How to Disappear: A Memoir for Misfits

Chapter Five: Beyond the Blue Horizon

C  F Beyond the Blue Horizon 220 Beyond the Blue Horizon I t had been the hottest August on record. The last day of the month came, a Sunday, and there was a good promenade concert that night at the Royal Albert Hall– Sibelius, Britten, Stravinsky. But I’d miss it since I’d promised to drive down to Sussex on the Sunday afternoon in order to help my friend Elisa whose mother had recently been transferred to a nursing home. Elisa had to go through the house prior to its sale, sorting out room after room of possessions, and she was dreading it. I got up at around 9 am, made a pot of tea, and switched on the box. Princess Diana had been killed in a car crash. Reports were only just coming through from Paris and the matter was still very confused. Sometimes you find yourself doing things without having decided to do them, as though your conduct were being guided. Falling in love can be like this: you are swept up with someone and taken by events without consciously willing any of it. So on this morning I discovered I simply couldn’t stay indoors in the flat, and at around 10.30 I found myself walking along Notting Hill Gate, holding a potted white cyclamen. Nobody had told me to do this. I hadn’t even told myself to do it. And I’d never have guessed I would be doing it. In retrospect it’s a great surprise to me that I did, because nothing in my life had been directly concerned with the Princess of Wales. But I was doing it. And I wasn’t alone. There was a trickle of us on that strange Sunday morning, drifting through the flowery, stucco streets of Notting Hill towards Kensington Gardens, mostly single people, several couples, quite a few black women. And it was unusually quiet, as though somehow the streets were padded. Beyond the Blue Horizon 22 1 Suddenly the cyclamen felt heavy. I don’t actually recall having bought it, or where I bought it, but I do remember being repelled by the cyclamens that were red and knowing that white, on this occasion, was the only and proper colour. There was an Arab café on Wellington Terrace called Café Diana which I’d never noticed before, or rather, I’d noticed a café but hadn’t bothered to register what its name was, despite having walked past it hundreds of times. This morning was different. The café’s owner had already set up a little memorial on the pavement, comprising a photograph of the Princess and a bouquet. I asked him about the origin of the name of his establishment and he told me they’d adopted it two years previously because Diana had often taken her boys there after collecting them from their day-school in Pembridge Square round the corner. I decided to put my cyclamen down at this impromptu site outside the café and continue onward to Kensington Palace to pay my respects. Why Kensington Palace? Because, I suppose, it had been her home. But this wasn’t something one was conscious of assessing. It was simply the only and obvious place to go. In the Broad Walk it was again apparent that others agreed with me. From all directions people were moving towards the Palace, not many, perhaps a hundred in all, but, viewed from the vantage of the north slope of the park, one could see how the Palace was exerting an irresistible, magnetic pull. Nobody was walking in any other direction. And it was all taking place silently. At the great gilded gates facing south, people had begun to leave flowers. A dozen or so bunches were propped against them, some attached to the wrought iron 222 Beyond the Blue Horizon scrolls. There were a couple of badly painted portraits of the Princess, seemingly the work of children, and a red satin heart with Diana, we love you on it. Obviously people were bringing personal items. A shrine seemed to be in the offing. Eventually a group of tourists arrived and began taking photographs but another mood took hold of them, their cameras halted and the tourists just stood there. I shifted about, vaguely nonplussed. Nobody spoke much, but there was unselfconscious eye contact and no barriers between people. If anyone said anything it...