The Royal Governess

by Wendy Holden

  Miss Golspie was looking at her with thoughtful dark eyes. “I understand why you feel the way you do. But what about the other end of the scale?”

  “The rich?” Marion was puzzled. “They don’t need my help.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Of course. They’re the elite. They have every advantage.”

  “They have Dr. Stone,” the principal pointed out. “And you just said you felt sorry for the children in his class.”

  “I do. Very.”

  “So what sort of advantage is that?”

  Marion considered this. “I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at,” she said eventually.

  Isabel Golspie leaned back in her chair and smiled. “What I’m getting at,” she said, “is rather radical. I’m trying to suggest that, admirable though it is for you to want to help the very lowest class of society, the top of society need you too. And if you can help them, they can help the others.”

  Marion was completely lost now. But if Miss Golspie was suggesting she go to work at Glenlorne, she could forget it.

  The principal calmly sipped her tea. “You’ve seen what it’s like at an elite school. Those little boys will have power one day. And one of their main childhood influences will have been Dr. Stone. How do we grow a just society out of that?”

  Marion stared down into her teacup, at the brown pool of tea, whose name she could not now recall. But she could remember the tawse, the dunce’s cap, the fear on the little boys’ faces. “I want to work in slums,” she said, stubbornly.

  “Which is precisely why you should teach the wealthy,” suggested Miss Golspie. “Who else is going to tell them how poor people live? About feminism, equal opportunities, social justice and all the other things you care about? Not Dr. Stone, you can be sure of that.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The next day was Saturday, the day when Marion went to visit the slums. As always when she visited Grassmarket, she dressed up. The children living there saw enough dirty rags. She wanted to raise their sights and cheer them up by wearing her smartest, brightest clothes.

  Her new pink frock swirled satisfyingly about her knees. You would never know the pattern had come free with a magazine. Her mother was clever with her needle, and the drop waist fell perfectly. The hem was just the right length to show off her slim legs.

  She hurried along, as if sheer speed would outpace the words of Miss Golspie, which had sounded in her dreams all night. She could see the principal’s argument, which was a typically ingenious one. But her commitment to the poor of Edinburgh was total.

  About to cross the road, she stepped back just in time. A car swept past, all shining panels and royal crest. A recent heavy downpour had left puddles in the gutter, which the tires now plowed through. A wave of muddy water rose upward, spattering her skirt and stockings.

  Marion swore under her breath. She looked after the car, now gleaming in the distance, heading toward the palace at Holyrood. On both sides of the road, people were staring at it. Were the royal family making one of their periodic visits? She remembered George V on Dr. Stone’s wall. Had the pop-eyed king-emperor ruined her dress? She felt a stir of passionate anti-royal feeling.

  “This any use?” The voice came from behind her. A young man was holding out a crumpled handkerchief.

  “Thanks.” She took it hastily, without looking. The frock was her priority. But as she dabbed her gaze kept wandering from the dirty fabric to the footwear beside her on the pavement. The brown leather was scuffed, and one lace was undone. But the shoes were good ones; expensive.

  “I should introduce myself,” he said. “I’m Valentine.”

  “Valentine?” She stopped dabbing and looked up. A pair of bright dark eyes looked back. “As in the card?”

  “Everyone says that,” he replied equably. “As in one of the two gentlemen of Verona, actually.”

  She straightened. “I’ve never seen that play.”

  “Everyone says that as well. What’s your name?”

  “Marion.”

  “As in Maid?”

  “Everyone says that.” They didn’t, actually, but he wasn’t to know.

  He grinned. He was very attractive. There was a crackle about him, an energy. He was shorter than her—most men were—but looked strong. His hair was thick and dark, and a shining hank of it dangled in one eye, giving him a boyish look, although she guessed he was about her age, twenty-two. The scruffy shoes were matched with a battered tweed jacket, creased flannels and a red scarf that glowed like a flame. He was carrying a large green canvas bag, with a flap over the top. Whatever was in it looked bulky and heavy. Books?

  “Are you a student?” she asked him. The university was full of bumptious young men who strode about the streets as if they owned the place.

  He nodded. “Guilty as charged.”

  “English, I’m guessing.”

  “Actually, I’m studying history.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I mean you. You’re English.” His accent definitely was, but not the cold, clipped sort. His voice was low, warm and had a crack in it that was very attractive.

  He looked disappointed. “Is it that obvious?”

  “Well, you don’t sound Scottish.”

  “The accent’s quite hard,” he said, deadpan. “Even for Scots. People in Glasgow seem to struggle with it terribly.”

  This made her laugh. He looked pleased.

  “I’m from London,” he said. “Ever been there?”

  She shook her head. She had never been out of Scotland. Suddenly, she felt confined and provincial. She handed back the handkerchief. “I have to go.”

  “Can I walk with you?” he asked.

  She looked at him. “Why?”

  “Because you’re beautiful?”

  That made her laugh again. What a flatterer. She was not beautiful. She had good big eyes and nice chestnut hair, even if it was now nearly all shorn. Damn that accursed crop. It only drew attention to the fact her nose was on the large side and she was both too tall and too thin. “A long drink of water,” her mother called her.

