The moment they reached Lou’s room Sarah wanted to go out again to Lou’s theatre to tell her the great news, but Margaret would not go with her.
‘I’ve got to read this whole play before tomorrow, Sir John Teaser said so.’
Sarah did not want to leave Margaret alone but, after giving her strict instructions about locking the door and not opening it to anyone, she at last left, and Margaret stretched out on the floor to read the play. On the first page was written ‘The Little Queen – a play in four acts’. The play opened with the child Anastasia and her father and mother returning from her grandfather’s funeral. Reading what Anastasia said, Margaret decided she liked her, for she had her own views about everything and did not like being dictated to. Then Anastasia asked who were all the hundreds of people who had attended her grandfather’s funeral, and her father explained.
Her grandfather was born Crown Prince of a small country in Eastern Europe called Parthenia. But he never came to the throne for there was a revolution during which the then king was killed and he escaped to England, which was his mother’s country. There his son, Anastasia’s father, was born and brought up.
Then Anastasia’s mother took up the story. ‘It’s been very lucky for you,’ she told Anastasia, ‘that Parthenia had that revolution for if not, Papa would be King and I would be Queen and you would be a princess and expected to behave like one, no tomboy ways such as you have at home and at school. You could never run about free, as you do now.’
Then her father broke in: ‘You would be waited on hand and foot and everyone would curtsey or bow when they spoke to you.’
To this Anastasia said: ‘What nonsense! I would not allow it.’ Margaret thought that a splendid answer for she would not allow it either.
Margaret went back to the play.
Then Anastasia’s father explained about the hundreds of people who had come to the funeral. They were Parthenians living in exile in England but all longing to get back to Parthenia. ‘Which I suppose they never will,’ Anastasia said. Her father hesitated before he answered that. ‘Never is a long time; they say things are changing in Parthenia, so perhaps some day they can go home.’ Anastasia’s mother got to her feet when he said that and gasped: ‘Pray God it never happens.’ Then she fainted and that was the end of Act I.
Margaret found Act II much less interesting for Anastasia did not come into it and it was full of long speeches about liberty and brotherhood. But she liked the end of the act. A man who worked on Anastasia’s father’s estate came running in holding a pigeon with a message attached to its leg. The man said the pigeon was exhausted. Her father took the message off the pigeon and read it. Then he said: ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, Parthenia is free.’ The directions said there was a slight pause for the news to sink in, then one of the men called out ‘God Save the King’ and as the curtain fell everyone knelt or curtseyed.
The third act opened in a hotel on the frontier of Parthenia. There were a lot of beautifully dressed people waiting to receive their new King and Queen and the Princess, and there were several long speeches about freedom, which again Margaret skipped. Then the stage directions said there were sounds of carriages and postilions outside the hotel, doors were thrown open, the bowing staff backed into the hotel lobby followed by the King, the Queen and Anastasia. This dignified procession is spoilt by one of the backing staff falling over his sword and landing flat on his face. Everyone is shocked and he is hurriedly picked up, but to Anastasia it is funny and she lets out a peal of laughter. In an icy voice her father says to one of the ladies:
‘Countess, will you take the Princess to her room.’
Anastasia is furious. ‘Such nonsense!’ she said. ‘He isn’t hurt. Why shouldn’t I laugh? And why should I go to my room? You said I’d got to come to your Coronation and I’ve come but I won’t be pushed away into my bedroom. And though I’m sure the Countess is a very nice lady it’s no good calling her my governess, all she can teach me is embroidery, she said so herself, and I hate sewing.’ Margaret was so carried away by this speech that she read it through twice and did not hear Sarah tapping on the door while she called out:
‘Margaret, it’s me.’
Sarah had brought the supper in with her. It was jellied eels, something which Margaret had never eaten before but she thought delicious. Margaret told her about the play, reading to her the speech in which she lost her temper.
‘No wonder you said Sir John Teaser said it might be a good thing for you losing your temper,’ said Sarah. ‘I can see now Lou and me was right, he doesn’t want a pretty little thing all curls and that, he wants a child with spirit. Oh, I do hope you get the part, dear.’
After supper Sarah made Margaret go to bed.
‘I’ll lay out Lou’s supper for when she comes in but you get a good night so you’re fresh for the morning. Did you tell me you had a petticoat and drawers with lace on them? Better let me run an iron over them for you’ll need them for trying on little Miss Teaser’s things.’
Margaret did not at once get out her luggage basket, for she was thinking. Then she said:
‘Hannah, who brought me up, when she heard I was being sent to an orphanage, made three of everything for underneath.’
‘Because that’s what you came with when you were found in a basket?’
‘That’s right, but she made one petticoat and one pair of drawers with lace on for Sundays as well. I never wore my own clothes in that awful orphanage, although each Sunday while I was with the Fortescues I did. But tomorrow isn’t a Sunday. Do you think Hannah would mind?’
Sarah put herself in Hannah’s place. ‘I think if we could ask her she would say there must be an exception to every rule.’
Margaret was charmed. ‘That’s exactly what Hannah would think. She was always saying things like “A stitch in time saves nine”.’
‘If she made the lace underwear for Sundays,’ Sarah suggested, ‘why not wear your plain ones next Sunday to pay back?’
Margaret thought that splendid. ‘You do have good ideas, Sarah. But I’ll tell you one you haven’t had. I don’t mind going to bed now if that’s what you want, but I’m not going to sleep until I know the end of the play. I simply couldn’t.’
Margaret went to bed on her mattress and rolled over so the script of the play was on her pillow. Then she read her favourite speech once more. ‘Oh, I do hope I am Anastasia,’ she thought. ‘I can hear me saying that.’
In the play there was, of course, a shocked pause after Anastasia’s outburst, then her father said to all the ladies and gentlemen:
‘Leave us, please. I wish to speak to my daughter alone.’
The next scene Margaret thought rather mushy. She did not like the way Anastasia gave in to her father. If it had been her she would have had a lot more to say. Anastasia’s father talked about her duty. He told her she was called to a high position, so must behave always with that in mind. The situation in Parthenia was difficult, there were still many people, particularly the peasants, who did not want their royal family back, so it was up to all of them to behave beautifully at all times so that the country could learn to be proud of them. Then he told her all the ladies and gentlemen who had greeted them were their loyal friends and it would have shocked them that she could behave so badly, so he was now calling them back so that she could apologize.
There was a lot of description then which Margaret skipped, but all the ladies and gentlemen came back, and Anastasia stood at the bottom of the staircase facing them, and said she was sorry but she had been brought up in England where everybody said what they thought. When that was over the ladies and gentlemen drew back and the King and Queen, followed by Anastasia, started to climb the stairs. Then there was a pistol shot and the King fell. The Queen flung herself on him and said he was dead. Anastasia clung to the banister frozen (so the script said) with terror, and then a man called out, ‘Long live the Queen’ and this was taken up by all. Anastasia suddenly realized that it was her they were calling Queen. With tears pouring down her face she managed to bow to the kneeling ladies and gentlemen, then the curtain fell. But that was as far as Margaret got for her head had rolled on to the script and she was fast asleep.
Sarah smiled as she gently slid the script away. ‘Pretty dear,’ she thought, ‘I do hope she gets to play the part.’