‘Is that right?’ he said to me. ‘Fools. They have no idea who they’re writing to.’ He made a noise, not quite a laugh.
I blushed, found myself tongue-tied once more. I longed for Helen’s confidence.
‘Well?’ he said, still looking at me. ‘You think they know their prince?’ He looked more calm this morning, I thought. Helen had said the night before that the stunts stressed him and then he had to take a few days to get ready for the next one. But the trouble was there were no gaps in the schedule in which he might actually do that.
‘I do,’ I managed to say. He had such beauty, those light blue eyes, that blond hair and a glow to his skin as if he were lit from within, the sadness of that countenance at rest.
Mr Waters came in behind him then and rescued me. ‘It’s Maddie who writes all the replies, so she should know, sir.’
‘How very splendid,’ he said. ‘You know, I noticed last night that the letters were more modern than they used to be. Rupert is such a stick-in-the-mud when it comes to how things are done. I like very much that we are friendly as far as possible. Is that you?’
I nodded, still dumb.
Helen laughed. ‘Her father is the poet,’ she said. ‘Thomas Bright. I know his work. It’s uplifting in a time of sorrow, although you might not know she’s related to him to talk to her in person right now.’ She elbowed me subtly. ‘Maddie seems to have lost contact with her normally vivacious self.’
‘Well, it’s wonderful to have the daughter of the poet among us,’ the prince said. He smiled so warmly I felt the honour of it. I felt he must be used to people being tongue-tied in the royal presence and he was making it as easy as he could for me.
‘Sir, thank you,’ I said. ‘I am so pleased to serve.’
‘So am I,’ he said. ‘So am I.’
He stood very erect, I noticed, and his hands kept going to the front of his trousers as if to smooth the creases, or perhaps correct them to keep his father happy.
His gaze remained on me, his expression turning quizzical. ‘I’m sorry to be staring, but do I know you?’ he asked.
‘I don’t think so, no, sir,’ I said. ‘I came to see you with my family when you arrived, but I doubt you saw me as we were several miles away. I may have spotted your hand waving from a carriage.’
He laughed then. ‘I knew I knew you. You were one of the twenty thousand. I have a memory for faces.’
I must have looked shocked.
‘A little joke,’ he said, grinning now. He regarded me a moment longer and then turned behind him to Mr Waters.
‘Have you seen the telegram? It seems I was right about His Majesty on this occasion.’ I could hear from his voice that he was not smiling now. ‘He’s got Bertie going to see my friends, man. I assume it wasn’t your doing?’
‘Of course not, sir,’ Rupert said quietly. ‘On the other hand, he agreed we might postpone India, and that’s been positive.’ Mr Waters attempted a smile but it quickly faded.
‘Quite,’ the prince said, nodding tightly. ‘I understand Mr George is still pushing. Perhaps you might speak with Ned.’ He turned back to me. ‘Maddie, isn’t it?’
I nodded again.
‘Well, Maddie, it’s wonderful to know I have such a talented correspondent with me. It will come to me, how I know you. I’m sure it will.
‘And now, Helen, perhaps you and I could take some time to work on my remarks for tomorrow.’
‘Certainly,’ she said.
He opened the door to his study and she walked through. He followed and closed the door behind them.
I looked at Mr Waters, his eyes fixed on the closed door. He looked back at me. ‘Nothing,’ he said, although I hadn’t asked a question.
From Autumn Leaves by M.A. Bright:
France, 1918
It was a pantomime. She had played an angel, a crow that turns into an angel, from black to white, from a long yellow beak to long golden hair.
The pantomime was a comedy but that part made him sad, as if she were better as a crow. He didn’t know why.
It had snowed earlier in the day, and his mind would not rest, not even in the time he spent looking out the window at the large flakes which fell softly.
He had come to one of those moments in which your life is arrested suddenly, stopped on what had always appeared to be its straight and true road. You might reflect, or not. You might find yourself wanting. You might glimpse another road, a road you might have taken, might still take.
You might act.
