As far as the king’s assistant secretary, Tommy Lascelles, was concerned, the royal tour across Canada had been an unqualified success from almost every perspective, at least so far. In the end, rather than using a Cunard vessel, it had been decided that a Canadian liner, the Empress of Australia, would be used as the royal yacht on the outward journey while its sister ship, the Empress of Britain, would be used for the return trip. The day after the Empress of Britain arrived in Montreal carrying Barry, Holland, Herr Ridder and Sheila Connelly, it went back down the St Lawrence to Halifax for a month-long refit to royal standards.
The tour began in Portsmouth on May 6 as the king, queen and the royal retinue boarded the white-painted ship to begin their journey, their leave-taking witnessed from the royal family enclosure on shore by Queen Mary, the king’s mother, the dukes of Kent and Gloucester and their duchesses, the Princess Royal and her husband and members of the royal household and local dignitaries and officers. Neither Princess Elizabeth nor Princess Margaret was accompanying their parents on the tour, although both children were there to see their parents off.
Although the original reason for using a commercial liner had supposedly been to save any fighting ships of the line from leaving England’s defence, the cruisers H.M.S. Repulse, H.M.S. Glasgow and H.M.S. Southampton accompanied the Empress out into the Atlantic. After the third day at sea the Repulse turned back for England but the other two cruisers remained as a royal escort.
Shortly after reaching the mid-Atlantic the weather began to worsen, first with dense fog, then with roving ice fields and bergs, all of which the king recorded on the new Kodak movie camera he’d purchased for the tour. Eventually though, after eleven days rather than the scheduled six, the Empress of Australia reached Wolfe’s Cove and Quebec City.
After a gruelling day of sightseeing, presentations and processions, the royal entourage enjoyed a lavish banquet at the Chateau Frontenac Hotel and then made an early night of it, even though thousands of well-wishers kept a cheering vigil around the hotel until the early hours of the morning. After a simple private breakfast the king and queen then travelled by car to the royal train, which was waiting for them at Quebec Station.
The train consisted of twelve cars, five of which were coaches, all painted royal blue and silver. The two rear coaches each bore the royal crest and were designated Car 1 and Car 2. Both coaches were usually used by the Canadian governor general, Lord Tweedsmuir, better known to the reading public as the thriller writer John Buchan, whose novel The Thirty-nine Steps had been made into an exciting and popular film by Alfred Hitchcock several years before.
Car 1, at the very rear of the train, contained the two main bedrooms, the king’s decorated in blue and white chintz, the queen’s in blue-grey with dusty pink damask chair covers and curtains to match. There was also an oak-panelled office for the king, dressing rooms, a private bath for both royals, a sitting room with a radio and a small library. In Car 2 there were two bedrooms for senior staff, as well as offices, dressing rooms and bathrooms.
Farther forward there were living and working quarters for MacKenzie King, the Canadian prime minister.
The remaining cars were given over to accommodation for roughly fifty people, including members of the royal entourage, the prime minister’s staff, stenographers, railway workers, maids and valets, as well as the king and queen’s personal bodyguards, a contingent of Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the commissioner of the entire RCMP, Stuart Wood. Two baggage cars were filled to overflowing with literally hundreds of wardrobe changes for Their Royal Highnesses.
Pulling the train was the enormous Canadian Pacific Locomotive 2850 equipped with a massive stainless-steel Hudson engine refitted for the occasion. The locomotive had been dressed in royal blue, silver and gold with imperial crowns attached to the running boards and the royal coat of arms emblazoned over the headlight. Although rated and tested at over eighty-five miles per hour on the tracks it would utilise, the train would rarely exceed thirty-five miles per hour on the outward leg of the trip from Quebec City to Vancouver, except during the night.
