In Royal Service to the Queen

by Tessa Arlen

  “What seems to be the problem?” I asked, mindful that Margaret was a blurter.

  There were no thoughtful pauses from Margaret. She took in a deep breath. “First of all, Mummy is very much against Lilibet marrying Philip. She will go to any lengths to prevent it. Do you know what I mean? No, of course you don’t, so I’ll tell you.

  “While Lilibet, Philip, and Papa were off stalking, Mummy spent a lot of time with Tommy Lascelles. Tommy doesn’t approve of Philip to begin with. But after a session or two with Mummy and Uncle David, he holed himself up in his office and spent his time busily writing letters and getting answers to them. It has to do with Philip’s family and his suitability as a future consort to Britain’s queen.”

  I had to turn my head away; her urgent voice and deeply serious expression would have been amusing at any other time. Margaret was playing her role of intelligence gatherer to the hilt. “Tommy thinks that Philip has a bit of a reputation . . . as a lady’s man.”

  I shook my head. “What? No, it’s not possible. In fact, it’s ridiculous.”

  “Yes, it is a fact, because I heard Uncle David telling Mummy that Philip is too sophisticated and far too European for words. And everyone knows what that means.”

  This was just the sort of thing that David Bowes-Lyon would come up with. If Philip was handsome, virile, and good company, of course he had to be a lecher.

  “I overheard everything. Everything! According to Uncle David, Philip has always had lots of girlfriends. Even when he was writing to Lilibet during the war, he was always with some woman or other. But for years, he has been very close with that glamorous Hélène Cordet.” She looked at me in a kindly, pitying sort of way. “Now, I know you don’t know who she is, Crawfie, but I do. She is a singer—a really good one, actually. And she is absolutely gorgeous. Much more gorgeous than Lilibet—she has what they call sex appeal. And please don’t tell me that you don’t know what that means.” I started to ask her how she knew what sex appeal meant, but she waved an impatient hand. “Philip is godfather to her children.” She lowered her voice, but its clear tone rang ahead of us up the hill. It was as much as I could do not to put my hand over her mouth. “Uncle David says there is a rumor that he might even be their father.”

  I pushed the hair back out of my eyes and stared at her in horror. If only half of this is true, it makes Philip look tawdry, shopworn, and certainly not the man I have taken him for.

  “Crawfie, you are gaping.”

  “There are always rumors—Philip is a good-looking and an attractive young man.”

  Her laugh was derisive, and it was patronizing too. I frowned at her until she apologized.

  “And then there is Papa. He is not very keen on the idea of Lilibet and Philip at all. Not one bit.”

  I was not a poker player. I knew my face expressed the fear that threatened to submerge me, to send me running to my room to try to work out how we could overcome this hurdle.

  “Does he believe that Philip is—?”

  “A womanizer? I don’t know what he has heard. But Papa is furious with Uncle Dickie because he is not only sponsoring Philip’s naturalization to become a British citizen and giving Philip his name, but he is telling everyone that Philip and Lilibet are secretly engaged to be married.”

  “But they are not, are they? So, it is just another rumor.”

  She reached out her hand and joggled me by the elbow. “Oh, Crawfie, please wake up! Uncle Dickie has put Papa’s back up, and he is digging in. On top of all this womanizing business, Philip is looking more and more like an unsavory gold digger by the minute.” She put her hands on her hips and glared at me as if I was being obtuse on purpose.

  I remembered my role as governess. “Please don’t put your hands on your hips, Margaret.”

  She folded them across her bosom. Her Windsor blue eyes flashed outrage and fury. “Don’t you see? Papa doesn’t want Lilibet to marry anyone at all right now; he just wants it to be ‘we four’ again. And it doesn’t help with everyone biting at Philip’s ankles and running him down, behind his back, to Papa!”

  I was still too taken aback by the “womanizing” accusation to offer any suggestion that would be of use.

  “Lilibet has no idea!” Margaret threw her hands up at her sister’s naivete. “No idea at all what is going on. It makes me so angry with all of them.” Her brows came down and she took a step closer. “So, what are we going to do?”

