CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
She traveled back south through a lush late-summer landscape. On the rack above her seat was a suitcase with a new outfit. Marion herself was in need of a replacement wardrobe, but these clothes were not for her. They were many sizes too small and for someone else entirely.
She had exacted this price at least. If she was to go back, it would be with a set of playclothes for Elizabeth. Running up a hard-wearing tartan skirt on the Singer and knitting a warm red jersey in the armchair had been no problem for her nimble-fingered mother. On the contrary; she had set about it with delight.
And of course, Marion thought, looking out at the sunny fields, there were other advantages too. She would not have to leave the princess, and she would see Tom again.
And as for Annie McGinty and her teaching course, well, she would return. Just not straightaway. Fate, in the unlikely combined form of Miss Golspie, Ethel McKinley, her mother and the Duchess of York, had decreed otherwise. Fate had also made her task clear, and she planned to put it into action the instant she arrived at Piccadilly.
“CRAWFIE!”
She had barely gotten through the door when Lilibet, who had clearly been waiting for her, hurled herself across the hall and clasped her in a hug. But something had hurled itself after her—something low-slung and ginger-colored. The princess threw herself on the carpet with a scream of rapture. Her absence, Marion saw, had coincided with the arrival of the long-hoped-for dog.
“His name is Rozavel Golden Eagle!” Lilibet gasped, excitedly. Marion had never seen her so utterly delighted. She was now sitting up, laughing as the rough-haired ginger animal licked her face.
“That’s a very long name.”
“The kennels called him Dookie! Because they knew he was going to live with the Duke of York!”
Not everyone shared the princess’s joy at this arrangement, Marion guessed. Ainslie was edging round the hall walls, a nervous smile on his face. A housemaid hobbled past, face pale with pain and annoyance. She hurled a gaze of hot loathing at the dog, who was now running over the princess’s stomach as she lay on her back, fondling the animal’s large ears and tickling its barrel-like body. It was not a breed Marion recognized.
“He’s a corgi!” Lilibet cried happily. She stared at Marion’s luggage. “Is that a pirate chest out of a story?”
“Absolutely.” Marion played along immediately. “A pirate gave it to me.”
Actually, the little polished curved-lid box had been a farewell gift from her mother. The wood had, in a former life, been the paneling in the wardroom of a German battleship scuttled by her crew in Scapa Flow. It was bound with brass fittings and had an “M” set in lighter wood into the lid.
She smiled at Lilibet. She looked beautiful with her shining eyes and the huge monkey grin that transformed her serious face. She had grown taller even in the past week, and lost some of her childish plumpness. Marion hoped the playclothes would fit.
She must go and hand them over immediately. There was no way round it. Mrs. Knight was in charge of clothes and dressing, and the princesses’ wardrobes were her kingdom.
THE EXCHANGE WAS done on the nursery threshold, over whose boundary no representative of the schoolroom could cross. Looking unimpressed, Mrs. Knight took the parcel and began to open it. Marion glanced past her into the green-painted nursery, where Margaret, as usual, was standing up in her cot, gripping the wooden bars and staring at the parakeets in the cage by the window. It was possible she shared with them a fellow feeling.
She really must have a word about this, Marion thought. But that was a battle for another day.
“And what might these be, Miss Crawford?” The nanny’s thick fingers had reached the tartan skirt and jumper.
“Playclothes, Mrs. Knight,” Marion said pleasantly. Against the unrelieved black of the nanny’s uniform, the little red outfit struck an optimistic note. “If you could dress, er, Lilibet in them for lessons, that would be lovely.”
The nanny raised her square chin in challenge. The child’s nickname had been, until now, her prerogative. Marion met the flinty gaze without flinching. Yes, Mrs. Knight. Things are about to change round here.
Later, having failed to locate the duchess, she approached the duke’s ground-floor study and knocked. Unexpectedly, a gale of laughter greeted this. She twisted the knob and popped her head round the door. “May I come in?”
The Yorks were both there, sitting on either side of a fireplace with a large oil painting of cows above it. The evening sunshine fell on the duchess’s diamond rings and glowed on a double row of large pearls. “Oh, it’s you, Crawfie.”
As if, Marion thought, she had simply gone round the corner and not the entire length of Britain in order to rethink her whole future. Not to mention theirs.
“Yes, it’s me, ma’am. I’m back from Scotland.”
The duke held a cut-glass tumbler of whisky and the duchess a glass of champagne, almost empty. “And how is my dear homeland?” she asked.
“It seemed fine, ma’am.”
Marion wondered how long they had been drinking. The duchess’s eyes were misty. Her glass was now completely empty. “My ain countree!” she declaimed. “How I long to live in some far wee croftie next to the shining river!”
The door opened and a footman entered with a silver tray, on which stood a full flute of champagne. Glasses were exchanged. “Thank you, Fotheringay.”
Watching Fotheringay bow and retreat backward out of the room, Marion reminded herself that she had returned with the express purpose of connecting these people with ordinary life. It was clearly going to be an uphill struggle. But she may as well get on with it. “Ma’am?”
The duchess took a hearty swig of champagne. “Wonderful calves,” she remarked vaguely.
“Calves?” Marion glanced at the cows above the fireplace.
“Used to be frightfully important in a footman. In my grandfather’s day the butler actually measured them with a compass to make sure they were all the same size.”
Marion took a deep breath. “I would like to ask permission to take Princess Elizabeth on the Underground.”
The Yorks stared at her in amazement. It was as if she had suggested taking their daughter to the moon.
“I thought it would be good for her to see the . . .” Marion stopped. She had been about to say “normal world,” but that implied that the one Lilibet lived in was abnormal. “Real world,” similarly, seemed to set up unfavorable comparison with “royal.” “The ordinary world,” she said, eventually. “To see how . . .” Marion paused again. “How other people live.”
She looked from the wide, creamy face to the gray and drawn one and waited for the light to dawn. For them to see that she was trying to help them, not to mention their daughter.
Eventually, the duke spoke. “It m-m-might be a g-good idea, darling,” he said to his wife.
“But Bertie! The Underground.” The duchess clenched her champagne flute for support.
“They don’t have to g-g-go far. They could visit Mama and Papa.”
Marion felt impatient. To go from the Piccadilly mansion to Buckingham Palace hardly counted as exposure to the real world. But she had anticipated this, and had a plan. “I thought, perhaps, the new central YWCA?”
Elizabeth of York looked blank.
“I believe you opened it, ma’am? It’s on Tottenham Court Road?”
“Oh yes. Vaguely. A new building, by Mr. Lutyens? Rather modern?”
“Exactly, ma’am.” This was part of the plan too. Lilibet had probably never been in a building more recent than the mid-nineteenth century. “Very modern. It has a cafeteria where you serve yourself.”
Right on cue, Fotheringay now returned. He took a new glass of champagne from his salver and placed it by the duchess. She sipped, musingly. “Serve yourself? What marvelous fun!”