The Royal Governess

by Wendy Holden

  Her stomach swooped and swirled, which was just as well, given the food now borne in with due ceremony by two footmen. She eyed a brown crust of potatoes with some sort of mince underneath.

  Tommy leaned toward her. “Shepherd’s pie,” he said in a low voice. “Probably made with actual shepherd.”

  Wizened chops were laid to rest on a thin bed of gray mashed potato. Any hope that Windsor would be somehow exempt from the rationing that gripped everywhere else was unfounded. But she did not care. She was full of a barely contained excitement. This dark, confined wartime world suddenly seemed full of thrilling possibility.

  Tommy was keeping the table amused with a laconic ease that amazed her, given the circumstances. He described how the king, giggling helplessly, had knighted him on a train during the tour of North America.

  “And how is Lady Lascelles?” Dudley asked, suddenly. “Is she here at Windsor too?”

  Marion held her breath. She felt as if she were a glass vase, about to fall off a shelf.

  “In the country,” Tommy said smoothly, and she felt her whole body relax.

  A conversation began about the queen. “The mere sight of Her Majesty raises morale,” Sir Dudley said of her visits to Women’s Royal Voluntary Service, Air Raid Precaution and Red Cross units the length and breadth of London.

  “But she never wears a uniform,” Sir Hill pointed out. “There’s the brilliance of it. Her Majesty is always dressed as a civilian while the king is always in uniform. So, while he stands for all the fighting men, she represents every British housewife rolled into one.”

  “The most dangerous woman in Europe,” Sir Dudley said with a smile, struggling with his chop.

  It was agreed that the king was finding the war much more difficult. “Without the queen, he would collapse under the strain” was the general view.

  “Those big blue eyes of hers,” Kelly remarked dreamily, helping himself liberally to more port. “But she’s as tough as old boots underneath.”

  Blue eyes and a will of iron, Marion remembered. That is all the equipment a lady needs! Pudding came: a gray jelly. “Reminds me of Dead Man’s Leg at school,” remarked Sir Hill, peering at it.

  “We used to call it Nun’s Toenails,” said Sir Gerald, in his Irish accent.

  When, at long, endless last, the final glass was emptied and they all stood up, Tommy turned to Marion. “Perhaps, this being the blackout, you might allow me to escort you to your door, Miss Crawford.” His tone, so deceptively formal and distant, sent a delicious shiver down her spine. A powerful desire filled her. This was the moment!

  They filed out. Polite good nights were exchanged with the others. The heels of handmade shoes crunched off down stone-floored passages. They were left alone.

  She waited. He was hard to see in the dark. Just the tip of his cigarette, marking the location of his mouth. She swallowed.

  She jumped as his fingers touched her elbow. “This way, Miss Crawford.”

  “Marion, please,” she said, giggling. Perhaps the wine had gone to her head slightly.

  He steered her along, talking about gardening. “Last weekend Joan and I were carting potatoes, of which we have a fine crop. I was continually struck by the resemblance that General de Gaulle has to the average potato, although the potato is the more malleable of the two.”

  “What?” He was making the smallest of small talk, and mentioning his wife into the bargain. And yet he had stared at her breasts, pressed his leg against her. She was sure of it. Or was she? Had she, once again, misinterpreted the situation?

  He left her at the entrance door to her tower. She stood, watching him walk into the shadows. “Good night, Miss Crawford.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  The girls had taken to wartime with surprising ease. They seemed to part with their past, pampered life with never a backward glance, and certain aspects of the new one they positively enjoyed. The official recommendations, in Lilibet’s case. They satisified her strong desire for order. Poring over maps, she quickly established the positions of all the first-aid posts, fire stations, telephone boxes and police stations in the surrounding areas.

  “If you know where they are, you may be able to save someone a few precious moments in an air raid,” she would solemnly inform Marion, who nodded just as solemnly, although the likelihood of the princess having to tell anyone anything was remote. It was a shame, in a way. Lilibet would have made a formidable air raid precaution warden.

