In Royal Service to the Queen

by Tessa Arlen

  Another murmur, this time louder: the queen’s voice rose in a question.

  “Yes, yes, of course I did.” His voice lowered from a shout. “Attlee was right there on Winston’s tail! I hardly had time to think before he was ushered in, clutching that hideous hat in his hand.”

  A short, sharp question from the queen.

  “Yes, I heard you the first time: I asked Attlee to form a government in my name, and he said something irrelevant, and I waited for him to get the hint and bugger off.”

  The queen started to say something but was drowned out by her husband’s fury. “Dear God Almighty! I am thinking about Winston. We have let the man down!”

  It was fully fledged gnash and time for me to go. “Please give this book to Her Majesty for me. Thank you.”

  I tramped the long corridors and staircases back to finish my packing. Who could possibly imagine that an outmoded and ailing old imperialist like Winston Churchill would be the man to lead his people after the hell Britain had been through in the last five years? I leaned back against the closed door of my bedroom before I returned to my packing. Life in peacetime was going to be very different at the palace. By the end of this year, Lilibet might very well be a married woman, and I would be making plans for the rest of my life at home in Scotland.

  · · ·

  At a quarter to seven the following evening, I arrived at King’s Cross station carrying my small overnight bag with an overexcited Susan swarming ahead of me on her leash. “Good evening, Mr. Blount.”

  A polite nod and he turned back to supervising the organized chaos of boarding the household and their luggage. “Her Majesty’s dogs are already in the saloon coach,” he said over his shoulder. “So you are free to get settled in the third.”

  Susan surged ahead, her eyes bulging and her tongue hanging out in anticipation of another encounter with the formidable Dookie. We trotted past the saloon coach, shaking with canine activity inside, as Dookie and Honey jumped up on chairs to shriek at us.

  “Disappointed?” I said to Susan as we climbed up into the empty third carriage next door. She sniffed the air and then threw herself down on the floor, and I pulled a book out of my handbag.

  Gradually, the scrum of nannies, dressers, and valets on the platform organized itself in a boarding party as they were settled in their allotted coaches, and I looked out the window to watch Their Majesties and the princesses walking down the platform to the train, followed by the king’s equerry and his private secretary. The queen was dressed in mauve: tweed dress, coat, hat, gloves, handbag, and shoes. How does she manage in those crippling heels? I wondered. She looks as if she is walking on springy turf.

  The queen turned to the king, and her bright smile flashed in response to his gloomy shrug. Oh dear, the election is still weighing on him.

  The saloon coach door banged shut, and I could hear the Windsors organizing themselves: the queen’s fluting questions, Lilibet’s bell-like answers, and Margaret bossing the footman. Susan sat up, her attention focused on the connecting door, and catapulted forward as Lilibet pushed it open.

  “Hullo, Crawfie. Thanks for bringing Susan. What a naughty girl you are!” she cried as the dog jumped up into her arms, her little tailless rump agitating with delight. “Mummy says that Susan and Dookie have to be friends, so I’ll take her in with me.” I got up to hold the door open. Behind her, the king, his hands rammed deep into his coat pockets, argued with his private secretary, Sir Alan Lascelles, or Tommy, as he was affectionately called by Their Majesties and no one else.

  “Jesus Christ all-bloody-mighty, Tommy!” the king exploded at the silent Lascelles. “Just tell the silly bugger I have no ruddy intention of inviting him up to Balmoral. It’s my damned holiday, and I want to spend it with my bloody family.” Everyone froze and looked down at their feet. To catch the king’s eye at this point would be fatal.

  “Sir, if I may.” His quiet drawl gave no hint that Tommy was intimidated by the royal temper. In his time he had seen flying ashtrays, books, magazines, and sometimes a whiskey and soda, first from the abdicated king and now from his present boss. Tommy made no attempt to pacify; neither did he, like the rest of us, avoid eye contact. “We always have the prime minister to stay at Balmoral for his weekend in the summer, sir. We can, perhaps, organize it for later on, at the end of August, before we return to London.”

