Authors: Karen Harper
“They're coming back!” Harry called to us and went to the rail. “Papa and Mama's boat and the Russian one too. We'd better get down to bed, Georgie, because Papa made us promise.”
They scampered in, where I knew Martha and Jane would be waiting to put them to bed, then I'd tuck them up soon. This moment with Johnnie on the yacht, gently rocking, was so sweet.
“That boat,” he said, pointing at the well-guarded Russian tender. “Girls in cloud dresses.”
“Yes, beautiful dresses that looked like clouds, satin, tulle, and chiffon.” I amazed myself that I could pick out not only patterns now but yard goods, materials, after listening to Rose for so long.
She had almost dived over the railing into the sea today when she got the slightest glimpse of the summer gowns with blue satin sashes the tsaritsa and her four girls wore as they were rowed ashore to Barton Manor. Earlier, she'd made me describe their simple, sharp gray sailor suits to the last stitch and pleat. It was so good to be traveling with Prince George and Princess May this time instead of having them take Rose and be gone for months. She was down in Princess May's cabin now, laying out her nightgown and preparing to unlace her from layers of garments.
“Come on, my boy,” I told Johnnie, as I stood him up and struggled to rise from the canvas chair that sagged like a hammock. “Time for bed, and we'll have a story about girls in cloud dresses.”
“And boxes of pictures.”
“Yes, with Brownie box cameras. That's what those were, and we'll ask your grandpapa for one for Christmas for all of you. Come on then, before Papa and Mama find you still up.”
“Up in the clouds,” he said, holding my hand.
But as we went over the raised step into the companionway, he gripped my hand so hard he hurt me.
“What is it?” I asked, turning to him and looking down. “It's not dark below. Lanterns, see andâ”
His eyes rolled up into his head. His features went slack, then twisted. His body shook, convulsed. He fell against me, and, catching him, I sagged against the wall under his weight. Dead weight!
I
managed to catch Johnnie partway to the floor. He was breathing, unconscious, yet moving his rigid limbs. I lowered him to the wooden deck. Why didn't someone come along? Should I scream for help? But I could not bear for someone to see him this way. I knew the court physician, Sir Francis Laking, was ashore and on call in case the king took ill, but . . . but what was happening to my boy?
His limbs flopped so hard, they beat out a fierce rhythm against the floorboards, even his head, which I tried to steady. His teeth were clamped shut yet saliva flowed from the corner of his mouth. If he should die . . .
“Johnnie. Johnnie! Can you hear me? It's Lala.”
I needed help but could not leave him. After what seemed an eternity, he went quiet, still breathing, thank God. He had a pulse but seemed to sleep like the dead.
“Johnnie! Johnnie!”
He opened his eyes, then closed them again. I wiped his
sweaty brow with my skirt hem and held his hands, cold and clammy. Finally, a sailor came through the companionway.
“Did the lad fall, then, ma'am?”
“Yes,” I told him, not wanting anyone to know what had happened until I told the queen. “Can you help carry him to his cabin? Carefully, please. He hit his head.”
The young man scooped the boy up as if he were weightless, and I led him to the cabin I shared with Johnnie. Finch was next door with George and Harry, but I didn't want to alarm them. Like most of the cabins on this deck, our space was small, with two narrow bunks squeezed in. I gestured at one and the sailor lay Johnnie down.
“I am grateful,” I told the man. “Would you wait outside in the hall so you can take a note for me?” I tried to beat down raw panic. I felt the desperation of the Russian royal family to protect and shelter their ill boy.
I scribbled a note to Rose, asking her to bring Princess May, and sent it with the sailor. I sat on the edge of Johnnie's bed, loosened his collar, unbuttoned his shirt, and bathed his face and neck.
“Did I fall in the sea?” he whispered. “I'm wet.”
“It's all right. I think your mama's going to come to tuck you up. Not dizzy? No belly or headache?”
“I was swimming. I hurt my headâon a seashell.”
It seemed as if I held his hand for ages. I could hear Harry's and George's voices next door through the wall, and occasionally, Finch's. Finally, a knock on the door. I rose to open it.
Princess May stood there with Rose behind her. The princess was evidently ready for bed. Her hair was down, and she wore a full-length, striped brown and beige silk robe wrapped around her body with no skirts or petticoats beneath.
“What happened?” she asked and came in with Rose in her wake.
“As you can see, he seems well enough now,” I tried to assure her. “Could Rose sit with him for a moment, and I could explain in the hall?”
“Don't leave me, Lala,” Johnnie whispered.
“You just rest. Mama and I will be right back, so we're not leaving.”
Rose shot me a desperate look. Mending clothing, not children, was her love. But the princess and I stepped quickly out, and I closed the door. As I explained it all to her, sugar coating nothing, the yacht began to rock, so we were evidently under way.