  She took the strictures on saving energy just as seriously. She watched Alah like a hawk to make sure the bath was not run over the requisite five inches and made cardboard rings to slip under the lightswitch covers. They were in the shape of a face, the knob forming the nose. “Please Turn Me Off,” in the princess’s distinctive hand, was written round the edge.

  “Is this from food groups one to four?” she would inquire at mealtimes, consulting her ration book and staring at the butter with the royal monogram supplied by the Windsor farms. “Remember,” she would add soberly, quoting the slogan on the posters, “you can use every bit of a pig except its squeal!”

  Margaret was more taken with the idea of fifth columnists, of dastardly enemy agents disguised as nuns or mothers with babies. “Bet you anything there’s a machine gun under that bedding,” she would hiss whenever they passed a woman pushing a pram in Windsor Great Park. From time to time Marion and the girls would come across little bands of Local Defense Volunteers drilling with whatever equipment they had been able to find: kitchen knives lashed to broom handles, pitchforks, garden spades. An elderly sergeant major strode up and down in front of them, shouting, in a strong Cockney accent, “What we want is not to shoot the Bosche but bayonet ’im! That’s what the Germans don’t like, cold steel. They don’t like it up ’em! You stick it in the throat, in the lungs or in the stomach, giving it a twist as you pull it out.”

  They would straighten up proudly and salute on seeing the princesses. “Gosh,” Margaret would mercilessly remark as they walked on from the motley collection of old men and young boys. “Hitler’s not going to have a very hard time if he gets here, is he?”

  “Margaret!” exclaimed Lilibet. “Don’t be so mean!”

  Scorching day followed scorching day. They Dug for Victory in the castle gardens, using the gardening skills honed at Royal Lodge. Later, after hearing the teatime news reports, Lilibet moved flags about on a big map, following the movements of the various armies. The reports were not encouraging. Hitler had taken the Netherlands and Belgium. He was advancing through France.

  One day, the sound of shattering explosions and gunfire, and endless RAF coming over, made the princesses pause their game of Hide and Seek. “Crawfie, whatever is it?”

  The answer came later as they listened to Children’s Hour on the radio. A new voice came on, a man speaking in a firm, calm but urgent way.

  “What’s going on?” Margaret demanded indignantly from the corner of the nursery where she was playing with her Spitfire pilot. “What’s happened to Larry the Lamb?”

  “Shhh!” said Lilibet, frowning. She was listening hard.

  “Something about boats?” demanded her sister. She was listening herself now, repeating the words. “If you have a boat capable of crossing the Channel, take it now to the coast of France and bring home some British soldiers.” She stared at the others, dumbfounded. “But why? What for?”

  Lilibet was quicker on the uptake. Her face, as she looked at Marion’s, was drained of all color. “Because the Nazis have driven us back.”

  Marion’s throat was blocked. Tears pricked at her eyes. She blinked them back determinedly and tried to smile reassuringly at Lilibet.

  But the princess was ashen. “That means,” she said slowly, “that Hitler now occupies the entire seaboard from Iceland down to Spain. Oh, Crawfie!” Her blue eyes filled with tears. “That’s absolutely terrifying. What’s goin
g to happen to us?”

  Margaret, behind her, had gotten up. She stood there in her summer frock, brows drawn and eyes flashing. “We’re fighting with our backs to the wall. Death or glory!” she declared in resounding tones. They were currently reading Swallows and Amazons, and Margaret had immediately seized on bold Nancy Blackett as a literary soul mate. “Any invader who sets foot on British soil is for it! No mercy! We will be shooting parachutists down and throwing hand grenades about!”

  Lilibet’s white, scared look had gone. She grinned her trademark broad grin and assumed a familiar Cockney accent. “What we want is not to shoot the Bosche but bayonet ’im! That’s what the Germans don’t like, cold steel. They don’t like it up ’em! I know where to stick it, too.”

  She beamed at her sister as they chorused “In the throat, in the lungs or in the stomach! Giving it a twist as you pull it out!”

