by Karen Harper
The memories poured back to heat and crush me like a sparkling incendiary bomb: Mother there, Father, my brothers and sisters—and Marguerite standing in the door to the kitchen with her hands clasped and her eyes shining on my dear brother David and me.
I think everyone wondered why I cried now. Why I could barely choke down a bite of the special and delicious confection.
“A French tradition, Your Majesties,” said our only footman, who had served it. “The Big House cook, who lives in the village now the place is closed, came in to bake it for you. Seems she had a French master chef teacher, even one from Paris, she did.”
“Please thank her for us” was all I could manage. “I’ll be right back,” I told Bertie and the girls. “The cake is lovely, and please thank the cook. I hope I’m not coming down with something.”
I went upstairs to the small sitting room between Bertie’s and my bedrooms. I hoped he would stay with our daughters and not see me like this, but he came in from his door and sat down next to me on the old horsehair settee. Trying to regain control, I sniffled to silence and dabbed at my eyes.
“My dearest, are you not well?” he asked, leaning closer and taking my hand.
Tell him! my inner voice screamed. Tell him now.
“You and your memories of Lala,” I said, my voice rough. “Oh, I had a sweet nanny too, but my mother was the dearest—”
“Yes. Yes, I know. Some sort of sad memory about losing your mother?”
I nodded fiercely. “But not what you think,” I choked out.
“A bad one? But I know full well what a happy childhood you had. You are worried for your father’s health, still mourning your mother?”
I nodded, tugged my hand from his so I could blow my nose. Now was the perfect time to tell him about my real mother, maybe tell him my other secrets too.
“Yes, I loved my parents so much. But once, when they thought I was old enough, they told me a family secret, and I vowed then to keep it a secret, but . . . but I suppose I should have told you years ago—before we were even wed.”
“Something upsetting or even scandalous?” he asked, his voice a whisper. “All families have something in the closet. But you can tell me—anything, my darling. Not to sound trite but . . . b-but we are all in this together. You have supported me and I you. So, is this secret why you turned me down twice when I proposed, because you were worried what I or others would say if they found out?”
“Papa and Mama said never to tell anyone, but it . . . it has bothered me, haunted me. That Yule log cake tonight—our French cook Marguerite Rodiere—at St. Paul’s Walden Bury . . .”
“Yes. She made cakes like that?”
I nodded fiercely. “Yes. She favored me—little David too. Then my parents explained how much they loved children.”
“What? But your parents were my ideal for rearing Lilibet and Margot.”
“But they—wanted more children and couldn’t. So—it was a done thing—Father went into her—Marguerite—and she had two more children for them, and Mother loved us all the same—more, she said.”
He had gone silent. My stomach, full of holiday dinner as it was, flip-flopped. I was afraid to look up.
Bertie’s voice was so quiet I could barely hear. “The Earl of Strathmore is your father, but this Marguerite is your physical mother?”
I nodded again wildly. Waited. Barely breathed. If this was so hard, no way in all creation could I tell him about my relationship with his horrible brother. Never.
“Then,” he said, “you had t-two fine mothers who loved you dearly, and you earned and deserved that love. And have given that back to me in good times and bad. I don’t know what I would have done without you in the past or now, especially since I seem to have lost my relationship with David, who has betrayed me and us all.”
I wiped my swollen eyes and looked sideways at him.
“You should have told me before,” he said and pulled me to him. “Long before. It would not have changed how much I love you, need you—how much you mean to me. Now we share your secret, now we still go on together, for that was nothing you did, nothing you could control or caused.”
His arms went strong around my shoulders; my hips slid against his on the horsehair. I pressed my face into the side of his warm neck and held him tight. That last thing he said showed me that, even though he was down on David now, my other secrets must stay buried.
Buried deep.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
D-Day
So,” Winston told us, solemn-faced and still standing, though our weekly luncheon table awaited, “here we are on the sixth day of the sixth month, the year of our Lord 1944, and I have come to let you know how the invasion has gone thus far, Your Majesties. On the sixth hour this morning, Operation Overlord commenced, and I can report that Generals Montgomery and Eisenhower have sent thousands of men, ships, and planes to overrun five key Normandy beaches. The cost will be great, but the result—I am yet waiting to hear more updates—but we have a beachhead!”
Bertie clapped him on the shoulder, then gripped that shoulder. “Monty and Ike aside, it never would have happened without you, Winston!”
“And you, sir! And behind all of us men stand our Valkyries like the queen and my Clementine,” he added with a nod at me. “By the way, our breaking the code has given us perhaps the best hurrah of the day from that damned fox, Hitler’s General Rommel. We intercepted that he has said—privately, he thinks—that the invasion must be repelled on the beaches, for if they are lost, the Allies would win the battle of France, and then, the war. And I swear to you we are going to win on the beaches and then beyond!”
Bertie said, “It was brilliant of Eisenhower.” He pulled out my chair at the table, and the three of us sat. “He raised the air support from three to five divisions and insisted on getting that pipeline laid from here to there for oil to keep our tanks going once they breach the German defenses.”
“And how clever,” I put in, “to install those artificial quays to make harbors off the five target beaches. Mulberry harbors, I believe the general said they are called.”
