by Wendy Holden
The princess led the way in the corn-colored frock from which, at the moment, she could scarcely be parted. Philip liked it, Marion suspected. He had good taste, she would give him that; the yellow was the perfect foil for Lilibet’s glossy dark hair, rich red lips and creamy skin suffused with rose. She still wore very little makeup. There was something of the innocent girl about her yet.
Not so these sophisticates of the aristocracy stalking round on their colt legs, tossing fur stoles over elegant shoulders. A white-gloved hand brushed, questioningly, a large pile of magnificently bound leather books. “They’re from Mr. Churchill,” came Lilibet’s high, clear voice. “He autographed them for us.”
The owner of the white-gloved hand read the gold-stamped title. “The World Crisis? Hardly bedtime reading! This is much more like it!” The earl’s daughter paused before a mass of magnificent rubies.
“They’re from the Burmese nation,” supplied Lilibet.
“Goodness, look at these diamonds,” interrupted a duke’s sister. “They’re absolutely amazing.”
“They’re from the Nizam of Hyderabad.”
High-pitched titters greeted this. “The what of where?”
“What on earth is a Nizam?”
“Does it matter?” murmured the white-gloved girl, gazing at the diamonds. More titters.
And so it went on, slowly round the display. Gasps of admiration alternated with exclamations of puzzlement.
“But my dear, what could this possibly be?”
The fast set had paused before a lump of pinkish stone. Lilibet beamed round at the group. “It’s an uncut diamond.”
“Is this one too?” The duke’s daughter had stalked ahead and was gesturing at a large gray boulder.
“That’s a bit of Snowdon. An old man from Wales sent it. He said in his letter that it was for luck.”
Luck, thought Marion darkly. None of this had brought any luck that she could identify. As feared, she had become relegated and ignored, dragged along to carry the handbags. She, who had been Lilibet’s all in all. Her friend and companion, her trusted teacher, her playmate, her wartime comfort. All forgotten now that Philip had entered the picture.
Beside the piece of mountain was a small lump of gold. “From the people of Wales for my wedding ring,” came Lilibet’s high, trilling voice. The people of Wales strike again, Marion thought, remembering the first visit to the Little House. Sudden tears stung her eyes and she had to turn away.
The group passed on, not bothering to look at the lace Victorian underslip, beautifully hand-embroidered, that had been worn by the brides of an old lady’s family for generations. But no more—and Lilibet would not wear it either.
“What’s this?” White Gloves was pointing at a piece of plain cloth.
“It’s a loincloth. From Mahatma Gandhi. He made it himself, on a spinning wheel.”
“Whyever would he do that?”
“Well, he’s renounced all worldly possessions, you see.” Lilibet passed on to a silver ashtray. “From the Eisenhowers. I rather wish they hadn’t, though, as Philip’s promised to stop smoking.”
There were exclamations of disgust at two misshapen black lumps arranged on a plate. Marion had opened that one too. The lumps were charred toast, sent by two high-spirited young women who had been making it when the news of the royal engagement came over the radio. They had been so excited they had burned their supper.
“Imagine sending toast,” scoffed the duke’s daughter.
“Imagine making it,” added White Gloves, derisively.
As the princess laughed her high, trilling laugh, Marion thought of the Balmoral bothy. How little Lilibet had loved to make it then.
* * *
• • •
“IT’S A NIGHTMARE.” Norman had lost weight and was smoking copiously. “They’re bribing all my staff. My packer’s actually been offered a yacht.”
Marion clutched her jacket around herself. It was late October and very cold but they were in the palace gardens because Norman thought the rooms he used were bugged. He had taken to checking the corners of ceilings for spy cameras. Marion was reminded, poignantly, of Cameron the royal detective and the trip to the YWCA. Happy, long-ago days.
She tried to concentrate. “A yacht? Really?”
