by Wendy Holden
“Nonsense!” Margaret had riposted. “They’ll pay anything to see us.”
Except that they might not be seeing Margaret now. Marion wanted to go in and shake her. Why ruin the efforts of so many good people? Because she could, of course.
She returned, frustrated, to the Waterloo Chamber, where the stage put in by Queen Victoria for household theatricals stood pantomime-ready. The beautifully painted set, the work of two volunteers, portrayed a castle kitchen right down to the turnspit. Cinders’ broom stood ready in the corner.
She walked across the stage and into the wings. Behind the set, out of sight, stood the racks of elaborate dresses, beribboned periwigs and silver buckled shoes, all specially hired from a theatrical costumier’s and all labeled and assigned to the different characters. There too was Queen Anne’s sedan chair, pressed into service in a way she could never have expected, as Cinderella’s pumpkin coach.
And here too, Marion now saw with a start, even more unexpectedly, was His Majesty. Standing in the wings, hands in pockets, looking round with a critical expression.
“Sir!” She bobbed a curtsey.
The king’s interest in the show had been minimal until about a week ago, when his inner Cecil B. DeMille had been spectacularly unleashed. He had insisted on going through every aspect as thoroughly as he went through battle plans with Churchill.
The king looked round from his examination of the stage set. “Everything all right, Crawfie?”
“Actually, sir, we have a problem.”
He laughed shortly. “Tell me about it. Any n-number. Although things look a b-bit better now, admittedly.” He was, she knew, referring to the recent victory at El Alamein, which represented the first major defeat of German forces.
He heard her out. His smile disappeared. He sat down on Cinders’ three-legged stool and thought. Then he stood up. “I have the answer, Crawfie!”
“Sir?”
“You will replace Margaret. You know the words, after all.”
She considered. The costumes would not fit. She would be twice the size of all the other actors, apart from a couple of the older Etonians and the six-foot Windsor guardsmen marching on for the finale. “Perhaps one of the other children, sir? I’m not a very good actor.”
The king looked at her. “You and I are both actors, Crawfie. We s-stand before an audience every day. We have had to learn to be good at it.”
And how the king had learned, Marion thought. His confidence had increased as his stammer had lessened. The queen’s sterling example had showed him the way.
He smiled again, the sudden, wide grin so like his daughter’s. “But if you let Her Royal Highness know you are covering for her, it may well be that you don’t get your moment in the spotlight after all.”
He was right, of course. Margaret was out of bed in a flash, health miraculously restored, pea-greenness definitively gone.
The production was an astounding success. The audience, made up of townspeople and estate workers, packed even this huge room. Kerald Jelly was there, of course, after a hard day putting yet more “finishing touches” to the portraits of the king and queen. They sat in the front row, the latter sparkling with some of the huge diamonds left to her by the recently deceased Mrs. Ronnie. The Surrey estate may have gone, ultimately, to the National Trust, but these were the consolation prize.
The finale, as reorganized by the king, was the best scene of all, with the Windsor Castle guard, magnificent in red, black boots gleaming, marching and countermarching across the stage while the children unfurled huge Union Jacks and waved them to thunderous applause.
The cast, especially Margaret, bowed endlessly and lapped it up. Her vivid little face, dazzlingly lovely in the stage lights, looked as if it had never had a wicked thought in its life.
Lilibet looked delighted too, but her pink-faced joy, Marion knew, had less to do with the applause than with a certain figure along the front row. It was not her father or mother. It was Philip Mountbatten.
Marion had seen him the moment he had walked in, as had every other woman in the room. His commanding height, crackling energy and spectacular good looks drew all eyes. He had marched straight to the front and sat down, throwing out his long legs and laughing with his companion, who, like himself, was dressed in Navy uniform. The gold braid on his sleeves shone as brightly as his blond hair. He had distinguished himself in the war, having been mentioned in dispatches for a sea battle off the Greek coast. Italian warships had been sunk. Philip had manned the searchlight.