It was a month since he’d arrived here. The surgeons were saying he needed a further month, perhaps two, to recuperate. He was glad of it.
But now the prince had found him. It had taken a few weeks but he’d had a wire that morning, reminding him he’d have to go back to all that, the life he’d been chosen for.
He was getting stronger every day.
It wasn’t fear he felt. It was resignation. The life he’d been chosen for.
From the wings, she watched him watching the pantomime. He’d said three times now that he wanted to marry her. She could no longer tell herself he was deluded. He loved her truly, it seemed, and she found herself loving him back.
‘I think I will have to go away,’ he said.
‘Batman?’
‘Yes.’
‘What does Miss Ivens say?’
‘She says my arm is slow to heal.’
‘Can you feel your fingers?’
He shook his head.
‘Then I’d suggest you listen to Miss Ivens.’
She leaned in and kissed him then. Her body flushed with desire and, with it, a terrible sadness.
She withdrew from the kiss. ‘I could tell you things,’ she said. She thought she might cry.
‘I could tell you things,’ he said.
‘Not like mine.’
‘Maybe not,’ he said. ‘But I’m weaker than you.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘I wouldn’t have saved your arm.’
‘Well, luckily, it wasn’t my arm that needed saving.’
‘What needs saving?’
She didn’t answer, put a hand to her heart.
‘You’re strong,’ he said. ‘And I can help with anything else. I don’t care about anything else.’
‘You might,’ she said.
‘But I don’t.’ He looked at her.
‘Is truth better or a dream?’ she said.
‘Truth,’ he said.
‘There’s no one in my room,’ she said. ‘Quickly.’
A dream. A dream is always better.
FIFTEEN
Sydney, 1920
THE TRAIN ARRIVED BACK AT CENTRAL STATION AT teatime. It seemed like an age since I’d seen my family, and yet it had been no time at all.
Helen had let me keep the skirt and jacket I’d borrowed. ‘Truly, I have two of each,’ she’d said the evening before, after the official function was over. I was wearing them again today, with my own blouse. ‘And you just look a picture, Maddie, a proper correspondence secretary,’ she said when she gave them to me.
I hadn’t managed to clear the backlog of letters altogether, but I knew it would be easier for Mr Waters to do now that a system was in place. He would need a typist, I’d told him when he came into the office during the morning. He didn’t seem terribly interested. There had been more stops on the way back to Sydney than on the way to Canberra and he had been kept busy with those.
No one had come back to the office to say goodbye and I wasn’t quite sure what I was supposed to do. Not that I expected a farewell, but I’d have liked to see Mr Waters and Helen. I didn’t know how I was to be paid either. I didn’t want to ask but I would have to. We needed the money. And I didn’t know if I was supposed to turn up the next day to serve at Government House while the prince was staying there. I didn’t much fancy the idea of Mrs Danby as my supervisor.
I waited fifteen minutes more and then left a note on the desk for Mr Waters. I assumed they’d fo
rgotten about me so I collected my little bag and went down to the platform. I decided I would catch the ferry at Circular Quay and go back to Bea’s. I would come back to Government House tomorrow to see about wages.
I was trying to work out which direction I should go when I heard a voice behind me. ‘Maddie!’ I looked out and saw my brother Bert. Behind him and beyond a makeshift barrier were the other boys, John and the twins, George and Henry. Every time I saw them all together like this, I felt the stab of who was missing: our brother Edward.
Mummy was there, and Daddy too, I saw, with the younger boys. Bert had jumped the barrier to come to me. He hugged me tightly, although I’d only been away for two nights.
‘Daddy arrived this morning,’ Bert said. ‘We saw the prince was coming back, so I said we should wait for you.’ He was grinning, and his narrow face, a carbon copy of his father’s, reminded me of Daddy in better days.
Bert was sixteen, a year younger than me, but a head-and-a-half taller now, and I’d swear he’d added an inch in those two days. We’d grown up in each other’s pockets, Edward those couple of years older. Bert left school when I did and got a delivery job with the iceworks at Ithaca. It was heavy work, lugging blocks of ice wrapped in canvas into people’s back kitchen iceboxes. Nicer in summer was all he said about it.
