by Karen Harper
“I thank you for the offer to ‘please help yourself,’ ma’am, but I’m not sure I can do that anymore, and I don’t mean lift a ladle or serving fork. With the turn of things, I’m not even sure I can finally lift us out of war to a complete victory anymore.”
Bertie snapped to attention. “Something dreadful has happened? We’ve lost Monty or Eisenhower or they have lost a battle?”
Winston shook his head. “Monty’s so furious that he should be locked up for his own good. But in a way we’ve lost Eisenhower, because our favorite American general has lost his mind! Lost his mind!”
“Winston,” I repeated, indicating the table with a sweep of my arm, “please sit down here with the king, and I will serve all of us today. We will eat in civil fashion, and you can tell us what has happened.”
The two men did not sit across from each other as usual but huddled at the corner of the table with their shoulders almost touching, like two boys who had been scolded for bad manners.
“It’s the battle for Berlin, isn’t it?” Bertie asked Winston as I dished out shepherd’s pie on their plates. “Or has Stalin done something again and—”
“Yes, sir. Yes and yes,” Winston huffed.
After serving them, I filled my own plate and sat across the table in Bertie’s usual chair. Winston’s eyes watered. Bertie looked intense, yet so much whiter than Winston’s ruddy hue.
Bertie glanced at me, then darted his eyes toward the sideboard and made a gesture with one hand as if he had a glass and were drinking. I went back and poured both of them a whiskey and water. I went heavier on the water than they might have wanted. Some sort of dreadful revelation was coming, and I wanted both of them to be rock steady.
Though it wasn’t to my taste, I poured myself a whiskey and water too, then sat again across from them, with my hands gripped in my lap, also ignoring my food.
Winston cleared his throat, downed half of his drink in one gulp, and said, “We have needed Joseph Stalin, but we know we can’t trust him. But it’s something else. Eisenhower has let me—let us—down. He refuses to push ahead to take Berlin from the west, so the Russians will do that from the east, take prisoners, take the glory, probably take Hitler and try him in some sort of a look-what-we-did show trial when it’s been years of our British blood, sweat, and tears that fought and died for this.”
I put in, “Those Russian rebels killed Czar Nicholas and his family, and now they have this new communist czar, I don’t care what Stalin calls himself.”
Winston nodded, picking up his knife as if it were a weapon but still ignoring his food. “Exactly. Quite right, ma’am.”
“But why,” Bertie said, “will the Americans not push ahead to take B-Berlin after all they’ve been through, after leading the charge through France, through G-Germany?”
Ignoring Bertie’s sudden stuttering, Winston sighed and fumbled in his pocket to produce a cigar when I was expecting a map. Bertie reached for the pack of cigarettes lying on the tablecloth. Sometimes they almost made me wish I smoked, but I had never had that vice at least. Smelly and expensive. I supposed I smoked in a way, breathing in all their puffs of wispy clouds. I took a sip of my whiskey and water and waited for what else Winston would say.
“I admit,” he went on, “I can’t fault Eisenhower’s motives, but he knows full well that war means sacrifice. God knows, we British have paid the price as far as we have come to stop Hitler’s tyranny—Mussolini’s too, though we haven’t dispensed with him permanently either.”
“We will,” Bertie vowed. “Someday soon, we—the Allies—will.”
“As for Hitler,” Winston went on, “I’ve described for you the Nazi-run Jewish prisons or so-called internment camps that have been liberated so far, and no doubt we’ll find more. They are indeed death camps, inhumane, unspeakably brutal. You were right to warn us early of what you learned about Jewish oppression when you were in France before the war, ma’am. Hitler’s final solution for the Jews is to wipe them out—and wipe us out too, so we need to be certain he is eliminated from the face of this earth!”
Bertie said, “I agree wholeheartedly, the bloody bastard!”
