Chakrabongse’s former aide-de-camp, Tapong, was now the Siamese ambassador in Paris and being an old friend of Katya’s, he frequently asked her to dine at the Siamese Legation. One day she was shocked to hear that he had seen Chavalit and was horrified to find her so changed. ‘He said that she looks quite green as a dead person, that she doesn’t eat, has no flesh at all, just bones, and that doctors who saw her don’t give much hope’. After dinner, the door suddenly opened to admit Chavalit’s husband. ‘He had changed so much and got old so quick’ that Katya failed to recognise him, and had to ask who he was. And she adds – feminine vanity uppermost – ‘I am sure he was surprised to see me so young looking!’, and goes on: ‘I feel again I was in Bangkok when Chakrabongse died and the whole picture of old days passed in my brain.’
To her suggestion that she might go and see Chavalit, Tapong said diplomatically that he thought it inadvisable, since seeing her might be such a shock to Chavalit that it might kill her. Later that same evening, Amorn, who ‘looked very nervous as he is terrified he may catch Chavalit’s disease’, asked Katya, as a trained nurse, what he should do to protect himself as his wife ‘wants to kiss him every time she sees him’. To which Katya commented: ‘Is it not absurd that I am the one to give him such advice?’
On her return home she could not sleep:
‘My brain was working all the time. All the cruel action of Chavalit, all what I had to suffer through this girl, came back to me. Two feelings were fighting in me: one pity that she suffers so much, and another feeling of satisfaction that God punished her for all her selfishness. I felt rotten. Is it possible that I prayed God all these years to punish her and now when the punishment comes, I am sorry for her? All night I slept very badly. My conscience worked all the time. Oh how complicated life is!’
On 19th June, on telephoning the Legation for news, Katya learned that Chavalit had died the day before, and that her cremation would take place privately at Pere Lachaise on 20th June. Chula volunteered to attend with Tapong and when he got back to Rue Parmentier afterwards he told his mother, who wrote: ‘It was awful as when the cremation was over, the men who looked after the fire came and invited them to look at the ashes! Chula said that he saw the whole body. Then to put ashes to a marble box, the men had to break the bones. He says he will never forget this cremation.”
And as a sad coda to the end of Chavalit, whom Chula had last seen as a young laughing girl in her prime, Katya adds: ‘Chula says Amorn was not sad at all’ – possibly because he was relieved at no longer having to fear her pathetic frightened embraces.
The revolution in Siam, coupled with the death of Chavalit, had considerable consequences for Chula for, in the summer of 1932, he was advised by King Prajadhipok that, as he was now no longer an absolute but a constitutional monarch, he had no further control over the capital and income left by his father, Chakrabongse. It will be remembered that Chakrabongse’s will in which he bequeathed his entire fortune to Chavalit, had been suspended by King Vajiravudh, who decreed that only a portion of the income from the estate should be divided between Chavalit, Katya and Chula, while the capital was to remain untouched. Now, however, due to Chavalit’s death, Chula became his father’s sole heir and found himself in possession of £20,000 a year instead of £1,000.
With characteristic generosity, he immediately increased his mother’s allowance, and in addition bought her a charming little thatched house near Rambouillet, called Le Mesle. This was only an hour’s drive from Paris and there, family and friends were entertained at weekends, and Katya was once more able to indulge her love of gardening, which she had sadly missed since her days at Paruskavan and Hua Hin. He also donated £25,000 to endow hospitals and schools in Bangkok, and was instantly accused by some in that city of ‘buying popularity’.
At this time Chula was sharing a furnished flat in London with Abhas and, in midsummer, they had planned to go together with Bira on a motor-tour in Europe, in Chula’s new car, a larger Voisin. But as Abhas had failed his final examinations at Cambridge, he reluctantly remained behind to prepare to re-take them in October. Chula and Bira therefore set out on their own, covering over three thousand miles in France, Switzerland and Italy, and it was during this trip that Chula became most impressed with Bira’s capacity as a driver.
After Bira returned to Eton for the autumn term, Chula was in correspondence with Phraya Mana, the first Premier under the new constitution, from whom he ascertained that he was not now expected, as princes were in former times, to serve in one of the government services. As he had already decided that an army career was not for him, he decided to remain in private life and continue his work as a writer. He had already begun to establish a reputation in this field, as his book reviews and articles on political subjects had already been published and well received in Siam. In addition, his biography of Frederick the Great in Siamese, he explains modestly, ‘had an unexpected success’.
Following the revolution, as the revenues of King Prajadhipok had been greatly reduced, the financial support hitherto enjoyed by Siamese princes abroad, including Bira, was discontinued. Consequently Chula now made himself financially responsible for Bira and, in fact, became his guardian. And when Bira left Eton aged eighteen, a private tutor was engaged to prepare him for entry into Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1934.
Bira was most engaging and talented, retaining for much of his life a childlike air of innocence and egoism – the more disarming because it was so natural. He was slender and well-built with an endearing way of seldom standing still but shifting rapidly from one foot to the other. Many of his most prized possessions were toys including a vast model railway in which he could remain absorbed for hours on end. He also had amazingly nimble fingers and, at one point, used to fashion exact replicas of different types of aircraft, tiny enough to fit into a matchbox.
During 1933, he and Chula moved into a flat in Kensington, and as Chula – unlike most of his royal relatives in whom it amounted almost to a passion – actually disliked shopping, Bira was entrusted with buying the furnishings. Unsurprisingly, his taste was in tune with the times: square deep armchairs, plenty of chromium-plate and sombre or neutral colours.
After much thought and long discussion, Bira eventually decided that an academic career was not for him, and abandoned the plan of going to Cambridge in favour of studying sculpture. After an initial trial period, he was accepted as a pupil by Charles Wheeler ARA and made excellent progress, later on exhibiting at the Royal Academy.
Meanwhile, Chula worked hard at his literary work, having two more biographies published in Siam but, although he and Bira led an active social life, going to many theatres and, above all, to performances of Russian Ballet given by de Basil’s famous company, neither of them neglected their mutual great interest in motor-cars and motor-racing and, in 1935, Bira ran in some short handicap races at Brooklands, driving a Riley Imp, painted hyacinth blue – Katya’s favourite colour – which soon became known as ‘Bira Blue’. The Riley was superseded by a super-charged MG Magnette, but after watching the performance of cars built by a small firm, English Racing Automobiles, which became widely known as ERA, Chula, considering their productions were the best of the light car class, purchased one for Bira and presented it to him on his twenty-first birthday.