by Wendy Holden
“It’s rather full-on in there.” Debo waved a careless, white-gloved hand toward the ballroom entrance. “I’m taking a breather. Met some lovely dukes though. One in particular.”
“Good,” said Marion, intending to continue on her way.
“I’m so sorry,” Debo added, with rare sympathy.
“Thank you.” She was surprised that news of her mother had come this far.
“He was so young. Such a waste.”
Marion felt suddenly as if she were looking at herself. She watched herself gasp, stumble, grip the arm of a chair. Her inquiry, to her own ears, came from very far away. “Who are you talking about?”
“You don’t know about Valentine?” Beneath the nodding feathers, the green eyes were wide.
The music from the ballroom swelled in Marion’s ears. “Know what?” she muttered, but she had already surmised what Debo would say.
* * *
• • •
SHE COULD NOT sleep that night. She lay, tossing from one side to the other, listening to the wind lamenting in the chimney. She felt a heavy sadness, but knew she was mourning more than just Valentine. Rather, she was lamenting her own loneliness and everything she knew she had denied herself. The tragedy of her first real love—her only one, really—wasn’t just that the bright gleam of romantic happiness had faded so quickly. It was that it had never been repeated, and while she worked for the king and queen, it never could be.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Nine children! Can you imagine?” Alah was buttoning Lilibet into her frilly frock.
“Like the old woman who lived in a shoe,” said Margaret, who was admiring herself in the mirror.
“Well, this one lives in the American Embassy. Mrs. Kennedy is the American ambassador’s wife.”
“Perhaps she got all her babies from a shop,” suggested Margaret. “That’s how babies come, isn’t it?” She slid Alah a naughty glance.
Lilibet, now securely buttoned, looked up from pulling up her socks. “Of course not. People are like horses, their babies come from between their legs.” She had been spending a lot of time in the Windsor stables recently.
Margaret stared at her sister in disgust. “I don’t believe you!”
“That’s enough.” Wearily, Marion took both girls’ hands. “Time for church.”
The Kennedys, who had arrived in London the year before, were spending the weekend at Windsor. Last night there had been a dinner, and today the princesses were to meet them and their children.
An air of unusual importance surrounded the encounter. The king and queen had started to throw their weight behind the diplomatic effort. The Munich peace agreement, struck by Chamberlain amid much fanfare the previous September, was still holding. But while Hitler had been ceded the Sudetenland, which he had anyway invaded six months before, there was widespread suspicion of his intentions toward the rest of Czechoslovakia.
Should appeasement fail, which Churchill continued to insist it would, America would be a powerful ally in the event of a war. The question was whether the neutral President Roosevelt could be gotten on their side.
As Marion ushered the girls into the cool and colored gloom of St. George’s Chapel, she saw that Roosevelt’s representative and his family were already present and correct.
He was a strange-looking man, with a high forehead, thick round spectacles and a huge white manic grin. Mrs. Kennedy, also smiling excitedly, was as slim and young-looking as advertised. The children, who filled the pew, were the picture of American healthiness, all thick hair, tanned complexions, and their father’s big white teeth. Ranging in age from something close to Margaret to late teens, they stared openly at the princesses as they filed in behind their parents. Lilibet kept her gaze demurely on the floor, but Marion could see Margaret staring boldly back at the visitors. One of the older boys, a handsome brown-haired youth, winked at her.
Afterward, at morning coffee, Margaret hastened to sit near the winking boy. For all their difference in age—he must be twenty at least—they were soon deep in conversation. They seemed to be laughing a lot, although about what Marion could not hear. Hopefully not Lilibet’s earlier bombshell.
She sat near the back of the room, ostensibly in charge of the girls. The nearby window had a view of the castle’s moat garden and the much-adored dahlias of Lord Wigram, the castle warden.
The queen was in sparkling form. She sat next to the rather silent king on a sofa whose frame was carved with golden Neptunes and chatted merrily to her rapt American audience.