“But to your question, sir,” Winston went on with a decisive nod, stabbing at the air with his cigar. “Why has Eisenhower—with FDR’s agreement and blessing, of course—halted the surge toward Berlin and why has he left the taking of it and capturing of Hitler to the Russians? I’ll tell you why. Because he knows there would be mass American, Canadian, Australian, and British casualties in taking the city—one hundred thousand more, he estimates. Thanks to British and American bombing raids—those big Flying Fortress B-17s—Berlin is a pile of rubble already, but they are dug in deep like rats and may well fight to the death—and so take our brave Allied soldiers and officers with them.”
“And,” Bertie put in, “the Russians do not value the life of the common man, as we do. Without a second thought, they may mow down thousands for their own glory, their own people or their enemies. I regret that through my great-grandmother Queen Victoria, we have blood ties to them, to their previous czars. My father and Czar Nicholas were cousins but almost looked like twins.”
Winston sighed so hard that his big body seemed to deflate. “All that aside, sir, Montgomery is raving mad that Eisenhower will not just plunge on heedless of the human and financial cost. Oh, yes, I see the value of winning without hurting more people if it is possible. But war goes by its own rules, and I longed to—I dreamed of—I needed to take Berlin.”
I thought of my brothers Fergus, dead in battle, and Mike, never quite right after the Great War. I would still always call it that, though several years ago, the American magazine called Time had declared that we were fighting World War II after surviving World War I. But what if Fergus had not been lost and Mike not damaged in a final push, because someone else was hell-bent on taking one more town? Shouldn’t Winston be relieved instead of furious?
Surely Bertie also saw the value in winning without hurting more of our people. True, then we could not say we had seen it through, that we were total victors, that we had eased our guilt and cleared Europe of its evil past without the Russians.
The three of us sat silent at that table for a while over our meals gone cold. The two men were stronger for facing the truth, for accepting that they would not ride into Berlin as heroic victors, that they must face disappointment at the end of this war after all.
And I thought again of my past pain and struggles. I longed to clear my conscience about David with Bertie. He would hate his brother then, the way these two hated their so-called ally Stalin. But would the cost of that—Bertie’s being let down by his brother and even by his wife—be too much for him to bear?
* * *
“May I come in, dearest?” Bertie called out as he opened my bedroom door that night and popped his head in.
“Of course, and you do not need to ask,” I told him. I was propped up in bed with a book I was not reading.
“Somehow, that is one of the blessings to come out of this damn, bloody war.” He came in and closed the door—even clicking the lock behind him. Since I had opened my bed and body to him, we had been even closer. I suppose I had done that partly out of duty, partly out of guilt, especially when he had been so supportive when he learned about my French mother. It was nothing you did, no blame on you, he had said, and how I treasured those words.
Yet, to truly clear my conscience—and to show him what a wretched man his beloved brother was—I would be revealing something I did share the blame for. I should never have set my cap for the Prince of Wales, never fallen for him, never have gone back into the party room when everyone else had gone to bed. It pained me to think how well Bertie had taken my desire to have a sexless marriage, not that he didn’t have a friend on the side in the beginning. But he did not demand, he did not act the way David did that night when he thought he had the right to shame and hurt me. For certain and forever I had the better deal of the brothers.
&nb
sp; “Such a long day, such a long war,” he said, sitting on my side of the bed so that it—and I—sagged toward him. He put his arms around me, and I held tight too. We both needed comforting after Winston’s visit today, but surely he wasn’t in the mood for a bout in bed, only affection. He looked and sounded so tired, almost beaten. He wore a silk robe over his pajamas and had his feet stuck in his favorite worn leather slippers, so homey—so newly normal for us.
“Do you want to talk about what Winston shared today?” I asked.
“What will be will be. We needed the Americans to win the war. The ultimate decision not to go bombing and stomping into Berlin is theirs. So we shall get through this wretched war. We shall rebuild—just as you and I have managed to already. We can even allow David to come home.”
I stiffened in his embrace. “For a visit. Not to live?”
