CHAPTER TEN

Marion slept deeply. She awoke slowly, like someone surfacing from the depths of the ocean. She found herself in an unfamiliar bed, staring at a strange white ceiling. Where was she?

In a tremendous flash it all came back. Royal Lodge. A dragon in the nursery. Once around the park before bedtime.

She swung her legs from beneath the blankets and headed to the window. Behind the flower-print curtains, sunlight burst through leafy branches. A lawn stretched beyond, leading to flower beds. Birds hopped about.

A noise, faint but definite, caught her ear. A child’s shriek, perhaps. Alarmed, she pulled on her ancient dressing gown and headed to the door. The corridor was empty but the noise was louder. Screams, definitely. Thumps and yells.

She thought of the little girl in the bed driving her team. The monkey-like grin. Was she in danger? Why were there no staff about? Barefoot as she was, Marion hurried down the corridor toward the sound.

Downstairs and round a bend, an open doorway gave into a large bedroom. In the middle of a blue carpet, back turned, stood a child in a rose-patterned nightdress. She held a large, lace-edged pillow.

“Elizabeth?”

The princess whirled round, the color high in her cheeks and her blue eyes shining with excitement. “Miss Crawford!” she exclaimed, just as a smaller, plumper child appeared from behind the door.

With a howl of triumph she thumped her sister hard with a pillow.

“Margaret, you beast! I wasn’t looking!”

As the elder princess, yelling vengeance, gave chase to the shrieking younger, Marion now noticed the big wide bed. Beneath a blue silken bedspread huddled two large, shaking lumps. As pillows were now smashed against them, two protesting red faces emerged from under the covers.

She was looking at the Duke and Duchess of York, Marion realized in astonishment. “Surrender!” the younger princess was demanding, threateningly waving her pillow at her parents.

“Never!” The duchess was mimicking a dramatic film heroine, the back of her hand to her forehead, dark hair tumbling about her cheeks.

“Beg for mercy!” Elizabeth commanded her father, who was covering his face with thin hands as she thwacked him with all her might.

“N-n-never!” he gasped, before descending into a fit of coughing.

A pillow hurled by Margaret now slammed into the polished dressing table, sending all its contents onto the floor. A crystal perfume bottle smashed against a silver-backed brush. A silver lid fell off a jar, spilling talcum powder. Squeals of delight greeted this destruction.

Marion stood, inhaling the heavy scent rising from the stain on the carpet. She had no idea what to say. The duchess now spotted her. “Miss Crawford! What must you think of us?”

The duchess wore thick silk pajamas. Marion briefly wondered what she thought of her, in her threadbare dressing gown, her large pale Scottish feet bare on the carpet.

The duchess burst into peals of laughter. “I should have mentioned that we always romp in the morning! We want our girls to have as normal and ordinary an upbringing as possible!”

As Marion returned to her room, the shrieks, whoops and yells echoed down the corridor behind her. It was all rather unbelievable, the duchess’s explanation most of all. Was it normal and ordinary to thwack your parents with pillows first thing in the morning? And who tidied up the bedroom after these romps? She was glad it was not her.

Her confused spirits rose when she saw that a large brown tray had been left outside her door. On it was arranged, with exquisite precision, a silver teapot, crested china cup and saucer, two boiled eggs, a silver toast rack and butter stamped with the royal crest. There was a snowy napkin in a silver ring and a newspaper that seemed to have been ironed.

Inside her room, Marion spread out the paper on her small but serviceable desk and read it as she ate. The news was not good. The unemployment figures had risen yet again and were now approaching three million. The north of England, her native Scotland and the valleys of South Wales were the most depressed areas. Benefit cuts were making matters worse and several hunger marches from all over the country—Scotland, South Wales, the North, anywhere that unemployment and poverty were biting the hardest—were marching to London in order to draw attention to their desperate plight and demand the abolition of the hated Means Test. Introduced in 1931 as part of a sweeping general austerity package, this granted minimal unemployment benefit only after an invasive and humiliating examination of the applicant’s entire household. Pensions, savings, even family possessions were taken into account. Marion read of the little bands of walkers, many dressed by the collective efforts of their families—the father’s trousers, the brother’s coat, the uncle’s boots—and felt a wave of hot anger. How could people be still living like this, in 1932?

