Afterwards in Chula’s hotel suite there was much champagne and many congratulations while the victor in his Bira-blue overalls sat content and happy, drinking orange juice.
Later that evening, having changed, we all met again at the Sporting Club where about twenty of us sat at a table in the centre of which glittered the resplendent cup. Many members of the elegant crowd who sauntered into the restaurant came over to greet Bira who, though obviously very happy, appeared modestly confused by all the attention. When, after an excellent meal, Chula suggested that we should all go and dance at the night club downstairs, the idea was greeted with enthusiasm.
Chula flushed and animated – he had every reason to be pleased and proud as it was his efficient management of the ‘equipe’ that had contributed greatly to the success, proposed to Bira that they should take the cup to their table at the night club. But Bira objected. He though it would be ‘showing-off’. Chula tried to change his mind and began to show signs of keeping anger at bay with an effort and the argument continuing as we left the restaurant, we began to feel embarrassed.
Prince Rainier Cup, Monaco, 11 April 1936. their first victory. Chula is at extreme right.
Eventually in two or three rather subdued groups, we went down in a lift into a kind of foyer, where we stood about while Chula and Bira harangued each other, oblivious of our presence. Katya was nowhere to be seen. Our spirits began to sink and the élan of the evening almost visibly drifted away. Suddenly the lift came down again and, turning towards this diversion, I saw Katya emerge. Good, I thought, she will bring them to their senses and save the party from disaster. I watched her move towards them in a quiet determined manner that promised well but, as she drew nearer, her pace quickened, she tossed her head and sprang forward, not to separate and reason with them as I had hoped, but with heightened colour and dramatic gesture, stirred the flaming quarrel higher still in furious Siamese. By now an impression was gaining ground among the forgotten guests that it would be better to depart so, with politely murmured thanks ignored by the combatants, we all stole away.
In 1937, Chakrabongse’s old friend from their days together in the Corps des Pages and the last Emperor’s Own Hussars, Colonel Poum, arrived in Paris, very much alone now that his great love, Madame Chrapovitzkaya, to whom he had devoted his life, had died in the South of France. In his mid-fifties, he had greying hair and moustache and an air of gentle resignation, far removed from the youthful dash and style he had shared with Chakrabongse in the last days of Imperial Russia. He gave the impression of a man somewhat withdrawn from life – courteous but absent in manner – who smiled when he saw others smile while his eyes remained grave and distant. His few clothes were always carefully brushed, pressed, and worn with elegant neatness, and he moved with the brisk precision of the soldier, contrasting with the remote sadness of his features in repose.
He had risen to the rank of Colonel in the Emperor’s Own Hussars and his popularity with the men was such that on the outbreak of Revolution, though his ties with the Imperial Family were known, the Regimental Soviet voted to continue serving under him. However, probably foreseeing how wretched the plight of officers would become when, all discipline eroded, they would be powerless to command, he wisely decided on flight and took Madame Chrapovitzkaya with him. He was able to do so as, though for many years a naturalised Russian, he had retained his Siamese passport, and with it he engineered their escape. They reached eventually the South of France where, in harsh poverty but in safety, Poum worked in a bank in Monte Carlo to support them both until she died.
Chula, with his strong sense of responsibility, cast about as to how he could enable Poum to live free from financial insecurity without injuring his pride and came up with the idea of appointing him Katya’s secretary. The post was diffidently accepted and, on assuming his duties, Poum took up residence in a modest hotel within easy walking distance of the Rue Parmentier. ‘With him I can speak my own language’, Katya writes more than once, and it would hardly seem far-fetched to infer she meant more by this than that they could merely speak Russian together, as this she could do with her relatives and many of her compatriots now in Paris.
Poum on a brief trip to Thailand in 1937.
The fact that Poum was Siamese yet spoke her language fluently and had lived in her country among her people as Chakrabongse had done, revived the already existing bond between them so that, as the months went by, the past they had shared together gradually seemed to emerge into the foreground and become part of the living present.
At the same time, his presence in Paris – as unforeseen and unlikely as Chavalit’s journey there to die – must also have rekindled in Katya a painful sense of exile, not only from Russia but Siam, where her life had reached its high point only to be much reduced since.
Poum, who, as no-one else, was aware of the full secret story of her runaway marriage, reminded her of her love for Chakrabongse in all its freshness and her love for his exotic country in all its strangeness where, despite so many obstacles, she had spent her most truly happy years. For Poum, too, she was the only being he now knew, who could remember Madame Chrapovitskaya and could step back with him into that lamp-lit drawing room in the Machavaya Ulitsa in St Petersburg, where the 23 birds sang and twittered and where they could gather around them in memory the light-hearted young people drawn there by the spell of her endearing personality.
XV
Life in Cornwall
Prince Chula and Lisba on their wedding day, 30 September 1938.
The Munich Agreement, engineered by the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, in September 1938, was judged by some in Cabinet and Parliament, and by many ordinary people in Britain, to be not only shameful but ineffective: merely a temporary halt on the march of events towards inevitable war. On the other hand, there were those who welcomed it with joy and thanksgiving and believed Chamberlain when he hailed it as ‘peace with honour’ and ‘peace in our time’.
In the year-long respite that followed, a minor effect of the still existing uneasiness – a feeling of waiting for catastrophe – was the number of couples who hurried to advance the date of their marriage. This was the case with Lisba and Chula, whose wedding took place on 30th September instead of October, as they had at first intended.
Their attachment had survived much guarded or straight-forward disapproval on both sides. Chula’s uncle, King Prajadhipok, had more than once begged him not to take example from his father and marry a ‘farang’ and such a union was automatically frowned on by all his royal relatives, while the few among his many English friends to whom he made known his matrimonial intentions, were dubious or, at the best, cautiously lukewarm.
An invitation to Prince Chula and Lisba’s wedding luncheon.
My parents were deeply concerned and troubled, faced with a prospect they could never have envisaged for one of their four daughters. They had also, of course, to face the pain of separation, for Lisba inevitably would spend much of her future life in a country and among people of whom they knew next to nothing. My father, in particular, felt unhappy and bereft, for he was especially fond of Lisba. For myself, as I have said, convinced that theirs was an enduring love, I gave them unreserved support, which in no way prevented me from understanding how my mother and father felt. It did mean, however, that inwardly I thought little of our relations – unanimously ‘shocked’ and ‘dismayed’, writing letters of ‘condolence’ instead of congratulation, telephoning their ‘sympathy’ and in one case calling personally to enquire if Chula was really black.