The royals - Kitty Kelley [83]
By 1956 Philip had had a bellyful of “pomping,” as he referred to court protocol. With his son starting school, his daughter too young to notice, and his wife too busy for him, he felt diminished. He decided to go off on his own for a while. He had been invited to visit Melbourne, Australia, for the opening of the 1956 Olympic games, so he laid out a forty-thousand-mile itinerary around this one event to include visits to The Gambia, the Seychelles, Malaya, New Guinea, New Zealand, Antarctica, the Falklands, Galápagos Islands, and the West Coast of the United States. He planned to travel for four months with Michael Parker. The two men had been navy shipmates, crewed on the same yachting team, and played cricket on the same team. Parker recently had separated from his wife, and Philip now wanted to be separated from his—geographically, if not matrimonially. So the two grown-up boys planned their trip to the South Pacific with the abandon of Huckleberry Finn and Jim rafting down the Mississippi.
“Philip was born with itchy feet,” said the Queen, seemingly unperturbed by his plans. “It’s a waste of time trying to change a man’s character,” she added. “You have to accept your husband as he is.”
Her husband presented the cruise as a “diplomatic mission.” “This is my personal contribution to the Commonwealth ideal,” he said, announcing that he would leave England by air for Mombassa, Kenya, on the east coast of Africa on October 15, 1956, to meet the royal yacht, Britannia, with its crew of 275. He would be accompanied by his equerry, Michael Parker, and his friend Baron, the photographer.
Several weeks before they left, the forty-nine-year-old court photographer went into the hospital for hip surgery to relieve his arthritis. He wanted to be in good shape for the trip, but a few days after his operation, he died of a heart attack. His fiancée, actress Sally Ann Howes, who had begged him not to undergo the surgery, never forgave Philip.
“Baron was a wonderful guy—witty, debonair, and quite brave,” said Larry Adler. “He belonged to the Thursday Club, and he gave Philip his bachelor party. He had been the official photographer for the royal wedding in 1947 and for the coronation in 1953. He felt that if he hadn’t been Jewish, he could’ve married Princess Margaret. He took wonderful pictures of the royal family, and for all of that, he naturally expected a knighthood. But Philip wouldn’t do a thing about it—he could have, I think, but he didn’t—and the reason was the Queen did not approve of Baron. She thought he got Philip into trouble and helped Philip find girlfriends.”
The Duke of Edinburgh, extraordinarily handsome at thirty-five, needed no help attracting women. He needed only privacy, which the cruise provided; it also kicked up a swirl of whispers. His trip to Australia became a sensitive issue for biographers who tried to investigate what happened and for friends who tried to defend him against scurrilous allegations. Even a devout monarchist like Barbara Cartland, who reveres the royal family, talks about a secret love affair that she learned of from Philip’s uncle Lord Mountbatten.
“I know all about Philip’s illegitimate daughter in Melbourne,” she told an interviewer, “but I’m not going to talk about it.”
“Look into the boathouse in Sydney that is owned by Lady Mary Ellen Barton,” advised an Australian lawyer. “That’s the place Philip used for his dalliances.”
The stories of Philip’s women and his trysts were as many and varied as his ports of call. “A couple of lady typists were flown out to join the boat in Singapore,