by Karen Harper
“Actually, I was often here as a child, but born in London,” I told her with a smile. “My nickname in my toddling days was ‘Merry Mischief.’”
“Well, ma’am,” she said, “I did bookkeeping work for the baby doctor Dr. Thomas in Welwyn, and he claimed to be present here at your birth, he did. Got paid his fees for the delivery too.”
My stomach fell to my feet. I knew the doctor’s name. And had he said who the woman in labor and delivery was? Yes, he had probably brought me into the world by tending to the house’s pretty French cook.
“I believe he tended to my mother, Lady Strathmore, and me when we arrived here shortly after my birth in London,” I told her.
“Oh, if you say so, Your Majesty. I guess you would know even though there’s a real nice plaque nearby says you was born here.”
I forced another smile. Several years ago, I had been part of that dedication day, having accepted the invitation to attend before I realized several local folk knew I had been born here—and had arranged a ceremony and plaque to commemorate and celebrate that.
Rather than dig myself in deeper—for I had seen in the crowd a reporter from the London Times who was tagging along, I moved on, smiling, chatting, waving.
Again, midday though it was, I wished I had a drink, a strong mixed one, as a matter of fact, my can’t-do-without Dubonnet and gin. I often had it packed to travel with me but had overlooked that today. I had no intention of turning into a sot, but lately it helped me to cope, to cling to the good things and times before this bloody war. Because the temporary oblivion the most dangerous woman in Europe, the queen of England with the stiff upper lip and stiff drink, sometimes sought was hard to come by lately.
And there it was lurking in the sunny beauty of this place, one of the several bombs in my past life I feared could yet explode. That I was the daughter of a foreign cook. That I kept the king of England from my bed, so that our two princesses were conceived through artificial insemination, though surely borne by their loving mother. That all of those bombshells made me a fraud of the highest order who both had adored and now hated the man who had once been king, and the horrible, lower-than-low woman whom he adored and had given up his throne to marry. And what he had so cruelly done to me.
* * *
Almost all of our family’s rooms were on the north side of Buck House, the girls’ bedrooms two stories above ours. We had no central heating, but tried to make the rooms as cozy as possible with radiators as autumn set in. We had mostly adapted to what was already in that living section of the palace, except for Bertie’s having ordered a squash court and swimming bath built for the girls and him to enjoy, though I went in too upon occasion when no one but the family was about. How the girls loved splashing and swimming. And a glass roof covered the pool and court so whenever the London sun was out, we enjoyed the warmth.
So it seemed more than the roof, squash court, and pool were shattered when a bomb hit that area in 1940. I dreaded telling Lilibet and Margot when I saw them at Windsor next. The morning after the bomb, the tenth of September, the king and I walked amongst the ruins. Even he blinked back tears. It was as if something had been taken from us again, the early family joy of being together, learning things, splashing each other when there was no war, no sad separations.
A newspaperman in our little entourage remarked, “Your Majesties, this is a dreadful loss.”
I turned to him. “Since this is the royal palace, the enemy means it as an assault on our nation, not just on us. We do make rather a large, obvious target. But compared to the loss of entire homes—of lives of our dear people—this is a small thing. Just glass and stones, not blood and bones. Our hearts are with those of our nation who have lost dear ones in battle or on the home front. We will endure and win.”
Bertie took my arm and faced the little crowd of staff, security, and newsmen.
“The queen and I stand in solidarity with our bold people. As our prime minister says so eloquently, only victory will do.”
Once inside, we held hands, almost had to hold each other up.
Bertie said, “Winston has nothing on you, my love. Do you think we shall ever have a woman P.M.? I would say tally-ho for one, if she was as bold and bright as you. I think I have said this before but don’t know how the bloody hell I’d manage without you.”
“I don’t mind talking to the nation about this loss, but I will hate telling Lilibet and Margot. And if we can have queens who rule like Elizabeth the first and Victoria, why not a female P.M. someday?”
