The Good Servant, page 29
We have taken down beds and blankets, toys and books, and even a kettle and cups and saucers for tea. The shelter is becoming almost cosy.
Every night at 7.00 pm, the Princesses troop off with their little cases, wearing their new siren suits, as if they are off to catch a train. Then, when the all-clear sounds, Lilibet is told, with a bow from a courtier, ‘You may now go to bed, ma’am.’
It is remarkable how one can make the ordinary out of the extraordinary. Lessons continue. Christmas has been and gone. Time passes, and the war rumbles on.
The King and Queen are often away, touring the country in the royal train and keeping up morale.
The Queen writes to me when they are away, asking after the girls and their wellbeing, and I had a very funny letter from her the other day after she had visited the Sandringham Women’s Institute. I shall copy it here, for it made me smile. They treated her to patriotic tableaux.
‘It was a hoot. Mrs Way, dressed as Neptune(!) glaring through a tangle of grey hair and seaweed. The verger’s daughter, Miss Burroughs, as Britannia, was HEAVEN. The script was spoken by Mrs Fuller’s cook, draped in a Union Jack. Crawfie, dear, you would have loved it. Give my love to the girls and thank Alah for her card. Tinkety tonk, Old Fruit, and down with Hitler!’ I can’t agree more. When will the blasted man give up?
Buckingham Palace, December 1941
Darling Joan,
Ever since Buckingham Palace was bombed, the King and Queen have been determined to increase their visits to fresh bomb sites. They stand and watch the tireless efforts of rescuers digging the trapped or killed from the rubble, or those who drowned in the burst water mains. The Queen hates these visits but never cries. I commended her the other day on her steadfastness and she said, ‘I am a beastly coward. It breaks my heart. The destruction is so awful and the people so wonderful. They deserve a better world.’ It is all so piteous. I pray every night for our John and try as far as possible to check on the whereabouts of his regiment. You know I can’t tell you all I know, but I do know at this moment he is safe.
Meanwhile, the Princesses, with the help of Miss Crawford, are putting on a nativity play. Princess Elizabeth played a wise man and Princess Margaret played the child who gave the gift of herself, and sang to the baby Jesus in his crib. The King told me ‘I wept through most of it. It is a wonderful story.’
Princess Elizabeth is preparing to give her first radio broadcast. She will speak to the children of England, those at home and those evacuated. She worries so much about their fear – their fathers fighting, their mothers alone. She is busy writing a lot of it herself, to be shaped by others later. I am certain it will bring tears to many eyes and a new post bag of cheer.
I will come down on Christmas Eve to be with you all but will have to return on Boxing Day. I think I know where I can get hold of some half decent wine. Ask no questions and I will tell no lies!
Your Tommy
Windsor Castle, spring 1942
Today I walked through Windsor Great Park by myself. The sun had more heat than I had expected and I had to take my coat off. I walked up to the Copper Horse and laid my coat on the grass, thinking of George. I sat and thought of the day we met up there and the heather he brought me from Scotland. It is now almost dust but I cannot let it go. I sat there for some time imagining him walking towards me through the daffodils which are such a hope of better things to come. I pray for him each and every night. He has been sent abroad – he can’t tell me exactly where. It must be awfully difficult to get his letters out because I receive none for four or six weeks and then several come at once. When this awful business is over we will at last be married and I shall be the most loving of wives.
My parents are the same – stalwart and safe, although my stepfather is getting older and his hip is worse. My mother is knitting madly for the troops – socks and mufflers mostly. Princess Margaret was fascinated when I told her and insisted I taught her to knit. So far, her swift and nimble little fingers have produced five scarves and two pairs of rather ugly socks. Queen Mary is very proud of her but I noted she turned down Margaret’s offer of fingerless mittens! ‘That’s so kind of you, Margaret; however, we must keep the wool for the soldiers.’
The Princesses have such fortitude and resilience. Lilibet is almost sixteen and Margaret twelve. Where does the time go? The war has made them mature beyond their years. They are such good companions, which, considering they have only the grenadier guards and the household around them, is a great thing!
