Letters to a Princess (13 page)

There was a strange sense of empathy in the loungeroom. Maybe it was the sight of the crown of white roses or the card with ‘Mummy’ written on it in a child’s handwriting which you knew was a little boy’s simple goodbye to the mother he’d never see again. Anyway, for some reason, many reasons, I was drawn into the room and sat down with Graham and Marcus like we were a family. Now, if anything was unbelievable that was!

When I moved to get up and leave because I was going to burst into tears, Graham came over to sit beside me. ‘It’s okay, love,’ he said in the same voice I was sure he’d used when he’d taken Mum’s hand in the hospital. That was when we all knew it was not going to be okay for Mum at all.
Now at last he wants to comfort me. But it’s too late.
This thought made tears slither down my cheeks.

‘Never mind, Di. I know how you adored her. It’ll be okay, love,’ he said. Why was he giving me words of comfort on this night of all nights?

I still couldn’t believe Marcus was staying silent. It was as if we were joined by the funeral, of all things, and by our own needs. It was remarkable. No-one said anything until just before Elton John was going to sing
a special song for the princesss. Marcus took this opportunity to jump up. He mumbled something about getting a drink from the fridge.

Diana’s brother, Earl Spencer, read the eulogy. He talked about her being ‘the most hunted woman in the world’. When he finished the people in the church started clapping. This was unheard of, people don’t clap in church—except for Princess Diana.

I couldn’t bear to see her coffin being carried away, taking her on her last journey. I made my way to my own room. Graham followed me and said, again, ‘I’m truly sorry Diana.’ And I knew he wasn’t just talking about the funeral but about the whole mess, the charade that was our family. He looked so pathetic that my hatred melted away and even though I couldn’t hug him like I might have if we’d been in a movie, I nodded. It was the best I could do.

‘You can have that lock fixed on your door, love. I was wrong about that. You deserve privacy. I’ll fix it for you. Okay?’

I nodded again and then turned away.

I realised Graham was saying more than sorry. He was trying to tell me, in his ineffectual way, that things would change around our place. And I nodded because I couldn’t bring myself to speak to him. He let me go to my room and turned back to the loungeroom and Marcus.

Then, with a start, I remembered my plan. The dance, Seb, all of that seemed like an age ago and my resolve was not quite so urgent as it had been. My head was aching but my mind was clear. ‘I should go now’, I said out loud. But I didn’t move.

Instead I stood in the middle of my room and turned around slowly, taking in the hundreds of pictures of Princess Di which studded my walls. I looked long and hard at them, at her. I was seeing her but also in those smiling blue eyes, I was seeing something else. Someone else. I was seeing myself.

Time seemed to stand still. I think my heart rate slowed down, because I felt slow and calm, like I did when I’d done meditation classes afer Mum died. I could feel Princess Diana watching me. I thought about her looking at my life and my pathetic plan to go to Ben Buckler to die by the sea. And something changed in me. I don’t know why but her face, her whole demeanour, her eyes, seemed to be saying something to me that night of her funeral. Whatever it was, it saved my life. ‘For God’s sake Diana Louise, you have to
live
life. You have to live!’ I heard her saying. And then a chorus of voices, Tatania talking about ‘a spiritual awakening’, or words to that effect, Babs lecturing me about how talented I was. Something clicked and it was as though I was literally coming to my senses. Maybe the alcohol was clearing out of my head too.

I knew I wouldn’t be rushing like a complete loser through the night with Graham’s pills to Ben Buckler and the rat cave around the lonely, sea-sprayed rocks. I was so relieved I sank to the floor, and boy did I cry then!

‘Thank you, Diana,’ I said over and over, trembling a little with relief.

I thanked her because I knew she’d given me a gift. One that she’d never know about, and neither would anyone else.

As the princess’s remains were being borne through the streets to their final resting place, I realised that she’d been part of the gift of
life
for me. Even more, of love, because I felt filled with it at this moment. I was also amazed that a horrendously average schoolgirl with self-esteem problems and stupid, ugly thoughts had been transformed by a gift from a dead princess. Well, transformed is a bit much because you don’t just change like that. But that’s what it felt like at that moment.

