In Royal Service to the Queen

by Tessa Arlen

  “I have seen it and it is pretty. It’s in Kensington Palace grounds, but quiet and private.”

  His face maintained a look of polite interest. “Has your mother definitely decided against the move to Aberdeen?”

  I closed my eyes and nodded that she had. Ma had resisted the idea as soon as I had mentioned it. “I can’t say that I would move to Aberdeen, Marion. It’s . . .” She had wrinkled her nose in disdain. “So gray, so big, and . . .” She hesitated. “Madge and Mary, however much I love them, they are just not my . . . It’s all about the church with them . . . so stifling. And I would miss my garden—the peace and quiet.”

  “I can’t leave you alone, stuck out here, Ma. That winter was a killer.”

  “How many of those do we get?” She held her hands open palm upward, as if I were suggesting that catastrophic weather would be a normal occurrence in the future. “I have my friends around me, my darling girl. They are important to me. Betty and me, we go way back . . . the Mackenzies, the Rosses. Even Dr. Marley. I’m too old to make the move. When you come to Scotland, I know you will come here to be with me for a few days. And I would love to come to you both for the odd weekend in Aberdeen. Let’s just see how it goes.”

  Inspiration had struck me like a bolt of frigid air—the kind we got in Dunfermline when your mother was getting on in years and lived four hundred miles away. “Supposing Betty was to come and live with you, here? You could share your place; it’s big enough.”

  A long, penetrating look from my mother, the kind that did more than search your face for telltale signs of daughterly concern. “She would drive me up the wall within a week. All that chitchat. But I see what you mean. I am rather cut off . . . and I don’t want you worrying.” She sat back in her chair and her thoughts turned inward; I might as well have not been in the room. And then in an attempt to reassure me: “Soon enough you’ll be shot of them—the Windsors—and then if I know anything, you’ll have had enough of Aberdeen. I have no doubt that you and George will settle in Dunfermline when he retires.”

  I looked across the restaurant table at my husband, trying to interpret whether the stoic expression on his face meant that he would actually enjoy big-city life. I put down my knife and fork and took a sip of wine. “If we were to abandon the idea of living in Scotland, what on earth would you find to do down here in London?” I hoped this was opportunity enough for him to let me know how he really felt.

  “Why, all the things we can’t do in Aberdeen, of course! And, sorry to be a banker, but if the rent is free—Nottingham Cottage might work for us. I have a good bit put by, and we could sublease the flat to a professor who teaches at Aberdeen College—he used to be in digs with me at Mrs. Patterson’s place—I know he would jump at it. I am due to retire at the beginning of April—that’s only four months away. A year of living in London might be fun—we would be so close to everything—the West End theaters, little French bistros, and please don’t forget the Oval for cricket!”

  London with George! In all the years of living in Buckingham Palace, I had often felt as if it could have been in any large city—I so rarely had a chance to explore it. I was still reluctant to push. “I have seen the cottage. It is delightful, full of light, with a well-proportioned and pretty drawing room, and it’s in a secluded part of Kensington Palace grounds. It has a walled-in garden. We can go and have a look at it tomorrow morning. And have a think about it.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  November 20, 1947

  Buckingham Palace, London

  The people outside the palace gates had gathered there the day before yesterday and now launched into “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”

  I wish to heaven they would all stop chanting for a moment. Wedding nerves. I laughed at myself. The excitement, with its underlying whisper of tension, had stolen down the palace corridors to my remote rooms, dispelling any possibility of serenity or calm.

  My fingers trembled as I picked up my hat: a shallow, wide saucer covered with tiny black feathers, like the breast of a raven. It had cost me a month’s salary, but it was a dream of simple, understated elegance with my worsted wool suit in a rich garnet red. Where is the elastic supposed to go? I tried to remember the woman in the hat shop’s instructions as I pulled the thin black elastic to the back so it would fit under my hair. For the second time I fumbled it, and the elastic snapped me on the ear.

  The singing and chanting increased in volume; someone must have either arrived or left the palace. The din had been picking up in enthusiasm and power since yesterday afternoon: it reminded me of the end of the war—the VE Day celebrations.

