by Tessa Arlen
I wasn’t the only one to notice.
“What on earth have you done to little Lilibet?” A smooth voice, too close to my ear, lifted the hair on the nape of my neck. The queen’s younger brother, David Bowes-Lyon, stood at my elbow. What on earth is he doing here? I thought he was in Washington, DC, attached to our embassy, part of the Political Warfare Executive. A trumped-up job that gave David Bowes-Lyon the safety of living in America.
I turned a face that I hoped was empty of expression. “Done, sir?” I asked.
“Oh, come off it, Crawfie. Where’s that chubby little schoolgirl with her badly cut hair and her dowdy skirtsh?” He was drunk. I felt the corner of my lip beginning to curl. “One of the Guards, is it?” he prompted.
The last thing in the world Lilibet needed was to be noticed by this scurrilous old gossip.
“Ten to one it’s Lord Dalkeith!” Two deep-set, bloodshot eyes watched me closely. I kept my face impassive. “Not Dalkeith, then? Orright, so it’s got to be Swinford. I’ve been on the case with Margaret and her little pals all evening, and her money is on Shwinford too.” He lifted his cigarette to his mouth, inhaled, and enveloped me in a cloud of smoke. “Not him? Then it has to be old Porchey. Good strong rump on him, that chappie, should come in well ahead of the others—he’s got staying power, has old Porchers.”
I knew David Bowes-Lyon was a snake, but I had never heard him be crude before. I covered my distaste with what was safe to say. “I believe Sir Thomas Swinford’s son was killed in North Africa, sir.”
“Oh really? Poor bugger, so he was. Well, why don’t you tell me who? We all know that you know.” He blew more smoke and my eyes stung. “No, it’s wrong of me to ask someone in the household to breach a confidence. I’ll have to have another go at Margaret.”
I tried to calm my breath, but the smoke caught in my throat and I coughed. Was this odious creature determined to dog the sisters’ footsteps until he dug out Lilibet’s closely guarded secret so that he could paw over the possibilities with his ghastly friends? The queen’s younger brother was renowned for his gossip, his cruel gossip. Lady Spencer had told me that Elizabeth’s little brother had run off scores of governesses in their nursery days with his mean practical jokes. No one in their right mind made an enemy of David Bowes-Lyon. He must always be handled like fragile china, I reminded myself, having made the mistake in my early days with the family of angering him and paying the price of being ragged on for months, until the queen had intervened.
The need to control my anger and panic brought a flush to my face. Kind, considerate Lilibet the prey of this empty-headed, spiteful man? I would rather die! I drew myself up with what Margaret called my “governess” look: eyebrows slightly raised, lips pressed firmly together.
“Touched on a nerve, eh, Crawfie?” He saw my reddening cheeks and laughed whiskey fumes in my face. How dearly I would love to slap that stupid, leering smile off his face!
I forced myself to feign incomprehension. I could do perplexity well after eight years of court life. I shook my head, eyes open wide in confusion.
Lilibet’s Uncle David laughed. “The duenna doesn’t know? Come on, be a sport, there is someone, isn’t there? A dumpling doesn’t turn into a swan overnight for no apparent reason.”
I couldn’t help myself. “It is cygnets that turn into swans, isn’t it, sir?” I tried to smile, but my lips were trembling with fury.
He laughed, shrugging as he turned his back on me. “And sometimes little caterpillars turn into moths.”
December 28, 1944
Windsor Castle, Windsor Great Park, Berkshire, England
The fog lay heavy in the park below our windows. The snow had melted, and our snow woman had shrunk to a pile of gray slush. Margaret fidgeted in her seat and rolled her eyes at her English grammar; Lilibet stared out of the window, her hand rhythmically stroking Susan’s head, until the puppy’s eyes closed in contented bliss.
“It was a lovely pantomime. What shall we choose for next year?” I asked, hoping to help them out of the doldrums.
“Whit shaa we choose fur next year?” Margaret mimicked the accent I had schooled myself to eradicate over the years, and the image of Uncle David with his sneering face peeked maliciously over Margaret’s shoulder for a second. I blushed with embarrassment and looked down at the book on the table in front of me.
