magazines you’ve got there. Thought you didn’t like those things.”
Lydia looked down at the stack in the crook of her arm. “I was thinking about a different hairstyle. I might get some ideas.”
Carson reached out and stroked her hair. “Really? I think it suits you as it is.” He pulled her gently toward him and she rested her head on his shoulder. It wasn’t a problem that he asked her questions. The problem was that she wanted to answer them.
Chapter Nine
31 January 1998
Here is a conundrum. My days are numbered. I am wishing these days away. They do drag on. I know that is because I am waiting to see her again. I have thought many times of bringing the trip forward but I believe that would not be right, dictated by my needs and desires and not hers.
What I ought to do is work. But I have scant appetite for it and what will the world be missing without my belabored pontifications on the dodge and feint of diplomacy across the pond? I remember when I first started lecturing, an undergraduate put up his hand toward the end of the seminar. “What would you say is the point of history? I mean, what is your personal view? Do we, like, learn from it so the same mistakes aren’t made over again?” I smiled at that. I doubtless gave some fatuous reply about the telling of truth and the historian’s role as mere impartial observer. The naive question is often the most telling, which is why we brush it aside. The point of my book? No one, thank goodness, will ask me that.
I had thought, when I began it, that this diary would allow me to clear my head, so that I could get back to work on the magnum opus. I write these pages and then reflect, and reflect again. March does seem a long way off. But only to me. I must remind myself that she is not sitting there in North Carolina waiting anxiously for me to arrive.
1 February 1998
We remained ten hours or so in the motel. The entire place was designed so that the clients and staff never set eyes on each other. We ordered a meal, chicken and salad, that was left behind a service hatch in the anteroom. After that we again drove on in the dark. I half expected roadblocks, and to see billboard signs, reading Princess of Wales kidnapped. Of course there was no such thing. I tuned in to the radio, my Portuguese is passable, and it was the headline news. “They’re talking about me,” she said, “aren’t they?” I said I would switch it off just as soon as I knew the situation. She turned her head to the window.
I had caught her expression, though, and it wasn’t tears in her eyes, it was defiance.
The most difficult judgment of my life has been whether this “little plan” of ours should be implemented. Would it be the most extreme expression of her recklessness, one from which there would be no possible recovery? At what exact point would the line be crossed? Even as we were driving it occurred to me that we could turn around and go back. Say she had kept a rendezvous with me, wanting to explore a little of the country away from the media glare. There would be an uproar of course, more questions about her mental health, a storm of comment and fury about the conduct of the mother of the future monarch and those with whom she chose to consort. But it wasn’t too late. I said as much.
She shook her head. “This wasn’t a game.”
She is simply the most extraordinary woman. The strictures of royalty, of motherhood, of overbearing fame—those things that should have kept her behavior in check—made her progressively more reckless. I remember a few years ago when she was on an Austrian ski trip (Lech, I think it was), getting a call from her bodyguard. He pleaded with me to make her see reason. How could he do his job? The princess had disappeared from the hotel by jumping from a first-floor balcony into the snow, a drop of at least twenty feet. She had stayed out all night, one presumes with her paramour. I think she herself feared how far she would go, how
Lydia looked down at the stack in the crook of her arm. “I was thinking about a different hairstyle. I might get some ideas.”
Carson reached out and stroked her hair. “Really? I think it suits you as it is.” He pulled her gently toward him and she rested her head on his shoulder. It wasn’t a problem that he asked her questions. The problem was that she wanted to answer them.
Chapter Nine
31 January 1998
Here is a conundrum. My days are numbered. I am wishing these days away. They do drag on. I know that is because I am waiting to see her again. I have thought many times of bringing the trip forward but I believe that would not be right, dictated by my needs and desires and not hers.
What I ought to do is work. But I have scant appetite for it and what will the world be missing without my belabored pontifications on the dodge and feint of diplomacy across the pond? I remember when I first started lecturing, an undergraduate put up his hand toward the end of the seminar. “What would you say is the point of history? I mean, what is your personal view? Do we, like, learn from it so the same mistakes aren’t made over again?” I smiled at that. I doubtless gave some fatuous reply about the telling of truth and the historian’s role as mere impartial observer. The naive question is often the most telling, which is why we brush it aside. The point of my book? No one, thank goodness, will ask me that.
I had thought, when I began it, that this diary would allow me to clear my head, so that I could get back to work on the magnum opus. I write these pages and then reflect, and reflect again. March does seem a long way off. But only to me. I must remind myself that she is not sitting there in North Carolina waiting anxiously for me to arrive.
1 February 1998
We remained ten hours or so in the motel. The entire place was designed so that the clients and staff never set eyes on each other. We ordered a meal, chicken and salad, that was left behind a service hatch in the anteroom. After that we again drove on in the dark. I half expected roadblocks, and to see billboard signs, reading Princess of Wales kidnapped. Of course there was no such thing. I tuned in to the radio, my Portuguese is passable, and it was the headline news. “They’re talking about me,” she said, “aren’t they?” I said I would switch it off just as soon as I knew the situation. She turned her head to the window.
I had caught her expression, though, and it wasn’t tears in her eyes, it was defiance.
The most difficult judgment of my life has been whether this “little plan” of ours should be implemented. Would it be the most extreme expression of her recklessness, one from which there would be no possible recovery? At what exact point would the line be crossed? Even as we were driving it occurred to me that we could turn around and go back. Say she had kept a rendezvous with me, wanting to explore a little of the country away from the media glare. There would be an uproar of course, more questions about her mental health, a storm of comment and fury about the conduct of the mother of the future monarch and those with whom she chose to consort. But it wasn’t too late. I said as much.
She shook her head. “This wasn’t a game.”
She is simply the most extraordinary woman. The strictures of royalty, of motherhood, of overbearing fame—those things that should have kept her behavior in check—made her progressively more reckless. I remember a few years ago when she was on an Austrian ski trip (Lech, I think it was), getting a call from her bodyguard. He pleaded with me to make her see reason. How could he do his job? The princess had disappeared from the hotel by jumping from a first-floor balcony into the snow, a drop of at least twenty feet. She had stayed out all night, one presumes with her paramour. I think she herself feared how far she would go, how
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