by Karen Harper
My mind spun back to what I could have done wrong, not that it fretted me. David and I were loved and coddled, corrected when need be but never really punished. Mother darling often referred to me as “Darling Elizabeth,” so our love and respect was mutual. I knew we were cherished here on the extensive grounds or at our smaller, charming estate in Hertfordshire at St. Paul’s Walden Bury. I had enjoyed a lovely, happy childhood, roaming the grounds, playing games and charades at night, spending warmhearted winters before the crackling fireplace.
But since we still had some wounded soldiers here at Glamis Castle recovering from shell shock and injuries, did he think I had flirted overmuch with them when I tried to make them feel at home? After all, when a fire broke out without Mother on the premises, I had helped get everyone out and oversaw the firemen when they arrived.
Oh, Mother was sitting in Papa’s study too when I stepped in. I sat tight next to her on the velvet settee. Such a kindly, beautiful, and fun mother, and I longed to be just like her. She read to us, made certain we were not overtaxed by our governess or tutors, took us on walks in the park, applauded, laughed, and—
“Since you are old enough now, nearly quite the grown lady . . .” my father began, sitting across from us in his favorite horsehair chair, “and will attend your first ball soon—where, by the way, I hope they do not do that wretched foxtrot.”
“Now, my dear Claude,” Mother put in. “It’s all the rage for the younger set.”
“If you wish to take this over, my dearest,” he said with a narrow look at her, but also a wink—for they were quite the love match—“I shall hold my peace.”
“No, you start,” she said.
The tension and suspense hovering in the room was so unfamiliar that I began to tremble. Mother must have seen that, for she reached over and covered my hands, clasped in my lap. How I wished I looked exactly like her, with her oval face and light arched eyebrows. Yet I was too proud to pluck my heavy ones, and I did resemble her a bit, didn’t I?
Father cleared his throat. “As you know, our darling daughter,” he said, “we gave you the sobriquet ‘our angel’ because you are that to us. Dearly beloved, you and David both.”
“Just as you love the others,” I put in. “Even dearest Violet and Fergus, who are gone—gone to heaven.”
“Yes. Yes, of course, lass. You see, we have loved having and rearing children.”
“Of course,” Mother said, “all of you, but I suppose one tends to cling to and cherish the last—the youngest ones the most.”
Papa gave her another narrow look. “So we feel it is time to explain to you,” he went on, clearing his throat, “and we will to David too—that after we could have no more children and wanted more, we decided something.”
Mother said in the awkward silence, “Because there were complications with the last births, Rose and Mike, and I could bear no more children.”
“So,” Papa said, “it is not one whit untoward—that is, not done, that—ah—”
He looked as if he would have a winter coughing fit, when it was quite fine weather. Mother turned to me and said, “It is a done thing that if a happy couple—a solid family—would like more children, they can talk it over and decide to have the father go into a good woman who agrees to bear a child and then give that child—children—to the family to rear.”
“I am adopted?” I gasped. “David too?”
My stomach fell to my knees. True, I was not the best of students, but had I been so dense not to know—to sense—this? Even tutored, I had failed an important exam the first time I took it—damn that beastly test! But I—this woman—I adored and . . .
I didn’t cry but clamped my hand over my mouth and bent over as if I would be sick. But Mother—was she still my mother?—pulled me up and into her arms while Papa came to sit on my other side.
“You and David are more ours than the others, because we chose to have you!” Mother said with her mouth pressed against my mussed hair along my temple. “Have we ever given you one moment to feel you are not ours in head and heart?”
“So I am of Father’s blood, but not yours?”
“You are of his blood and of my heart, and what could matter more than that?” she asked and squeezed me so tight I could barely breathe.
Finally, after a moment, I hugged her back, my arms tight around her waist, my face buried against her shoulder. Oh, I knew enough of the birds and bees to figure out what they meant.
“We love you, our angel, and always will,” Papa said and patted me on the back.
