by Tessa Arlen
She needs to be mentally challenged or there will be hell to pay. I could see Margaret at Cambridge joining the Footlights Dramatic Club. Surrounded by a group of energetic extroverts: people of her own age. Away from the empty pomposity of royal life, she would flourish. Without direction and a purpose, she would become the palace tyrant.
“Lilibet won’t be going anywhere,” I said, knowing that this was not quite true. “There is nowhere for them to live. They will have their own apartments in the palace while Clarence House is refurbished from top to bottom for them. It will take months and months to put that old house to rights; it’s almost derelict.”
After a moment she pulled back and blew her nose. “I’m not a complete baby,” she said furiously.
“No, you are not,” I said. “But you and your sister have both been close to each other all your lives, and it is understandable that you will miss her.” I saw two little girls playing in the rose garden at Windsor Castle during the war years: training dogs to jump over benches, riding their fat ponies across Windsor park. Sitting by the nursery fire in their nighties as I read to them and then, when the air-raid siren sounded, running downstairs to the bomb shelter in the castle cellar, clutching their favorite dolls. Don’t be scared, Margaret—it is just another cowardly German with a bad aim. Jerry couldn’t hit a fly! Lilibet’s voice echoed down through the years.
“I don’t care—I don’t need her,” Margaret said, the tears still streaming.
“You will be busy with your own royal duties. Your own life: dancing the night away at the 400 with all your friends.”
Margaret turned an exasperated face to me. “Crawfie.” She jogged my arm as if I wasn’t paying attention. “I don’t want to do any of those silly things; they are not essential. What I want is my own life!” She trumpeted into my hanky. “I want someone there for me too, my own person. Someone who belongs only to me.”
But who? I stroked tendrils of damp hair out of her eyes. The leftovers from the queen’s cricket eleven? None of them can possibly appeal to her. She is too intelligent, for one thing . . . and much too demanding. “You will meet someone wonderful; I know you will— when you least expect to!”
She balled up my handkerchief in her fist. “And if I ever meet someone in this godforsaken dump, it will be no one they want for me, just you wait and see. Mummy hasn’t a clue about anything except being queen!”
Was there someone now? I studied her face, trying to see if there were secrets concealed behind this outburst of despair. Margaret’s explosions usually revealed what she felt—her expressive face gave everything away—but she was the master of cover-up too, when it mattered. Determined not to be waylaid by the queen and accused of slacking in my duty to my charge, should Margaret suddenly decide to tell us that she was engaged to marry the butler’s son, I considered all possibilities. Every male in the palace, apart from the servants, is over forty! Her tears are simply those of an adolescent girl whose big sister is about to start her life with the man she loves.
Chapter Thirty-One
July 1947
Buckingham Palace, London
I dithered in the doorway of my wardrobe, taking down dresses and then putting them back on the rack. Everything I had chosen to wear for my wedding day looked all wrong. I gazed down at a row of shoes and then up at a line of hats on the top shelf. Which dress, the silver-blue or the gold? Margaret came swishing into the room, and I jumped, feeling guilty. The Windsors’ governess was planning something close to an elopement.
“Crawfie, I can’t believe you are going off to Scotland, not with all this wedding kerfuffle going on.” She plumped herself down on my bed and tried on the hats that lay there.
“I like this one, this pretty rolled straw; it’s a lovely shape, perfect for you.” I turned with my newest hat in my hand, the one I had intended to wear with a silver-blue shantung silk suit.
Margaret shook her head at it. “Horrid, quite horrid. It looks like a helmet.”
“But this style is all the rage now. I thought it looked rather elegant.”
She shook her head dismissively. “Yes, perhaps on a crabby old spinster . . . it’s too severe.”
She put on the rolled straw. “What’s the occasion?”
My cheeks flamed. I had no intention of telling any of the Windsors that George and I were to be married in five days’ time. But I would not lie to Margaret.
“It’s for a wedding,” I said.
