Meghan’s projections by now were proving to be her undoing, for too many people who wished to be convinced by her but were not. These projections, ringing the hollow note they did, now added fuel to the fire where her expanding bump was concerned. The result was that she, and by extension the monarchy, became involved in one of the most distasteful stories since 1688.
Not being a conspiracy theorist, I was prepared to consider that Meghan’s conduct as she drew attention to what she called ‘the bump’ owed more to her actressiness than to anything else. However, the word had spread on the internet amongst an uncomfortably large number of contributors that she was attempting to con the world into believing that she was pregnant when she was not. While it was possible to discount some of the contributors as crazies, or something even more odious, like racists, there were just too many people piling in, some quite sane-sounding, for the problem to be dismissed out of hand. Plainly, there was a problem, and it needed to be addressed respectfully and, if possible, learnt from.
According to the doubters, Meghan had got too big too quickly. She had then continued to grow at a pace that was more in keeping with a woman having triplets than one who was having one child or even twins.
Soon, I had journalists approaching me every time I attended an event in public. Then they started ringing me up. Did I know what was going on? What was the inside story on how the palace was coping with the deluge of internet stories about the bump being a prosthesis? The palace was stonewalling them, as it ought to have been doing.
The speculations being fed to Fleet Street for Meghan’s conduct would have been entertaining, had the matter not been so serious. A Mail journalist told me that there was a persistent rumour that ‘the reason she’s always clutching the bump is because she needs to keep it in place.’ This journalist also said that there were stories circulating about the bump slipping; about photographers having taken pictures of Meghan when the bump had slipped; about the bump being sometimes too high, sometimes too low, other times just right.
Although all segments of the mainstream press, from the respectable broadsheets to the most downmarket tabloids, avoided reporting on these stories, their very existence was an embarrassment to the monarchy as well as a concern that these rumours might gain further traction. Also embarrassing and of growing concern was Meghan’s increasingly flamboyant conduct as she answered criticism of her belly clutching by clutching her belly ever more resolutely.
This was not the sort of story people who wanted Meghan to succeed cared to see. It was at best distasteful and more realistically damaging, not only to her status but to the aspirations her supporters had for her. Aside from the occasional woke journalist, the only other category of individual in society who seemed to commend her rebellious flamboyance as she met criticism with further ostentation was minor celebrities who were pregnant. I attended several premieres where some virtual unknown would encircle her unborn child in front of the cameras. None, however, did what Meghan did. Only she kept her hands firmly planted on her protuberance after the flashes had faded. Although there were simple explanations, ranging from rebelliousness to New Age Communication, which could explain away Meghan’s determination, as far as many of the people who came into contact with her were concerned, the belly-clutching really was too much. The chief ground for criticism was that ladies simply do not clutch their bellies, pregnant or otherwise. No one except the New-Agers were buying the line that Meghan was soothing the baby, and as the pregnancy progressed and the bump grew apace while her hands continued to hover over it, the criticism grew louder because there has always been a generally accepted viewpoint that modest women simply don’t clutch their pregnant bellies. Doing so draws undue attention to a fact which all societies have traditionally treated with respect and circumspection, irrespective of class or colour, whether one is in the US, Canada, Britain, Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, the Far East, the Sub-Continent, South and Central America, the Caribbean or the Antipodes.
Another consideration from the point of view of Meghan’s critics was the fact that, until fairly recently, pregnant royal women were so discreet that they did not draw attention to their condition or even say they were pregnant. Some might allude to being enceinte, while in the aristocracy women might ‘breed’, but they would not ‘make a spectacle of themselves’ by wearing clothes that accentuated their condition, nor would they flaunt their pregnancy the way Meghan was flaunting hers.
Once more, people in certain circles began to query why Harry was letting this groundswell of criticism grow. He knew what was acceptable behaviour to the British, and what was not. Pregnancy is a fact of life, but one which has personal connotations. Like all bodily functions of a personal nature, it is treated with finesse irrespective of class, colour or creed. Just as how British men do not advertise their private parts through their clothing, nor do they scratch or make adjustments except out of view, nor does
