by Tessa Arlen
A sorrow-filled sigh, a slight shake of her head, and the queen stretched out a hand to ruffle Dookie’s ears. “I am so sorry that you are not, after all, able to come with us to South Africa; what a terrible disappointment it must be. We had no idea that the White Train was almost as cramped as our train here!” She put her head on one side; a frown corrugated her forehead for a moment and was gone. “Lilibet and Margaret were so looking forward to your joining us.”
I was not concerned for Lilibet: marooned on first a ship and then a train with Bobo’s determined dislike of Philip, and her mother’s regretful concerns about his unfortunate family. Neither was I anxious for the king and the grueling months that a state tour promised for a man who disliked travel of any kind outside his own country. And I felt only relief that I would not spend the next three months with the forceful personality sitting in front of me anticipating the adoring crowds who would cheer her, and the opportunity to dance the night away at gala balls. The queen’s state visit to South Africa would be her moment in the spotlight: her London Blitz all over again, but with better food and no danger of falling bombs.
I nodded along; her voice a distant, eager buzz. My only thought was for George. The blessed relief I had felt when I was told, “So awfully sorry, Crawfie, you’re not coming,” had been washed away by his letter.
I slipped my hand into my skirt pocket, and my fingers closed around the envelope that I had opened just this afternoon. My fingernail caught on the rough edge of the torn paper, and I swallowed down an irresistible urge to get to my feet and say that I was urgently needed elsewhere. When will the bright, empty chatter ever stop? I needed the sanctuary of my rooms so I could lay my aching head down and cry away my pain.
“And then there is Margaret . . . she has been so wayward recently . . .”
My hand gripped the letter that I had read over and over again until the paper was limp in my hand.
“What is it that makes young women so antagonistic—to their mothers, I mean? She can’t do enough for His Majesty.”
One glance through the letter, and I had pulled down my suitcase from the top of the wardrobe and started hurling winter socks and sweaters into it as fast as I could.
My dear Marion,
“And then there is the unsuitability of her choice of clothes— that awfully bright cyclamen pink. She positively bullied poor Mr. Hartnell . . .”
Your mother came to Aberdeen last week to visit her sisters. Fortunately, I had time to give her tea before she caught the half past six train back to Dunfermline. She told me how excited you were that you were going on the royal tour to South Africa, and we both thought how lucky you were to escape this bitter winter!
I realized when she left how much your life with the royal family means to you. And how wrong it was for me to have pressed you to leave a job that I know means everything to you. It was selfish and thoughtless of me, and I feel like a self-centered fool for not understanding before.
I am releasing you from our engagement—I know it will be best for both of us. I hope we can remain good friends when we meet. But for now, I wish you bon voyage and a wonderful adventure in Africa.
Yours,
George
It seemed that George no longer wanted to be mine. The shock of his words froze all thought; all I could hear was the hammering of my heart, the pain in my chest so intense I thought I was going to die. But I’m not going to South Africa. I have been given an eleventh-hour reprieve. The words on the page had connected with my brain, and I booked a seat on the express train leaving for Scotland.
I had three months, while the family were away, to concentrate on just one thing. If I had not already lost George—I nearly burst into wails of agonized tears—I must do everything I could to bring him back to me.
The queen’s voice, from the center of her sofa, demanded my attention. “Did you say you were leaving for Scotland tomorrow morning, Crawfie? Is that wise? I hear the weather in the north is even worse than here!”
I got to my feet and made a half curtsy, even though she had not given me permission to leave. “Yes, I must go to Scotland,” I said, my words so heavy with emphasis that she blinked. “Bon voyage, Your Majesty. I know the tour will be a great success.” And I left her already instructing her two dressers and three pages in a close huddle of detail.
I could not, dare not, imagine what my life would bring me over the coming months. I merely thanked God that I was free to try to rescue my future.
* * *
• • •
The train ground to a stop for the third time in as many hours. I peered out the dirty windows of my drafty second-class carriage. What now? I opened the window and stuck my head out to look up the line. My breath hung in the frozen air, and my ears and nose burned with the cold.
“Close that window, miss.” The conductor came through the carriage. “Snow blocking the line ahead; we’ll be here until they can get it clear.” A large woman with a cheerful red hat and a bright blue woolen scarf made a tutting sound. “Come on, ducks,” he said. “Come and help me dig away the snow.” There was laughter all round. The Great British public were showing how doughty they could be.
I couldn’t bring myself to ask how long it would take to clear the snow from the tracks. British Railways had a wonderful way of being jocular when their schedules went haywire, as if they were planned events for our entertainment. I unscrewed my thermos and drank the last cup of tea, brewed at seven o’clock this morning and presented to me by Mr. Ainslie. “Blizzards in the north, Miss Crawford. It will be slow going, I’m afraid. The cook has made some sandwiches for you and some of her fruit cake.” He handed me a beautifully prepared little hamper. “There is a coal shortage up there too—thanks to this terrible weather. Perhaps you should consider waiting a few days? I mean, after all, the journey will be . . .” He lifted his hand to heaven: only the Lord knew what he had in store for us.
