The Queen's Secret: A Novel of England's World War II Queen

by Karen Harper

  “What?” I demanded when he slammed the receiver down. “Both of what? What losses?”

  “Our battle cruiser Repulse and the ship Churchill went to Newfoundland on—”

  “The Prince of Wales?”

  “Yes. Both sunk by Japanese warplanes off the coast of Thailand.”

  “One moment of hope—and then this.”

  “They were lost. . . . Lost, hundreds of crew, our fine, b-brave British ships . . .”

  I broke into tears, and he held me to him. Even, finally, in the hope of help from the Americans, the king was crying too.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Tangled Ivy

  In the spring of 1942, I went without Bertie or the girls to visit Queen Mary, in exile, as she called it. Leaving London was not the thing to do, she’d argued, but she had agreed to be kept safe from the bombing by “camping out” in rural Gloucestershire.

  Hardly a campout spot, I thought, as my motorcar driver took me up the lane toward the massive, beige Cotswold-stone building called Badminton. It overlooked a placid lake that reflected its lofty cupolas. Sheep grazed on the green, and swans swam perfectly in the glassy lake. The estate sat in the frame of the Forest of Dean with its ancient oaks, beech, and ash trees. I felt myself unwind a bit and regretted that my mother-in-law had evidently not relaxed here one bit but always had some project at hand.

  I was greeted by Mary, Duchess of Beaufort, Queen Mary’s host with her husband the duke, Bertie’s nephew. They had been kind enough to take in Queen Mary and her sizable household for the duration of the war. The duchess was a lovely brunette and had been a bridesmaid at our wedding. We kissed in the French way, touching both sides of our cheeks. We walked in together past the grand, curving staircase with huge paintings of Beaufort ancestors and their beloved racing steeds hanging on most of the walls.

  “Is she all right?” I asked straightaway when I didn’t see Queen Mary.

  “Oh, quite. A bit of a head cold is all. She actually slept in, anxious for your arrival, though, so she could show you her latest passion.”

  “Oh, dear. She hasn’t been pottering about and asking for any of your collectibles?”

  “I knew to put them away for now where they would not collect dust,” the duchess said with a little smile.

  I nodded with a smile in return. It had been common knowledge for years that the former queen had an acquisitive nature. Some had said that she pilfered things for her nest like a magpie, such as Fabergé pieces she liked. She was often wont to hint she would adore owning such and such an item, that she had not been able to find that particular bibelot, and how it would enhance her collection. And what were her hostesses to do but offer that as a gift to the king’s wife even after he had died?

  “So where in the house are her rooms?” I asked as we entered the drawing room where a lovely tea service had been laid out before an ornate fireplace.

  The duchess smiled—or was that a grimace? “Everywhere, anywhere,” she said with a little shrug.

  “I must tell you how indebted the king and I are to you for your . . . your sacrifice in these trying times.”

  “We all must do our bit. Speaking of which, do you see that lovely painted Chinese screen over there? She has had a private commode installed behind it and uses it whenever—whoever—is about.”

  “Oh, dear. And what is this she writes me about landscaping outside? Mary, I am sorry, but best tell me, and I’ll tell the king.”

  “No, that’s the least of things, quite all right,” she assured me. “You see, she is on a mission to oversee our woodcutters—especially that they stack the wood in a certain, precise way. But it is truly the tangled ivy on walls, tree trunks, and fences that she is—well, is at war with. I’m sure she will show you when she comes down shortly.”

  “Dear friend, you and the duke deserve a medal for service.”

  “We are honored to help, and she is a dear—under it all. She showed me your last letter, entitled Mama darling. You honor her too.”

  And so, before the former queen even joined us, Mary and I sat, drinking tea and eating tea sandwiches and tarts in the very room at Badminton where a former duke’s children in the 1860s had been allowed to use light rackets to hit featherweight shuttlecocks in a game from India that had taken on the name of this grand house. With that game, they would not harm the paintings of the famous horses reared and raced here.

  Too bad that my mother-in-law, “Mama darling,” had made another game for herself here, one I decided to call “Tangled Ivy.”