She laid a forefinger against her cheek, her head on one side, and batted her eyelashes as she admired herself in the mirror. “This is the hat for you: airy, summery, and so pretty with your oval face.” She got up and transferred the hat to my head. “I would have said almost bridal.” She reached into the wardrobe and pulled out a full-skirted dress in royal blue. “Where did you get this? It’s dreamy: look, it almost floats. Is it a posh wedding?” I shook my head. “Then this is perfect; all you have to do is take the ivory rose off the hat. And tie a blue silk scarf around the crown. See?”
Her woebegone face of the last week was replaced by the enthusiasm of dressing up. Margaret whisked around my room laying out the dress and shoes on my bed. “May I?” Without waiting for my agreement she picked up some nail scissors and cut a navy blue silk scarf in two. I turned to the looking glass. The hat was pretty; its crown was rounded, the brim dipped softly aslant my face. I have a small head and sometimes hats make it look even smaller. The fine ivory straw filtered light to my face, making me look years younger.
Margaret took off my hat and waved the scissors at it in inquiry. “These dreadful droopy roses have to go.” She neatly snipped them off and tied the scarf around the base of the crown in a soft bow at the side. “See? Much better now.”
I watched her serious face as she reached up to put my hat back on my head.
“It’s quite lovely, Margaret!”
“Yes, I know. Now, hold the dress up against you and kick off those black shoes and put on these.” Gray high heels on my feet, indigo blue silk dress, and a pretty hat on my head—I looked bridal, an elegant summer bride.
“You have the perfect figure, Crawfie—you can wear anything. I wish I was as tall and slender as you.” Margaret peered into the looking glass with me. “You might want a little padding in the bosom, though. You know, just to give you something there.” She picked up the remnants of the silk scarf and the scissors. “Come on—you never know who you might meet at a wedding!”
I backed away, laughing. “I love what you have done to the hat. It looks absolutely perfect.” I turned back to the pier glass and then glanced over my shoulder to share my pleasure in the outfit with her. But she had gone over to the window. All interest in her creation had evaporated in one of her startling changes of mood. Her brows were down, and so were the corners of her mouth as she glared at a bird who had the gall to perch on a twig outside my window.
“It’s all such rubbish, really,” she said. “Mummy is making such a fuss over something only she cares about—cake! Thousands of ration coupons are being squandered on a cake! Do you know it’s nearly fourteen feet high? Why don’t they do what everyone does these days? A cardboard replica with just real cake on the bottom layer? Isn’t that the done thing in these days of grueling austerity?”
I didn’t say that if this were her wedding cake, twenty towering feet of sugar, butter, eggs, and flour would not be tall enough. She came back to my dressing table and tossed the rose she had discarded there onto the floor. I hadn’t the heart to tell her to pick it up, or not to lounge round-shouldered on the stool in front of my mirror. “When I get married, I will choose my own dress, and it won’t be made by Norman Hartnell.” She propped her chin on folded hands and stared into the mirror. “It will be made by Christian Dior, with a fabulous full skirt so I can sweep down the aisle in splendor.”
I sat down next to her on my dressing table stool and met her eyes in the ref
lection of the mirror. “Norman Hartnell is the court dressmaker. Of course he will design Lilibet’s gown. Her dress must be symbolic of our ancient traditions. We are Great Britain, proud and enduring. Not France, broken and capitulating. Anyway, Dior’s New Look squanders yards and yards in the skirt. It would be an insult when people can’t buy new clothes!”
She sighed as if I had let her down. “But we can use up thousands of coupons on a stupid cake.” She got up from the stool. “When are you going up to Scotland?” she demanded.
I jumped to my feet, galvanized back into activity. “Tomorrow morning, first thing.”
“And when are you coming back? I’m amazed Mummy is letting you go at a time like this.”
But I was too busy deciding what to pack for our honeymoon to answer her. In twenty-four hours I would see George again. In another twenty, I would be standing beside him at the altar of our local church. I put on my wedding hat, and laying my forefinger against my cheek, I tilted my head to one side and fluttered my lashes to peals of laughter from Margaret.
