The Royal Governess

by Wendy Holden

  “Oh, Crawfie!” Elizabeth cried one day, watching with burning eyes a particularly sad little specimen staggering away from the traffic lights pulling a huge cart. “If I am ever queen, I will make a law against all this. Horses should have a rest too!”

  “But you aren’t going to be queen,” Marion pointed out. “Your uncle is the heir to the throne.”

  Elizabeth did not seem to be listening. “And I shan’t let anyone dock their pony’s tail!”

  If she left, Marion wondered, who would play with Elizabeth as she did? She had encouraged the serious princess to be silly by being silly herself. Elizabeth could, at first, hardly believe that Marion would allow her to slip a pair of red reins with bells on over her shoulders and gallop her round the house. “Alah would never let me do this to her!” she whispered.

  “Really?” A smile tugged at Marion’s lips. “You do surprise me.”

  “Paw the ground, Crawfie! With your hoof! Like this!” She demonstrated with her small foot on the carpet.

  Deliveries was the other favorite game. The bells on her reins jingling, Marion would allow herself to be driven round the garden to the rear of the Piccadilly house, “delivering groceries.” She would be patted, given her nosebag and jerked to a standstill as the princess stopped at imaginary houses, handed over imaginary goods and held long and intimate conversations with imaginary customers. She seemed to have an advanced understanding of customer service, and the importance of keeping clients happy. In a different life, Marion thought, she would make a great saleswoman. Or perhaps the head of a large business. But without her help, would Elizabeth ever know these other lives even existed?

  And in this life, anyway, she needed sensible clothes to play in. Marion had tackled the duchess on the subject but was told to ask Mrs. Knight about it. Mrs. Knight had advised her to ask the duchess. And so it had gone on, even though the sooty bushes behind the Piccadilly house left streaks and smears all over the lace and chiffon.

  Then there was Tom. He didn’t want her to leave either. He made a comic sad face. “I’ll miss you.”

  “Aww!” She made a comic sad one in return, to hide the fact she would miss him too.

  The first outing to the National Portrait Gallery had led to others. The British Museum, the Victoria and Albert, walks across the parks and, today, tea in his flat. It was in a small, shabby apartment block near King’s Cross Station but, in an inversion of Valentine’s foul room in its magnificent university building, was pin-neat. The tiny rooms were immaculately clean, and the coverlet on Tom’s narrow bed was so straight and taut you could have bounced a penny on it.

  “What’s that noise?” she asked. There was a thundering sound above, as of a jangling piano on a wooden floor, and people stamping and shouting. Tom’s windows were rattling with the force of it.

  He rolled his eyes. “The upstairs neighbors.”

  She stared. There was no noise like this in Piccadilly. “Can’t you tell them to stop?”

  He gave her a wry grin. “Be my guest. But I wouldn’t recommend it. They’re not usually entirely sober this time of day.”

  “But how do you sleep?”

  He shrugged. “I’m used to it.”

  “Can’t you move?”

  “I could. If I had the money.”

  Marion, reddening, wondered why she had assumed that everyone in London lived like the Yorks did, amid the carpeted peace of many-roomed mansions.

  On a shelf near his bed was a photograph of a pretty young woman. Her insides clenched. “Who’s that?” she asked, attempting insouciance.

  “My sister. Kate.”

  “Does she live in London?”

  He shook his head. “I’m from Cornwall.”

  So that was the accent. “How romantic,” she said, thinking of craggy rocks dashed by turbulent seas, of picturesque villages in the folds of rolling hills.

  “Not if you’re Kate,” Tom said shortly. “She’s got TB.”

  Marion’s hands flew to her face. She stared back at him, aghast. “I’m so sorry. How absolutely dreadful of me.”

  “You weren’t to know.” His eyes were on his sister’s face. “But you’re right, it is dreadful. Everything I earn here goes toward her treatment. That’s one reason I’m doing the photojournalism, to get some extra money for Kate.” He smiled at her. “Want to see my latest, by the way?”

  The minuscule bathroom, in which two people could hardly stand together, doubled as a darkroom. It had a red bulb, and lines of drying photographs were strung up near the ceiling. He took them down and showed her some of the pictures he had taken recently: poor children in the East End of London, stick-thin, sunken-eyed and shoeless. She looked at him with brimming eyes; his face was right next to hers. “They’re very powerful.”

  He pulled her to him and kissed her. She clung to him as if he were the answer to every conundrum and contradiction swirling within her. She allowed him to lead her into the little bedroom, gently undress her and make love to her. He was unhurried in all the ways Valentine had been abrupt. Generous as Valentine had been selfish. Desire thundered within her, drowning out even the piano music coming from above. When it was all over, she lay in his arms. She felt calm, and complete, as if something long searched for had finally been found.

  Tenderly, he nuzzled her hair. “Don’t go,” he said.

  * * *

  • • •

  MARION NOW FELT pulled in any number of different ways. To help her decide, she made a list of pros and cons. The best pros were Elizabeth, Tom and “Operation Normal,” as he called her program of outings. The worst cons were the continuing absence from college, from Grassmarket and from her mother. She added Queen Mary, Alah and the lack of direction from the duchess. Without support, what could she do?

