asked.

  ‘We’ve contacted them. They’re coming.’

  He heard her voice, annoyed now. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Soissons is cut off again.’

  The man didn’t reply.

  ‘I know him,’ she said. ‘He’s a family friend. Let me take him to Royaumont.’

  ‘You can’t just take every soldier you fancy,’ he said, switching to accented English.

  ‘I’m only taking one,’ she said. ‘I have room.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘We can’t make exceptions. He’s English. He must go to an English hospital. We are funding Royaumont, not the English.’

  There was quiet then. He opened one eye. They were alone.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘We’re not finished yet, not by a mile. Give me a minute.’ She smiled then and she looked so very young. It filled him with hope, which was the most dangerous feeling. He thought he might cry.

  He bit his lip hard.

  He watched her walk away from him, had the strongest urge to call her back. He was sure he would never see her again. Oh God, how weak he was.

  It had been three days since the explosion. His wounds were septic, he suspected. She’d screwed up her nose when she uncovered his arm. He might die, he thought. It might be better than losing his arm, his left. He was left-handed.

  Just then two French soldiers appeared, one with a head wound, the other a bandaged leg. They each took one end of the stretcher. She was with them, looking around. ‘Are we allowed to do this?’ one of them said in French.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Quickly now. We must get him to Royaumont. He’s a batman.’ That smile. In another context, he’d think she was making fun of him. But since she was taking him away from here, she couldn’t be unkind if she tried.

  The drive was excruciating, long. The track was rutted. Every bump. The morphine had worn off, he could be very sure now, and while he couldn’t feel his arm anymore, his right leg, where he’d taken shrapnel, was aching, dully at first and then in full bloom. His head hurt too. He remembered then the unique noise as his eardrum burst, like the sea rushing in. Shocking, unrelenting, its report over and over.

  The flash of light at the blast kept coming back in his mind’s eye. Was David with him? He couldn’t have been. Someone would have told him. David wasn’t there, he was almost sure; they’d never have lost him if David had been there.

  He heard a church bell in the distance. His life was all about sound now, what he heard, and the sun which shone through the trees and warmed his face. He would die here, in the sun, the distant bells.

  By the time the two young orderlies were pulling his stretcher from the ambulance, he was entirely numb again.

  Someone was calling out, ‘You didn’t say which are priority. This one?’

  He could see a single pillar of what must have once been a church leaning precariously towards him and, next to it, a vine climbing a high wall.

  Had she said Royaumont? Wasn’t there an abbey called Royaumont near Paris?

  And then her voice in reply. ‘Yes, the stretcher is urgent,’ she was saying. He heard accents, English, Scottish. Where the hell were they? ‘The others are all walking. But get him to X-ray soonest,’ she said.

  SEVEN

  London, 1997

  VICTORIA WENT DOWNSTAIRS TO THE READING TABLES to go through the morning editions of The Eye. They’d been running them hourly since three am, the page-one headline, and pages two, three, five and six, plus the leader in the latest edition: TRAGEDY FOR THE WORLD.

  There were smiling pictures of Diana, Fayed; a badly crumpled car, unrecognisable as a Mercedes; a tunnel entrance. Fayed died at the scene, along with the driver. Diana died in hospital. Too much blood loss, one story said. The impact had torn her pulmonary vein from her heart, Victoria read in another.

  The pulmonary vein, that was one that took blood to the heart from the lungs, if Victoria remembered correctly.

  She went back upstairs to her desk and dialled her father.

  ‘Byrd,’ he said.

  ‘It’s me, Daddy.’

  ‘Victoria. I’m just making tea.’

  She looked at her watch. ‘Yes, I was planning to pop in this morning after the meeting, but I have to go to Paris instead.’

  ‘They’ve got you on it?’

  ‘Ewan wants to redo the cover so I’m going over to do an hour-by-hour. I’ve got a lunch first and then I’ll have to go home and pack, so I won’t make tea this morning.’ She normally went over on Sundays.

  ‘Tony’s going to make a statement.’

  ‘Someone should. Ewan says the family haven’t yet.’