I felt a stab of something then: fellow feeling—these were my kin—shot through with something else, embarrassment, which took a moment to register. I was embarrassed. I looked past Bert to the rest, huddled in their odd little group. I felt as if I’d grown up and away from them in these two days, and here they were, mixing in with my new life. How quickly we change our allegiance! It was me on the official side of the barrier. They were on the other. In truth, I wanted to be in neither place right then, but if I’d had to choose, I’d have stayed on the train side with the prince.
I gave a little wave and smiled and went over to where they stood. I hugged Daddy across the barrier that had been set up to stop gawkers from coming onto the platform. When one of the policemen started making his way towards us, Bert jumped back over to their side.
‘You made it,’ I said to Daddy.
He’d told us before we left Brisbane for Sydney that he probably wouldn’t come. He said he was finishing a poem. I don’t know if Mummy believed him. I knew better, having been into his study.
‘Your mother might have wired me you’d been kidnapped by the monarch,’ he said. ‘I gleaned what I could from Bert here and thought I’d better see the situation for myself.’
He was trying hard for his old humour. It was awful when he was like this, as we saw a glimpse of the father we’d once had, the wicked grin, the sparkle in his eyes, but we knew now he could not stay.
‘Something like that,’ I said. ‘The heir.’
‘It’s possible that’s worse,’ he said, looking at me carefully, as if I might be a spy now. ‘It’s all so grand,’ he said. ‘And you pretty grand yourself.’
Helen’s skirt, I assumed, made me more grand, or perhaps because I’d been among such important people I’d become a little important too.
I hugged each of the boys, Bert for the second time. I felt better then; they were my family and I loved them. I felt more normal again, ready to go home with them.
‘Oh, how wonderful this all is,’ Mummy said. ‘The prince himself!’ She smiled and I saw how proud she was. ‘But where’s your uniform? What are you wearing that skirt for?’
Before I could answer, I noticed Mummy was looking behind me, smiling still. I turned around and there was Helen.
I felt the embarrassment again now, more acutely. I turned back to my mother, whose dress, brought across from England in 1900, had originally been ankle-length. She’d hemmed it mid-calf but the skirt flared too much for that. It was overmodest and unsuited to both the climate and the current fashion, as I now knew. Her little boots were all wrong too. They were well cared for but old.
My mother was standing there, looking at us expectantly, Daddy next to her dressed in his old tweed coat, a gift from a family at the school and not quite long enough in the arms, his corduroy pants from St Vincent’s, also not quite long enough, his worried expression, narrow face so vulnerable. They looked like a travelling theatre troupe rather than a modern family.
Daddy looked afraid, I realised then. His arm was shaking too, I noticed, never a good sign.
Helen looked at me.
‘I’m so sorry. Helen Burns,’ I said finally, ‘this is my family.’
‘I’m Emily,’ my mother said in her best English, almost a different accent from the one she’d acquired from living so long in Australia. ‘My husband, Thomas. So very pleased to make your acquaintance.’ My mother’s manners, like her clothes, were from another time. She hadn’t needed them for twenty years. We were never in this kind of company, only the parents of the children at the school, who were all struggling to make a life in a new country, like we were.
Helen pulled the barrier away immediately, waving Mummy and the rest to come on to the platform, nodding at the police officer to let him know they were with her.
‘Mrs Bright,’ Helen said, ‘the pleasure is all mine. Maddie here has been invaluable to us on the visit.’
Mummy turned to me.
‘And I didn’t pour tea on him once,’ I said.
Helen laughed. ‘Well, that’s not quite true, is it, Maddie?’
Mummy looked horrified for a moment.
‘We’re just joking,’ I said to my mother. ‘I’m actually doing a different job.’