  The girls’ fighting spirit reflected that of the rest of the country, in particular Prime Minister Churchill, whose speech to the Commons in the wake of Dunkirk was quoted on the radio news. “We shall go on to the end . . . we shall defend our island whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills, we shall never surrender.”

  “Never!” agreed Margaret, waving her pencil. She was drawing a Squander Bug copied from government posters that urged people to save for the war effort and not waste their money on consumer goods. The bug had teeth and the Führer’s face, with swastikas all over its belly.

  Even so, it was looking increasingly as if Britain might be fighting on alone. France’s surrender to the Germans had been a shock, and the Americans, despite the queen’s efforts and Norman’s hostess dresses, were still pursuing a policy of neutrality. When would, as Churchill’s speech had continued, the New World, with all its power and might, come to the aid of the old?

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  The princesses stared at the round metal container in amazement.

  “A biscuit tin!” said Lilibet. “Papa wants you to bury the crown jewels in a biscuit tin?” Her manner was sufficiently Lady Bracknell to make Marion smile. A smile was also twitching the thin, scholarly face of Sir Owen Morshead, Librarian of Windsor Castle and the man chosen to put the king’s most recent orders into action.

  “It’s the perfect size, Your Royal Highness,” he explained as the footman holding the container descended into the cellar that had been specially dug into the castle’s chalk foundations and secured with two double metal doors.

  “I think it’s a good idea,” said Margaret stoutly. “Hitler will never think of looking for the Black Prince’s Ruby in a biscuit tin.” She paused and looked thoughtful. “Unless he likes biscuits, of course.”

  Margaret herself was extremely fond of biscuits, to which rationing had severely restricted her access. Marion let her continue to wonder aloud about what kind of biscuits the Führer preferred. Far better that than having her realize that the need to bury the jewels was tacit acknowledgment that an invasion could be imminent. Photographs of Hitler in St. Edward’s Crown were not even to be thought of.

  Hitler, of course, had not bargained for any of this. His expectation that Britain would roll over and surrender after the fall of France had proved something of a misjudgment. Churchill had once again swung into action with stirring oratory about this being Britain’s finest hour. His determined hope exasperated many who felt the fight was over. Even the king and queen had their doubts.

  “He’s just told me that success consists of going from failure to failure without any loss of enthusiasm,” the king told his wife after one prime ministerial meeting.

  “He told me that if you’re going through hell, keep going,” replied the queen, with a shake of the head. “But he’s right, Bertie. What else can we do but Keep Buggering On?”

  Meanwhile, in the skies above southern England, the Battle of Britain had begun. Vicious dogfights between the Luftwaffe and the Royal Air Force became part of everyday life. “Hitler wants to destroy the RAF so he can invade,” said Lilibet. “But he’s chosen the wrong country!”

  Her favorite plane was the Lancaster bomber. Margaret, meanwhile, became obsessed with Spitfires. “Is it true,” she demanded, “that they were named after someone’s bad-tempered little daughter?” The king had told her this and she was obviously envious of the child concerned. She was determined to contribute to the Spitfire fund launched by Lord Beaverbrook, the Minister of Aircraft Production. Housewives were being asked for saucepans and kettles, zinc baths, anything that could be melted down to make an airplane.

  “What have you got under your frock, Margaret?” the queen asked one lunchtime as her youngest daughter left the table, walking in a strangely careful fashion and clanking gently. After a determined but fruitless resistance, Margaret lifted her dress to reveal a quantity of silver cutlery pushed down the sides of her knickers.

  “Wh-what—?” began the king.

  “The Spitfire fund!” Lilibet squealed, pressing both hands to her mouth in delight. Margaret shot her a cross look. She did not enjoy having her thunder stolen.

  “Margaret?” The queen spoke gently, but there was a definite twitch about the corners of her mouth.

  The child fixed on her parents a pair of defiant violet eyes. “A whole Spitfire costs five thousand pounds,” she announced.

  “More like twelve and a half,” muttered the king, but he looked amused.