But I couldn’t wait another moment. I had to get to Aberdeen; I had to get to George. I lifted the Bakelite cup to my lips and took a sip. The tea was cold and tasted sour.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
February 1947
Limekiln Cottage, Dunfermline, Scotland
Marion!” My mother’s face was puckered with concern as she pulled open her door. “What’s happened? Is everything all right? I thought you were on your way to Africa. Oh, for heaven’s sake, what possessed you to make the journey in this weather? You’re perished.” She put her arms around me before drawing me into the kitchen. I was rigid with cold; my hands and feet ached, my nose a peak of ice in the middle of my face. I was so exhausted I hadn’t the energy to speak.
“How on earth did you get here from the station?”
She took me by the shoulders and guided me to the heat of the Aga. “Hot tea,” she directed herself. “Or would you prefer soup?”
“Yes, soup, please.” My stomach was an empty pit, clamoring for food. I was close to breaking down with remorse and fear that everything I held most dear had been put to one side for the Windsor family, who were now setting off for three months in the sun.
“The lane’s been blocked for two days. No one can get down nor up. How did you get through?”
“Mr. Mackenzie and his tractor . . . they dug out the lane yesterday evening. Mr. Franklin gave me a lift in his truck. There is a box of groceries on the step outside—more snow coming in tonight. Mr. Franklin said to expect at least another foot. They’ll dig out the drifts in the lane so they can get more supplies to us.”
My mother chafed my hands in hers. “Parsnip soup . . . with oatcakes. And tomorrow we’ll have chicken stew . . .”
I nodded, too tired to care.
Her accent broadened as she sensed the despair I felt. “Somethin’ has happened; your face is as white as milk.” The skin at the corners of her eyes creased in concern. “Ne’er mind, soup first
.”
“It’s George.” I was too drained, too distressed, to cry, but it was hard to get the words through the tight band around my throat whenever I thought of him. “George has released me from our engagement. It’s off, Ma.”
“What on earth are you saying?”
“I think he has had enough of my job and the Windsors.” I tried to laugh, but I couldn’t.
She smacked her hand to her forehead, her eyes wide. “It’s ma ain fawt. Marion, I told him you were going away to Africa for three months, because you said you were!”
Her face was so distressed that I caught her by the hand. “No, it is not your fault. It is mine. I should have given notice when George asked me to marry him. I was selfish, terribly selfish and stupid.”
“You did what you thought was right.” She bent down and gathered me to her. I closed my eyes and rested my aching head on her narrow shoulder, surrendering my burdens and returning to childhood as she rocked me in her thin arms. After a while she released me and sat down on the settle next to my chair. “Now, what are you going to do?”
That she thought I should do something was reassuring. “As soon as the snow clears, I am going to Aberdeen. I am going to see George and tell him that I will leave my job immediately and marry him. Do you fancy a winter wedding, Ma?”
She laughed and chucked my chin. “That’s my girl. You go up and stay with your aunts Madge and Mary. Go and see George and talk him round.”
My plan was a simple one. I would go to Aberdeen on a Friday morning and stay with my aunts. I imagined their joyful welcome as they pulled me into their house and scolded me for arriving before a weekend.
“You know we do the flowers at St. Peter’s Church every other Saturday, silly girl.” Aunt Madge was bigger and sterner than her little sister, and it was she who insisted they still make the two-hour bus journey, twice a month, to the parish they had grown up in to do the flowers for Sunday service.
“Don’t say that, Madge. She is welcome whenever. You can do the flowers; I’ll stay here.” Aunt Mary would be beside herself with happiness.
They would argue, but both would agree that on Saturday afternoon they would set off for the church to do the flowers for Sunday with the vicar’s wife. And stop the night for Matins the following morning. They would skip lunch at the vicarage and be home for lunch and tea with me.
“If we leave after Sunday service it will give us plenty of time to catch up . . . I am surprised you didn’t go to Africa with the queen. Your ma was right proud of you going all that way!” I heard my aunt Mary say.
When they were gone, God help me, I would go over to George’s house, not ten minutes’ walk from Cameron Avenue, and bring him back to the privacy of their scrupulously tidy living room. I could see the fire burning in the grate lighting the well-polished shabby whatnots and little tables and their fat old orange tomcat sleeping on the windowsill. George and I would have a chance to talk things through—alone, without interruption, without tea cakes on doilies and the elaborate teatime ritual of spinsters. If all went well, we had the night alone together, and we would have time to make our plans. When my aunts came home again on Sunday, it would be to a happier, more betrothed woman than the one they had left on Saturday afternoon.
* * *
• • •
My overnight bag was packed in readiness for my train journey to Aberdeen the next morning, but my bedroom was as dark as night at eight o’clock when I awoke. I turned over to grope for my alarm clock; the top sheet crackled with a thin layer of frost, and a long icicle, formed by my breath, scraped against my cheek. I swung my legs out of bed and shivered as my feet, scuffing for my slippers, touched the icy floor. I pulled the curtains back. It had snowed again in the night, enough to bank up on the roof below my bedroom window. I put on half my winter wardrobe and went downstairs. Ma had made porridge and tea.