“The crew of our ship did Maori hakas and Marquesan pig dances,” trilled the queen. This was about their trip to Australia some ten years before.
“A what dance?” asked Mrs. Kennedy.
The queen looked at her with mock surprise. “You’ve never seen a Marquesan pig dance? My dear, it is just too delightful!”
The ambassador slapped his knee, cackling with laughter. “Your Majesty, as we say in the States, you’re quite a dame.”
The queen turned on him her most radiant smile. “Thank you, Ambassador. You’re quite a man, too. We’ll need men like you on our side, should things turn nasty with Mr. Hitler.”
From the back of the room, Marion blinked. The queen had moved like lightning. Under the flag of small talk, she had been awaiting her opportunity, and seized it.
Kennedy saw this, and moved to block it. “The American people don’t want a war,” he said, quoting the official line as he picked up his coffee cup.
“Not even to defend democracy?” twinkled the queen, her voice so light and teasing it was impossible to tell whether she was serious.
Now Kennedy’s smile was tight. “We went into the last war to make the world safe for democracy. And look what happens—a whole crop of dictatorships.”
The queen beamed. “But if we had the United States actively on our side, working with us, think how that would strengthen our position with the dictators!”
Marion held her breath. The queen was taking no prisoners. The steel below the swirling misty blue could now be seen. As the dark clouds of conflict gathered above her country, Her Majesty had risen to the challenge. The caprice and self-indulgence had been put aside to reveal a bold and skillful diplomatic negotiator. But would it work?
There was a silence for a moment. Mrs. Kennedy cleared her throat and straightened her skirt. The king looked at the ceiling. Kennedy replaced his coffee cup, bending his head to hide his face. When he raised it again, he too was beaming.
“Your Majesty, you know, you should visit America.”
“A royal tour!” The queen clasped her hands in delight. “I’d absolutely love to. I only know three Americans. Fred Astaire, J. P. Morgan—and you!”
Everyone was laughing now. The difficult moment was past. What was more, a diplomatic coup had been pulled off. At the back of the room, Marion felt a warm wave of admiration. The king obviously felt the same, looking at his wife in undisguised amazement.
The queen was back on the subject of Hitler, voice bubbling with amusement. “My mother-in-law, Queen Mary, can’t abide him, you know. She says he speaks the most abominable German!”
Later, Margaret revealed her conversation with the Kennedy boy. “His name is John, but everyone calls him Jack. He once exploded a toilet seat with a firecracker.”
“What?” said Lilibet.
“For a joke at school,” Margaret continued with an admiring tone. “He got into awful trouble though. The headmaster took the toilet seat into chapel assembly and brandished it.”
“His poor parents,” Alah sniffed. “A young man like that will never amount to anything.”
* * *
• • •
NINETEEN THIRTY-NINE ARRIVED. In March, Hitler marched into Prague. As had been widely feared, Czechoslovakia had ceased to exist. The Munich Agreement was in ruins, the Germa
n ambassador was expelled from London and an unconditional guarantee was given to Poland that Britain would come to its aid in the event of invasion. Should a European war erupt, a strong relationship with America would be more than useful—it would be vital.
The tour of Canada and the United States was fixed for May. There was no doubt of its importance now, although the queen still affected to see it as a delightful adventure. The world stage onto which she had stepped with such confidence seemed to suit her, as did her new role as national figurehead and chief morale-raiser.
Her special genius was her lightness of touch and unflagging sense of humor. “Tinkety-tonk, old fruit,” she would say to friends on the telephone. “And down with the Nazis!” After a rocky first few years, the monarchy had found its purpose.
The tour preparations included a vast new wardrobe for the queen. Norman, to his delight, was back at the palace. Marion bumped into him one morning, bowling down the red-carpeted corridor with the urgency of the White Rabbit.
“Can’t stop! I’m making the frills to frustrate the Führer! The gowns to bring down Goering! The Himmler-repelling hemlines! The frocks that will save the free world!”
