Kate (9 page)

During her upper sixth, Kate, like William, was given the honor of serving her school. The prince was made a member of Pop, a select group of prefects at Eton, and Kate was appointed head of house. “Marlborough did some big social days out in London, and as a prefect, one of Kate's jobs was to promote the school. She was an ambassador for the school and a very good one,” said Mrs. Patching. “Catherine had a good relationship with everyone. She was very well-mannered, she was aware of social situations. She had a real confidence in herself. She felt secure at Marlborough. She was successful
and diligent and hard-working. When she got to the upper sixth, she had a lot more responsibility. She was able to go into any sort of social situation and speak to anyone.”

As a prefect, Kate enjoyed the use of a special common room and was also allowed to hand out punishments to others, but she rarely did. In fact, when she caught older pupils having a forbidden cigarette on the playing fields beyond the central quad, she turned a blind eye, not wanting to be seen as a tattletale. She herself had never been part of the more hedonistic set that experimented with boys, smoking, and alcohol. Apart from having to join Mrs. Patching on one of her “punishment runs”—for little more than having her lights on late—Kate was never in trouble. She performed well in class, and though she wasn't a natural academic, her hard work got her good grades in her chosen subjects—chemistry, biology, and art. Kate was determined to go to a university, aware that she would need top grades to be selected for one of the best in the country. She would also need an array of extracurricular activities to add to her university application. Although her passion was still for sports, she enrolled in the Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award program, which entailed volunteering in the local community, learning a new physical skill for a year, and participating on a four-day trek in the wilderness. According to Mrs. Patching, it was “a huge achievement” for Kate, who was one of the few pupils who made a point of completing the paperwork so that she could go and receive her medal at Buckingham Palace. It was a fitting end to a very happy school life. Now all Kate needed were her grades.

CHAPTER 4

A Change of Heart

K
ATE FLEW DOWN
the stairs as soon as she heard the letterbox clatter. It was Thursday, August 17, 2000, and the whole family had been waiting for the postman to arrive. The brown paper envelope that would seal Kate's future lay on the doormat. “Open it,” squeaked Pippa, who had raced downstairs behind her sister. Kate tore it open and read the typed letter twice. She smiled, looked up at her family, and announced the good news. She had achieved two A's and a B, exactly the grades she needed for her first-choice university, Edinburgh. She skipped with joy, threw her arms around her sister, and rushed to phone Emilia and Alice, who had also applied to the Scottish university. For most of the upper sixth, the three best friends had imagined their lives together as students in the Scottish capital. Kate hoped desperately that they had gotten their grades.

Some 8,000 miles away in the Belize jungle, Prince William was also celebrating. The eighteen-year-old prince was on exercise with the Welsh Guards in the South American jungle when he received an e-mail from his housemaster at Eton, Andrew Gailey, telling him that he had achieved an A in geography, a B in history of art, and a C in biology, and most important, a place at the University of St. Andrews to study for a degree in the history of art. His father had already sent an e-mail of congratulations, and back at home Charles told reporters he was delighted with William's results: “I know how hard William worked to achieve these excellent results and I am very proud that he has done so well.” St. James's Palace issued a statement confirming the happy news. “Prince William is obviously delighted and relieved that he has got into St. Andrews and is very much looking forward to becoming a student in a year's time.”

St. Andrews University is steeped in royal history—the Scottish King James V studied there in the early sixteenth century—but of course when the Palace announced that Prince William was going, the university became world-famous overnight. The compact coastal town of St. Andrews is “a destination rather than a place one stumbles across, because it is so remote,” according to the university's former vice chancellor Brian Lang. The population is tiny, just 18,000 residents, and the town is dominated by students. With the news that William was going to be studying there, its popularity rocketed and the university's registrars recorded a 44 percent rise in applications. Coincidentally, the university had just shot up the league table to become the only Scottish university in Britain's top ten elite colleges, ahead of Edinburgh. Delighted to be charged with the education of a future King, a spokesman
said, “We are pleased for Prince William as we are for all successful applicants to the University of St. Andrews, and look forward to welcoming him to our community next year,” adding that the university would be a “unique, nourishing, and challenging” place to study.

Like Kate, William had initially wanted to study at Edinburgh, where the history of art degree program is considered one of the best in the country. Whereas his father and his uncle Edward had studied at Cambridge, William had been eager to break the mold. He didn't want the academic pressure of studying at Oxford or Cambridge, and he had loved Edinburgh when he visited the campus. The city was considered the party capital of the British Isles and some of William's friends from the Glosse Posse were heading there. But despite William's enthusiasm, both his housemaster and his father had urged him to reconsider. Edinburgh is a large, fast-paced city, where the protection of the prince would be complicated. On their recommendation, William had gone to visit St. Andrews, a smaller, more sheltered university than Edinburgh, where the history of art program also enjoyed a first-class reputation. The Queen's cousin James Ogilvy, the son of Sir Angus Ogilvy and Princess Alexandra, was a former student. He had loved studying there and urged William to take a look. After an informal visit, William agreed it was the right choice.

Kate, however, was set on Edinburgh, and according to her residence house tutor, Miss Gall, who helped Kate complete her Universities and Colleges Admissions Services (UCAS) form, and Jasper Selwyn, the career adviser at Marlborough College, it was the first choice on her UCAS form. “As far as I am aware she had a place confirmed at Edinburgh,” said Mr. Selwyn. “She was accepted through the usual UCAS routine.
In those days you applied for five courses and got acceptances and rejections depending on your grades. You chose one firm place and one insurance. Kate's firm choice was Edinburgh and that was confirmed.” Miss Gall insisted that it was not just the fact that her friends wanted to go that made Kate enthusiastic about going. “She wouldn't have applied to Edinburgh just because her friends were going; it was because of the course. She wanted to read history of art,” she said. The arts faculty is regarded as one of the best in Britain and in their final year, the history of art students are given highly coveted work placements at either a gallery or a museum to prepare them for life as a postgraduate.