  Oh well. She did not intend to make her living through her looks. Women had more choices these days.

  “I like your hair,” Valentine said, sending a huge, helpless wave of relief through her. She smiled her thanks and started to walk off.

  He fell into step beside her. This was unexpected, but not unwelcome.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Grassmarket.”

  The dark eyes widened. “You . . . live there?”

  She was tempted to tease him, but found herself telling the truth. “No, I teach there in my spare time.” Now, surely, he would leave her alone. Her interest in the slums shocked most people.

  He stayed where he was, however, and hitched the heavy bag onto his other shoulder. “I’m wildly impressed.”

  Something in the overstatement made her defensive. “You don’t need to be,” she returned stiffly. “I’m studying to be a teacher. Underprivileged children are my area of special interest.”

  Now, surely, he was bound to leave. He kept up, however. “Really?” he said brightly. “That’s absolutely fascinating.”

  “That’s one word for it,” she agreed.

  They had almost reached the top of the Royal Mile now. The sky had cleared completely and become blue, bright and beautiful. To the north, the Firth of Forth sparkled like a carpet of sapphires. To the south, the great bare bulk of Arthur’s Seat rose over the towers and spires. Above the great black stone gateway of Edinburgh Castle, the motto on the coat of arms shone gold in the sun: “Nemo Me Impune Lacessit.”

  “No one provokes me with impunity,” Valentine translated easily.

  “Or,” said Marion, “as the Scots would put it, ‘Dinna mess wi me, or else!’”

  “But they
were messed with,” he pointed out. “Mary Queen of Scots and Charles I lost their heads. And James II and Bonnie Prince Charlie lost their kingdoms. That lot down there”—he nodded toward Holyrood, at the other end of the street—“need to watch out.”

  Marion glanced at her dress. The damp hem, edged with a grayish border of mud, clung to her bony knees. “They do,” she agreed. “Look what they did to my frock.”

  “I don’t mean that,” he said. His bantering tone had gone and he now sounded slightly impatient.

  Beneath the rearing dark hair, his face had become serious. His features were beautifully molded, she saw, his lips full and shapely, his cheekbones pronounced.

  “What do you mean, then?” she asked. “What do they need to watch out for?”

  “For the international proletarian revolution,” he declared.

  She felt a thrill of shock. “You’re a republican?”

  “You’re getting close.” The dark eyes gleamed. “The monarchy’s an outdated institution. How can a system where privilege, power and position come from a mere accident of birth ever be justified? It has no place in the modern world.” He paused before adding, in stirring tones, “As the spring must follow the winter, the triumph of the workers over the ruling classes is historically inevitable.”

  She felt her mouth drop open. “You’re a Communist!”

  “And what if I am? What if I’m a red under your bed?”

  His amused gaze was locked on hers. The thought of him under her bed, and even in it, jumped into her head. She tried to push the image away, but it was too late—something sharp had pierced her, low in her belly.

  He had flipped back the flap of the bag now. Inside were piled not books, but a great many newspapers. They bore a red hammer and sickle and the title Daily Worker. He grinned at her. “Can I interest you in a copy, madam? Something sensational to read in the train?”

  She stared at him. “You’re selling those? Here?” Respectable Edinburgh wasn’t an especially left-of-center city.

  “All members of the party have to. It’s our socialist duty. Spreading the word.”

  “And what is the word exactly?” Marion was curious. She was interested in politics but knew little about Communism, which was something she associated with fierce, bearded Russians, violent uprisings and murdered czars. Not well-brought-up young men from England.

  “Well.” He hesitated. “Do you believe in the equality of the sexes?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And do you agree that everyone should enjoy equal social and economic status?”

  She nodded vehemently.

  “Do you believe in love rather than money?”

  “Er . . .” She looked at him. He was grinning, and a wave of heat rushed up her neck. Just being close to him was exciting. She had never met anyone like this before. She searched for a smart reply, failed to find one and decided she’d had enough of this disconcerting stranger.

  “I have to go,” she muttered, then turned and clattered down the dark stairs leading from the castle rock. She half expected to hear him clatter after her, and her relief that he didn’t was mixed with regret. She realized, feeling the lump in her pocket, that she still had his handkerchief.

  At the bottom were dirty cobbles and dark, rotten entries. These broken houses with their tall gables had once been home to the city’s aristocracy. Now Grassmarket sheltered—if that was the word—its opposite extreme. She took a deep breath and plunged into the warren of gloomy passages.

  The McGintys’ door was on the first floor, up a broken and banisterless staircase.

  The battered portal threatened to collapse at her knock. A small pale face appeared in the gap, its initially suspicious expression flaming with sudden delight. “Miss Crawford!”

  It was Annie who had first brought Marion to Grassmarket, the previous winter. She was eight, but looked three years younger. Her father was an organ grinder who did the rounds of the Edinburgh streets, taking his daughter with him. The day had been freezing wet and the child’s naked feet had looked cold and vulnerable on the shiny pavement. And yet she had sung “Loch Lomond” with a sweet gusto.

