The Royal Governess

by Wendy Holden

  “You mean things like the way the police were pushing? To annoy the marchers?”

  “Exactly.” His eyes shone; he looked pleased. “Tell the truth about something. Find the telling detail. A picture can say so much.”

  “Or so little,” Marion said, thinking of the perfect royal portraits.

  He smiled. “Well, quite. The thing about photojournalism is that it’s not preplanned. It’s spontaneous, on the spot.”

  She considered this. “What do photojournalists do with their pictures though?”

  “Same thing journalists do with their words. Sell them to newspapers and magazines.”

  This surprised her. “But who wants pictures of police hitting marchers?”

  “Actually, there’s a growing market for them. Some newspaper editors want to show what is really happening in the world. Not just be part of a royal public relations exercise.”

  A horrible possibility now dawned on her. “You wouldn’t be a Communist, by any chance?” She wasn’t sure she could bear another.

  He was midway through biting into a scone. The laughter this provoked made him snatch for his napkin. His broad shoulders heaved. “Nothing of the sort,” he gasped, eyes streaming. “As a matter of fact, I don’t trust extremes.”

  “Good.” This was a relief. “But you still don’t want Mr. Adams to know about . . . your other interests.” That was certainly the impression he had given.

  “Not really.” There was a flash of anxiety in his gray eyes as he looked at her. “You won’t say anything?”

  She smiled and patted his arm. “Don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me. And anyway, as you said, we’re doing similar things. You’re working with the royal photographer but doing your photojournalism and I’m working with the royal family but trying to connect them with real life.”

  His broad, handsome face cleared. “Yes. We make a good team.”

  Something flashed through her at that. Sternly, she reminded herself that she was not looking for love. What was the point? She was headed back to Scotland before much longer.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The invitation from Queen Mary came out of the blue. Her Majesty wished Marion to come to the palace for tea. She hoped this would be convenient and would Marion please telephone at once to her lady-in-waiting, Lady Cynthia Colville?

  Marion lifted the heavy black receiver with trepidation. She had met Lady Cynthia, a terrifying old dragon with a huge nose, fierce eyes and a mouth twisted in permanent disgust. When not waiting on the queen, she presided at the London Juvenile Court. The predicament of any felon up before her would be unenviable to say the least.

  “Her Majesty means just me, and not the princess?” a puzzled Marion asked her.

  “Her Majesty does. Kindly be on time. Her Majesty is never late for any engagement, public or private. She expects the same punctuality from others.” With that, Lady Cynthia rang off.

  Marion went to consult the duchess, who chuckled. “My mother-in-law has strong views on education! Prepare to be instructed in thorough Teutonic fashion!”

  But what business was it of Queen Mary’s? Marion wondered. Elizabeth was the duchess’s daughter. Any instructions should come from her, surely? She felt mildly offended, but also fascinated. Tea with the queen-empress would be extraordinary—and what would Buckingham Palace be like?

  * * *

  • • •

  SHE SET OFF a good half hour earlier than necessary, as the walk from Piccadilly through Green Park to Buckingham Palace was ten minutes at the most. The buses roared by to nearby Hyde Park Corner, bells dinging, adverts plastered on the sides, passengers packed in their tops. There were cars to dodge too, heavy horses and carts, and still a number of boys on bicycles, even though morning deliveries were long over.

  Green Park, lovely in summer, was sprinkled with flowers and tourists. They sat in deck chairs or lay on the warm grass. They were content, it seemed, to be near to the gold-topped black railings of Buckingham Palace, from whose pillared central portico the Royal Standard fluttered. The gilt figure atop the Victoria Memorial blazed against the blue sky. She could see the soldiers, magnificent in their bearskins, with the gold on their red jackets flashing in the sun. A sense of excitement gripped her. She was going where very few people ever went.

  At 4:50 p.m. precisely she walked through the black gates of Buckingham Palace. Under the eyes of several observers, she approached the policeman, who seemed to expect her; he nodded her through and directed her to a black double-fronted door on the right-hand side of the facade. As she approached, the doors opened as if by magic; up a wide, shallow flight of steps and Marion was inside.

