where to sit in the canteen at lunchtimes. Inevitably, there were cliques. Should she spend the hour with the black girls or the white girls, with the Filipino or Latino girls? Mostly she avoided the issue by joining every group or society going, making do with a sandwich during French club or giving her views on the next important question for the student body. It helped that she was intelligent and articulate, although there was a chance she was becoming a little earnest.
The girls at Immaculate Heart were encouraged to get involved in the community. In these early teenage years they were educated in the school’s ideology values ‘to become women of great heart and right conscience through leadership, service, and a life-long commitment to Christian values.’
In middle school, they were expected to volunteer for worthwhile projects in the Los Angeles area. Meghan, aged thirteen, chose a particularly challenging one, working at a place that was on Doria’s radar as something worth supporting.
The enterprise in the heart of downtrodden, downcast, downtown LA was run by a remarkable couple, Jeff Dietrich and Catherine Morris, a former nun, who is in her eighties now but still turning up two or three times a week to do her bit at the ‘Hippie Kitchen’, as the locals named their community kitchen back in the day.
Skid Row, fifty-four blocks of relentless misery, is not a place for a night-time stroll past the trolleys full of crumpled clothes and cardboard boxes, past the homeless men and women huddled round an oil-drum fire waiting for the sun to rise on another day; waiting for the soup kitchen on the corner of 6th Street and Gladys Avenue to open.
Jeff and Catherine met as volunteers there in 1974, four years after the kitchen opened in an old Victorian house. They were part of an organisation called the Catholic Worker movement that aims to help the most vulnerable members of society. The three hundred or so homeless people queuing for their only meal of the day were not fed religion as part of the deal.
Instead they were treated to an hour or so of respect where they could eat some freshly cooked food – vegetables, rice and beans or some salad with hunks of bread – in the tranquil, sunny courtyard dotted with palm trees and parrots, and chat about this and that and nothing in particular before stepping back into the harsh reality of their world. Perhaps best of all, it was a place of safety where they knew your name.
The kitchen was open in the mornings and the police were never too far away, patrolling the sidewalks where crack cocaine and bad alcohol were in competition to drag the Skid Row residents down even further. Meghan had been apprehensive, even fearful, of volunteering. She had seen the grim streets of Mexico and Jamaica, but here she was making a connection and becoming personally involved: ‘The first day I felt really scared. I was young and it was rough and raw down there, and though I was with a great volunteer group, I just felt overwhelmed.’
Meghan was more her confident self when she gave her first serious speech; she spoke at her middle school graduation ceremony at Immaculate Heart in June 1995. It was a masterful effort for someone not yet fourteen. Wearing the traditional white cap and gown, she showed no sign of outward nerves when she began, ‘Good evening parents, friends, faculty and fellow classmates …’
She thanked the school graciously for the previous two years, singling out the religious lessons that had helped her and others to ‘develop spirituality in our lives’ and the classes that had taught them ‘a deep compassion to those who suffer from the Aids virus’.
She concluded in a mature way: ‘We will graduate from high school in 1999 and begin college in the next century, taking many different paths. Some of us will go into politics, finance, entertainment, education and many other fields. But no matter what field we choose, we will always carry the spirit of Immaculate Heart with us. And always and forever as women of great heart, dedicate ourselves to making it a better world.’
Not for the last time in her life, a Meghan Markle speech was greeted with a rapturous round of applause. The last sentiment was one she has endeavoured to follow throughout her life and that she could have included in almost any speech she has made since.
Doria continued to nurture her daughter’s empathy by taking Meghan with her to weekend meetings of her church, the Agape (Greek for unconditional love) International Spiritual Center in Santa Monica. These were very popular across a wide spectrum of ages and ethnicity. Dismissing these gatherings as an exuberant, exclusively black gospel event is completely wrong.
Of course the hall resonates with some glorious, uplifting singing, accompanied by the Agape house band of musicians, but there’s also the chance to meditate, spending time in soothing silence and quiet reflection, that particularly appealed to Doria and her embrace of yoga culture.
The centre was founded in 1986 by the Rev Dr Michael Beckwith, a charismatic advocate of the New Thought movement that promoted positive thinking as a modern way of dealing with the universal problems of today – feeding the homeless, preserving the environment and helping children whose lives have been shattered by war and disease. They are the virtues that Doria and Meghan already followed and ones that would become even more important to them in the years to come.
These were religious gatherings and God did not take a backseat, but they were a world away from a draughty Sunday service at Crathie Kirk, next to Balmoral. A celebrity or two might drift in, happy that they were not going to be photographed or disturbed. The Oscar-winning actress Hilary Swank was a particular devotee and would often be there when Doria and Meghan attended.
In the school holidays, when Meghan was thirteen going on fourteen, Agape started a summer drama camp for some of the members’ children. The camp, which met every day, was called Agape’s 38 Flavours, because that was the number of children who signed up for it. They were from different cultures, all encouraged to share their experiences of life.
Meghan was one of thirteen or fourteen young teenagers, alongside a pocket of pre-teens and a group of little children. Another girl was known as Meg so Meghan adopted her own special jingle: ‘Meghan Markle with a Sparkle’ and everyone called her that.
Generally, Doria would be the morning taxi, dropping her off at 8am, then Tom would pick her up at 4pm. Meghan’s domestic arrangements had changed. Tom and Doria had swapped roles to a certain extent. One of the popular myths about Meghan’s childhood and beyond is that her mum and dad remained great friends. That was not the case, but like many parents, they made the best of it for the sake of their child.
Meghan was faced with the tricky dilemma of keeping both parents happy and including both in her life. During the week she lived with her father. The Woodland Hills home had proved far too large for one person after both Yvonne and Tom Jr had moved out, so instead, he found a second-floor apartment in an unassuming West Hollywood street called Vista Del Mar, conveniently near his work and the school.
At weekends she was back with Mum. Doria was following in her own dad’s footsteps by setting up in business for herself and becoming a store owner. She found premises for two businesses in a modest shopping mall on La Brea Avenue, just a five-minute drive from home; one was a gift shop called Distant Treasures and the other, catchily named A Change of a Dress, included some of her own designs. Understandably, the stores required a lot of attention so there was little time for the school run, so Tom’s place seemed a sensible option for Meghan during the week.
Tom didn’t go to the Agape church but he was happy to do his share of parental chauffeuring for camp. This was the first time the teenage Meghan had come into contact with boys. She went to an all-girls school so the opportunities had been thin on the ground. That changed when she met Joshua Silverstein, a year older than her and just as keen on theatre.
Like her, Joshua was mixed race. His father David was Jewish and his mother, Beverly, African–American. His parents, who divorced when he was eleven, went to high school with
