by Karen Harper
* * *
Despite the wax plugs in my ears I had taken to wearing to get some sleep, I heard the crump, boom of a bomb nearby. The sirens began to sound. I yanked out the plugs and pulled on the robe and warm nightcap Norman had designed for me and made ready to head for the shelter. If I did not see Bertie in the corridor I would fetch him first, no matter what befell. My thoughts unscrambled. It was the eighth of March, and that blast had evidently come from the gardens, not the palace.
A second, worse blast followed along with a show of light so bright it leapt through the slit in the draperies of my room as I rushed for the door, scolding myself for stopping to don my new shelter fashions.
Bertie met me in the hall. “It hit back in the gardens!” he shouted over the noise of something falling. “Maybe the forecourt too!”
What could be turned to rubble out in the vast gardens, I wondered. Trees falling into the old North Lodge or Wellington Barracks? At least it hadn’t hit the palace this time. And at least Lilibet’s friend Police Constable Robertson was not on duty in the gardens tonight, because I had seen the rotation sheet for plane spotters and security men.
An aide rushed up to Bertie as we made it downstairs. “Incendiaries, Your Majesties! Direct hit on the North Lodge and then the barracks!”
We waited in the shelter for the all clear. Bertie sent someone over to be sure the staff was all safe in their shelter. We could hear the muted tune of someone playing the piano over there. I recognized it as “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” which seemed so terrible. Sweethearts parted; sweethearts lost to terrible weapons of war forever.
One of the security men rushed in. “Your Majesty, the second hit toppled the North Lodge masonry! P.C. Robertson was working to put out fires near there and is evidently buried in the rubble, but we’re trying to dig him out.”
“He’s not on duty tonight,” I spoke up. “It must be someone else.”
“No, Your Majesty. You know how kind he is. He switched duty, took the night garden beat for a friend of his tonight, a man who had a wedding anniversary today. Talked to him a while ago. It’s P.C. Robertson under the debris, for a certain.”
“Bertie,” I said, gripping his arm when the man ran back outside, “he’s the one who walks the corgis with Lilibet, and she adores him.”
“I know. I know. I swear, if I could dig him out with my own hands . . .”
“I think we have the girls safe at Windsor, but they’re not really safe from . . . from all this destruction—the ruination of their innocence and childhoods too. It haunts me and will them forever.”
“Everyone will have apoplexy if I go out to watch—to oversee the rescue efforts, but I’ll stand far back. You must stay here. I’ll be right back.”
But he did not come right back. I heard the shriek of an ambulance, many men’s voices that came and went outside.
I wanted to rush there myself to see what was happening, but I could hardly argue with or defy him, though I wanted to—and in these nightclothes? Instead, I sat nearly alone in the “royal shelter” and prayed that Lilibet’s favorite P.C. would be rescued and recover.
But, after an hour or so, Bertie’s long face when he came back in—the shake of his head, then a helpless shrug—told me it was hopeless.
He sat beside me. “They heard a tapping or scratching sound beneath the debris, so they dug all the harder, thinking it was him, that he was alive. They . . . they dug him out, partly crushed, quite gone, though they rushed him to Charing Cross Hospital anyway. But no good.”
I sucked in a sob. He put his arm around me, and I cried silently against his shoulder. Someone dead I knew, a loss that would bring the war home even harder to Lilibet and Margot.
“Something else,” Bertie said. “Even when he was laid on the ground, then taken away, the sound beneath the rubble they had heard continued. I told them it was broken stones, rolling rubble, even a waterspout dripping. It stopped, but then it began again. As if his spirit was still there, saying thanks for trying or—or something like that.”
“Or just everyone is going barmy, going mad,” I said with a hiccough from my crying.
But the next day, when I insisted Bertie take me out to the site, I heard it too, more, I thought, like an unexplained tap-tapping. I overheard one of the workers clearing the masonry rubble say, “It’s his fighting spirit, like all of us leave something behind.”