I knew enough of my Bible to realize why I had overheard, more than once, some of our Bowes Lyon relations refer to David and me as “the Benjamins.” After all, Benjamin was the dearly beloved and youngest of his father’s and Rachel’s children and had many older half brothers.
I amazed myself by not exploding into hysterics, though I did still hold hard to Mama as I asked, my voice quite calm, “Then was my birth mother, so to speak, one of the maids?”
But even as I asked that, I knew the answer. How often at Walden Bury had the French cook Marguerite Rodiere smiled at me and David and offered us a sweet or some sugary-topped Scottish shortbread when it seemed the others must wait for mealtime? How she had looked so longingly at me and smoothed my hair and once tenderly washed my scraped knee, then darted off when Mother came into the kitchen.
Mother said now, “We tell you all this, dearest daughter, before you begin to move in public and social circles beyond our family. There will be friends, dances, courtship, perhaps with highly respected and noble beaus. It is a secret we—and you—must guard because others might not understand that it was a mutual decision between your parents who love you very, very much and always will.”
“And as you young people say,” Papa put in with a hand on my shoulder, “ain’t we got fun as a family—mutual love too? As Mama says, you and David are just as much ours—actually more—by choice—than any other child. And yes, your birth mother is Marguerite from Walden Bury.”
I nodded, still feeling a bit shell-shocked. Yet I loved these people and wanted to make all this easier for them. “So, no wonder I took to speaking French—you said I did. I was glad to have a governess who taught me German, but isn’t French so much prettier?”
Evidently grateful I was taking the news so well, they embraced me between the two of them. Papa said, “We wanted you, and, in a way, chose you, and that’s that. Keep it close to your heart, guard that heart well, our dearest. You are Lady Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, daughter of the Earl of Strathmore and Cecilia Cavendish-Bentinck, your mother who sits right here, and never forget that. It changes nothing!”
But somehow, I knew it had changed—and could change—so much.
Chapter Two
The Last Dance
Can you pick out their launch amidst all this watercraft?” I asked Bertie. We leaned over the railing of the steamship Empress of Britain as we sailed into Yarmouth Bay on the Isle of Wight, nearly home. Lilibet and Margaret Rose, whom we called Margot, were to be brought out in a launch to travel the rest of the way with us, though that would only be the last two hours of our five-day homeward journey from our Canadian-American tour.
“Don’t see them yet, but glorious weather. Reminds me of my best Royal Navy days. My dearest, we have missed a lovely holiday summer by going on our tour, but it was important business.”
Bertie covered my hand with his on the rail. Despite the swarm of small boats close below, I kissed his cheek. Dear man, never really far or free from the burdens of the kingdom, even at sea. At luncheon today, he had admitted he loathed going home to all the talk of possible war and having to deal with powerful men like Churchill who refused to believe “peace in our time” with the Germans was possible.
“Damn, but I still like and trust Prime Minister Chamberlain,” Bertie groused, picking up on his fretting even now. “I know rabble-rousers like Churchill expect war, but Der Führer signed the dratted Munich Agreement, didn’t he?”
“I told you, I don’t believe Hitler and his Huns are to be trusted.”
“But did Churchill have to carry on with his usual loquacious, high-flying oration? He said something like, this is the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time. War! He means war after the devastation—albeit victory—of the war to end all wars, and with the bloody Germans again!”
“That is frightening, my dearest. The man does have a way with words, but then so do you these days. Your unease and hesitation problems with speaking are far behind you. Mark my words, the speech you have prepared for our people about our new bonds with Canada and the United States will smooth things over and warn the Germans.”
“But the latest privy news I had is that our people are going to the beach with baskets of food and gas masks—gas masks—just in case!”