He was manning one now, she thought, and aiming it at Lilibet. She shone; she sparkled. She might be a dashing Prince Charming on the stage, but the person she clearly considered her real-life counterpart was sitting a mere few feet away, staring appreciatively at her legs in their tights.
The king and queen were obviously oblivious. They gave Philip the occasional amused glance, but no more. To them, Lilibet was still their obedient child. That she was a young woman of sixteen, with a mind of her own, and in love, had not yet hit them. But it had hit Marion. Philip’s bold gaze, trained on the young girl she had nurtured for a decade, made her shudder. It was more than disapproval, or even dislike. She realized that it was fear.
“Miss Crawford! My congratulations on an excellent production.” Tommy’s slightly sardonic voice fell lightly from behind her. Marion took a deep breath, then turned.
Joan was at his side, lipstick immaculate. Her hair was waves of shining gold, and a modish frock of printed silk skimmed an elegant figure. She swept Marion a brief, unimpressed glance before ostentatiously looking around for more interesting and significant people. “Look, darling, over there. Isn’t that the—?”
“Darling, why don’t you go and talk to them? I need to have a quick word with Miss Crawford.”
He took her arm and tried to steer her to an unoccupied corner. She shook off his hand and stood firm. He looked surprised. “I just wanted to fill you in, that’s all.”
“About what?”
“Last time we met was a bit awkward, to say the least.”
He meant the tea party with Mrs. Roosevelt, she realized, interrupted by the gate-crasher. “Delia Peel and I had a very unpleasant quarter of an hour with Their Majesties afterward,” Tommy said ruefully. “And the trouble’s not over yet.”
“How do you mean?” Marion asked, curiously. The First Lady had gone home weeks ago. “Is Mrs. . . . what was her name . . . still here?” She frowned, unable to remember anything about the woman apart from the determined expression in her eyes. It reminded her of someone else, but she couldn’t remember that, either.
“Gould, and yes she is, maddening woman. I had to go and see her at the Ritz, in fact. At the queen’s behest.”
“She’s still here?” Marion’s mouth dropped open. “Why?” After what had happened, she had imagined Mrs. Gould to be a pariah of the first water. Not someone visited at a fine hotel by the king’s own private secretary.
“About the articles Mrs. Gould mentioned.”
“The queen surely isn’t going to write them?”
Tommy shook his sleek dark head. “I talked to her for an hour.”
“An hour?”
“Told her the queen was above and beyond politics. I said that though she sympathizes with the mission to make the women of the UK and USA understand each other better, she can’t write any articles herself.”
Marion could only stare back. She could not imagine why the queen was even bothering to tell this to the upstart journalist. Via Tommy especially. Via an interview lasting a whole hour. What a waste of time.
“Well, she’s gone back to America now, and hopefully that will be the last of it.” Tommy turned away. “Goodbye, Marion. I wish you a happy Christmas.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
A photograph of Philip had appeared on the mantelpiece in Lilibet’s bedroom. Her parents, p
ossibly by a great mutual effort of will, didn’t seem to notice. They, who stood fearlessly against Hitler, were all too obviously terrified of acknowledging that their daughter was in love. Marion understood. She felt exactly the same.
Margaret, as ever, had no such scruples. “Are you going to get married, Lilibet?” she teased. “Everyone else is. Look at Ivy and Peter.”
They had been engaged and would be married in the same month. The wedding, in the pretty Georgian surroundings of the Windsor Registry Office, was unfussy but delightful. Ivy was gay in serviceable lavender tweed with a bright yellow courgette flower from the allotment in her lapel. Peter, looking amazed at his own good luck, wore an Eton lily in his elegant three-piece dark suit.
“You were always too good for me,” Marion said, hugging him. She meant it: he had gotten the wife he deserved and wanted; someone completely normal, with her feet firmly on the ground.
