The Royal Governess

by Wendy Holden

  Would Princess Elizabeth enjoy “Letter from Bobs”? Did the Yorks even have dogs? She knew so little about where she was going, Marion thought.

  She dozed and read as the hours passed. People came and went. She must have fallen asleep, because suddenly she woke just as the “King’s Cross” sign slid past the window. They were arriving in London.

  She had been looking forward to seeing it. But now the necessity of moving bags, finding tube lines and making connections superseded all else. She made the Windsor-bound train by a whisker, and an hour or so later, as it rounded a bend, she saw, in the distance, a vast mass of turrets, walls and towers. Against the garish stripes of sunset, battlements showed like black teeth. A flag fluttered. She had traveled most of the length of England, and now she was nearly here.

  Windsor and Eton station was quiet and dark. As she tugged her case onto the platform, someone in a peaked cap and buttons bowled up.

  “Miss Crawford? Blimey, young, aintcha? Was expecting someone ancient. This yer luggage?” His cawing London accent fell unfamiliarly on her ears.

  “Yes, yes and yes,” said Marion, amused.

  She had never traveled in a car before. It was exciting, if noisy and smelling strongly of cigarettes. They soon left the town behind. Peering outside, she could see nothing but darkness and the faint outlines of trees.

  “We’re ’ere,” said the driver, as a pair of white-painted gates flashed past. Ahead was a large building blazing with yellow lights.

  A dignified figure in a tailcoat appeared in the doorway, light gleaming on his silver hair. “Miss Crawford? I am Mr. Ainslie, the butler. Their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of York are in London this evening.”

  Relief swept Marion. She could go straight to bed in that case. She was by now so tired she could have lain down on the floor.

  “However,” Mr. Ainslie continued gravely, “Her Royal Highness the Princess Elizabeth wanted to wait up for you. If you would follow me upstairs?”

  Marion stumbled crossly after Ainslie through a vast, ornate room. Things now were beginning to take on the aspect of a dream. Faces loomed from gold-framed oil paintings on the wall. A row of huge arched windows looked into the black night.

  After several passages and flights of stairs Ainslie stopped at a white-painted door that opened immediately upon his knock. A large black-clad figure loomed in the entrance. It had a square jaw and a glinting eye, which looked Marion up and down coldly.

  “Miss Crawford, Mrs. Knight. Princess Elizabeth’s nanny.” Ainslie then shot off as if he couldn’t get away fast enough.

  Marion watched the glinting eye take in the details of her worn old coat. Then the broad black back had turned and the solid legs in their sensible shoes were stomping off. Marion followed her through a pink-walled day nursery with a table and chairs, bookshelves and cupboards lining the walls. Were the three tons of toys in those, and the French dolls with their writing paper?

  It was simpler than she had expected, similar to what she had known at Rosyth. The night nursery was indeed almost identical: a soft brown room with a fireplace before which stood a clothes airer, rug and armchair. Opposite it, in a small, iron-framed bed, a small figure with a mop of curly hair was sitting up.

  Marion stared at her in surprise. The world’s most famous six-year-old looked different from the frilled doll of the photographs. She wore a simple nightdress patterned with small pink roses and held two dressing-gown cords in her hands. They were attached to the ends of the bedknobs and she was jerking and pulling them vigorously. “Trot on!” she commanded in a high little voice.

  It was an unexpectedly comical sight. “Do you usually drive in bed?” Marion asked.

  The blonde curls nodded. “Oh yes. Always. I go once or twice round the park before I go to sleep. It exercises my horses.”

  Mrs. Knight now stepped forward. “This is Miss Crawford.” She sounded as if she were announcing something dreadful.

  The princess dropped the dressing-gown cords. She looked at Marion properly for the first time. She had her mother’s keen, rather piercing blue eyes. “Why have you no hair?”

  There was a muffled snort from Mrs. Knight. Ignoring her, Marion pulled off her hat. “I’ve enough to be going on with. It’s an Eton crop.”