July 1947
Loch Goil, Scotland
The half-timbered lodge at Loch Goil stood on the lip of a deep lake. There was an air of genteel dilapidation in its wide, creaking pinewood boards, the peeling paint of heavy sash windows quivering in their frames in the bright summer breeze that blew down the valley from the hills.
An elderly porter with skinny, bent legs greeted us formally in the lobby, ignoring the trail of rice that fell out of George’s pocket when he pulled out his wallet. He insisted on carrying our suitcases and, as soon as we had washed our hands and returned to the dining room, seated us at a little round table graced with a red rose in an alcove away from the whispering silence of the other guests twice our age.
“Roast duck tonight, sir. Mrs. Cullum does it with a simple port-wine sauce. Would you care to see the wine list?”
“This old building may have seen better days, but there’s nothing wrong with their cook.” George lifted his glass of red burgundy: “To my wife. To our life together.”
Our honeymoon! I smiled as I remembered my mother’s delighted face as we said goodbye to her and half of Dunfermline at the Kincardine hotel. “No, my darling girl, don’t you give it a second thought. Off you go—good Lord above, you only have ten days before you have to go back to London. Betty and I are going to put up our feet and enjoy a nice little glass of Glen Avon.”
Two hours later we unlocked the door to our bedroom with a heavy iron key that had been forged in the time of the Gaels. The giant brass bed had been turned down and the much-mended velvet curtains drawn against the dark glass. I sat down on the bed’s edge and leapt to my feet again. Every coiled spring rang out its welcome. George put his hand in the middle of the mattress and bounced it up and down. A chorus of deeply solemn, rhythmic creaks.
“It makes complete sense that the bed would be geriatric too.” George moved the nightstand into a corner and slowly slid the mattress off the bedframe and onto the floor. His face was scarlet when he stood upright. “I’m so sorry, Marion, but I think the mattress has done for me.” Giggling like schoolchildren, we undressed and got into bed.
* * *
• • •
In the morning, I stood in the cool draft from the window and pulled open the curtains. The lake was smooth and still; its polished surface reflected the black and slate blue hills that ringed it around. I watched the morning mist lift up through the tops of the pines and the stars fade as the sun came up in a pale lemon sky, flushing the mirror surface of the loch to a deep rose.
I turned back into the room. The top of George’s head was barely visible on the pillow. I crept back to our mattress on freezing feet and searched in vain among the sheets and blankets for my nightgown. Thoroughly chilled, I slid in beside him.
“Dear God, woman, are your feet made of ice?”
“I think you had better warm me up, George; there is a draft coming through the window frames straight from Greenland.”
He pulled me toward him and wrapped his arms around me.
At the more civilized hour of eight o’clock, we were awoken by a gentle knock on our door and a throat being cleared loudly in the corridor.
I lifted my head from the pillow. “I’m praying it is someone with tea and hot buttered toast with marmalade.” My stomach growled, desperate for food.
George sat up in bed, groped around for pajamas, and had to make do with his dressing gown. His hair stood up in a coxcomb on his head. “It had better be a bit more exciting than toast,” he said as he tied the belt around his waist. “I ordered the works: bacon, eggs, black pudding, and all the rest. We have to keep our strength up for all the hikes I have planned.” He was awake and alert as he scuffed across the floor in his old felt carpet slippers. “A nice brisk walk along the loch this morning with a picnic, a long afternoon nap, and then it’s to work on dinner.” He swung open the door, and our waiter trundled in a trolley so laden I thought its wobbling wheels might spin off and bounce across the room.
George poured tea and brought it to me. “Now, what can I give you? There’s bacon, sausage, scrambled eggs, mushrooms, and what looks like a nice rich black pudding. Everything? Ah, Marion, I knew you wouldn’t disappoint me!”