  The palace interior was like the grandest of grand hotels. Great carpeted corridors flowed like red rivers between white-paneled walls scrolled with gold. Vast chandeliers blazed from the ceilings, dripping with faceted glass. It was all very quiet.

  “Your coat, madam?”

  “Thank you.” Marion handed the pale blue jacket over to a tall figure in black tails. His waistcoat was a brilliant scarlet and his collar stiff and white.

  “This way, madam.” He set off along one of the corridors, walking well to the edge of the carpet. Hurrying alongside him, Marion walked in the middle. Passing several other black tailcoats, all of whom looked at her askance, she asked what she was doing wrong.

  “Only royalty walk down the middle?” she gasped, torn between amusement and its opposite.

  “A freshly brushed carpet is fit only for royal feet.”

  She stared at him. Was he serious? His delivery was absolutely deadpan, but beneath his powdered hair, his black eyes sparkled. “This way, madam.”

  Madam followed. The palace was almost fantastically ornate. One would never have imagined it from the austere outside. The rooms were massive, built on a giant scale; there seemed not an unfestooned square inch. Walls were of shimmering damask and ceilings blazed with gold. Layers of swagged curtains at colossal windows were restrained by thick silken ropes. There were enormous gold-framed mirrors, huge portraits and shining sofas whose bloated silk cushions threatened to burst from their carved gold frames. Everywhere Marion looked there were painted medallions, gilded moldings, blank-eyed statues striking attitudes in alcoves.

  “Madam!” The footman claimed her attention. She saw that he had stopped dead and turned swiftly to the wall.

  A short young woman in a white frock was walking down the dead center of the carpet. As she passed she swept Marion, who had not turned, a haughty glance with some familiar blue eyes. She turned the corner and was gone.

  “Who was that?”

  “Her Royal Highness the Princess Royal, miss.”

  King George’s only daughter, Marion knew. The sister of the duke and the Prince of Wales. “Why did you turn to the wall?”

  “We’re supposed to avert our gaze, miss.”

  “What? But that’s ridiculous.”

  Who did these people think they were? They may be king-emperor and queen-empress, but this was the twentieth century.

  They had reached a wide, red-carpeted staircase where an elegant gentleman in an even more elaborate outfit awaited in the dead center of the carpet at the top. Behind him, two closed white doors heavy with gold decoration were set in a tall gold and white doorcase.

  Marion’s thoughts flew back to Alice, only this time it was Through the Looking-Glass, with the Fish and Frog Footmen. Apart from the wet look conferred by his brilliantined hair, the first footman bore no resemblance to a fish. But there was certainly something of the frog about the bulge-eyed functionary she was now approaching, resplendent in his red tailcoat and patent pumps with silver buckles. “Her Majesty’s personal footman,” the first footman muttered under his breath, before turning away.

  Emanating tremendous dignity, the frog footman smiled a courtly smile at the precise moment a series of si
lvery tinkles from unseen clocks announced that the hour was exactly five. As the last stroke died away he intoned, “Her Majesty is waiting.”

  Turning his red-tailcoated back on her, the frog footman seized the round gold knobs of doors. As he pulled them open, the vista exposed was of an opulent sitting room. But this was mere hazy shining background. It was what stood in the foreground that occupied the attention.

  Queen Mary stood proudly erect, her ankles touching, her feet at ten to two, her gaze drilling straight into Marion’s. The scene was completely silent but felt somehow full of noise, like a blare of trumpets. It was a tremendous coup de théâtre.

  “Miss Marion Crawford, Your Majesty,” announced the footman, before ushering Marion into the room and withdrawing. On silent, oiled gold hinges, the doors behind her closed. There was no escape. A sense of panic swept through Marion.

  Queen Mary had been imposing enough in the Royal Lodge gardens. But inside Buckingham Palace the effect was tremendous. She loomed above Marion like a vast statue topped with a face of frowning resolve. Her pale gray gown and the width of her bust suggested the palace frontage. As ever, her high collar and leg of mutton sleeves recalled the Victorian era, as did her hair, supplemented at the front with that strange little pelmet of false gray curls.