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘Did he call you?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Tony.’

  ‘Alastair. I don’t know why really. He said Tony wanted me to come up with something to say. I didn’t have anything. There aren’t words.’ He cleared his throat.

  Had he been upset by Diana’s death?

  Victoria’s father was scathing about the monarchy, had written op-ed pieces on the sheer unfairness of a system that saw people born to rule. But Diana; he’d always had a soft spot for Diana. He’d met her once, at a lunch where he’d represented New Labour. She’d sat him at the top table. He didn’t know why, but when they spoke she knew about the education policy he’d drafted. ‘She talked about being dumb,’ he told Victoria later, ‘but you would never describe her as dumb. You’d be stupid to make that mistake.’

  ‘Alastair must be over the moon,’ Victoria said now. The P.M.’s press secretary had no time for the royal family either.

  ‘It’s not like that.’

  ‘No, I suppose not. Even the diehards here are shocked. Except Des Pearce.’

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked. She could picture him sitting in his office chair looking out to the front garden—the garden that had been her mother’s.

  ‘Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t I be? Anyway, the pulmonary veins,’ she said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Are they the ones that take blood back to the heart?’

  ‘Yes. But The Guardian already has the line. Diana died of a broken heart.’

  He had never liked the fact she’d left The Guardian for The Daily Mail. She may as well have joined a leper colony. ‘Good on them,’ she said, wishing now she hadn’t asked him. ‘Anyway, I must go.’

  She told her father she’d pop in when she was home from Paris.

  It wasn’t until she hung up the phone that she realised. Thirty-six. Diana was Thirty-six, the same age as Victoria’s mother when she died—the same age as Victoria now.

  It was what that psychologist Brad had said. She’d been to see him three months ago, prompted by Claire, who knew of him through a friend. Victoria was stressed and anxious and didn’t know why. Brad told her she was suffering from delayed grief, as if he was some sort of detective of the mind and he’d solved her crime. She was Thirty-six, and her mother had been Thirty-six when she died. Snap! Brad called Victoria a strong woman, she remembered now, said he liked strong women. She’d laughed with Claire about it afterwards. ‘I like strong women,’ Claire had said, making eyes at Victoria. />
  But perhaps that had been what had upset her father, Victoria thought. Diana’s dying reminded him of that other loss.

  She nearly called him back but didn’t. What would she say? Her mother was one of the things they didn’t talk about.

  Victoria went back to her desk and took out a blank notebook, intending to sketch notes for her story for The Eye. Reuters were reporting that the bodyguard had lived. He was in hospital, critical. He’d lost his tongue. It wasn’t a figure of speech.

  Victoria had written one of the first features on the problems in the royal marriage when she was at The Daily Mail, in 1987, before anyone was saying anything publicly about Charles and Diana. She’d interviewed five staff at Kensington Palace off the record, and it painted a picture of terrible unhappiness between them. The editor had loved it.

  Victoria sighed heavily. What would she write about Diana now? She hardly knew. It was as if bearing witness, the first job of a journalist, reporting what she saw, was now out of reach to her and she didn’t know why. She couldn’t think, let alone write. Grief, Brad had said, delayed grief. Perhaps he was right.

  She recalled a picture she’d seen of Diana taken just a few months ago. She looked like the shell of a person, as if the real Diana had just walked out of her own life. Diana didn’t look like someone starting afresh, which was what the stories said after the divorce. She didn’t look like someone who was playing the photographers the way Danny described. Alone. She looked terribly alone.

  At the time, Victoria had thought of the story she’d written, wondered if in some way she’d contributed to that hunted expression. She’d told herself she was just doing her job. But it had shaken her because she was starting to understand just a little of what it felt like to be pursued.

  Ben had said calmly at the start of their relationship, the first morning after they slept together at her flat, that being with him would present a unique opportunity to see what it was like to be on the other side of the notebook and camera. ‘Like William Hurt in The Doctor,’ he said. ‘He gets cancer and he picks the surgeon he used to make fun of, the one who speaks respectfully to patients, even when they’re asleep on the operating table.’