The Queen's Secret: A Novel of England's World War II Queen

by Karen Harper

  We sat in the dim corner of our shelter until the all-clear siren screamed. We went outside.

  “Three workmen injured and one of them deceased, Your Majesty,” an aide told him.

  “See that his full wages for this entire chapel rebuilding project are sent to his family,” Bertie said. The man nodded, bowed, and backed away.

  “Would that we could do that for all those being lost,” I whispered as we went wearily upstairs. “One thing, though. I don’t want Lilibet and Margot to know how close we came to—to the blast.”

  “Righto, my love. Onward and upward, as my father used to say, but then he used to say a lot of things, most not inspiring but brutal, like bomb blasts to David and me. To our dear brother George too. No wonder he turned to drink and drugs, not to mention other—others.”

  “But you survived, and here we are. Everyone has tough times in his or her childhood.”

  “Yes, you lost a brother in the first war and a sister to disease. At least everything else was rosy for you with your loving parents, and I always admired that. If it wasn’t for this bloody war, maybe our girls would have the same charmed childhood as you did.”

  There it was again, not only his comparison of his strict parents with my affectionate, indulgent ones, but the suggestion he knew nothing of my true heritage. Again, I tried to tell myself it didn’t matter who my mother was or that my worst enemies knew that my dear husband did not know. Or did he?

  “Let’s telephone the girls, for they are bound to hear” was all I said when I could have blurted out so much more, but now was not the time.

  “And we certainly won’t tell them how close we came,” he insisted.

  I intended to convince him to tell Winston or I would tell him secretly myself. No need to rile the man who knew at least my dossier secret.

  “Yes,” I said. “But it is best that children and sometimes even adults don’t know certain sad or frightening things at all.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Playacting

  I almost felt guilty, taking time to visit my dress designer in such difficult times, but I was to be fitted for what were called “austerity clothes.” After all, people expected me to look good—queenly—as one London paper had put it. Yet I needed to tone down my attire to emphasize the government’s new clothing regulations.

  “Welcome, Your Majesty,” Norman Hartnell greeted me at the door to his Bruton Street townhouse in Mayfair. “I was telling everyone that you are fashion’s North Star we steer by in these trying times.”

  I shook his hand as his staff curtsied behind him. I smiled at them before, with a wave of his hand, he sent them back to their duties. Norman was such a handsome man and still unmarried, an eternal bachelor, he called himself, dedicated to his art. We were much the same age. I had recently put all my fashion decisions in his capable hands, though Bertie had much to do with my finally leaving my longtime designer Madame Handley-Seymour.

  I had stayed loyal to her and asked her to design my wedding dress, but I’d heard the murmurings it was old-fashioned, even . . . well, dowdy. So when Norman had designed gowns for Lilibet and Margot to be young bridesmaids for a family wedding, I saw his designs firsthand. And when I had come for the girls’ fittings, I had been quite won over by the man’s charm and designs for me to wear. I had hesitated at first because I knew that Mrs. Simpson had patronized his shop, but she, thank heavens, had moved on swiftly to Mainbocher, trying to enhance her thin, austere body and persona.

  Even Bertie had chimed in with ideas of how I should be gowned, but now you might know, this war was ruining Norman’s career too.

  He escorted me toward his office through his lovely first-floor salon with its tasteful mix of Regency and very modern furniture. The lady-in-waiting who had accompanied me stayed in the salon, chatting with the shop’s hostess. Beyond lay the spacious, mirrored fitting room with the seamstresses’ spaces mostly upstairs.

  The hallway was lined with photographs of women in Hartnell designs, though, out of respect, none of the royal family, only a copy of the Royal Warrant we had recently awarded him. It was always exciting to be here, for his clientele went beyond royalty to film royalty: Framed photographs of stars like Merle Oberon, Marlene Dietrich, and Vivien Leigh smiled at me from the dove grey walls.