Running half an hour ahead of the royal train at all times was the very ordinary-looking pilot train that housed the radiomen, extra RCMP officers, post office, telegraph and telephone officials, a special darkroom for photographers and film crews and accommodations for more than sixty-five correspondents. Most of the newspapermen were also aware that the pilot train itself was a safety and security precaution for the royal party, which was pointed out in a story filed from the train to the New York Times:
If a bridge fails, if a freight train gets shunted onto the main line or somebody leaves a bomb on the track it will be 30 minutes before the train bearing King George VI and Queen Elizabeth across Canada this week comes upon the wreckage of its pilot train and the mangled bodies of the correspondents and photographers who are covering Their Majesties’ trip.
For the next two weeks, with the royal train as home and refuge, the royal couple rumbled across the country, avoiding controversy with the fascist-loving mayor of Montreal, exhausting their bodyguards and the RCMP protective contingent by breaking every security rule in Ottawa when the queen suddenly decided to mix with the crowd around the new war memorial they were dedicating, meeting the Dionne quintuplets and dedicating a new horse race, the King’s Plate at Woodbine racetrack in Toronto.
In Winnipeg they endured a downpour, soaked to the skin in their open Packard limousines, and a daunting radio speech of eight hundred agonisingly enunciated words on the occasion of the king’s grandmother, Queen Victoria’s birthday. In Manitoba the king and queen received two elk heads and two black beaver pelts in lieu of the ancient rent demanded by King Charles II of the Hudson’s Bay Company and it was estimated by one of the newspapermen that the king had shaken three thousand hands and would shake ten thousand more before the tour was ended.
Somewhere along the way the king was made Great Chief Albino of the Blackfoot Duck Clan and then they were into the mountains, eventually reaching the small resort town of Banff with its huge, chateau-style hotel, the Banff Springs, where they listened to a fifteen- hundred-voice children’s choir sing ‘Springtime in the Rockies,’ walked alone briefly by the banks of the Bow River and then had buffalo steak for dinner. Several quiet comments were made that the king seemed to be exhausted.
After a day’s rest in Banff they continued west to the Pacific and by first light on Monday the twenty-ninth they were out of the mountains and into the Fraser Valley. By ten in the morning the royal train reached the Canadian Pacific Railway station by the docks in downtown Vancouver. There was a brief welcoming ceremony at the new and faintly totalitarian Art Deco City Hall, a visit to a veterans hospital and the University of British Columbia and then a luncheon at another one of the CPR’s chateau-style hotels, the Hotel Vancouver. Then they crossed the newly built Lions Gate Bridge, where they joined the CPR vessel Princess Marguerite docked at the foot of the bridge on the opposite shore. By the time the small ship, briefly transformed into the royal yacht, reached Victoria, the king had rested sufficiently to attend to his duties, enduring another round of receptions and gatherings, including yet another lavish luncheon in yet another lavish CPR hotel, this time the ivy-covered Empress.
Given the king’s speech problem, even the briefest addresses given at these receptions tended to be nerve-racking, especially for Tommy Lascelles, who did most of the speech writing. When a newsreel crew suddenly appeared in the Empress dining room, bathing the head table with their hot lights, Lascelles was furious, terrified that the king would be seized by one of his attacks of nerves, especially since this particular speech was being broadcast by radio. In fact the king carried the speech off without a single moment’s stuttering and was quite proud of his performance, demanding a recording of it for a souvenir, which was promptly made for him.
The following day they left Victoria, travelled back to Vancouver and drove by motor car to New Westminster, where they boarded the royal train again, this time travelling on Canadian National Railway tracks and drawn by a Canadian National locomotive. Travelling through the remainder of the day and all the next night they arrived for a day of rest in Jasper, Alberta, early on the morning of Thursday, June 1.
A general order for privacy was published, restricting the newsfilm operators and photographers from following the royals, who, by noon, were firmly ensconced in Outlook Cabin, an adjunct to the much larger Jasper Park Lodge. While the king ran off a few hundred more feet of home movie film, the queen picked flowers and the rest of the party from both the pilot train and the royal train generally took a day off, occupying themselves with fishing or swimming or tennis or golf.
Sitting in his drawing room compartment on the royal train, Tommy Lascelles was far from relaxed, even with a majestic mountain view to be seen in every direction. In his mind the Canadian portion of the tour was almost without interest; the country was a loyal dominion, bound to England by hundreds of ties and treaties, not to mention, with the exception of Quebec, popular favour and patriotism.
