Reminiscing with a friend about our university days, and how our academic endeavours took second place to meeting new people and the pursuit of a campus romance, I made an innocuous comment that produced a strange effect in him. We had been lefties at university but Colin never grew out of it. A life-long socialist, he has dedicated himself to the eradication of class and privilege and is proud of his son, Clint, who has embarked on studies at Western Sydney University in international politics and Marxist theory with aspirations for a doctorate in anarchist law and the abolition of monarchy.
It was a throw-away comment at the end of our monthly alumni coffee catch-up. All I said was that I had read somewhere that a new student at The University of Sydney, also doing international politics, is a beautiful young princess who is heir to the throne of some European country.
Colin looked discombobulated at this news this but I thought nothing of it until the next meeting when, with Colin uncharacteristically subdued, I asked him how Clint was going at Western Sydney. I was set back in my seat when he told me that Clint had transferred to the University of Sydney. Colin had only ever spoken of that institution with disdain, referring to it with words including exclusive, hubristic, pretentious, racist, individualist, nepotistic, endowment-laden, colonialist, capitalist, sexist, opaque, conservative, stiff, starched, aristocratic and vapid. Now he was describing the University of Sydney as strident in its Marxist methodologies in terms of both the politics of class and socio-cultural mores. He used to talk about the convenience of the Kingswood campus of Western Sydney University, being close to home. Now he was explaining how the express from Penrith to Central is under an hour and is good study time for Clint.
A thought crossed my mind as to what might be behind this but it was one that was unworthy of Colin and I dismissed it. He was a socialist of conviction and had pedigree. His grandfather had been prominent in the Australian Communist movement of the 1930’s, his father had been a union leader, and Colin himself had runs on the board. On one occasion on national television, he had asked a tough question of the panel on the ABC’s Q&A program and the audience had applauded.
Uncannily, however, two media reports about the Princess appeared to show either or both of Colin and Clint in the background. A newspaper article described her as Princess Ingrid Alexandra of Norway, the twenty-one-year-old daughter of Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit, and it had a photograph of her by the Quadrangle. In this photograph, standing nearby were some onlookers, two of whom, although partially obscured, looked to me like Colin and Clint. They were not wearing their trademark father and son black t-shirts. Instead, they were in collared, designer shirts, and Colin was standing slightly behind Clint, as if edging him forward.
Then, the following week, the 6 o’çlock news showed the Princess walking towards a reading room in the library and, sitting on a chair directly in her path and line of vision, looking debonaire with reading glasses on the tip of his nose, was a young man reading a book. The camera only gave a glimpse but for all the world it was Clint, and the book he was reading, holding the cover higher than necessary as the Princess walked by, was the historical novel, Kristin Lavransdatter, by Norwegian literary identity, Sigrid Undsett.
At the next meeting, it was time for some straight talking. ‘Tell me about this princess at The University of Sydney,’ I said the moment we sat down, ‘I understand she’s second in line to the throne of Norway and…’. ‘Third,’ Colin interjected. ‘Ingrid is the granddaughter of King Harald V and Queen Sonja,’ he explained with a sigh, as if pained to be talking on such a subject, ‘and her parents are Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette Marit’. Speaking quietly, Colin managed to add that Ingrid is a passionate environmentalist and has shown herself to be mindful of the traditional Nordic principles of social equity. In time, Colin went on, she will become Norway’s first female monarch, following the passing of a law of absolute primogeniture by the Norwegian Parliament in 1990.
Contributing a snippet of knowledge of my own, I said that I believe her family is of the House of Glucksburg. ‘It’s pronounced ‘Glooksburg’, Colin said with irritation, ‘and in written form it is Glücksburg with two umlate above the u,’ which he wrote out, thrusting his notebook in front of me and using his pen as a pointer to the ü.
Colin had changed in more ways than one. Not only was the militant socialist suddenly conversant on the antiquities of Norwegian royalty, he was now often lost in a reverie, having to be spoken to two or more times before he heard. There could no longer be any doubt as to what that reverie was. It was a dream of a Norwegian heaven on earth, with a modest castle overlooking a fjord, sipping tea on a balcony with King Harald and Queen Sonja, walking his grandchild to school hand-in-hand whilst nodding respectfully to the photographers, early evening walks in the woods with Crown Prince Haakon, afternoons on the slopes with Ingrid, Clint and their friends, and Sunday drives to the Oslo markets, all whilst embracing Scandinavian cultures and showing kindness to the common people. For Colin, it seemed, there could be no more fitting reward for a life of service to the socialist cause, and no more suitable monument to the memory of his forbears, than his ascension into European royalty by the marriage of his son.
‘See you next month’, I said to him as he stood to leave, ‘I’ll put my thinking cap on for you for new strategies for Clint to meet Ingrid.’ He froze before turning to me, wide-eyed and slightly flushed. ‘What they hell are you talking about?’
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Craig Pett, Independent journalist 