Katya & The Prince of Siam

Other evenings we spent at home, out on the veranda, while darkness hid the glossy-leaved trees and shrubs, frogs croaked and touk-kae – a giant frilly-necked lizard – appeared, then shyly disappeared. Smaller lizards remained motionless on the walls while we listened dreamily to music played on Bisdar’s record-player, or laughed and gossiped together, as we had in our youth. I can only remember one instance during those happy, happy weeks when I felt not sadness but an intimation of sorrow. I was awaiting Lisba in the garden, my mind idling and feeling agreeably blank but, as she came towards me, it struck me like a blow that the tone of her golden skin had changed – was a bad colour – and I was afraid. In a flash I rationalised and exorcised it: she was wearing green – a sharp green that did not suit her – of course, that explained it. I put my arm around her and realised, for all her energetic and radiant vitality, how slight she was. A year later, she fell ill and two years later she was dead.

It was 13 years later before I would visit Thailand again. Chakrabongse House remained much as I remembered it though Narisa’s vital personality had imposed itself and made the rooms less formal, introducing delightful alterations in the previously rather austere bedrooms. A curious aspect of my stay which still haunts me was that, although Lisba had died in England, I had never felt so aware of her after her death as I now felt in Thailand. The strange form this awareness took was that, in the way Narisa moved, in the cadence of her voice, I often saw and heard Lisba to the point of almost calling her daughter by her name; and once or twice, hearing Narisa’s young decisive footsteps approach the room where I was, I expected to see my sister enter through the door when she opened it.

A memorable visit was to Vimanmek, ‘Residence in the Clouds’ which has a singular history. Planned by one of King Chulalongkorn’s brothers, Prince Narisarasuwaitiwong, who was also architect of the most superb temple in Bangkok, Wat Benjamabopitr. Vimarnmek, constructed of a rare golden teak, was an enchanting palace of exquisite design, started in 1893 on Koh Si Chang Island in the Gulf of Thailand. But, owing to a blockade by French gunboats in 1894, the building was abandoned, still incomplete, until, in 1901, Chulalongkorn, impressed by its deserted beauty, ordered its removal to the vast gardens of Suan Dusit, another of his many palaces, where it was rebuilt as the main royal residence in a mere seven weeks! Chulalongkorn lived there for six years, delighting in its airy serenity and spacious gardens reflected in four canals to north, south, east and west. But eventually, he moved to another palace just across the park where he died in 1910.

Once more Vimanmek was forsaken and forgotten until, in 1982, Thailand’s present Queen Sirikit, aided by one of her daughters, Princess Sirindhorn, lovingly restored it, arranging with unerring taste the treasures of furniture, paintings, porcelain and sculpture collected not only by Chulalongkorn, but by his royal predecessors. Here, in this magical ambience, Narisa and I wandered for the length of a golden afternoon, so enfolded in a gentle calm that memory returns to it gratefully long afterwards.

On another occasion after I had gone, Narisa was once again at Vimanmek, this time conducted by a female guide who repeatedly and ingratiatingly expressed her amazement at her fluent command of Thai. ‘How is it that you speak our language so well?’ she asked once too often, whereupon Narisa, pointing to a full length portrait of Chakrabongse, replied rather shortly, ‘Because that’s my grandfather!’

One morning we were admitted as a special favour to the Chapel only opened for a royal lying-in-state where, within the golden urn, glimmering with diamonds in the soft effulgent light was the body of Queen Rambai (whom I met more than once with Lisba in 1969) guarded by two officers, motionless and uniformed in white. On an easel her portrait, wreathed in flowers, smiled in the bloom of youth and the calm beauty of the scene seemed to breathe both acceptance of the young woman in the prime of life and the acquiescence in the end.

It was not without difficulty that Narisa arranged for me and Bisdar – who knew it well as a boy – to accompany her to Paruskavan, as it is now a top-security Government Department, and we were therefore prepared to find it greatly changed – and greatly changed it was. The magnificent gardens, so beloved by Katya, had long since disappeared beneath modern administrative buildings and only a solitary waterfall and the strange ugly ‘folly’, built by Chakrabongse, remained. Within, the house has suffered the inevitable neutering of its character by conversion to official use.