The Royal Governess

by Wendy Holden

  Slowly at first, then more and more confidently, she found herself joining in, saying what she thought too. The freedom of being able to express herself was exhilarating, extraordinary. She realized how repressed she had been, how lonely, just reading the papers in her room and feeling she was the only one who cared.

  Someone, somewhere, was singing “The Red Flag” to the accompaniment of a ukulele. She smiled. This was fun. Really fun.

  The ukulele stopped and someone put a record on: “Night and Day.” She felt the music flow through her, along with the wine. She wanted to dance, suddenly. It was ages since she had done so. It was ages since she had done anything a normal girl in her twenties did. God, she was twenty-six now. Where had the time gone? Panic seized her. She took another mouthful of champagne, a big one, closed her eyes, and began to sway gently to the music.

  She felt someone take her hand. She gasped, opened her eyes and found herself looking into Valentine’s. He pulled her into him and kissed her. They swayed gently together. Candle shadows flickered on the walls. She felt that, even though she had seen gilded ballrooms and glittering crowns, these peeling walls and dusty floorboards were more glamorous still.

  “Shall we?” he muttered into her hair.

  His bed was just a mattress on the floor. She stared at it. He was behind her and had slid his arms through hers, clasping her breasts. Her breath caught in her throat. Desire beat within her, like a drum. It had been so long. She wanted him so much. Desire whirled in her head, spinning her downward, to the floor.

  “No,” she said, as he planted his mouth on hers. She pushed him away. “No!”

  She scrambled to her feet. What was she thinking of? She couldn’t hang around in shabby riverside houses talking freely about politics with young left-wingers. She worked for the royal family. And Valentine was not only behind the glass wall, he was a Communist into the bargain. If anyone found out—and they would find out, the Tom business had made that clear—this would be the end.

  She remembered with horror the conversation with Lascelles about Karl Marx. She had thought herself so clever, but it had been a stupid thing to do. She had learned through bitter experience that she could not be two things at once. She had made her choice, and she must stick to it. “I’ve got to go,” she said, her voice sharp, panicked.

  He lay on the mattress, annoyed. “God, Marion. You’re such a prick-tease.”

  She hurried down the stairs.

  In the kitchen, Decca was having an intense conversation with a bearded young man. “They sent me to finishing school in Paris, which almost did finish me off, actually.”

  “Didn’t you like Paris?” The bearded young man was gazing at her admiringly.

  “What was there to like? We learned bridge, did a cathedral a week and went to the opera. But we had to leave before the last act of Faust because the ending was considered immoral.” Decca giggled. “Then I came back and got threatened with the London season. That was the last straw, the idea that I was supposed to find someone to marry among all those chinless wonders!”

  Marion slipped past, down the stairs. The battered door stuck briefly before it wobbled open. Outside, the fog rolled up the cobbled street. The gables of warehouses loomed in the mist; boats hooted on the river. She hurried toward the Underground station, feeling like Cinderella in reverse. Cinderella had to leave the palace. But she had to get back to it. Before the clock struck and everything disappeared.

  It was hard, even so, to turn her back on all that fun. Most nights, as she sat in her silent room, she thought of the cheerful arguments, the candlelight, the scruffy camaraderie of the Rotherhithe house. She pictured Valentine’s mattress and groaned. Must she live like a nun? Sometimes it seemed that in trying to bring normal life to Lilibet, she had cut herself off from it.

  Given all this, the annual long trip to Scotland that autumn was almost a relief. But the new Duchess of Kent, visiting with her husband, evidently felt the opposite.

  “AND HOW ARE YOU FINDING BALMORAL, MY DEAR MARINA?” the king’s voice boomed like a volley from a warship.

  Princess Marina, doubtfully poking her haggis, started at the shattering noise. “There are many insects.” She gave a rueful glance at the red bumps on her slender, lily-white arms.

  “YOU SHOULD SMOKE NAVY CUT! KEEPS THE BUGGERS AT BAY!” instructed her father-in-law.

  Marina’s beautiful dark eyes widened in amazement. The Duchess of York, no fonder of her sister-in-law, tittered. Prince George leaned forward. “She doesn’t smoke, Papa.”