  Awed and rather terrified, Marion dropped into the deepest curtsey her shaking knees allowed, then limply, without squeezing, shook the proffered hand, which bristled with diamonds. She had expected now to be offered a chair but the royal ankles remained welded together while the royal expression, frowning and expectant, suggested that something else was required. Marion wobbled carpetward in another curtsey.

  The statue now moved. “Let us have tea first and then ve can haf a talk,” said the queen in her guttural voice.

  Only now did Marion look about herself. The walls of the predominantly red room had a satin shimmer, and the great looping curtains at the colossal windows were restrained by silken ropes.

  The queen was leading the way into another, smaller room furnished in gray-blue silk. A faint creak accompanied her, as of much whalebone corsetry. A fire glowed in the depths of a marble fireplace despite the sun outside the silk-draped window. A table stood by it, draped with a white cloth edged with lace. Arranged upon it were pink cups and saucers, a plate of muffins and scones and a large fruitcake. The queen was standing up and fiddling with a silver kettle hanging over a methylated spirit lamp. It bore the monogram VR.

  “Zis kettle belonged to Queen Victoria,” Queen Mary remarked needlessly as the water boiled and was decanted into a silver teapot marked with the same royal monogram. “Zis teapot too. And you see zis bracelet?” She extended a glittering hand to Marion. The links of the bracelet seemed to be painted with eyes. It was rather horrible.

  “Zey are the eyes of all Queen Victoria’s chiltren!” Queen Mary declared triumphantly.

  Tea began. The queen ate with great relish, looking about her as she chewed and making approving little noises deep in her throat. Raisins and crumbs tumbled down the palatial frontage. Marion picked nervously at a scone and darted occasional looks at her hostess. Queen Mary had a bristly chin, she noticed. An ornate gold clock could be heard softly ticking on the mantelpiece.

  Having demolished a muffin and a slice of cake, the queen dabbed her wide mouth with a linen napkin, gave a grunt of satisfaction and looked Marion squarely in the eye. “Now ve vill haf our discussion.”

  She began fiddling in a basket on the floor. Her hand emerged, holding what looked like a heap of dirty string. “Vaste not vont not,” pronounced the old lady as she began to unravel the cord. “I never throw anything avay. Never! Packing string, post string, it is alvays useful. I keep it all. Also the paper and envelopes. We must not vaste money.”

  Marion clenched her jaw. The risk was that it would drop open at the sight of a woman surrounded by gilded splendor, to whom she had been conducted by two footmen and curtseyed twice, untangling used parcel string and rolling it into neat little balls.

  “You are enchoying teaching the bambino?”

  The chance, Marion thought, would be a fine thing. “We haven’t had many lessons,” she admitted.

  The queen did not seem to hear this. “Ja, she reminds me so much of myself! I vud read for six hours every day!”

  Marion thought this sounded rather excessive. “I was aiming for an hour for Princess Elizabeth. Children need variety and exercise, especially at her age.”

  Queen Mary looked up from an especially tricky knot. “My torter-in-law tells me that you haf some unusual ideas about education, Miss Crawfort.”

  “Not unusual,” Marion corrected, smiling. “Just modern.”

  The small eyes glinted. “I too haf ideas about education. You must teach Lilibet history. Children are very interested in genealogy. Royal genealogy in particular.”

  Marion suppressed a gasp.

  “History is by far the most important subject,” the queen proclaimed. “It is for instance far more faluable than arithmetic.” The bright eyes peered hard at her over the glasses. “You are teaching Lilibet arithmetic?”

  “Yes.”

  The wide old mouth twitched skeptically at the corner. “Lilibet does not need to study arithmetic. She vill never have to run a household budget!”

  “But—”

  “Chography, though, that is worth doing. Chorge’s empire covers a very large part of the globe. You must ask Mrs. Knight.”

  “Mrs. Knight?” What did she know about geography?