“Crawfie, I am so sorry. I didn’t mean it to come out quite that way.” Margaret was out of sorts—we had better beware. Lilibet, usually quick to correct selfish manners, didn’t even look up.
“I think we should go for a walk before lunch. It will do us all good.” I was determined not to be thrown off-balance by anything that might happen on this miserable day in our dark and drafty castle, now empty of Christmas guests. It was my job to keep royal morale up in the schoolroom.
“Keep up the good work, Crawfie,” the king had said as he and the queen had prepared to leave, his mind already on the days ahead. And the queen had joined in. “Yes, Crawfie, well done. Important to keep them busy . . . and happy!”
Lilibet got up from her window seat and started the business of putting on the layers that kept us warm.
She was humming a tune as we ran down the stairs: “Heaven, I’m in heaven. And my heart beats so . . .” she sang under her breath. “We can stop off and see if the post has arrived.”
Margaret shot me a wise look. “Papa and Mummy have already written to us since they left,” she said with affected innocence.
Lilibet rounded on her. “Sometimes, Margaret, you imagine you are much cleverer than you actually are. I’ll catch up with you two.” And off she went, ahead of us out the door, with Susan trotting at her heels. I composed my face in a parody of the downright, sensible Scottish woman that I wished I was. It was going to be a long, cold winter at Windsor, and I would be hard put to keep these two isolated young women occupied, let alone happy. I was grateful that I had been given permission to visit my mother in Dunfermline for Hogmanay.
January 4, 1945
Limekiln Cottage, Dunferline, Scotland
I helped my mother stack wood outside the kitchen door. January in Scotland was an unforgiving time of year, and before I left, I wanted to make sure that she was prepared for a long winter.
“No need to carry any more wood. Ross McAlister’s boy is home on leave, and I pay him to do the heavy work. And, yes, my dear, when the weather’s bad, I have groceries delivered right to the front door. No need to worry. Why don’t we walk over to say hullo to Betty? She would never forgive me if we didn’t drop in so she could tell you all the news. Such a gossip is that woman, and you know how much she loves to see you.”
We put on an extra layer of clothes. My mother’s old friend Betty lived on what we called the cold side of the river in a gray stone cottage. No more than one room, it sat square on a promontory facing north and caught the worst of the weather. But on a clear day, no view could be finer than the one Betty had from her stone kitchen sink.
Betty was what we called a “pure tough ’n’ brave lass.” She towered over my mother and was ten years her junior. I often wondered how my mother would cope with her lonely life if there were no Betty.
“Ah yes, an’ here ye are. Come on in—that wind’ll cut ye in two. Now, Marion, let me take a guid look at yer. Such a bonny face, an nay mistake.” Betty’s cottage was simple, with a stone hearth on which she made her food. But she suffered from an incurable need to chatter, so our visit was limited by my mother to half an hour.
“Dear God,” my mother said with a laugh when we were out of earshot of Betty’s last exhortations to watch our footing on her stony lane. “Hind leg off a donkey, that one. To be sure, I heard everything she told us at least twice before you even arrived. No wonder no man ever pressed her into marriage. Poor Betty.”
When I said goodbye the following morning, I felt no misgivings at leaving my mother
standing in her kitchen doorway, her old Aran cardigan wrapped tight around her spare frame.
“Write when you get to Windsor, Marion, and give my love to your aunts.” She waved me off down the path past the pond and into the lane. I was to stop overnight in Aberdeen to say hullo to my spinster aunts. “And tell Madge and Mary I’ll be up to town in a week or two!”
I always turned at the bend in the lane for one last wave. And there she was, my resilient little ma, waving me off with all the goodwill in the world.
May 7, 1945
Windsor Castle, Windsor Great Park, Berkshire, England
“Come on—fresh air. Susan needs her evening walk before it gets too dark. Margaret, put on your coat, please.” It was May, and it might as well have been March.