“Something he ate?” Princess May asked, frowning. “Are you sure he didn't just trip and hit his head?”
“I am sure. I am sorry, but I am sure.”
“Running around with the Russians?” she went on as if asking herself, instead of me. “Could he have caught something ashore? There is something strange about little Alexey.”
For certain then, she didn't know about the Romanov heir! None of them must know. But I knew the tsarevich's malady was nothing contagious. I almost told her what I knew, but I honored my pledge to Margaretta.
“Could we have the royal physician look him over?” I asked. “Did he come aboard?”
“No, the king felt well enough that he told him to stay ashore for a few days. But we'll have him visit when we can. Lala, as alarming as that must have been for you and Johnnie, I have heard of cases where children had convulsions and it came to nothing. They outgrew it. Too much excitement for him with all these new people around, I fear. We shall just keep a good watch on himâas you always do. I'll go in and see how he seems to me. As ever,
thank you for being there with him, and I'll inform his father in the morning, as he's in with the king right now.”
She pulled her robe closer and went back into the cabin. I leaned against the wall to steady myself, and not because the yacht was rocking. I was rocked to my core by her reasonable response when I feared the world had just tilted.
E
VEN BACK IN
the quiet routine of Sandringham, I feared another “attack,” as I came to think of it. Yet things had returned to normal. There was not another falling fit, as Rose, who had been sworn to secrecy, called it. No more “childhood convulsive reactions to stimulation,” as Dr. Laking termed it after he had examined Johnnie. I hovered and watched the boy like a hawk and was grateful each day that it seemed to be a “onetime brain disturbance,” as Prince George had dubbed it.
Finally, by the end of November, I began to believe them and relax a bit, and my growing group of female friends helped with that.
Last week, Margaretta Eager had visited me for the second time, and we frequently corresponded by post. She had been so relieved to hear every little detail about how her Russian girls were getting onâand my repeating how graciously and cleverly Olga had accepted the photograph. Of course, my friend Mabel Butcher was still dear to me, as busy as she was as head housekeeper at the Big House.
Today I was enjoying sitting in Rose's sewing room off the kitchen while Johnnie took an afternoon nap upstairs and I had tea with Helene Bricka and Rose.
“You should see the gown Princess May is wearing to the queen's birthday party at the Big House next week!” Rose told us.
She had an eager audience, for Helene dearly loved the princess and anyone who supported her. I yet felt as if I were an understudy of sorts for the sartorial styles of the Marlborough House and Buckingham Palace set.
“I hope,” Helene, chatty as ever, said, “it's quite grand, because the queen is always trying to upstage her. Why it even annoys her that May has such good hearing she can pick up on distant conversations, while the queen can't catch things said right at her, let alone their quite pointless race to see who collects the most Fabergé agate animals and those ornate eggs with the surprises hidden in them! Why, the queen, I hear, has two large electric lighted cabinets full of those carved creatures and bejeweled eggsâeggs, no less!”
I didn't want to hear all that again, so I asked Rose, “So what will the gown be like?”
“English-made as usual, not imported from the Frenchies like some I could name.”
Helene gave a sharp nod. “When she is queen, she will promote British fashions, not foreign. Oh, I know in the olden days it was treason to so much as think about the current sovereign's demise, but the king is not well. Too much wine, women, and song, not to mention those gargantuan meals he puts away and those dreadful cigars.”
There was a moment's silence as Rose and I glanced at each other.
All three of us knew the Prince and Princess of Wales did not covet their fate to be next in line to the throne. They dreaded and feared it.
“Oh, well, about the gown,” Rose went on. “Of course, it is on the cutting edge of the shift in women's styles. Raised waist
line, less tight, the hips smaller and the skirts less full. Frills and flounces are so passé now. But I guess “passé” is a French word, is it not,
M
adame
Bricka?”
“Hmph. Too much change too fast is never good. Someone had best tell Prime Minister Lloyd George that. All those liberal ideas! Pushing through that so-called Great Budget with pensions and national insurance for the masses, as if people cannot put in an honest day's work for themselves anymore. The very idea! No wonder the royal family doesn't like or trust him. Give the man on the street too much power, and we'll have more protests and riots, like in Russia. But I didn't mean to interrupt. I daresay, Charlotte will be the only one of us to attend the gala party with the children, so best you tell us of the gown, Rose, and she can report on the other ones later.”
Rose put down her teacup as if she needed her hands free to describe it. “It's striped white and gold silk with tassels in the Egyptian style. Neckline and sleeves trimmed in gray chinchilla. And,” she whispered, though we were quite alone, “the corset hardly pulls in the waist, though it does push up the bosom, which will be dripping with diamonds below a six-strand choker of pearls in that look the queen has made her own.”
