He interrupted, ‘But that, little one, is exactly why I want to talk to you. Now come and sit down beside me, and tell me about your life.’ He wanted to hear about everything, he said.
Well, I barely knew how to start, not being in the habit of having conversations with princes, but I knew better than to string it out too much so I just told him briefly about the nuns and his mother the queen, when she was a duchess, coming to The Castle, about how we arrived at the palace and how me and Nora liked to have a laugh together. He sat quiet, as if he found my every word fascinating, and those blue eyes was on me the whole time, smiling with amusement or frowning in sympathy. He must surely be the best listener in the world, I thought, not that anyone much had ever listened to me before.
I told him about Miss G and how she needed a prince’s kiss to cure her warts and he hooted so long and loud I was afraid it would rouse the rest of his family, wherever they slept. When he stopped, his beautiful soft eyes went serious and he put his hand on mine, leant forward, and gave me a kiss on the cheek. I nearly jumped away with the shock of it.
‘There,’ he said. ‘A prince’s kiss to make Miss Romano even more beautiful.’
‘Oh sir,’ I gasped, blushing to the tips of my toes.
He lifted my chin with his finger and turned my face towards him, then planted another kiss – this time on my lips. It was my first proper kiss, imagine that, and so delicious. He tasted of marshmallows, vanilla and icing sugar, and I wanted it to last for ever, but after a few seconds he pulled away, stood up suddenly and walked over to the fireplace, stopping with his back to me. I must have been holding my breath the whole time, for my head started to swim and I thought I might faint clean away, so I kept my eyes to my lap to stop the room from spinning round.
After a long moment he spoke. ‘I am so sorry, I got carried away. Please forgive me.’
‘There’s nothing to apologise for, sir. It’s surely
my
fault for being so impertinent, sitting here and going on about my ordinary little life.’
‘But that’s just it, don’t you see?’ he said, walking back across the room towards me, taking my hands in his and shaking them with every emphasis. ‘I
want
to know what ordinary lives are like. My family is not
normal
, never will be. But I want to know how it
could
be.’
He let go of my hands and suddenly pulled me to my feet, wrapping his arms around me so as our bodies were touching from top to toe. My hands seemed to take matters into their own, clasping themselves around his waist. Though he wasn’t a tall boy my cheek rested on his chest, and I breathed in his smell of expensive shaving soap and clean-washed tweed and tried to get my head around this extraordinary turn of events.
I could hear his heart beating and feel his breathing, fast and strong. As his fingers stroked the back of my neck my legs went to jelly with the joy of it all. I wanted to stay there, close to him, for the rest of my life. Apart from Nora, he was the only person in the world who had ever held me so tight.
After a very long time he drew away. ‘You had better go, little one,’ he said, ‘or I might be tempted to kiss you again. You know, don’t you, that you must not whisper a word about this evening to anyone, even your friend Nora? Rumours get about like wildfires in this place.’
‘Yes sir,’ I said, remembering who he was, and made a little curtsey even though it seemed too formal, when moments before we had been so close as to feel each other’s heartbeats.
He went to the door. ‘Go left, then right, along the corridor to the third door on the left, down the stairs, turn right again and you will be back in the servants’ hall.’ He smiled, ‘Got that?’ and as I turned to go out of the door he caught my hand again and kissed it.
‘Sweet dreams, little one,’ he said. ‘You will come to see me again, won’t you?’
My hand burned with the lingering touch of his lips. That night I climbed into bed and tried to relive every blissful moment of that encounter – the easy conversation, his laughter, the sweetness of our kiss and the long, tender embrace. Each time I thought of it, my body ached with longing to be close to him once more, and I became almost choked with the fear that it might never happen again, might have been a one-off.
But I need not have worried. He asked for me several times after that, sometimes during the day, and the footmen came to recognise me, as I made my way along the palace corridors to his chamber. Perhaps for the first time in my life, I felt important.