Margaret stood like a gloomy donkey with her nose pressed against the schoolroom window. “It’s too cold to go out. Look, all the apple blossom is flying through the air—even the rain is blowing sideways. I thought this was supposed to be spring!” Her bottom lip was out as far as it could go. “And I hate this war—when will it end?”
The door opened and our page, Nigel, came into the room. “You are wanted on the telephone, Miss Crawford.” He held the door open.
“Stop!” cried Lilibet. “Put on your coat. That room is arctic!” She draped my coat around my shoulders. Our eyes met briefly, and she nodded, a bright, eager, and expectant nod.
The queen half shouted down the receiver in a crackle of static, as if she was calling from the other side of the world: “Crawfie? Is that you? I can’t hear you!”
“Yes, ma’am,” I shouted. “Can you hear me now?”
“Yes, loud and clear!” A cloud of static. “Wonderful news!” Suddenly the line was as clear as if she was with me at Windsor. “Hitler took cyanide and then shot himself, and when it was all over, someone we have never heard of, a man called Karl Dönitz, surrendered Germany to the Allies. Apparently, Hitler poisoned his girlfriend and, for some horrid reason, his dog, but that’s Nazis for you. Their General Jodl is signing a complete surrender at Allied headquarters in Reims, tomorrow.” The queen’s clear voice fluted down the telephone as if suicide by cyanide was the usual way wars were concluded. “I can barely bring myself to believe that, after all these years, we will be celebrating victory in Europe. But don’t tell the girls yet—just have them ready to come up to the palace tomorrow after lunch.” Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “You never know, with these wretched people, what they might do at the last moment, so best to be oyster until we are quite sure.” And with that she hung up.
My hands shook as I put down the receiver. It was over! I spun in a circle of joy, clapping my hands and mouthing silent hurrahs. It was finally over. No more air raids and the deathly silence of V-2 bombs before they dropped from above to obliterate us. No more hiding in the dark of night, praying that those we loved would survive to come home to us. Families would be together again—or at least what remained of them—and finally, after years of inadequate food and going without petrol and enough coal to warm our houses, we might now return to the life we had led before the war. I closed my eyes and conjured up deep, hot baths with scented soap and real shampoo.
Alone in the dusty, dark cave of the telephone room, I did a jig of absolute thankfulness before the second part of the queen’s instructions repeated in my head. Keeping this exciting news from the princesses would be like trying to train Susan not to take an offered biscuit. Living on the edge of life as they did, Lilibet and Margaret were frighteningly intuitive where news of any kind was concerned.
I trotted two poorly lit corridors and three flights of stairs to the schoolroom. In the time it had taken to be told by a page that I was wanted on the phone to my return, it had been all of what—fifteen minutes? When I opened the door, Margaret and Lilibet jumped away from the wireless. Two guilty girls and the BBC Home Service. How on earth could I blame them?
“Don’t worry, Crawfie, we’ll pretend we don’t know.” Lilibet reached out to take my arm at my horrified expression. “That’s what Mummy told you, wasn’t it? ‘Don’t, whatever you do, tell the girls that the war is over—just yet!’ We knew it was massively important news because Nigel was so secretive that it was Mummy on the phone. No one else calls and asks to speak to you, so we knew it was her.” Lilibet’s eyes were shining with laughter. “You do understand that we had to turn on the wireless . . . we simply couldn’t resist. Crawfie, the war is truly over.” And I had thought Germany’s surrender was privy information? How could I be expected to keep the princesses in the dark with the BBC trumpeting the welcome news?
“The trouble with living away from the parents for so long,” Margaret chimed in, in her “helpful” voice, “is that they think we are both babies. ‘They must not, on any account ever, be dis-a-ppoin-ted. It is import-ant that they are always heppy.’ ” Her voice bore the unmistakable inflection and cadence of the one that I had just heard on the phone minutes ago. Margaret’s ability to mimic was terrifyingly accurate, often unnerving, and always reduced us to helpless giggles.
“Well . . . certainly, you are far from being babies, but I think it would be a good idea if you were to let Nanny inform you she is packing to go to London, and not make announcements. I am sure Her Majesty will tell us exactly what the plan is when we go to the palace tomorrow.”
