Letters to a Princess (8 page)

I was so glad to see Babs when she finally got back from holidays. As luck would have it, Marcus was out at footy training.

‘What’s up sweetie?’ Babs asked as soon as she saw my expression. ‘School getting you down? Or is it Marcus?’

I poured it all out to Babs. I told her how badly I needed a lock for my bedroom and that Graham would never get around to it. I really wanted to tell her about the mess of the Diana interview too, but somehow I just couldn’t get it out, not even to Babs. The interview had been hanging over me for the past two days and it seemed to have taken on a life of its own.

‘I just want some privacy in my own room, Babs. Just time to myself without that ape barging in all the time.’

‘I had four brothers and our house was tiny. But I still had a room to myself at the end of a verandah and, well pet, it was my sanity. Look, I’ll tell you what. I’ll phone Martin and he can buy a lock for you this afternoon. You can wear the key around your neck,’ she chuckled, ‘just like I did. I’ll talk to Graham about it, don’t you worry, love. You’ve got a right to a bit of privacy.’ I hugged her.

It was music to my ears to hear Martin later that day drilling the door and putting in the lock. I prayed he’d finish before Marcus or Graham came home. But there’s always a price to pay when Martin does anything for you—you have to listen to him talking about his favourite subject, the Holy Bible. If Babs could take it (she agreed he was obsessive and even though she was a believer, it could get on your nerves), then I could.
This time he gave me a lecture on why I should read the Bible every day.

‘You’re a good reader, Diana. You might just be surprised by what you find in the Good Book. Now look at this lock, works like a charm.’

I thanked him profusely as I tried the key and promised I’d give the Good Book a go. But I was apprehensive when he and Babs left. Graham didn’t know and hadn’t approved and Marcus, well, who knows what he’d do? I’d have to tell Graham about the lock straightaway.

Graham was rushed and distracted as usual. He just grunted when I told him that Martin had put a lock in for me. Maybe Babs had phoned him. Or maybe it was just that he had to get an important report finished. Then I told him about a documentary on Ancient Egypt our history teacher had told us to watch that night and for once he laid down the law to Marcus so that I could watch it. Amazing! I touched the key that was safely around my neck as Marcus stalked off, glad to get away.

The doco was really interesting. I wasn’t surprised that Marcus didn’t want to watch it, but I should have been suspicious about his lack of protest. What was dear Marcus doing while I was watching TV? He was busily unscrewing the hinges on my door!

‘A little surprise for you, Ugly,’ he gloated, coming down the hallway when he heard the thwack of the door hitting the carpet. His look said it all but he couldn’t resist rubbing it in, ‘You might think you can win with your high and mighty airs, Princess Poo, but you never will. Not in my house! So handle that, Ugly!’
and he laughed as he stomped on the door and kicked the handle.

Ugly! Like he can talk, he’s the ugliest person on earth when he speaks like that, with his piggy little eyes narrowed. I was so angry I wasn’t even frightened. I just shoved him out of the way and braced myself for a retaliatory whack on my back, but it didn’t come. He was too shocked, I guess. I walked right out of the house. His house, yeah right! At least the park at the end of the road was private. I stayed there for hours thinking about lots of things—the door, the Diana interview fiasco, Mum and, most of all, my future. It didn’t look all that bright. Not a glimmer of hope. Usually I’d try to jog it all off, forcing my legs when my muscles screamed for mercy, faster and faster down street after street, until I exhausted myself and my feelings. But tonight I was even too dispirited to exercise. I felt so low I just sat there in the park like a blob.

Graham came looking for me eventually. ‘You’d better come home, kid,’ he said in a sympathetic voice. ‘I’ve seen what Marcus has done and it’s not on. I’ll fix the door on the weekend, but the lock can’t go back on. The only doors we lock in our house are the exterior ones.’ I knew Graham hated screwdrivers and hammers and that the door would never be put on unless Martin did it. I felt utterly hopeless.

As we walked up the road together he surprised me by saying, ‘And what’s this about an interview I heard you and Zoë did? That’s a hell of a scoop if it’s true. Is it Diana?’

I didn’t answer him.