“And we are rearing Queen Elizabeth the second, are we not?”
“I pray she won’t be queen for many, many years. But Bertie, our world is being bombed to bits, so when we rebuild, perhaps some things will change, a new, modern Georgian era under my beloved King George VI.”
Though we never showed affection to each other in the public places in the palace, he put his arm around my waist as we climbed the dusty, rubble-strewn north staircase together.
Chapter Ten
To See Clearly
Sadly, I became used to the wasplike buzzing of planes over the Thames and East End. Except for one day, London had been repeatedly bombed for weeks—long, terrible weeks. At least our Spitfires had taken down German planes, some of which had bombed the West End.
Our enemy did not realize it, but that actually helped our home front, our cause. Just when the East Enders were turning against the West Enders because we had not been hit, we were. That made Londoners more united, though I felt our bomb damage here at the palace—especially a mere luxurious swimming bath and squash court—hardly let us look the poor East End in the eye. As tragic as it was to have one dead and two injured on our palace grounds, there were thousands of injuries and deaths in London, mortality statistics that, despite the bomb shelters, were staggering.
Today was Friday, 13 September—ha, Friday the Thirteenth. The king and I had established the routine of spending our days in London but our nights with our girls at Windsor. We could see that was the best strategy for now.
I took yet another sip of my drink, frowning, remembering how the Prince of Wales, damn him for a traitor, used to tease me that Dubonnet was not a real “cocktail” even mixed with gin. Every slang word, everything American, fast, and modern—and svelte—that’s what he liked. He’d used such crude slang he’d picked up in the United States, such as “hit me again,” meaning his butler should pour him another drink.
I took a second swallow. It went down well. How stupid I had been to once imagine I would be his queen, and here I was, queen anyway, and at war with him as well as Germany.
I drained the glass and decided to nip down the hall to see how Bertie was doing. He had been working hard to memorize a coming speech and study the war papers, as we called them, that Winston had left for him to read. “Just leave the documents, and I’ll study them tonight and discuss them soon,” he usually told Winston at what the three of us jokingly called our weekly “picnics.”
At the luncheons we kept the food simple and simply served, for each of us selected from the side table what we wanted, to avoid having servants hovering. I almost always sat in so far, letting Bertie mostly do the talking and deciding, at least in front of Winston. But I was honored they included me and listened to me. I believe Winston knew it not only bolstered Bertie, but that I would support the P.M.’s point of view and not just the king’s.
I went down the hall, careful to walk a straight line and wishing I could see out the netted windows. Some of the aeroplanes sounded close. From the motor sounds, Bertie could even tell whether the plane was ours or theirs. I hoped they were RAF Hurricanes and Spitfires in the sky and not just the damned Luftwaffe.
I knocked and went into his study, which always smelled like leather and cigarette smoke. It had a marvelous view down the Mall, and I saw he had the tall, main windows open to enjoy the September air, despite the battles in the distant sky. I hated to say it, but we were getting used to that and sometimes, un
less our security men dragged us there, had decided to forgo the daily wasted time in the palace air-raid shelter.
He was alone, for once. No aides, no secretary.
“Darling,” he said, looking up, wreathed in a haze of cigarette smoke before the crisp breeze blew it away. “Just reading dispatches. Our aeroplane production will soon be up under Lord Beaverbrook’s aegis, both fighters and big bombers, so we can strike at Berlin. Hitler has promised his nation and capital that will never happen, so it is high on our list.”
“I know. Any other news of the day?”
“The forces of Herr Hitler’s evil twin Mussolini are invading Egypt. We must fight them both, and Japan’s making noises it wants to be allied with them.”
“At least Japan is far away,” I said, walking behind his desk and putting my hand on his shoulder. He covered my hand there with his.
“I’m glad you came in for several reasons,” he told me, sliding his chair back. “Listen to a part from my speech I go rather haltingly over, will you? I fear I’ll catch my breath—hesitate a bit. It’s the impact of the words, I think, that is rattling me.”