“Touché,” Helene pronounced with another nod. “Dear May knows how to hold her own, even fight back, but with beauty and dignity.”
I thought about that as we chatted on. Beauty and dignity would stand her well at this elaborate party. Finch and I were to escort the three youngest boys so their grandparents could show them off as if they didn't belong to Prince George and Princess May at all. But, sometimes, I too felt they were more mine than theirs.
How I often wished Princess May would worry more about her children. Mary had turned stubborn about her studies, however much the prince harangued her. David and Bertie were both desperately unhappy at naval school.
And last month I had stood horrified in the study to hear His Highness tell Harry, “You are a boy and not a little child, so stop that sniveling. Do not behave like a baby or I shall send you somewhere else.” And now he was doing just that. Harry was to be sent away to live and study at York Gate Cottage, Broadstairs, the seaside home of the court physician, Sir Francis Laking, when the doctor would not even be there, because the boy needed the sea air and to be built up, the prince said. Soon it would just be George and Johnnie in my care. George was a handful, even as clever and charming as he was for a boy who would be seven next month. And JohnnieâI always worried what he would say or do, even though I'd finally relaxed my fear he'd have another convulsion.
Rose's voice sliced through my thoughts. “Charlotte, whatever is it? You look as if you've been sucking on a lemon, my dear. I'd give anything to see the fabulous creations at that party, so you'd best take good mental notes for me. Oh, I know, you're more worried about the children behaving there.”
With another of her signature sniffs, Helene put in, “With that Mrs. Keppel in attendance, and all the hanky-panky that goes on during and after these gatherings, I just hope the adults behave themselves.”
F
OR THE CELEBRATION
of Queen Alexandra's sixty-fifth birthday, the Grand Saloon of the Big House was absolutely aglitter with lights and jewels, silks, satins, crystal, and chinaâand filled with chattering people. I wore my best gown, chocolate silk with
beige ruching and a touch of lace, though I'm afraid it was of the old cut. Earlier in the day, Rose had piled my hair up and made some ringlets with her heating iron, and I wore tiny, single-pearl earrings. As Finch and I walked in with the children, I saw something that made me think of Helene's words about the adults behaving themselves.
For the first time, I saw the women were also smoking, not just the men. No cigars, though. Including the queen, they were puffing on thin cigarettes they took from flat, gold and gem-encrusted cases before one of the gentlemen swooped in to light them for them with a lucifer. The air beneath the chandeliers was quite blue with the smoke.
“Makes me dizzy,” Johnnie said. Immediately, I loosed his hand and stooped to look him in the eyes.
“Want to sit down? Does your head hurt or is it spinning?”
“I feel good, really.”
“Ha,” George told his younger brother. “You are hardly ever acting good, really. You're always into something.”
“No bickering, either of you. Smiles and manners, or you'll get reminders from me and Finch later.”
Finch put in, “I always did like your name for that, Lala.”
“Better known as punishments,” George said with a roll of his eyes.
“But not for Johnnie,” Harry dared to say. “Just Georgie and me.”
I gave the nine-year-old a pat on the head. Did they really see it that way, that I was harder on them and coddled Johnnie? “I love all of you just as much, but in different ways,” I told them. And then I was saved from trying to explain more by Johnnie pulling his hand away and dashing off toward the lighted cases of the queen's Fabergé animals.
I lifted my hems and tore after him with Finch and the other two in my wake. I'd decided against tying Johnnie to me, thinking it would look bad, but that might have been a mistake.
“Look, Lala,” Johnnie told me as he gazed up awestruck at the lighted cases. I couldn't help but think the expression on his face must have been what I looked like the first time I saw the royals' tall Christmas tree. “A zoo! But pretend animals.”
“Yes, that's right,” I told him, pleased by that comment, for he often merged the real world with his imaginary one. “Pretend animals, not real ones.”
George said, “But I'll bet Grannie's Russian dogs and Grandpapa's little Caesar are here. Still, the ones in this case would skid great on the floor in the hall, or be bully chess pieces.”
George was the cleverest of the Wales brood, even more than David had been at that age. Sharp-tongued but kind, he sometimes helped me with entertaining and watching Johnnie, and I was grateful for that.
Harry tugged at my sleeve. “But there are some real animals over there, Lala! Goldfish! See? Right on the big birthday cake!”
I grabbed Johnnie's hand so I didn't have to chase him again, and we went over to the six-tiered, elaborately decorated cake on a table of its own. Between each of the layers, next to the small pillars that held up each tier, were round crystal bowls with three goldfish circling in each. The boys watched mesmerized, and it was Johnny who spoke first.