CHAPTER NINE
Marion stared out the window as the train thundered south through the countryside. Dark shaggy hedges and heavy green trees bordered the rolling gold meadows of late summer. The trackside was gay with yellow ragwort and purple berberis, overlaid with the rags of engine steam. Marion wondered if she would know when they crossed the border. Would she feel a tug within? A sign to the true-bred Scotswoman that she had left her native land and was in alien territory, the country of the English?
Above, on the rack, sat her suitcase. It contained mostly old clothes. Her pale blue coat was worn as well. New things had been beyond their budget; the royal family were not paying much either. Her mother had wanted to buy patterns for ball gowns. “I’ll be working, Mother,” Marion had teased her. “Not dancing. And for only four weeks, it’s not worth making anything new. Besides, if they wanted me in smart clothes they should have paid me smart money.”
They were in fact paying even less than Lady Rose had, as Marion was living in. She would have a room in the Yorks’ weekend home—Royal Lodge at Windsor—and in their house in Piccadilly during the week.
“Two houses!” she had said to her mother.
“They’re royalty,” said Mrs. Crawford, as if this explained it.
“They’re royalty,” Miss Golspie had agreed, when Marion went to see her. The principal’s eyes gleamed over her colored reading glasses.
“So you don’t mind if I delay returning to Moray House?” Marion had almost been hoping that she would. Now that arrangements were well underway, she was wondering if she was doing the right thing after all.
Beneath the portrait of the founder of Girton College, the principal linked her fingers and rested her chin on them. “Not at all. On the contrary, I regard it as secondment. An extension of your duty to bring everyday life to those whose lives are, shall we say, a little remote from it.” Miss Golspie smiled.
Marion replied with an uncertain nod. “Remote” was not exactly the word. As the most cursory examination of Mrs. Crawford’s scrapbooks showed, the distance between Princess Elizabeth and ordinary life was that between Earth and a particularly remote planet. She did not even look like a little girl, but like a gold-and-white doll, neatly brushed, in a fussy ruffled frock.
Her full name was Elizabeth Alexandra Mary. She was born in London in April 1926, the third in line to the throne, and her arrival was greeted by a twenty-one-gun salute from the Tower of London and congratulatory telegrams from nine reigning kings, a reigning queen and an emperor. At the age of one, she had received three tons of toys from the people of the Antipodes. The people of France, not to be outdone, later gave her two dolls whose 150 accessories included pairs of gloves, jewel cases, beaded bags, fans, sunshades, tortoiseshell hairbrushes and their own monogrammed writing paper. All over the Empire, her image was on flags, stamps and toffee tins. There was a figure of her in Madame Tussaud’s, children’s hospital wards bore her name and a flag had recently risen above Princess Elizabeth Land in northern Canada. None of this seemed to encourage a well-balanced view of either herself or anyone else.
“But what can I do with her?” Marion asked Miss Golspie in panic. “How can I show someone like that what is normal?”
The principal waved a hand with a large blue Bakelite ring. A row of wooden bracelets rattled. “Use your imagination, my dear!”
“But.” Marion blinked at her.
“Take her out! London is one big outdoor classroom! Take her on the bus. Into the parks! To Woolworths!”
“Woolworths?”
Miss Golspie’s eyes gleamed impishly. “And why not? You can be sure she has never been there. It would be a royal first!”
Marion considered. Once the surprise and panic had faded, she could see what was meant. A very different curriculum; a set of lessons that no royal child had ever received before.
EVEN WITH THESE intentions, saying goodbye to Annie was difficult. In the weeks since she had last visited, Grassmarket seemed, if it were possible, to have got even more decrepit.
“Sit doon, Miss Crawford, do,” said Annie’s mother, attempting a wincing smile in which her lack of teeth was sadly evident. The flannel was still tied around her head. Perching on the one bed, which doubled as a sofa, Marion glanced round the room for Mrs. McGinty’s tailor’s dummy. Usually it stood by the window, to catch what dim light struggled into the courtyard. The family had sold it, she now discovered.
“Ma’s eyes are too bad noo,” Annie explained sadly. “She canna do the fancy sewing nae more. So she lost her situation.”
Marion felt anguished for them. How would they manage?
“I can do rough sewing.” Annie’s mother gave a brave smile. “Mending dresses for neighbors.”
“And I’ve been charring,” her daughter added proudly. “Takin’ in washing. Standing at the alley end with mae dolly tub.”
A child of six, charring and doing laundry! As a great wave of guilt and doubt crashed through her, Marion battled to control herself. She must remember what Miss Golspie had said. She was tackling all this from the other end.
She had decided not to say where she was going. The contrast was too cruel; the explanation too complicated. And the parting would, anyway, only be temporary. “I won’t be away long,” she had promised.
Annie had leaned close. The smell of her unwashed little body nipped Marion’s nostrils. “Miss Crawford, can I chum ye?”
“Come with you,” in Edinburgh dialect. Marion had placed her clean forehead against the child’s dirty hair. “Oh, Annie,” she said softly. “How I wish you could.”
THE TRAIN RATTLED down the country, stopping and starting, always in the worst areas of every town. Durham. York. Leeds. Doncaster. The factory chimneys and rows of blackened terraces all looked the same. So many poor people, Marion thought. And here she was, off to serve the richest. It was crazy, really.
