Katya & The Prince of Siam

Katya’s duties took her sometimes far afield, and although the hours passed rapidly enough while she was absorbed in work, on return to her dull empty house, the bitter regretful memories that surged into her heart made the evenings seem longer and more lonely. Partly because of this and partly because her brother had represented to her that it was unwise, even unsafe, for her to be so completely isolated, she decided to let her top floor and quite soon succeeded in finding two lodgers, a Swedish businessman and an American engineer employed by the American General Electric Company. Although it was true she seldom saw them except when they came to pay their rent, she could hear them moving overhead, and the sound of their footsteps on the stairs, a door slamming or their muted voices, relieved to some extent her utter solitude.

But suddenly one night, the electric light failed, and groping about in pitch darkness, she realised she had no idea where the fuse-box was or how to mend a fuse even if she found it. After some hesitation, she therefore brought herself to call for help from the engineer, who promptly came to her aid and soon put all to rights. And afterwards in the restored illumination, on getting a closer look at his pretty landlady, he stayed to chat and to her great surprise, but not entirely to her displeasure, before leaving he drew her to him and kissed her good-night.

He followed this bold move a few days later by asking her to dine and Katya, finding him congenial, also took pleasure in shaking out and wearing some of her elegant dresses again, and being escorted by an attractive man. She came to look forward to seeing him and, although he was not at all the type to appeal to the cosmopolitan Europeans clustered around her sister-in-law, the latest report on ‘Katya and her American’ was looked forward to.

Harry Clinton Stone was from Portland, Oregon and had served with the American forces in the War. Although good-looking in a tall rangy way with rather cold grey eyes and pale complexion, his personality was irredeemably provincial and the unexceptional sentiments and high-toned judgments he pronounced in a chilly nasal voice seemed so unimbued with genuine feeling as to sound insincere. He also possessed an apparently inexhaustible store of set ‘funny stories’, none of which were ‘risque’ - a daring Continental word to which he was addicted – but all dull. These set-pieces and chunks of accurate information on a wide variety of subjects made up his conversation, which was therefore stilted and somewhat lacking in spontaneity. Such drawbacks to enjoyment of his society would, however, not have been apparent to Katya who, although she spoke good careful English and understood it well enough for ordinary purposes, would be unlikely to recognise the banality of his opinions.

If she had searched the whole world over, she could hardly have met anyone more different from Chakrabongse and, perhaps to her bruised ego, this was part of Harry Stone’s attraction. In addition, his attentions slowly restored her faith in herself as a desirable woman, and she began to rely on him to add a dash of colour to her days.

Slowly the sharp pain of loss and thorny stabs of fierce jealousy caused by Chavalit lessened, and she began to dream of visiting America to meet Harry’s parents, referred to in special sanctified tones as ‘Dad and Mother’, to whom he had confided his happiness at meeting Katya in his weekly letters. He had a good position in the GEC and prospects seemed set fair and to be moving towards another phase in Katya’s strange life, perhaps to be lived in as different a clime as Siam had been from Russia. Even so, although she continued to feel she was right to leave Chula with his father instead of exposing him to the hazards of whatever fate had in store for her, she often yearned for him and relived in memory their mutual happiness as mother and son.

Sometimes haunting fears for her relatives in the Ukraine, natural preoccupations which Katya shared with other refugees, plunged her into Slavonic gloom but the telegram she received on 13th June must have driven all other considerations from her mind. For in that telegram, the king told her that Chakrabongse was dead. She could not believe it, and at first experienced that sensation of uncomprehending stupefaction that postpones immediate acceptance of tragedy till the mind feels more able to support it.

So it was that, only eleven months after they had parted, Katya returned to Bangkok where the King had placed a fully-staffed house at her disposal so that she might attend Chakrabongse’s cremation in September. She was treated with every mark of consideration and respect but, though Chula spent much time with her, he continued to live at Paruskavan in the affectionate care of his nurse Cham, and where Chavalit remained discreetly in residence.