The Royal Nanny

by Karen Harper

  “I have written the duchess more than once,” she muttered as I sat across the table, keeping an ear cocked for voices in the hall that might mean I should head back to the nursery. “But what can she do from the far reaches of the earth? And it galls me to no end, my girl, that George and May have not yet been named Prince and Princess of Wales. The queen’s doing, I tell you. She’s jealous that the king admires May so much, even gave his permission for her to help the duke read the important documents in the official boxes the king shares with him.”

  Perhaps she is right, I thought, though I dared not voice it, for it seemed to me, even here at York Cottage, the walls could have ears. Alexandra resented May’s interest in affairs of state because they were beyond her, and the king knew it. Or perhaps the queen’s resentment of May stemmed from the fact she had some sway over her, whereas Her Majesty had no way to get back at the king’s favorite mistress and advisor, Alice Keppel, who was known to also weigh in on governmental matters.

  “Now about us getting shuffled off like this . . .” Helene began before her voice trailed off. She shook her head, and her curls bounced against her pink-powdered cheeks. “It’s the way with us in service, isn’t it, even those of us who are more intimate with the royals than, say, the scullery maid or hall boy? I often wonder if, in heaven, there will be these class differences. We are not good enough to mix with some of them, but good enough to bring up their children, the highest in the land too. It does not make people more loyal to be snubbed and ignored. Those boys should be here right now conjugating verbs! Why, I heard that George’s cousin, Kaiser Wilhelm—Cousin Willie, they call him—might visit again, and I want David and Bertie to greet him properly in his native language. Oh, I despair of all these delays!”

  I only nodded at first. Lately, though I kept it to myself—even from Rose and Mabel—I knew all about despair. I fought to keep my mind on the children. “At least Bertie’s stuttering seems to be better lately, though he’s so frustrated by those dreadful splints he has to wear. Helene, he begs Finch to let him do without at night, and sometimes Finch agrees.”

  “Worse, soon we’re to have a tutor to set up a proper schoolroom, and I’ll only have a bit of their time then. Whatever are we going to do and whatever is this world coming to?”

  We both froze as a shrill whoop from David sounded clear from downstairs where their grandfather was no doubt entertaining in fine fashion. Why, I’d heard at a formal dinner he’d brought the boys in and put butter pats on both of his pant legs, then let them cheer to see which would melt and run down first. It was so good to see them happy, but then we were all left with settling them down. The king was already promising them that they would be invited to his sixtieth birthday party and get to stay up late and eat anything they wanted. Now, that could be a battle royal with their father.

  “Oh-oh,” I said, popping up from my chair. “I hear Her Majesty’s voice in the hall. Time to go and pick up the pieces. I had to do that literally last time. Harry grabbed and broke her three-strand pearl choker, and I had to fish them—big as chickpeas, they were—out of the soapy water.”

  I gave Helene’s shoulder a little squeeze and hurried out and down the hall. “Mrs. Lala,” the queen’s voice boomed out, “we have dried and dressed little Harry and put him down for a nap. Mary is playing with her new baby doll. I do believe you have the most wonderful job in the kingdom, caring for those lovely children. Perhaps we should change places for a day,” she said and laughed as I curtsied and edged toward the nursery door. “And I’ve kept count of my little menagerie of agate animals David so adores, and you’ve done a find job keeping him honest . . . you and Finch.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty. I believe he is coming along nicely.”

  I noted her peacock blue walking suit and yellow silk parasol were both speckled with soapy water. Her beige mushroom hat with its cotton netting poufs had slipped to the side, and its three ostrich feathers were dripping water down her back. Rose had taught me well to record fashions for her while she was away. I even jotted things down for her, so wait until she heard this regal, elegant woman looked absolutely bedraggled after her water skirmish with Harry.

  I noted too that she and Lady Knollys had left wet footprints behind them. I shuddered to think what I was going to find in the nursery.