But she gritted her teeth, remembered Miss Golspie and channeled her doubts into planning her alternative curriculum. It would include a bus ride and shopping at Woolworths, as Miss Golspie had suggested. And, perhaps, to give some insight into how the nation was run and protected, they would visit Parliament—but strictly the public gallery—and a police station. The London docks, for trade. The Bank of England, so Elizabeth might learn about how it worked, that substance of which her family had so much and most people so little.
Having made her notes, Marion reached for the Teacher’s World she had bought at the station. It was her favorite of the professional magazines because of the columnist Enid Blyton. While its purpose was to interest children in animals, her weekly “Letter from Bobs,” supposedly written by her pet fox terrier, was one of Marion’s guilty pleasures. Bobs this week had been chasing the postman and causing ructions in Enid’s flower beds. It made Marion smile in spite of herself. Blyton was a talented writer. She would be wonderful at children’s books.
Would Princess Elizabeth enjoy “Letter from Bobs”? Did the Yorks even have dogs? She knew so little about where she was going, Marion thought.
She dozed and read as the hours passed. People came and went. She must have fallen asleep, because suddenly she woke just as the “King’s Cross” sign slid past the window. They were arriving in London.
She had been looking forward to seeing it. But now the necessity of moving bags, finding tube lines and making connections superseded all else. She made the Windsor-bound train by a whisker, and an hour or so later, as it rounded a bend, she saw, in the distance, a vast mass of turrets, walls and towers. Against the garish stripes of sunset, battlements showed like black teeth. A flag fluttered. She had traveled most of the length of England, and now she was nearly here.
Windsor and Eton station was quiet and dark. As she tugged her case onto the platform, someone in a peaked cap and buttons bowled up.
“Miss Crawford? Blimey, young, aintcha? Was expecting someone ancient. This yer luggage?” His cawing London accent fell unfamiliarly on her ears.
“Yes, yes and yes,” said Marion, amused.
She had never traveled in a car before. It was exciting, if noisy and smelling strongly of cigarettes. They soon left the town behind. Peering outside, she could see nothing but darkness and the faint outlines of trees.
“We’re ’ere,” said the driver, as a pair of white-painted gates flashed past. Ahead was a large building blazing with yellow lights.
A dignified figure in a tailcoat appeared in the doorway, light gleaming on his silver hair. “Miss Crawford? I am Mr. Ainslie, the butler. Their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of York are in London this evening.”
Relief swept Marion. She could go straight to bed in that case. She was by now so tired she could have lain down on the floor.
“However,” Mr. Ainslie continued gravely, “Her Royal Highness the Princess Elizabeth wanted to wait up for you. If you would follow me upstairs?”
Marion stumbled crossly after Ainslie through a vast, ornate room. Things now were beginning to take on the aspect of a dream. Faces loomed from gold-framed oil paintings on the wall. A row of huge arched windows looked into the black night.
After several passages and flights of stairs Ainslie stopped at a white-painted door that opened immediately upon his knock. A large black-clad figure loomed in the entrance. It had a square jaw and a glinting eye, which looked Marion up and down coldly.
“Miss Crawford, Mrs. Knight. Princess Elizabeth’s nanny.” Ainslie then shot off as if he couldn’t get away fast enough.
Marion watched the glinting eye take in the details of her worn old coat. Then the broad black back had turned and the solid legs in their sensible shoes were stomping off. Marion followed her through a pink-walled day nursery with a table and chairs, bookshelves and cupboards lining the walls. Were the three tons of toys in those, and the French dolls with their writing paper?
It was simpler than she had expected, similar to what she had known at Rosyth. The night nursery was indeed almost identical: a soft brown room with a fireplace before which stood a clothes airer, rug and armchair. Opposite it, in a small, iron-framed bed, a small figure with a mop of curly hair was sitting up.
Marion stared at her in surprise. The world’s most famous six-year-old looked different from the frilled doll of the photographs. She wore a simple nightdress patterned with small pink roses and held two dressing-gown cords in her hands. They were attached to the ends of the bedknobs and she was jerking and pulling them vigorously. “Trot on!” she commanded in a high little voice.
It was an unexpectedly comical sight. “Do you usually drive in bed?” Marion asked.
The blonde curls nodded. “Oh yes. Always. I go once or twice round the park before I go to sleep. It exercises my horses.”
Mrs. Knight now stepped forward. “This is Miss Crawford.” She sounded as if she were announcing something dreadful.
The princess dropped the dressing-gown cords. She looked at Marion properly for the first time. She had her mother’s keen, rather piercing blue eyes. “Why have you no hair?”
There was a muffled snort from Mrs. Knight. Ignoring her, Marion pulled off her hat. “I’ve enough to be going on with. It’s an Eton crop.”
The princess seemed satisfied with this explanation. She nodded and picked up the reins again. She negotiated what was evidently a dangerous and difficult corner before asking, in her direct way, “Are you going to stay with us?”
Marion hesitated. “For a little while at least.”
Mrs. Knight now barged forward. “Time for us to go to sleep,” she said sternly.
The princess allowed herself to be tucked away. Then, suddenly, she bounced up again and looked straight at Marion. “Will you play with me tomorrow?”
“Er, yes. Of course.”
A huge grin flashed across the child’s face, changing its serious appearance completely. The effect was dazzling. Marion was still recovering when the princess added, happily, “Good night. See you tomorrow.”