by Karen Harper
I marched out into the hall, then burst into tears, leaning against the paneled wall. A footman scurried past with a tray, averting his eyes from the scene I made, no doubt the way they were taught to avoid their betters. But Chad’s nurse was there, and I supposed she’d heard all that was said.
“Bravo!” she whispered and, putting her arm round my shoulders, steering me farther from Chad’s open door. “I’ve seen other men just give up, and it’s the worst thing they can do. He’s still facing possible infections from that pitchfork, but the doctor hopes to pull him through. Well, the old queen’s physician—who could do better, though he seems unable to convince Queen Alexandra that the Germans aren’t coming here.”
I blew my nose and stood straight, then swiped madly under both eyes. It seemed good to think of someone else’s problems, even dear, dotty Queen Alexandra’s. I cleared my throat and told her, “She’s hated the Germans ever since they attacked her homeland of Denmark years ago.”
“So I’ve heard from her, I assure you. She mixes up times and places, waved to cows in the field the other day. But she does love it when you bring her youngest grandson here.”
“I will do that again soon,” I told her, perking up a bit. That would help Queen Alexandra and give me an excuse to visit Chad. But his healing, a possible infection, his broken spirit, his thinking he should cast me off now—he just had to pull through all that.
CHAD’S RECOVERY WAS long and grueling, stretching nearly a year. Johnnie’s visits, as well as Penny’s, helped him back to health a bit, but he remained adamant that I must not consider a future with him. I read him David’s letters—another excuse to see him, though the latest ones worried and angered us both. The Prince of Wales was now twenty-one, but always a boy to me. When British men were dying in the trenches of the war, David had the gall to complain that Paris, where his beleaguered father had finally sent him to be part of the war effort, was dull and boring. Yet Finch had sent a note that said, despite the dreadful trench warfare and men missing their wives and families, David was feeling his oats and had a very good friend, a Parisienne woman who seemed very fast and was evidently teaching him all the right—or wrong—things.
I kept waiting for the old Chad to show himself, but only with the children did he make an effort. He had been back in his house for several months, and though he walked with crutches, he kept insisting he would tell the king he could not do his estate duties. When I told His Majesty, he would not even see Chad because he refused his resignation and told me to tell him to “get cracking.” However rough and demanding the king yet was on his sons, I was grateful that he treated Chad the same way.
At least when Queen Mary was at Sandringham that meant my dear friend Rose was here too, for I missed her sorely when she was in London so much.
“Her Majesty is doing yeoman’s work in bolstering the war effort,” she told me as we sat in her mending room off the kitchen one evening. “She visits hospitals and cheers soldiers heading for the front. How much I miss all the grand events though—dressing her for them, the lovely gowns and all. We’re on food rationing at Buck House just as strictly as you are here, not so much as a nip of wine either. I tell you, belowstairs as well as up, it’s dreary and dreadful.”
Actually, hearing of the casualties our men had taken early in the war—lists posted in the papers were terribly long—I was rather put out at Rose for complaining about no fancy dresses. Everyone was suffering and having to do without, so why should the royal family not set the example and share in their people’s trials? My brother Ernest had gone to war, and my parents were desperately worried about him. As for rationing, perhaps I’d been so inured to nursery food over the years that I hardly noticed the difference.
I was just going to scold Rose when the door burst open and Princess Mary stood there in tears. We both leaped up. “Whatever is it?” I asked.
“Oh, Lala, I just knew you’d understand! Can you talk to Papa about it? Mama just goes along with whatever he says!”
I was appalled to see my tomboy Mary like this. “What’s amiss?” I asked, pulling her into my arms. She seemed so young again, needing me.
“It’s perfectly awful, all that’s happening. Londoners breaking windows of German shops. Someone even stoned a dachshund to death in Green Park! And now I have to send my dear Else back to Germany, and everybody loves her. You both know her! After I left the nursery, she’s been my maid that long! This whole war is not fair! Troops billeted here, when no German soldiers can march clear to Norfolk! All the flowers in Grannie’s gardens are going to be pulled up and go to awful things like Brussels sprouts and turnips!”
I let her talk, then quieted her down. Sheltered as she was and reared in a family with German kin, how could she grasp how much the Brits hated the Germans and how bad it looked for the royal family to bear the last name Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. I’m not sure her parents realized it either.
“Look, Mary,” I told her, “it is very sad about people hating the Germans, but you can see—”
“They call them the Huns, but we—my family—are related to them over and over. My Else is hardly Kaiser Wilhelm, you know, any more than that little dog people killed was piloting those horrible Zeppelins that are bombing London!”
“Shhh. There are many burdens for English folk right now, and for the royal family with their blood ties to the Germans. Many people are having to give up things and people they love. And some Britons just don’t understand German descendants, like your family, can be true blue.”
“I know Bertie wants to do his part and now he’s having more abdominal attacks. And David—well, I heard he’s tripping the light fantastic in Paris, and here I am, just asking to keep my dear Else. It was enough to lose you, Lala, but . . .”
She exploded in tears again. When she pulled away and stomped out, I was reminded again that my dear children were growing up and my days as royal nanny could well be numbered.