  * * *

  “Dear Elizabeth, I simply must show you my out-of-door project,” Queen Mary told me after she joined us for high tea. I had shared what I could about the progress of the war, especially now that the Americans were in it too. The duke was at his post in London, but would be back soon, I was told, so I decided I might tell him a bit more than I had the ladies.

  “I hear you are getting healthful, fresh air here, Mama.”

  “It keeps me young. Why, would you believe that I am in my middle seventh decade, if you did not know so?”

  What to say? But I did not need to say anything, for she went on, “I worry so for my dear sons. Little Johnnie gone, of course, lost much too early. Dear David, far away on that tropical island. George flying too much here and there in those aeroplanes he adores. And your Bertie, of course, king and having to oversee it all. After this dreadful war is over, we must have a reunion of them all, get David back for at least a visit, even if he brings that woman.”

  And what to say to that? So I changed the topic. “Would you both consider briefly entertaining the American president’s wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, when she visits here this autumn, in October, I believe? I would love for her to see our lovely countryside as we saw hers. A day or two here at Badminton, some time with the Churchills in the country, I think, then of course, a short stay at the palace. Beyond that, she will have her own agenda. I regret what dreadful shape Buck House is in, having been bombed and repairs quite neglected during all this.”

  “Why, we’d be honored, would we not, Mary?” the queen asked the younger woman as if Badminton were hers, just as the bibelots and ivy and woodpiles.

  “I shall have to ask the duke, but we would indeed be honored,” the duchess agreed.

  “Thank you both,” I said. “Now, Mama, why don’t I change into some out-of-door clothes and you can show me your project? It won’t take me long to freshen up.”

  “Well, there is a lovely, newfangled commode in this room if you don’t want to go to yours. Yes, let’s head out so you can see how things are coming along.”

  How things are coming along . . . kept revolving in my head as I went up to my room where a maid had unpacked and hung my clothes. I changed into jodhpurs and a flannel jacket over a blouse. I felt Bertie’s mother looked and sounded good despite her cold, but she obviously thought Badminton House, perhaps her immediate world, still revolved around her.

  Worse, the idea of a reunion with David and that woman worried me. At least, I hoped, the war was an excuse to keep them where they were.

  * * *

  “Sorry I missed your birthday celebration at Balmoral,” Mama told me when I joined her downstairs. “Frankly, I was afraid I’d see an aeroplane on my way there and have an allergic reaction.”

  I almost broke out laughing. An allergic reaction was the least of anyone’s worries if they saw a German plane coming over or at them.

  “So, here’s where my project began,” she told me as she marched me outside and around the corner of the massive building. She held in her hands a short-handled claw-shaped rake as if it were a weapon and had handed me a pair of hedge clippers. If our hostess thought I had not seen her roll her eyes as we headed out, she was quite mistaken. But I was so grateful to her and the duke for taking on this task—this formidable, if slightly dotty, woman who had never quite given up being queen. Would it be someday that way for me too?

  But why had Queen Mary not been more a
ffectionate to her children, why had she not defended Bertie—even David—when their strict father had scolded and shamed them? She had been a wonderful grandmother to Lilibet and Margot when we were away on trips like the one before the war to Canada and America. Lilibet, especially, adored her, and I suspected her grandmother was giving her advice on being queen someday, which made me uneasy, as if Bertie would not be here long. Perhaps that is why our eldest had become so skilled and tactful with powerful, political men like the Canadian prime minister or even with Winston.

  I recalled when I first knew my mother-in-law when she was queen. She had once indirectly threatened me and my family with social banishment when I turned Bertie’s marriage proposal down a second time. But she had been kind to me since, and I had assiduously cultivated her friendship and opinions.

  “Oh, you can see where the ivy had climbed here and clung to this stone,” I said, looking at the blank beige wall where she pointed. A ghostlike form of a climbing vine seemed etched upon the stone.

  “Exactly. I pulled it all off, here, there, anywhere. Why, it was an eyesore, hiding so much. Cleaner this way. I just cannot abide anything clinging like that. I joke with the gardeners that before, one could not see the forest trees and house for the ivy!”