“I let you sleep; you were all in last night.” Her lined face was less tired than it was two days ago when I had arrived. She was glad I had come home.
I took a short walk to the end of the path to the lane. The dip in the road was full of snow. I looked up into a dark sky. I would not be catching a train anywhere. “I don’t think they can get the tractor down the lane,” I reported to my mother. “I’ll have to put off going to Aberdeen.” Neither could I possibly leave my mother snowed in. “We have to bring in more wood from the shed. And I have to do something about the chickens,” I said as I started to eat my porridge. “Would you put on the wireless, Ma? We can catch the nine o’clock news.”
A static crackle and a high-pitched intermittent whistle as Ma twiddled the knob of the wireless I had bought her for her birthday last year. “I can never get it quite tuned in,” she said fretfully as she tortured more atmospherics and shrieks from the dark brown box. “I think the snow is blocking the airwaves somehow.”
The wireless whined; then clear as a bell came a human voice. “For the Fife area . . .” A hail of static. “The worst blizzard for twenty-five years in Dunfermline, Ballater, Kirkcaldy . . . three feet of snow with ten-foot drifts. Many of the county’s main roads are blocked.” The weatherman’s voice was drowned in a crackle of interference.
“Ninety Fife villages . . . cut off. A major road in Dundee city center is covered in a sheet of ice . . . All bridges in the county are impassable.” An unearthly screech of distorted sound. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I got up from the table with a cup of tea in my hand and knelt by the radiogram.
“You have to move the dial slowly . . . and watch the needle as it moves to one-five-zero to the Home Service,” I explained as a voice came through the wireless, loud and clear. “Aberdeen broke its record for snowfall . . . with more snow on the way. In Edinburgh for the fifth day in a row, the disruption of transport, including coal trains, has led to power cuts and the restrictions on use of domestic electricity for five hours each day, under threat of fines or imprisonment.”
“Good Lord above, as if we didn’t know that. The shortages are worse now than they were in the war. Switch it off, Marion, please. I can’t listen to the same weather report morning after morning. It makes me itch.”
On the fourth day of what was to become the worst winter on record, we had carried in firewood and stacked it in the hall. The pump handle froze, and we melted snow for water in a big pan on the Aga.
“Never had any use for electricity anyway; if we could get a line down this road, it would collapse in all this snow.” My mother went about the daily task of filling her oil lamps. “I don’t think the chickens will make it in this cold.” She filled the last lamp, trimmed its wick, and sat down in a chair by the Aga.
“Will you stay here and tend the fire, Ma? Boil enough water so we can have a nice bath. I will go and do something about the chickens.” I put on my thickest coat, barely able to button it over three sweaters, pulled my beret down to my eyebrows, and wrapped a scarf around my face below my eyes to my neck.
The front door of the cottage faced south: the air was almost balmy when I opened it. I allowed myself a minute to admire the beauty of the pristine filigree world that surrounded us before making my way toward the henhouse. When I came around the corner wall of the cottage, the north wind slammed into me with such violent fury it sliced through layers of wool like needles of ice and whirled my beret off my head. I crouched in the lee of the mulberry tree’s thick trunk to get my bearings, and then, half-blinded by flying snow, I fought my way to the chicken coop and wrestled open the door. It blew back out of my hands and slammed against the wall.
Inside the air was cold, but the coop had been built by John Mackenzie and, like our cottage, was strong and stout—made for harsh winters. “Everyone bearing up?” I put my hand into the nearest nesting box. Surely they couldn’t have survived? The warmth of soft feathers. No music was sweeter to my ears than the irritable clucking as I disturbed her sleep.
I tobogganed bal
es of straw from the barn down to the coop and used them to pad the henhouse walls for insulation. I fed the chickens their corn and helped them back into their boxes, reassured by the drowsy sounds of contentment. I filled the water troughs again and prayed they would not freeze too quickly.
“Thank God you have always led a simple, practical life, Ma,” I said as I stood in front of the Aga, trying to warm my freezing bum.
She looked up from chopping onions, her eyes watering. “There should be enough root vegetables, cabbages, pears, and apples in the cellar, and we can always kill a chicken or two.” She put down her knife and went into action. “Your face is blue with cold; come on, sit here and get warm. No, not too close to the fire, you’ll get hot ache.” With one hand she put the kettle on the hob, and with the other, she wiped melting snow off my face with a tea towel. “Good Lord, your eyelashes are frozen. Just how long can this terrible weather last? Here, drink this.” She wrapped my hands around a mug of tea.
“When we’ve had our supper, let’s light the oil lamp, and I’ll read to you.”
She brightened up immediately. “What’ll it be? Dickens? Austen? What about an adventure story? It’s been a long time since we read Robert Louis Stevenson—he’s pretty good.”
I pulled down a couple of books from the bookshelves. “Kidnapped or Treasure Island?”
* * *
• • •
I stared into my bowl of porridge and put the spoon down on the table. I would never have thought I would hate the taste, the smell, and the texture of oatmeal as much as I did now. Across the table my mother sipped her tea, pausing to cough and then take another cautious sip.