Chapter Twenty-Eight 28 December 2023 #2
Together we lifted a wriggling, unhappy Chino into the trolley and then I climbed in after him. Inside, it smelled like cleaning solvents and wet towels.
“I’ll close you in now,” Charlie said as pulled the lid up. “Don’t worry, it’ll only be for a minute.”
We were in the dark. The plastic drum wobbled on its wheels as Charlie steered us over the carpet, across the floorboards and out the front door.
When we skittered through some gravel, Chino let out a yelp and I pulled him to my chest to soothe him.
For a moment everything was still. But a great shove threw us backwards, like the ascent of a rollercoaster, and I knew Charlie was pushing us up the ramp and into the van.
There was a metallic thunk as the doors shut us inside.
“Everything okay back there?” he said as he buckled himself into his seat. “Let’s get through the gate and then I’ll park around the block and let you out.”
“All fine,” I said.
The van shook to life and soon we were crunching through the gravel of the quadrangle before the tyres gained traction on the sealed road.
There would be two police officers standing sentry at the gates.
I’d emailed them that morning to let the carpet cleaner in, and now all they had to do was sign him out.
The air in the trolley was becoming moist from our quick breaths and I tried to stay quiet as the van slowed to a stop.
Burying my face in Chino’s fur, I silently pleaded with him not to make a sound.
“Hey,” Charlie called in an affable voice. “All done in there—thanks, mate.”
“Right then, one moment,” I heard one of the officers reply. “Happy Christmas.”
The iron gates groaned against their frozen hinges, and then the van was rolling forward.
Soon we were moving at speed, just another workman’s car on the streets of London.
It was the week before New Year’s, when time seems endless, and no one leaves the house if they can help it.
By the time Stewart realised I was gone, it would be too late.
The quadrangle would be scandalised by my escape.
All my older relatives would stand around whispering, trying to figure out how I had done it.
It was the second time that I had slipped away from them undetected. But this time, I didn’t plan to return.
Two weeks before Christmas, Mary had called Stewart to ask that the Queen’s speech no longer announce my forthcoming investiture as the Princess of Scotland.
The public shouldn’t be promised something that would never occur.
Over a series of fraught, clandestine meetings at Amira’s dining table, Stewart had made clear that if I intended to give up the crown, I would be giving it all up.
My titles, my name and my privileges would all be taken away so that I didn’t overshadow Richard’s future reign.
No one had ever willingly removed themselves from the line before, so if I did this, I would be choosing a life in exile.
“I know what I’m giving up,” I said.
I was not permitted to speak to the Queen directly about my decision.
Instead, Stewart spoke to her himself. She sent a message back, saying that I was to take the fortnight before Christmas to make sure that I was sure.
Her speech would become a meditation on the meaning of service.
If, by the time it was broadcast, my case of cold feet had passed, we would pretend it had never happened.
No one would ever know how close Richard had come to wearing the crown, least of all Richard himself.
But if I searched my soul and found that it was not fit for a queen, I would be shown the door.
On Christmas afternoon, with her speech aired and our family taking tea in the drawing room, Granny and I went for a walk around her estate. Chino and Pud raced ahead of us into the fading afternoon sun, while she held on to my arm gingerly to navigate the muddy snowmelt.
“You know, there were many times when I was your age that I wanted to give this up,” she said. “Your grandfather and I had our hardships early on and I wondered if perhaps it was best for my family if I handed it over to Beatrix. She always wanted it more than I did.”
“I never knew that.”
We stopped by the old water fountain that had been drained and covered for the winter. Granny’s blonde hair glowed like a corona in the setting sun.
“I hope you’re not reconsidering because of the furore over last month’s reception,” she said.
“It’s been my view for quite some time that you are being poorly advised.
The people around you have been filling your head with dangerous ideas about what this role can be.
I did consider intervening earlier, but it’s a lesson we must all learn the hard way. ”
“What is the lesson?”
“That this role is not a platform for your ideas.” She looked at me. “What did you say at the reception? When we speak, the world sits up and pays attention? That is not the role of a monarch.”