  There was a short interlude as the king was served from a silver tray of venison borne by the man in the brown plaid rug. “MY OWN DEAR PARADISE IN THE HIGHLANDS,” he boomed, as the rug moved on. “THAT’S WHAT QUEEN VICTORIA CALLED BALMORAL!”

  “It’s very . . . historical,” said Marina.

  “CHARMING, DON’T YOU THINK?” the king roared on, making the crossed swords rattle on the paneled walls. “KEEPING EVERYTHING THE WAY SHE HAD IT? THE CHILDREN LOVE THE FACT IT NEVER CHANGES.”

  Prince George and his brothers exchanged incredulous glances.

  Marina dabbed her red lips with her napkin and squinted through the flickering gloom. “What is happening there?” She gestured at a large painting hanging opposite her seat.

  Her husband shot his father an apprehensive look. “It’s Prince Albert gralloching the stag, Marina.”

  “What?”

  “Gutting it.” Prince George sighed, as Marina looked nauseous.

  His York sister-in-law now leaned forward. “You really must go out shooting with His Majesty, Marina. He is an extraordinary shot! He never misses! His birds are dead in the air before they even reach the ground!”

  The Greek princess raised a glittering hand to her mouth.

  After dinner, Marion was dismissed. Queen Mary, her tartan skirts sweeping the tartan carpet, progressed to the drawing room with her newest daughter-in-law. “Your nails are very red, my dear. My Chorge doesn’t like painted nails.”

  “Well, my George does,” was the Greek princess’s spirited reply.

  Marion mounted the plaid-swathed staircase. A loud cry reached her ears, coming from the direction of the drawing room.

  “Marina! You can’t sit there! It was Queen Victoria’s favorite chair!” The voice was the Duchess of York’s and held a definite note of triumph.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  That Christmas, Marion returned to Edinburgh to find her mother had suddenly aged. Her formerly bright eyes now seemed wavering and dim. Dusty shelves and grubby cupboards pointed at a steady loss of sight—her mother, who had been so house-proud! It tugged at Marion’s heartstrings, as did the sight of her hands, eternally knitting or sewing as always as she sat in her armchair, but shaking as they never had before.

  Marion thought about London, and returning there after Christmas. As always, distance enabled a more detached view. Could she really go back and leave her mother? She had mothered Lilibet for long enough, at the cost of considerable personal sacrifice. She was almost twenty-seven now. She had missed the boat with Annie, but she could still return to teaching. And perhaps it was time now for some little girls of her own.

  Her mother, whom she had half expected to object, agreed that she had done her duty. As the Jubilee had shown, the monarchy rested on the firmest of foundations. And she had Lascelles’ assurance that the prince would not marry Mrs. Simpson, whose existence her mother clearly knew nothing about. The newspapers were still ignoring her as well. Perhaps, after all, she really wasn’t very important.

  The idea of now finally having a life of her own gathered more momentum with a letter from Ivy.

  From Sandringham, where she had gone as part of the palace household, Ivy wrote, in her unexpectedly beautiful handwriting, to say that she and Alf were to wed in the spring. So we’ll be leaving! Alf’s dad’s got a costermonger business, he�
�ll be joining that.

  Marion had no idea what a costermonger was.

  She thought of Sandringham. It was her least favorite of all the royal residences, a great sprawl of Victorian redbrick, like a golfing hotel. Royal peculiarity seemed at its most intense here, with the king’s obsession with punctuality given full expression. He had even created his own time zone there: Sandringham Time, where all the clocks were half an hour fast. Ivy described the paternal greeting received by Prince Henry, two minutes delayed to dinner after an absence of six months: “LATE AS USUAL, HENRY!”

  Ivy’s letter offered highlights of the royal Yuletide. The Prince of Wales had given offense by going to play golf during his father’s Christmas broadcast. Extravagantly bored throughout the festivities, he had subsequently gone skiing in Switzerland with Mrs. Simpson.

  Lilibet, in painstaking pencil, offered a sunnier account. “Everyone loved their presents from Woolworths! Grandmama was very pleased with her china mouse and Uncle David loved his handkerchief.”