  The princess seemed satisfied with this explanation. She nodded and picked up the reins again. She negotiated what was evidently a dangerous and difficult corner before asking, in her direct way, “Are you going to stay with us?”

  Marion hesitated. “For a little while at least.”

  Mrs. Knight now barged forward. “Time for us to go to sleep,” she said sternly.

  The princess allowed herself to be tucked away. Then, suddenly, she bounced up again and looked straight at Marion. “Will you play with me tomorrow?”

  “Er, yes. Of course.”

  A huge grin flashed across the child’s face, changing its serious appearance completely. The effect was dazzling. Marion was still recovering when the princess added, happily, “Good night. See you tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Marion slept deeply. She awoke slowly, like someone surfacing from the depths of the ocean. She found herself in an unfamiliar bed, staring at a strange white ceiling. Where was she?

  In a tremendous flash it all came back. Royal Lodge. A dragon in the nursery. Once around the park before bedtime.

  She swung her legs from beneath the blankets and headed to the window. Behind the flower-print curtains, sunlight burst through leafy branches. A lawn stretched beyond, leading to flower beds. Birds hopped about.

  A noise, faint but definite, caught her ear. A child’s shriek, perhaps. Alarmed, she pulled on her ancient dressing gown and headed to the door. The corridor was empty but the noise was louder. Screams, definitely. Thumps and yells.

  She thought of the little girl in the bed driving her team. The monkey-like grin. Was she in danger? Why were there no staff about? Barefoot as she was, Marion hurried down the corridor toward the sound.

  Downstairs and round a bend, an open doorway gave into a large bedroom. In the middle of a blue carpet, back turned, stood a child in a rose-patterned nightdress. She held a large, lace-edged pillow.

  “Elizabeth?”

  The princess whirled round, the color high in her cheeks and her blue eyes shining with excitement. “Miss Crawford!” she exclaimed, just as a smaller, plumper child appeared from behind the door.

  With a howl of triumph she thumped her sister hard with a pillow.

  “Margaret, you beast! I wasn’t looking!”

  As the elder princess, yelling vengeance, gave chase to the shrieking younger, Marion now noticed the big wide bed. Beneath a blue silken bedspread huddled two large, shaking lumps. As pillows were now smashed against them, two protesting red faces emerged from under the covers.

  She was looking at the Duke and Duchess of York, Marion realized in astonishment. “Surrender!” the younger princess was demanding, threateningly waving her pillow at her parents.

  “Never!” The duchess was mimicking a dramatic film heroine, the back of her hand to her forehead, dark hair tumbling about her cheeks.

  “Beg for mercy!” Elizabeth commanded her father, who was covering his face with thin hands as she thwacked him with all her might.

  “N-n-never!” he gasped, before descending into a fit of coughing.

  A pillow hurled by Margaret now slammed into the polished dressing table, sending all its contents onto the floor. A crystal perfume bottle smashed against a silver-backed brush. A silver lid fell off a jar, spilling talcum powder. Squeals of delight greeted this destruction.

  Marion stood, inhaling the heavy scent rising from the stain on the carpet. She had no idea what to say. The duchess now spotted her. “Miss Crawford! What must you think of us?”

  The duchess wore thick silk pajamas. Marion briefly won
dered what she thought of her, in her threadbare dressing gown, her large pale Scottish feet bare on the carpet.

  The duchess burst into peals of laughter. “I should have mentioned that we always romp in the morning! We want our girls to have as normal and ordinary an upbringing as possible!”

  As Marion returned to her room, the shrieks, whoops and yells echoed down the corridor behind her. It was all rather unbelievable, the duchess’s explanation most of all. Was it normal and ordinary to thwack your parents with pillows first thing in the morning? And who tidied up the bedroom after these romps? She was glad it was not her.

  Her confused spirits rose when she saw that a large brown tray had been left outside her door. On it was arranged, with exquisite precision, a silver teapot, crested china cup and saucer, two boiled eggs, a silver toast rack and butter stamped with the royal crest. There was a snowy napkin in a silver ring and a newspaper that seemed to have been ironed.

