Katya & The Prince of Siam

Narisa on her second birthday with her beloved Norland nurse, Dorothy Thomas, known by Narisa as ‘Nin Nin’.

 

Narisa as a baby.

 

More than once when I stayed at Tredethy, I met Poum and it is one of my lasting regrets that knowing nothing of his remarkable history, I accepted him as no more than a gentle and amenable guest – rather silent – an onlooker rather than a participant in the lively life around him, smiling rather anxiously at jokes he clearly found incomprehensible despite his sound English. I felt his presence there did not greatly concern him and had nothing to do with his inmost thoughts and being.

One winter’s day in 1947, the house buffeted by westerly gales, he had a sudden heart attack and as quietly as he had lived since Madame Chrapovitzkaya’s death, he died. And so it came about that this Buddhist, Greek Orthodox, Siamese Colonel in the Russian Imperial Hussars, found his last resting place in the windswept graveyard of a Protestant church in Cornwall. Thirteen years later, Katya wrote in one of her last letters to her son, before her own death and burial in a small Russian cemetary in Paris: ‘How I miss Poum you do not know. He was such a fine man and such a help and with him I could speak my own language, but we cannot change the destiny…’

 

Narisa, Lisba and Chula, 1957, together with Pompey the poodle.

 

What the extent of their relationship was or became will never be known, for their discretion was absolute. But the perceptive Henry Maxwell, who knew them both, is convinced they were lovers and when asked why said simply, ‘Because of the way she regarded him.’ As good a reason as any other and one hopes indeed they were.

On January 3rd, 1960, at the age of seventy-two, Katya’s own adventurous life drew to a close, not accompanied by painful illness, but a calm acceptance of her end. ‘Just peacefully giving up’, as her doctor described it, she may have recalled from her girlhood in Russia long ago, a wise old saying: ‘Never regret past happiness, but be grateful to have known it!’

Chula and Lisba in 1962 about to go to a royal ceremony. He is wearing the Chulachomklao chain – First Class, which he had just received.

 

How Chula reacted on learning of his mother’s death later in 1960 must remain a matter for speculation. That he loved her was certain, that she exasperated him unbearably is also true, whether he ever forgave her for leaving him so abruptly all those years ago no-one dared ask, nor will ever know.

Epilogue

 

 

The author in the 1930s.

 

It was not until nine years after Chula’s tragic death from cancer in 1964, that I first went to Thailand with my sister. Lisba had become a Buddhist in 1952 and her life, so highly charged while Chula lived, had taken on a slower more reflective pace, enabling her to spend more time with her daughter, family and friends and to develop her considerable artistic talent.

At the airport we were met by a bevy of relations, Bisdar – childhood playmate of Chula at Paruskavan – then a good-looking man in his late fifties and his pretty wife Pungpit. Chakrabongse House, Queen Saowabha’s gift to her favourite son Prince Chakrabongse, though designed on classical lines by an Italian architect, is set in about an acre of lush, tropical gardens. Dark wood panelling, polished wood or marble floors, ensure coolness within from the blazing heat outside. A wide veranda has steps down to the swimming pool and garden where palms and mangoes grow and flowering creepers and bougainvillaea shade a pergola, beyond which is the Chao Phraya river, lively and noisy with craft by day and night.

Many servants seated on the ground, saluted our arrival with clasped hands and bowed heads, men in high collared white jackets and dark trousers and women in long blue skirts and loose white blouses.

During the five weeks I spent with Lisba, our companionship seemed to have a kind of bloom on it, for it was not only truly happy but – rare indeed in the modern world – it was leisurely, for we had time to absorb the atmosphere, so new and magical to me – known but still magical to her – of this fascinating country. We had neither to cook, wash up, dust or even do the flowers, for the retinue of servants swiftly forestalled any instinctive move we might make to perform a single useful action. Even a dropped handkerchief was instantly whisked away to be laundered and with our clothes returned the same day.

My personal maid hovered speechlessly – for we had no common language to help me into dresses, fasten zips and adroitly prevent me from tidying anything away.