Chapter Thirteen 13 March 2023
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It was one of those March days in London that brings with it just the slightest hint of spring, like a whispered promise on the breeze. There had been weeks of relentless rain. Then, on Commonwealth Day, we woke to find an impossibly clear sky.
The service to celebrate the Commonwealth was one of the most important events on the royal calendar, which every member of the family was expected to attend.
The event dictated that we be publicly ranked in the pews according to our place in the line of succession.
This year’s service, our first family appearance since the funeral, was expected to be heavily scrutinised.
After a childhood spent in the second row, I was now by Granny’s side.
Richard, Demelza and Birdie had also moved forward, taking the seats left vacant by Papa, Louis and Annabelle.
In a move the Daily Post described as “a touching but somewhat unorthodox gesture,” Amira sat behind me.
Evicted from Elton Park, Annabelle had moved to Papa’s estate in Scotland after the funeral. She wasn’t in touch with anyone from the family, not even bothering to RSVP to the service.
The Daily Post ran a photo from the Abbey on its homepage: Granny, me, Richard and Demelza sitting solemn-faced in our pew.
Poor Birdie must have been clipped out. The gap between Richard and me would give body language experts enough content for a week’s worth of interviews.
The headline read: “The New Royal Order.”
Once we got home, I went straight to the bathroom to remove the bobby pins from my elaborate updo.
Tucked into the mirror was a polaroid I’d found under the sink weeks earlier: Louis and Kris, their arms looped around each other.
On the back, Louis had scrawled: I wish everyone could know how happy we are.
In a different pen, Kris had added: Maybe one day—after we’re gone.
I kept meaning to move it. It was risky keeping it out in the open where a maid might pull it out and see the tender secret on the back.
But I liked to imagine that Louis kept it above the sink where he could see it as he got ready for his day.
Just as I relieved the source of my tension headache, I heard the phone ring from the bedroom.
“Is that mine, Mary?” I called, plucking the tiny metal rod that was menacing my temporalis muscle. “Could you answer it for me?”
“Princess Alexandrina’s phone, this is Mary,” I heard her say in her phone voice, two full octaves lower than the way she spoke to me. “Yes, one moment, sir.” To me, she called, “It’s Mr. Jennings, ma’am.”
I looked at my reflection in the mirror and smiled. She would never call him Jack, no matter how much we both insisted. My hair free, I came out of the bathroom and took the phone.
“Hey,” he said, “do you ever think the Commonwealth is just a way of keeping everyone in the empire under a new name?”
I smiled. He was never afraid to say things like this to me.
When dusk finally fell on the British empire, an ancestor transitioned this rapidly unravelling collection of colonies into a modern economic bloc. Fans of the Commonwealth say we are richer and stronger together. Critics call it Empire 2.0.
“Well, I don’t know if it’s that simple,” I said, one of the mealy-mouthed non-responses I had become very good at delivering after three months back home. “I’m sure there’s a way to acknowledge its colonial past but make it work better for everyone.”
“Ahh, so it just needs a better CEO then,” Jack said. “You sure spend a lot of time in churches these days.”
“A weird place for a bastard love child to hang out,” I tried to joke.
For the past week, the tabloids had speculated about my and Louis’s paternity, based on “whispers travelling around the palace” that Mum had an affair with a doctor from Médecins Sans Frontières.
Their evidence for this theory was a photo of an admittedly saucy-looking Mum seated next to a handsome young man at a charity gala in 1992.
One “royal watcher,” who clearly had a sophisticated understanding of genetics, claimed that since this man and I were both doctors, we were obviously father and daughter.
The doctor now lived in Angola and was refusing to speak at all—a strategy Mary thought prudent for everyone involved, though I knew for a fact that Mum didn’t give up on the marriage and seek comfort elsewhere until I was thirteen.
I could also point out that the shape and circumference of my hips marked me as a true Villiers woman.
“Tell me something that’s happening at home,” I said, suddenly keen to change the subject. I lay on the bed in my dressing gown.