Lilibet wasn’t listening. She was singing what had become her favorite song since Boxing Day. She held her arms open as if she was waltzing with someone taller than herself and swayed to the melody in her head:
Heaven, I’m in heaven,
And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak
“Come on, Margaret, dance!”
“Blimey,” said Margaret in her best Mrs. Mundy. “She’s orff agin, in’t she? Its lerve, lerve, lerve with our Lil.” She danced across the room, caught Lilibet around the waist. In their headlong, giddy delight they abandoned all attempts to keep time and took off in a gallop, with Susan running after them in a tizzy of hysterical barking. They knocked over a side table and a wastepaper basket before they collapsed on a sofa, helpless with laughter.
Susan was so overwrought with delight that she nipped Nigel on the ankle when he came into the room. “Your Royal Highnesses.” Fending the corgi off with one foot, he bowed his head to Lilibet. “Mrs. Knight has asked that you join her in your rooms when Miss Crawford can spare you.”
At the mention of their nanny, there was immediate calm. “Well, girls, perhaps you had better pop up and see Alah now,” I said as Lilibet ran over to the looking glass to smooth down her hair.
“Margaret, you had better do something to your’s—it’s all over the place.” Lilibet handed her sister a comb.
But today Margaret didn’t give a hoot for Alah. She ran her fingers through her hair until it was sticking up on end. “Alah wants to let us know that we are ‘orff to the palace.’ No more kicking our heels in this drafty old dump, Lilibet.” She sailed through the door the page held open for her. “Because you see, Ni-gel, the war is over!”
Chapter Five
Victory in Europe, May 8, 1945
Windsor Castle to Buckingham Palace, London
Alah’s habitual frown included everyone at the breakfast table, but our page caught the lash of her impatience. “Nigel, stop dithering and tune in to the Home Service now. I don’t want to miss a word of His Majesty’s Victory Day speech. Yes, that’s it. Now, turn up the sound.”
We shrank into our coffee cups as the announcer’s voice blared, faded, and blared again. “This is the BBC Home Service . . . auspicious day . . . His Majesty . . . Buckingham Palace.”
“Nigel, turn it down—we are not deaf!”
“Yes, Mrs. Knight, but it’s not the sound; it’s the reception.” Nigel, his back to Alah, pulled a face. Margaret snickered. Lilibet frowned.
As clear as morning, the king joined us at the breakfast t
able. “Today we give thanks to Almighty God for a great . . . deliverance.” His disciplined and measured tone, with only the slightest hesitancy, brought our shoulders down from around our ears. Alah glared at the lesser of her two nursemaids, Ruby MacDonald, sister to the more terrifying and very senior Bobo, as she scraped margarine onto her toast. Ruby caught Alah’s disapproval and put down her knife.
“Speaking from our empire’s oldest capital city, war-battered . . . but never for one moment daunted or dismayed . . .” A long pause; Lilibet’s forehead creased with tension. “Speaking from London, I ask you . . . to join with me in the act of thanks . . . giving.”
Thanksgiving! The king’s brave, faltering voice had paused on the one word that I had heard in my head ever since the queen had told me the war was over. Our nation was giving thanks for the end of a nightmare. That simple word was more than I could bear. I stared down at the tablecloth and inhaled, blinking away at my coffee cup. It doesn’t matter if you cry, I told myself. We have pulled through. We made it through: there’s no danger now. Tears of relief and joy slid silently down my face as King George VI of the United Kingdom and the dominions of the British Commonwealth—a king of the free world, unvanquished by the Nazis with their dream of the Third Reich—gave us the best news we had heard since we won the Battle of Britain in 1940 and turned the tide of the Luftwaffe’s Blitzkrieg.
“Germany, the enemy who drove all Europe into war, has been finally overcome.” I brushed away the tears, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ruby and Bobo holding hands under the cover of the tablecloth. Alah, her back as straight as Queen Mary’s, stared ahead of her, no doubt willing the king to control his stammer to the very end.