  Marion smiled as she remembered the shopping trip. Margaret had come too. The little girls had excitedly bought calendars and pencils for their relatives. A bottle of brilliant pink bath salts for Mrs. Knight had been an especially inspired purchase. The image of her chief adversary dyed a bright shade of magenta had added considerable cheer to Marion’s festive season.

  She had tactfully pretended not to see them buying the little bead necklace she eventually unwrapped on Christmas morning. Mrs. Crawford was delighted with the little elephant on a pin the princesses had sent to her. “They’ve left the price on the box though, bless them.”

  They were in her mother’s tiny sitting room, cozily battened against a winter storm, when the news came over the radio that the king was confined to bed with a cold. “Poor chap,” said Mrs. Crawford, over her knitting.

  A few days later, the king’s weak heart was reported. Marion, clearing the dinner plates, paused and frowned. But the king had not been ailing. On the contrary. She had it on the best authority that he had many, many years in him yet.

  Alan Lascelles had been wrong, it now seemed. “The king’s life,” said the radio announcer, a few days later, “is moving peacefully toward its close.”

  Marion looked out at the snow, whipped by violent winds, whirling past the windows in thick flakes. It mimicked the panicked thoughts swirling about her brain. What was happening to the girls in this time of trouble?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Death came peacefully to the king at 11:55 p.m.,” announced the radio on January 21. Dutiful to the end, he had held a Privy Council in his Sandringham bedroom and attached a wavering signature to a parchment.

  Marion saw the pictures in the newspapers. Crowds at the entrance to Sandringham, huddled in winter coats, to read and reread the framed bulletin. It felt strange seeing from outside what she knew so well from within.

  The decorative wrought iron of the Norwich Gates, through which she had passed so many times. The distant factotum coming down the snowy drive from the Big House, his gloved hand holding the cardboard envelope. Did she know him? She could almost hear the eager, questioning Norfolk voices in the crowd, an accent that had once been new to her but was now familiar.

  She wondered about Lilibet and Margaret. How were they coping? The duke and duchess were sure to be swept up in procedure and protocol. Who was with the princesses? Alah, presumably. Marion could hardly bear to think of the flint-faced old stoneheart being their only source of comfort.

  “I should go to them,” she said to her mother.

  “No, you shouldn’t; it’s your holiday,” Mrs. Crawford pointed out. “And you’ve just said you’re leaving them.”

  But then the telegram arrived. Marion read it, walking slowly back from the front door. “The duchess wants me to go back,” she told her mother.

  “What?” Mrs. Crawford looked up from her sewing. “Cable her and say you can’t.”

  But the lines were down, the telegraph boy had said. It was the snow. There was no way of getting in touch.

  “See it as an opportunity,” said her mother. “Now is a good time to break with them. A new king, a new start.”

  “Yes, but I can’t get in touch,” Marion fretted. “They’ll think I’m ignoring them.”

  “They’ll understand. Wait until the snow clears, and then tell them.”

  “They won’t, Mother. I’ll have to go down and do it in person.”

  The journey was endless and freezing. It was like the first time, but a hundred times worse. The first thing she heard on entering Royal Lodge was sobbing. It was a dreadful keening, expressing a world of terrible agony. It echoed round the green-paneled entrance hall. The girls? Horror clutched Marion’s heart.

  Dumping her suitcases in the hall, she dashed up to the nurseries. In the gloom of the upstairs passage, two small figures were visible. Neither seemed to be crying.

  “Crawfie!” yelled the taller child, hurtling across the lino. “We’ve been waiting for you to come!” Margaret rushed after her sister. Laughing and gasping at the force of the assault, she held them tightly, her nose buried in their silky hair, breathing in their soapy, little-girl scent, hugging one and then the other.

  The howl of anguish sounded again. “It’s Alah,” Lilibet said.

  “But we don’t know why,” Margaret added scornfully. “She didn’t really know Grandpapa.”

  “But everyone’s sad about His Majesty,” Marion pointed out. “And most people didn’t know him.”

  “I didn’t know about the rabbit,” Margaret conceded.

  “What rabbit?”