  She dragged me here and there, even to the stone sign she had ripped ivy from to expose the Latin motto for Badminton House carved in it: Prorsum semper. Ever forward.

  I thought of Bertie’s latest saying when he was glum and exhausted, which was too much of the time. “Onward and upward!” he had said. Well, I was tired too from our constant visits to lift people’s spirits at factories, hospitals, schools, service groups, and first-aid posts, sometimes with Rowena in tow, taking photographs and notes for Brendan Bracken’s war “information” as Winston had called it. But as for the king, it was as if he had caught Winston’s recent up-and-down health problems, but, thank heavens, Bertie did not disdain doctors and had not treated his head colds and sore throats with Winston’s treatments of whiskey and snuff!

  At least, around here, on this visit, as we plodded on to view numerous de-ivied trees and fences, it was onward if not upward.

  * * *

  One thing that cheered me greatly was when Cosmo Lang, archbishop of Canterbury, preached from his pulpit that I was a modern-day biblical Queen Esther. I had greatly admired the man who had conducted our wedding ceremony, overseen our coronation, and christened both of our daughters. He had written me in a letter much the same about Queen Esther once, claiming that my role of support and inspiration in the war was best compared to the Bible quote: Who knoweth whether thou art come to the Kingdom for such a time as this.

  So he had dared to preach that I had the strength and courage and patriotism of that Old Testament queen, who saved her people from annihilation by the enemy. I must admit that I much preferred that reference to Hitler’s declaring me “the most dangerous woman in Europe.”

  “Rather high-flying rhetoric,” I told Bertie when he read it aloud to me from a newspaper after I had returned exhausted from Badminton. “But, of course, a great honor. Actually, as different as you and Winston are—our true leaders in such a time as this—I see many similarities between you.”

  “Neither of us will ever give up,” he said, crumpling the newspaper in his lap and looking down the length of the sofa at me. I had perched on the other end to take advantage of the lighted floor lamp there. “And, you know, Queen Esther’s power with the king came partly from the fact she coerced him in their royal bed.”

  That set me back a moment. We had been affectionate lately—more than usual—but still not fully intimate. Was this a rebuke or a challenge? But we were both terribly fatigued, falling asleep sitting up, nodding off in church, having to go to our beds to ward off debilitating illness.

  “All right,” I said, rising to at least the comparison challenge, yet changing the topic. “But there is more. Winston has a tough constitution and you do too. Both of you arrange problems from greatest to least and attack them in that order.”

  Obviously listening raptly, turning toward me by putting one knee up on the sofa, he nodded, so I plunged on. “At least you trust doctors when Winston does not, but this war is taking a toll on both of you.”

  “I have to trust my doctors for the kingdom’s sake. Yes, this war takes its toll. Go on.”

  “Both of you speak beautifully and forcefully when you have planned ahead.”

  “A great compliment to your once lisping, nervous husband. So far, so good.”

  I wet my lips with my tongue. Why had I started this? “And dare I say, you both adored your beautiful but busy mothers, who remained rather distant. You know he adored Jennie Jerome and—”

  “And I—all of us—Queen Mary—who ever acted the part of queen over that of mother. Yes, her reserved nature with us even affected David,” he admitted, frowning. “I swear, I wonder sometimes if he took to Wallis Simpson so much because she treated him coldly—him, the playboy, like a matinee idol, the handsome catch of the century—and she insulted and turned him down at first. Maybe, though he didn’t even know it, winning Wallis Simpson over would prove something to him after . . . after our mother.”

  “Yes, I—yes, perhaps,” I agreed, anxious to get this comparison back to Winston, not David. “And if you want to get absolutely Freudian about it, as Winston says, both you and he had fathers you loved who, to put it nicely, barely had time for you and when they did . . . well.”

  I blinked back tears. I should not have started this tangle of . . . of resentments and aggravations. It was true both David and Bertie seemed to have personality problems that their younger brother George, the apple of his father’s eye, had apparently never had, but at least I had tried to throw Winston into the mix too. Was there some fault in English fathers and mothers of the rich and famous? How blessed I and my brothers had been with mine—perhaps an aberration.