Lascelles was well aware that England was on the verge of war but throughout the tour so far it had been the wee Scots girl from Glamis Castle who’d dominated everything, deciding which speeches ‘Dear Bertie’ should give and where, stepping forward into the limelight, supposedly in an attempt to combat her husband’s shyness and often making naive statements about the present political situation around the world.
There had already been a few reflections of this in the American press, including a pair of inflammatory articles in Time and Newsweek saying that the whole purpose of the visit was to draw first Roosevelt and then the people of the United States into what was clearly going to be an unpopular war with Germany. The king and queen would only be in the United States for five days but that could easily be enough time for opinions to polarise, especially if there were mistakes made by one royal or the other.
For the past hour he’d been trying to put his thoughts down in his journal but the entry was bleak, with the possible exception of the rumour going up and down the train that he was on the King’s List and up for a knighthood. After all the years he’d put in to the Windsor family it seemed like a fair enough exchange.
There was a short, rapping knock on the door to his compartment.
‘Enter.’
Stuart Wood, the tall, powerful-looking commissioner of the RCMP ducked into the room. It was one of the few times Lascelles had seen the man out of his scarlet, heavily medalled uniform. The commissioner had what appeared to be a sheaf of yellow telegraph tear sheets in his hand. Lascelles gestured to the banquette on the other side of his portable table and Wood sat down, letting out a long breath. Lascelles offered his tin of Senior Service and both men lit up.
‘A problem?’ Lascelles asked, pointing to the pile of telegraph forms.
‘Possibly. As you know, the FBI and a Scotland Yard representative have been keeping tabs on Sean Russell.’
‘The IRA chief?’
‘Yes.’
‘Supposedly he’s in the United States to raise money.’
‘There’s more to it than that. There’s information that would lead us to believe there is an assassination plot against Their Royal Highnesses, with Russell as the plot’s chief conspirator.’
Lascelles shrugged. ‘If there’s evidence then surely he can be arrested.’
‘It’s not that easy by the looks of it.’
‘How so?’
‘The FBI has orders to keep Russell under surveillance only.’
‘Whose idea was that?’
‘Believe it or not, the orders would appear to come from Mr Roosevelt.’
‘I’m not surprised.’ Lascelles shrugged. ‘Next year is an election year for him. Russell may be a thug in England but in Ireland and America he’s a bit of a hero. Roosevelt doesn’t want to alienate the Irish vote. He’d lose New York, Boston and Detroit and they’re key to his winning the presidency for another term.’
‘You seem to know a great deal about American politics.’
‘When I was secretary to the Canadian governor general I had to learn Canadian politics too.’ Lascelles offered up a baleful grin. ‘Once upon a time all you had to do was count the number of gun ports on a navy’s ships. Now it’s all done with voting booths and expensive campaigns. The point is it’s unlikely Roosevelt will allow any action to be taken against Russell unless it’s absolutely necessary.’ Lascelles made a small face. ‘Anyway, he does seem rather an unlikely assassin. He’s far too much in the public eye.’
‘Even more so now,’ said Wood. ‘Someone named Dr Dinsley gave a press conference in Los Angeles telling a gathering of reporters that he was a British Secret Service agent with an F10 designation who was there to announce that Sean Russell was in the United States for the express purpose of assassinating the king and queen.’
Lascelles frowned. ‘There’s no such Secret Service ranking as F10.’
‘No, there isn’t, as the next day’s editions of the newspapers were quick to point out. This Dinsley person was utterly ridiculed in the press and so was his idea of Russell as an assassin.’
‘What happened to Dinsley?’
‘Disappeared without a trace, the damage done.’
‘Who organised the press conference?’
‘A man named Lechner from the American Legion Los Angeles Public Relations Committee.’
‘And the FBI?’
‘Russell no longer has any priority. I cabled Hoover asking for photographs and descriptions of Russell in the event that he tries to cross the border but I’ve had no reply.’