Chapter 31
Paris, July 1915—Dearest Lala from David.
Finally I’ve been allowed to see some action, that is, I helped interrogate a few prisoners. My German helped out, bless old Bricka! There is a shortage of munitions, which are going to the Dardanelles instead of coming here!! We hope to receive more soon!! But things can be tedious and dull, a bloody bore, even on my 21st birthday. I hear the tsar is having troubles in Russia. War, war, war! And the dances when I was summoned back to Buck House just before the war were tedious affairs too. Why the old quadrille dance when we could be doing the hoochie koo and the tango? My best to Chad—the king says he’s navigating well on crutches and uses a horse cart to get about. I assure you I am making up for my wretched childhood—except for you and Finch, well Bertie too. I hear the Sandringham Company is in the Gallipoli campaign in Turkey. Damn Turks siding with the Huns! I’m sure those Zepps harassing London wouldn’t bother with boring Norfolk—but you keep looking up.
“Keep looking up, indeed!” I told Chad as we sat on a bench by the lake while Johnnie threw stones into the placid water. I still made an excuse to read Chad David’s letters, for he mostly avoided me, and we’d had words about our . . . his situation. Avoiding me was easy enough while he was occupied overseeing the estate, especially since most of his staff was now untrained women and boys. More than once, I had told him his injuries didn’t change how I felt, but he insisted they changed how he felt.
Now, when he said nothing, I went on, “Isn’t he giving away war secrets in this letter? I mean, I’m hardly going to telephone the Huns, but shouldn’t some of this be kept secret?”
“His father would throw him in the brig. David’s always been naive, but that’s dangerous in wartime. On the other hand, his mail does come here with the king’s letters to Queen Alexandra, so they must be safe.”
Chad almost smiled but he still didn’t look at me. The old Chad, sturdy, secure, and supportive had not come back. So I had to bide my time to make him realize he could be everything I ever wanted again.
I shuddered, as whip-smart George had been prophetic. The huge German dirigibles, the Zeppelins, were dropping incendiary bombs on London. They blew holes in buildings, started fires, and killed citizens. George had been right about something else: Men were in training to be pilots who would shoot each other down in the air.
“Johnnie’s also looking for girls in cloud dresses up there,” I added. “He’s never forgotten meeting the tsar’s daughters, but he looks up to find them. They were such beautiful, charming young ladies almost ripe for love and marriage.”
Chad grabbed one of his crutches, heaved himself up, half balancing on it, then stooped to grab the other off the ground where it had fallen. What had I said? I was always walking on thin ice with him now.
“Chad, I could have helped with th—”
“Don’t you get it?” he told me low enough that Johnnie couldn’t hear. “I don’t want your help, picking up my crutches or myself. I want you. I want us to be the way we were, when I had two good legs and I hadn’t quite proposed a second time, which is all water over the mill dam now.” He started away, walking fast despite the thick grass, then spun back to me. “You’d better watch the boy because if he wades in too deep, I won’t be a bit of help to save him, and if he has a fit—hell, it doesn’t help to hear about the others fighting . . . or know David’s chasing women. Let’s face it, even when I had two legs, it was you who had to stop Barker Lee!”
He mounted—by pulling himself up over the wheel after he heaved his crutches in—the small, one-horse cart he used to get round the estate and left me with tears in my eyes that blinded me like the sun off the water.
THE WAR WAS not going well. The battles that were to be over by last Christmas waged on. And to make things worse—and worse than Chad’s temper—the king fell off his horse in France when some guns boomed. He broke his pelvis in several places. He was in constant pain, physical as well as mental, in his anguish over dead British soldiers and the ruination of the royal families of Europe. I overheard him say once that Queen Victoria would be rolling over in her grave to know her descendants were at war and many were losing their thrones. At least His Majesty was on the same side as Tsar Nicholas. He even named him an honorary field marshal of the British Army for fighting the kaiser.
As in the old days when I was grateful that King George left the estate, the entire staff at York Cottage breathed easier when the king had convalesced and went back to London. Prime Minister Asquith’s insisting “It just didn’t do to have a king in a cottage” annoyed him, but he still refused to take Sandringham House from his mother. Again, I feared he’d send Johnnie away, for I knew I’d beg to go with the boy. And then, what would become of Chad and me?
I did not think things could get worse until that summer when horrendous news reached us. The king’s own Sandringham Company had been massacred to a man in the Turkish campaign. What a good idea it had once seemed that they could serve together with their kin and friends. But it meant, if they were attacked, they could all be wounded or killed. New weapons called machine guns had mowed them down when they were ill-supplied. One hundred fifty local men were lost. At first, Sandringham folk held out hope that some had been taken prisoner, but we learned those few had been shot too. Of course, if Chad had had his way, he would have been among those slaughtered.
I, like many of the local grieving women, hurried to the church to pray and comfort others. The long list of men’s names was nailed to the church door, some familiar to me, some not. At least Hansell had been in another company. Inside, Winnie sat, crumpled over in a pew across the aisle from me, for her husband, Fred, was among the dead. Her two daughters and Penny were with her, all sobbing into handkerchiefs, so they didn’t see me.