  She looked at the list when she had finished it. The pros and cons seemed fairly evenly balanced. Perhaps she should just leave things as they were. Let events take their course. They were drifting, but not unpleasantly.

  Then she squared her shoulders and raised her chin. She was not here to drift. She had come here with a mission. But as she was not allowed to perform it, she should just go back.

  That weekend, at Royal Lodge, she went to the duchess’s study. It was a charming, octagonal room with tables heaped with books and paneled walls hung with paintings. An air of comfort pervaded, along with the powerful scent of roses. Within a green marble fireplace, a fire flickered calmly.

  At the back by a tall, pink-curtained window, a big mahogany writing desk was crowded with photographs and personal effects. “Crawfie!” The duchess looked up, her ivory skin glowing in the light of a fringed lamp. “Do you want to talk to me?”

  Marion hesitated. The strong, clear words in strong, clear tones that she had rehearsed in her bedroom had deserted her. All the power in the room had shifted, or so it seemed, to the woman at the desk. But it was hers, surely, Marion thought. She was the one leaving. “It’s just . . .” she began.

  The shining head behind the desk graciously tilted. “Just?”

  Marion stared down at her hands, twisting together. “My trial period is over, ma’am.”

  “Is it really?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I . . .” But the words about returning to Scotland and her intended career path died in Marion’s mouth. The blue eyes fixed on her had a mesmerizing power.

  “But of course you must stay,” the duchess said mildly, as if the whole affair had been settled long ago and couldn’t be more obvious or simple.

  Marion made an effort to rally. “But, ma’am. I—”

  The telephone on the duchess’s desk now shrilled. She picked it up and exclaimed, with delight, “Hello, you old fruit!”

  The interview was clearly over. It was, Marion thought as she left the room, almost as if the duchess had a button under her desk to arrange convenient telephone interruptions. />
  She returned to Edinburgh, ostensibly to collect her things but really to think it all over again. “I’m really not sure,” she said to her mother. “I always meant to leave after a month.”

  Here in Scotland, with almost the length of England between them, the duchess’s strange, blue-eyed power had no dominion. Tom, on the other hand, did. She desired him and admired him equally; his pioneering photography was fascinating and his devotion to his sister touching. She would have liked to inspire his devotion herself, but she had to be sensible. Attractive though he was, she hardly knew him. She could not base a decision this important on the strength of a few dates. Her previous romantic experience attested to that.

  The worst pull was Elizabeth. But now, back in the city of Annie McGinty, there was no real contest. With so much misery and poverty, how could her work with the Yorks be justified? Even if she got permission for them, what difference would a few tube trips make? How could she return to London?

  She would stay in Scotland, Marion decided, and do what she wanted, what she had always intended: go back to college, to the children in the Grassmarket. Take up where she had left off. Her mother, royalist as she was, had surely had enough of living alone now. She would be glad to have her only child return.

  “You should go back to them,” Mrs. Crawford said, to Marion’s astonishment.

  They were standing in the little stone-flagged galley kitchen. Mrs. Crawford was frying bacon and eggs for breakfast. On the scrubbed wooden table next to the green enamel cooker, two plain white plates stood ready. It was, admittedly, very different from the Meissen and footmen of life with the Yorks, not to mention food cooked by a professional chef. Marion pushed this reflection aside.

  “Don’t you want me home, Mother?”

  “Of course I do.” Her mother sighed, then knit her brows determinedly.

  Marion was exasperated. “Mother, I’m not staying in London just so you can tell the butcher’s queue that I work for the royal family.”

  “It’s not that. You said yourself that you haven’t finished the job with Elizabeth. You’ve hardly started, in fact.”

  “You sound like Miss Golspie,” Marion said sulkily, regretting she had admitted these details.

  Mrs. Crawford nodded. “As a matter of fact, Miss Golspie’s been to see me.”

  “Has she?”

  “She was just passing, she said, and dropped in for coffee.”

  Marion raised an eyebrow. This seemed unlikely. Moray House College and the Crawfords’ little terrace were on opposite sides of the city.

  “I mentioned that you were coming home. We had quite a chat.” Her mother’s eyes were bright with the remembered importance of being sought out by so great a person.

  Marion folded her arms. “And?”

  There was a hiss as Mrs. Crawford lifted the bacon from the pan. “They need you, the Yorks. The princess in particular needs you.” She picked up the plates and carried them into the tiny sitting room, where the folding table had been put up.

  Marion followed with the teapot, which she set down next to a copy of The Times. Its presence was unexpected; her mother’s preferred reading matter was the picture papers.

  The front page described how another hunger march, reaching London, had had the petition it carried, intended for Parliament, confiscated. Scuffles were reported. There was a photograph of police on horseback armed with long batons; another of a group of officers dragging a young man along the ground. She wondered if Tom had taken it. A powerful longing went through her.

  “This is a dangerous situation,” said Mrs. Crawford, nodding at the paper. “The country’s becoming divided between the haves and the have-nots.”

