The Royal Governess

by Wendy Holden

  “Only black tie.” Valentine snorted. “Complete with spats and a top hat.”

  “And absolutely no jewelry on the dunes.”

  “Perish the thought. Ever seen a tiara at Blackpool?”

  “Ha ha!”

  “Hee hee!”

  “No one, unless they be a complete snob, will think the worse of you for inadvertently using the wrong fork at table.”

  “That’s a relief. Give it here, my turn. Oh, here we go. To refer to someone as a gent or a bloke is very bad form. One should always strive to avoid the repetitive use of slang and meaningless ejaculations.” Valentine hooted. “Meaningless ejaculations!”

  Marion had the book now. “Nearly everyone knows the story of the two men who spent twenty years on a desert island not speaking to each other because they had not been introduced.” She wiped her streaming eyes. “Do they?”

  “Oh, absolutely.”

  “Ha ha.”

  Valentine was unpacking the picnic, laying it out on the rock. There were hard-boiled eggs and lemonade in the rucksack, and slices of cake swiped from the larder when her mother’s back was turned. Mrs. Crawford, who had regularly plied Peter with her baking, would never have allowed Valentine access to her Victoria sponge.

  “On entering a restaurant, the senior man of the party will go in first so he can bespeak a table.”

  Marion placed one of the sandwich packets on her head. “An erect carriage and dignified bearing are central to correct form.”

  Valentine indicated the boulder. “Would madam like to be seated?”

  “Why, thank you, kind sir!”

  After lunch, they lay stretched out. The warm air was scented and heady as wine. When Valentine began to kiss her, she rolled away. She watched his face slump in disappointment then stiffen in surprise as she unbuttoned her dress and removed her underwear. She stood above him, stretching in the sunshine.

  He stared up at her. “Are you sure?”

  She nodded. Never had she been so sure about anything.

  Afterward, they lay in the heather. Suddenly curious, she asked him about his childhood and he told her he had been to a succession of boarding schools, many of which had expelled him.

  “Didn’t your mother mind?” She could hardly imagine what Mrs. Crawford would have said.

  “She hardly noticed.” His tone was scornful. “Too busy running around Monte Carlo with her second husband.”

  It sounded like a life from another world. She returned to the subject of most interest. “So why did the schools throw you out?”

  He waved his cigarette in the air. “Let me count the ways. First we refused to join the Officers’ Training Corps. Then we painted a statue of the king with red paint.”

  “We?”

  “Me and Esmond,” he said, as if the name would immediately resonate with her.

  “Esmond?”

  “My cousin. We were at school together. One of the schools, anyway. He got me into Communism, in fact.” That he hero-worshipped this Esmond was obvious.

  “On Armistice Day, we put anti-war leaflets in all the prayer books. They fluttered down during the Two Minutes’ Silence, causing a row of unimaginable proportions.”

  “I can imagine. But why go to those extremes?”

  “Because public schools perpetuate an evil and outdated class system” was the answer. His glib tone infuriated her. He seemed to have no awareness of his privilege.

  “Slums do the same,” she snapped. “But unfortunately they’re not so easy to leave.”

  Valentine propped himself up on his elbow. “Don’t be so pompous. You’re working for the Duchess of York’s sister.”

  “Only for the summer. Some of us have to make money, you know. We don’t all have privilege handed to us on a plate.”

  “Some of us are using our privilege to raise the consciousness of the workers. Not pretending to be egalitarian feminists whilst becoming lickspittles to the aristocracy.”

  She gasped. “How dare you?”

  His laughter was low, triumphant. “You’re beautiful when you’re angry.”

  She glared at him, but felt herself melt. He was so absurdly handsome, and these arguments excited both of them. She rolled onto her back and only pretended to fend him off when he leaped on her.

  * * *

  • • •

  “AND HOW ARE you getting along with Mary?” the much-admired Lady Rose inquired charmingly after a few weeks had gone by. It was the end of the day and she had called Marion into the sitting room, whose air pulsed with perfume from the vases on every shining surface. Lady Rose loved flowers, and there were roses in every size and shade of pink.