Although the course was prestigious, the social life was another attraction, and with only six hours of lectures a week, the students, who at the time had the biggest students' union in Britain, were known to spend more of their time in coffee houses or bars, or throwing dinner parties, than studying. Emilia and Alice couldn't wait to move to Edinburgh, but upon receiving her grades, Kate had a dramatic and sudden change of heart. She decided to turn down her place at Edinburgh, take a gap year—a year off—and reapply for St. Andrews.

It was a bold move and very risky, and rather out of character for Kate. There was no guarantee that she would get a place in the history of art program at St. Andrews, which was oversubscribed now that William had confirmed his place. Kate was convinced it was the right thing to do and already had an idea for the first part of her gap year. Her cousin Lucy, an undergraduate at Bristol, was studying Italian in Florence and had been badgering Kate to join her, tempting her with the city's historic art, the opportunity to learn Italian, and the great social life to be had. It suddenly seemed too good an opportunity
to miss. Having discussed the idea with her parents and after outlining her evolving plans for the rest of the year, she enrolled in a three-month course to study Italian at the British Institute in Florence. The program started in September and ended at Christmas. There was a voluntary expedition to Chile that had caught Kate's eye, and she intended to do some research on that as soon as she sent off her new UCAS form. Her friends were rather taken aback—it was unlike Kate to let them down. Knowing they were going to be undergraduates together in Edinburgh had kept her, Emilia, and Alice going through their exams, and she knew that Pippa was planning to apply the next year. Her decision was rather mysterious, according to her housemistress, Mrs. Patching: “After she left school, Catherine made some different decisions, but why she made those decisions I don't know.”

Jasper Selwyn believed that turning down a place at Edinburgh, which was deemed one of the best universities in the United Kingdom, was unusual. “Edinburgh was a very popular choice, St. Andrews less so, probably because it was smaller.” Another senior teacher at Marlborough who oversaw the reapplication said that the school was fully supportive of Kate's decision, even if it was somewhat surprising. “The school would have been aware of her reapplying and they would have been involved. She would have reapplied at the end of August or the beginning of September; it was a fairly smooth system. Everything was set up to help her. She decided to reapply, which is fair enough.”

Kate was required to turn down her place at Edinburgh formally through UCAS, so Marlborough advised her to write a letter to the university directly as a matter of courtesy. Once she had reapplied to St. Andrews, she packed her bags for
Florence. She did have the required grades to get into the history of art program, and it was now more a matter of whether she would be able to gain admission. It seemed every girl in America wanted to come to St. Andrews to search out the prince. Kate would have read the papers. She would have known that William was going and that there was every chance they could be in the same program at the same time if she got a place to study there.

As usual, her parents were wholly encouraging and knew that when Kate set her mind to something, generally it happened. Some royal watchers have claimed that Carole persuaded her daughter to apply to St. Andrews. Society journalist Matthew Bell penned an intriguing article in the
Spectator
after Kate graduated. “Some insiders wonder whether her university meeting with Prince William can really be ascribed to coincidence,” he wrote. “Although at the time of making her application to universities it was unknown where the prince was intending to go, it has been suggested that her mother persuaded Kate to reject her first choice on hearing the news and take up her offer at St. Andrews instead.” Bell, who claimed he had “a reliable source who knows Kate very well,” fueled a frenzy of speculation. The truth is Kate did change her mind and reapplied to St. Andrews, knowing that the prince was going there, but only she truly knows whether her change of heart was because of William.

William had also been allowed some time to unwind before embarking on his vocational gap year. It was July of the new millennium and France had just won the European Football Championships, England having failed to even qualify for the quarterfinals. Despite this bitter blow to national pride, William was enjoying the summer, riding around the country
lanes near Highgrove on the new Honda motorbike his father had given him for his eighteenth birthday. The present marked a coming of age, as did his new romance. Rose Farquhar, a student at the nearby Westonbirt School in Gloucestershire and part of the Glosse Posse, had been friends with William for some years. Like William, she had just finished her A-levels, and when one of their nights out had become amorous, they saw no harm in embarking on a summer romance.

However, idyllic as it was—both the summer and their romance—the courtship was brief, for William was to embark on an action-packed year off. Ideally, he had wanted to ride polo ponies in Argentina, but Charles had devised a more educational gap year for his son that was to be both fun and challenging. That August, William left the United Kingdom and headed for Belize for a taste of army life. There, William took part in an operation, code-named Native Trail, deep in the jungle, where he was trained by the Welsh Guards in survival skills, learning how to treat a snakebite and kill a chicken for food. Immediately afterward, he flew to Rodrigues, an island off the coast of Mauritius, a paradise of white sands and warm turquoise waters, a welcome contrast to the humid rain forest of South America. But William wasn't there solely to work on his tan; the Royal Geographical Society operated the Shoals of Capricorn project, and the prince was to spend most of the trip learning about the endangered coral reef. Determined to stay under the radar, he checked into a no-frills guesthouse for a month as “Mr. Brian Woods.”

Meanwhile, Kate had arrived in Tuscany in September and was enjoying the dizzying charms of the Renaissance city of Florence. It was her first time living overseas without her family, and Carole had been on the phone to her niece Lucy
to make sure everything was in place ahead of Kate's arrival. By a stroke of luck, a room had become available at the apartment Lucy was renting, and the British Institute, which oversees students' accommodation, offered Kate the room for $750 a month.