Daughter of Empire

by Pamela Hicks

  When we arrived in Kenya, I was immediately struck by the smell of earth baked by the sun and the brilliant colours of the birds and flowers that at once reminded me of India. After a few days in Nairobi – a whirlwind introduction to a life of cheering children, regimental inspections, hospital and church visits, lunches, dinners and receptions – we travelled north on bumpy roads, engulfed by clouds of red dust, to Sagana Lodge on the slopes of Mount Kenya in the Aberdare Mountains. This fishing lodge had been given to the prince and princess as a wedding present by the people of Kenya, and this was their first visit. Mike Parker and I were the only members of the royal household to accompany them. The princess and I spent the first two mornings riding a couple of reliable police horses that I had managed to secure, while Prince Philip and Mike relaxed, fishing in the nearby trout stream.

  On the third evening we set off in an open jeep – the princess and I wearing khaki shirts and slacks, drawing a few comments from Mike, who was unused to seeing us in anything other than silk or cotton dresses. We were heading for Treetops, the tree-house-turned-miniature-hotel built in the fork of a huge 300-year-old fig tree. Eric Sherbrooke Walker had built his now famed – and greatly enlarged – hotel over a large waterhole, the edges of which formed a natural salt lick that extended right to the foot of the tree.

  It was a remote spot on the elephant migration path to Mount Kenya, and promised spectacular views of the elephants and many other splendid wild animals. The last quarter of a mile of the journey had to be made on foot down a track also used by the animals. Sherbrooke Walker was waiting as our guide, and warned us not to tread on twigs or scuff leaves and to walk in total silence, and speak only in a whisper in the event of a dire emergency. We followed him in single file, accompanied by some rather unsettling trumpeting and crashing sounds, until he stopped and pointed to a white pillowcase – the sign for ‘Danger at the Waterhole’ – Muttering above the roof of the hotel. Sherbrooke Walker conferred with Prince Philip, who whispered a rather hearty ‘No! Let’s go on!’ After a moment’s hesitation, Sherbrooke Walker decided to take the prince and princess on alone, indicating that he would come back for Mike and me. As they set off again, he waved vaguely at the rough ladders nailed to worryingly small trees every fifty yards or so and whispered that we should climb up them if an animal appeared. ‘The safe height is ten feet for rhino and buffalo but twenty feet for an elephant,’ he hissed. Far from reassured by this instruction, I turned to Mike, who whispered, ‘Pammy, if you have to climb one of those things and feel someone overtaking you, it will be me!’ We decided not to take any chances.

  The prince and princess safely climbed the ladder into the tree house, despite the presence of a cow elephant standing guard over her herd, anxiously flapping her ears just eleven feet away behind the thinnest of hedges. African elephants are far larger than Indian ones and cannot be tamed, and these mountain elephants had a particularly ferocious reputation. Luckily the wind was blowing across the clearing towards us so no scent was being carried to her. The princess was already busy filming, excited by the presence of such a wide variety of magnificent creatures. She was also concerned for us, asking what it had been like, being left behind in the bush. We left her in no doubt as to our feelings. It was only later that we learned that Jim Corbett, the great white hunter, was hidden in the undergrowth with his loaded gun, protecting us not only from the animals but also the threat of Mau Mau guerrillas. We also heard that just after we left Treetops, elephants had uprooted all the trees with ladders, including the very ones that Mike and I had clung to so fearfully.

  At the time, the house was very simple, comprising four very small bedrooms, a tiny dining room and kitchen and an observation balcony that ran down the whole of one side. The bedrooms had been carefully prepared for us but the staff could do nothing to prevent the hilarious sight that greeted us as we looked up at the tree. Just before our arrival, baboons had stolen rolls of toilet paper from the minuscule loo and now the branches were festooned with large untidy swags of cheerful white. We didn’t get much sleep that night, as there was so much to see once the moon was up. It was a thrilling sight, watching the animals arrive at the waterhole and observing the antics of the baby elephants that blew water from their trunks over the monkeys, as well as the young bull elephants enjoying a mock fight.