“Blimey, his ghost from a violent, sudden death, that’s what it is,” said another worker, this one with a shovel.
Bertie whispered as we walked away, “This growing ruination of our world haunts us all.”
“When we can, we shall put a plaque to his memory there,” I said. “Lilibet and I will dedicate it. Bertie, he was taking his friend’s place tonight or he would not have died. ‘Greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for his friend.’”
“And, if I must, I—Winston too—will lay down ours for this nation and Empire.”
I took his arm and held it close for support as we walked through the ravaged March gardens, bombed and barely showing signs of spring.
Chapter Fourteen
Full Moon
I used to love it when the moon was full and bright,” I told Bessie as she cleared my cosmetic jars from my dressing table in my bedroom at Windsor. “But not now, because it only gives the bloody Germans clearer bombing targets.”
“Yes, ma’am. Don’t we East Enders know. Heard a saying the other day that shows we still have backbone, though. Went a bit like this. The night bombs keep us up, but they won’t get us down.”
“I like that! I shall tell the king and Prime Minister Churchill too. We all need a pick-me-up, don’t we?”
“That we do! A good night to you then.”
As she went out into my sitting room and then the hall beyond, I was certain I heard Bertie’s raised voice coming from the corridor. Could he have received bad news about the nightly London bombings? Surely they had begun by now, especially with a bright moon. Was he talking to Winston on the telephone, for they had both raised their voices lately? No—it sounded—though it could not be—that he was arguing with Lilibet.
I wrapped and belted my robe tighter and went out into the draughty corridor. It was the evening of the tenth of May, but the old stone façades and vast, high-ceilinged rooms kept this castle so chilly. I now heard both their voices raised and hurried down the hall to Bertie’s study.
“If I am old enough for you to call me Betts, instead of Lilibet, I am old enough for that, Papa.”
“My dearest girl, you only turned fifteen a few weeks ago! I’ll not have a princess of the realm, my heir, volunteering for more than your Girl Guide service. Granted you have visited some bombed-out areas, but—”
“Oh, Mummy,” she cried as I opened the door to his suite. “I heard I could have an honorary appointment as a colonel in the Grenadier Guards, but Papa thinks I’m too young to serve. I want to help! Granted, Margot is too young, but it is different for me. He said I shouldn’t correspond with Philip too, but I’m just trying to keep up spirits for someone in the Royal Navy, and Papa is a Navy man, so why doesn’t he understand?”
I forced myself to slow my steps and keep calm. Keep Calm and Carry On, my favorite London poster said.
“Well, fifteen is a bit young for private letters to and from Philip or any other male friend.”
She pouted, but I could sense her backbone stiffen. Bertie lit another cigarette and paced. He, like Churchill, more than all of us, had been under terrible pressure lately with all the brutal bombing. To boot, the stubborn Americans still stood firm on not declaring war when we were increasingly desperate for fighting men and supplies.
I put my arm around Lilibet and snagged Bertie’s as he went by. “Let’s sit and talk. Where is Margot?”
Lilibet said, “Playing her grammy and listening to who knows what records. She wants to learn not only the waltz and foxtrot but the tango and the latest dance craze too. We read in a newspaper th
at line dances like the Palais Glide and Oomps-a-Daisy are all the rage.”
Bertie and I exchanged glances. Two nights ago, the popular restaurant Café de Paris had been hit by a bomb just as “Snakehips” Johnson was leading his band in the popular tune “Oh, Johnny.” All of the band except one had been killed, and a second bomb had landed on the dance floor. We had heard through private channels—not Winston this time—that the blast in such a closed space sent body parts flying and exploded lungs. Sadly too, since the patrons were quite well-to-do, looters of the worst sort soon arrived, an ugly aspect of the war.
Amazingly, we had also been told that dance halls and restaurants were still packed the next night. Devil-may-care bravery, I wondered, or callous disregard for the lost and their own lives? At any rate, at no time on God’s green earth were my daughters going to learn the tango and dance crazes or go to such clubs, not even in peacetime!