I put my arm around his waist and held him tight. “The thing is, Hitler knows we will fight. And as an island nation we have the sea to keep him off so he can’t just march in like he did to his nearby nations. Yes, I detest him too—hate the Huns—but—”
I stopped and pointed. “There! There they are, waving, ready to come aboard! Oh, Bertie, look how much taller Lilibet is, however short for her thirteen years! And our little Margot, almost nine, and we shall have such a birthday for her. Lilibet! Margot! Darlings! Oh, look, Bertie, they have brought one of the corgis!”
I quite forgot the royal wave I had so cultivated. How I loved them, our precious princesses. I hated to leave them to go off on official duties like this, however important to the Empire. Why, I’d left our heir Elizabeth for six months when she was an infant, and had vowed never, never again to be away that long. I could not wait to hug our girls.
* * *
“Mummy, I have so much more to say than when we talked on the transatlantic telephone line,” Lilibet told us, sounding terribly grown-up, when we finally got through our initial hugs and greetings. “Crawfie says we are both doing awfully well on our history reading.”
“She is not working you too hard during the summer, is she?” I asked. I had had words with Marion Crawford, their nanny and governess, more than once about “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” I insisted my girls be brought up observing life, not just studying facts ad infinitum.
Margot said, “Sometimes on gardens walks, we go over almost everything we read and recited in the morning. A bloody lot of review.”
“Margaret Rose, do not say ‘bloody,’” her father insisted. “That’s men’s talk.”
Our younger daughter was perched on his knee. As much as he loved Lilibet, little Margot was much more demonstrative. Why didn’t he see that Lilibet was more like him, dutiful and worried she’d get things wrong? At bedtime, she even lined up her shoes neatly for the next morning, whereas Margot was more devil-may-care, even tried wearing a favorite pair of shoes to bed to save time and fuss the next day. Ah, but we loved them both dearly and spoiled them as best we could—even as I had been spoiled and poor Bertie most certainly had not.
As much as I admired Queen Mary for her advice and help, she had hardly been a doting mother to him or her other children. Sometimes I thought the way Bertie described her when he was growing up reminded me of that dreadful, twice-wed American woman whom David, Prince of Wales, had so desperately fallen for. And as for Bertie’s father—batten down the hatches for a hard, icy blow.
With our girls at our side and the corgi wrapping his leash around the king’s legs, we sailed homeward bound, waving over the railing at yachts and other boats with our dear people cheering us on. Bertie began to sing “Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree” with all the silly motions that went with the lyrics until he had both girls aping him and laughing. We segued into the sprightly “The Lambeth Walk” with its strutting steps, slapping our thighs amidst a gale of giggles.
“I say,” Bertie put in, out of breath, “if we just had a gramophone here, we could practice a bit more and take to the road on tour!”
Finally, Crawfie came out for the girls, and we sent them inside to spiff up and prepare to disembark with us.
“If they call for us to appear on the palace balcony later today,” Bertie told me, breathing hard with both hands on the rail, “we’ll all four go out. I regret that we stood out there smiling with Chamberlain, touting ‘peace in our time.’ I fear now it was a dreadful mistake to align myself with him on that. And to think the crowds below kept singing ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow,’ whether they meant him or their king! But I do not want Churchill forming a government and calling at the palace all the time to urge we must get into another damned war!”
“We may have no choice,” I told him, taking his arm and giving it a squeeze. “Bertie, if we have war—real war—God forbid—we will weather it together, all of us,” I insisted and swept my hand as if to encompass the crowds waiting below and our many subjects far beyond these docks. I went on, my voice quiet, almost reverent, “Sometimes I wonder if we are not already fighting a war, one of love and right against the forces of evil. Come on, then, Your Majesty, let’s take the train to Waterloo where your mama awaits and then take our girls home.”
“I need you, my beloved, and always have,” he said, turning to me with tears in his eyes and a trembling lower lip as we went inside together.
* * *
“Oh, ma’am,” said Bessie Miller, one of my closest private servants, in her sprightly Cockney accent, “just see if your fair skin didn’t bounce right back from all that heat we had in the States.” She held up my silver-backed looking glass, so I could view my face more closely. “Over there, thought I’d took a bath before I took one, that Yankee humidity and all!”