  Marion could hear Isabel Golspie’s voice in this. The principal had clearly been working on her mother. The newspaper was there on purpose, part of an argument. “But what can I do?” she asked, stubbornly. “I’ve tried my best.”

  “So try again! Get that wee bairn out from behind those palace walls,” her mother instructed. “Like Miss Golspie told you to.”

  “But they won’t let me!” Marion cried.

  Her mother’s eyes flashed. “So make them let you! You’ve got to show her how ordinary people live. She’s the future of the royal family. But if they go on like this, they might not even have one.” She waved a reddened hand at The Times.

  “You don’t seriously think there’ll be a revolution?” Remembering her mother’s contempt for Valentine, she almost wanted to laugh.

  “Well, it happened to the czar! And he was the king’s own cousin!”

  Marion’s insides froze. She thought of Elizabeth. She knew, from the romps, what shrieks in the Royal Lodge corridors sounded like.

  She felt manipulated. Cornered. “But my vocation’s here,” she began, and stopped. She sounded unconvincing, even to herself. “I want to work in Grassmarket. Get that wee bairn out from behind those walls. Slum walls, not palace ones.”

  Her mother gripped her hand. “It’s time to make your vocation somewhere else. Make a different sort of a difference.”

  * * *

  • • •

  NEXT DAY, ON her way to Grassmarket, Marion mulled over this exchange. Her mother, obviously backed by Miss Golspie, had made a powerful case. Could she really do more good in London than here?

  She was thinking so intently that she did not notice the figure approaching her in the street. And when it did, recognition was slow to come.

  “Ethel?” Her old classmate was barely recognizable. Previously plump, glossy of hair and bossy of manner, she seemed like a balloon with the air gone. She was thinner, her shoulders were slumped and the formerly shiny bun was straggly and uncombed. The once-bright brown eyes were faded, and there hung about her an air of exhausted defeat. Had she been ill?

  “How’s the family?” Marion asked.

  “Jock’s minding Lizzie,” Ethel said.

  “Good.” More men should share the childcare burden, Marion felt. But why was Ethel’s stare so hostile?

  “It’s not good,” she blurted. “He’s lost his job. The shipyard cut back—he’s a ship riveter—and . . .” She bit her lip hard.

  “Well, that’s hardly his fault,” Marion robustly assured her.

  “No, it’s not,” Ethel agreed, heatedly. “But a lot of folk seem to think it is. Talking about lazy idle loafers on the dole.” She stopped, her eyes glistening.

  Marion stared. The right thing to say seemed suddenly elusive. Ethel did not especially seem to expect it, however.

  “We’ve had to throw my mother out.” Her voice was choked with anger. “That bloody Means Test.”

  “What do you mean?” Marion knew the Means Test assessed household income by means of invasive, humiliating questioning. But why would Ethel have to eject her parent?

  “They deducted money because they said she was a lodger. But she wasn’t paying anything. She doesn’t have anything. None of us do.” Ethel raised a reddened hand to her mouth.

  Marion stared at the pavement. She had no idea what to say, except that on no account would she be revealing who she worked for.

  But Ethel seemed to know. She felt her hand being seized, suddenly. The other woman’s defeated expression had changed to one of sudden, violent hope. “I’m sure the king would help us,” she said desperately. “Will you put in a good word? Please?”

  * * *

  • • •

  MARION WENT ON to Grassmarket with a sinking heart. It was like living in a nightmare; other people’s nightmares, but nightmares all the same.

  At the McGintys’, things were not only as bad as anticipated, but worse. McGinty had returned with his barrel organ, but brought no new prosperity. Rather, he drank away what little his daughter and her mother brought in. “He’s like a de’il when he’s been out smelling the cork,” Annie reported.

 
; Thin before, she was skeletal now. Her cheeks sported the accumulated dirt of weeks and her rusty hair stuck out in all directions. Her thin cotton gown was all but worn out and her shawl was threadbare. When she walked she shuffled along in case her large men’s slippers, found on a rubbish heap, should slip off her feet. Mrs. McGinty, formerly an assiduous mother, was now clearly too ill to be one. She was almost blind and suffering from neuralgia. To help with the pain, she had tied a dirty scrap of flannel round her head, but clearly it made little difference.

  * * *

  • • •

  BACK AT HOME, with her mother, Marion flung herself on the sofa in despair. “It’s so unfair! I want to do something about it!”

  Perching on the sofa arm, Mrs. Crawford stroked her daughter’s troubled head. “But you can’t do anything. Not here.”

  True, Marion knew. She could not get Jock his job back, and even teaching Annie was out of the question now given her charring obligations and the return of her obstructive father.

  “I’ll visit them for you,” her mother promised. “I’ll keep an eye on Annie.”

  Marion raised her head. “Really?” Her mother had never set foot in Grassmarket in her life. She was amazed and touched. “You’ll do that? For me?”

  Her mother nodded. Her eyes were glistening. “For you, for little Elizabeth. So you can do what you meant to do. Marion, you have to go back.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  She traveled back south through a lush late-summer landscape. On the rack above her seat was a suitcase with a new outfit. Marion herself was in need of a replacement wardrobe, but these clothes were not for her. They were many sizes too small and for someone else entirely.