As Bertie started to sputter again, I raised my hand. I sat Lilibet down on one end of the sofa, Bertie on the other, and I perched between them.
“I know everyone is on edge and rightly so,” I began, shifting my thigh against Bertie’s. He nodded and blew out a little puff of smoke.
I resisted the urge to wave it away. I was worried about him, for he had become increasingly short-tempered and even a bit gaunt. His hands sometimes shook.
Facing him, I went on, “I do think it is marvelous and shows Lilibet’s maturity, doesn’t it, Bertie? I mean that our eldest and heir wants to serve in a traditional and supportive way. Her wireless broadcast was excellent and so are the Grenadier Guards. She is hardly going out to go into battle with their vaunted infantry. I believe she can make a fine contribution to our fighting spirit without, of course, fighting, nor should there be any fighting within our family. Bertie, it would occupy her mind over other things she may indeed be too young for,” I added, with another subtle bump of my thigh against his.
As preoccupied as he was—and rightly so—he would surely get my hint about giving her a focus other than mooning over Philip.
“I know she would do a spiffing job at whatever she puts her time and hand to,” he said, leaning over me to pat Lilibet’s knee. “I just have a hard time of it, realizing you are as old and as eager as you are to serve, my dear. Of course, the honorary appointment to the guards would be an honor indeed.”
“Oh, thank you, Papa!” she cried and bounced up to lean over to hug him. “And Mummy! And I hope to volunteer to help with the land girls who will bring in the harvest at Sandringham next autumn—so short of men!”
She ran out, then came back and gave us a little, unnecessary curtsy. With a smile, she was off down the hall, evidently to tell her sister or governess.
“Barely fifteen, going on twenty-one,” he muttered, taking my hand.
“Remember that A. E. Housman poem?” I asked. “But I was one-and-twenty, no use to talk to me. . . . But we all have learned things in our own way, the hard way, have we not?”
“You too, my dear love?” he asked and kissed the back of my hand. “Such a happy family life, you Bowes Lyons, and you being so admired, courted, and, dare I say, well-wed.”
I nodded and managed to match his intense, serious expression. How foolish I had been to love his brother, to think I could win the dashing playboy Prince of Wales who was always, as David himself used to say of himself, “raising tallywhack.” And how blessed I was to have Bertie, despite how dangerous our lives were now. I saw Lilibet’s obsession with the charming Greek who looked like a Norse god as being just as dangerous and harmful as my early passion for David had been. Never was she going to become entranced or entrapped by Philip, not if I could help it.
“Despite it all, my dearest,” I told him and kissed his cheek, “we will find our way together through all this. Victory, just as Winston says!”
We stood, still hand in hand, when Bertie’s night equerry appeared in the hall door Lilibet had left open.
“Your Majesty, Mr. Churchill is on the phone! Terrible bombings in London! Westminster—Parliament! Everything afire!”
Bertie squeezed my hand so hard I flinched, then sprinted out into the hall toward his office, which had the secure phone to the P.M. wherever he was in the country. I hustled right behind him, quickly out of breath.
“I think he’s at Ditchley, so they must have phoned him from London!” Bertie said over his shoulder.
Ditchley was the historic home and estate that the Tree family, Winston’s friends and supporters, let him use as a weekend getaway. It had been discussed and decided that his own country home of Chartwell and the traditional prime minister’s country getaway of Chequers, just south of London, were targets too easy to spot from the air, whereas Ditchley was quite hidden without a long drive leading to it like an arrow. And it was close to Winston’s birthplace and beloved family home at Blenheim Palace, though he would never be Duke of Marlborough there.
Bertie made a dive for the receiver of the telephone lying on his desk and ordered the equerry out with a wave of his hand. I made it inside and closed the door.
He began to pace again until he realized the telephone cord would not let him. He sank into his leather desk chair, urging Winston to talk slower. I leaned against the edge of the desk next to the red documents box that went everywhere with us. When Winston slowed his speech, I was close enough to hear his words.
