The Grand Duchess of Nowhere

by Laurie Graham

  So Missy was put privily away and didn’t come to Ernie’s great celebration. She was starting to show.

  I didn’t sleep the night before Cyril and Boris were expected. I was suddenly full of fears and doubts. What if Cyril didn’t adore me any more? All those girls he must have seen on his travels. And what if I’d grown old and undesirable without even realising it? Ernie was so nonchalant about it all, so amused at my nervousness, I began to hate him for inviting them. And then when they did arrive it was earlier than they’d said, and with a dozen other guests, so there was no time to make a pretty speech or compose myself in a flattering attitude. We just greeted each other as cousins do and afterwards Ernie whispered to me that I had the stain of a coffee drip on my chin.

  Sunny, for once, lived up to her name. She was very happy to be home. She loved the church, ‘her church’, she called it, she approved the changes we’d made to the kitchen garden, and she was relieved to see how fit and well Ernie was looking. That’s what she said. She took my hand and thanked me for nursing him back to health.

  ‘Our treasure,’ she called him.

  She said, ‘I do love my new life, but I miss Ernie most dreadfully. You must come to Russia as often as possible. Every year without fail.’

  Of course Ernie had no intention of going to Russia.

  ‘Ridiculous language, filthy climate,’ he’d say. ‘And as for the people, well they’re just not like us.’

  And having topped out Sunny’s Orthodox church he felt even less of an obligation.

  ‘Let her come here,’ he said. ‘We can now offer her everything she requires and without the risk of frostbite.’

  Cyril and I still hadn’t talked. It wasn’t that he was avoiding me. We were constantly part of the same huge, jolly gathering. Ernie had so many jaunts and activities arranged that there was never a quiet moment. But then one morning when the men were going out to a horse sale, Cyril pleaded an earache and an urgent letter to write and Ernie advised him against going out in an east wind.

  ‘Stay indoors, old boy,’ Ernie said. ‘Write your letter. Ducky will provide you with everything you need.’

  Cyril came and found me in my drawing room.

  ‘Can’t believe I’m doing this,’ he said. ‘It feels like shockingly bad form.’

  He hugged me anyway.

  He said, ‘Is it my imagination or is Ernie trying to throw us together?’

  I said, ‘He’s trying to be nice to me. He’s still enjoying a resurrection glow. He nearly died, you know? So now he’s being everything considerate, to show his gratitude. Health restored, second chances and all that.’

  ‘Still,’ Cyril said, ‘it’s a pretty rum way for a husband to carry on. Has he … you know?’

  Ernie’s resurrection glow had actually brought him to my bed, twice. He needed a son. But on both occasions he’d presented himself like a man awaiting execution.

  Cyril said, ‘What a terrible affliction he has. It really defies comprehension. How can he resist you?’

  Then we wrapped ourselves in each other and a velvet curtain and stayed there, out of sight and pressed against each other for I don’t know how long, until someone came in to put wood on the fire and must have been surprised to hear the curtain sneeze. And so, when Cyril and Boris left, to go to Paris, I was in a state of bliss. We were promised to each other. One day, whatever the price, however long the wait, Cyril and I would be together.

  Ernie said, ‘Observation: you’ve been uncommonly gay since the morning Cousin Cyril faked earache and availed himself of your escritoire. Did you let him dip his pen in your inkpot?’

  I threw a hairbrush at him.

  ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘You’re cross. Does that mean he did or he didn’t? Didn’t, I’ll wager. So punctilious, our Cyril. Not like Boris. I don’t think there’s a woman born that Boris wouldn’t oblige. Well, you can’t say I didn’t give you the opportunity. I think I was rather generous. Under my own roof and so forth.’

  It was Ernie’s way of telling me that he was going to continue his resurrection celebrations in his own, private, special way. We spent Christmas apart. I went to Coburg to be with Mother and Pa and Missy. Ernie spent it with a dragoon called Dieter.

  11

  Missy was near her time. Under the circumstances – paternity of the child shrouded in winter fog – one really might have expected her to be in Mother’s bad books but instead I was the one who received a telling off. Mother was angry about Cyril’s visit to Darmstadt.

  ‘After all the advice I’ve given you,’ she said. ‘The way to avoid temptation, young lady, is not to invite it into your house.’