  A knock on the door, and hairpins spilled from my fingers all over my dressing table. “What is it?” I called out. It couldn’t be Margaret; she was on the other side of the palace happily bullying a group of bridesmaids.

  “Mrs. Buthlay?” A page came in through the door. “Her Royal Highness asks that you . . .”

  “Is everything all right?” I rounded on him holding a hatpin the way Margaret held her cigarette holder.

  His face assumed an expression of patience, the patience of a saint about to be martyred. He had been around women dressing for a wedding all morning, and if I skewered him, he would not be taken by surprise.

  “Yes, Mrs. Buthlay, ma’am. Everything is in order. But . . .” He hesitated.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Her Royal Highness’s wedding bouquet. A footman put it somewhere to keep it cool, and he can’t remember where. Would you—”

  “Isn’t Bobo there?” Why couldn’t the superbly efficient commander of the royal robes track down Lilibet’s bouquet?

  At the mention of her name, his face flushed, and he looked down. So, Bobo has already ripped every servant on the second floor a new windpipe. I stowed away my hairpins in the pocket of my suit coat, picked up my hat, and followed him out of the room.

  It took ten minutes of fast walking to get to Lilibet’s apartments. As we passed the grand staircase and a line of windows, I glanced out at the crowd surging up to the gates at the top of the Mall. A figure in a morning suit shot across my line of vision outside the window. Was that Jock Colville running like a hunted hare? Jock picked up speed as he crossed the diagonal of the courtyard, his top hat in his hand, his handkerchief in the other. I bent down with narrowed eyes, but he was around the corner and gone from view. Why is Lilibet’s private secretary running a marathon in full morning dress on her wedding morning?

  As we paced on down the last one hundred feet of corridor, I racked my brains as to where a footman would have likely stowed flowers to keep them from wilting. “Not in the between-stairs room?” I asked the queen’s footman.

  “We already looked, all of us, in every service room there is, Mrs. Craw . . . Buthlay.” He shook his head at the idiocy of others not in Her Majesty’s retinue.

  We rounded the corner from the front of the palace to its east side, and the guilty party slunk into view. The poor man looked as if he was praying for a stay of execution.

  As we passed the closed doors of the Chinese Room, I felt the familiar draft eddy around my ankles from under its massive doors. I stopped and beckoned to the footman. “You wanted to keep the orchids cool?” I asked. His ears were fiery red, and now his cheeks suffused with embarrassment. I nodded toward the doors.

  “Bloomin’ hell.” He threw back his head, eyes closed in thanks, before throwing open the heavily carved door. In the shadow of a lacquered tallboy, on a little table by the half-open window, shone a cascade of pearl white orchids and myrtle.

  “On we go,” I said as he emerged with the flowers.

  * * *

  • • •

  “Crawfie, have you seen Jock?” The queen was standing behind her seated eldest daughter with a mouthful of hairpins—they seemed to be in high demand this morning. “He left quite some time ago to go to St. James’s . . . to pick up
Lilibet’s pearls.” I could tell by the queen’s expression that her morning was not going well. Lilibet, on the other hand, looked quite serene, as if she was watching all of us from under the shade of a flowering tree in summer.

  “Why are Lilibet’s pearls at St. James’s?” I asked Margaret.

  “Part of the wedding present display. Put there by mistake by some nincompoop.” Margaret crossed and recrossed her legs. “He has plenty of time to get there and back, Mummy.” She was sitting in her petticoats with a dressing gown thrown around her shoulders, as unperturbed as her sister. “Crawfie, the color of your suit is stunning—more garnet than ruby I would have thought.”

  “I think it would be a good idea if you put on your dress, Margaret.” The queen’s eyes flew up to the clock. “We’ll be leaving in half an hour.”

  “Forty-five minutes, actually.” Margaret lit a cigarette.

  “No, thirty minutes, and don’t smoke in here, please.”

  “Lilibet is hardly going to catch light, Mummy.”

  It was time for the governess to intervene.