  “Very well,” Marion said, and meant it. Mary was a delicate, fair-haired child who compensated for a lack of physical vigor with a powerful interest in her lessons. “She’s a clever girl,” she added.

  “She tells me you’ve been teaching her about the suffragettes.” Lady Rose toyed with a long rope of huge pearls.

  Marion looked at her. Was Lady Rose shocked? “Modern women need to know about the modern world,” she said firmly. “We were talking about the vote and I felt she should know that it was largely through the suffragettes that women eventually got it.”

  The violet eyes twinkled. “Indeed. It appears you have quite fired her up. She has been sternly lecturing her father on the principle of equal rights.” Lady Rose gave one of her silvery laughs. “And, of course, she’s very taken with the specter stalking Europe. She’s done some simply terrifying drawings of it.”

  Mary had indeed been struck by the opening of the Communist Manifesto, although her questions had been less about dialectical materialism than what the stalking specter looked like. Was it a skeleton?

  “And she’s been telling me all about those clever boffins in Cambridge splitting the atom.”

  “Cockroft and Walton, yes.” Mary, who had a scientific bent, had been fascinated by the sensational recent experiment’s power and speed. “Had you thought about sending Mary to school?” she asked. It seemed the obvious thing, once she herself had returned to college in the autumn.

  But now it seemed she really had said something shocking. Lady Rose’s beautiful violet eyes widened in amazement. For a second, her lovely oval face went blank before it resumed its customary charming expression. “Goodness, Miss Crawford. I hardly think that is necessary, do you? When I was growing up my sisters and I only had a governess. And we all married well.” Lady Rose paused. “One of us very well,” she added, significantly.

  Marion stared at Lady Rose. Had no one told her that marrying well, as she put it, was no longer the route to an interesting life? If indeed it ever had been. Women could take degrees now, have careers. Lady Rose was stuck in the Dark Ages.

  * * *

  • • •

  A WEEK OR so later, Mary greeted her governess in the schoolroom full of excitement. “Great news, Miss Crawford! Aunt Peter is coming here tomorrow.”

  This strange name suggested a mannish woman in a trouser suit and monocle. “Lovely,” she said. She picked up the slim volume on the table. “Now, are you sitting comfortably? Shall we see what Alan Breck and David Balfour do next?”

  They were soon absorbed in Kidnapped. Would she have been a Jacobite? Mary asked her governess.

  “Most definitely not. They were terribly misled.”

  “I would have followed Bonnie Prince Charlie!” Mary said fervently.

  “He let his people down,” Marion pointed out. “They gave him their hearts, but he betrayed them and went abroad. He never came back.”

  Mary reflected gloomily on this poor example of royal behavior. “I’m glad princes don’t behave like that anymore.”

  * * *

  • • •

  LATER, MARION PICKED up her hat for her walk back. The morning-ga
thered flowers lay limply over the brim. Lady Rose appeared, apparently about to go out. She wore a perfect pearl-gray cloche, trimmed with a matching feather. “Miss Crawford!” she exclaimed. “I’m so very glad to have caught you.”

  Marion paused, cautiously. Had her uncompromising views on Charles Edward Stuart been transmitted? Some Scots, definitely, would find them controversial.

  “We have visitors tomorrow,” said Lady Rose.

  Marion nodded, the limp adornment on her hat brim nodding with her. “Mary mentioned Aunt Peter.”

  To her surprise, Lady Rose burst out laughing. “Her real name is Elizabeth. The children couldn’t pronounce it so they called her Peter.”

  Aunt Elizabeth. There was only one Aunt Elizabeth Marion could think of. The most famous Aunt Elizabeth on the planet.

  Lady Rose’s blue eyes twinkled. “These days, of course, we must all call her Her Royal Highness the Duchess of York.”

  Marion waited to be told that, as the family was dealing with royalty, her presence was not required. Well, good. She could use the time studying for the new term in autumn.