  Gone with the Wind was the hit movie of the year in the States, and we had viewed an early run of it. The romance of the fashions had made Bertie decide that when we returned to entertaining again, I should wear full skirts—with crinolines, no less. Before the abdication, when I was so upset about that woman calling me the “dowdy duchess,” Bertie had even showed Norman the Winterhalter portraits that hung at the palace, telling him he thought I would look lovely in that style, and so Norman had designed such gowns for me. Although that artist was German, which had made me want to disagree because of the so-called Great War, Bertie and Norman were convinced that the full skirt and feminine look with lace, satin, and pearls would be right for me during formal occasions—which we had so few of now.

  I removed my gloves as we sat to tea in upholstered chairs across a small table with tea service laid out. I was charmed that he always poured for us himself while we reviewed my past and present fashions.

  Norman told me, “I can remake any day dresses or gowns you need to fit the blasted rules, ma’am, but I cannot believe we’ve come to this. Rules on the amount of fabric in a garment? Specifics on the number of buttons, fastenings, and embroideries? By the way, I will have some of the entrancing beadwork, crystals, and pearls on your dresses and gowns removed for now, but I shall simply have the lavish embroidery dyed to hide it. It would be a sin to ruin some of those dresses. You know that I despise simplicity in design—in life. Your garments are works of art, and you so perfectly present them.”

  I took the teacup from him. “You’ve advised me so well, even to wear light colors, so people can pick me out better in these dark days—no mourning black, for that would be like giving in. I do think the three-quarter-length coats over the slimmer skirts for daywear and large hats give me more height. And I will ever be grateful for how quickly you managed to put together the mourning wardrobe for me when you had just completed everything for our trip to France before the war. You and your clever staff shifted so quickly from colors to French mourning white, when my—my mother Cecilia, Countess of Strathmore, died.”

  “I know how dear she was to you, but you rose to the occasion to be so deeply grieved yet carry on with steady aplomb. The French visit and North American tours went off fabulously—fashionably—well.”

  We shared a little laugh as he proffered a plate with scones and tarts. I could not resist trying several.

  “And, of all people, you have helped me to be . . . well, to enhance my form and shape these last years, even now,” I said, turning toward him more in my chair.

  “We have adapted more than once, have we not? Colors just slightly muted now, dusty pink, blue, and lilac. Ah, that reminds me, I have a gift for you,” he said with a broad smile as he popped up to take a hatbox from the shelves behind his desk. He had not touched his tea nor the pastries. I supposed that, and hard work, was how he stayed so trim.

  “Every important woman,” he said, “and you are the best of them—has her own style.” He gave me time to put aside my teacup and sweets while he waited to put the box on my knees. You might know, though it was not tied shut with a ribbon, it was covered with satin with a lace border.

  I lifted the lid. “Whatever . . . ?” I asked and looked in at the items.

  He leaned against the edge of his desk, hovering over me. “The mauve items are a gown and nightcap for you to don quickly should there be another air raid at the palace and you in bed, though, thank God, there has been no nighttime bombing yet. And that black velvet case is for your gas mask.”

  I had to laugh. “I’d best not let the East End know of that. But it’s all delightful in these dreadful times. It lifts one’s spirits. But for my other clothing, I’ll
trust you to stick to the austerity and utility rules. We must all do our bit for the cause. And I was proud to hear that you joined the Home Guard,” I added as I put the items back in the box and perched it on his desk and he went back to his chair.

  “I did, ma’am. We Home Guards are proudly augmenting professional security here in London, often at night—factories, the docks, main thoroughfares. Our duty is to be a secondary defense force and, if need be, to slow the advance of the enemy should they come here, to allow regular troops to regroup and deploy. We all must do our part—and my part is also designing for our dear queen.”

  * * *

  In the dressing room, I stood on the small dais, surrounded by tall looking glasses, while Norman and his assistant Thelma draped canvas and cotton on me to find the correct proportions for my austerity clothes. Small seams and no lapels. Narrow belts. Skimpy lining.