‘Do we have any idea where Russell is now?’
‘Not the faintest.’ The commissioner paused, stroking his moustache for a brief moment. ‘Does the king know anything of this?’
‘No.’
‘Perhaps he should be told.’
‘I think not. For the moment it’s better to let sleeping dogs lie.’
The king sat in a large, partially upholstered Adirondack chair on the open porch of the small cabin smoking another of his never-ending supply of Players. There was a large tin ashtray built into one arm and a holder for a glass built into the other – which he thought was a fine idea – and which now held a double gin and tonic, even though it was only just past noon. In the meadow below the cabin Buffy and one of her ladies-in-waiting, the Lady Nunburnholme, were busy gathering up bouquets of wildflowers and laughing together.
On the king’s lap was a copy of one of Grey Owl’s books, given to him as a gift by some dimly remembered official at a whistle-stop in the north of Ontario. He smiled, remembering how the leathery old fraud, whose real name was Archie Belaney, had visited Buckingham Palace two years before and how he and Buffy had tiptoed into the nursery unannounced as the soft-spoken man with a feather in his braided hair instructed the two enthralled and wide-eyed little princesses in the secrets of woodcraft. For days afterward none of the Corgis was safe from Lilibet and Margaret Rose with their makeshift bows and arrows, war-whooping up and down the corridors and terrorising the little creatures, insisting that they were wolverines whose pelts would fetch ‘big dollar’ at the Hudson’s Bay Post.
The king lit another cigarette from the hot end of the previous one – a habit Buffy found ‘perfectly disgusting’ – and then took a small sip of his drink. He was supposed to be working on the breathing and relaxation exercises he’d been taught by Logue, his Harley Street speech therapist, but today he just couldn’t be bothered. The techniques were tedious, most of them involving endless repetitions of convoluted, childish sentences like ‘Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers’ and learning how to breathe with his diaphragm rather than his throat. Since he wouldn’t be giving any long-winded speeches for a little while yet, he’d decided to abandon the exercises, at least for today. Logue had been very insistent that he give up smoking as an aid to his breathing, if not his general health – not an untoward suggestion since his father, George V, had died of respiratory complications – but Bertie had refused, insisting that other than Logue’s exercises, the only thing that calmed him enough to speak without too much of a stammer was the cigarettes. And the gin.
The king picked up the book in his lap and stared at the cover. On it an Indian – Archie, no doubt – was paddling a birchbark canoe along the margin of a lake, tall pines rising in the background and high above in a cloudless sky a hawk or eagle circled. If you looked very closely and carefully you could see the shy, sleek head of a young deer looking out from between the trees. Archie, born into some ghastly slum in Birmingham or Manchester or wherever it was, transformed himself into an Indian, and a famous one at that, and was now a famous fraud with his secret made public.
Both of them frauds. The king for the fact that he knew nothing of kingship and wanted to know nothing, for his petrifying fear of women, even his own dear Buffy, his secret left-handedness, virtually beaten out of him by his father and his tutors as a child, but secretly indulged whenever he could manage it, like a child sucking at his thumb. He stared at the cover of the book and felt the first sting of angry tears. A street urchin like Archie Belaney could come and go as he pleased, glide over lakes and rivers, live off the land, be something for himself, entertain, do good works even if that good work was nothing more than putting a gleam of another world into his daughters’ eyes. And yet a king, an emperor could do nothing, be nothing. Nothing at all. Talent, desire, want and need, all of it was nothing, the bloodline was all, a proper heir the object. When you came right down to it all the King of England could do well was hit a tennis ball and shoot grouse. Hardly a reason for existence and less of a reason for being on what was beginning to feel like an endless tour of this gigantic country that only served to make him feel smaller and more useless than he usually did.
Buffy came up the steps in one of her blue dresses, her arms laden with flowers. Lady Nunburnholme was still in the meadow. ‘Have we been doing our exercises?’ asked the queen.
The king managed a smile and a nod. He stubbed out his cigarette. ‘Just getting to them now.’