“Well,” Jack said, “the harvest starts next week, so Ragu and I are up early. He caught a blackbird this morning, so he’s happy.”
I could hear the gravel and leaves under his feet. The sun had just left me and was currently rising above his head. It was hard to believe he was 14,000 kilometres away when I could almost see him ambling between the vines, his full lips curving into a smile.
“What are you wearing?” I asked, realising too late the innuendo lurking in the question.
We laughed softly. Mary, who had been packing up my suit in the closet, made a swift exit and closed the door behind her.
“A very sexy outfit,” he said. “I’m in Blunnies, which are getting a hole at the toe. And those jeans you keep trying to make me throw out. Ragu’s wearing his collar and no pants.”
“Classic ensembles.”
“Your turn,” he said, his voice lowering to smokier notes that fanned the flames inside me.
“I was in this suit with a big hat,” I said.
“Was?”
“Well, the suit had to go back to the designer.”
“So you’re just in the hat,” he said teasingly, always giving me an out, always sensing when we were drifting into territory I might find dangerous.
“Just the hat.”
In the days after the helicopter broke up our kiss, we barely spoke.
Grieving and overwhelmed, I couldn’t cope with the idea that my friendship with Jack might change too.
So I’d panicked and avoided his calls for weeks.
But once I had committed to spending some time in England, we eased back into regular conversation.
He usually called when he woke just before dawn, which was dinner time in London.
If I had an evening event, I would call him from bed, the phone on my pillow, just as it had been when I lay in the barn, his voice all around me as I tried to sleep.
We talked about everything. Except what I planned to do at the end of the year.
“Do you remember when we went swimming at Wineglass Bay?” I asked, though I knew he remembered.
He had still been with Georgia then, but she’d had a furniture show in Melbourne and couldn’t come camping.
After dinner, Jack and I went down to the beach alone, took off our clothes and strode through the waves so we could float where it was calm.
Intoxicated by the moment, I forgot that I was scared of the night sea.
I couldn’t look at black water without imagining Mum slipping below.
But suddenly I was up to my neck in it, looking at Jack, who was slick and glowing under the moonlight, and the fear returned.
Sensing it, he swam towards me. “Want to go back in?”
I shook my head and breathed. “Just give me a minute.”
Tentatively, he wrapped his hands around my waist to buoy me, ruffling the nerve endings under my skin.
I eased closer, folding my arms around his shoulders, disturbing the droplets there, feeling the strong lines of his neck.
We floated like that, quietly, until Jack’s eyes darkened and he cleared his throat. “We should go back in,” he’d said.
His voice brought me back to the present. “I remember,” he said. “Are you going to ask if I was thinking about kissing you then? Because, as I said, it’s your turn.”
My stomach went warm, and I felt the old precipitous danger. “You had a girlfriend. I didn’t want to be that person.”
“No. Same,” he said, and then he laughed. “I regret it now.”
“Don’t ever regret being a good guy.” We were quiet for a minute, and I could just make out the fluty warble of the magpies on the vineyard. I felt a craving for home, even as I sat in the house I grew up in. “What are you doing today?”
He paused. “James is in town. I’m having a beer with him later.”
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me. James’s disapproval of my decision to return to my family had been like a southerly buster, an icy wind blowing all the way to London from Tasmania. He did not return my calls and texts, only voicing his disappointment via Jack or Finn.
“Well, say hello for me, I guess.”
“I will,” he said.
There was a clatter of metal that I knew to be the bolt on the main shed.
“You’re about to lose reception—I should let you go,” I said.
“I don’t need to go in yet,” he said, and I imagined him settling on the old wooden bench outside. “You’re not worried about these tabloid rumours, are you?”
I thought for a moment. “I don’t think so. It’s more that I don’t know what Richard will do next. It’s always waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“Does he know… you know, about Louis?”
“No,” I said. “Hardly anyone knows now.”
“Try not to worry, okay?”
I smiled.
“Are you really just wearing a hat and nothing else?” he suddenly asked, and I laughed.
“Just a hat,” I lied. “Goodnight.”
“Good morning,” he said and severed the line between us.