PERIPATETICS: Reunion In Davos

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As the train chuffed into the station at Davos, Switzerland, a battered jeep bearing the markings of the U.S. Fifth Army stood waiting. A news photographer, assigned to cover a royal reunion, wasted no glances on the strapping youngster in U.S. Army flying jacket who sat at the wheel. But when the big train braked to a stop and the pretty girl in the fur coat stepped off, she had eyes only for the jeep driver. “Hello, Michael darling,” she trilled in English, running to him and planting an enthusiastic kiss on his cheek. “Hello, Anne,” he stammered in blushing answer. “It’s good to see you.”

A moment later they were speeding off to a gingerbread-trimmed hotel in the village. The cameraman was indignant. “How was I to know that was the King?” he stormed to a royal aide. Shrugged the aide: “What did you expect? That he’d be wearing his crown?”

Thus-last week began the third act of a romantic Balkan operetta which (thus far) had carried Rumania’s 26-year-old King Michael and pretty Princess Anne Antoinette Franchise Charlotte of Bourbon-Parma through a lyrical, whirlwind courtship amidst the glitter of a British royal wedding and the dark second act of a Communist coup d’état in Bucharest.

The final lines of the play had not yet been written. For a month Anne and Michael planned to enjoy themselves in Switzerland* under the chaperonage of her mother, Princess Margrethe, and his uncle, Prince Nicholas. There was still no official announcement of betrothal. Political considerations, Michael’s finances ($3,000 in cash, four automobiles, and a diamond-and-ruby medal given him by Stalin were all that Bucharest let him take out), and the safety of members of the royal entourage still in Rumania were plot complications still to be unraveled. But the promise of a happy ending seemed certain. As Anne’s father put it: “They’re engaged all right.”

* For news of other doings in Switzerland, see SPORT.