She looked at the silver knife in her hand, and the butter with its royal crest, and felt her previously keen appetite fade away.

She had just finished dressing when the door to her room burst open. “Miss Crawford! I’ve come to take you to the Little House!”

Princess Elizabeth wore a pink dress with laces up the front and white cap sleeves. The effect was vaguely Tyrolean, and very fussy. Her hair was impeccably brushed and her shoes shone like mirrors. Two white socks were pulled up to spotless knees.

She looked an entirely different child from the pillow-hurler in the bedroom.

“What’s the Little House?” Marion asked.

“The people of Wales gave it to me,” the princess said airily. “Wasn’t that nice of them?”

Marion glanced at the newspaper, with its pictures of the pinch-faced people of the principality. “Very.”

“Come on!” urged the child, excitedly.

Outside in the garden, flowers were in full bloom that were yet buds in Scotland. Royal Lodge in the daylight was, Marion saw, not white at all, but painted a pale pink. With the row of arched French windows and the finials on the balustrade it looked unexpectedly exotic, something of a fairy pavilion, especially surrounded by many-colored rhododendrons and with a background of soft green trees.

“I bet you enjoy climbing those trees,” Marion remarked as they passed a magnificent Lebanon cedar.

“I’ve never climbed a tree, actually.”

“Never?”

“Alah wouldn’t like it. I’m to stay on the paths and not get my clothes dirty.”

“Allah?” What did the God of Islam have to do with it?

“Mrs. Knight,” said the princess. “Look! Here’s the Little House.”

The Little House was actually quite big, much bigger than Marion had imagined. It was in fact an entire house, built to scale for a six-year-old girl. It had a small square chimney and walls of palest blue, into which, on the ground floor, two large white lattice bay windows protruded. Three further windows were set at first-floor level beneath an undulating roof of golden thatch. Before the house were a low brick wall and a sundial in a circle of grass. There was an elegant front door, above which words were painted in black Gothic letters.

“It says ‘YBwthyn Bach,’” explained Elizabeth. “That is Welsh for the Little House. Do come in. Mind your head!”

Stooping, Marion followed Elizabeth through the little front door and looked around in amazement. The scaled-down world was complete in every detail. There were little chairs, a child-sized grandfather clock, blue chintz curtains at windows that really opened.

Elizabeth was flicking the lights on and off. “It has electricity.”

Marion remembered the newspaper. The hunger marchers. Carefully she said, “Did you know that most people in Wales don’t have that?”

A pair of earnest blue eyes were turned on her. “But they’ve plenty of coal, Miss Crawford. Granny told me. She’s been down lots of mines.”

Marion blinked. The child clearly hadn’t the foggiest idea how some people lived. It was time she found out. “Most of the mines have shut now,” she said flatly.

Elizabeth clapped her hands. “Goody! The miners must be very pleased.”

“Er, not exactly.”

The wide blue eyes looked accusing. “But Granny said it was a horribly dirty job. Isn’t it?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“There you are, then.” With an air of abundant satisfaction, the princess went skipping off into the tiny kitchen.

Marion hesitated before following. She felt rather stunned. With such lack of awareness, where did one even start?

Perhaps with the draining board. “Speaking of horribly dirty.” She drew a finger through the thick dust. “Why don’t you clean it?”

“Clean it?” The princess looked surprised. “I don’t know how.”

Marion looked at her. “Oh dear.”

“What’s the matter?” This was uttered anxiously.

“The people of Wales would be upset if they knew how dirty it was. The people of Wales might ask for it back.”

“Oh, Miss Crawford!” The princess was jigging from foot to foot in panic. “What shall we do?”

Marion was opening the tiny cupboards in the kitchen. An array of brushes lay within, plus a scaled-down mop and bucket. “Clean it, of course.”

The princess proved to be a gifted housewife. She particularly enjoyed making the windows squeak as she rubbed them down with newspaper. She plumped the pillows on the child-sized four-poster bed upstairs and even sprinkled the little lavatory pan with a miniature canister of Vim. In the kitchen’s miniature sink, she got to work on the sticky crockery from the miniature oak dresser. “This is such fun,” she gasped, grinning her huge monkey grin, her arms up to the elbows in soapsuds.

“Isn’t it?” agreed Marion, trying not to think of Annie McGinty, forced out charring with her mother.