  Inside her room, Marion spread out the paper on her small but serviceable desk and read it as she ate. The news was not good. The unemployment figures had risen yet again and were now approaching three million. The north of England, her native Scotland and the valleys of South Wales were the most depressed areas. Benefit cuts were making matters worse and several hunger marches from all over the country—Scotland, South Wales, the North, anywhere that unemployment and poverty were biting the hardest—were marching to London in order to draw attention to their desperate plight and demand the abolition of the hated Means Test. Introduced in 1931 as part of a sweeping general austerity package, this granted minimal unemployment benefit only after an invasive and humiliating examination of the applicant’s entire household. Pensions, savings, even family possessions were taken into account. Marion read of the little bands of walkers, many dressed by the collective efforts of their families—the father’s trousers, the brother’s coat, the uncle’s boots—and felt a wave of hot anger. How could people be still living like this, in 1932?

  She looked at the silver knife in her hand, and the butter with its royal crest, and felt her previously keen appetite fade away.

  She had just finished dressing when the door to her room burst open. “Miss Crawford! I’ve come to take you to the Little House!”

  Princess Elizabeth wore a pink dress with laces up the front and white cap sleeves. The effect was vaguely Tyrolean, and very fussy. Her hair was impeccably brushed and her shoes shone like mirrors. Two white socks were pulled up to spotless knees.

  She looked an entirely different child from the pillow-hurler in the bedroom.

  “What’s the Little House?” Marion asked.

  “The people of Wales gave it to me,” the princess said airily. “Wasn’t that nice of them?”

  Marion glanced at the newspaper, with its pictures of the pinch-faced people of the principality. “Very.”

  “Come on!” urged the child, excitedly.

  Outside in the garden, flowers were in full bloom that were yet buds in Scotland. Royal Lodge in the daylight was, Marion saw, not white at all, but painted a pale pink. With the row of arched French windows and the finials on the balustrade it looked unexpectedly exotic, something of a fairy pavilion, especially surrounded by many-colored rhododendrons and with a background of soft green trees.

  “I bet you enjoy climbing those trees,” Marion remarked as they passed a magnificent Lebanon cedar.

  “I’ve never climbed a tree, actually.”

  “Never?”

  “Alah wouldn’t like it. I’m to stay on the paths and not get my clothes dirty.”

  “Allah?” What did the God of Islam have to do with it?

  “Mrs. Knight,” said the princess. “Look! Here’s the Little House.”

  The Little House was actually quite big, much bigger than Marion had imagined. It was in fact an entire house, built to scale for a six-year-old girl. It had a small square chimney and walls of palest blue, into which, on the ground floor, two large white lattice bay windows protruded. Three further windows were set at first-floor level beneath an undulating roof of golden thatch. Before the house were a low brick wall and a sundial in a circle of grass. There was an elegant front door, above which words were painted in black Gothic letters.

  “It says ‘YBwthyn Bach,’” explained Elizabeth. “That is Welsh for the Little House. Do come in. Mind your head!”

  Stooping, Marion followed Elizabeth through the little front door and looked around in amazement. The scaled-down world was complete in every detail. There were little chairs, a child-sized grandfather clock, blue chintz curtains at windows that really opened.

  Elizabeth was flicking the lights on and off. “It has electricity.”

  Marion remembered the newspaper. The hunger marchers. Carefully she said, “Did you know that most people in Wales don’t have that?”

  A pair of earnest blue eyes were turned on her. “But they’ve plenty of coal, Miss Crawford. Granny told me. She’s been down lots of mines.”

  Marion blinked. The child clearly hadn’t the foggiest idea how some people lived. It was time she found out. “Most of the mines have shut now,” she said flatly.

  Elizabeth clapped her hands. “Goody! The miners must be very pleased.”

  “Er, not exactly.”

