‘And the Queen,’ his uncle warned. ‘You’ll have to work harder with her. It’s not at all helpful of your grandmother and great aunts to keep referring to her as a common Scottish girl!’
So far the Queen has been charm itself, but Philip is aware that her sweet smile is at variance with her sharp blue eyes.
At last, the main lights go out and the orchestra gets going. There’s some rousing music and just as Philip is seizing the opportunity to slide down in his seat, the curtains are dragged open. The drum roll bangs a conclusion, the lid of the laundry basket on stage is tossed aside and up pops none other than Princess Elizabeth, heiress presumptive to the English throne.
There’s a tiny moment of silence when she seems to be looking straight at him, and he’s so taken aback that at first he can only stare back, his headache forgotten, before he starts to grin at the sheer absurdity of it.
Then she smiles – another shock, as he doesn’t remember her smiling like that – and starts to sing as she comes out from behind the basket. She is wearing a red and gold Chinese jacket and filling it out very nicely indeed. The jacket reaches her thighs. Beneath it, she is wearing only a pair of satin shorts and silk stockings that reveal surprisingly shapely legs.
Philip whistles to himself and sits a little straighter.
He watches with new interest as Elizabeth tap dances across the stage. The show is better than he had expected, he has to admit, and he even finds himself laughing out loud at the more groan-worthy jokes. Princess Margaret is very pretty and undoubtedly the better performer. She has a better voice and is a better actor, but Philip’s eyes keep going back to Elizabeth. She is positively sparkling.
She must be seventeen by now, he calculates. He hasn’t realised what a difference two years can make. Uncle Dickie’s exhortations to fix his interest with her suddenly don’t seem quite as tiresome.
Chapter 3
Elizabeth feels as if she is smiling with every cell in her body as she joins hands with Margaret and the rest of the cast and bows. The curtains fall into place with a dull swish. Never has she danced so well, sung so well. Dressed as a washerwoman in a sackcloth dress and an apron, she sang ‘We’re Three Daily ’Elps’ with Margaret and Cyril and thrilled at the sight of Philip throwing his head back and laughing. No tight smiles or simpers for Philip of Greece.
She is trembling with excitement and anticipation as they leave the stage, but when Philip comes backstage to congratulate her, her confidence evaporates abruptly. After dreaming of him for so long, the reality of him is intimidating. He is taller than she remembers, the lines of his face harder, the icy eyes bluer. He seems to take up more than his fair share of air so that her breath shortens and she feels twitchy and exposed.
He comes in with the King and Queen and his intimidatingly elegant cousin, Marina, Duchess of Kent with her languid, tilted smile and exotic accent. Elizabeth remembers being a bridesmaid at Marina’s wedding to her uncle George. Philip was there, too, but he was just a boy then, an alien creature Elizabeth watched out of the corner of her eye. Uncle George was killed on active service last year, and Marina is facing her widowhood with courage. She is effortlessly beautiful and has a warmth, a kindness and an easy charm that Elizabeth admires and envies.
‘What fun that was!’ Marina kisses Elizabeth warmly. ‘You were marvellous, darling.’
Elizabeth smiles and thanks her, and kisses her parents, but all the time she can feel her gaze being dragged to Philip, who is standing a little behind them. She doesn’t want to look at him, she is determined not to, in fact, but it is as if her eyes are iron filings being sucked remorselessly towards a magnet. When the others move on, he lingers, and she doesn’t know whether to be delighted or terrified.
‘I say, that was terrific,’ he says warmly. ‘Very funny indeed.’
‘Thank you.’ The old terrible shyness clamps around her throat. She is still wearing the costume with the jacket and tights and she turns the saucy cap she has worn on stage between her hands, keeping her eyes firmly fixed on it. ‘Mr Tannar, the headmaster of the Royal School, wrote the script, so it’s nothing to do with me really.’
‘I don’t agree. A script isn’t any good without good actors. I enjoyed it. The laundry scene was very funny. Especially with the iron burning through all those “unmentionables”.’
His eyes drop to her legs. Elizabeth orders herself not to fidget but she feels ridiculously exposed and her smile is stiff.
‘Yes, Margaret and Cyril are very good.’
What has happened to the sparkle she felt on stage, she wonders miserably. She had been so determined to show him that she was no longer the gauche fifteen-year-old he had met before, but look at her: her tongue feels thick and unwieldy, any hope of witty repartee shrivelling in her throat. It was hopeless.
‘I thought you were very good, too,’ says Philip, but Elizabeth can’t help wondering if he would think she was good if she weren’t the King’s eldest daughter.
‘That’s kind of you,’ she says with a stiff smile, ‘but it’s Margaret who is the performer.’
‘You’re determined to turn aside any compliments, aren’t you?’ he says. He’s not exactly smiling but when Elizabeth risks a glance at him, she sees that the crease in his cheek has deepened. The sight sets warmth trembling inside her. She can feel it spreading outwards, blotching her throat and staining her cheeks beneath the greasepaint.
‘I don’t like being complimented when I don’t deserve it.’
Philip seems amused rather than daunted by her priggish voice. ‘What do you deserve to be complimented for?’ he asks, as if he’s really interested.
Being dutiful, that’s what her parents would say.
‘I have a good appetite,’ she says and remarkably, he laughs.
‘We have something in common then. I still think of the tea on the royal yacht when you came to the Royal Naval College in ’39. I had two banana splits.’
‘And platefuls of shrimps, if I remember right,’ says Elizabeth, encouraged by his laugh. ‘I’m surprised you weren’t sick.’
Philip grins at her. ‘It would have been worth it.’
His smile burns behind her eyelids and she looks away.
‘It’s hard to imagine a banana split now,’ she says after a moment. ‘I haven’t seen a banana since the start of the war.’
‘I’ve got friends who say that they dream of fresh fruit now.’
‘For me it’s soap,’ Elizabeth says and he raises his brows.
‘Soap?’
‘Before the war, when the soap got thin, we’d have a new bar to unwrap. It always smelt lovely, of roses or lavender. But now we have to use it down to the last tiny sliver, when it’s all cracked and grimy, and then it gets put together with other slivers so we can keep on using it. It makes us feel that we’re doing our bit, though it’s little enough compared with what most people have to do. So I always feel guilty about longing for a new bar all to myself. It’s a dream for when the war is over!’
Why had she told him that? Elizabeth cringes inwardly. Philip has been fighting. He has seen the reality of war. He is hardly going to be impressed by a silly girl yearning for soap.