I know Martin would have hugged me for what I did next. I reached for the black leather Bible he’d sent to me via Babs when I’d been in hospital. I wanted to look up something I’d heard at the funeral, something about love that the Prime Minister had read with such emotion. My hands were shaking so much I couldn’t find the place but I heard Mr Blair’s clipped voice, and I remembered the fragment,
‘faith, hope and love, these three remain, but the greatest of these is love’.

While I was looking through the Bible, I heard something unusual from the loungeroom. The TV was off and it was the sound of Graham and Marcus actually talking. I didn’t know what they were saying to each other, and I didn’t want to know, but I remember thinking that it was the first time I’d ever heard them talking like normal people. Like I imagined a father and son should talk, like the way Mum and I used to talk.

After I’d found the Bible passage, I looked up ‘Diana’ in the
Companion
I had borrowed from Miss Pate. I took out
The Diana Papers;
the folder was like an old
friend. I read over bits and pieces of my past and hers. And I wrote out parts of the entry from the
Companion.
I’m not sure why I did this but I realise now that it was a kind of tribute. And it really cleared my mind, like writing always does for me.

And then I did what I said I’d never do. I wrote to a
dead
person.

Dear Princess Diana,

The whole world mourns you, even my stepfather and stepbrother. That’s a miracle in itself. You’ve united hearts around the world in a way no-one else on earth could quite do. You’re supposed to ‘promote the union of communities’, after all.

You saved my life today. Well, you helped me save my own life. Your brother pledged to make your boys ‘sing’ their way through their lives and I’m going to try like crazy to ‘sing’ my way through mine. Like my mum wanted me to, like Babs and Tatania and Zoë want me to.

I’m at a crossroads, Princess Diana. I know it’s up to me how I live the rest of my life. This will be my final letter. I’m going to miss you. I read that a scientist has named a new star after you. Diana, the People’s Princess.
You sure were a star for me and you always will be. Whenever it’s a bright moonlit night, I’ll think of you, the moon goddess.

Thank you for your life and thank you for mine.

With love, sadness and happiness,

Diana Moore

I looked in the mirror at my face, all red and swollen from the tears. I looked at my image and I didn’t hate it. I knew that not only did I want to live, but I also wanted my life to make a difference to people. To do things the way Princess Diana, in her own way, had tried to do—with landmines, with AIDS victims. Maybe I could talk to kids who have the same eating problems as mine. Maybe I could do it through journalism. I don’t know yet how, but the prospect of it is exciting. I’d be more free to do good things than Princess Di ever was! Being average has its advantages, I was learning.

This was when I realised something else. I wasn’t calling out to Mum to save me. In some weird way, for the first time, I was the one in control. It was up to me and I could do it.

I closed
The Diana Papers
and felt a glow of certainty—very unusual for me. My Diana phase was over. I began taking down all her pictures. The walls, the doors, the noticeboard looked so empty without them, but they also looked clear and clean. I lay on my bed and Seb Johnson, Zoë and Jason, Hammond Zeigler, Aronda, Ingrid; all these faces came swimming through
my mind. In the far off I was conscious of Graham and Marcus still talking in the loungeroom. But I let them drift away. And without another thought, and certainly not any of the despair that had been so sharp before, I felt myself floating, delightfully empty, off to sleep.

Next morning in the kitchen nothing much seemed to have changed. Graham was quiet and switched channels to find something other than images of Diana’s funeral. ‘Where’s the news?’ He kept asking the television irritably. And Marcus’s aggrieved comments were entirely for my benefit. ‘They’re dragging this dying swan thing out a bit, aren’t they? She was just a clotheshorse with anorexia.’ The difference was I didn’t take the bait.

‘It was bulimia, actually, Marcus. And she was over it,’ I said quietly.

‘Oh yeah, I forgot, the Vomiting Princess.’