  We had reached the top of the hill, and the corgis threw themselves down in a panting heap. I fanned my face with my hand. “Well, there is nothing whatsoever we can do, is there?”

  “What?” she exploded. “We can’t just let them ruin Lilibet’s one chance of happiness.” Her cheeks were scarlet, and her hands were back on her hips. “We can’t just stand by and let this happen. Lilibet wouldn’t let my happiness be destroyed by a bunch of old gossipers and starchy out-of-date courtiers . . . she just wouldn’t!” Tears welled up in her fierce eyes and her lower lip jutted.

  I put my arm around her shoulders. “Margaret, life isn’t that simple, I’m afraid. Especially for the heir to the throne.”

  She shook my arm off. “Don’t start talking to me about duty. How can Lilibet possibly do the job of being queen if she’s married to some dull chap that Mummy chose for her? Answer me that one. Philip is perfect for her; he will stick up for her and give her confidence.” She didn’t wait for an answer. “She has no one at all, except you and me.” She broke away and started to stump off toward the castle gate, and I puffed after her.

  “I know how upsetting it is, but we have to have some faith in Lilibet.”

  “She is such a Goody—”

  “Yes, I know she often comes across as dutiful and obedient.”

  “I was going to say that she is a wretched Goody Two-shoes. It makes me so bloody furious. Sorry again, Crawfie.”

  “And I was going to say that we must not forget that she has learned patience and self-discipline: two attributes that have made her strong and steadfast. All she has to do is not back down and wait them out. All this fuss and bother, all of these rumors about Nazis in the family, philandering fathers, and mentally ill mothers, and now Philip’s affairs with other women, are all simply fuss. I am quite sure that Lilibet will prevail. And it is our job, Margaret, to stand by her. Encourage her and help her stand firm, and that means doing just that and absolutely nothing more. I hope I am being clear.”

  “You don’t think we should at least say something to Papa?”

  The gleam of battle had not gone from her eyes. I thought of all the passionately well-meaning damage she could do, and I tried not to clutch at her in my panic.

  “Margaret,” I said slowly, forcing calm. “If you really want to know what I think, the very best thing we can do is to let Lilibet deal with this in her own way. She knows we care; she knows we love her. I promise you she will come through.” I had almost convinced myself.

  “Yes, Crawfie, all right.” She wiped her eyes with her handkerchief and on we went together toward the castle gate. “Mentally ill mothers? I didn’t know that about Philip’s mother. Do you mean to say she actually went bonkers?” I hadn’t the energy to reply.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  December 1946 to January 1947

  Limekiln Cottage, Dunfermline, Scotland

  Two days before Christmas I went north to the stinging winds and the sullen skies of Dunfermline.

  My mother had lost weight, and when she wasn’t moving, her hands went to the small of her back. “Just a touch of lumbago; it’s the chill off the river,” she said as she pulled me into the kitchen and wrapped her arms around me. “You look bonny, Marion. Look, this came in the post for you.” She handed me a Christmas card. It was from George.

  I wish you the Merriest of Christmases, his neat handwriting informed me. And if all goes well I will be with you both to celebrat
e Hogmanay. All my love to you both.

  But all did not go well. At the last minute a severe storm locked us in its freezing grip. The roads were sheets of black ice and gale-force winds howled from the north. On the morning before New Year’s Eve, as we were making our porridge, the blizzard was so thick we couldn’t see out the windows.

  “Good Lord above. If this keeps up we’ll be snowed in,” my mother said with the complacency of a woman who planned for every season with a well-stocked vegetable cellar and enough lamp oil to last a decade.

  For the first time since the war, Ma and I celebrated Hogmanay alone. I was determined to make it a good one for her because it troubled me that she was showing signs of slowing down—of aging.

  “There is plenty of wood, so I have built up the fire. Come into the parlor and leave those dishes. I’ll take care of them.” I tried to coax her to sit, to do nothing but enjoy an evening in front of leaping flames.