“It’s hell, I tell you.” Norman’s tone exactly blended hysteria and delight. “The whole world wants pictures of my dress. I’ve had to cover all my windows in muslin. My manager is literally sleeping in the salon.” He lit another cigarette and puffed on it agitatedly.
Finding the right design had taken months. It was perfect, though, a vision in satin and pearls and featuring the exquisite embroidery that had made the Hartnell name. Marion was one of the tiny handful to have seen the sketches. But the queen, who had ultimate veto, had taken her time to approve them.
A delaying tactic, obviously. Both king and queen were battling valiantly to hide their dread and despair at the coming parting. Showered with congratulations, none of which he wanted, the king was doing his best to seem cheerful. The queen’s serene smile no doubt required as much courage as any of her wartime displays of bravado.
Marion looked at the trees, blazing richly with autumn color. They had, she felt, an elegiac air. As she glanced at the silver lake another memory surfaced, of Lilibet falling in. Of Tommy’s muscled torso. She pushed it away, thinking of George’s muscled torso instead.
“And of course,” Norman said, “I’ve only just got over the worms.”
“I didn’t realize you’d been ill.”
“The silkworms.” Norman sighed deeply. “People thought they were Italian, or possibly Japanese. I was accused of using enemy silkworms.” He let out a rush of cigarette smoke.
“I thought the war was over.”
“Not in the field of bridal gowns, my dear.”
Marion snorted. It was good to laugh with Norman again. “What do you think of Philip?” she asked.
“Godlike.”
She nudged him. “I’m talking about the sort of person he is.”
“Does it matter?” He brushed a fallen leaf from his jacket. A silence followed, punctuated by the twittering and trilling of birds. They would be leaving soon as well. Everyone was, except her.
“I suppose the cake’s a bit odd,” Norman said, eventually. “They’re having a battle scene on it. On the third tier. That battle that Philip was in. Operated the searchlight or something.”
“Matapan?”
“Royal icing, I heard. With edible paint.”
She thumped him. “Not marzipan. Matapan. The name of the battle.”
Norman was huffily straightening his immaculate jacket sleeve. “If you say so. But what sort of man has a battle on his wedding cake? Rather macho, isn’t it?”
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
It was the morning of the wedding. Marion had slept little. Pictures had whirled in her head all the night long. Lilibet catching happy days at Birkhall. Writing carefully in the schoolroom. Rattling Marion’s bell-hung reins to deliver bread in Hamilton Gardens.
Sensing the princess hadn’t slept either, she had gone to her suite in the dawn, still in her dressing gown. There would be no other opportunity today to see her alone. In the evening she would leave the palace with Philip. This was goodbye. After fifteen years, this was the end.
They stood at the window of Lilibet’s sitting room. The dim light of coming day struggled through the long net curtains. Outside, filling the Mall, was a solid mass of people, many of whom had evidently slept out. Mounted policemen were trotting magnificently past small squatting groups cooking bacon on camping stoves. The window was open slightly; a faint smell of coffee floated in with the noise of the crowd.
She looked at the princess, staring out with wonder at the crowd. Diminutive in her dressing gown, hair rumpled from the pillow, the bride-to-be seeme
d suddenly so close to the little golden-haired girl driving her team round the park with a dressing-gown cord attached to the bedposts. A sudden surge of love threatened to knock Marion off her slippered feet.
As Lilibet was still staring out, she could take one last long look. The tilt of the head, the delicate profile, the pure pale skin. The soft shine of dark hair. At what point had Lilibet changed from blonde to brunette? She had been too close to see. Precious, intimate moments, thousands of them over the years, had gone by almost unremarked. There would always be a next one. But this was the very last.
Lilibet returned to her dressing table and there was about her the unmistakable air of someone who wanted to get on with things. It was time to go.
She had intended a brisk, smiling farewell. But Marion’s footsteps felt lead-heavy as she approached the princess. She blinked wet eyes. “Goodbye,” she managed. From her blocked throat, it came out a whisper.