  I went in to see Mary had already put a fashionable, bisque-headed doll with her collection of them and had her nose in a book on horses, for she had taken to reading earlier than the boys. Water blotched the wall and the floor. Harry was indeed tucked into his crib, looking exhausted, no doubt from what must be equal to a swim across the channel.

  Queen for a day, indeed. Me? Even as a joke? Me?

  How Chad would have laughed at that.

  STILL IN A tizzy over the king and queen’s whirlwind visit, once Mary was down for a nap too, I left Martha mending the children’s clothes in my chair in the nursery and went outside to calm myself. It was a lovely day, and I strolled to the botanical glasshouse with its riot of colors and smells. Although flowers were blooming on the grounds already, and I’d heard the ruffled grouse drumming away with their mating calls, I still needed to heal my loss of Chad. This seemed to be the nearest—and most challenging—place to do it.

  I didn’t fear I’d run into him here, for it was one of his busiest seasons stocking the coverts and fields with pheasant, grouse, and woodcocks. Too soon, no doubt even this Saturday, the air would be rent with the bangs of guns bringing down the birds Chad and his father raised. Massive numbers of them were killed at one of the king’s or duke’s hunting parties on the grounds by the male guests, while, during their midday break, the ladies, dressed to the nines, met them in the field for luncheon under a tent before more shooting.

  Once I was in the door, I breathed in the moist, sweet air. A young, brown-haired woman with a cart that just fit between the aisles of plants was loading orchids and clove-scented malmaisons into it, no doubt decorations for the Big House. I’d seen that Queen Victoria’s favorite begonias and petunias had been quickly replaced by more exotic, imported blooms. I’d heard that Queen Alexandra’s favorite color mauve was taking over the old queen’s favorite dark colors in drawing rooms and salons. French instead of German styles, they said, were all the rage. As for this woman, I didn’t want to bother her or speak to anyone, but she turned as if she had sensed my presence.

  “Oh,” she said, with a little gasp. “It’s you. I know who you are.”

  I did not know who she was, but I sensed it. Chad, Mrs. Wentworth had told me, had married the daughter of the man who kept the Big House in flowers, but I’d encountered no one here this late in the day.

  I said nothing for a moment as we studied each other. I know who you are, echoed in my head. But sometimes, I didn’t know who I was. Oh, yes, Mrs. Lala, head nursemaid to the royal children, and blessed to be so. But was I missing something, living here like a nun at Sandringham? Was it enough? Would I look back with regrets? I did now, so terribly torn between who I was and who I could have been.

  “Then you have me at a disadvantage,” I said, though it was partly a lie.

  “I warrant I do now,” she said cheekily and banged an orchid so hard on her cart, the flowers nodded hard in agreement. “My Chad wasted years on you, taking you all about the estate, but I’ll make up for it now.”

  I wanted to say something pert, even hurtful back to her, but I held my tongue. For Chad. For propriety. For my own terror that perhaps I had done a stupid thing not to run after him in this very place and beg him to give me more time, to wait for me.

  Instead, I said to her, “I believe you have a job here on the estate that you must love, just as I do. I wish you well, Millie Reaver.”

  I guess using her name or my kindness took her aback. Her mouth dropped open. I turned to go, but wondered if I should send her the feather picture, or if Chad would be angry at that. I was upset she had ruined the glasshouse as my refuge. As I hurried away, one thing hurt even more than
losing Chad. I pressed one hand over my mouth and one over my flat belly, for I had long ago learned to read the signs: Despite the dustcoat she wore over her dark green cotton dress, I saw Mrs. Chad Reaver was several months breeding.

  TANGLING WITH BOTH the highest woman in the nation to the lowest flower girl, I’d had a difficult day. So I was happy when Finch let David and Bertie run down the hall to the day nursery to join Mary to recite the creed their father had wanted them to have memorized before he came back from his tour of the empire. Especially today, after coming face to face with Chad’s wife, I took it to heart as first David, then Bertie—he stuttered yet a bit—recited it for me:

  “I shall pass through this world only once. Any good thing, therefore, that I can do or any kindness that I can show any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”

  “Very good, both of you,” I told them with a little clapping.