Dear Princess Diana,

This is to offer sincere, heartfelt and BIG TIME apologies for what happened. I’ve wanted to write to you for weeks but I’ve been feeling sick about the whole thing and so, so guilty. To tell you the truth, we’ve been in heaps of trouble, Zoë and I, ever since the Hammond Zeigler TV affair, that I haven’t had the heart to do much at all. For weeks I haven’t even wanted to show my face to the outside world.

I’ve even stopped collecting pictures of you, I’m feeling so bad. I’ve apologised to every picture of you on my walls—all 217 of them—quite a few times. I’ve cried and I’ve even laughed, somewhat hysterically, I have to admit. But laugh or cry, talk or shut up, I feel bad, bad, bad!

And to top it all off, Babs is trying to get me to go to
hospital for a while because I’ve lost so much weight. I’m not eating much and I’m feeling low in every way but I’m certainly not a nutcase.

Of course I don’t want to go to this miraculous treatment facility Babs is raving on about. Although sometimes I think anywhere would be better than here with Marcus. He’s having a field day over this Hammond Zeigler thing. He keeps calling me ‘ham-fisted and ham-faced and ham in the sandwich’, among less polite things I won’t bore you with.

As for Martin, well, he left a bible on my desk and said we could talk any time about truth and lies, love and Jesus. I don’t want to talk to anyone, not even to Babs.

I don’t want you to feel responsible in any way—heaven knows you have your own problems—but it was after the visit to the Carven building that you opened here in Sydney that things took a downward turn for me. Big time!

No doubt you’ve heard something of the Hammond Zeigler saga since it was on international television! The whole world knows about the ‘schoolgirl prank’ pulled by ‘two psychologically disturbed Sydney students’. It’s so unfair. It was just an ill-timed series of disastrous events.

I’d like to explain a few things to you from my side
about how Hammond Zeigler’s name came to be linked with yours. I mean, it was my fault—our fault—but then again, it wasn’t.

Basically, Zoë and I are in trouble at school because we pretended to have interviewed you when we saw you at the Carven building in Darlinghurst. We were almost expelled. But worse than that, for me, was the fact that what we did ended up hurting you, when all I’ve ever felt for you is love and admiration.

After we’d had our joke about pretending to really interview you and written our fake article, with our fake new love interest in your life, Hammond Zeigler, I just wanted to set the record straight. Way back then—truly! But Zoë kept procrastinating because for a while we kind of became megastars at school.

‘You’ve actually spoken face-to-face with Princess Di? No way!’

‘Was she as gorgeous as she is in photos?’

‘What perfume do you think she wears?’

‘Does she have French nails?’

‘Do you think they were Prada shoes or Gucci?’

‘Did she have more than one diamond ring?’

On and on until I thought I’d scream, whereas Zoë answered everything convincingly and just seemed to love all the attention.

Zoë kept telling me she’d sort it all out but she didn’t. I don’t know how many times I was on my way to the principal’s office to confess, when something or someone stopped me. It went on for three days. Then the Daily Telegraph got hold of the story, well, of the name Hammond Zeigler anyway.

You see, Zoë had given my copy of our interview to another student whose dad works at the paper. It was a coincidence that her dad, Lionel Fitzsimmon, was also doing an article on you. Maybe not such a coincidence since all the papers and mags were having a field day about your being here in Australia. Anyway, there was a mix-up and Lionel gave the subs our Diana article instead of his. That’s how our fake Hammond Zeigler made it into the paper and out into the world. Simple as that.

Worse was to come when we discovered that THERE IS A REAL, LIVE, FLESH-AND-BLOOD HAMMOND ZEIGLER! As you know by now, he’s a 55-year-old scientist who lives in Ohio. He’s married with four kids and has spent his life researching cows’ intestines! He’s not rich! He’s not handsome! He’s not very glamorous! And he’s probably ready to sue the pants off Zoë and me—or at least the Daily Telegraph!

It was our bad luck that the real Hammond Zeigler was at a conference in New York at the very same time
you were there. Why that should give the press or anyone else leave to surmise things, I don’t know. And aren’t journalists supposed to check their stories thoroughly?

This real Hammond Zeigler found himself on his hotel steps surrounded by cameramen and reporters asking him about the nature of his relationship with you!