  “I sometimes feel as if I’m on a stage, playacting with everyone watching, but it is only these looking glasses that make me feel so here,” I told him after he had recited measurements to a secretary, who wrote everything down. I was sadly certain that, despite cutting back on some foods at the palace per regulations—for the king and I were determined to keep the rules and suffer with our nation through all this—my measurements had gone up a bit.

  “I can imagine, with eyes on you at all times, it is a bit like playacting,” he said. “Now this day dress will be perfect with just a touch of pearls at the neckline.”

  “A pearl necklace, not sewn on—rules!” I told him.

  “The queen may wear her jewelry to draw attention to the neckline rather than farther down. I cannot wait for the photographs in the newspapers.”

  * * *

  Strange, but I knew women told their clothiers and hairdressers things they did not even tell their husbands. Norman understood I was sometimes playacting at being queen, and a queen in wartime at that. I told myself it was more like a history play and not a tragedy—and definitely not a comedy, though we tried to be lighthearted at times.

  Actually, British citizens we spoke to were newly solicitous of us, as if the bombing of the palace had united us with them even more. Winston had absolutely insisted the attack on us be broadcast far and wide, though he didn’t want it to get back to the Germans that the king and queen came close to being harmed or even killed in the apparently rogue attack, so that was not released at this time. Still, one woman even asked me if my “pretty things been blown to bits” like hers had been.

  The very first day I wore a new austerity outfit with my trademark triple string of pearls, I had just leaned over to talk to a young woman in a wheelchair with a baby in her lap when the little boy reached up a hand to seize my necklace.

  “Oh, no, Jackie! No!” the woman cried and made a grab for him.

  “Quite all right,” I assured her, putting my hand on the child’s. “I have two of my own who used to act like that.”

  With a smile, I managed to disengage the little hand, nod at the relieved young mother, and move on, when a voice behind me said, “Oh, Your Majesty, I would have shot that picture of him with your necklace, so touching, so . . . real.”

  I turned to see a young woman when I was expecting a cameraman, but weren’t they all in the service? “I understand,” I said. “Let’s stage it then.”

  “Oh, I’d be ever so grateful. I been trying to listen and learn, filling in like this at the newspaper, my big chance. Everyone’s feeling you are one of us now, ma’am, since the palace been bombed and all.”

  “We have been bombed but we haven’t lost all that these dear people have,” I told her as I turned back to the surprised woman in the wheelchair and leaned over to hand my strings of pearls to little Jackie.

  With a pop of her flashbulb, the young woman snapped the picture, thanked me effusively, then stopped to talk to Jackie’s dazed-looking mother as I moved on. No doubt the photographer was taking the position of a man who had been called to duty—or like Norman, was serving with the Home Guard.

  The photograph appeared in the London Times the next day with the photographer’s name, so I snipped it out to keep. I wished I had my lady-in-waiting who had been with me that day get her name, but there it was, farther down in the article rather than under the photo since she had the presence of mind to also interview the crippled mother. I hoped I would see the brave lady photographer, Rowena Fitzgerald, again someday. And even perhaps Penelope Brown and her little Jackie. Not really playacting in public, but being myself, and with an avid, dear, and important audience.

  * * *

  That weekend at Windsor, Lilibet and Margot, with their governess Crawfie’s help, had arranged two short drama scenes for us to see. How this reminded me of gay days growing up at Glamis when David and I would put on “plays” for everyone, some we wrote ourselves. Ah, such happy, peaceful times.

  The town of Windsor had been bombed but not the sturdy, old castle itself. I was happy to see we were to be treated to scenes that could not possibly have any allusion to Philip of Greece, whom I was amazed to find Lilibet still pining for and reminiscing about as if they had spent hours, days, weeks together. Meanwhile, I kept my notes updated on possible future matches for her from British nobility.

  Still, our eldest’s care for others came through, which I told myself would stand her in good stead in the future. She had even asked me to say hello to her favorite police constable, Stephen Robertson, who guarded her at times when she, sometimes with Crawfie and Margot, walked our corgis on the palace grounds. He was a kind, conscientious man, one of our most loyal P.C.s, one who had even volunteered for night duty during these terrible times. I was glad our armed services let us keep some of our staff who would surely have been called to duty otherwise.