  The wide blue eyes looked accusing. “But Granny said it was a horribly dirty job. Isn’t it?”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “There you are, then.” With an air of abundant satisfaction, the princess went skipping off into the tiny kitchen.

  Marion hesitated before following. She felt rather stunned. With such lack of awareness, where did one even start?

  Perhaps with the draining board. “Speaking of horribly dirty.” She drew a finger through the thick dust. “Why don’t you clean it?”

  “Clean it?” The princess looked surprised. “I don’t know how.”

  Marion looked at her. “Oh dear.”

  “What’s the matter?” This was uttered anxiously.

  “The people of Wales would be upset if they knew how dirty it was. The people of Wales might ask for it back.”

  “Oh, Miss Crawford!” The princess was jigging from foot to foot in panic. “What shall we do?”

  Marion was opening the tiny cupboards in the kitchen. An array of brushes lay within, plus a scaled-down mop and bucket. “Clean it, of course.”

  The princess proved to be a gifted housewife. She particularly enjoyed making the windows squeak as she rubbed them down with newspaper. She plumped the pillows on the child-sized four-poster bed upstairs and even sprinkled the little lavatory pan with a miniature canister of Vim. In the kitchen’s miniature sink, she got to work on the sticky crockery from the miniature oak dresser. “This is such fun,” she gasped, grinning her huge monkey grin, her arms up to the elbows in soapsuds.

  “Isn’t it?” agreed Marion, trying not to think of Annie McGinty, forced out charring with her mother.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  It was lunchtime at Royal Lodge and Marion was standing behind a chair in a dining room with a fine view of the garden. She had been surprised at the invitation to eat with the family. “Their Royal Highnesses are very informal,” Ainslie had instructed. He seemed unaware of the contradiction that sounded like.

  Informal! The waiting Marion took in the polished table set with gleaming glasses engraved with the lion and the unicorn. The charger before her was ringed in gold and painted with an exquisite rendering of a pheasant. She turned it over. “Meissen, 1787.” The plate was set with military exactness between a full set of gleaming silver flatware, which spread out like wings on either side. Flanking a carved sideboard heavy with silver were two footmen. Marion tried not to stare. She had not realized, outside of fairy tales, that footmen actually existed. These ones were very tall, and looked similar, as if they had been picked to form a pair. They wore black tailcoats and breeches
, scarlet waistcoats, brilliantly white shirts and stockings and buckled pumps. And was their hair actually powdered? It was strangely white, and stiff.

  She tried to concentrate on her file of notes. She had taken great pains over her curriculum. Every morning would consist of three half hours of different subjects, followed by a break for games in the garden. Then reading.

  But the most important lessons would be in the afternoons, after lunch, when the program of Elizabeth’s education in real life would begin. After the footmen and the lunch plates, but most especially after meeting the princess, it now seemed more vital than ever. She was a real little girl, in the most unreal of settings.

  Marion flicked through her notes. She had slipped in, almost as an afterthought, a copy of Teacher’s World. She found “Letter from Bobs” and read it again.

  Princess Elizabeth now whirled into the room. “Why are you laughing, Miss Crawford?”

  Marion showed her. The princess’s eyes widened as she read it. “I love Bobs!” she exclaimed.

  Her fervency was striking. “Do you have a dog?” Marion asked.

  Elizabeth shook her head sorrowfully.

  “Perhaps you should get one. There’s plenty of room here. We could take it for walks.” Then she remembered that by the time any dog arrived, she would be gone.

  Fortunately, they were now interrupted. Voices could be heard approaching.

  “Yes, but you know P-Papa,” the duke was saying. “He’s used the same c-collar stud for fifty years, and the same brushes, with only one re-b-bristling.”

  As she saw her daughter, the duchess beamed. She wore a dress of misty blue, with white high-heeled peep-toed shoes.

  Above his snowy collar, silken tie and immaculate tweeds, the duke looked fragile. Perhaps the pillow-battering this morning had taken its toll. He seemed wearier than Marion remembered him being at Rosyth. He held a cigarette in his thin fingers, streaming smoke.