  George V had, it seemed, once bought a half share in a rabbit. The animal had been the joint property of a small sister and brother. Discovering that, to the dismay of his sister, the brother intended to sell his half, the king had bought the boy out for ten shillings and presented the share to the little girl. “Wasn’t that sweet of him?” Lilibet asked.

  “He never bought me a rabbit,” Margaret grumbled. “He didn’t like me. Only Lilibet. She said goodbye to Grandpapa. But not me.”

  Lilibet described how they had learned about the king in the Sandringham gardens. Her account was simple yet vivid and Marion could see the dark berberis, the rhododendrons thick with snow, the flower beds hidden, the lawns wide, white and empty apart from two excited little figures sticking a carrot nose on a snowman. The carrot nose glowed, a brave dash of bright orange in the somberly monochrome scene.

  Then, out of the great redbrick house with its gables, chimneys and pepperpot turrets had issued a tall, forbidding figure. Gliding toward them over the snow had come Queen Mary in her long Edwardian skirts. It was time for Lilibet to say goodbye. “Just Lilibet,” Margaret repeated. “Not me.”

  Lilibet looked agonized. “I’m sure Grandmama didn’t mean anything—”

  “She did. She doesn’t like me.” The littlest princess paused and assumed a familiar frown and heavy German accent, “You are so small, Margaret! Venn are you goink to grow?”

  Now that Alah had stopped yowling, Royal Lodge seemed very quiet. “Are Mummy and Papa here?” Marion asked.

  “They went to London. But Mummy left you a note.”

  In her familiar, leisured, looping handwriting on thick cream crested paper the duchess had written two sentences: Don’t let all this depress them more than is absolutely necessary, Crawfie. They are so young.

  Not a word of thanks, Marion thought. She had moved heaven and earth to get here. Had she done the right thing after all?

  Lilibet wanted to tell her every detail. Grandpapa’s bedroom, she reported, had lots of words in frames hanging on the walls. One said “There Is Nothing the Navy Cannot Do” and another “Teach Me to Be Obedient to the Rules of the Game.”

  “But what rules does Grandpapa mean, Crawfie?” Lilibet looked puzzled.

  “Noughts and c
rosses,” Margaret declared authoritatively. “Tell Crawfie about the deathbed, Lilibet. The doctor had a funny name.”

  “Oh yes.” Lilibet grinned. “Sir Farquhar Buzzard.”

  “Hee hee. And what was that sign about the beast?”

  “If I am called upon to suffer, then let me be like a well-bred beast that goes away to suffer in silence.”

  “But Grandpapa never suffered in silence,” Margaret pointed out. “He was always shouting.”

  Mrs. Knight’s sobs struck up again.

  “Why not play with your farm set?” Marion suggested to Lilibet.

  A pair of doubtful blue eyes met hers. “But, Crawfie—ought we to play?”

  “Of course you should. Grandpapa wouldn’t want you to be unhappy.”

  Margaret was certainly not unhappy. She was dancing around the landing.

  “Uncle David’s going to be king now,” she declared. “He’s Edward the Eighth. I’m the niece of the king! Hooray!”

  Marion looked from one to the other: the sober elder princess, the cock-a-hoop younger. That she was in charge of the king’s nieces had not occurred to her before. From a position on the sidelines, she was now right at the center of the national drama. She could not, like Margaret, help feeling excited too. Perhaps, for the moment, she would stay. Until everything calmed down. Then she would go.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  They remained at Royal Lodge while the duke and duchess dashed back and forth. Strange stories reached them about the new king. At his father’s bedside, once the old king had died, Edward the Eighth had sobbed for a full hour on his mother’s bosom. Marion found this hard to believe. Queen Mary’s bosom was invariably stiff with diamonds. It would have been like weeping on a gravel drive.

  It was much easier to believe that the new monarch’s first act as king had been to adjust the Sandringham clocks to the right time. Marion imagined him wearing enormous trouser turnups when he issued the order, surrounded by all his ungentlemanly friends. Mrs. Simpson would no doubt be among them. Servant gossip had her dancing round Fort Belvedere in delight, planning her coronation robes and refusing to wear mourning dress. “I haven’t worn black stockings since I gave up dancing the cancan,” she was supposed to have said. Was this true? It sounded unlikely, but Marion wasn’t sure what to believe anymore.