Each time, when I walked in, his smile bathed us in its sunshine, and he made me feel as though I was the most special person in the world. We would have a small sherry while we were talking, and though the taste of alcohol was strange and tart at first, I soon began to enjoy the way it helped me to forget the oddness of our situation. We talked for hours, he held my hand, we kissed and a bit more besides, if you get my meaning.
Don’t think badly of me, Miss. Each time he went just a little further and I knew it was wrong but I was that hungry for him I never tried to stop it when he unbuttoned my top and put his cheek to the rise of my breasts, or when he stroked my backside through the cotton of my uniform, or pulled my skirt up to feel the bare leg above me garter. Naïve as I was, I couldn’t help but notice the effect I was having on him and it made me want even more.
I did my best not to tell Nora, I honestly did. But we had been friends for years, and she knew me too well.
‘Don’t say a word, I don’t want to know,’ is what she whispered to me when, for the second night in a row, I crept into our room in my stockinged feet, trying to avoid the creaky boards, well after midnight. In the morning, as we started into our sewing, she said, ‘It’s
him
, isn’t it?’ When I said nothing she went on, ‘You’re
not
to go again. You know how gossip gets around, and if anyone finds out what you’ve been doing you’ll be on the streets before you can even try denying it.’
‘I can’t refuse him, can I, the future King of England?’ I said, all snippy. Consorting with the prince was giving me airs above my station, I see that now.
‘If he calls again for a seamstress, I’ll go instead. That’ll put a stop to it,’ she said firmly.
I was about to say he wouldn’t want to kiss a great tall thing like Nora, she’d tower over him, but all I said was, ‘If he asks for me, I’ll have to go.’
‘Be it on your own head, then,’ she said, throwing down her sewing and stomping out. We didn’t talk for the rest of the afternoon, and the atmosphere in the sewing room was frosty for days afterwards.
A week or so later I was summoned again but this time, when I entered the bedchamber, his smile failed to light up and I immediately knew that something was wrong.
‘Dearest girl,’ he said, holding me in his arms for a brief moment, and then pulling away.
‘What is it, sir?’ I asked, with my heart in my boots. ‘You look unwell.’
‘Sit with me a moment,’ he said, patting the chaise beside him. He took my hands in his. ‘You know, do you not, that my fate is not my own to decide?’ he said, with a sorrowful face. ‘The king has decreed that I should go back to the Navy. I leave for Southampton tomorrow.’
‘But that’s not too far away, is it?’
‘I shall not be in Southampton, dearest, but on a ship, travelling who knows where. Then, when I get back, I must go to Norfolk to study in preparation for Oxford. Father seems to want me out of his way. Or perhaps he thinks I will get up to mischief if I stay in London.’ His eyes twinkled again, briefly.
It seemed as though my world – as I had come to know it – was unravelling like a loose seam. But he pulled me into his arms again and whispered, ‘But I will write, as often as I can, and I will surely be back in London from time to time. So let’s have a little tipple, and make this a night to remember, shall we?’
And so we did, dearie, so we did. After what seemed like hours of kissing and cuddling, long past the time when the clocks chimed midnight, he pulled away, took a deep breath and looked me straight in the eyes. ‘Can we?’ he asked, and I nodded, knowing exactly what he meant and wanting it so much but at the same time fearing I might faint with the terror of it all. He asked me to unbutton him and my fingers were that shaky I couldn’t get a single one undone, so he took over himself. What happened next was clumsy and hurried but the look of pure joy on his face afterwards will stay with me forever. He held me in his arms and kissed me so tenderly it felt as though I was melting pure away.
It was his first time, too. He was eighteen and I’d just turned sixteen.
I knew it was wrong, of course I did. I should have kept myself pure for my future husband. I can see you’re smiling. You must be thinking what a little trollop I was.
‘No, Maria, I’m not judging you. I’m smiling because I’m glad you had some fun while you were young.’
Oh yes, it was fun all right, and I found I could lock away me conscience easily enough. I was already head over heels in love with my beautiful blue-eyed boy, and he was going away for months, perhaps years. Who knew when would we have the chance again?