Helen turned to Daddy who had remained where he was. ‘Mr Bright—may I call you Thomas?’ She didn’t wait for his answer. Perhaps she could see he wouldn’t answer. ‘I am Helen Burns. You wrote for Vanity Fair, where I was on the staff. If I may be bold, your poetry changed lives. You showed me what writing can do. We were all in awe of you, even the senior editors.’ Helen grinned like a girl, like she had the first time I’d met her. She looked so much younger and less sophisticated.
I saw just how much she admired my father. But Daddy seemed hardly to register her presence. ‘Well, good, then,’ he said gruffly. ‘Maddie, time to go home. Bea’s waiting.’
I’m sure Daddy didn’t mean to be rude. I could see he was becoming agitated. More people had come onto the platform now that the train had arrived. The barriers were not holding anyone back.
Daddy looked around nervously. I saw Mummy grab his hand and hold it tightly. ‘Of course it is,’ Mummy said, looking at Helen and smiling. ‘Bert and John, take your father outside, would you? We’ll meet you on the corner where we waited this morning. All right, love?’ she said to Daddy.
‘I want to see inside the train,’ John said.
Helen smiled at him. ‘I bet you’re John,’ she said. I couldn’t believe she’d be able to tell the boys apart from the little I’d told her, although I had said John was the scallywag and he did look the part, his shirt untucked, a determined grin on his face, grease under his fingernails. On the other hand, all four boys met any reasonable definition of scallywag. ‘I think we’ll be able to get you on the train once H.R.H. is off.’
Mr Waters came up to us then, and so getting Daddy outside was going to be impossible for a little while longer. Mummy looked worried and this worried me. She knew best what Daddy could manage.
Around us porters were unloading the train. There wasn’t as much of a crowd as the day we’d left because, Helen had told me, they hadn’t announced the prince’s return in the newspaper, but there were enough people to worry Daddy. Crowds bothered him now, and noise, and the station was filled with both.
I noticed his hand, the one Mummy wasn’t holding, had started to open and close into a fist slowly.
Mr Waters nodded at me and then looked at Daddy. ‘You must be Maddie’s father. I’m Rupert Waters, H.R.H.’s man. Mr Bright, I know you served, and Prince Edward would have liked to be here to thank you in person. I know he would have. I also want to tell you that your daughter has
been of great service …’ He trailed off, looking at Daddy more carefully.
Daddy, for his part, had started jiggling his leg now in a way he had. I knew he wouldn’t last much longer. Soon, he would begin to sweat, despite the winter day. And then he might begin to make noises, moan or cry out, and we would have to do something.
He took the hand Mr Waters offered. I knew his own would be clammy. Mr Waters noticed, God bless him. He looked at me and back at Daddy and nodded.
He didn’t even acknowledge Mummy or the boys. He smiled warmly, his eyes still on Daddy. ‘Mr Bright, can I suggest we step into the private lounge which is just to our right? Very quiet in there. Pop under the ropes. That’s right. You too, Mrs Bright, children. I think you’ll find it will suit us better.’ He looked at Daddy again, narrowing his eyes. ‘Actually, Helen, perhaps you could follow with Mrs Bright and the family in a few minutes. I’m just going to take Mr Bright inside for a moment.’
He took Daddy’s arm and all but lifted him off the ground, as if he knew what state my father was in.
‘So, John?’ Helen said after they’d gone. ‘I do think you need to meet the train driver.’
She looked over at the policeman in charge. He nodded. The prince had already been taken off the train, it seemed. Helen had said they sometimes took him on the track side in order to avoid the crowds.
‘Yes, I do,’ John said to Helen.
Mummy turned to Helen to say something, and then I heard her sharp intake of breath, for there was Prince Edward himself in front of her, with his cousin Dickie behind him.
‘Helen,’ he called softly, so as not to arouse interest. ‘I seem to have found my way back to the train. They brought steps onto the other side and I was supposed to sneak off.’ He giggled. ‘We got lost. Guilty as charged, but you can be sure I’ll blame the flag lieutenant if the admiral gets wind of it.’
He pulled a face then, his mouth downwards, his eyes wide, like a clown.
The True Story of Maddie Bright Page 15