  I said, ‘I didn’t invite him. He came with Boris and Boris was Ernie’s guest. Besides, I haven’t done anything wrong. What about Missy’s mess?’

  That was Nando’s fault, Mother said.

  ‘When a wife gets into a muddle, it’s her husband’s job to correct her.’

  Missy herself was entirely unrepentant.

  ‘Why such a fuss?’ she said. ‘Babies all look alike anyway.’

  Not if they have Nando Hohenzollern’s ears they don’t. Missy was just cross at having missed Ernie’s big party.

  She said, ‘Boris Vladimirovich must have been so disappointed not to see me.’

  I allowed her to enjoy this fantasy though I’m sure Boris had never given her a thought.

  ‘And what about Sunny?’ she said. ‘I hear she’s consulting some special French doctor. He’s supposed to guarantee you get a boy, though heaven knows how. Smuggles one in in a warming pan, probably. Why doesn’t Sunny do that anyway? It’d be a lot cheaper than paying a doctor.’

  I said, ‘Never mind about Sunny, what about you? What are you going to do?’

  ‘Do?’ she said. ‘What do you think I’m going to do? Have this damned baby and go back to Romania.’

  She said Nando didn’t make fusses or study the features of new babies.

  ‘He just does whatever Uncle King Carol tells him to do. When one has waited for a throne one doesn’t do anything to mess up one’s prospects.’

  I said, ‘But are you happy?’

  ‘Happy?’ she said. ‘No idea. I never think about it.’

  Missy’s baby was born at the beginning of January. A girl, Marie, but to be called Mignon to distinguish her from all the other Maries in the family. I saw no particular resemblance to Boris Vladimirovich but neither did the child have Nando’s ears so God is good. Encouraged by Mother, Missy lingered at Coburg until March when Nando came to take her home.

  ‘Hey ho,’ she said.

  By June Nando was back in Coburg and so was I. Pa was dying.

  But Missy had been forbidden to travel by King Carol. He wanted her where his courtiers could watch her closely. I don’t suppose it occurred to King Carol that Missy didn’t need to travel to find adventures, nor that she was perhaps taking life gently so soon after childbirth. It was a particularly unkind punishment, the price Missy paid for the Mignon muddle, not to be allowed to see Pa one last time, but even the approach of death doesn’t necessarily bring out the best in people. While he was still able to speak, Pa gave instructions that Mother was not to be admitted to his bedside. After twenty-five years of marriage, after five children, he refused to see her.

  At first Mother said it was a misunderstanding. Pa’s speech had become indistinct. The doctor had misheard.

  ‘Royal Highness,’ he said, ‘I am not deaf.’

  Mother cried a little. Then she said, ‘Your father means to spare me. That’s what it is. He doesn’t want me to see him suffer. Ach! What a good man he is.’

  I’d never heard Mother speak so lovingly of Pa.

  I said, ‘You know, sometimes cancers wander. Perhaps Pa’s has gone to his brain and makes him say things he doesn’t really mean.’

  ‘Yes!’ she said. ‘Of course that’s it. How clever you are, Ducky. I’m so glad you’re here with me. Such a comfort.’

  During Pa’s last days, Mother and I gr
ew closer than we had ever been. Mother, who was accustomed to being obeyed, seemed quite cowed by Pa’s doctors, but I promised her that she would be with Pa at the end. I’d make sure of that.

  *

  Pa had asked to be taken up to Rosenau where the air was cool and fresh. The only company he seemed to want was a silent doctor and a good supply of Herr Merck’s morphine. Nando was allowed to enter the sickroom. Heaven knows why. Pa didn’t even like him.

  Mother reminisced about Pa. So handsome! So dashing! It was funny to imagine my stout, growling father as a dashing suitor.

  ‘Penniless, of course,’ she said. ‘But I knew he was the husband for me.’

  Then came the day Pa’s physician said we might be allowed to visit.

  ‘See,’ Mother said. ‘His mind has cleared. I knew it would.’

  What a shocking sight Pa was, shrunken and grey. I heard Baby Bee catch her breath. We took turns at his side.

  I told him I loved him, which was true, and that Missy was on her way, which wasn’t. I showed him a picture of an elephant and a sailing ship that Elli had drawn for him. And Mother told him his colour was much improved and he might even be well enough to sail at Cowes if he’d only get out of bed and go for a walk. Then she spoke to him very quietly, in Russian. I don’t know what she said, but he managed a little smile. He died that evening while we were at dinner. Nando was the first to be told.