  Queen Mary went on to explain that among the toys in the nursery was a set of building blocks made of fifty different timbers grown in various parts of the king’s vast realm. It had been presented to Their Majesties during the 1911 Durbar.

  “Vot an occasion!” The old queen was misty-eyed now. “Ve vere treated like gods! Ve rode on elephants and I vore the biggest diamond in ze vorld!” The old hands continued to wind the grubby little bits of string.

  Marion shifted on her padded seat. It was time to stand up for herself. “Your Majesty,” she began, firmly. “It may be that for a truly rounded education, the princess might additionally benefit from an awareness of social conditions—the difficulties faced by a great many of Your Majesty’s people, the poor.”

  A sort of whinnying harrumph came from the seat opposite. “Ze poor!” exclaimed Queen Mary.

  Marion braced herself for a royal thunderstorm. The frog footman would be summoned to throw her out of the palace gates. If so, let him. She would have at least gone down fighting.

  The queen stared at her indignantly. “But I too am very interested in how poor people lif and vork. I know a lot about the vorking classes as I have always been surrounded vith servants.”

  As there seemed no answer to this, Marion did not attempt one. Nor, it seemed, was one required. “I haf taken tea vith miners’ vives,” Her Majesty went on, “and vonce when ve vere staying in Yorkshire there vos a terrible pit accident. Ve vent straight to the pit cottages and comforted ze veeping vidows.”

  * * *

  • • •

  MARION EVENTUALLY STUMBLED out of the audience clutching a set of Happy Families playing cards where the families concerned were the Plantagenets, Tudors and Hanoverians. How happy had any of them actually been? Her brain teemed with Queen Mary’s reading recommendations: the classics and the Bible, as well as poetry by heart—“Vonderful memory-training! And you simply must read Harrison Ainsvorth.”

  Marion had never heard of a novel called Harrison Ainsvorth. But she had barely been back at 145 Piccadilly before a car swept up from the palace containing a large box of books. The entire works of Shakespeare, Dickens and Jane Austen were topped by a small leather-bound volume whose gold-stamped spine read Windsor Castle, by Harrison Ainsworth.

  Marion flicked through it. There were a lot of “thees” and “forsooths.” She groaned. Really, t
his was the most uphill of uphill struggles. However, it would soon be over.

  Elizabeth keeps asking me to call her Lilibet, she wrote to her mother. She said that everyone else in the family does. But I can’t really encourage her to think of me as family when I’ll be gone soon.

  But the weeks went by and the end of the month passed, and nothing was said.

  Had the Yorks forgotten?

  Should she say something herself? But her job was hardly finished yet. Elizabeth loved outside learning, her obsessive compulsion seemed much diminished and she now almost had fingernails. But the program of “normal” adventures, which had always been the point, hadn’t even gotten started.

  Permission was hard to obtain; the duchess, especially in London, was always rushing off in a whirl of furs to a waiting car, and the duke was either out or shut in his office. Marion had asked herself many times why she was even trying. She should just leave, surely. Enlightened principles, modern ideas—they had no place here. The dancing class and, especially, the audience with Queen Mary had shown her what she was up against.

  But now that she knew Elizabeth better, stepping away was harder. Besides being a joy to teach, she was a loving little girl it was impossible not to love in return. If she left now, Marion wondered, would the prison gates ever open? Or would the child be condemned, like some princess in a tower, to spend the rest of her days in lonely privilege? She thought of Buckingham Palace, heavy and hushed, with that feeling of being cut off from the rest of the world, even though the whole of London was going about its business just beyond the brocade-draped windows.

  Had the princess been an insufferable prig, it might have been easier. But Elizabeth was softhearted and sensitive. Her compassion, especially for animals, was striking. Standing with the child at the window as she looked down on Piccadilly below, Marion listened to her concerns about the horses pulling the brewer’s dray that stopped every evening at the traffic lights. Her anxiety if the horses were late was touching, as was her concern for weary little ponies trotting home with their carts. Their owners would have been amazed to know the extent of royal concern and sympathy they roused from that upper window.