  “I would like you to meet them,” Lady Rose concluded.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Next day, Mary was in unusually tearing spirits, which Marion happily indulged with games on the lawn. Back in the house for elevenses, they were cut off at the pass by one of the housemaids. “Yer wanted in the drawing room.”

  Remembering, suddenly, the royal visitors, Marion looked down at her frock. It was wet at the hem and bore magnificent grass stains. She raised her chin. They must take her as they found her.

  The drawing room was long and rectangular. Pictures in gold frames hung from the rail, and bay windows at the end overlooked the sea.

  Lady Rose wafted up to her, smiling. “Miss Crawford! Come and meet my sister.” She found herself taken by the arm. “It’s Your Royal Highness when you first meet her,” Lady Rose went on. “But ma’am after that is fine. Ma’am as in jam, remember. Not ma’am as in smarm.”

  The Duchess of York sat on one of the window seats. She looked much like her sister, although with darker, stronger brows, darker hair and a wider face. Her skin had a porcelain perfection and her eyes were piercingly blue. Her hands and feet were as small as a doll’s, the former sparkling with diamonds, the latter in pale, high-heeled shoes. Her dress was of blue chiffon, and ropes of pearls gleamed softly against it.

  Marion felt suddenly acutely aware of her stained skirt and her stout, serviceable shoes.

  The duchess exuded an impish glee. “The famous Miss Crawford!” She spoke in an excited, high-pitched voice, with emphasis. “Rose has been telling me how far you walk every day! Simply miles! You’re as strong as a horse, she says.”

  It was difficult to know what to make of such exuiberance. “I enjoy walking,” Marion replied. “Your Royal Highness,” she added quickly, to which the duchess gave a roguish, couldn’t-matter-less wave of the hand.

  “And the countryside round here is very beautiful. O Caledonia stern and wild!” The girlish little figure in blue leaned forward. “We Scots must stick together!”

  Marion tried not to look surprised. She hadn’t even realized the duchess was Scottish. She didn’t sound it.

  “I daresay you’ve passed lots of absolutely beastly exams, Miss Crawford?”

  “Some,” Marion admitted. “Marm. Mam.”

  “I only ever took one exam. In a horrid place called Hackney. They made me eat tapioca and it still makes me boil with rage to think that I forced down that garbage for nothing! I didn’t pass, you see,” the duchess confided. “Whisper it soft, but intellectual giant I am not.”

  She was like something out of P. G. Wodehouse, Marion thought, just as, right on cue, the duchess waved and called, “Bertie!”

  Marion turned. Bertie was a slim, dark-haired man talking to Admiral Leveson-Gower. He hurried over immediately. He too was exquisitely dressed, in a perfectly cut tweed suit. Smoke streamed from the cigarette between his thin fingers.

  He looked at the duchess adoringly. “Darling?”

  “This is the amazing Miss Crawford!” enthused his wife. “She walks literally hundreds of miles every day and has passed thousands of fiendish exams!”

  Prince Albert seemed quite accustomed to his wife’s exaggerations.

  “Good m-m-morning, Miss Crawford,” he said, after several aborted efforts to achieve the phrase.

  His wife regarded him gleefully. “I was just telling her how irredeemably thick we both are!”

  “Oh, terribly d-dim,” agreed the duke. “I was p-p-placed sixty-seventh out of sixty-eight in my class at Osborne Naval College.”

  “But it wasn’t his fault.” The duchess turned to Marion. “My husband’s youth was blighted by a succession of elderly tutors. Is that not so, Bertie?”

  The duke drew hard on his cigarette and nodded. “Madame Bricka was the f-f-first. She’d taught my m-m-mother when she was a little girl, but she was quite o-o—” He started to cough.

  “Old, Bertie.” His wife reached and tugged the sleeve of his suit. “Remember Mr. Logue. Let’s-go-gathering-heather-with-the-glad- brigade-of-grand-dragoons.”

  This evidently was a breathing exercise of some sort. Marion watched the duke attempt to repeat it. “Glad brigade of g-g-g—oh, blast!!”

  His wife kept up her reassuring smile. “Remember to breathe.”