  The king raised his hands in the air and shook them. “No, and no and no, damn it! Dreadful little man—probably eats his peas with his knife.” Lascelles straightened his tie and waited, hoping as we all did that the worst was over.

  Margaret piped up in her best Mrs. Mundy: “There’s nuffink wrong with eating yer peas thataway, sir. How else can you get ’em in your mouf wivout droppin’ ’em in yer lap?” And her father threw back his head and roared with laughter, delighted to be rescued by his cheeky daughter.

  “All right, all right, Tommy. You can tell the silly sod that he had better come at the end of August; by that time I’ll be ready to accept that the country has treated Winston abominably—absolutely ruddy abominably. After all the man has done for us.” He stomped off to his favorite spot in the corner of the saloon, lit a cigarette, and puffed away furiously as his family went about the business of settling in.

  The train rolled forward and pulled out of the station, and I returned to my couchette at the back of the third coach and tried to find my place in the book I was reading. If the king was this upset by the election of a prime minister whose only fault was that he came from the middle class, I dreaded to think how he felt about his eldest daughter, his pride, marrying a man with nae name, nae home, and nae country.

  Chapter Ten

  July 8, 1945

  The Royal Train—London to Stirling, Scotland

  The train clattered north at the leisurely pace required by the queen for a long journey, and I used the time to do nothing at all. With my book open on my lap, I leaned my forehead against the cold glass of the window to watch the country unfold. Now clear of the dreary, war-scarred London suburbs, the world was fresh and green. The summer sun had started its leisurely descent to the horizon, glazing the backs of brown cows to a vivid clay red as they grazed in emerald-gold pastures and drank from opal ponds.

  The intricate piecework of fields and pastures bound by hedgerows, dark woodlands, and wide, serene rivers rolled past my window. A village nestled among beech trees was a snapshot of black-and-white half-timbered houses. We slowed, but did not stop, at the Midlands county town of Northampton. I leaned forward to catch a glimpse of a quiet street on the edge of the town: the thin spire of a church steeple pierced the thickly leaved trees on the slope of a hill; a strong-shouldered shire horse pulled an empty dray effortlessly up its incline, the driver leaning back, reins slack in his hands. England was at peace again!

  As the light began to fade to dusk, more sheep appeared in pastures than cows—we were in the north country. The rhythm of the train lulled me away from the outside world, and I looked down at my lap. Slotted between the pages of my book was a letter from my mother that had been handed to me by the palace postman as I was leaving.

  I slit the envelope open and pulled out two closely written pages, both sides covered in my mother’s economically small but clear handwriting.

  My dear Marion,

  All is ready for your arrival. Betty and I have been baking (she has made more oatcakes than we could possibly eat) and we have marked off each day on the calendar that brings you closer to us.

  Our VE Day in Limekiln was a quiet one compared to yours, but it was good to see families reunited again. We were let off lightly in the village this time around: the MacFiggis eldest, Fergus, was killed in the Battle of Britain, and of course the Archers lost both their boys in ’44, and the Dewar family are still hoping that there will be news of Amos.

  We put out flags and bunting down the high street and set up t
restle tables. Everyone brought along something to eat, and the Bruce Arms set up a keg! I have to say the Limekiln Pipers put on a good show! How I wish you could have been with us to share in the fun.

  One face in the crowd was such a welcome sight. Do you remember George Buthlay? I should say Major (!!!) George Buthlay lately returned from India of all places! He sat down with me and the Rev. and Mrs. Blair at our church supper last Sunday. He certainly remembers you and asked after you!

  I told him all your news . . .

  My pulse thudded a warning in my ears, and I looked up from the page and closed my eyes.

  What had my compulsively outspoken mother told George Buthlay? That I would be delighted to see him? That I talked about him nonstop, avid for any news of him? My cheeks flushed and I felt uncomfortably warm. I unbuttoned the top button of my blouse. For heaven’s sake, would you get ahold of yourself, Marion? She only gave him your news!