“Dearest, so many families are broken, shattered with lost members. I believe the first family of the land, we royals, must set the pattern for reunions, for a return to unity. I know you do not like the duchess, and, God knows, I do not either, but—”
“Bertie, why don’t you go round and get in bed? As usual, this lovely Buck House of ours is cold and draughty, and we have to keep you healthy.”
“Yes, yes, all right. We shall rebuild this palace and we shall rebuild London and our lives,” he declared decisively again as if he were giving a speech. He went to the other side of the bed, kicked off his slippers, pulled off his robe, and got in.
Still shaken from his idea of bringing his brother—and his wife—home, I shoved my book aside, pushed my pillow down and burrowed under the covers to face him.
If I told him about David’s attack on me years ago, I would have to admit my foolish pursuit of him when I had played hard-to-get with Bertie. He had not been well lately, did not look well now. But I could not bear it if David and that woman came back here where they would try to horn in, take over, advise us. We might look dowdy and old-fashioned next to their international flair and panache, but hadn’t they made a mess of everywhere—even little Nassau—they had gone?
To my surprise, Bertie turned me so my back was to him, then drew me close against him into his arms again, as if I were sitting in his lap.
“You know how I feel about them, especially her,” I whispered, deciding to take the soft approach and not rant like a fishwife.
“But you understand about loving a brother. He was my comrade and comfort when early life was hard. You love your brother David and miss him sorely. He’ll be coming back to England soon, as he has done his duty there, near FDR, who they say is ailing too.”
“Too? Meaning as Winston had been ill? Or are you feeling especially weak again?”
“Are my arms around you weak?”
“You know what I mean. You have lost weight and color. Your legs bother you, and your cough—”
“I will see this all through,” he said, nuzzling the nape of my neck. “With your help and support—and our Lilibet’s strength and maturity—I will see this all through.”
I decided then that I would fight the battle over David and his wife another day. This moment was precious, important. I must build Bertie up, not tear him down.
And then I realized he had instantly fallen asleep.
But I vowed that somehow, some way, I would keep the Windsors from coming back and trying to take over, making Bertie less important, less attractive to his people, for I knew that would happen. And I must admit that almost the last thing on earth I would like to do is vie with that skinny, smart-mouthed woman for fashion and popularity. Never. I had waged a silent war against her for years and I would not let up now. Like the strong but caring American general from Kansas, I would pick my battles and somehow win my secret war.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Spring Passing
Spring seems more beautiful this year,” Bertie said as we walked the sunny gardens behind the palace. I had my arm through his, tight against his ribs. We had made love last night. Perhaps the winter of war was gone and lovely days like this were really here to stay. “It always passes too fast, you know,” he added.
“The gardeners have begun to repair things beautifully,” I said. “You can’t keep flowers down here, even after bombs hit.”
“Can’t keep Britain and the Empire down,” he said with a little smile. “Or the king and queen. We shall—we have—almost—come through. And though Winston and I were upset that Eisenhower did not push on toward Berlin ahead of the Russians, I still like the man’s style. Ike Eisenhower is such an honest man to be bold enough to tell us straightaway that he must let us down on that, yet he loves deception and deviousness in battle.”
“Mmm. All is fair in love and war?”
He turned quickly to look at me. “At least with us, they are never one and the same.”
I nodded and smiled, but I knew my lips quivered.
“Do you know, my love,” he went on, in expansive lecture mode now, “Eisenhower went so far as to have phony maps and attack site orders planted on a dead body he knew the Germans would find? He sent someone disguised as Monty into an area where we were not going to attack and ordered bombing at some sites where we had no intention of going in.
“So see,” he said with a chuckle, “there can be good to come out of deception and lies.”