  Marion’s own coat was old and her shoes had seen better days. But she was nonetheless grateful for them as she sheltered under a nearby shop awning and pretended to study displays of gleaming silverware. Her chance came when the organ stopped grinding. She turned; the father had stepped away, so she approached. “Why are you not at school?” she gently asked, flinching as she saw the bruises on the child’s thin arms. Beneath her dirty hair spread what looked like a healing gash across her forehead.

  Fear had filled Annie’s large eyes. She would, she said, have liked school but whenever her father went out with the organ, out she must go too. It was at this point that the father had reappeared out of the doorway of a low-looking pub. He had the small, mean eyes of a fighting dog and was wiping his mouth with the back of a dirty hand. He spoke roughly to the child and dragged her off down the street, wresting from his daughter’s thin fingers the sixpence Marion had slipped her. She had followed, at a discreet distance, and found not only Grassmarket, but what she now felt was her vocation.

  McGinty was not here now, thankfully. Annie’s mother, a wan, wasted creature who worked as a seamstress, was lying on the bed, eyes closed. A piece of dirty flannel was tied round her head. “Ma’s head is bad,” Annie said.

  Marion looked at her, wishing she could help. But she was not a doctor, much less a plumber, glazier, carpenter, electrician or any of the other trades that, combined, might make this wretched place vaguely habitable. She was only a teacher, and a not-quite-qualified one at that.

  But that was something. If Annie learned to read and write, and add up a bit, she could get a proper job. Escape from this miserable hovel. Hopefully take her mother with her.

  There was a nudge from Annie. “Are we gan to read, Miss Crawford?”

  “Sorry, Annie. Of course we are.” Marion hurriedly got out The Princess and the Pea.

  It now struck her as an unfortunate choice. But Annie didn’t seem to compare her circumstances with those of the more fortunate. She just loved the pictures of the beautiful carved four-poster with its piles of patterned mattresses.

  “. . . she was a real princess!”

  As the spindly child spelled out the simple words, Marion felt a hard ache in her heart. This was what she wanted to do—help children like this rise up and escape their circumstances. Not the scions of the rich, who could look after themselves. Until the revolution, of course. She smiled, thinking of Valentine and his fiery philosophy.

  She agreed that a revolution was needed. Just not the big, violent sort he espoused, pitting a nation against itself. Her revolution would make more money available so schools could have the books currently in desperately short supply. She had spent evening after evening repairing old ones, gluing pages back in, trying to make them readable. But there was nothing she could do about the leaking roofs, clapped-out boilers and pathetic lack of pens and pencils, or even blackboards. During her training, she had several times drawn maps on the brick walls of playgrounds to explain geography to a crowd of shivering children. The funding of education was a national disgrace. But housing was even more of one. The slums should be destroyed; it was appalling, in 1932, that children like Annie lived in conditions that would have shocked Dickens. What chance did they have, apart from her?

  Miss Golspie, Marion decided, was wrong. Her future was not with the wealthy and powerful, but here, with the poorest of the poor.

  CHAPTER THREE

  She stayed longer than she had intended. Golden evening light was spreading stickily over the Old Town as she made her way home. It was the city’s ancient heart and where its dark glamour seemed most intense.

  “Marion Crawford?”

  A red-cheeked young woman, smartly dressed, her smooth dark hair twist
ed into a bun, was staring at her curiously. “Marion Crawford? Is it really you?”

  “Ethel.” Marion had finally placed the homely face from the back row of a long-ago schoolroom. She and Ethel McKinley were the same age. But not, it seemed, the same anything else. There was a wedding ring, and a sleeping baby dribbled on Ethel’s smart coat.

  Ethel was looking at Marion’s hair. Or at where it had been until recently. “Have you had it all cut off?”

  Marion flushed. As she pulled off the white cloche to reveal the short brown side-parted crop, Ethel’s dark eyes rounded.

  “It’s the fashion,” Marion said defensively. “It’s an Eton crop.”

  “Eaten?” Ethel’s smile was satirical. “Eaten by what?”

  This shaft of wit made Marion impatient. Who was Ethel to poke fun? What had she done with her life except get married? And have babies? Anyone could do that.

  “Eton,” she elucidated. “It’s a school. An expensive boys’ school, near London. I see you’re a mother,” she added, to change the subject.

  Ethel was, like herself, only just twenty-two. Too young to be married with children, especially when there was so much else one could do. Women these days had careers; did Ethel not know?

  “This is Elizabeth,” Ethel said grandly. She shifted the enormous child in her arms.

  “Lovely,” Marion said politely.

  “After the little princess,” Ethel prompted.

  “Oh . . . yes.”

  Princess Elizabeth, along with her baby sister, Margaret Rose, was the daughter of the Duke and Duchess of York. Along with the rest of the nation, Marion had seen pictures of them in the newspapers: white-socked, blue-eyed, golden-haired, frilly-dressed. She didn’t follow royalty, however. She felt an interest in them was for the older generation, not her own. She felt Ethel was rather pitiable.