  David said, “Bertie says his b’s too many times like ‘human b-b-being.’”

  “Well, then,” I told them, “it’s good that the creed has very few b’s at the beginnings of words. I think Bertie’s doing much better with that.”

  Bertie beamed but David rolled his eyes. Despite their naughty natures, how I missed tucking them up in bed at night, being with them more. But Finch was good for them, Helene was necessary, and they would soon enough have a tutor for all else but the foreign languages.

  “Lala,” Bertie said, “how about a b-bedtime nursery rhyme song?”

  I pulled both of them closer. Harry was on my lap and the ever-independent Mary hovered. “Well, now that you are both getting older, shall we say the Lord’s Prayer together like we used to?”

  David said, “Is the part ‘Thy kingdom come’ because Father will be king after Grandpapa and then I’m next? You know, this kingdom and the empire is to come for us? Lala,” he added, lowering his voice, “the thing is, I don’t want to be king and have a kingdom. Too much work, even if there are nice parties. I would rather have a bicycle.”

  I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, especially when Bertie chimed in, “Don’t tell Father, but I’m glad I shall never b-b-be king.”

  “Listen to Lala now, both of you. Sometimes we cannot choose what we will be, and life can take a sharp turn or go too fast—like a bicycle going lickety-split on the hill to the station, David. I’m sure you will both be given bicycles soon. But just as you have to obey rules to ride a bike and make the turns that are already laid out on the road . . .” My voice caught. My own life and losses rushed at me. “Well, that’s enough for tonight. Now let’s say the prayer and then off to bed before Finch comes looking for you.”

  I was glad the three oldest closed their eyes for the prayer. I dreaded how I’d explain if they saw my tears.

  Chapter 11

  The first of November 1901 marked the first time I’d ever been to sea—I mean really out on the water where I couldn’t spot land. Once each year Papa had taken us up and down the Thames on the steam launch he captained, but now we were in the English Channel just off the Isle of Wight. Mind you, this wasn’t the real ocean but it seemed like it. Chad had said once he’d like to see the real ocean, far from the North Sea with its winds whipping into the Wash just beyond the estate’s fields and fens.

  I sighed. Chad would like to see the ocean, and I would just like to see him. To say I’m sorry. To wish him well. Maybe it would get me past being haunted, as he’d said, by making the decision I did, a decision I had to make, didn’t I?

  I was with the children and the king and queen on the royal yacht Victoria and Albert going out to meet the return of the steamship Ophir after its eight-month colonial tour. Despite our craft’s seaworthiness, it was tilting through choppy waves. The wind yanked at my hair and hat, and the overhead flags flapped so hard it sounded like cannon shots. But, even as I held little Harry firm in my arms and kept an eye on Mary, I reveled in it all.

  To think that baby Harry had not been walking or talking when the duke and duchess left for their tour, and now he was doing both. What a sacrifice, at least for the duchess, to have missed all that. Yet the letters she wrote to Helene, which she shared with me, were filled with a newfound sense of self-confidence. She had been welcomed and wildly cheered everywhere she went. The newspapers even commented that she was more popular than the solemn duke. Now we waved madly at the still distant Ophir, where the triumphant couple waved at us in return. I searched for Rose among the clusters of staff and servants, but could not pick her out.

  “Too rough to tie up and board from ship to ship!” King Edward shouted to us. He kept his hand on David’s shoulder. “We’ll get on a steam barge to go on over to board the Ophir,” he told us.

  But it was too wild even for that, so it was decided that the barge and the ship would steam up the Solent toward Portsmouth for the reunion. Word of that soon spread, and we were quickly surrounded by pleasure craft of all sorts with people cheering both their present and future kings. As I watched seven-year-old David jump up and down, I saw that they even cheered their future-future king.

  The harbor itself was lined with people six or seven deep. I must say, it was the first time since the death of Queen Victoria that I realized the reach of the monarchy itself, how its popularity was passed on. Bands played ashore—I recognized the tune of “Home, Sweet Home”—and the cheers were deafening.

