by Karen Harper
“He’d better, because he simply cannot come back here, not now,” Winston said so strongly that I almost imagined him addressing the Commons. He stood and bowed to us both again as we stood also. “I shall also inform the duke that this assignment requires that he stay out of the U.S., so he doesn’t meddle with our requests for further aid or get his or the duchess’s misguided comments in the rabid newspapers there. We shall send to America a more trustworthy man named David, yes, your brother, ma’am.”
I breathed easier. I pictured the Windsors trapped on a distant beach like castaways. Fighting back an urge to smile, I squeezed Winston’s hand in silent thanks when he took his leave.
* * *
Dreadful news soon wracked us all. England might have had a new, strong prime minister at the helm, but it seemed not to stop that hellhound Hitler. Not only had his forces rampaged through the Sudetenland and chopped up Czechoslovakia, but, of course, Poland had been swallowed between him and his ally Stalin. Hitler’s Panzer forces on the ground and Luftwaffe in the air had invaded Denmark and Norway as if it was a mere walk in the park.
We were already sheltering Dutch royalty who had fled their homeland and were now living in Eaton Square, soon followed by the Norwegian king and crown prince, both of whom I was very fond of. We had even gone down to Euston Station to greet them, and they were currently living here in the palace.
France had then been open ground to Der Führer’s greedy reach, so Britain had sent men and war machinery to help stem the tide on the Continent. But now as the lovely month of May blended into the June of a nervous 1940, the British and Allied fighting forces and their armaments had been trapped on the French beaches of Dunkerque, which we British spelled Dunkirk.
Fearful our men would be captured or annihilated there, and that could mean an early end to the war, our government put out a hue and cry for even small watercraft to rescue our soldiers and equipment by bringing them across the Channel to our shores. The entire nation was terribly on edge.
We had sent our daughters to live at Windsor Castle, a bit over twenty miles away from London, and I visited them often. Today I did my best to both listen to the radio, which, of course, could not say much of the evacuation, and also listen to our children’s questions.
“So couldn’t some of them just swim away off the beach there?” Margot asked as we walked in the gardens, trailed by corgis, four family dogs now.
“Of course not,” Lilibet cut in, “because soldiers are not to abandon their rifles, and they would be ruined if they were wet. Mummy, remember you said we could take pistol shooting lessons either here or at the palace.”
“Yes, I intend to, and you can too. My dears, not only is the water at Dunkirk almost instantly deep, but the last report I had was that there is not enough room on the smaller vessels, so those are acting as ferries to get the men, who are in long queues, even up to their necks in water, onto the larger ships.”
“We are up to our necks in this war, and they’d best not come here, the Jerries!” Margot insisted in a most unladylike voice. “So then their rifles would get wet and not work while they are in line in the water!”
“Hush. We do not need our Army and Navy secrets broadcast over a megaphone clear to France or even here at Windsor. There are posters in London that warn Loose Lips Sink Ships, so think about that. But yes, a valiant effort is being made to rescue our forces, so they can fight again.”
“But what about French fighters being trapped there too?” Lilibet asked.
“I hear our transports are going back to try to save them too. From now on, we shall remember the Dunkirk spirit and not give up in this war,” I said, trying to sound upbeat and hopeful.
“Maybe it will never come here,” Lilibet said. “After all, we are an island, and they’d best stay off our beaches, or we will trap them there. And one thing more, Mummy.”
“Yes, dear,” I said, hoping it would not be something about the thankfully distant Prince Philip again.
“Papa says I’m becoming too much of a woman now to be called Lilibet, just because I never could pronounce my name when I was small. He’s begun to call me Betts.”
“And you like that, or you do not?”
Margot put in, “I don’t like it. It sounds like going to the racetrack and betting on horses, or on who will win the war or something like that. But I do think when he calls me Margaret Rose it sounds more grown-up than Margot, but when he’s put out with me, he says both names.”
