LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

Ellerbee did not forget the gap-toothed, freckly, articulate youngster and recalled, ‘It was absolutely clear that this young woman was strong in her belief. It didn’t matter that she was eleven years old. She believed in women and in her own power. She wasn’t afraid to reach out and say “I want my power. I want my rights.”’

      Not everything worked out that well. Sometimes she would send a letter of injustice and be ‘rewarded’ with a bag of sweets or candy in the post. She would usually take them into school, which at least helped with her popularity rating.

Meghan was never a latchkey kid returning to an empty house. Her grandmother Jeanette would look after her if her parents were working – although when she was old enough she would visit Tom at the ABC Studios a mile from the school and wait for him to finish work. He had secured a second significant job as a lighting director on Married … with Children, a slightly risqué sitcom that was first broadcast in the spring of 1987 and ran for ten years. She would later recall, ‘There were lots of times my dad would say, “Meg, why don’t you go and help with the craft services room over there? This is just a little off-colour for your 11-year-old eyes.”’ Ironically, Meghan wasn’t allowed to watch the show at home, even if she had been in the studio during recording. Her mum would call her to watch the end credits, though: ‘I could give the screen a kiss when I saw my dad’s name go by.’

      Meghan was more interested in the show’s dog than in guest stars such as the renowned former porn star Traci Lords. The hound in question was a shaggy coated Briard called Buck, a canine superstar and arguably the most popular character in the show – appearing in 177 episodes. One Friday night before the show was being recorded, she noticed Melba Farquhar, the wife of one of the producers, feeding Buck some leftovers.

      The next Friday, Meghan turned up with her own leftovers. Melba remembered, ‘She had saved some of her dinner to give to him and wanted to know if it was ok if she fed the dog this time. She was just so sweet.’ Meghan doted on Buck and would always seek him out for a pet and a cuddle. The dog’s trainer, Steven Ritt, remembered her gentle manner with Buck: ‘Meghan was always kind of an old soul, a little more mature than some of the children around the set at her age.’

      Her maturity for someone still at elementary school was evident in her kindness to a girl called Elizabeth McCoy, who was one of those unfortunate pupils who was shunned and bullied principally because she suffered from petit mal seizures, a mild form of epilepsy characterised by a fleeting loss of consciousness. They are better described these days as ‘absence seizures’. She stood out as different, which often makes the child an easy target for other children – the ‘mean girls’, as Elizabeth called them.

      Sometimes Elizabeth would be just sat there as if in a daydreaming trance. If Meghan saw her, she would be the first to go over, hold her hand and sit with her until she was sure she was ok. Meghan was a couple of years older but would happily chat to the younger girl about the things that she found important and interesting. Elizabeth thought she was very cool.

Portraying the young elementary school Meghan as a serious-minded geek intent on saving the world is simply not how she was, though. She could enjoy herself as much as any other sociable young girl, like the time she dressed up as Elvira, the Queen of Halloween, complete with black wig, and pretended to try out various coffins for size.

      For one end-of-year school show she joined her classmates to give an exuberant performance of one of the cooler seasonal songs, ‘Christmas in Hollis’ by the New York rap trio Run-DMC. She also narrated a performance by her friends of How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, the Dr Seuss story that had become one of the most popular films of the time, starring Jim Carrey with narration by Anthony Hopkins. The show ended with everyone singing the Spanish Christmas song ‘Feliz Navidad’ before a rousing rendition of ‘Jingle Bells’. The concert was a snapshot of the school’s diversity.

      The shows often had a theme: one year it was Dick Tracy, when the Madonna and Warren Beatty movie was doing the rounds. Another time, a show was based around Japan. In June 1992 Meghan and her friends performed ‘Broadway comes to Hollywood’ at the annual end-of-term show, dancing to ‘Greased Lightning’ from the musical Grease and to the show-stopping ‘America’ from West Side Story.

      The absolute highlight, though, came a year later at her graduation. She was still a couple of months short of her twelfth birthday when she put on a white mortar board to receive her ‘Elementary Diploma’. Then she stood in front of the school, watched by teachers and beaming parents including both Doria and Tom, and introduced the entertainment that she and Niki had devised. She told them, ‘We’re here to thank all the people who have made us feel really special over the past nine years.’

She and her friends then launched their entertainment tribute. Meghan wore denim shorts, a stripy t-shirt and Easy Rider shades for some enthusiastic moves to Chuck Berry’s timeless ‘Roll over Beethoven’. Perhaps the highlight was the class’s rendition of the 1957 doo-wop hit ‘Mr Lee’ by The Bobbettes. They changed Mr Lee to Mr T to show their appreciation of a favourite teacher, Mr Teryl.

      And so it was time to cut the graduation cake and say goodbye to her first school, where she had been a big fish in a small pond, as the old cliché goes. Now, she would have to navigate the demands that middle and high school made on a teenage girl. She had shown some promise on stage and demonstrated a mature social conscience in someone so young. Moving forward, could she successfully marry the two?

4

       With a Sparkle

      Just like any other day at the Immaculate Heart High School for girls, the morning began with a prayer. The students did not have to cram into church or kneel in corridors, they just had to stop what they were doing, stand still even if they were late and hurrying to class and think quietly for a minute or two, listening to the words coming from the loudspeakers dotted about.

      The greeting was familiar. ‘Good morning Immaculate Heart!’ It was the voice of Christine Knudsen, who chaired the theology department. Occasionally she would recite a formal prayer that might end with an Amen – after all, Immaculate Heart had been founded as a Catholic school – but more often than not she would choose some words of inspiration. Sometimes she would talk about a film or an important sporting event; she might mention Gandhi if it was 2 October, his birthday. She used an Eleanor Roosevelt quote to great effect: ‘You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.’ She encouraged the girls to think of the qualities that mattered in life, such as compassion, acceptance, fairness and personal integrity.

And she would always conclude with a rallying cry. If it was the start of the week, she would declare, ‘MAKE IT A GREAT MONDAY!’‘The idea is that we just take a moment to compose ourselves and reflect. It’s a great way to stop and be free to start class,’ explained the current school president, Maureen Diekmann.

      On one particular morning, census forms were being handed out to the seventh graders in middle school during their English lesson. It was the usual kind of thing – just tick the box and move on. But for twelve-year-old Meghan Markle, it immediately presented a problem. There were four choices for ethnicity: white, black, Hispanic or Asian.

      Meghan didn’t know what to do. She asked the teacher, who looked at her light-toned skin and told her to check ‘caucasian’ because that was how she looked. But Meghan was uncomfortable with that advice because, in her eyes, it was choosing one parent over another. Imagine looking Doria in the eye if she had done as suggested. She told Elle magazine, ‘I put down my pen; not as an act of defiance but rather a symptom of my confusion. I couldn’t bring myself to do that, to picture the pit-in-the-belly sadness my mother would feel if she were to find out.’

      Instead she just left it unanswered, heartbreakingly: ‘I left my identity blank – a question mark, an absolute incomplete – much like how I felt.’ That evening she told her dad what had happened. Tom was

Скачать книгу