  While we were standing in awed silence, watching the comings and goings before us, King George VI, aged just fifty-six and in the sixteenth year of his reign, died in his sleep. Earlier in the day he had been watching his guests shoot at Sandringham. He then retired to bed and suffered a coronary thrombosis. So the princess who had climbed up the ladder at Treetops came down the next day as a queen. Signals in cipher had been sent out to Kenya immediately but no one in Government House, Nairobi, could decipher them because the cipher book had been taken by the governor, who was already driving to Mombasa to bid us goodbye the following day. After little sleep at Treetops, we had driven the twenty or so miles back to Sagana Lodge, exhausted but euphoric after a magical night of big-game watching. We had a very easy morning, totally unaware of what was happening back in England. We must have been among the last people in the world to hear the news.

  The King had been found dead by his valet when he went in to call him. At 8.45 a.m the King’s principal private secretary had called his assistant in London, using the code word ‘Hyde Park’, telling him to inform the prime minister and Queen Mary. At 10.45 a.m. the British news agencies were permitted to announce the King’s death. The news did not begin to percolate into Kenya, which was ahead of Britain by three hours, until after 1.45 p.m. local time, the time that we, none the wiser, were finishing lunch. The rest of the royal party, waiting for us on board Gothic, were also oblivious. Lady Palmer had gone up on deck after lunch to admire the decorations on the buildings that lined Mombasa harbour. She was very puzzled when she noticed people had begun to pull them down.

  After lunch, Prince Philip read the newspapers and dozed on his bed, while the princess wrote to her father, telling him about all the wonderful sights she had seen, emphasising how much he would enjoy it here and saying she hoped he could come out in the future to see it for himself. Meanwhile, Martin Charteris was waiting in the lobby of the Outspan Hotel in Nyeri for his group to depart for Treetops, when a local reporter emerged from a telephone booth, ashen faced. He told Martin that there was a Reuters newsflash proclaiming that the King was dead. For a moment neither man could speak – to them, as to the rest of the world, the news was totally unexpected. Then the dreadful implications of this information dawned on Martin and he jumped into the booth to telephone Buckingham Palace. Unable to get through, he rang Sagana Lodge to see whether he could get confirmation of the news from us. Mike answered the call and Martin was as usual discreet and told him that a Reuters newsflash was announcing the death of our ‘boss’s father’ and asked what we knew. When Mike had recovered he replied that we knew nothing, so Martin suggested we find a wireless.

  There was indeed a portable wireless in the sitting room where Princess Elizabeth was writing and Mike crept in, managing to get it without her noticing. After a few minutes of static and frantic tuning we finally made out the faint sound of the solemn music with which the BBC had replaced all its programmes. After the tolling of Big Ben, the news at last reached us from far away, the gravity of the newsreader’s tone unmistakable. Mike confirmed the news to Martin and went straight in to tell Prince Philip, who lifted up his newspaper to cover his face in a gesture of despair, saying, ‘This will be such a blow.’ He then walked into the sitting room and asked his wife to come with him into the garden. Mike and I watched them on the lawn as they walked together slowly, up and down, up and down.

  I knew how much the princess loved her father and how much he had adored her. When they returned, I instinctively gave her a hug but quickly, remembering that she was now Queen, dropped into a deep curtsy. She remained completely calm and said simply: ‘I am so sorry. This means we all have to go
home.’ When Martin arrived shortly after this, he asked her what she would like to be called. ‘Elizabeth, of course,’ she replied. ‘It’s my name.’ She seemed surprised, but her father Prince Albert had become King George VI and her uncle David had become Edward VIII. Queen Elizabeth II, as she had now become, was the first sovereign in two hundred years to accede while abroad. In a strange parallel, she was the same age as Queen Elizabeth I had been on succession.

  I couldn’t believe the King had died – we had all imagined that it would be at least twenty years before the princess would succeed her father to the throne. It felt completely unreal, out here in Kenya, that the princess should now be the Queen of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland and Head of the Commonwealth. There was, of course, business to attend to, which did distract us from the shock and grief. It was imperative that we leave as soon as possible. The new Queen returned to her desk to approve telegrams that Martin had drafted to be sent to Churchill and to the governors-general of all the Commonwealth countries we were due to visit. Mike had to make arrangements for our journey back to England while I busied myself packing my case and Bobo hurriedly threw things into the princess’s suitcases and John Dean, Prince Philip’s valet, did the same. Of course, there was nothing suitable for mourning, so the Queen had to wear a beige dress with a white hat.