“You’re right,” Ivy quipped, overhearing. “But anyway, you’re married to those bleedin’ Windsors.”
Margaret, Lilibet and the rest of the evacuees had saved their sugar rations, but the cake made by the Windsor Castle cook had a bitter taste to Marion after that comment.
Lilibet’s passion for a serving officer renewed her old determination to join up. At eighteen, she was finally of age, but the king and queen were reluctant to let her. With their usual adroitness at avoiding unpleasant matters, they changed the subject whenever it arose.
But the princess could no longer be fobbed off so easily. It was rare for her to sulk, but now she stomped about, brows knitted, mouth a cross line. “Can’t you talk to Papa, Crawfie?” she begged. “He listens to you.”
Marion doubted that this was the case, but the suggestion was flattering. As was Lilibet’s imploring face. The request itself dismayed her, even so. She no more wanted Lilibet to join up than she wanted her to marry Philip. The army would take the princess away, possibly forever. She would hardly return to the schoolroom after she had seen active service.
But there was no choice. Lilibet, once she had set her heart on something, was relentless. Marion found herself tracing a reluctant path to the king’s office door.
“Might I have five minutes with His Majesty?” she asked the new equerry, the slight, high-cheekboned one with the dark wavy hair.
Peter Townsend glanced at his watch. He was one of the new non-aristocrat equerries, a wing commander in the RAF, much-decorated. He would, she guessed, be in his late twenties, but looked older. While of an almost feminine delicacy, his features had that familiar, weary, war-worn stamp about them. “The meeting should be over soon,” he said. “If you could wait here a few minutes.”
Marion nodded. She liked Group Captain Townsend. He was understated and modest, although obviously brave. A Spitfire pilot, he had been shot down several times and been given a DFC.
But however tactfully she approached it, Marion had never gotten him to talk about his wartime experiences. He stiffened and something came down behind his eyes. She wondered if he opened up to his wife, whom she had never met but who was supposed to be pretty and lively. There was a child too, a son.
Townsend stood awkwardly beside her now in his RAF gray blue, gazing at his brilliantly polished boots. A muscle ticked in his well-defined jaw, as if he were clenching it. He was staring at the king’s shining door as if he could open it by sheer force of will.
The king’s door remained closed. The rocking horses were still outside, now old and battered, their paint worn and their manes partially bald through much enthusiastic riding. The girls hadn’t ridden them for years, but they had been kept there as a memento of the childhood that Lilibet in particular was now so determined to break free of.
Suddenly, the door opened. Townsend stood instantly to attention, saluting smartly as no less a person than Churchill, with the king behind him, emerged between the rocking horses.
Marion stared in awe. The prime minister, jowly and creased, wore a worn pin-striped suit and held his famous bowler hat. A pair of shrewd, bright eyes met hers. Churchill nodded, then passed on with his rolling walk. She gazed after him, dazed.
Something drained from the atmosphere with his departure. The king, left in the doorway, now looked shrunken and gray. A cigarette, as ever, streamed from between his thin fingers. “Go in, Crawfie. I just need a word with Townsend here.”
In his office, the air was so thick with mixed cigar and cigarette smoke that it made her cough. Maps were fixed to the wall and bristled with many pins. Papers were scattered across the royal desk, stamped all over with the red imprints of secrecy and the title “Overlord.”
Marion sat down. She could read the topmost one.
SUPREME HEADQUARTERS, ALLIED EXPEDITIONARY FORCE.
Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark on the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you . . .
The king had returned. “Now, C-Crawfie. What can I do for you?”
She explained her mission quickly, with no introduction. With any luck, it would be a straightforward “no.” The princess would be disappointed, but at least she would still be around. “Lilibet wants to join one of the forces, sir.”