  The last time I had seen George Buthlay—now Major Buthlay, emphasized by my mother’s exultant exclamation points—was in the late summer of 1939.

  What was it about this tall, silent Scot that had fixed him so firmly at the back of my consciousness over the years? As soon as I read his name, I could picture him quite clearly the last time we had seen each other, five years ago. I counted on my fingers—could he really be forty-seven now? Would he be bald and stooped, his health broken by three years of the war in India? I opened my overnight bag and pulled a worn leather photograph folder from the inner pocket of its lid. George’s serious, unsmiling face gazed out at me; even five years ago I hadn’t thought this photograph a good likeness. George didn’t need to smile to share a joke.

  I saw him in my mind as if it were the first time. I was in Edinburgh at school when I was introduced to a tallish, wiry man with dark, serious eyes. He was talking with two of my professors—men of his own age, both of them old friends. The most striking thing about George was his silence—his expressive silence. Where others chattered easily, on and on and on, George shared his observations in subtler ways. A look was all that was needed to enjoy a private exchange about the chattering group around us. Our silent communion, so intimate that I had often felt we were alone among the buzzing, noisy crowd of my friends, was what attracted me most to him. His eyes expressed pleasure, concern, and derision with eloquence, until his gaze turned inward and he retreated from the world. Then his silences were complete.

  My mother of course knew all about him—she had been close friends with George’s widowed mother before she died. When I first became attracted to George, I knew she would have more information about this rather enigmatic man.

  “Why has he never married?” I asked her—already fascinated by this deeply private man and flattered by his attention whenever we met at local events and get-togethers.

  “He might have had someone he was sweet on before the last war, but I can’t remember. He was studious, a quiet boy was George, and barely eighteen when he got his call-up papers. They were filling the ranks with conscripted boys from all over the country in 1916: new recruits pitched straight into the Battle of the Somme on their first day in France.” She nodded. “Yes, that battle.” I said nothing, but I waited to see if she would go on. My two brothers, Ian and John, had both died at the Somme. I wondered if this was why my mother took such an interest in George; he was about three years younger than our Ian and the same age as John.

  “Anyway”—her voice was brisk—“no need to dwell on the bloodiest days of that war. So, George was one of the lucky ones, if you can call surviving the carnage of the Somme lucky.” She frowned down at the peas we were shelling, immersed in troubling memories of the past.

  While I was playing with my friends in flower-filled meadows, George Buthlay and young men like my brothers were struggling for their lives, and those of their men, in the trenches of Belgium and France. I finished shelling peas and fixed my eyes on my mother’s face, willing her to continue. She looked up. “Ah yes, George Buthlay. When the war finally came to an end, George came home—one of many heroes. He was mentioned in dispatches for conspicuous gallantry, even awarded a DSO. And like most of them who had survived uninjured to come home again, he had changed—there was a piece missing.”

  She sighed and shook her head. “Those were terrible times. No one can imagine the horror those surviving men had suffered.” She didn’t mention my father’s pain-racked last months. His lungs, ruined by mustard gas, failed him completely that winter. I had heard his voice calling for help in his nightmares, and at times we had both been strangers to him. My mother’s face was prematurely lined with the burden and grief the war years had brought to most women of her age. When my father died, we left Dunfermline to live with my spinster aunts in Aberdeen. They looked after me when my mother went back to teaching.

  “George hadn’t been wounded in battle. But he was a faded version of the young man who had gone to do his duty. His mother said she could count on one hand how often he spoke to her. He never opened his mouth: a nod was all you got if you saw him on the street. His nerves were shot, of course—like so many of our brave lads. And then he disappeared up north. Mrs. Buthlay said he couldn’t take the crowds of people on the street, at the market, or anywhere really.” She shrugged off Dunfermline’s quiet community as if they were an out-of-control football crowd on their way home from the pub on a Saturday night.