Lilibet subtly elbowed Margot back a step and said, “I was asking Mummy first, and I am the eldest.”
“Poor you, queen someday,” Margot shot back. “It isn’t really that much fun to be queen, is it, Mummy? I mean, it’s a lot of hard work and worry, especially if wars come along.”
“Both of you just take your turns talking. Now Lilibet had asked me a question. My dear, you were named after me, but we thought it would be confusing if we were both called by the same first name. So Lilibet worked well, but if your father insists on Betts, do you mind?”
“I love him and want to help him, especially now when he’s always worried about our boys fighting—and bombs coming here on aeroplanes too, so it’s all right, but very different. I still like Lilibet better. I want to grow up, but not sometimes.”
I hugged them both to me. “I know exactly what you mean. And I understand your feelings about being the younger daughter, Margot. After all, I have many more older siblings than you do. And believe me, when one grows up and doesn’t see them much anymore, one misses them terribly. So despite this wretched war playing havoc with our lives, enjoy your time together now, promise me, my dear Elizabeth and Margaret Rose.”
* * *
Little family tiffs whilst waiting for real war to come soon seemed nothing. Nor did our forces’ skin-of-our-teeth escape from Dunkirk. Nor the grousing of Londoners who hated the blackouts and stumbling about in the dark and motorcar and pedestrian accidents when no bombs had fallen. And it wasn’t just changes in the city everyone talked about. Citizens complained about the repositioning of street and road signs on the eastern coast, so if there was an invasion, the enemy forces might become confused.
I had to admit the huge barrage balloons tethered over our parks in case of dive bombers were a terrible sight day and night, like hovering doom. The king and I had been attending a meeting with several charity groups including the Red Cross. We motored back to the palace in the afternoon on Saturday, 7 September 1940, while Londoners partied in curtained pubs and restaurants as if they had not a worry in the world.
I thought too that the silent ack-ack guns in the parks were a scar on the early-autumn beauty. Even at the meeting with rousing speeches today, I had overheard people complain about the required limit of five inches of bathwater in tubs, a rule we also followed. Some upset citizens during this so-called Bore War had put up crude signs reading Snore War and scribbled out the words bravely claiming, London Can Take It! to write instead Take What? Our Own Govt’s Bloody Blackout?
“That ‘London Can Take It’ is a brave sign,” I told Bertie. “But when the bombs fall and the Nazis come, we’ve seen our fellow royals in European countries cannot sometimes take it.”
“We’ve had a rash of royal visitors, have we not, my dear? Poor Queen Wilhelmina having to flee the Netherlands in May when Hitler’s forces came calling.”
“So sad. She had only the clothes on her back and that too-big tin hat for protection when we met her at the Liverpool station and took her in. I think it was a great comfort to her when her daughter and grandchildren arrived here safely too.”
“And a good move on your part to find them a house in Eaton Square and then suggest they go to Canada for the rest of the war to be completely safe.” He sighed. “If any of us royals are completely safe in this chaos in our homelands.”
“My two favorite royal Norwegians seem to have made the best of it, but then they are men.”
“I would argue the females of the species are m
ore hardy than the males—at least around here,” he said and patted my knee. “But of course we had to take in my uncle King Haakon and Prince Olav.”
“I hope to find a place for them to stay outside the palace, for it would be dreadful if they were hurt here. Bertie, they both try to cope by sleeping all the time, and that hardly helps!”
“But we, at least, are a help to other royals who need us. I know, I know—I swear you would take everyone in at Buck House if you could, including your entire staff’s families in case our land is bombed too.”
I did not argue that for, when we were barely back at Buck House, I thought I heard thunder in the distance on this sunny day. But it wasn’t the sounds of a storm I heard but rather a boom-crump-boom.
Once we were inside, Bertie took a phone call from Winston that London was at last under attack.
Before running down to the shelter, we opened a window casement and stood there, his arm clamped tight around me as we both gaped at the sight and shuddered with fear and anger.