Chapter Thirty-Two
August 1947
Buckingham Palace, London
The train pulled out of Stirling station, leaving my husband standing on the platform waving his hat in farewell. I could not bear to pull in my head as I watched the lonely figure recede in a pall of oily gray smoke.
I settled in a corner of the empty carriage. The next three and a half months of my life would be one long round of lists, errands, plans, counterplans, and finally a wedding. But more than all the preoccupation with the width of the wedding dress’s skirt, the height of the cake, and the length of the guest list, my greatest concern was for Margaret.
The twitch of anxiety that had run like a misfiring motor became a full-throttled throb of concern when she came into my room the day after I got back to the palace: defiantly smoking a cigarette, determinedly offhand about the exhaustion of wedding details that took up every waking hour, and as fragile as Venetian glass about her role as chief bridesmaid.
“Far too many of us, really.” She blew a thin plume of smoke and put her cigarette out in the ashtray. “Lilibet couldn’t have chosen a more scatterbrained bunch of girls. But there you are, Crawfie; there is no end to the mindless fanfare.” She counted on her fingers. “Princess Alexandra of Kent, she’s the best of the lot, and that’s saying something; Lady Caroline Montagu-Douglas-Scott, unreliable as they come and bound to do something really daft at the last minute; Lady Mary Cambridge, I mean blah blah blah never stops talking; the Hon. Pamela Mountbatten, who knows absolutely everything, which makes her nothing but tiresome; the Hon. Margaret Elphinstone”—she lifted her nose with her forefinger—“such a rotten little snob; and Diana Bowes-Lyon.” She waved her hand dismissively at her cousin, too weary to mention her flaws. “William and Michael as page boys—so you can imagine the chaos.” She held up her hand before I could say something to retrieve goodwill. “And the pièce de résistance is that Philip is insisting that that silly ass, David Mountbatten, is his best man, so we can only hope that they are not too hungover after the stag night to find their way to the abbey.”
Underneath the throwaway manner and the makeup, I saw the dark smudges under her eyes and the tense fingers that played with her cigarette holder. I had been away for two weeks, and she had lost weight—too much of it.
“What fun we will have!” I was determined that somehow I would help this reluctant bridesmaid find something to enjoy about her sister’s wedding. She had worked hard to champion Lilibet’s cause, to see her through to marrying Philip; there must be some way she could enjoy the triumph. “Is the dress decided on?”
She nodded. “Dull as ditchwater, even th
ough he insists his inspiration was taken from Botticelli’s Primavera.” A snort of derision, but her restless eyes held a bleak expression.
“Have you seen it?” I asked, and she nodded.
“Well, not exactly seen the actual dress, no one is allowed to, but I have seen the drawings. No one”—she pointed her empty cigarette holder as if it was a spear she was about to throw—“not even you, Crawfie, will see it before the day. I only saw the drawing because I insisted. Hold on a moment . . . where are you off to?”
Did I tell her now, or should I wait until I had met with the queen?
“I shouldn’t be more than a few minutes . . . I have an appointment with Her Majesty.”
She got to her feet, brushing down the front of her dress. “Well, don’t let me keep you.”
“Wait for me here?”
She laughed. “I don’t know what she has to say to you, but it’s probably about the cake. She is obsessed with it! The icing, the decorations, the emblematic theme. She is the Norman Hartnell of cakes.” A dismissive wave of the hand as she threw herself down on my sofa and picked up a magazine.
* * *
• • •
The queen, surrounded by fabric samples, barely looked up when I came into her sitting room and made my half curtsy.
“Crawfie, thank goodness you are back. Margaret has been impossible. So disobliging and critical. What on earth are we to do with her?” She picked up two almost identical swatches of baby blue silk and held them up to the light.
“She’ll settle down soon enough when it’s all over, ma’am.” I had decided not to talk about Margaret until I had been congratulated on my marriage.
“This one is better for me, don’t you think?” She held the two folds of fabric up against her face, one on each side.