But no Chad here where I thought he’d be. All I could think of was that he must surely see the hand of God in his salvation from this massive loss of men. And then, could he not be more content with his lot?
But later, when I found him outside, at the fringe of the graveyard, leaning against a tree, I sensed that he would rather have died with his brother-in-law and friends than be the last man—well, standing.
I walked slowly toward him, not certain what to say.
“I should have been there with them,” he told me. He stared off across the tombstones as if he’d seen a ghost—ghosts.
“I thank God you were not. Things happen for a reason, Chad.”
“Do they? This godforsaken war? All these deaths? Remember that football game when David and Bertie were young? Every one of those boys who played that day but the two royal ones are on that list.”
I sucked in a sob.
“They died heroes. I’ll be sure my nieces know that, Penny too. They say someone named Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, took the blame for not sending in more troops, getting them supplies in time. I hear the Lancashire fusiliers lost half their men, but not—not all—to a man. What?” he asked, turning toward me. “Why did you jump when I said that name?”
“I met him once—Churchill—about five years ago at Buck House. He seemed forthright and honest.”
“At least he took the blame like a man. But this loss will do him in for his political future, a fatal mistake like that. All I know is, if I was there—one more man—it might have made a difference. I could have been with them, done something to help.”
“Or died too. But you are helping here. Helping the king, being kind to Johnnie, keeping things going, and—”
“I’m a charity case. I couldn’t help those men, couldn’t save you—couldn’t even save myself. Don’t look at me that way, Charlotte! See you at the funerals, where we’ll have to bury empty boxes, because the king’s equerry says we won’t get bodies back, just like I’ll never get myself back.”
Again, as times before, he turned away from me and moved faster than I could have run, through the tombstones, toward his horse cart. I stood there, praying fervently for the families of the lost and for my lost Chad.
JOHNNIE’S EPILEPTIC ATTACKS grew more frequent, but I knew better now how to handle them. I read the warning signs and managed to get him away from others in time, and I never gave him the dreadful doses the king’s doctor had. Instead, I put a pillow under his head so it didn’t bang on the floor, slipped a padded leather strip between his teeth so he didn’t bite his tongue, and gave him a sip of apple juice with bromide when he quieted.
But there were some happy moments I tried to cherish. Queen Alexandra was good with him. When the women gardeners began changing the flower beds to vegetables, she’d told them to leave a place back by the gazebo for a patch of flowers, where Johnnie could plant seeds. She’d also had Winnie, who now oversaw the vegetables in the glasshouses, plant some already sprouted flowers in Johnnie’s spot the next morning.
“Results right away,” the old woman said as Chad, Johnnie, and I stood there, admiring the miraculous flowers. She seemed a mere specter of herself, terribly frail, gaunt, white-haired with two huge, bloodshot eyes peering from a wrinkled face. I fancied she looked like that haunted Miss Havisham presiding over the ruins of the glorious past. Before George was sent to naval school, he had read Johnnie and me Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations. Sadly, any sort of great expectations were in short supply during the dreadful war years.
“That’s what we should have in this war,” Queen Alexandra went on, “the results of victory full and fast. But all we get are longer lists of the wounded or dead and those beastly Zepps bombing London and the coast!”
ONE THING ABOUT having troops now billeted at Sandringham was that it seemed safe even after dark. The few times Their Majesties were in residence, I could see why the men patrolled here. But, I swear, the rest of the time, like now, they were just out for strolls because they were so bored guarding a dull country estate and the dowa
ger queen. If only the men who ran this war would have let the Sandringham Company perform these duties.
One fine night that fall, moonless, cloudy, and quite windy but still warm, Johnnie and I sat in chairs in the gazebo behind the Big House with Queen Alexandra, her spinster daughter Toria, and the ever faithful Charlotte Knollys. We were eating, talking, enjoying the air while Johnnie went between eating goodies and taking one of the three lanterns and walking a few steps away to admire his private flower bed in bloom.
“My, aren’t the stars lovely tonight,” the old queen said, fumbling for her small ear trumpet she was willing to use in the dark when she thought no one could see it. “Now wherever is that?” she asked, and for the fourth time this evening, her ladies and I began to look for it. To my surprise, Johnnie spoke up.
“I know where it is, Grannie!” he called out, coming back to us.
“What? What did he say?”
“Johnnie, where is it?” I asked him, moving the plate of currant and blackberry scones away from him, for he’s been eating far too many, which made me miss Bertie all the more.
“I hid it until I can have one of my own,” he told me. “Papa won’t let me. I want a big one like Mama has. A gramophone.”
I gasped, took his hand and pulled him away from the others. He was eleven and growing fast, but I didn’t let his height and weight cow me when he needed to be scolded. After all, he still reasoned and acted like a four-year-old, and maybe it would always be that way for him.
“Johnnie, that is the ear trumpet so your grannie can hear better. It looks a bit like the big bell of a gramophone that plays music, but it’s different,” I tried to explain, though once he got something in that head of his, often, that was that. “You show me where you hid that right now.”
“She listen to it, Lala,” he said, pouting. “So it has to have something in there, like music. I put it in my flowers. And I hear something right now. Music. Don’t you?”