  “Our other two siblings,” Bertie went on, not looking at me now but off into space, “did not suffer quite that much, not Mary, of course, not the only girl.”

  I thought of the other two Marys I had been with recently, Mary, Duchess of Beaufort, and the dowager Queen Mary. All of these lives, noble, powerful, were just as open to heartbreak as poor Bessie’s pregnant sister who had jumped off Tower Bridge and drowned herself, so Bessie had used the ten pounds I had given to bury her.

  “I love you, my queen,” Bertie whispered to bring me back to the here and now. “And always will, no matter what befalls.”

  “I love you too,” I told him, blinking back tears as I scooted over to sit beside him. “War or peace, I too.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Walkie-Talkie

  Of all the many visits to troops we continued to make, perhaps the most interesting one, at least in 1942 so far, was to a United States Army camp near Ballykinler, County Down, in Northern Ireland. Thank heavens, Winston’s presiding over the “marriage” of our country with the U.S. had gone well. Despite our terrible losses to German U-boats, Americans were being shipped over in droves.

  What a raucous cheer went up when we visited Wolff’s shipyard near the camp, where many of the Americans worked or were stationed. We were absolutely engulfed by well-fed, healthy-looking young men. How well outfitted they looked too, as we smiled and waved through another round of “hip-hip-hooray!”

  What straight, white teeth the two officers had who guided us on our tour. “We are honored by your visit, Your Majesties,” a Lieutenant Kettering told us. He was a redhead who could have passed for Brendan Bracken’s brother or even his son.

  “And we are indeed grateful you are here,” Bertie told him.

  “We know you have been busy to keep spirits up amongst your own soldiers and sailors and your brave airmen,” Kettering said. He had a most unusual-looking instrument or weapon in his hand, which I noted Bertie kept eyeing. “More of us are coming, and I’ll bet we work together well. As Benjamin Franklin said, ‘We’d best hang together or w
e’ll hang separately.’ Sorry to hear of the setbacks in North Africa, Your Majesty.”

  “We have a new commander there, General Montgomery, whom I and our P.M. trust implicitly,” Bertie told him. “We shall turn the tide, especially now that we are all in the same boat, so to speak. But, I say, whatever is that wireless item you are holding?”

  “Quite newfangled, sir. It’s called a walkie-talkie. For sure, it’s wireless, but I can talk to someone far afield and he can talk back. Quite a handy-dandy article. Here, let me demonstrate, as my aide is on the other end right now.”

  Bertie watched, wide-eyed. I did too, thinking what a clever item it would be not only in battle, but on the home front. Why, I could keep in contact with Lilibet and Margot or easily summon Bessie when I needed her and not have to use the old Victorian wire-and-bell system. If there were any earth-shaking news—which it seemed now was our daily bread and butter—I could call Bertie.

  “Smashing,” Bertie said as the lieutenant demonstrated the instrument by talking, while we were walking, to his aide.

  “I didn’t realize this would be new to you, sir, and I shall see if we can give you two of them with the instructions,” Kettering offered.

  After a review of the troops and a conference with the other officers in charge—their generals were evidently on their way across the ocean if a U-boat didn’t sink them first—we were driven away in our short motorcade.

  “Well,” Bertie said glancing at the pair of walkie-talkies he’d insisted not ride in the boot, but by his boots, on the floor, right here. “I wonder what else we’ll get and learn from the Yankee troops. But I was thinking too, I’ve always had a walkie-talkie since I’ve had you, my darling. And what would I ever do without you?”

  * * *

  Not only Northern Ireland but our dear London was being invaded, but not, thank heavens, by the damn Germans. Rather, the Americans were here in the thousands with yet more to come. In late June, their commander, General Eisenhower, had arrived but we were yet to meet him. For now, Churchill’s information minister Brendan Bracken was giving us a tour of the “American takeover” of Central London. We were in our motorcar with our chauffeur but with Brendan’s narration as if we were tourists or newly arrived Americans. He sat on the jump seat across from us, riding backward as we gazed agape out our windows at the transformation of Grosvenor Square.