Miranda #2
There, making her way down the queue of people, was Elizabeth. With a smile on her face, she stopped to shake hands with some of the children, nodding at others, occasionally sharing a few words.
Then umbrellas began to come out, some of them turning inside out in the strong gusts, yet the queen kept smiling regardless, mounting a podium for a prize ceremony. Excited children hurried to the stage to shake hands as they received various medals and badges.
‘They hold this event every year, always here in Windsor.’ Sinclair had come up beside her. ‘The queen and Philip are great supporters of children, especially orphans.’
Miranda chuckled. ‘I had no idea she shook hands with orphans. That’s kind of her, isn’t it? I always thought of the queen as spending her time with other royals, cutting ribbons and being fed Champagne in grand palaces – that’s what I’d do if I had the chance.’
‘Would you really?’ Sinclair eyed her. ‘Surely you’d want to do good, too?’
Miranda’s eyes went back to the queen smiling, the children elated. ‘Perhaps.’
Before long, the moustaches arrived and the meeting began, and on and on it went.
It was incredulous to Miranda how much pointless discussion was involved.
Naturally, things needed to be perfect – she got that.
But a forty-minute discourse as to whether to add a much-needed break in a back chapel of Westminster Abbey after the service was excessive.
The men kept insisting that since it had ‘never been done that way before’, it was ‘against protocol and tradition’. The entire discussion was nonsensical.
After an hour, a tea trolley was wheeled in, and Miranda excused herself to the ladies’, desperate for a few minutes’ peace.
On her way, she looked out the window. The pageant had finished, three footmen rolling up the carpets.
Beside them, a limousine pulled up to the main door, and then, of all people, the queen herself came out to open the door.
Miranda wondered who would be so grand as to have the monarch welcome them personally, but then she saw.
It was four-year-old Charles and little Anne, still only two.
Miranda watched as the queen stepped forward to greet her children, not austere, as all the newspapers would have it, but loving and caring, scooping up Anne into her arms and kissing her, taking Charles’s little hand in hers to head back inside.
It was a natural motherly instinct, a smile beaming from Elizabeth with the close connection, a mother and her children.
Miranda quickly tried to blot out a sudden feeling of unease.
Back in Connecticut, she and Jack had talked about the children they’d have.
It was the summer before Pearl Harbor, before they’d married, before he’d gone.
Together they’d run, dancing through the sun-dappled lanes, talking about their future.
They’d have a dog called Bess, and two children – he liked the names Adam and Catherine, but for her it was Rose and Tommy.
She pictured them in her mind, twirling them around in the sunshine, a lump in her throat as she mourned their absence.
Ever since Jack’s death, she’d avoided young children.
When her friends reproduced, she found other places to be, new friends with whom to spend her time.
The more she threw herself into her career, the more she realized how children would have held her back – wasn’t it a relief that she’d never had them.
And yet, she acknowledged as she watched the queen delighting in the little girl’s giggles, she felt something stir.
Her dreams of children with Jack had been squashed down when he died – the ghosts of little Rose and Tommy had died alongside him.
And now she felt a small thud of regret that she hadn’t done things differently.
By the time the meeting ended, it had gone six o’clock. Miranda and Sinclair retraced their steps to the entrance, and soon the car was winding through London.
Meanwhile, they entertained each other with updates about the palace. Today Sinclair included a choice morsel concerning Miss Driscoll being perennially growled at by the Queen Mother’s favourite corgi.
s
It was late by the time they were dropped at the palace, and after depositing their meeting notes in the offices, they hurried to the Underground station in the driving rain.
It was then that Sinclair proposed that they stop in a pub beside the park ‘to dry off’, adding, ‘I think we deserve a drink after that meeting.’
Keen to grill him about the royal family, Miranda readily agreed, following him into the charming old pub with a low ceiling and easy chairs. They took a table by a great fire, warming themselves after the deluge.
‘Cheers,’ he said, raising his glass. ‘I suppose it made for a nice break, getting out of the city for the afternoon.’
‘I managed to avoid my aunt’s cooking – she has tripe on the menu for today.’ She laughed. ‘I can’t imagine you’d ever be faced with that dilemma,’ she said, and paused, looking at him quizzically. ‘Or perhaps you have a wife at home, a houseful of children?’
Laughing, he replied, ‘Neither. I’m not married and have no offspring. I have to cook for myself.’
‘I bet you have a house in the suburbs, a well-kept backyard.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘You strike me as a gardening man.’
‘Actually, you’re wrong in both regards. I don’t live in the suburbs, and I don’t have a garden – although I am partial to a spot of gardening, so perhaps I should give you a little credit for that.’
‘Then where do you live? A plush flat in Chelsea?’
‘Nothing as dull as that, I assure you. No, I live in an area in north London called Little Venice,’ he paused, then added, ‘on a canal boat.’
Miranda laughed. ‘A canal boat?’