“Worst night of bombing . . . full moon. Westminster roof aflame . . . Parliament hit, House of Commons—damn them! Big Ben took a bomb . . . fires all along the Thames. And we thought our RAF was taking such a toll on them they might back off. Hitler’s still furious over our hitting Berlin and . . .”
I sucked in a sob. Bertie reached out to grasp my wrist. I leaned forward and braced his shoulder with my free hand.
“Something good—some sign—has to c-come along,” Bertie said into the phone. “Call me again, Winston. Let us know what we can do besides curse the enemy and pray we endure.”
* * *
Neither of us slept that night. We curled up together on the large leather sofa in Bertie’s office near the phone, buried in blankets and grief. The quiet of Windsor seemed so wrong when London was being blasted. I tried to close my eyes but, lying in front of Bertie, I just stared at the block of moonlight coming in through the window. It moved slowly across the floor, so lovely and yet that was what was allowing the Germans to bomb tonight. I remembered a story Fergus had teased David and me with once about the full moon turning people into flesh-eating vampires. Yes, Hitler was that.
I jolted in Bertie’s arms when he suddenly spoke. “I’ve been thinking about my brother George as an RAF captain, so daring and handsome, now air vice-marshal, though, of course, he earned that. But I still can’t believe he left the Royal Navy with his passion to fly. Of course, the RAF seems much more daring and romantic, especially now, than the Navy.”
“I know he’s visiting RAF bases to boost morale, but you do that and so much more,” I said, careful to walk the line between praising the gregarious George but upholding Bertie. I always thought too that their royal father’s bullying of Bertie and David had made him resent his younger sibling a bit.
“It’s easy to worry about younger brothers,” I went on, when Bertie just nodded, his chin bumping my shoulder. “My dear David is safe in Washington across the ocean from all this, but I still worry about him. So I can see why you would think of George in these trying times—especially with the RAF, as successful as they’ve been, no doubt in great danger during this massive attack.”
“Mmm. I swear, if anything happens to George, Mother will absolutely die. Her favorite of us boys—David too—you know. How she manages to turn a deaf ear to—well, she is quite deaf—George’s carousing and flagrant sexual liaisons, I will never know. Yet I love him despite his waywardness—even his pursuit of other men.”
“No, I don’t know,” I said, thinking of my own homosexual brother, David. I stirred a bit in Bertie’s strong embrace, which had just be
come a grip.
Yes, I knew that Queen Mary favored handsome George, Duke of Kent, her youngest living son, for her last child, little Johnnie, had died young, and she had seemed to cling to George even more after that tragic loss. But I also knew that, though the Duke of Windsor would never be forgiven by his mother for not standing by his duty to the crown and family, she loved and missed him too.
I understood Bertie’s feelings of resentment, for I couldn’t help but feel jealousy when his brother George had wed Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark. The people were fascinated by her, and she was pretty and slender to boot. Drat—there was that intrusive Greek nobility again, so I must be doubly sure that Philip wed elsewhere. The Greek royal family had skeletons abounding in its closet, though I realized I had no right to openly criticize with all the Windsors and Bowes Lyons were keeping the lid on.
But how I understood wanting one’s mother’s favor! As king, it was a bitter pill for Bertie that, as supportive as the widowed Queen Mary was—and I worked hard to cultivate her affections for us both—she still favored George and David. What else could I say to comfort my dear husband about that or about the horrors happening now in our beloved London?
When the secure phone rang, I startled, and Bertie stumbled up to answer it. At least it was daylight outside, a sunny Sunday morning here at Windsor.
“What possible good news, except the bastards are gone?” I heard him ask, evidently speaking to Winston. “You think it might have been so brutal because it was their last hurrah, at least in the night skies? You had said you thought the German Satan was turning his greed and might toward ‘Mother Russia.’”
I got up slowly, watching Bertie’s expression because I could not hear the other end of the conversation this time.
