The way to clear up a mystery is to shed light upon it. The way to increase its power is to lure it further into opacity, as Meghan and Harry were doing. It is hardly surprising that even people who had doubted the stories about Meghan’s bump being a prosthesis, who had thought that the Doubting Thomases were being silly in their suspicions, now began to question what was really going on.
In the midst of this turmoil Meghan did something which shored up the disbelievers in a way only one’s worst enemy would wish. At nearly eight months pregnant, she attended a function, elegantly accoutred in the highest of high heels. She greeted a child, got down on her haunches, legs spread wide open, displayed her undoubted skill in dealing with children, then without missing a beat, bounced right back up. This was an exceptional display of agility, even for an advanced yogi like her, and it caused astonishment. Indubitably, Meghan is an extraordinary woman, and this proved it, for while most women start waddling like a duck by their seventh month, and find it difficult to walk straight in flats much less balance themselves on their haunches while wearing high heels in the final trimester of pregnancy, there she was, giving everyone sight of how truly amazing she is.
Whether it was Meghan’s natural ability to gain attention, both positive and negative, or her intention to remain at the forefront of all news reports by always providing the press with some new angle or snippet with which to run, thereby knocking all the other royals off the front pages, or whether she was so naive that she honestly didn’t realise that her behaviour was feeding a frenzy of her own creation, what she did next was pure genius in terms of headline nabbing. She announced that she would be retreating from public view until the baby was born, and moreover that she and Harry had no intention of revealing when the birth had taken place until they were good and ready. She would not be parading around with a newborn. She objected to the custom whereby royal women stepped out of the Lindo Wing, shortly after giving birth, with their baby wrapped up in blankets while they themselves were beautifully coiffed and attired. That sort of thing was barbaric, she maintained, yet again conveying the message that she disapproved of royal traditions and her way was the more enlightened one. As far as she was concerned, the custom put too much pressure on the woman, and being an avowed feminist, she wanted to protect herself and all royal women by changing the practice. She therefore wouldn’t be playing ball. She would be enjoying being a new mother in the privacy of her own home, with her husband, as is the right of all mothers and fathers. This was ‘their time’, she said, and they wanted to keep it to themselves. Only when they were good and ready would they ‘share’ their joy with the world. On one level, her argument was sound if one accepted the premise that she was a private individual and not a constitutionally significant national figure, but on another, it was guaranteed to provoke a reaction, and sure enough, it triggered a whole new wave of speculation about the baby.
The basic theme was that Meghan and Harry had gone to ground to await its arrival, but where, the internet and too many speculators wanted to know, was it coming from? A damaging number of people were now convinced that Meghan would not be giving birth at all. Had they known about James II, Mary of Modena and James, Prince of Wales, they would have concluded that this was an updated version of the Baby in the Warming Pan. Only this time it was being smuggled in right under the noses of the world’s press, according to the conspiracy theorists.
To add even more fuel to the fire, the Sussexes now issued instructions stipulating the degree of privacy they required. These were new and increased demands, coinciding not only with the impending birth of the baby, whose due date they were careful to keep secret in defiance of precedent, but with their move from Nottingham Cottage at Kensington Palace to Frogmore Cottage. An exclusion zone was declared around their new residence. Press, public and neighbours were banned from its environs. Local residents who were used to seeing members of the Royal Family out and about, such as the Queen, the Duke of York, even the late Queen Mother and Princess Margaret when they had been alive, and who were used to exchanging nods and sometimes even brief words, were informed that they must not approach, acknowledge or even look in the direction of either Harry or Meghan. Some of the strictures were so taut that the recipients interpreted them as impertinent rather than merely offensive. For instance, if the locals saw the couple walking their dogs, they were not even to look in their direction, and if one or other of their two dogs bounded up to them, they were not to pet it. This was a new way of doing things, one that the locals believed claimed all rights for the Sussexes, while stripping them of their own rights, so that they could not even be civil or respectful to the couple or neighbourly with the pets. This did not sit well with any of their neighbours, some of