“Ma’am,” Winston said, turning to me, “if I still had my hat on my head, I would doff it to you.” He looked at Bertie. “My best counsel and advice today, sir, is to stay on the right side of this formidable warrior woman and queen.”
“None like her,” Bertie said with a warm, proud glance at me.
I breathed a double sigh of hope and relief. That the forces of good would prevail against the damned Nazis. And that what I had told Bertie of my mixed British–French heritage had not shaken his devotion. Yet would he stay steady if I finally unburdened myself with the worst of my secrets?
* * *
The king gave a D-Day speech to the nation. I kept up my visits to our bases—much depleted now by the forces fighting on the Continent. But our hospitals were full, so I went there too, sometimes with Lilibet. That is, until she convinced her father that she should join the Auxiliary Territorial Service, called the ATS, as a mechanic and ambulance driver. Even though she would not be a full-fledged member of the ATS for months, she was proud to begin training and show us how that was going.
Both of us found time to visit what would be her section to see how she was faring. So there was Princess Elizabeth of England, heir to the throne, in oil-and-dirt-stained baggy overalls, on her knees by a lorry demonstrating how to change a tire.
I felt entirely overdressed in my usual suit and hat, but I still believed in keeping up appearances, however many of our troops were slogging through the mud and hedgerows.
Her father, smiling proudly, said, “I won’t worry one whit now if I have a tire go bad. Just call Lilibet.”
“This is entirely serious, Papa,” she said under her breath. Two movie cameras were rolling, and I had asked Rowena to come along to take some still photos for us. Several newspapermen hovered. “If I’m going to drive an ambulance or even a lorry,” she went on, turning a large wrench at t
he hub of the tire, “I must know how to tend to everything.”
In a quiet voice, he leaned down and told her, “We are proud of you, and Philip will be too.”
Bertie had been entirely more in favor of their long-distance, budding romance, and I had accepted she should at least stay friends with him. He had sent the king and me a handwritten note of gratitude for “allowing him to enjoy the warmth of our family.”
I hated to say it, but he was somewhat winning me over, though I did not want her to set her heart on him, or even trust him in some sort of intimate situation. No, I had seen a passionate young woman make that beastly mistake and come out feeling bruised and beaten. I had learned that D-Day merely meant the day of attack, but in a way that dreadful day with David years ago had been my D-Day, my day of disaster. Damn him, he had ruined my marriage bed and made me hate him and his vicious, chosen woman.
Bertie and I both gave our best waves and smiles to the newsreel cameras and Rowena’s single-strobe one. Our Lilibet did not look up, but pulled the replacement tire closer, rolling it toward the propped-up axle.
I could not quite see myself doing that. I hoped she was different from me in some ways, at least in some important ways early in her life. I must admit, I had never been more impressed or proud of her.
* * *
Exactly one week later, 13 June, I made a visit to several local hospitals where our wounded men were being brought back from the Continent. It was the least I could do to try to keep spirits up, though the invasion—taking Europe back, as one newspaper had said—was going apace, despite dreadful casualties.
I was thankful that both Winston and Bertie had seen the wisdom of not going over yet, even to bolster morale. Let the generals do that for now, they had said, but they both wanted to visit soon. Winston had showed us a short letter of resignation General Eisenhower had written in case his D-Day invasion went all wrong: If there is any blame or fault, it is mine alone.
Well, that hit me hard. More than once, I composed in my head a letter to Bertie with similar wording for when I might tell my shameful truth. I must clear my conscience and explain why I hated his brother whom he still cared for deeply despite his perfidy. But, like Lilibet, I did find some solace in helping by visiting the sick and wounded, of which there were many despite the turning of the tide across the Channel.
“This is Eddie, Your Majesty,” the nurse who was guiding me through a hospital on the southern fringe of London told me. The young man was dressed, sitting quietly on the very edge of his cot, crowded in with the others. He looked like he might jump up and flee.
The nurse was very kind to escort me from ward to ward and bed to bed of our wounded. This entire room was filled with British boys we called “shell-shocked.” Often, they had no visible wounds, but were so very damaged and haunted-looking.
“Hello, Eddie,” I said in a quiet voice and stooped to take his hand in my gloved one. I turned back a moment to shake my head, so Rowena would know not to frighten him with the pop of the flashbulb on her camera.
I doubted if Eddie was yet twenty. He was blond and blue-eyed. His hand trembled. He shifted his wide, vacant stare to our hands and did not look at my face.
The nurse whispered, “That’s what we call the thousand-yard stare, Your Majesty. He can’t shake it off yet—what he’s seen or had to do. Don’t know if he ever will.”
“I understand,” I said, more to him than to her. “Eddie, I am glad to see you and I thank you for all you have done. You must rest and not be afraid of anything anymore.
“What do you know of his family?” I asked her, turning slightly away. “Have they been to see him?”
“Lost their home in an early bombing, ma’am, and the railway tracks still not repaired where they live, but they hitch a ride in now and then, his mother and sister. His father—missing in action.”
“I see. Eddie, it has been an honor to meet you and hold your hand. You get better now so you can go back to your mother and sister. They need you and they love you.”