Buckingham Palace, November 1942
My darling,
America’s First Lady has arrived to visit the American troops newly stationed in the United Kingdom, and for us it is a chance to hopefully send the message that we Brits are most grateful and should be liked a little better.
Back in the States, I hear the voters are none too happy with the cost and danger to their men and country. Of course, if it wasn’t for the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbour last year, Roosevelt would never have joined. But he had no choice.
Therefore ‘Operation Sweeten the Americans’, disguised as a Thanksgiving tea party, was launched at BP. Two hundred American officers arrived and were charmed by British hospitality and as many young ladies as we could muster, to cheer the whole thing up.
A certain Mrs Gould managed to gatecrash the event and make a nuisance of herself. She is co-owner of an American periodical called the Ladies’ Home Journal. Some time ago she persuaded Mrs Roosevelt to contribute to the magazine, writing a column called ‘If You Ask Me … Essential advice from the First Lady.’
Dangerous rot, I daresay
But now Mrs Gould has successfully wormed her way into the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Information, seducing them with the idea that the Queen should write something similar for them. ‘It would ease tensions between us and America,’ she bleated, or so I was told.
I told the FO that a queen can no more write an article for a magazine, than serve a pint in a pub. I drafted a letter turning Mrs Gould down firmly. I hoped to God she takes the hint and disappears.
No such luck.
Alas, she has come back with a letter via the Foreign Office which includes a highly fictitious account of a conversation she supposedly had with the Queen, wishing permission to publish!
As you well know, any request to me from anyone – and I include our own offspring here – I put to the test by asking: ‘Will it do more harm than good?’ In this instance the answer is blindingly clear: Yes!
The Queen summoned me to go round to the Ritz hotel, where Mr and Mrs Gould nest while in London.
‘Tommy, dear,’ HM said, ‘would you go to the Ritz and tell Mrs Gould that the Queen has warm feelings for the Americans, but cannot agree to her request.’
My mission went well, I thought, and Mrs Gould appeared to accept that any business with the Queen would not be entertained.
Next thing I know, it is President Roosevelt himself who becomes a bother. This time to the King. He has been asked by the Duke of Windsor to ask Winston Churchill to ask me to pave the way for the Duchess of Windsor to be made HRH.
This is clearly another attempt to make the Americans like us more. It is rather doing the opposite for me.
Thank you for the handsome new pipe. It smokes very well and is wearing in nicely. You are a duck.
Fondly,
Tommy xxx
Windsor Castle, January 1943
I find myself in a bit of a low trough. I am trying very hard to pull myself together but last night I could not stop the tears. The truth is that I miss my parents and Scotland and George. I have never been besieged by so much emotion. It is almost a tangible entity – a black mist that sits over me and drains any energy or joy in life. I long to sleep, to have this war over. I cannot think of a future.
I hide this from the Princesses, who remain so gay and stalwart, but this evening, Alah took my hand and asked me how I was. Her words of kindness and understanding as I tried to put words to my misery opened a floodgate of embarrassing sobbing.
When the storm finally subsided, she made me a cup of Ovaltine and helped me to bed. I felt like a small child being protected, made to feel secure as she kissed my forehead and said good night. She told me that she will get me through this.
Tomorrow is another day, and I shall not allow this awful ennui to continue. There are people who have it far worse than me.
Chapter Forty-Three
Windsor Castle, July 1944
‘Come in, come in.’ Tommy opened his office door to Crawfie. ‘Sit down. I am having to make the tea myself this afternoon. P-T is doing her fire watch duty.’
‘I did mine two nights ago. Jolly cold up on the roof. I hope P-T has a good coat.’
‘She’s a woman of good country stock,’ Tommy answered, filling the small electric kettle from a large water jug. ‘If I know her, she’ll be as warm as toast.’ He plugged the kettle in. ‘Sugar? Milk?’
