‘You’ll have a rather bigger note than me.’
There is an edge of something Elizabeth can’t quite identify in his voice. She glances at him and then away. That, too, is true. There is no point in denying it. Does it bother him that her inheritance is so much greater than his could ever be?
‘Do you ever wonder what it’s like not to be royal?’ he asks abruptly.
‘Sometimes.’ Elizabeth pulls the collar of her old coat closer against the chill as they start walking again. ‘When Uncle David abdicated, we moved to Buckingham Palace. We were horrified at first. We loved our cosy house in Piccadilly. That felt like an ordinary way to live, although I don’t suppose it is. The palace isn’t the most comfortable of places but it has a lovely garden with a hillock in it. Margaret and I used to climb it so we could look over the wall at the people walking past. We liked watching the children especially and wondering where they were going, where they lived, what they would have for their supper.’
‘Did you envy them?’
‘Not really. We were just curious. It’s hard to imagine what life is like for other people, isn’t it? Probably those children were walking past and wondering what it was like to live in a palace, but for us it was just the way things were. How they are.’
‘You’re lucky,’ Philip says, and she smiles faintly.
‘It doesn’t always feel that way. I know how privileged I am, but it does come at a price. I don’t have a choice about the life I get to lead.’
He looks down at her. ‘What would you choose if you could?’
‘Oh … nothing exciting. Just to live in the country with dogs and horses.’ She sighs a little. ‘I suppose you think that’s very dull,’ she adds, flushing a little.
A smile twitches the corner of his mouth. ‘Well, it’s not what I would choose, I have to admit. But if it’s what you want …’
‘I might want it but I’m not going to get it,’ Elizabeth says. ‘I might have been able to if Uncle David had done his duty, but he chose to put his personal feelings above that. Papa has had to pay the price for that decision, and I will too. Of course there are worse fates, but no, I don’t always feel lucky.’
Philip has his hands jammed into the pockets of his tweed jacket. ‘Actually, I was thinking about your family,’ he says. ‘About how close you are. Your parents, your sister. It’s been very nice for me to see that. I do envy you that.’
‘Yes, I am lucky in my family,’ she acknowledges, her face softening as she thinks of her beloved father, her bright, charming mother, and Margaret, so quick and so talented, so funny and spirited. Too spirited, sometimes. ‘Of course, Margaret and I have our moments, but I suppose all sisters have those.’
One of the dogs has dropped behind as it determinedly investigates some scent. Elizabeth turns and whistles for it, and after a moment, the dog grudgingly leaves the smell and trots towards them.
‘Jane,’ Elizabeth says fondly. ‘She’s getting on now and she likes to do what she wants. She’s the matriarch,’ she explains, glancing around at the corgis. ‘That’s her daughter and granddaughter … and over there is her great-granddaughter.’
Why is she talking about dogs? Philip can’t possibly be interested. She is just putting off the moment.
The water is dripping from the peak of his cap and the shoulders of his jacket are spangled with rain. She has been enjoying the walk but he must be soaked, she realises with a guilty look. ‘Shall we turn back?’ she asks.
Chapter 10
Philip is glad to agree. There is rain trickling down beneath his collar and his hands are frozen. He has never thought that he would remember with nostalgia those sweltering days aboard Valiant after the Chinese stokers jumped ship in Puerto Rico. Stripped to their shorts, stinking and sweating, he and his fellow midshipmen had to shovel coal into the ship’s furnaces all the way to Virginia and he had dreamt of a cold, wet winter day.
No longer.
‘You have sisters, don’t you?’ Elizabeth asks after a moment. ‘Are you close to them?’
She doesn’t ask about his parents. She must know that they have lived separate lives for many years.
‘I wouldn’t say close. I’m the baby of the family and my sisters are all much older than I am. They’re very … boisterous.’
In his memory, his ears ring with the noise his sisters create when they are all together. They’re all restless movement, jumping up and down, and swirling their skirts, a mass of swooping scented kisses and talking over each other and shrieks of laughter. Their conversation is a vibrant mixture of English, French, and German as forgetting a word in one language they would switch to another and then carry on in that until they went off at a tangent and into a new language that for some reason seemed better suited to it.
‘I’m very fond of all of them,’ he says. ‘Especially Cecile. She was killed in an air crash in 1937.’
‘What a tragedy,’ Elizabeth says.
‘Don, her husband, and my two nephews were with her. They were coming over here to a wedding. Cecile was heavily pregnant.’ A muscle jerks in Philip’s cheek. ‘She gave birth on the flight, perhaps even during the crash. The baby died with her. It never had a chance to live.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Elizabeth’s voice is so quiet that Philip barely hears her. He is remembering the sound of the gun carriages laden with coffins trundling over the cobbled streets of Darmstadt. He was sixteen. He flew to Germany from Gordonstoun and followed the coffins with his brothers-in-law in their Nazi uniforms, Uncle Dickie a row behind. Philip’s memories are blurred but he remembers his uncle’s hand on his shoulder during the funeral. He remembers the heavy tread of feet, the silent crowds watching. The sullen sky spitting sleety pellets of ice. The occasional stiff-armed salute and murmurs of ‘Heil Hitler’.
The yawning disbelief and horror: that could not be Cecile with her dancing eyes and burble of laughter shut up in that box.
He swallows down the memories. What is the point of wallowing in them? What’s done is done.
‘Margarita, Dolla – that’s Theodora – and Sophie – we call her Tiny – are still in Germany.’ Philip’s voice is even. All three were married to senior German officers. ‘For obvious reasons, I haven’t seen them for a while.’
‘That must be difficult for you.’
Philip isn’t going to admit to finding anything difficult. Isn’t that what Gordonstoun and the war has taught him? You get on with what you have to do. You don’t wring your hands and complain about your lot.
‘The war is difficult for everyone,’ he says almost curtly. ‘We are not the only family divided by war.’
Elizabeth glances at him. ‘I know,’ she says coolly. ‘My grandfather and Kaiser Wilhelm were cousins.’
The Great War had taught the British royal family to be chary of their German relations. They had changed their name to Windsor and insisted that the Battenbergs, descended from Queen Victoria and British to the back teeth, forfeit their princely title.
‘Your sisters’ German husbands will be your biggest handicap,’ Uncle Dickie warned him. ‘Distance yourself from them as far as possible.’