  Finally, when the ships docked, we all disembarked the barge and boarded the Ophir. The king clapped Duke George on the back and said something to him about soon being named Prince of Wales, that he had earned and not just inherited that honor. The duke seemed deeply moved as he actually embraced David, then Bertie, something I had never seen him do. Bertie managed to greet his father, fortunately without a word that began with a b. Four-year-old Mary smiled when she was handed some sort of Oriental doll by her mother, though she then went back to hiding behind my skirts and then her grandmother’s. But when I tried to hand little Harry to his mother, the child clung to me and burst into tears and shrieks.

  “Oh, dear,” Duchess May murmured as tears filled her eyes. “It’s Mama, my darling, it’s Mama. Lala, I tell you, there is always a price to pay.”

  How well I understood that, but I only tried to assure her, “He’ll be running to you in no time, Your Grace.”

  “He’ll come to me, won’t you, sweeting?” the queen asked the squalling child. She edged in between us and stretched out her arms as little Harry nearly dove into them.

  It was then I realized what Helene had been grumbling about was true. Despite her power and position, the queen meant to hurt her daughter-in-law. I had also seen that, once Alexandra had become queen, she’d stood up to her husband by always being late to his promptly planned events, or not being there at all. She’d also scheduled visits to her native Denmark, leaving her husband behind and snubbing his closest circle of friends.

  Of course, her increasing deafness made it hard for her to cope with a great deal of chatter, but it was her way of getting back at her husband for his women and his Continental ways. Oh, the French loved him.

  Granted, the queen had also been hard on her own daughter, called Toria, keeping her home most of the time and fending off her suitors, but should she not be tutoring and building up May to inherit her position as queen someday? It was one thing to cleverly protest her husband’s infidelity, but must she mow down Duchess May?

  It was then I spotted Rose and managed to edge toward her. She kissed my cheek, and we hugged. “Oh, my goodness, I have so much to tell you, Char! My poor mistress was a triumph on land but spent the hours at sea sick as a dog—mal de mer, the French call it. And wait ’til you see the samples of silks I’ve brought home, and I’m making you a lovely embroidered bed jacket. You can’t be dressed like a children’s nurse all the time!”

  IN JUST OVER a week, November 9, 1901, we all celebrated King Edward’s sixtieth birthday at Sandringham. I say we, for the event with all its g
uests kept the staff busy from before dawn to late at night. Even the children were on edge, for they’d been promised what their grandfather called carte blanche for the occasion, which I heard David tell Bertie meant they could have and do anything they wanted.

  “Mind you, not ‘anything’!” I corrected the boys. “You will get to meet all his guests and have some lovely cake and see beautiful decorations, but you are still to behave.”

  “Righto!” Finch told them. “No bouncing off the walls.”

  “We wouldn’t d-do that!” Bertie protested, but my mind began to wander again. Chad had often said, “Righto.” I felt a stab of pain over losing him at the strangest, random moments. But again, the children needed me. I knew the king’s so-called La Favorita, Mrs. Alice Keppel, and her compliant husband, George, were coming too. Should I explain that to David so he didn’t blurt something out if he was introduced to her?

  “Mrs. Lala”—Finch’s voice interrupted my thoughts—“I said, what time are we to take the children over?”

  “Oh . . . yes. The king wanted them to be there for his investiture of the duke as Prince of Wales at eight.”

  “Goodie!” Mary piped up. “We get to stay up late. And what about Mama? She will be a princess and me too, someday, I vow I will.”

  “B-But,” Bertie said, “I can’t wait ’til Grandpapa and Papa show us how to shoot. Chad’s going to show us the good places to bring down b-birds, that’s what he said, b-bring d-down . . . birds. Then I think we will have them for a b-banquet since they will be d-dead.”

  David rolled his eyes either at Bertie’s naivety or his stuttering, which had grown worse since his father had returned. I swear, Finch looked at me as if he knew all about my agonizing over Chad Reaver. Of course, the belowstairs staff could have told him how we used to go about together.