Still red-haired and freckled and quite devoted to my service, Bessie had been with me nearly since I’d wed Bertie sixteen years ago. Then we were the Duke and Duchess of York and thought we would remain so, far from the crown. Though Bessie could trim my hair in a pinch if we were on tour, her greatest contribution these years had been her overseeing of my complexion and bathing. I never used soap on my face but rather Cold Cream of Roses mixed to perfection by Malcolm Macfarlane in his pharmacy in Forfar, near my beloved childhood home of Glamis Castle. He had sent me a jar of it for my wedding, and Bessie and I had never used aught else on my skin.
My dewy, youthful complexion had been remarked on far and wide. I must admit I was rather privately proud of it, even at age thirty-nine. Bessie always said it made my violet eyes stand out. As for my hands, the girl—well, now a woman of thirty-six—used a secret blending of warm rose water with crushed almonds followed by a hand cream of oatmeal, rose water, and lard. No matter, I always tried to tell myself, that women like David’s adored Yankee were thin as boards and I was a bit more rounded. Bertie was keen on me just the way I was, however much his older brother mooned over the skinnier types. And could I help it if I had a healthy Scottish appetite and adored Scottish shortbread, lots of chocs, and drinkie poos?
“There, a touch of powder and perfume and you are ready for the dancing, ma’am,” Bessie said, stepping back to survey her work as if I were a piece of art. She was a staff member with whom I was on more familiar terms than most. She was a dutiful daughter, one who had never wed but kept close to her siblings and parents, and I admired that.
“Awfully quick notice for Their Majesties to pop in like this, but I know everything will go right well,” she told me as she gathered her tray of cosmetics, curtsied, then backed toward the door before turning away. “You never leave one detail unturned, not you.”
I pondered that as I was decked out in my jewelry by Catherine Maclean, my dresser, a faithful Scottish friend from near Glamis. A bit anxious, I did not wait for Bertie to knock but stood in the carpeted corridor of the palace, since our bedrooms and sitting area were a good fifteen paces apart.
The Prince and Princess of Yugoslavia were our guests for a ball tonight, with nearly eigh
t hundred accepting our hastily delivered invitations. It promised to be a lovely event, but I felt I could read the dire handwriting on the wall of old Europe. This might indeed be the last social hurrah, not only for the season, but for the season of peace. So as soon as this gala night was over, we were taking our daughters and heading for a last holiday on the royal yacht before . . . well, before dreaded difficulties could begin.
At first, I had pictured just sailing off into the sunset to escape the looming tough times and my own fears—Bertie’s too, of course. But we were king and queen, and there was no escaping the battle to come. I feared Mr. Churchill was right and Chamberlain wrong. And as we prepared to enter the ballroom with our honored royal guests, every step mattered, for everyone was always watching.
* * *
Two days after the lovely ball—everyone stayed up till all hours as we danced the night away as if no storm clouds were looming—the king and I set out with our girls on the royal yacht Victoria and Albert for a short holiday. Bertie was in his element, for we visited the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth where he had studied, though when assigned to ships at sea, his digestive problems had led to surgery and long periods of convalescence.
The five hundred cadets gave us a rousing welcome and rolled with laughter when their king astounded and amused them all—me and the girls too—by reading from a mocked-up College Punishment Book of all the rules he’d broken while a cadet here. I was so happy that the king, whom so many saw as shy and serious, could show them the fun-loving side his family knew.
But where had Lilibet gone? I looked around again. Margot was chatting with two cadets who had been kind enough—or perhaps had been assigned—to entertain a young girl, but Lilibet?
Then I saw her behind us, off the rostrum, smiling at and chatting with a young, blond cadet who towered over her. At this distance, for one moment, it was almost as if I didn’t know my serious daughter, as if I observed a much older lass. When Bertie and I left the dais, I whispered to him, “Whoever is that man Lilibet is speaking with?”
