Meghan Misunderstood. Sean Smith

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СКАЧАТЬ moved back to her mother’s house and took Meghan with her. For the sake of their young child, they stayed on reasonable terms and there was never a question of Tom not being fully involved with their Flower’s upbringing. Meghan proudly states, ‘I never saw them fight.’ Although Meghan was just two when they split up, her parents did not divorce until 1987, when she was seven and at primary school. Whatever their feelings towards each other, they were determined that their daughter’s world would be a safe and happy one.

Tom tried his best to ensure she felt no different from any other little girls her age. Meghan revealed in her now-famous blog, The Tig, that when she was seven she had her heart set on a family set of Barbie dolls for Christmas. They were called the Heart Family and consisted of a mum, dad and two children, but there was a problem: the ‘perfect nuclear family’, as Meghan described it, was only available in all black dolls or all white ones.

      Tom was not happy with that so he marched into a Toys “R” Us store in West Hollywood and carefully customised a set just for his daughter. As he saw it, he was not going to allow her to be disadvantaged by the colour of her skin, even if it was just a Christmas present.

      Meghan recalled Santa’s gift: ‘On Christmas morning, swathed in glitter-flecked wrapping paper, I found my Heart family: a black mom doll, a white dad doll and a child in each colour.’ The new family ‘echoed her reality’. It was a sweet gesture for his daughter but also a serious one that she never forgot. The question of her racial identity was one that would absorb Meghan as a child and as an adult.

      Meghan’s first school was well-known and an important influence on her even at such a young age. The Hollywood Schoolhouse was founded in 1945 as a private nursery school that welcomed and encouraged ethnic diversity during the post-war years when many other private schools did not.

      The renowned founder and first headmistress, Ruth Pease, had her own inspiring story. She herself was the only child of deaf parents and from a very young age would communicate with the hearing world for her parents. She would be teased about it by other children and grew up understanding the hurtfulness of casual and thoughtless remarks and prejudice.

During the war, she and her husband took in a little boy whose father was Chinese and mother was white. His parents had trouble finding day care for him, almost certainly because the locals thought he was Japanese and the US was at war with Japan. Ruth’s daughter, Debbie Wehbe observed, ‘My mother wanted no part of that attitude. To her, children needed someone to take care of them: Period.’

      The school just off Highland Avenue was originally known as the Hollywood Little Red Schoolhouse simply because Ruth’s husband Robert painted the original building that colour. They added a distinctive bell tower that made the school’s appearance seem like something out of a fairy tale or nursery rhyme. It was welcoming to nervous children and uncertain parents.

      At Ruth’s school, all children were accepted and nurtured for who they were as individuals. It was a perfect fit for Meghan as far as Tom and Doria were concerned. Ruth had officially retired in 1970 and her daughter had taken over, but she was still part of the furniture of the place, living to the grand age of 96. She would wave to the children from her balcony as they came into school and they would call up ‘Good morning Miss Ruth’ or ‘Hello Grandma’.

      Back in the early days the most famous former pupil at the school was the fifties’ bombshell Jayne Mansfield. Now, it’s Meghan Markle, although in Hollywood terms it remains to be seen whether Johnny Depp’s daughter, the actress Lily-Rose Depp, becomes a household name. Despite one or two well-known alumni, this was not a celebrity or elite school.

      Doria had moved into a spacious second-floor apartment on South Cloverdale Avenue, three miles from the school. It may not have been as leafy as Woodland Hills but the street was wide, clean and tidy with small front lawns dotted with flower borders and palm trees. It was a pleasant, safe neighbourhood in midtown LA.

To help pay some bills and also because she didn’t want to be stuck at home all day, Doria started looking for work. Under the terms of the divorce agreement, Tom had joint custody and agreed to pay $800 a month towards Meghan’s upbringing. While Tom could afford the school fees at the Hollywood Schoolhouse, pupils whose parents could not meet them could apply for assistance grants. The school was quite liberal-thinking in its attitudes at a time when it would not have been derided as ‘woke’.

      Intriguingly, it was during her time at elementary school that the first signs of the two passions in Meghan’s life began to form: standing up for what was right and wanting to be a performer. For the former, Debbie Wehbe, who was headmistress while she was a pupil there, gives credit to both Tom and Doria for encouraging her ‘belief systems’.

      Meghan’s love of performing was evident at the annual end-of-year shows when all the children were encouraged to make the best use of their talents. When she was five, Meghan took centre stage to sing the old favourite, ‘The Wheels on the Bus’. Right from the start, Tom would be there proudly taking photos of his daughter. He literally took pictures of her every day.

      Importantly, Meghan found a best friend at the school. Ninaki Priddy, known as Niki, would turn out not to be a friend for life, but growing up they shared many memorable moments. For Niki’s ninth birthday party, Meghan took a leading role in a jokey, spontaneous show where she pretended to be a queen surrounded by her servants. The whole thing was captured on video by Niki’s mum Maria and was just some back-garden fun, but it did reveal how much the camera loved Meghan and, even at this age, she could be the centre of attention in any group. Over the years, Niki collected almost as many shots of Meghan as Tom Markle did, diligently sticking into albums happy photographs of the two girls at home, at school or on trips abroad.

From an early age Doria encouraged Meghan to be aware of the whole world and not just her little patch of Los Angeles. She was working for a travel agency that opened up opportunities to take her daughter with her on some wonderful holidays. While there was sun and beaches, culture and laughter, there was the occasional more sobering experience of those less fortunate.

      She took her to see the slum areas of Jamaica, a genuine eye opener for a little Californian girl who could scarcely comprehend the unbearable poverty of what she was seeing. Her mother had soothing words: ‘Don’t look scared, Flower. Be aware but don’t be afraid.’

      In Oaxaca City, in southern Mexico, she saw for herself poor street children selling sweets to earn a few pesos to buy food. It was a stark dose of reality that illustrated the unfairness in the world. Doria had taken Meghan there for the famous Day of the Dead Festival – ‘Día de los Muertos’ – which is nothing like as grim as it sounds. The celebration, which begins on Halloween, marks the three days when the spirits of lost loved ones visit the living and is infused with a sense of fun and a carnival atmosphere: truly a party spirit.

      Meghan fell in love with Mexico – the people, the culture and, perhaps best of all, the food. But she never forgot her mum’s life lessons. In one of her essays for Elle magazine, she wrote, ‘My mum raised me to be a global citizen with eyes open to sometimes harsh realities.’

      Doria also encouraged Meghan from about the age of seven to join her for ‘mommy-and-me’ yoga sessions. Meghan was not keen: ‘I was very resistant as a kid but she said, “Flower, you will find your practice – just give it time.”’ As with many things, Doria would be proved right in the end.

It’s too easy to say that it was Tom who encouraged her acting while Doria was more serious. She spent most of her time with a mum who had more boundaries and limits in place, but Doria still liked to have fun and would dance carefree around the apartment to her favourite music. She loved the mellow soul of Al Green. And Tom was there when needed to lend a hand and support her ideals. Generally she would spend the week at her mother’s and weekends with her father. When СКАЧАТЬ