“What is the role, then?”
“You should hardly speak at all. We are meant to be solid and stable as the nation shifts around us. We’re the thing they grasp on to. I know some people think we’re a relic of the past, but everyone needs steadying now and then.”
I looked back at the house. I knew that Richard would be watching from one of the many windows that overlooked the gardens. I could feel his eyes on me.
“So a more appropriate monarch is a man who hires private investigators to stalk his own family? A man who blackmails the people he’s supposed to love?
Richard has been threatening me for months.
He said that if I didn’t leave, he would expose something that Papa and I did years ago.
I know you prefer to stay out of these things, but perhaps it’s best if you know what’s happening in your own home. ”
A huge skein of geese came twisting and undulating through the skies, their call so loud that we had no choice but to wait until they passed.
It was a frighteningly beautiful sight, but I realised Granny wasn’t looking at the birds.
She was staring at me. When the geese vanished into the horizon, she turned back to the open lawns of the estate and kept walking.
“Freddy had a strange attraction to secrecy,” she said quietly. “His first instinct was always to lie, to cover things up, rather than just confront them and move on. I told him as much at the time, although by then it was too late—he’d already paid that Italian man to get you off the boat.”
Of course he had told her what happened in Italy. He hadn’t been able to keep a secret from her in his life.
“I had no idea you knew.”
“Things reach me one way or another,” she said. “It was a foolish thing to do, but I think he just couldn’t bear to be at the centre of another scandal.”
“Maybe he thought he was protecting me,” I said, suddenly desperate to defend my father.
“Maybe,” she said, sighing out a foggy breath.
The dogs ran in circles around our feet and shot off again towards the trees.
“If you’re worried about the truth coming out, I do think it’s possible for you to survive this.
Your mother was extraordinarily irresponsible that night.
Many people have wondered what her intentions were.
We could very easily give the impression that your father merely sought to protect her reputation after she made a reckless decision in the throes of a great crisis. ”
I looked at her, stunned. “No, I can’t do that.”
It was a theory I could never entertain. She would not have taken me out there just to leave me alone.
Granny gave no sign that she had heard me. As we approached the forest, she turned and leaned against the craggy trunk of a Scots pine. Then she pulled a handkerchief from her pocket, unfolded it and scattered bits of roast ham from lunch on the forest floor for the dogs.
“Richard has always wanted this desperately. It must be a terrible misfortune to be born second,” she said. “Did you ever resent your brother?”
“No, it was always meant to be him.”
She smiled to herself. “Yes, he was special.”
“Richard knew things about him. He was going to expose Louis,” I said, staring at her, desperate for a sign that she could hear me. “When they went up the mountain that day, they were scared, and they weren’t thinking clearly.”
She shook the last of the meat from her handkerchief and dusted her hands. When she finally looked up, her eyes were shining with tears.
“This entire year, all I’ve heard is how much you wanted it to be me,” I said, remembering how she once taught me to handfeed a horse with an open palm, how to curtsy, how to prune roses without taking the bud eye.
“Yes.”
“I would have done anything you asked me. I was willing to change my life, I was willing to give up—” I faltered, unable to say his name.
Tears came, but I held them back. “I was willing to give it all up for this duty. But I know now that the only way for me to do this is to keep burying all these secrets inside myself, and I can’t do that anymore. ”
She looked sad but unruffled. “I understand.”
“Do you?”
Delicately, she pressed a gloved fingertip to her cheek to absorb the tear before it slid any further. Then she waved her hand over her face, as if commanding herself not to shed a single tear more. When she looked at me again, my grandmother was gone, and Queen Eleanor had returned.
“For some monarchs, the moment the crown is placed on their heads feels like a death, as if they have lost themselves forever,” she said.
“For others, it is the moment the crown lands that we are finally, finally our true selves. It’s not always easy.
But we would never give it up, no matter how much we might be tempted, because that would be giving up who we really are.
You, my dear girl, don’t want it enough. Richard does.”
“Everyone says he could be the end of this thing.”