Lilibet remained with her back turned, looking into the mirror. The blue reflected gaze was dry, even dismissive. “Goodbye, Crawfie,” she said crisply. “I’ll see you in the Abbey.”
* * *
• • •
THEY WERE NOW engaged, so George had been put on the wedding guest list. Now they sat in Poet’s Corner, Marion in velvet of George’s favorite color, red. She wore a broad-brimmed black hat to which black ostrich plumes were fixed with ruby clips. It was bigger than her usual style but cast a shadow over her face, which might come in useful.
The faint light of dawn was now a dull morning. Through the alchemy of stained glass, the watery sun gave off rays of brilliant color. They glowed on the ancient stonework and danced off the diamonds and pearls, silks and feathers, medals and braids of the waiting guests. How often she had been here, Marion thought. So many weddings, funerals and christenings. She could remember every detail of all of them.
So could Tommy, she guessed. He sat nearby, impeccable in a morning suit, with the inevitable Joan beside him in tiara and long white gloves. Marion nodded to them both. Tommy nodded back, his gaze lingering impassively on George for some seconds.
“Who’s that bloody stuffed shirt?” George hissed.
Five kings, eight queens and eight princes and princesses, from Romania to Iraq by way of Denmark, Norway and Holland, had mustered to see the wedding of the heir to the English throne. Philip, newly minted as a British citizen, had given up his Greek title but had been immediately swamped by British ones ranging from duke to baron and judiciously sprinkled about the islands. His mother, the strange Princess Alice, who sometimes flitted about the palace in convent robes like a dark ghost, sat in the nave. His sisters, all married to former high-ranking Nazis, were not present.
But not all the black sheep were on Philip’s side. Also conspicuous by his absence was the Duke of Windsor, now living in Paris. Marion wondered about Wallis, as she rarely did these days. No one did, which must have been the intention. Their exile was as complete as it was deliberate. When the queen wanted to get rid of someone, that person never came back.
She could see the queen from here. She wore an uncharacteristically simple outfit in what was, for her, an equally unusual apricot brocade. Her face wore its usual expression of sweet composure, but Marion could guess what, today of all days, was going through that most cryptic of royal minds.
“Who’s the tall bird?” George was nodding toward a brunette in the front row of the nave.
“Edwina Mountbatten.” The willowy, beautiful and astonishingly rich wife of Lord Louis. He stood beside her, looking equally aquiline and haughty, but possibly a little purple under the eyes.
Last night had been Philip’s stag night. The group of naval officers had been pursued by photographers to the Dorchester, where Mountbatten had suggested, in the interests of fairness, that the revelers take pictures of the newspapermen first. They had handed over their cameras, whereupon Philip and his friends had smashed them on the lobby’s marble floor. The incident had been reported as an example of Mountbatten ingenuity, but Marion had thought it cold and cruel. She wondered if one of the photographers had been Tom.
The organ played softly. From time to time the doors opened to admit latecomers, letting in the shouts of the crowds outside. “We want Elizabeth! We want Philip!”
“So do we,” George muttered. “We’ve been sitting here for bloody ages. Where are they?”
There was a murmur of anticipation as the great doors opened once again. Under the arched entrance that had welcomed monarchs for centuries stood a doughty, instantly recognizable but nonetheless hideously late figure. With the faithful Clementine on his arm, Churchill started to make his way slowly down the aisle to his seat at the front. “Hasn’t the bloke got a clock? Not exactly his finest hour, if you get my meaning.” George chuckled at his own joke.
But now, finally, the moment had come. All eyes swung to the Great West Door. Marion gasped. Lilibet was here.
She came slowly up the aisle on the king’s gold-braided arm. Marion felt at once bright with pride and heavy with sorrow. Lilibet looked like a ship, a beautiful, sparkling ship, rising like a mast from her long full skirts with her cloud of veil following like a sail. She glided up the red sea of carpet toward her naval lieutenant.