  “The first scene is one Margot chose,” Lilibet announced, standing at the front of the small stage recently erected for them here in the Queen’s Ballroom, now stripped of its huge paintings, though the blue wallpaper made a lovely background.

  They both wore white blouses with my old skirts belted about their little waists, knee-length skirts that looked quite long on them. Lilibet wore a cardboard crown. They had drawn and cut out a March Hare that Margot carried. A grinning Cheshire Cat, which looked to be crayoned instead of painted, smiled at us from the front of the stage, though the effect was a bit ruined by two of their corgis sitting there too.

  “Margot’s choice is from Alice in Wonderland,” Lilibet went on. “She is Alice, and I am the Queen of Hearts. The second will be a short selection from Romeo and Juliet, where I speak most of the lines because she doesn’t like that old-fashioned talk.”

  Their father applauded that little introduction, so I did too. They disappeared behind the makeshift, old velvet curtain, then entered again. I must say, Alice ended up being chased by the Queen of Hearts, who kept shouting “Off with her head!” I mean, an English king had once been beheaded and two of Henry VIII’s queens too.

  Bertie shook his head at that, and I rolled my eyes but we applauded heartily again to their numerous bows as Margot beamed and Lilibet, quite out of breath, kept up a solemn expression.

  And then to the romantic tragedy. Bertie reached over to take my hand and squeezed it once, in obvious pride for his daughters. Ah, I thought, Will Shakespeare should have written a drama about the lady who once longed to wed one royal brother, then wed the other and became queen anyway. A history play, no doubt, but would that also be a comedy or a tragedy? But I had the best of the bargain with the hero, not the villain, I thought, putting my other hand on top of Bertie’s and forcing myself to focus on Lilibet’s first attempt at the Bard’s challenging, old-fashioned language.

  “I am yet a stranger in the world—

  I have not seen the change of fourteen years . . .

  Yet my bounty is as boundless as the sea,

  My love as deep; the more I give to thee.”

  On she went with the love words of Juliet to her young Romeo. Why had she chosen these passages, wo
rds of longing, of missing someone so beloved?

  I sat up even straighter. She had even included a line about the sea, when Philip was at sea. Bertie would never believe me, so I would not bring it up and certainly not accuse her of pining for her own Romeo, whom she had spent so little time with—and look what happened to Juliet!

  I fought to calm myself. Storm in a teacup, I told myself. Of course, both of our daughters were strong-minded, and was that not part of my heritage to them?

  Chapter Twelve

  Locked Up

  Despite the shriek of the air-raid siren, we stood on the balcony where we had happily waved to the crowds after Neville Chamberlain promised “peace in our time,” but now we were horrified and mesmerized. If we thought the Blitzkrieg bombing of London could not get worse, we were so wrong. Because Hitler’s plan for daylight superiority in the skies did not achieve its end, thanks to our brave RAF pilots in their Hurricanes and Spitfires, October 1940 began a new terror: nighttime bombing. And, you might know, the very first night of it, we had decided to stay in London instead of motoring to Windsor to be with the girls.

  “We must go get locked up in that damned shelter again,” Bertie said, but he did not budge either. It was like seeing a moving picture or a huge kaleidoscope with vibrant colors on the black screen of the sky.

  “What are those blasts of color that look like fireworks?” I asked, raising my voice to be heard over the distant booming. “It’s like the sky on Guy Fawkes Day.”

  “Those huge sparklers are called incendiaries. They don’t show up like that in the light of day. They fall and start fires.”

  “And so much more terrifying at night. People—at least they used to be able to sleep.”

  “Which we won’t do one whit tonight, as good as locked up in that shelter. Let’s go down. This is too awful—Winston’s worst fear. And mine is that I’m terrified to the very depths of my soul whether, as the brave posters across the city say, ‘London can take it.’”