  “I saw Jock Colville a moment ago as I was walking here. He was running toward the privy-purse entrance to the palace.” The door opened and Bobo came into the room. In her hand she had the pearls the king had given to his daughter as a wedding present.

  “Poor Mr. Colville,” she said without a shred of pity as she arranged the pearls around Lilibet’s neck and fastened the clasp. “He had to run all the way to St. James’s and back; the traffic was so thick they couldn’t get the car through.” Her hand came protectively to rest on Lilibet’s shoulder, and with one of her rare smiles, she continued, her voice smooth with complacency. “Of course, none of the policemen guarding the wedding presents would let him anywhere near the display to look for the pearls, let alone allow him to take them. He had to telephone to the palace to Sir Alan and be verified. He could barely speak when he got back to the palace, he was so out of breath.”

  “Poor Jock,” said the queen, dismissing Jock’s sprint to save the day with a wave of a hairpin. “Now, Crawfie, you are the only one outside of the family, and Bobo, who is going to see the dress.” A beatific smile. “Are you ready, darling?”

  Lilibet got up from her dressing table and stood in the middle of the room. Bobo slid the cotton sleeve protecting the dress over the coat hanger to reveal a shimmer of ivory duchesse satin. “Seed pearls and crystals,” Bobo whispered, as the dress shot fire into a room silent with awe. She laid the dress in a pool of rich, glistening light on the floor, and as Lilibet stepped into it: “Mr. Hartnell says it’s the most beautiful dress he has ever made.” Her voice was hushed with reverence: in her mind she was already standing in Westminster Abbey, hanky in her hand, to watch her little lady walk down the aisle. The queen’s senior dresser and Bobo lifted the dress up over Lilibet and helped her to slip her arms into the sleeves before they carefully slid the dress up and over her shoulders.

  “The embroidery is exquisite.” I stepped closer as they fastened the gown at the back. The queen lifted her hand as if we might in some unguarded moment actually touch the creation that transformed Lilibet into an exquisite, ethereal being: a bride.

  “Springtime.” The queen’s voice was almost an ecclesiastical chant. “Star lilies, roses, orange blossoms, and ears of wheat.” She turned her daughter around to close the top button at Lilibet’s nape. “Such a classic and simple design, but quite stunning in its detail.”

  Bobo fastened the train to the back of the dress. “Mr. Hartnell said to keep the train in its bag until we get down to the coach. Is it too heavy? Shall we put it on later?”

  Lilibet spoke for the first time since I had come into her bedroom. “It is so light”—she swayed her hips—“so incredibly light. I feel as though I don’t have anything on at all.”

  “Better not say that when you get downstairs!” Margaret guided her back to the dressing table as if she might break, and Bobo slid the veil from its silk sack. It floated in the air: a glittering cloud of crystals as they caught in the glow from the lamps in the room.

  “A little this way.” The queen took one side of the veil. “Is that center?” They settled the silken cloud on Lilibet’s head, and it fell around her shoulders. “Look for the tiny buttonholes, Your Majesty, so that we can secure it to the tiara.” Bobo’s face was severe with concentration. “Perhaps a little more this way?”

  Margaret picked up the Morocco red leather case and, with a flourish, opened the lid for her mother.

  With significant ceremony, the queen lifted her fringe tiara in a flash and gleam of a thousand facets of brilliance. “My mother-in-law, your grandmother, gave me this on my wedding day, Lilibet.” She held the tiara over her daughter’s head. “Yes.” She smiled as she lowered the headpiece. “It looks perfect with the veil . . .” Her hands froze, and a look of horror, so awful that I thought for a moment she had been taken ill, held her as if she was made of stone. “Oh . . .”

  “Ma’am? Are you all right?” I was at her side. She turned her head to me, her face stricken. Her skin leached of all color underneath her makeup.

  “Your Majesty?” I reached out my hand to steer her to a chair before she crumpled on the floor where Lilibet’s dress had lain.

  “Oh . . .” Her mouth was an open circle of fear. I looked at her hands, held apart, each holding one half of the tiara.

  “Bloody hell,” said Margaret.