I didn’t say anything more. But when he got up to use the toaster and said, ‘Shove off can’t you, Diana?’ I realised his tone had changed. The venom had gone out of his voice. And I realised he wasn’t calling me Ugly or Fatso.

‘Hurry up you two or you’ll be late for school,’ Graham muttered as he grabbed his briefcase and his toast and headed for the door.

Life went on in our household, almost in the same old way. Almost, but not quite.

Things have changed a lot at home, though not soon enough for me. I’ve been given the privacy I longed for but it’s come a bit too late.

Graham broke the not-so-surprising news to me that Ingrid would be coming to live with him soon and that eventually, if things went well, they’d get married. That will certainly be one wedding I’ll choose not to attend! With the thought of Ingrid resplendent in this house, for once I can feel sorry for Marcus.

Despite Graham’s protests, I know that he’s grateful to hear I have plans to move out now that I am old enough. I’d already decided to live somewhere else after Diana died. I talked to the counsellor at school, yet again, and she’s in the process of getting me a room in what seems to be quite an okay place. It’s in a hostel with a whole lot of kids from the country. It should be good. I explained to Graham that I can get rent
assistance, and I won’t move far away. He’s relieved, though of course he won’t ever say so.

I’ve told Babs and she’s okay with it because the hostel is pretty close to her place. She actually offered their spare room to me but I couldn’t take all those religious pictures all over the house—all those bleeding hearts and things. She knows I love her and Martin very much and want them in my life. She understands that I crave a place of my own, my own privacy.

‘You writers need your ivory towers, love. I realise that. But you know I’m always here for you. Martin and me …’

Zoë said she’d like to come and live with me too, but she doesn’t really mean it. Her dad actually has a job in a big company at last. She wouldn’t say exactly what the job was but, ‘Let’s just say it’s
not
managing director,’ she admitted, ‘but close enough.’

She’s also told me that Seb is desperate to talk to me. Desperate? As if!’ Funnily enough, it just doesn’t matter to me anymore. I don’t hang out with that group at the bus stop after school these days. I say hello to Jason but that’s all. I can’t even look at Seb and don’t know if I ever will.

I’ve taken to waiting with some girls who are doing a journalism course with me a few afternoons a week at TAFE. They are totally devoted to writing and really serious about making a living from it. And it’s fun talking to them. They have lots to say but they actually want to listen to me, too. Zoë was a bit miffed at first but we still hang out together and we’re still best friends.
I’ve explained that I like talking to the TAFE girls about our work.

‘Don’t go and turn into a geek like them, Di,’ she warned. ‘All they do is work, work, work and that’s no fun!’ I can’t explain to her that this kind of work
is
fun to me.

Last week I received a letter with a postmark from Ohio, America. It made my heart beat in a really weird way. I could see that it had been sent a few weeks earlier and was obviously intercepted by my stepbrother. Why on earth he’d keep it, I have no idea. Since the funeral, with Marcus’s change of heart, he’s trying to act like a human being from time to time. Not that we’re friends. Too much has gone down for that. But he’s less interested in me and he doesn’t tease me anymore. He doesn’t ignore me either. It’s bizarre, he actually screwed up his face as if he was sorry when I said I’d be moving out soon.

He must have felt guilty about this letter and decided to deliver it, even though it proves he took it in the first place.

My hands shook as I opened the envelope, wondering what the real Hammond Zeigler would have to say to me. I was a bit frightened, actually. My eyes went straight to the signature and, yes, it was Hammond Zeigler’s all right. But in that American way they have of naming their sons after themselves, it was Hammond Zeigler Junior. A photo fell out. Not a stunningly handsome face but pleasant enough, with really nice eyes; brown and deep, and lots of curly brown hair. I looked at the photo for ages. Hammond Zeigler Junior reminded me
of someone. But I couldn’t for the life of me think who it was.

There was a whole lot of introductory stuff about how he’d tracked me down and how he thought I must be a crazy kid with a sense of humour like him! He has an ego on him that’s for sure, but he really made me laugh when he recounted how his father had nearly died when all the press first swarmed around him, but in the end he’d turned it to his own advantage.