The king, now back behind his desk, groaned. “Lilibet never gives up, does she?” He took another drag of his cigarette, then coughed. His choking, which was violent and extended, had a sticky rattle to it. He took a gulp of water from a cut-crystal tumbler that stood amid other tumblers in which the amber traces of whisky remained. He looked at Marion with streaming eyes. “Very well, Crawfie. We’ll see what can be arranged.”
She stared. “Is that a yes, sir?”
He nodded and pulled one of the Overlord documents toward him.
She left as quietly as she could. The golden handle fixed in the polished door turned silently in its lock. The well-oiled hinges closed behind her without a squeak.
In the corridor, a murmured conversation was going on. The participants were a little distance away, round a corner. They had obviously not heard her emerge.
“Twenty months of day and night combat,” came a hushed male voice that Marion recognized as Peter Townsend’s. “I was a sleep-starved wreck. I had confronted death so often that life seemed to have little relevance.”
Surprise rippled through her. Townsend had been taciturn when she had pressed him about his war experience. To whom was he unburdening himself so readily?
“Oh, Peter!” came the familiar high voice of Margaret, undercut with breathy admiration. “It must have been so dreadful!”
“Every time I took off I felt sure it was the last time.”
“Oh, Peter! Thank goodness it wasn’t!”
Lilibet wasn’t the only one growing up, by the looks of things.
* * *
• • •
THE UNIFORM ARRIVED almost immediately. In her bedroom, Lilibet carefully lifted off the lid of the large cardboard box and pulled away the tissue paper. Her gasp of excitement sent dismay through Marion.
Margaret, in the window seat, slid off the cushion and padded over to inspect the garment.
“Hideous color,” she commented, poking the thick, rough fabric. “You’re going to look horrible in it, Lilibet.”
Her sister, as ever, refused to rise to the provocation. “It’s not meant to be a fashion show,” she remarked, picking up the cap with its shiny black peak. Marion watched her take it to the small oval mirror hanging over the simple dressing table and perch it on her dark curls. “This is the uniform of the Auxiliary Territorial Service. And I,” she said, turning with the trademark grin of delight, “am Second Subaltern Elizabeth Windsor.”
Margaret folded her arms, bottom lip protruding, all attempts at indifference abandoned. “It’s not fair. Why must I spend all day in the schoolroom while everyone else does excitin
g things?”
Lilibet had put on the jacket now. The breast pockets enhanced her generous bosom. The belt, buckled tightly round her small waist, emphasized her hips. It crossed Marion’s mind that not the least of the army’s attractions was the scope it offered to finally wear something different than her sister.
“It’s not fair that Papa let you do this and not me!” Margaret wailed.
“You’ll be old enough soon.”
“Yes, but by then the war will be over!”
Only for Margaret could it be bad news that, following El Alamein, things seemed finally to be going the Allies’ way. Ground had been gained in Italy, Eastern Europe and the Pacific. And something else momentous seemed to be happening; not long ago, Lilibet had counted almost three hundred Flying Fortresses passing over the castle. “I gave up at two hundred eighty-four!”
Marion wondered if they were connected to the Overlord documents she had seen.
The eldest princess now bounded out of the room, eager to show the new uniform to her parents. Various excited dogs poured after her, and after them, Margaret. Last of all Marion, heart full of the sudden knowledge that everything was about to change.
It was a warm, sunny, blue-skied day. The king and queen were having tea on the terrace. Below it the castle rose garden was in full and glorious bloom, warm scents wafting up from the massy color. The long white tablecloth swept to the ground. It was a scene in which war had no part, until the uniformed Lilibet burst into it. She rushed up to her father and saluted. “Sir!”
The queen, about to pour, held the silver teapot in midair as she regarded her now undeniably grown-up daughter. “Oh, darling!” Her voice was choked, as if she was forced to face something she had long wished to avoid.
The king looked equally distraught, but other voices began to fill the silence. Loud, booming ones with an unmistakable transatlantic twang. The sorrowful expression on the king’s face was replaced by shock. “C-C-Christ! It’s Eisenhower!”