  “It was what we used to call shell shock. It was so common, we didn’t really talk about it.” She acknowledged my raised eyebrows. “George got himself a job on a sheep farm—up in the Hebrides. He wanted to be alone—completely alone.”

  “So, he only came back to Dunfermline recently?”

  “He came home when his mother was diagnosed with a heart condition. Mr. Carstairs, who was the bank manager at Drummonds back then, gave him a job at the bank. He was still the silent type, of course, but he had somehow managed to find himself again.” She swept the empty pea pods off the kitchen table into a galvanized bucket for the pig. “You’re awfully curious about George Buthlay.” She cocked her head on one side, her eyes alert with curiosity.

  “I’m not really that curious.”

  “Oh yes, you are!”

  Sometimes it was hard to be my mother’s only surviving child— her only daughter. I could have told her that George Buthlay was not the marrying kind, but she chose to hear what she wanted to. “I find him a bit confusing,” I said, and hesitated. To tell her too much would mean a thorough interrogation. “I think he likes me because he always seeks me out in a group or a party. He doesn’t flirt or anything, but I get the impression he likes my company . . . But there has been no . . . no progression.”

  She nodded. “He’s from a different generation from you, Marion. The way some of your girlfriends carry on is downright embarrassing. George simply respects you.”

  I nodded agreement. Sometimes it was the best thing to do when my strong-minded mother expresses an opinion. But I knew there was more to it than that. Something was holding George back from coming forward, and I didn’t know if I had what it took to break through that self-protecting wall of reserve.

  My friendship with George became sporadic when I was offered my job with the Yorks and went south—for what was only supposed to be the summer but turned out to be for years.

  It was cold sitting next to the black glass of the window. I reached up, pulled down the blind, and moved out of the way to let the steward make up my couchette for the night. George and I had seen each other often in Dunfermline whenever I came home to be with my mother for my summer holiday, for Christmas and the New Year. The last time was in 1939, just two months into what we optimistically called the Phony War, at the wedding of an old school friend.

  I spotted George at the Kincaid Hotel standing with his head bowed respectfully as he listened to Archie McLaren, whose agitated hands were waving in the air. Archie’s face was beet red, and I suspected it was ei
ther the whiskey, or more likely they were discussing Mr. Chamberlain’s undeniable avoidance in confronting Hitler’s brutal occupation in Czechoslovakia to “protect” the ethnic Germans living there from their supposed suffering.

  I had never seen George in Highland dress before. And I had to say there was nothing more off-putting than a man with short, bulging calves or thin, white, hairy legs in a kilt. I slid a downward glance at George’s long, well-shaped calves sticking out from under the blues, red, and greens of Anderson tartan and, encouraged, let my eyes wander up to his black cropped jacket. It fit smoothly across broad shoulders and sat snugly into his waist. I turned away in a flutter of embarrassed anticipation as he looked up, caught my eye, and excused himself from Archie’s vehement and scarlet face.

  “Hullo there, Marion. You are looking well.”

  “Archie seemed pretty upset.”

  His eyes glinted with merriment. “I sincerely hope I don’t have to hear any more from Archie McLaren on the base interest rate tonight.” He brushed wedding cake crumbs off his chin and cocked his head toward the scrape of a fiddle as it was tuned. “I think they are opening with a strathspey . . .” His tone became so somber you would have thought that I had overdrawn my account at his bank. “Would you like . . . care to dance?” He made a funny little half bow in invitation, and his serious face softened in pleasure when I said yes. He took my hand and tucked it in his arm, and his quick sideways glance of approval made me glad that I had worn the organdy dress my mother had wheedled me into wearing.

  Light on his feet, his kilt swaying, he was an unostentatious dancer, unlike some boisterous Scotsmen who bounced about, clapping their sweaty hands and shouting out encouragement to one another. I felt as if I weighed ounces as he took me through the elegant measures of the dance. And the next one, and the one after that too, until it was so hot and airless in the low-ceilinged room that the pipers, red in the face, called for a break. Sweating brows surrounded us, and there was a strong whiff of mothballs and damp wool in the air.