‘One of those long houseboats that chug around the city’s canals.’ He laughed. ‘I told you that I love to travel, and if I can’t go abroad, then I’ll live in a place where I can imagine it.’ He grinned, his eyes lighting up. ‘And Nessy is that place.’
‘Nessy?’
‘Her full name is Vanessa-Jane, but when I bought her, I was told that she likes to be called Nessy. Barges are often named after real people, so I imagine the real Nessy must have been a character.’
‘What’s Nessy like? The boat I mean, not the person.’
He gave a rueful smile. ‘She’s beautiful,’ he said, then blushed. ‘But I would say that, wouldn’t I?’
‘Don’t tell me, she’s your stand-in child?’
‘More like a stubborn old relative. She’s always leaking, and the motor continually jams.’ He laughed. ‘But it’s a fine life, out on the canal. You meet a lot of people, and travelling through the locks of London is one of the best ways to see it.’
‘Isn’t it a little cramped?’
He nodded with a smile. ‘It certainly is that, especially with my collections from around the world.’
‘What kinds of things?’
‘Oh, the usual ornaments and textiles, and also . . .’ He coloured, adding more quietly, ‘musical instruments.’
Unstoppably, a laugh tumbled out of her. ‘Are you serious?’
‘They’re nothing special, a sitar and a zither, a mugo drum, that sort of thing.’
He was blushing.
‘Do you play them?’
‘I try – some of them aren’t exactly the sweetest sound you’ll ever hear. But they tell a story about the place, about the people. That’s what matters to me. I like the idea that the world is made up of all these different cultures, that we’re not stuck in the strict rules of just one place.’
She watched him, thinking how quirky he was. How quick she’d been to judge him. ‘Have you ever been to the States?’
‘Several times, mostly to Washington, DC, and New York, but I’ve been to Chicago and LA, too. I’d love to go to New Orleans. You must have been there.’
There was a week in 1949 when she’d reported on women storming the men-only Sazerac Bar, demanding that they be served.
But she couldn’t let Sinclair know that she was a journalist, so instead she said, ‘I’ve visited once or twice.
How do you like New York?’ She had a sudden urge to talk about her home, the place where she’d struggled and survived. It felt a million miles away.
‘Last year I spent Thanksgiving with an American diplomat’s family on the Upper West Side. I think he felt sorry for me, spending Thanksgiving on my own.’
Nodding, she grinned. ‘That must have been an experience. It’s like an eating contest.’
‘And here’s me thinking it was about family. It was interesting to see a different side of New York.’
She laughed. ‘The city is the only bearable place to be.’ His openness encouraged her to tell him the things she usually kept buried.
She presumed it was his diplomatic career, but inside she knew it was more than that.
She hadn’t had conversations like these for so long, those teasing, tentative chats where everything was said, and nothing.
‘Do you come from there?’
‘No, I’m from Connecticut, but I don’t spend much time there.
My mum was in a car accident when I was ten, and we looked after her for a few years until she died.
My father remarried, and it’s fine really.
Rae is a polite and good person, but I’ve never been part of their family.
When I go home, all they’re interested in is trying to marry me off to a neighbour’s son or the new teacher in town.
I told them I’m not interested in dating, but it’s awkward, complicated. ’
‘You’re not interested in dating?’ Sinclair’s eyes looked into hers before flickering down to the wedding ring she had on her left hand. ‘What I don’t understand is why you use the title Miss and yet you wear a wedding ring?’
Her hand flew to the ring, and she drew back defensively. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
She could imagine the thoughts that were going through his mind: Poor her, she must be devastated by a divorce, or maybe she lost someone – what happened to him? More than anything, she couldn’t bear people’s pity.
He must have sensed her pulling away from him, as he skilfully tracked back to talking about people trying to matchmake.
‘For me, it’s my neighbours who are always introducing me to nieces and so forth.
’ He put on a comical lady’s voice. ‘“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”’
Miranda laughed. ‘And are you in possession of a good fortune?’
‘Not a fortune, but I like to think I have enough for a good life.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t need a grand mansion or a yacht. Just put me in a Tuscan villa with a few Dickenses and Tolstoys, maybe some Proust, and I’d be happy.’
‘Are you in search of lost time?’ she mused, charmed.
‘Well, aren’t we all when we must go to these interminable meetings?’ He smiled.
She looked outside into the gathering mist – or was it minuscule molecules of barely visible rain? ‘I have to say that a villa in Tuscany sounds perfect. I hope you’d add a swimming pool, too, a few sun loungers for good measure.’
He laughed. ‘And perhaps a table laid for a simple dinner of ripe tomatoes and local cheese, fresh bread, and a bottle of Chianti. The sun would be setting, the afternoon heat still in the air, the sound of crickets from the field of sunflowers.’
‘That would be quite a life,’ she murmured, settling back in her seat as she pictured the scene, imagined the sun on her and the lingering scent of summer. ‘Who needs all the chaos when you can live for the day?’