  I said, ‘We should have been sent for.’

  ‘The death struggle,’ Dr Moller said. ‘Very distressing for the ladies. Better to see him now he’s at peace.’

  Perhaps. It’s just that he didn’t really seem like Pa any more. He didn’t even smell of Navy Cut.

  *

  So Affie was gone, which left a small, sad space, and Pa was gone, which made me ache to hear him rumble, ‘Needs a Good Strong Dose’ one more time, but Grandma Queen hung on and on. A wire was despatched to inform Her Majesty that she had outlived yet another of her children.

  Letters from Ernie’s sister, Vicky Battenberg, were our main source of information from England. Vicky said Pa’s death had quite knocked the stuffing out of Her Majesty. She had lost interest in life and yet somehow couldn’t let go of it. Ernie predicted another winter would finish her, and in our letters Cyril and I began to speak of future plans. Grandma Queen would die and Uncle Bertie Wales would become King. After a decent period of family and Court mourning, I would be granted a divorce. There would then follow a period out of the public eye, appropriate to a fallen woman who hopes to make good her reputation. Then Cyril would marry me.

  It was all so frustratingly far in the future. Be patient, darling, Cyril used to write. We’re still young. This is the way it has to be. Let no one ever say we haven’t been considerate and discreet.

  *

  Mother made the surprising decision to go to England for Christmas. After twenty-five years of gentle bickering, she found she missed Pa terribly. She couldn’t bear to stay in Coburg without him and Nice seemed to have lost its usual attraction. United in grief over Pa’s death she and Grandma Queen had buried the hatchet. Mother took Baby Bee with her. Poor Bee. She was seventeen, so in Mother’s eyes the matter of a husband was becoming quite urgent, and if there was one activity likely to restore Grandma’s appetite for life, it was a little matchmaking.

  As Ernie said, it sounded like the Christmas from hell. Osborne House, in winter, with duelling mourners.

  Ernie had his own Christmas torture to get through. After much pleading from Sunny we were going to Russia.

  ‘Oh God,’ he groaned. ‘Those endless church services. And they can’t even get the date right. Christmas in January? What a benighted country.’

  We stayed out at Tsarskoe Selo in Uncle Paul’s recently vacated house. Sunny had had her way. When Uncle Paul asked for permission to marry Olga Pistohlkors, Emperor Nicky had refused to countenance it and so they had gone quietly away, Uncle Paul, Olga and their baby, Vova, to Paris where a Russian Grand Duke could live as he pleased. What a price Uncle Paul paid though. He left behind his older children. All the years he’d been a widower he’d farmed out Dmitri and Marie. They’d lived in Moscow with Aunt Ella and Uncle Serge. Occasionally they’d gone to St Petersburg to stay with Sunny and Nicky. They were growing up. Marie was ten, Dmitri was nine. Better not to disrupt the life they’d become accustomed to. Better not to expect them to fit in with a stepmother. Especially a divorcee. Everyone said so.

  Ernie and I saw the Imperials almost every day. We had snow fights and went sledding with Emperor Nicky and his three little daughters. Sunny just watched us, bundled up in furs. She was expecting again and in the very gayest of moods. She was confident she was carrying a boy. Her French doctor had assured her the signs were auspicious.

  I asked her about it.

  ‘I ate lots of red meat,’ she said. ‘And I douched with soda water. Do you see how low I’m carrying? That’s a sure sign it’s a boy. Are you and Ernie still trying?’

  ‘Sort of,’ I said. ‘No hurry.’

  The New Year came in and Mother still lingered at Osborne, dragging Grandma Queen out for little carriage rides every day and poring over the Almanach de Gotha every evening, trying to raise her spirits. Vicky Battenberg wrote, If Ducky’s Mama has anything to do with it, Her Majesty will live to be a hundred. What an unlikely pair they are!

  On 18th January, we received the news that Grandma Queen had suffered a seizure, brief and nothing too serious. SITTING UP. TAKING BROTH, according to Mother’s telegram.