  I was across the room to the page standing outside the door. “Where is Mr. Colville? Good. Now, listen carefully: tell him that Her Royal Highness’s tiara has snapped in two at the base and that he must telephone to Philip Antrobus and arrange for him to come directly to the palace to mend it. Tell him that we have to leave in twenty minutes for the abbey. I think you had better run.”

  Lilibet was up from her dressing table, her arms around her mother’s shoulders. “It will be all right, Mummy. Oh no, please don’t . . . it will only take the jeweler a moment to mend it.” The plea to her mother not to cry had me pulling my handkerchief from my pocket. I went over to what I believed was a woman made inconsolable by what she had done. But the queen had recovered some of her equilibrium: her face was no longer slack and lifeless, but tight with fury as she stared at the broken tiara in her hands.

  Margaret gathered her robe around her: armor to protect her from her mother’s anger. “Mummy, it is not the end of the world. It really isn’t—there are so many tiaras lying about the palace; if this one can’t be fixed, another will do just as well.”

  The queen turned from eldest daughter to youngest. “If you hadn’t waved the case about like that, it would never have broken . . .” She caught her breath and squared her shoulders, tilting her head to one side in a smile of regret. “I particularly wanted Lilibet to wear this one.”

  Margaret raised her eyebrows; her eyes bored into her mother’s for a brief moment before she looked down and saw Lilibet’s brief frown of admonition. “Well, if you say so, Mummy. I’m going to get dressed, and then I’ll wait for Mr. Antrobus at the top of the stairs.” She shrugged as she opened the door, as if her mother had put her hand on her shoulder to detain her. I saw her take in a deep breath before she turned back into the room, looking past her mother to her sister. “You look beautiful, Lilibet; your dress is pure heaven. I’ll see you downstairs. We’ll all be waiting for you there.” She came back across the room and kissed her sister. “Perhaps a little bit more lipstick. Would you like me to . . . ?”

  Lilibet smiled. “Thank you, Margaret. I can manage, really I can.”

  * * *

  • • •

  I waited outside the door to Lilibet’s rooms until the jeweler arrived and pronounced the tiara mendable.

  “A little soldering here, and here, Your Majesty, and it will hold up perfectly. Maybe five or ten minutes’ work; that is all.” I watched him follow Jock Colville along the corridor to a room
where he could work, and leant against the wall to allow myself a moment to recover, opening my mouth as wide as I could to loosen the tension in my jaw. Margaret had not been exaggerating; any tiara from the palace vault would have done as well, and no one the wiser.

  What had troubled me most about the little scene I had just witnessed was how important it had been for Lilibet to reassure her mother that all would be well. The queen’s happiness was more important than that of her daughter on her wedding day. I wished I was hundreds of miles away in Scotland, walking down the lane to my mother’s cottage, hand in hand with George.

  George! He is waiting for me at the abbey—how much time do I have? My watch was lying on my dressing table back in my room; I must not be late. I couldn’t leave my poor husband stranded in the abbey.

  As if I had shouted my thoughts, a page came down the corridor. “Mrs. Buthlay, we need to get you to Westminster Abbey now. The crowds are thick out there.”

  “Yes, of course.” I stood in front of a large gold-framed looking glass and put on my hat. I was so thrown by the tiara catastrophe that I realized that I had put it on back to front. I pulled it the right way around and secured the elastic underneath my hair at the back. My face was pale. I pinched my cheeks and put on some lipstick. There now, I told myself. Everything is going to be perfect, absolutely perfect. Plenty of time to get to the abbey and George. But I could still see the queen’s unkind glare as she had turned to Margaret with the broken tiara in her hands.

  “Ah, Crawfie. Now, don’t you look lovely?” It was the king on his way down to the hall. At his shoulder was Peter Townsend, both of them immaculate in their dress uniforms, the king as First Lord of the Admiralty and his equerry in RAF blue. “Garnet red, such a perfect color for you, and I really approve of that hat—simple but very chic. You look absolutely ch-ch-charming.” I was so thrown by the beauty of Lilibet in her dress and the queen’s reaction to the tiara that I said the first thing that came to mind.