“Of course,” I said.
“I should kiss you like a Brit would do to a Brit he loved,” he said with a little laugh, bending over my hand to kiss the back of it. “But I shall also say, ‘Enchanté, madame’—like a Brit would to a Frenchwoman,” he said and kissed my palm, even darting his tongue briefly out to lick my skin there.
Feeling that surprise move down to the pit of my stomach, I froze for a moment. Was he alluding to—could he have an inkling I was part French? Could his brother or his brother’s duchess have told him to get back at me? But he’d never said a word, never even hinted at it.
“Elizabeth? Just teasing. Sit over there, and I’ll sit here, since that’s the way it will be when I speak into the microphone.”
I smiled and nodded and did as he said. He began in mid-speech with the section that was evidently bothering him: “Let no one be mistaken. It is no mere territorial c-c-conquest that our enemies are seeking. It is the overthrow, complete and final, of this Empire and of everything for which it stands, and after that the c-c-conquest of the world.
“You see!” he went on, smacking his hand on the desk. “There is something in that section that bothers me, frightens me!”
I stood and went around his desk again. “Bertie, this whole war is frightening and you are doing yeoman’s work—a fine job of leadership and inspiration.”
“Perhaps I am afraid I will make some colossal mistake—‘Let no one be mistaken.’ And that last line seems like predicting doom, Armageddon, the end of the world. Drat, now I’ve got an eyelash in my eye,” he muttered, blinking madly.
“Here, don’t rub it. Let me see. Look up,” I said, bending over him.
“Sit on my lap to get closer and not hurt your back, twisting like that. And do I scent you have been having a drink without me?”
“And do I scent,” I shot back, feeling suddenly defensive, “that you are smoking mad and smoking too much?”
“Compared to Winston’s cigar smell, who cares?”
“I see it. Hold steady, and I’ll get it.”
“Must I have an eyelash in my eye to get you onto my lap, my love? Since that day London was first bombed, you haven’t repeated that request.”
“Don’t blink so much. Here, let me help to hold your eye open.”
He slid his arm that was around my waist downward and stroked my bum.
“Bertie, you are distracting me.”
“I’d like to. But whatever is that—that louder sound? That buzz, that droning whir-whir growing louder? Bloody hell, it can’t be!”
He gripped me hard and stood so fast I almost slid to the floor, bumping my hip into his desk as he set me back.
“It is just the constant hum of those Luftwaffe planes, of course,” I told him as if I were one of Winston’s military advisors. “Bertie, let’s go into the lavatory so we can have better light than from the window and see the eyelash in the mirror. Bertie, what?”
He moved to the window. He even leaned out a bit, staring with his jaw dropped open. I joined him there and saw what he meant. Out of the cloudy sky dropped a German plane, close, heading right for the palace down the Mall.
“Damn!” he said, sounding more awestruck than afraid. “It sounded like one of them, and it’s coming straight at us!”
I gasped and tried to drag him away, but he stood as if bolted to the floor. Indeed it barreled straight at us with a Spitfire right behind, with our plane perhaps afraid to shoot in our direction.
The whir became a roar. The Messerschmitt passed low overhead, and, for the first time, I heard the scream of the bomb descending, which so many people had described.
The shriek of it seemed endless. I may have screamed too. Then came an earth-shaking blast, close, too close. We both went off our feet to the carpeted floor, clinging together. My ears hurt. My soul hurt.
We clung hard, then Bertie rolled us against the wall, shielding me from the open window as the entire palace seemed to shake. Despite our efforts at netting, we heard glass shatter near and distant. If the tall window next to us had been closed, we would have been cut to pieces, for its daggers of glass exploded into the room, clattering onto his desk and beyond.
“Downstairs,” he said. “Downstairs to the shelter. A closer hit, and we would be gone.”