The nonenemy silkworms had done a good job; the satin shone pure white in the yellow glow of the tall candelabra. The embroidery on the skirts was spectacular, and there was so much of it, great swags of seed pearls and crystals forming roses, syringa and jasmine. It was based on Botticelli’s Primavera, Norman claimed, but Marion had never seen the resemblance to the loose-haired pagan in the painting. Lilibet, anyway, looked more beautiful even than the Renaissance Spring.
George nudged her. “Breathe!”
Marion let out a gasp of air. She felt she was descending from a great height.
“Here’s Maggie!” whispered George.
Marion’s heart went out to Margaret, resplendent in full-skirted tulle, her glossy head held high, walking in dignified solitude down the aisle after the bride and before the bridesmaids. The separation was to emphasize her rank but made her seem a lonely, even vulnerable figure. She was only seventeen. How would she cope without Lilibet in the palace? And how will I cope with her? Marion wondered, glumly. It was a bleak prospect.
The service passed in a whirl. The Archbishop of York conjoined the young couple to have “patience, a ready sympathy and forbearance.”
George snorted. “What have they got to be forbearing about?”
Plenty, Marion thought, looking at Philip’s arrogant, handsome face.
* * *
• • •
THE COUPLE WENT into the vestry and came out again, Lilibet radiant with happiness. She passed back down the aisle and then, reaching the place where her parents stood, paused and swept them a deep, beautiful curtsey. As the memory of that very first curtsey to the king on his accession day came back with force, Marion fumbled for her handkerchief.
Outside it was all wild pealing of the bells and the cheers of the crowds clustering about the Abbey. Margaret emerged with Peter Townsend beside her, dashing in his RAF uniform. She was looking up at him in a manner that could be interpreted only one way.
The queen was coming out now. She paused beside Marion and smiled. “I think she is happy, Crawfie.” The glassy blue eyes were wistful.
“I know how you feel, ma’am,” Marion said, from her full heart. “I feel as if I’ve lost a daughter as well.”
The queen drew back. There was a beat or two before she said, with her usual serene smile, “I’m sure you do, Crawfie. But they grow up and leave us, and we must make the best of it.”
With that, she passed on to her carriage. Lilibet and Philip’s had already set off, glittering in the sunlight, borne by cheers, into their glorious future.
PART FOUR
Nottingham Cottage, 1949
CHAPTER SIXTY-
TWO
Marion was weeding, pulling long blades of grass from the lavender border. The air was warm, and lively with birdsong.
The cottage behind her was built of old thin redbrick with a tiled roof and roses round the door. It looked like a house in a fairy tale, especially when the nearby field was full of white-fleeced sheep and the pigeons cooed in the trees in the evening. Really, she should be content.
Surrounding the garden was a low white fence into which was set a little gate. On it, in neat black capitals, were painted the words “Nottingham Cottage.” The long red buildings of Kensington Palace stretched all about. But the traffic of the nearby High Street was almost inaudible here. You would never have imagined you were in the center of one of the biggest cities in the world.
It was the perfect home for a newly married couple. And yet happiness seemed to have eluded them.
George’s playing floated out through the little white-painted window, open on the latch because of the warm day. His hands on the piano keys sounded angry and discordant, and sent a responding note of dismay through Marion. Their marriage had had a difficult start.
After an exhausting year trying to keep Margaret in line, Marion had been at her wit’s end. “We are only young once, Crawfie,” had been the queen’s serene view. “We want her to have a good time. With Lilibet gone, it is lonely for her here.”
Marion doubted that lonely was the word. As well as the nights out with the young officers the king had dubbed “the Bodyguard,” there were the driving lessons with the ever-attentive Townsend. Margaret’s beauty, always remarkable, had now reached a ripe intensity. Small-waisted, generously-breasted, large-mouthed and big-eyed, she dazzled every man who saw her.