The royals - Kitty Kelley [79]
Members of the royal household recall Philip reading Hiawatha to the children and putting on the Indian feather headdress he had brought from Canada. Whooping and hollering, he performed war dances around the nursery, to the delight of his young son. “That’s the game I love best of all,” said Charles, clapping his hands.
Others see Philip through more jaundiced eyes. “He tolerated Charles, but I don’t think he was a loving father,” said Eileen Parker, whose former husband, Michael Parker, was Philip’s best friend and equerry. “He would pick up Charles, but his manner was odd. He had more fun with Anne. I think Charles was frightened of him.”
The little boy was certainly afraid of his mother, who appeared aloof, forbidding, and too busy for him. Years later he said he could not remember one incident of maternal love from his childhood, except for an evening when his mother came to the nursery before his evening bath. She sat on a gilt chair with a footman behind her and watched his nanny bathe him. “She didn’t put her hands in the bathwater,” Charles recalled, “but at least she watched the procedure.”
He recounted for one of his biographers how his mother greeted him after her first royal tour. He had not seen her for six months, so he raced on board the Britannia to welcome her home. He ran up to join the group of dignitaries waiting to shake her hand. When the Queen saw her young son squirming in line, she said, “No, not you, dear.” She did not hug him or kiss him; she simply patted his shoulder and passed along to the next person. A photographer captured the awkward greeting between mother and son, which the Queen later justified to a friend. “I have been trained since childhood never to show emotion in public,” she said.
“Her dislike of physical contact is almost a phobia,” wrote British columnist Lynda Lee-Potter. “By her inability to demonstrate love for her children, the Queen has made it difficult for them to give affection in return. She is a stoic and, like her mother, has a ruthless streak.”
While the Queen seemed incapable of demonstrating affection, her husband appeared to be similarly aloof and reserved. “He doesn’t wear his heart on his sleeve,” said Michael Parker. “I always wanted to see him put his arms around the Queen and show her how much he adored her. What you’d do for any wife. But he always sort of stood to attention. I mentioned it to him a couple of times. But he just gave me a hell of a look.”
Charles did not grow up seeing much physical affection between his parents; nor does he remember his mother kissing him after the age of eight. He wistfully told a friend that his nanny meant more to him emotionally than his mother ever did. He cited research done on baby monkeys deprived of a soft, motherly touch right after birth. He said they never recovered emotionally. They became impassive and withdrawn, not unlike the fearful little boy who wandered through the carpeted corridors of Buckingham Palace. When he became aware of scientific research that shows the loving interaction between mother and child charges the youngster’s brain to be receptive to learning, Charles said he finally understood why he had been described as “a plodder.”
A sickly child, he suffered from knock-knees like his grandfather and great-grandfather. His flat feet forced him into orthopedic shoes and he developed colds, sore throats, bouts of asthma, and chronic chest congestions.
“His Royal Highness was an earnest little boy,” said a former courtier. “Correct, well mannered, but timid like his mother. He was uncertain on a horse and queasy on a boat. His sister, Anne, who was twenty-one months younger, was bold and rambunctious like her father, which is why