“Yes, all right, Norman,” Marion said, laughing.
He gestured at the small woman behind him, almost buried under bolts of silk, tulle and lace in sugared-almond colors. “This is Gladys. She’s here to do the measuring, pass the tape over the royal bosom and so forth. It’s not done to see one’s royal client in their underwear. Isn’t that right, Glad?”
“’S right, Mr. ’Artnell,” Glad confirmed in a curiously low, gruff voice.
“I love the colors,” Marion said. “And the material. It looks so romantic.”
“Beyond romantic! We’re going totally Winterhalter!”
His portraits hung in many places in the palace: large-eyed, tiny-waisted princesses and empresses in huge gauzy crinolines. They presented a sugary Victorian ideal of womanhood, but there was no doubt this was a brilliant idea, a style that would flatter the queen’s plump figure and suit her sweetly old-fashioned air. “Clever of you.”
“It was the king’s idea, would you believe. Frog-marched me from picture to picture and said, ‘I want her to look like that!’”
Marion thought, and not for the first time, that the king could be a surprising man.
* * *
• • •
THE ROYAL SCHEDULE sounded exhausting. The princesses followed it closely in the newspapers. But when the queen rang her daughters in the evenings, she sounded as bright as if she had just woken up.
“Mummy’s eaten a hot dog!” Margaret reported after one such conversation.
“Don’t listen, Jane.” Lilibet bent to put her hands over the ears of the nearest, newest corgi.
Their eventual return, at the end of June, was much anticipated, not just by the girls but by the whole country. There was no doubt in the support for the monarchy now. Alah, Marion and the princesses arrived at Southampton to find great cheering crowds massed on the quayside.
“Do we have to sail out to meet them?” Lilibet was dismayed at the prospect.
She disliked the sea, for its unpredictability. Supremely composed as she mostly was these days, there remained about Lilibet some aspects of the former anxious child.
It was windy on deck, and loud with vibrations from the engine. Alah immediately disappeared below. Margaret went to inspect the captain’s cabin and returned with the news that it was amazingly plain and bleak. “His mirror’s the size of a postcard!”
“That would never do for you,” Lilibet teased.
The princesses were given some cherries, a rare treat. “But what shall we do with the pits?” asked the orderly Lilibet.
“Shove ’em down the shafts,” said Margaret, tipping hers with a rattle down a nearby pipe.
As her parents’ liner, the Empress of Britain, neared, both girls became excited in their different ways. Margaret jigged about waving wildly, while Lilibet stood still at the rail, her delight contained.
The reunion was joyful. “Mummy, Mummy! Look how thin I’ve got!” Margaret was leaping up and down. The queen, looking considerably slimmer too, hugged her daughters close. “You’ll never guess what I’ve brought back for you! A totem pole!”
A riotous celebration ensued. Champagne cocktails of an unfeasible strength were served and drunk. Marion did her best to disguise the fact that her eyes were tying themselves in knots, but the queen, as ever, missed nothing. “Oh, Crawfie! I should have told you. They make them very strong on board!”
Perhaps everyone was feeling the effects, because the king started pushing balloons out of the portholes while one of his equerries tried to pop them with cigarettes. There was riotous dancing on deck. The king stood apart, watching his eldest daughter whirling round.
Marion, taking a breather, went to the ship’s rail to join him. The cocktails had made her bold. “Are you all right, sir?” His thin face wore a puzzled expression.
“Something’s changed about Lilibet. But I can’t put my finger on exactly what it is.”
Marion looked at the laughing, dancing princess, with her sparkling eyes and bouncing hair. As ever, she was dressed identically to her sister, but beneath her childish printed frock a notably womanly figure was visible, with hips and generous breasts. She felt a pang as she saw what the king could not. Lilibet was growing up.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Some weeks later, to Lilibet’s dismay, another sea voyage was mooted, in the royal yacht Victoria and Albert to Dartmouth College, the naval academy in Devon the king had attended himself as a boy.