  The duke remembered to breathe. It seemed to work. “And very fat. Always hanging around with her blasted F-F-French and German primers.”

  The duchess was giggling. “And what about the one with the huge mustache?”

  The duke took another deep drag of his cigarette, sucking his thin cheeks into the bony hollows of his face. “That was H-Hansell. Wore tweeds and smoked a pipe and was a c-c-con—oh, blast! Blast!”

  “Conservative?” the duchess supplied serenely. “Breathe deeply, Bertie!”

  The duke shot her a grateful glance, then tried again. “No, a con . . . con . . . connoisseur. Of ec-ec-ec . . . oh, blast it!”

  “Ecclesiastical architecture” took some time to establish. The struggle didn’t seem to upset the duchess in the least. “And tell Miss Crawford about the one who ate tadpoles!”

  “Oh yes! Mr. H-h-h . . .”

  “Hua!”

  “That’s right. My brothers and I went fishing in the pond at Sandringham. We got lots of t-t-tadpoles and got the cook to serve them to him as a s-s-savory, on t-t-toast.”

  “Bertie!” The duchess was shrieking with laughter now. “What must Miss Crawford think?”

  * * *

  • • •

  MRS. CRAWFORD WAS full of questions when Marion arrived back home. “What was Her Royal Highness wearing?”

  “Blue,” said Marion shortly. She felt exhausted. The royal visit had necessitated a longer than usual day, which she was glad to see the end of.

  “Blue?” repeated her mother. “Is that all?”

  Marion obediently summoned up the details. Once the initial excitement had subsided, she had noticed that, for a young woman, the duchess had dressed like someone much older. Her frock, while of luxurious material, was unfashionable; no doubt because she was plump and the flat-chested, drop-waist style would not have flattered her. Her mother hung on to every word.

  “Hair?” she demanded, when the clothes report was concluded.

  That had been slightly old-fashioned too: a fringe with a bun at the back. Marion thought this a missed opportunity. The duchess, presumably, could afford the very finest hairdressers.

  “Were the little princesses there?” Mrs. Crawford wanted to know next.

  Marion suppressed a yawn. “They were at Balmoral with the king.”

  “Balmoral!” Mrs. Crawford looked dazzled.

  “And the duke? What was he like?”

  Marion made a
final effort. “A side parting that looked done with a ruler and shoes that shone like mirrors. Oh, and he has a speech impediment.”

  “Good heavens! A stutter?”

  Marion could have kicked herself for opening up this fresh line of inquiry. She edged toward the sitting room door. “I’m afraid that’s all I can remember, Ma. Our brush with royalty is over.”

  The Leveson-Gower household gradually recovered from the excitement. The housemaids twittered for a few days afterward and Cook repeatedly relayed her short conversation with the duchess. “I asked her how old the princesses were now,” she went on, like a gramophone record with the needle stuck. “And Her Royal Highness just looked at me, like I’m looking at you now, and said ‘Six and one!’ Six and one!” Cook shook her fleshy jowls in wonder. “Six and one!”

  * * *

  • • •

  ONE AFTERNOON WHEN Marion was about to leave, Lady Rose appeared in the hallway. “May I have a word, Miss Crawford? In the sitting room?”

  Lady Rose’s sitting room was filled with an abundance of roses. The scent was sweet and strong and mingled with cedarwood from the fire, which burned even on the hottest days.

  Sinking gracefully onto a silk-striped sofa, Her Ladyship tucked a strand of dark gold hair behind an ear. “It seems,” she said, in her soft voice, “that you have made an impression, Miss Crawford.”

  “Impression?”

  “My sister would like you to undertake the education of her daughters.”

  Marion stared at her. Her mind had gone absolutely blank.

  Lady Rose flopped back against the sofa and burst into peals of laughter. “Miss Crawford! Your face!”

  The warmth and the flower scent seemed suddenly overpowering. “You mean,” Marion asked slowly, “your sister the Duchess of York?”

  “Indeed I do,” twinkled Lady Rose.