Besides, who was I to say no to the future King of England?
The tape clunks off.
London, 2008
On my first day of joblessness I woke with a new sense of purpose, and wrote a list:
I took a long luxurious shower, then pushed aside my city uniform on the wardrobe rail and grabbed my weekend gear: comfortable black skinny jeans, tee-shirt and a hoodie. That’s more like it, I said out loud as if needing to convince myself, this is the upside of being made redundant. I usually spent a good ten minutes in front of the mirror each morning, making sure that the person presented to the world was immaculate. Now, none of that mattered – I could be just me, whoever that was. With a bit of luck I was about to find out.
So I ended up spending time in front of the mirror anyway, wondering what the new me might look like. Those roots in my hair needed doing, but why go to the expense? Why not allow it to return to its natural mousy blonde? My eyebrows were a bit bushy – but actually I quite liked the slightly fuzzy shape, a relief from those starkly waxed lines.
Without the weight of mascara on their lashes, my eyes felt lighter and more alert, and appeared to be brighter blue without the carefully applied shadows and highlighter that usually framed them. Okay, my wrinkles were more obvious without foundation, the odd chickenpox scar from long ago more prominent – but I decided there was nothing too scary.
I straightened my shoulders, looked myself directly in the eye and took a deep breath: this was the new me, the natural, unadorned, take-me-as-you-find-me Caroline: a strong, independent and, yes, about-to-be-successful self-employed interior designer. Yes, that was the plan.
But it was strange having no job to go to, no appointments to rush between in the usual manic way, no one breathing over my shoulder asking when the report would be ready. My calendar was blank.
I pushed the living room table over towards the window so that I could have a view of the small park from my new ‘office’, phoned the bank for an appointment with their business adviser, and emailed several friends still working in the interior design field, casually suggesting that we might lunch. I sorted out my filing system, cleaned the flat and made several more cups of coffee.
When I changed the sheets on the spare bed, I brought the quilt into the living room, hanging it over the back of the sofa. Low sun streamed in, as it always does in winter when the branches of the plane trees outside are bare of leaves. The beams fell onto the quilt, and the silver threads in those silks that Jo had been so excited about seemed to come alive, gleaming in the light.
I read the little verse again, even though I already knew it by heart. Who had written it, and who was her lost love? How did the maker get hold of those royal silks? How did they know Granny? And was there any connection, as Mum seemed to suggest, with the mental asylum? Then I peered at the appliqué figures for a few moments, willing them to yield up any clues, but the duck and rabbit were stony silent.
The mysteries were too intriguing to ignore. I added a final bullet point to my list:
I was in the supermarket later that afternoon when he phoned.
‘Could I speak to Caroline Meadows?’ the man said.
‘Who’s that, please?’
‘Ben Sweetman, from the
Eastchester Star
.’
‘Hello, yes, I’m Caroline,’ I stuttered, startled by his speedy response. It must be a quiet news day at the newspaper. ‘Thanks for getting back to me.’
‘What can I do for you?’
‘I’m hoping you might be able to help me with some information about Helena Hall. As I said in my email, I gather you’re a bit of an expert?’
‘Journalists know a little about lots of things, but we’re never experts.’ His voice was baritone, his laugh a deep rumble. I visualised an overweight man, maybe balding, probably in his later years, who’d been at the newspaper for decades. ‘Do you mind me asking why?’
‘My granny was a patient there. She died quite a few years ago.’
‘Aah.’ There was a slightly awkward pause. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. What exactly are you trying to find out? It’s just that records are always confidential, of course.’
‘I inherited a patchwork quilt from her, which I believe she or someone else may have made while they were patients. I was hoping to discover a bit more about the sewing and needlework they did there.’
‘Is this quilt something special?’
‘Special to me.’ I hesitated, a little uncomfortable under such direct questioning. ‘Look, thanks so much for offering to help. But …’
‘I know,’ he filled the pause, ‘you think I’m after a story?’