  “Come and do them with me, Marion. I can’t have dirty crocks sitting in the sink for the New Year.” We had cleaned and polished all day to welcome in 1947. “No Scot worth her salt welcomes a New Year into a dirty house. It must be all those servants who have made you so lazy.”

  It took me a minute to wash and dry dishes for her to put away. Then I poured two generous glasses of Glen Avon and led her to the fire.

  “To you, my darling, girl. To you and George.” We drank, and she leaned forward and held up her hand, palm facing me. “I’m not offering any advice to you, Marion. None at all. But I have a feeling in my bones that all will come right for you both this year.” She raised her glass. “Do shlàinte agus do àm ri teachd.” To your health and to your future. We drank.

  “Ah yes, that’s the right good stuff, all right.” My mother put down her empty glass, and I poured her another splash or two. “I love the warmth as it goes down. A nice bright fire, a good dinner, and a glass or two would put anyone right.” This tiny scrap of a woman was hard hit by her belt of whiskey as she gently slurred her blessing. “Uisge-beatha: the water of life.” She raised her glass and sipped slowly as she gazed into the fire. “Now, tell me about this trip you are all taking to Africa.”

  “It’s quite a business, these official tours,” I explained. “Which is why I must leave tomorrow, to help get them ready. Lilibet will be celebrating her twenty-first birthday in Africa! It will be a tremendous amount of work for the family too. They will visit hundreds of towns to say hullo to the people of South Africa.”

  “What a fuss,” Ma said and took another sip—her eyes were drowsy. “And in this terrible weather too.”

  “They’ll escape our winter, at least,” I said. “It will be summer where they are going. They will be traveling all over South Africa in the White Train: the coaches have been built especially for this trip and are the last word in luxury.”

  A grunt of derisive scorn. “What a carry-on: I hope we are not paying for this shindig.”

  “Funnily enough the king said the same thing when the trip was in its planning stages. I have no idea who is paying—probably the South Africans.”

  The king, like my mother, had shrunk in height and weight the last time I had seen him standing in the middle of the queen’s drawing room, looking on as the women in his family exclaimed over fabrics that Norman Hartnell had produced for their summer wardrobe for the trip. Surrounded by the bright display of gauzy silks and cottons, he wore a strained expression of polite interest as Mr. Hartnell chirruped with enthusiasm and models paraded dresses, coats, and evening gowns. He had withdrawn into a corner of the room, eyes tired, face drawn and pale, and his responses to his wife’s delight were monosyllabic.

  “The king doesn’t enjoy public life,” I explained to my mother. “He dislikes meeting new people. I think he is dreading this trip.”

  Ma shrugged her shoulders in incomprehension. “Why go all that way for a country that’s not ours—why not stay here and meet his own people?”

  “Because it is important to solidify South Africa’s standing in our new Commonwealth. Their prime minister, Jan Smuts, is worried he will lose the next election. Smuts is outspoken in his dislike of segregation, and it has made him unpopular with the Afrikaners, and his opposition leader, Malan, is pro-apartheid.”

  “Apartheid?”

  “Keeping mixed race and black people separate from white people. I can’t imagine living in a country where they are prevented from being with the rest of us, can you?”

  She looked into the fire, her gaze soft as she remembered another time, when she was young. “The first time I saw a black man in Scotland was in 1918. Your father had just come home from the war, and I was in Glasgow to meet his ship. We had heard of them of course, in Dunfermline, but I had never met a black man, or woman, or even seen one.” She nodded at her memory. “They came from the Gold Coast in Africa and the West Indies to help us fight the war. They were welcome everywhere and treated like the heroes they were—with respect. I can’t imagine what these South Africans are thinking to force them to live apart from white people. They must be a very unpleasant bunch.”

  She raised her glass, and the leaping flames caught the deep amber in the whiskey. “It’s about time they gave back those countries they stole and end all this imperialism and taking what is not theirs—as if England were put on this earth to rule!” She sipped from her glass and wrinkled her nose in disapproval. “It is not good for a country to have so much power over those who have nothing; it gives it a sense of superiority it doesn’t deserve. Repression, Marion, is a terrible thing—it blocks out hope for generations. Anyone would think God was an Englishman the way they talk south of the border.” If I poured her another dram, she would be on about Scotland’s secession from England and the cruelty of the Sassenach. “That Mountbatten, now, he’s got the right idea about quitting India.”