“And Grandpapa before me,” he told his eldest daughter in an effort to raise her spirits. “His nickname was S-Sprat.”
“What was yours, Papa?”
The king sighed. “Bat Lugs.”
Margaret squealed. “Because of your ears, Papa?”
“I assume s-so.”
The way up to the college, a vast redbrick building on a cliff overlooking the river, was via a flight of very long and steep steps. Lilibet, in a larger version of the same pink coat as her sister, planted one white-sandaled foot in front of the other, as she plodded patiently up.
“It’s so boring,” puffed Margaret, beside her. “Why can’t Papa inspect this stupid college on his own? Why do we have to come?” She stared up at the skies. “Please, God, make something happen to stop it.”
Lilibet was shocked. “You can’t ask God to do things like that.”
“Why not?”
“You’re supposed to save him for big things.”
“This might be a big thing,” said the irrepressible Margaret.
God answered her prayers. They reached the top of the stairs to find that two cadets had come down with mumps. It was decided to whisk the girls out of harm’s way, to the Captain’s House. Some brothers called the Dalrymple-Hamiltons lived here, and Margaret, who loved boys but was rarely exposed to them, was delighted. “Thank you, God!”
The Dalrymple-Hamiltons were a disappointment, however. They were less interested in flirting than in showing the princesses their train set. As her sister huffed and pouted, Lilibet looked at the neat little locomotives and the model details that set the scene; the tiny trees and bridges; the cars waiting at the level crossing; the animals in the fields. “Look at this man on the platform. You can even see his newspaper.” She bent over to squint at it, her glossy dark hair falling on the tiny tracks. “I think it’s The Times.”
“You’re obsessed with The Times,” groaned Margaret. The king had recently started reading it with his elder daughter, pointing out articles he thought might interest her. Margaret, still confined to The Children’s Newspaper, was jealous, as ever.
Lilibet, as ever, ignored her. “Here’s a lady in a headscarf with dogs,” she observed placidly. “I wonder if they’re her horse
s in that field she’s walking past.” She sat back on her heels and looked dreamy, suddenly. “When I’m married, I’d love to be a lady in the country with lots of horses and dogs.”
Margaret, her hackles up, seized on this. “You can’t though,” she reminded her sister, spitefully. “You’re going to be queen. You have to marry a king.”
Lilibet’s strong brows drew together, giving her an uncharacteristically rebellious look. “I’ll marry who I like,” she said.
“You can’t,” repeated Margaret, tauntingly. “Uncle David tried that and look what happened to him!”
The door of the playroom now opened and someone came in. Lilibet, still absorbed in the train set, did not look up immediately. But Margaret did. Marion saw her violet eyes dilate and her lips part slightly. She turned to see who it was.
A tall boy of astonishing beauty lounged nonchalantly in the doorway. About eighteen, he had clean-cut Nordic features and hair so blond it was almost white. He looked vaguely familiar, but Marion could not place him. The room, which had been still, now felt charged.
Lilibet, sensing something, looked up. Her eyes met his, and the toy train dropped from her grasp.
“You’re to come to lunch,” he said abruptly.
The Dalrymple-Hamiltons had scrambled to their feet. “Philip!”
Now she remembered. This exquisite youth was the cousin of Princess Marina, Prince Philip of Greece.
Lunch was on the gold-and-white Victoria and Albert with its cretonne curtains and painted coats of arms. Lilibet, who had complained throughout the journey from London of the pitching and rolling, was not complaining any longer.
She gazed fixedly at Philip of Greece, hardly touching anything on her plate. He, conversely, ignored her completely and ate a huge pile of prawns. Lilibet watched his long fingers rip them apart with expert ease. A pile of pink shells rose beside his monogrammed plate.
Mrs. Ronnie, who with her usual ingenuity had managed to secure herself a place in the royal party, leaned toward Marion, powdered jowls wobbling. “I do so love youth!” she whispered, her egg-like eyes darting meaningfully between the Greek prince and the English princess.