I dearly hoped so. I was still at sixes and sevens about when and even whether to tell him about his brother’s attack on me. He would then hate David, maybe blame him for my squeamishness over the years in our love life, for my wanting our children to be created through artificial insemination. I feared it would infuriate dear Bertie, maybe crush him. But would it turn him against me too? So I hesitated, but I must risk all since David was still lobbying to come back to live in England, to simply buy a country estate, he had written Bertie, to help in any way he could. And, of course, Queen Mary was pushing for all that. She missed the son, her firstborn, who I knew was her favorite, especially now that George was gone.
As we made a turn and headed back toward the palace, I said, “Won’t it be wonderful to begin to have lovely garden parties out here? Lilibet is angling for one when Philip comes home—comes back from duty, I mean.”
“You’ve settled things with her about their courtship? I know you were dead set against him at first.”
“I am still dead set against his adopted father, Dickie Mountbatten, pulling Philip’s strings and then Philip trying to control Lilibet. Now that Philip’s father is dead, it seems he heeds Mountbatten above all others. Bertie, I heard scuttlebutt the other day that Dickie even boasted that through Philip, the Mountbatten dynasty would mount the throne someday, that the name of Windsor would not be used for future heirs if Lilibet wed Philip!”
“Damn bloody treason!” he whispered. He nearly crushed my arm against his ribs and ground out his half-smoked cigarette on the path with a fierce twist of his foot. “You’d think,” he went on, propelling me along a bit faster back toward the palace, “Mountbatten would not keep landing on his feet after his various military follies. He tries something like that with Philip, he’ll land on his bum—in exile. He can just trade places with David!”
“Now you sound like the one who doesn’t want our eldest and heir to choose Philip.”
“No stopping that—Lilibet’s decision, I mean. At least she has a backbone of steel, because someday, she is going to need it. But I believe, as over the moon as she is about Philip, she has courage too. She’s proved herself in this war, my love. But I am glad you told me what you heard about Mountbatten and his damned designs on our girl and our good name.”
Bertie’s usual pallor had gone red. I had not seen such a fierce reaction from him over something not war-related for years, but Lilibet and the family were not only dear but sacrosanct to him, as was the royal line. Again, I realized I would be risking much to tell him about his brother and me, but I could not have him and his duchess in this country! How I had prayed there was another way to stop that.
>
As we headed back, the mid-April sun seemed not so warm. Looking ahead, I saw Alan Lascelles rushing toward us, nearly at a run.
“Good news or bad?” I asked Bertie.
“Your Majesty,” Alan said when he reached us, looking at me, not the king. He made a hasty bow and out of breath told me, “Ma’am, Your brother David Bowes Lyon is calling from Washington and insists on my holding the line open until you can come to speak with him. He has some important news for you and will not say what, only that he will tell you and you can tell the king.”
Bertie was quickly out of breath as we went back toward the palace at quite a jog. He went with me into his office where the priority call with its private connection had been taken by Alan at Bertie’s desk.
Out of breath myself, I picked up the phone. “David dear, are you calling to say you are coming home?” I asked as Bertie sat in his desk chair and Alan left us alone, closing the door behind him.
“Yes, I will be now. You will hear all this from the prime minister soon, I’m sure, as he’s been notified. I thought it best I tell you and for you to pass it on to the king. Elizabeth, FDR has suffered a cerebral hemorrhage at his Warm Springs, Georgia, retreat.”
“And Eleanor is with him or has gone to him?”
“Ah—he’s coming to her—here in Washington.”
I realized now that David was terribly distressed. Bertie was leaning forward, trying to hear. Had David been crying?
He went on, “He was with his . . . his mistress when he simply blacked out, but that’s been hushed up, of course, though Eleanor knows. Things are all topsy-turvy here, for Eleanor has a special lady friend, and, God knows, I understand that, but—”
He was crying. I knew he admired Roosevelt and would now have to deal with his vice president until the president recovered, if he did. And whatever was the name of their vice president?
“What?” Bertie asked, reaching out to grip my arm. “Roosevelt’s pulling out of the war early?”
“He’s very ill,” I told him, then turned back to the phone receiver. “David, what—?” I demanded even as our connection began to fade a bit.