We stumbled to our feet and ran across his study, crunching glass. My knees were suddenly so weak I almost fell. Before we reached the door, it opened, and an aide started in, saw us, and held the door open as we rushed past.
“It hit in the quadrangle, Your Majesty,” he said, quite out of breath. “Several hurt, I fear, men repairing the chapel.”
“Damned Huns!” Bertie muttered. “We will strike Berlin.”
As we hurried down the corridor—thank God, it looked quite normal except for missing windows—we heard cries from outside of “Bandages! Bandages here! Ambulance. Send for an ambulance!”
When we reached the ground floor, we saw the palace’s first-aid members—selected staff—were busy with the wounded. I gaped at the devastation of the quadrangle with broken flagstones and soil thrown everywhere from the huge hole where the bomb had landed. I glimpsed one man on the ground, bloodied. I instinctively started over to see how he was, to comfort him if I could, but Bertie pulled me on.
“There may be another attack,” he told me. “The bastards have changed tactics and may again. Winston’s big fear is night bombings, but not this.”
As we passed the kitchen toward the shelter—I could not wait to be sure the housemaids and Bessie were all right—Bertie stopped to question one of the workers who had not been injured. I darted several steps into the kitchen, for it had a glass roof, and I could just imagine it would be devastated.
It was one of the ironies here at Buck House that Queen Mary had asked me to keep on the French cook, a man. But he was excellent and of good spirits, even now when food was scarcer, and menus greatly abbreviated. Thank heavens, the glass roof had not rained down on him and his assistants, for it was quite intact overhead, one of the vagaries of bombing where one thing stood perfectly intact next to a collapsed building.
“I am so happy to see you well, monsieur,” I told him in French. He was a bit of an ally and conspirator, for he knew well my sweet tooth and my love for what I called chocs, which were becoming rather hard to find these days.
He bowed and greeted me. “Just a little problem outside, yes, so tea and scones may be a bit late, Your Majesty. But have no fear, for Britain and France shall rise again, no matter what, yes?”
“Yes!” I told him and felt calmer for the first time since we had seen the plane roaring toward us. “I believe you will have to order that served in the shelter, for we shall truly sit there this time.”
“When it is one’s time to go—we go,” he told me with a shrug. “And I believe, madam, it is your time to go from here at least, for t
he king is like an invading force in the doorway.”
“Come now!” Bertie commanded.
I joined him, and after we checked to see our staff was in their adjacent shelter, we sat alone in ours. We always counted heads and listened to stories. Bessie had several new ones from her devastated neighborhood, but we didn’t have time to hear all that.
After things quieted down, I told Bertie, “Now we can really look the East End in the face. I just pray those poor construction workers will pull through.”
“Them and all of us and dear England,” he whispered, gripping his hands together so hard his fingers went white. “Winston’s so distraught about our losses, so perhaps we should not tell him how close that plane came to dispatching us. If that pilot dropped his bomb a second earlier, if we’d had the windows closed and caught all that glass . . .”
“Yes, I know. But Winston will hear the palace was hit.”
He nodded fiercely. And if we were killed, I thought, would Winston have convinced Parliament to crown fourteen-year-old Elizabeth as queen and named someone to rule for her until her majority? Or God forbid, would he have decided to bring the Duke of Windsor back to rule until she was of age—with that German conspirator wife of his?
“I think it might be best,” I said, “if we just let Winston, bright and perceptive as he is, realize we could have been hurt or worse, then see how he counsels us to handle it.”
“Yes, yes, all right. You may be able to look the East Enders eye to eye now, but perhaps we should not advertise our vulnerability here—that the Huns could have k-killed us.”
“Do you still have that eyelash in your eye?”
“Strange to talk of such again when we could be gone for good. I think it’s washed out now—with my tears.”
“You are not crying. You are ever brave through all this, and a great comfort to me, our staff here, and your people.”
He gripped my hands hard in his as I went on, “We are a team in this, through this, my darling. You ever help me to see things clearly.”