The eastern sky over the Thames and East End was black with a swarm of planes like mad, diving bats. Bertie said, “They bombed our RAF bases on the way in, but we still scrambled some fighters. Yet there seem to be hordes of the hellhounds.”
“Smoke and fire too,” I told him, my voice quavering. Tears ran down my face. Bombs killing our people. Fires burning London, just as in the capital cities and nations of the European royals who had fled here.
“They’re hitting the East End, the docks, the factories, but that doesn’t mean they won’t come here,” I said. “Let’s go downstairs.”
But I didn’t budge for another moment, horrified, mesmerized. Bertie didn’t either but began to recite from memory part of the radio speech he’d given in early September to the nation and Empire. “For the second time in the lives of most of us we are at war. Over and over again we have tried to find a peaceful way out of the differences between ourselves and those who are now our enemies. But it has been in vain. We have been forced into a conflict.”
I gripped his hand tighter and added, “Life, sadly, publicly and personally has too many conflicts. God forbid any are hurt and God bless our beloved people.”
“Let’s go down, darling,” he repeated as several of the staff knocked and rushed into his sitting room to escort us, one holding the single corgi our daughters did not have. “At least the girls are at Windsor,” I said, choking back a sob.
I worried about all the Londoners who must be surprised tonight to know that real war was here. I thought of Bessie’s family, of anyone who lived or worked down by the East End along the Thames. At least it was a Saturday, but some of the factories had been pushing round-the-clock shifts with overtime pay.
Bertie tugged me away from the dreadful display of color and noise and those damned diving planes peppering the sky. No more Phoney War, no more Bore War. The battle had come at last to England.
Chapter Eight
Target Practice
That monster Hitler’s Blitzkrieg besieged our beloved island home and city. We huddled in the palace shelter that afternoon, though Bertie was told none of the bombs were falling near us. Not true, I thought. They fell on us and in us as we mourned for our dear people and our land.
With our diminished staff in the shelter next door to ours, we sat for hours in our dimly lit one, yet probably the most unusual, posh one in Britain, truth be told. It appeared to be a shapeless catacomb with a conglomeration of furniture, gilt chairs, a velvet settee, and a huge Victorian mahogany dinner table. On the walls were oil paintings that could not be stored elsewhere, most of charming landscapes to make us wish we were in the country in the sunlight. I sometimes moved about, speaking to all who were huddled here to buck them up.
But besides sitting by the king in our shelter, I also went next door to comfort poor Bessie, whose family and friends were East Enders where the bombs were falling. The staff had an old piano stored here, but no one was attempting to play it, and the furnishings were a far cry from those in our shelter.
“Will you give me leave to go home, Your Majesty?” she’d asked me more than once. I had been holding her hand just as I would have held my girls’ hands had they been here, which, thank the Lord, they were not. No bombs at Windsor, Bertie had been told.
“You mustn’t go into the area if there are still fires,” I told her. “You would just get in the way of the firefighters. You tell me the street, and I’ll find out how things fared. There are shelters they surely went to, your people.”
“Everyone says they should be allowed to use the tube stations underground, ma’am,” she said with a sniffle, which was at least better than another flood of tears. The handkerchief I had given her was a wet wad. “But the ‘guv’nors and powers that be’—that’s the way my da said it—claim folks will just get underfoot with their blankets and all in the tube stops, even along the rails. And crowd the loos besides making do with their own necessary pots.”
I decided to talk to Bertie and Winston about using the Underground stations. I’d heard people did anyway and balked at being moved out to newly dug shelters. And weren’t our people’s lives worth crowded tube stops?
Eventually, after what seemed an eternity, we were told the all clear was sounding. Out we all went like a little flock of sheep, timid, wary to see the dusk before the coming darkness through the netted windows. One of Bertie’s staff took him aside, whispering, nodding. Meanwhile, not only was my body screaming from exhaustion, but the trembling that began during the first of the bombing was back again.
