Sunday Star Times
Here comes the groom
06 March 2005
Staff writer STEVE BRAUNIAS turns royal correspondent as Prince Charles - in his last solo engagement before marrying Camilla - begins his four-day visit to New Zealand today:
He looks good. Despite all his woes and humiliations, despite his frequent air of gloom, despair and some deep anguish, he looks happy, his own man. I can tell you this as a witness to the bearing and manner of His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, so often also known as the great royal clot, as he begins his New Zealand tour of duty, after arriving in Dunedin last night.
I spent quality time with Prince Charles on Thursday, in Melbourne. Actually, it was quantity time, nine hours straight from 12 noon in the shadow of a 56-year-old man who has perfected the staid art of walking very slowly with his hands clasped behind his back. The sun on a cloudless, glaring afternoon turned his cheeks, and the bald oval on the back of his head, a cheerful shade of pink. He wore a royal flush. It suited his holiday mood.
In the past week, he has inspected a lobster farm in Perth, and eyed up witchetty grubs in Alice Springs; in New Zealand, the company of beasts extends to visiting the Royal Albatross Centre at Taiaroa Head this afternoon, sidling up to sheep at an Alexandra station on Monday, and attending a reception hosted by Prime Minister Helen Clark in Auckland on Wednesday.
Melbourne was perhaps more his style. He was shown organic fruit and vegetables at a downtown market on the banks of the Yarra River. The seedless grapes particularly took his fancy. He told the stallholder: "Well done."
His equerry, Richard Pattle, stayed close to his side. Swift of foot and erect of carriage, the RAF squadron leader maintained the illusion of vast importance even though it seemed his sternest test that day came when a woman approached him with a jar of goat's cheese, and asked that it be presented to Charles.
"I shall see to it!", he responded, and went bounding off with the jar wrapped in white paper. Such errands uphold the monarchy.
A nice old dear hurried past the stall selling buffalo sausages to get closer to the Prince, but stopped and hissed at me: "I'm not standing with them!" She meant a vaguely rowdy group of republican protesters; one hooted, "Charlie! Get your mother's murderers out of Ireland!"
Useless teenagers slouched by, and shared this useless exchange: "Is that him? The old guy?"
"Dunno. Where's his wife?"
The centre of attention sailed on in a double-breasted suit, his neck in the tight noose of his knotted tie, his wrists pinned down by cufflinks. He was awfully apologetic. He said to well-wishers in a low, grave voice, fluting out of his long beak: "Have I interrupted your shopping?" And: "I hope I haven't got in your way."
He wore his heart on his face. His pellucid blue eyes brimmed with nameless sorrows and disappointments, but only when they looked at the ground. Was he pondering his latest mishap - the unseemly row over his wedding to Camilla Parker Bowles on April 8?
No, said aides, you can't marry in Windsor Castle; no, said the Queen, she will not attend the ceremony ... The lunchtime crowd at the market hung over the railings, and clapped, a happy tinkle of sound that lifted his head.
A voice cried out: "Congratulations on your marriage!" Prince Charles replied, "Oh, thank you." And then he quipped: "How did you know?"
He has always had a droll wit about him. This remains evident in the flashes of merriment that light the damp cellar of his eyes, and in the wryness of his smile. In fact, the line of his lips may well be his most revealing feature. There is something furtive about his mouth; it hints at sensual and lascivious intent. He wants to have fun. But is it allowed?
After praising the quality of beetroots and olives, the Prince was ushered into a very ugly building to sip San Pellegrino mineral water and launch a business and community project which aims to address Melbourne's social ills. He referred to a similar scheme that he had once supported. "Until gradually," he added, his mouth twitching with an irresistible impulse, "as the actress said to the bishop, it became too big for me."
It went down somewhere in the order of a lead balloon. But soon he was on the move, in the back seat of a white Ford Fairlane, at the head of a five-car convoy en route to a primary school. He watched with a quizzical eye as children competed in an egg and spoon race. "Well done," he said. He watched a sack race. "Good luck," he said. He watched a child water a box of herbs. "Parsley is jolly good stuff," he said.
The day, and Melbourne's raging heat, wore on. By the time the royal party arrived at a hockey and netball centre, it appeared as though His Royal Highness had shrunk. But this was because he stood next to a blonde netball coach with very long legs.
She laughed as he murmured up into her pretty face. And then much more laughter, peals of it, as Charles was surrounded by a herd of hot, gasping teenage girls fresh from the netball court. Is he handsome? He has a proud nose. His teeth are even, and as polished as a squadron leader's boots. The flapping Dumbo ears that cursed his youth have settled down, and rest closer to the home of his head.
Also, he is gentle, civilised, charming. Charm, wrote Evelyn Waugh, is the great English disease; but it brings humour and health to the otherwise melancholic, solitary figure of the brooding Prince.
The tour ended that evening at Geelong Grammar, a stately, red-brick private school an hour south-west of Melbourne. The night had turned cold. A stiff breeze blew off the waters of Port Philip; a murder of crows got up to no squawking good in the plane trees. But still the Prince remained in fine spirits.
This was a nostalgic homecoming: he had studied here for two terms, as a 17-year-old in 1966. Now, he was a Geelong Old Boy, called on to plant a gum tree, which is to say he languidly shovelled three piles of dirt, and then waved his spade in the air to the cheering crowd. He said to students: "It was very good to see you." And: "Good luck."
These were no doubt very sincere and heartfelt messages. I felt this when he spoke to me earlier in the day. I had torn off my media ID, stood in line with the crowd at the organic market, and soon found myself being approached by the Prince. He stopped and gave a handshake to a man beside me, who said in a guttural voice, "Welcome to Australia!"
Charles replied, "How kind of you. Where are you from, originally?"
"Turkey."
"Ah, so you're Turkish."
That superb dialogue concluded, Charles then met my eye, and pressed his dry, firm palm in my anxious paw. Having just learned his tremendous interest in geography, I blurted: "New Zealand!"
He smiled. He said: "I'm coming there quite soon." I smiled. I said, "Yes."
His parting words were spoken with great warmth, with keen anticipation of his visit, with visions of docile sheep and succulent lamb chops filling in the blanks of his eyes: "Well done".