‘No, thank you. Just black. Before this war, I used to have three teaspoons of sugar, but rationing has killed my sweet tooth.’
‘I wish it had mine.’ Tommy set up a tray with two saucers, two cups and a teapot into which he deployed a good amount of loose tea. ‘I couldn’t cook before the war – now look at me. Rustling up a cuppa at the drop of a hat.’
Marion smiled. During these war years, Tommy and she had become friends – not too close, but with an understanding of each other.
It had started in the dungeons on the long dark nights of air raids; Tommy noticed that she never showed any nerves or fear, always comforting the Princesses, and the first to make a hot drink for anyone who couldn’t sleep. When the Princesses fell asleep, cosy in their blankets, Crawfie would bring a book out of her bag and read.
During one particularly close bombing raid, when the ancient foundations of the castle seemed to shake beneath them, Crawfie had showed no concern. She checked that the noise hadn’t disturbed the girls, or Alah and Bobo, then serenely returned to her book. Her fortitude impressed Tommy, and in the next raid, he found himself sitting opposite her in one of the wider stone tunnels.
She was reading P.G. Wodehouse’s The Code of the Woosters and it was clearly amusing her.
‘That looks like the perfect antidote to an air raid,’ he said softly, so as not to awake those around him.
‘Wodehouse?’ replied Crawfie. ‘He really is a good writer. It was the girls who started me on him. The Queen orders the books. Have you read any?’
‘Oh, rather. Carry On, Jeeves kept me company when I was in India. Have you read Forster’s A Passage to India?’
‘No.’
‘Well, you should.’
And so their shared interest had begun.
Now she spotted her copy of Osbert Sitwell’s A Place of One’s Own on Tommy’s desk.
‘How are you getting on with it?’ she asked.
‘Not bad but rather too fanciful for me. Would an elderly couple choose to buy a wreck of a house rumoured to be haunted?’
‘I rather enjoy being scared.’ Crawfie smiled. ‘I began reading it aloud to Bobo and Alah around the nursery fire on evenings we aren’t parcelled into the dungeons, but Alah had to tell me to stop because it was scaring Bobo too much.’ Crawfie laughed. ‘Yet she is never frightened of the real haunted dungeons we sleep in.’
‘Which just goes to prove that fiction is more frightening than fact,’ said Tommy. The kettle had boiled and he was pouring the steaming water into the teapot, giving it a good stir. ‘Another culinary success.’ He carried the tray to his desk and sat down. ‘How did you get on with Forster’s A Passage to India?’
‘I thought it was thrilling. It made me want to go to India.’
‘It’s a wonderful place. Joan and I were married there. And wonderful people – they have nothing but would give you anything. In India, it is hard to live, but easy to exist; here in England it is easy to live but harder to exist – a Maharajah told me that as he sat in his many-roomed palace, and he wasn’t wrong.’ He poured the tea and passed her cup over. ‘What news on your parents? How is your stepfather’s hip?’
Family and friends had become another topic of conversation in the dungeons.
‘It’s a little better, I think. At least, that is what he told the doctor, or else he wouldn’t have been able to join the Home Guard for Fife.’ She said the last bit with comic pride.
‘A Fife Home Guard – how about that! Your mother must be very proud.’
‘Oh, she is. He has been part of a team manning the road blocks that Polish soldiers have organized.’
‘Goodness.’ Tommy stirred sugar into his cup ‘Quite right too. I hear that Fife is the chosen destination for Herr Hitler’s invasion of our sceptred isle.’
Crawfie laughed. ‘Once I would have thought you were awful, telling jokes like that. Now that kind of humour is the only thing that gets us through.’
Tommy dropped his gaze to his cup and asked carefully, ‘And George? How is he?’
‘Oh, he’s all right,’ she was saying now. ‘His work at the relief agency is going well. I told you about that, didn’t I? He coordinates the supply of food, medicines, fuel and shelter to victims of war. Isn’t that marvellous? You can imagine how relieved I was when the army turned him down for re-entry. Eyesight too poor. I told him it was because he’d strained them looking at all those lines of tiny numbers on the bank’s sheets.’ She gave a small laugh then frowned. ‘I think he’s glad to be away from the bank for a time. He’s a funny old stick.’