  The plans for our speedy return soon fell into place. Within two hours of hearing the news, we were ready to leave for Nanyuki airport, forty miles away. The Queen was completely calm, and with her husband by her side, she thanked the members of staff at Sagana Lodge, presenting them each with a signed photograph. As we drove, it became obvious that the bush telegraph had gone before us. Local villagers stood outside their huts or lined the roads, calling out, ‘Shauri mbaya kabisa’ (‘The very worst has happened’). That such sympathy was shown as we drove through what was to become Mau Mau territory was truly remarkable. Mike asked the press waiting at Nanyuki not to take photographs and they stood, every one of them, to attention, big box cameras at their feet in a mark of respect for the young Queen’s grief.

  It had been decided that we should fly to Entebbe, where the royal BOAC Argonaut would meet us. As it was getting dark and the airport officials were anxious about lighting flares – the ground was as dry as tinder – we hurried on to the waiting DC-4 aircraft. We suffered a serious setback, however, when a severe electric storm erupted. Such was the force of it that the pilot of the Argonaut would not take off for London. I felt terribly sorry for the Queen as she had to spend the next two hours under the gaze of officials. She managed, however, to make polite conversation with Sir Andrew Cohen, the governor of Uganda. Towards nine o’ clock we were able to take off and the Queen and Prince Philip retired to their cabin at the rear of the aircraft. I hoped that at last she would be able to have a good cry in his arms.

  We flew through the night, stopping only to refuel in Libya. Thankfully Bobo had sent a message to her deputy on board SS Gothic and she had delivered a black coat, handbag and shoes to the Argonaut so that the Queen could arrive in England in mourning. She could not find a suitable hat, however, so a telegram was sent asking for one to be delivered when the plane arrived. It was late afternoon the next day when we started our descent over London, and we could soon see that a large official reception had gathered to welcome the new Queen home. As we waited to disembark, I could see the prime minister, Winston Churchill, standing next to the Leader of the Opposition, Clement Attlee, the Duke of Gloucester and, to my delight, my parents. The Queen peered over my shoulder, looking for her private car but seeing only the huge black royal limousines that were drawn up in morbid ranks. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘they have sent the hearse.’ And as she said this, softly and slowly, I was suddenly conscious that the private life of this twenty-five-year-old woman and that of her young husband – who would have to abandon his naval career – and those of their two small children, had come to an abrupt end. From now on, they would forever be in the public eye.

  The Queen left the plane first and Prince Philip followed, leaving a little gap so that the photographers could capture her alone. I was so relieved to see my parents, and in the privacy of our car, I conveyed my shock and the distress of the last few hours. Like me, they had thought that the King was getting better. We talked about the Queen Mother, who at fifty-one was now a widow, and within the space of a single day had been removed from centre stage.

  The King’s body was lying in state at Westminster Hall and I went with my parents to pay our last respects. My father had admired the King and his sense of duty, believing him to be a shrewd man who was more aware of public opinion than his ministers. Unlike his elder brother, my father said, he had always striven to keep his finger on the public pulse. The King was buried at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, and as I looked at the three generations of queens in their black veils – Mary, the Queen Mother and Elizabeth II standing together – I thought of how terrible their grief, so well hidden, must be.

  I stayed on at Buckingham Palace for a couple of weeks to help with the thousands of letters and telegrams of condolence that the Queen was receiving each and every day. Most were written, not to a remote ‘celebrity’, but to a real person who happened to be their Queen, the head of a royal family that meant a great deal to them. Some came from women who had recently lost a parent and wanted to empathise with her situation. Many of the stories we read were deeply moving and they showed how widely the late King had been revered. These letters were a source of great comfort to the Queen.