  “Winston Churchill refers to him as ‘the man who wants to give away India.’ ”

  My mother laughed. “Oh aye? That must be one in the eye for the establishment,” she said. “So, Philip’s uncle wants to help India to independence. I think I approve of this boy. Well, good for the Mountbattens; perhaps they’ll bring some sense into that lot for once.”

  I steered her away from the Windsors. “Anyway, there will be a lot to do in the next month to get the family ready for their trip. I’ll be very busy.”

  “It will be an experience for you, Marion. To see another part of the world!”

  Part of me yearned to travel and see the world, but I would not pass up three months with my mother and George, if I could. “Well, we’ll see. Lilibet is definite that she wants me to go.”

  “Then I expect that is what will happen.” She was warm, and rosy-cheeked from the fire and Glen Avon, and her eyelids drooped.

  I smiled and took her hand in mind. “Yes, I expect that is what will happen.” But she didn’t hear me; her eyelids had closed, and she had drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  February 1947

  Buckingham Palace, London

  I wish you were coming after all, Crawfie. It just doesn’t seem fair: all this on-and-off-again business. I am furious with Mummy for changing her mind at the last minute.” Margaret, her lovely face flushed with excitement, pranced into my sitting room. “I wanted to show you my favorite coat and dress—I absolutely love this shade of pink. What do you think?” She strolled up and down my sitting room, turning with her coat held open with all the flare of a mannequin. She pirouetted, and the cyclamen silk dress underneath her shell pink coat shouted her joy at being Margaret: young, pretty, with rich parents who were going to take her on a cruise with trunks of outfits as elegant and as charming as this one.

  She stopped mid-spin to return to her outrage that I had been told yesterday afternoon I would not be going to South Africa. “I asked Mummy again, this morning, if she would change her mind, but she said that there simply
wasn’t room on the train.”

  I wondered when I would wear the cotton dresses and tropical-weight linen coats I had bought at the last minute, when I had been told five days ago that I should expect to board the royal ship at Southampton. I shuddered at the thought of short sleeves. The sleet-battered windows made the room dark and cold. I plugged in the electric fire. Just one bar, we had been cautioned by the palace in these times of austerity.

  I rubbed my hands together and put a heavy Shetland cardigan on over my jumper. “Is it snowing again? I am so glad we are leaving this awful weather.” Margaret gave an exaggerated shiver of shoulders clad in soft bouclé wool. The wind moaned up the corridor from a hundred drafty windows. I squared my shoulders so that our goodbyes were not tainted with the gloom of the bitter weather and my being told to stay behind at the last minute.

  “Take lots of photographs”—I took her warm hands in mine—“and if you have time, I would love a letter or two. But there is something else, Margaret. Please listen.” She had broken away to return to the looking glass.

  She stopped, her eyes wide at my tone. “What is it? . . . I don’t look like Mummy in this hat, do I?”

  “No, not at all. It’s about your sister.”

  She smiled at me. “Yes, I know, Crawfie, don’t worry. Bobo and Mummy are against Philip, so I have to be there for her. Did you know that Mummy said Philip might not come down to Southampton to wave us off when we set sail? Talk about shortsighted— anyone would think this was Tudor England.”

  I wanted to gather her in my arms and kiss her. But Margaret was practicing; she was a sophisticated woman of the world stepping out onto a stage that would applaud her. The last thing she wanted was her old governess hanging on her arm and telling her to be kind to her big sister.

  · · ·

  “Crawfie, how very sweet of you to spare me the time when we are all up in the air with last-minute packing.” I was ushered into the queen’s drawing room that evening so she could reassure me how sad she was I could not go with them. “Yes, please, do sit, dear Crawfie.” It was the familiar routine: the bright welcome, the little chair, and a glass of sherry.