‘Hmm,’ Tommy answered. ‘Jolly good.’
‘And how about you? How are Joan and the children?’
‘They are all in fine fettle. My dear wife will be coming to live with me in London when it’s safer and the children are off her hands a bit. The trouble is, she might find me to have become a bit of a bachelor – used to coming and going as I please with very little of anything in the larder.’ He looked off into the middle distance. ‘It is my son, John, she worries about.’
‘Oh. Which service?’
‘British army. Grenadier guards.’
‘You must be very proud.’
‘Indeed.’ He managed a smile. ‘He’s a good chap.’
Crawfie wanted to lean over and take his hand, but he was not the sort of man one could do that to. ‘It must be very hard on her,’ she said.
‘I am more worried that Joan will have adored her single life and is dreading the thought of living with me and the children again.’ He finished the last of his tea and looked at his watch. ‘Well now, somewhere in the world it is after six o’clock, so how would you like a small whisky?’
The ‘small one’ was not very small and was followed by several larger ones.
Tommy was not the sort of man to reveal secrets when in his cups, but something had been bothering him all day, irritating him, so that he felt the need to share it.
‘May I run something past you? Something a little delicate. I would value your opinion.’
‘Of course, but please don’t tell me any state secrets.’ She grinned. ‘I do not wish to carry that sort of burden.’
‘Nothing like that. No, no, it’s a little problem I have with two American journalists who are unable to take no for an answer.’
‘American? What do they want?’
‘In short, they want the Queen to spill her heart all over the pages of their ghastly magazine, telling tales of life with the King and their daughters – in short, of life as a monarch.’
Crawfie scoffed. ‘But she would never do that.’
‘Quite so, but try telling that to Mr and Mrs Gould. Today I received a message from them, opining that King George VI and Queen Elizabeth need a professional public relations team. Can you imagine? My whole life with the royal family has been devoting to keeping their private life private – and here I am being told to do the exact opposite.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Crawfie told him. ‘Our royal family would never stoop so low.’
‘No, they won’t, but certain people around them – housemaids, footmen, stable lads – may not have our scruples. In 1924 I was in Long Island with the then Prince of Wales – now Duke of Windsor – when a rodent of a journalist offered me a brand-new Lincoln motor car in return for “anonymously written articles about HRH’s private life”.’
Crawfie was shocked. ‘What did you tell them?
‘I laughed in their faces.’
‘Good. I cannot understand how anyone could betray the royal family. I never would, even if they did offer me a big car.’
‘Not even if it meant you and George could finally get married?’
Marion was taken aback by this unusually personal remark; Tommy usually circumvented anything emotional.
‘Honestly, a wedding seems a long way off at the moment,’ she said solemnly. ‘We can’t do anything until this war is over and the Princesses’ education finished.’
‘The Queen has told you that?’
‘Not in so many words. In truth, I think I would like to postpone our marriage until the girls are independent.’
‘And George is amenable to that?’
She hesitated. ‘He gets frustrated that we are so far apart. And I do miss him. I wish he would come down south more often. Last year we only saw each other three times. But we write and speak on the telephone.’
‘Why can’t he come down more often?’
‘Clearly it’s too dangerous, and besides, he may be sent to Italy soon. They need supplies of medicines and foods.’
There was a pause. ‘Do you trust him?’ Tommy asked.
‘Of course.’ Crawfie dropped her gaze. ‘But – well, the other day I mentioned, as a joke more than anything, that the postmistress in the village told my mother that she had seen him out with a girl on his arm. I am sure she did it out of malice. Anyway, I chose the wrong time. George had had a drink and flew off the handle. It’s his work. It is too stressful and I shouldn’t have asked. He told me that I have too much time on my hands and need to do something for the war effort myself.’