He was so stunned. I think his eyebrows disappeared into his hairline! Princess who? You almost had to laugh at the expression on his face when the press suggested he might be in a relationship with you. He obviously thought it was a crude practical joke and tried to brush them off. Big mistake.

I’m sure the look on my face would have been worth bottling too. When I first saw the whole thing on television I thought I’d have to kill myself! It was strange, the three of us—my stepdad, my stepbrother and I—were watching the news together because there were really bad bushfires just outside of Sydney and Graham had called us to come and see the footage. When the next news flash came up and I caught the name Hammond Zeigler, I nearly knocked over my stepfather’s prized coffee table because I stood up so quickly. I just kept saying over and over, ‘Oh my God no! Oh my God!’ so that Graham thought I’d gone mad—again.

‘Hammond Zeigler. It’s Hammond Zeigler,’ I kept repeating the name.

‘So?’ Marcus was intrigued.

‘Our Hammond Zeigler. But Hammond Zeigler doesn’t bloody exist. It can’t be Hammond Zeigler! Our Hammond Zeigler,’ I babbled.

‘She’s finally gone really mad, Dad,’ Marcus said.

‘Do you know him or what?’ Graham asked me, righting the coffee table. But I rushed from the room blubbering. The telephone was already ringing and of course it was Zoë. ‘Oh my God Diana, what’ll we do? What in hell will we do?’ she kept asking over and over as if I would be the one with the answer!

Well, there is no answer that will make everything all right again but there is a heartfelt apology to you. And I’ll really send this letter. Babs has insisted on it as even she is quite disgusted with me.

Life is pretty hard at the moment but I just needed you to know that I only wanted the best for you. I always want the best for you. Please believe me.

Sincerely,

Diana Moore

Zoë and I were well and truly sprung. We had to confess the whole truth to Miss Pate, the school counsellor, Selma Fitzsimmon, Selma Fitzsimmon’s dad and, of course, the principal, Ms Morrison. Not to mention various members of both our families. It was horrible.

After she got over her first impulse, which was to expel us for everything from lying to bringing shame on our school, our town and our country, Ms Morrison turned out to be our saving grace as far as the press was concerned. Because the press went a bit crazy. They hung around outside my house, and Zoë’s, for days. After that, seeing how upset and sorry we both were, Ms Morrison tried to help us, but not before she gave us hell.

She explained how the whole thing could have blown out even more and become a matter for the police. She said the British government had the right to take action too, if they wanted.

‘Why not the CIA, the KGB, whatever?’ Zoë had quipped after our first interview with Ms Morrison. But she said this without her usual laugh. It was all so SCARY. Zoë and I could see prison or a home for juvenile delinquents coming up for both of us. We told Ms Morrison the whole story without a single embellishment, not even from Zoë.

Zoë’s mum and dad were called in for another telling of the
real story.
Graham was there too, supposedly for my benefit. And Miss Pate, who just sat there, silent for once, taking notes. In the discussion that followed I pretty much came off as the main culprit. The first handwritten draft of the interview was passed around as ‘evidence’ of my ‘instigating role’. Zoë insisted it had been her idea in the first place but it was no use, no-one believed her. (She didn’t try hard enough, I thought. She just didn’t insist the way I would have!) In the end even I started to believe it was all my fault.

I could see how easy it was for them to lay most of the blame on me. To see me as the obsessive Diana fan who had exerted too much influence over Zoë. I would have obviously been keen on the interview idea because, being a Diana expert, I would know most, if not all, of the answers. I was a good writer with aspirations to become a journalist. On and on …

Given my ‘eating disorder and general depression’, I must say I looked like a complete nutcase. I could see a life-stint in a psychiatric hospital coming up.

It was Zoë’s dad, Jack, who came to my rescue when Miss Pate said I have a very fertile imagination and that
many of my stories bordered on the fantastic,
as if that too were a fault; an affliction.

‘Hey, listen, I know Zoë can invent a good tale or two herself! It’s not all Diana’s fault!’ Zoë’s dad intervened. Her mum, Bee, who was usually so easygoing, seemed a bit indignant that he was taking my side.