  Not all of the authors of these letters were quite so balanced, and among the piles organised under the collective headings of ‘children’, ‘women’ and ‘service families’, we also had ‘lunatics’. We spent hours opening, reading, sorting and replying to them all. One afternoon six of us were sitting in a circle on the floor going through the post when I opened a telegram that was signed ‘Mama in Chicago’. ‘Oh, listen to this!’ I cried, delighted at a diversion from our sad task. ‘One for the lunatic pile!’ Unbeknown to me, the Queen had just entered the room and my laughter was met by stony silence. ‘Pammy,’ she said, ‘Mama is in Chicago just now . . .’ As she removed the telegram from my hand I remembered, to my horror, that Aunt Alice, Prince Philip’s mother, was indeed in Chicago, raising money for her religious order. We continued our work in silence.

  I had only been asked to be a lady-in-waiting for the Commonwealth Tour, which had now been postponed, so I went to Malta to join my parents. My father was now commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean Fleet, a job he had very much desired. The proprietor of the Daily Express, Lord Beaverbrook, however, was still running his campaign to turn the public against my father. This vendetta had started when the film In Which We Serve opened with a shot of the Daily Express floating in the water, boasting the headline ‘There will be no War’. It was dated 1 September 1939, two days before the declaration of war. Beaverbrook had been a great champion of my father when he was made the young Chief of Combined Operations, but when my father asserted his independence from ‘The Beaver’ this was not forgiven. There may also have been another reason why Beaverbrook pursued this vendetta. In the 1930s Max’s mistress, Jean Norton, was my mother’s best friend. Jeanie and my father liked to go riding – she was an excellent horsewoman and he thought she had the perfect figure for a woman on a horse. But while they enjoyed riding together they were never lovers, as Max possibly suspected. When the Daily Mirror columnist Bill Connor, aka ‘Cassandra’, arrived in Malta, he told my father over lunch that Lord Beaverbrook had sent him out to ‘report on the riots’. ‘But there are no riots in Malta,’ Bill had replied. ‘Then start some,’ Lord Beaverbrook had roared. At the beginning of the Second World War Cassandra had to cease his famous column because of paper shortages. When peace was declared it started again with the words ‘As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted . . .’

  We now lived in Admiralty House in Valletta. In the entrance hall the soaring staircase rose between great marble pla
ques that listed all the naval commanders-in-chief since Nelson. The garden overlooked the ramparts and could be reached only through a tunnel beneath the street and a climb up a steep staircase. When the fleet was berthed in Malta my father worked in an office overlooking Grand Harbour.

  When Aunt Louise and Uncle Gustav of Sweden came to visit us, it was touching to see my father reminisce with his sister about their time spent on the island as children. While returning from a day out visiting their old haunts, however, driving along the Sliema harbour front, my father – a notoriously bad driver – managed to overturn the car, much to the horror of my mother, Uncle Gustav and me, who were in the car behind. Fortunately Aunt Louise and my father scrambled out unhurt, but the car lay rather helplessly upside down by the side of the road. As torrid newspaper headlines ran through our minds, a troop of Royal Marines came into view. Seeing his commander-in-chief standing at the roadside, their commanding officer brought them smartly to a halt and saluted. ‘Ah, Captain Huntingford,’ said my father, ‘oblige me by righting my car.’ And with a heave-ho, the Royal Marines obliged him and we were soon back on the road.

  Ever more adventurous and keen to see different parts of the world, I went to stay with George Arida – a dashing young Lebanese man whom I had first met during our previous time in Malta – and his family in their apartment in Beirut as well as their little house in the mountains, ‘The Cedars’. It was very beautiful up there with astonishing vistas, and surrounded by the cedars from which, it was said, King Solomon had built his temple. We spent our days waterskiing and our evenings socialising with the Paris-chic Lebanese women and their husbands, including George’s attractive sister Jacqueline, who was married to the son of the president of Lebanon. These were heady days and it wasn’t long before George and I fell for each other. I had had a couple of romances previously but had never really been in love. George was shy and quiet but a romantic, sweet-natured man, and if circumstances had been different, we would have been inseparable. We always found our partings distressing and were consoled only by the constant stream of love letters that followed.