  “But twenty-five hundred pounds would buy the fuselage and eighteen hundred pounds the wings, so this”—she held up two fistfuls of knives and forks—“will buy some screws and rivets and maybe a roller blind for night flying. They cost seven and six,” she added, emphatically.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE SUMMER WENT on. From attacking the Channel, the Luftwaffe came inland. Vapor trails and the rattle of gunfire became commonplace as German bombers with their guardian fighters struggled to get through the Spitfires and Hurricanes sent up to intercept them.

  Both girls became experts in identifying, by shape, the planes that screamed and soared overhead. Sometimes aircraft flew so low that fuselage markings were visible. “Ours!” the girls exclaimed in delight as a plane with the red, white and blue target came over. “Theirs,” they would snarl in disgust at a swastika.

  One sunny afternoon in September they heard a vague but ominous thrumming, growing louder. It was the sound of airplane engines. Lilibet stopped, one foot up the trunk of a tree. “Listen.”

  “Ours,” said Margaret confidently, from higher up in the branches. “Going out on a bombing raid.”

  Muffled, distant explosions followed. Lilibet gasped. “Theirs. That’s London.”

  Dookie had grasped the situation before anybody. He hared off across the lawns and back into the castle. Scrambling down and racing after him, the girls and Marion found the dog in the nursery bathroom huddling behind the lavatory. He refused to come out, even when the air raid bell rang. “Come on,” Marion said, seizing the fat ginger body and yanking it out. “Let’s get to the shelters.”

  Windsor’s air raid shelters had been set up in the castle dungeons. They were rudimentary: a few hasty and unfinished reinforcements and a few recently imported little beds for the girls. Around them, in the shadows, iron rings were set into solid stone and arched chambers ended in unfathomable darkness. The atmosphere seemed heavy, not just with damp, but with the terror of those who had, over the centuries, been imprisoned here.

  Determined as ever to distract the girls, Marion handed out copies of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and they all took parts. The Nazis were soon forgotten in the rude mechanicals’ hilarious efforts to put on a play. They emerged to find that, in the direction of London, the sky was glowing red. “Don’t worry,” Margaret, with Dookie in her arms, valiantly assured him. “We’re going to be
at the bloody hell out of those Germans.”

  And so the Blitz began. The mournful sound of Wailing Willie, as the air raid sirens were known, and the clatter of the ack-ack antiaircraft guns became part of everyone’s lives.

  One night, Marion was woken by a loud bell; the wardens on the castle roof were sounding the alarm. Wriggling out of her nightdress, she reached for her thick green velvet siren suit, grabbed her gas mask and ran.

  The way to the dungeons was through a trapdoor beyond the castle’s vast kitchen. A steep staircase, much frequented by beetles and spiders, led down to the bowels of the earth. Hurrying down it, Marion would close her eyes.

  In the shelter, Sir Hill Child was still in his dinner black tie. His gas mask box hung around his neck, slightly askew. He held a flashlight, and his distended shadow jerked ghoulishly over the rough stone walls. “Where are Their Royal Highnesses?” Sir Hill demanded.

  “With Alah,” Marion replied. During a nighttime raid, Alah was in charge of bringing the princesses to the shelters.

  Sir Hill groaned. “Where is the woman? Didn’t she hear the bell?”

  “This is impossible.” Lord Wigram, Governor of the Castle, stepped forward. He too was in his black tie. “This is a red warning, Miss Crawford. Bombing is expected. The princesses simply must come to the shelter now.”

  Marion plunged out of the dungeon entrance and ran back up the passage, expecting, any minute, to encounter three hurrying figures, one big and two small, accompanied by nannyish admonitions to be careful and not slip. But no one materialized in the gloom.

  Up and up the stone stairs, slippery with wet and ghastly with insects. Surely they were coming? Heart hurting with the effort, legs heavy in the thick green velvet, she clattered through dark stone chambers and shoved open foot-thick, iron-studded doors. The alarm bell screamed on.

  Finally, the Lancaster Tower was reached. She stumbled up to the nurseries. As she approached she could hear high girlish voices, mixed with Alah’s low rumble. They were all still here!