Bertie came over and took my elbow. I leaned into him as we headed up two flights of stairs and down the corridor toward our suites.
“Our planes scrambled, but much damage done,” he told me. “Darling, you are shaking.”
“Nerves. Outrage that it is finally here. Winston promised the nation blood, sweat, and tears, and I fear that it has all come calling. Damnation, I could use a drink!”
“You need sleep, and I need to get to work.”
“I couldn’t sleep right now. I told Bessie I’d let her know about her home area. And do ask whomever you must to see if the Underground stations can be used for shelters.”
“So far, no.”
“You advise and consent, so why not suggest? Tell them yes.”
He hugged me at the door to my rooms and turned the knob for me.
“Bertie, I know you have so much to do but come in for just a minute and hold me. Hold me!”
He looked surprised but hustled in behind me and closed and locked the door. He sat on the chintz lounge chair where I sometimes put my legs up and pulled me onto his lap.
“I don’t mean to delay our king from his duties,” I said and wrapped my arms around his neck. The square of medals on his midnight blue naval uniform was hard and cold against my cheek.
“You are my most precious duty—you and the girls—and this beleaguered nation.”
I held hard to him and he to me. He lifted my chin and kissed me with a strange combination of desperation and desire, and I kissed him back, opening my lips to his. Such sensual passion had been so long put away between us, and at my behest—my fault. This terrible attack had shaken me when I must be strong. No excuse, here protected in the palace with a shelter to run to, far from the fires.
But I felt better now, safer, a bit saner, sheltered in my husband’s arms with a fire in me I’d forbidden for years between us.
* * *
I pointed my Enfield .38-caliber revolver at the wooden target of the man with the bushy black mustache and pulled the trigger. I was out in the depths of the palace gardens alone but for a guard, plugging away at what I thought of as Hitler. If I ever had a chance to shoot him like this, I would. Bombs had fallen on London and our seaports for weeks now. France was overrun, and, I swear, even if it meant my own death, I would not tremble as I tended to do during air raids, though none had come to this area of the West End and—bang, bang! Ah, got him in the crotch that t
ime, so I hope he felt that.
But I was aiming for his heart and head. More practice needed. I had, however, greatly disturbed and been scolded by the greylag geese near the copper beeches on the lake.
A voice behind me made me jump. “I pray, Your Majesty,” came Winston’s now familiar ringing tones, “that is who I think it is and not your own prime minister who you think has been stalling on opening up the Underground stations. We have done so now.”
I lowered the pistol and shook his hand. Behind him, in the shadows of a chestnut tree, stood his security man, called a detective, who always wore a bowler hat.
“Then I approve of our prime minister wholeheartedly,” I told him. “You did know the king was out this morning?”
“I did, but some of this can’t wait, and I plan to tour the newly bombed areas, so I will be quite busy this afternoon.”
“I would like to go with you.”
“Excellent public relations that would be too, but I hear Your Majesties plan to tour the East End again soon. As I have told the king, however, there is some bad feeling from the tough and sturdy people there that they are taking the brunt of it all, while the ‘toffs and royals’ are unscathed.”
“I can understand that. So one of my staff has been telling me. Her family home was burned the first night of the Blitz, and her parents are living with one of their sons.”
I gestured to a bench surrounded by plane and hornbeam trees. He seemed to be quite out of breath. Winston’s girth always made me feel petite by comparison. We sat comfortably side by side. Both of our security men kept their distance but shifted their positions to keep us in sight.
“What news then, that I might relay to the king?” I asked. “Something about the Windsors on the beach in scenic Nassau, Bahamas?”
“Aha,” he said. “I must tell you that the Duke of Windsor himself once warned me you were a marshmallow with a bit of arsenic hidden inside.”
I gasped, then laughed. “Did he then? And I thank you for being so honest to share that with me. So, on to the arsenic—what news of them?”