  On the 23rd, I heard Ernie’s valet go in to him very early. It was a hunt day and I was already up and dressed. I thought perhaps Ernie had decided to ride out after all. But a few minutes later he appeared in the doorway to my room, huddled in his dressing gown, hair standing on end.

  ‘Sad news, Ducky,’ he said. ‘GQ’s gone. In her sleep. Sunny just telephoned. She’s in pieces. So, no hunting today.’

  I felt nothing. After all those conversations I’d had with myself that began, ‘When Grandma Queen dies …’ the fact of it fell very flat. It wasn’t the end of my wait. Only the beginning of the end. Sunny, though, was inconsolable.

  ‘Darling Gran-Gran,’ she kept saying. ‘She was like a mother to us and now we shall never see her again. How shall we manage without her, Ernie?’

  Ernie wore his most compassionate face all day though I could see his patience was wearing thin. Emperor Nicky hovered around Sunny wondering what to offer: hot, sweet tea? Cool compresses for her temples? Tender words? Poor Nicky. He must have been worried that grief would cause Sunny to miscarry the son for which she had so carefully douched.

  Of course I knew perfectly well how I should manage without Grandma Queen, but there was no one I could say that to. Cyril was far away, on exercises in the Black Sea. When I saw Aunt Miechen she did give me a significant look, but neither of us said anything.

  Just when I should have been feeling optimistic, I was forced to take to my bed. My tonsils were inflamed and I ran a high fever. Emperor Nicky felt unwell too. So it was decided that he would be represented at the Queen’s funeral by his brother, Grand Duke Misha. Ernie and Misha set off the next morning and travelled together to Windsor. And that was the start of a new headache for Mother though none of us foresaw it. Baby Bee fell for Grand Duke Misha, but Misha didn’t fall for Baby Bee.

  *

  I stayed on at Tsarskoe Selo until my fever subsided and I was well enough to go home.

  ‘We’ll be company for each other,’ Sunny said. ‘We’ll help each other through this sad time. You know it was always my wish that we should be better friends.’

  I saw then Sunny’s strange and lonely life. She disliked the Winter Palace and stayed in the country whenever possible, but even there her world was bleak. The Alexander Palace was no place to make a home. Sunny had made great efforts at cosiness – her sitting room, the children’s playroom, Nicky’s study – but they were tiny islands of comfort in an ocean of marble and gilt. I gave her many
opportunities to complain about her lot but she never took them up. Russia, Nicky, babies, everything was wonderful. She would have liked to go to England for the funeral but her duty was to the health of her unborn child.

  ‘The next Tsar,’ she said. ‘That’s what matters above all. Dear Gran-Gran would have understood.’

  Sunny and Ernie had known a different Grandma Queen than I had. She’d always been gentle with them, because they’d been so young when their mother passed away. They hadn’t seen her hard face as I had.

  ‘Marriage is sacred. Happiness is irrelevant.’

  12

  When I returned to Darmstadt, there was a letter waiting for me from Cyril. His ship would be putting in at Toulon in February and he expected to get some shore leave. Was my mother likely to be taking her usual winter rest in Nice? And if so was there the remotest chance I could join her there? In fact Mother had gone to the South of France directly from Grandma Queen’s funeral and had taken Baby Bee with her in the hope of distracting her from her crush on Grand Duke Misha. I told Ernie I thought I might visit them there. He guessed the reason at once.

  ‘I suppose the good ship Cyril Vladimirovich will be in port,’ he said. ‘Well, please yourself. But you may not take Elli with you. She’s to stay here with me.’

  Ernie had changed. With Grandma Queen gone he ceased pretending that we could get along. Every evening, as soon as he had read Elli a bedtime story, he went out and left me alone. And when he went to the country he insisted on going alone, no matter how many Meissen figurines I threw. I called him a beastly invert. He called me a sulking child. Windows rattled. It made no difference. He always went off and did as he pleased.

  All of Darmstadt knew about our frightful rows and of course I was held responsible. It was one thing for the servants to know, but something else entirely when people talked about it in the street. Even the George Buchanans had heard, and they’d left Hesse by then and were living in Rome. Some thoughtful friend had written to tell them that Grand Duchess Ducky had hurled an antique French spear at Grand Duke Ernie and almost killed him, which was completely inaccurate. It was a German halberd and Ernie was already through the door when it struck. My aim was good but my timing was slow.