His distant gaze focused and moved to my face. “Mother,” he said matter-of-factly, not as a question, not in any sort of false recognition. Just “Mother.”
Though I never did such a thing, I leaned forward and lightly kissed his cheek.
“Mother,” he said again, looking through me, past me.
The thousand-yard stare, the nurse had said. It wasn’t just a shell-shocked soldier who wore that look these days. I swear, I had seen it in my own looking glass.
* * *
After making more rounds, I was thanking the hospital staff—and asking them to let me know Eddie’s progress—when we heard a strange whistling sound, almost like a shriek. It cut out, but was soon followed by a boom-kerboom that blew in the reception room windows and shook the very foundation of the building.
I was thrown backward to the floor in a heap of bodies. Both the doctor and my nurse guide partly covered me, then helped me scramble up as we heard more distant blasts.
“What in bloody hell?” a man shouted. “Thought we were done with that!”
I recalled Winston had mentioned Hitler was so furious at how the tide of the war was turning that he might try to bomb us again. But I had heard no approaching aircraft.
The nurse helped me brush plaster dust off my suit, then gave up. “Forgive me, ma’am, but I have to see to the patients. Things like this set them off.”
I rose to go help her. I swear, I had to see to Eddie as if he were my own. But my driver and detective appeared, both covered with plaster dust.
“Your Majesty, some sort of weird bomb,” Percy, my driver, gasped out. “No plane, no pilot. Engine just cut out and down it came. We must get you back now.”
“But is there not a shelter here?” I asked the doctor. “You need to get these men into a shelter, especially if they panic because of what they’ve seen and heard in combat.”
Detective Ransley took my arm and began to hustle me out. “The other robotic bombs seem to be falling to the west,” he told me, or else he was talking to Percy, who raced along beside him. “We must head back, ma’am—now.”
Squeezing me between the two of them, they gave me no choice, and they were right. At least the bomb had hit somewhere outside, not on this facility. As we rushed to the motorcar, another of those horrid things flew over, screaming like a banshee.
Silence again when its motor cut out.
Then the blast. My ears popped, my head hurt.
“Hitler’s pretty upset about us getting a land hold and heading for him,” Detective Ransley said, still holding my arm to hustle me into the motorcar. “Best get down, Your Majesty, lower than these windows, even if they are thick glass.”
And so the queen of England, whose country was on the attack in Europe, had to put her head down, sprawl on the floor, and be covered with a blanket from the boot as if that damned Hitler could again bomb her and poor London to bits.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Information Fakery
I went straight into Bertie’s arms when my driver and detective delivered me safely back to Buck House. He was waiting for me at the door, as if he were any husband worried that his wife may have had an accident.
“Darling, I cannot believe you had such a close call,” he told me as he hugged me, then led me inward and up the stairs to my suite. “You look as if you’ve rolled in sifted flour.”
“Plaster dust. I—we were all—thrown to the floor. Bertie, there were so many shell-shocked men at that facility, and I’m sure they are even more panicked—or nearly comatose—from that blast. It was eerie, I heard no plane or pilot, so what was it?”
“They’ve examined one that failed to detonate on the East End—”
“Not the East End again!”
“—and several other places in London. Since Winston cannot leave the war room right now, he’s sending Brendan Bracken over to bring us up to snuff. We’ve had hints in reading the German coded messages that they were planning to laun
ch some so-called wonder weapons from bases in northern France, so maybe our forces will get there soon and destroy them—and the bloody Nazi dream of world domination.”
“I’d best change my clothes then. I’ll call for help to be quick.” I pulled out my hatpins and sailed my hat onto the chaise longue.
“Let me help you. Brendan will be here soon, and we don’t need others about. Here, let me take that coat. Oh, your hair is whitish too.”
“Even without that, I’m finding silver strands from worry and fear for us—for all.”
He helped me remove my coat and unfastened my pearls. As he unbuttoned the back of my dress quickly and deftly, I had two thoughts. First, where did he learn to free those little buttons so easily? And second—what a strange thought for such a terrible day—I had not been undressed by him ever. On our honeymoon, I was in a nightgown when he came in, and since then, with my servants and my own reluctance and request for . . . for bedroom privacy, for celibacy . . .
I stood before him in my slip and kicked off my shoes. I felt strangely vulnerable and almost naked. “Goodness,” I said, moving away, “I shall have to find my own dress in my vast closet. But in all things, my dear, we can make do.”
To my surprise and unease, he followed me into my dressing room with all its doors, shoes, and hat racks, my drawers of scant jewelry, for most of it had been secured or hidden in these terrible times.
I quickly jammed my feet in a pair of heels and shuffled through hanging dresses. I snatched one out, navy with a pleated skirt and padded shoulders. Its silk hanger went spinning away. I shimmied the lined garment over my head and shook it a bit until it settled.
“Turn around,” he whispered, looking me over and coming closer. “I’ll fasten it for you.”
Feeling warm and not from rushing, I did as he said and found I was staring at him and myself in one of the full-length looking glasses. We both froze for a moment, though I felt heated even more. From my close call today? From fear and anger that this war we should be winning raged on?