The royals - Kitty Kelley [52]
The Maltese were enchanted with her, and the Times of Malta ran several stories reporting her visits to the Under-Five Club, for children whose fathers were stationed in Malta. But the paper did not raise the question of why she, unlike other military mothers, had left her own children, under the age of five, in England. Often, photographs appeared of her smiling and waving, attending Champagne parties, visiting churches, warships, and horse stables. She was hailed as “the best-loved, the most notable naval wife ever to visit these islands.”
Back home, her press coverage was not quite so gushy. One newspaper story wondered how she could abandon her children for weeks on end, especially when her son came down with tonsillitis. Other newspapers took her to task for looking like “an Edwardian vaudeville queen.” Carpings about her weight and wardrobe disturbed her more than criticism about her children, especially coming from her husband.
“You’re not going to wear that thing,” he said when Elizabeth walked into his room to show him a new dress. “Take it off at once.”
“It was all very upsetting,” wrote Geoffrey Bocca in an early biography. “The Empire had on its hands a Princess it adored passionately, but a Princess that was both overstuffed and overdressed…. As a non-smoker she did not have the assistance of nicotine to hold down the poundage… [so] she went off starchy food and she took appetite-reducing pills—a blue pill for breakfast, a green pill at lunch, and a chocolate pill at dinner.”
The amphetamines, like all other medications for the Princess, were bought by a servant to preserve her privacy. “When sleeping tablets were prescribed to help her get a good night’s rest, I got them in my own name,” said John Dean. “To avoid drawing attention to the purchase and to the fact that they were for Princess Elizabeth.”
During Elizabeth’s longest stay in Malta, her sister came to visit, and the prospect of the glamorous, pouty-lipped Princess with her long, ornate cigarette holder and strapless gowns excited the bachelor contingent stationed on the small island.
“Malta is only ninety square miles in size, and Princess Margaret’s arrival was big, big news for the men, who just about went crazy,” recalled Roland Flamini, a diplomatic correspondent for Time magazine. “I was a teenager then, and because my father was writing Malta’s constitution, I later got to meet Princess Elizabeth. I didn’t have the slightest idea what to say to her, so I blurted out something about Princess Margaret’s visit, and said I hoped that she had had a good time.
“ ‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ said Princess Elizabeth in her high-pitched voice. ‘The little bitch hasn’t written to me yet, or thanked me.’ ”*
“I knew then that there was more to the proper, prissy-looking Princess Elizabeth than met the eye.”
Because of her father’s failing health, Elizabeth returned to London, and Philip had to follow a few months later after resigning from the navy. On July 16, 1951, he bade farewell to his crew. “The past eleven months have been the happiest of my sailor life,” he said. Five days later he flew to England, where he was greeted at the airport by his young son, Prince Charles, and one of his son’s nannies. But Elizabeth was not there. She was at the Ascot races.
Three months later, in October 1951, she and Philip were called upon to represent the royal family on a tour of Canada, which, after a diplomatic prod from the British to the Americans,* included a short visit to the United States. Once again Elizabeth and Philip left their children in the care of nannies and grandparents. They missed Princess Anne’s first steps and the third birthday of Prince Charles, but before leaving England, they selected gifts