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FORTY

During the war years Princess Margaret was awed to meet an American giantess, Eleanor Roosevelt. At six foot she was, literally, to the small Hanoverian, a giantess. Eleanor was a permanent ambassador for the president, making her reports, giving advice that was not always welcome to that consummate games player. Princess Margaret (PM for short) had an eye for detail and an ear, too, if, for nothing else, absurdity. The great family figure of her childhood was Uncle David, briefly King Edward VIII, thereafter, lengthily, aka Duke of Windsor. Neither he nor “the woman he loved” was welcome in England. Although PM and her sister, Queen Elizabeth II, were curious to meet this crown-crossed couple their mother saw to it that no such occasion would arise. “It’s all a woman’s show now,” said the Duchess of Windsor to me, bitter that her husband had been given no proper work to do other than the governorship of some Caribbean islands. Finally Uncle David died and his remains were brought back to be interred: only then did the Queen Mother relent and allow the Duchess to attend the funeral. While the family was duly assembled, PM reports that “Lilibet and I were so fascinated to see and hear this legendary figure in the flesh that we stationed ourselves at either end of the sofa where, side by side, Mummy and the Duchess sat, at peace at last, or so it seemed. I am rather good at eavesdropping, my sister not. So I heard more of what was said. The Duchess was a well-preserved old lady from the 1930s. The first thing that she said to Mummy was, ‘Do you have an upstairs or a downstairs kitchen?’ Mummy looked a bit alarmed. Not only does she not know where the food comes from, she only knows that it is on the table three times a day. Luckily, the Duchess was quite prepared to fill any gaps in the conversation: ‘We tried both and I prefer the upstairs as there is so much less moving about. Naturally, it depends upon how many guests you are entertaining.’ At this point they were interrupted.” The family was to assemble for the funeral service. The Duchess remained behind and watched from a window. After the service, the Queen Mother returned to the sofa, radiating charm and condolences to the family’s ancient enemy. PM again took up her place at the listening post only to hear the Duchess ask, yet again: “Do you have an upstairs or a downstairs kitchen?” Not long after when PM was in New York she got orders from the palace to pay a call on the Duchess. She was greeted at the door by several yapping dogs and Wallis Windsor. As PM dutifully patted the dogs she said, “Now I know the reason why you come so seldom to England.” “Well,” said Wallis, “they are one of the reasons.”

PM spoke of the royal family with expectable reverence not unmixed with humor and the occasional surrealist note: “The Queen is uncommonly talented in ways that you might not suspect,” she proclaimed. Suspecting nothing, I asked, “In what way?” “Well, she can put on a very heavy tiara while hurrying down a flight of stairs with no mirror.”

One bright hot summer PM organized a house party at the Royal Lodge near Windsor. “You can easily recognize it. It is very pink.” And so it was, set among tall trees. The lodge had been built by the Prince Regent whose portrait by Lawrence scowled peevishly at us in the terrace sitting room. I was assigned to what I think was called the blue bedroom. There were three or four other houseguests and PM had got King George’s cook out of retirement for the weekend. The Queen Mother who often lived at the lodge had retreated from the unusual heat to Scotland. We swam in an ancient pool full of drowning bees.

On the seventy-fifth birthday of Jack Heinz his wife, Drue, gave a grand evening party at Ascot where they had rented a house. There was a tent with an orchestra for dancing. Another tent for those invited to dinner. A Ferris wheel. A pond. Swans.

I should note that no one is supposed to attend an event after the Queen’s arrival but PM and I, at the lodge, lingered over gin and tonics. On the lawn of the Heinzes’ house the Queen frowned at her sister, who said within my hearing, “How’s it going?” The Queen replied: “We have shaken many hands,” which meant many Americans were on hand; the sovereign is not supposed to be touched by subjects: males incline their heads as in a bow, females curtsey. PM presented me, I did the nod. The Queen said: “You are staying at the lodge. Which room?” I said I thought it was called the blue bedroom. Suddenly the Queen’s girlish voice was replaced by the voice of Lady Bracknell: “My room!” she boomed. Then she fled across the lawn.

At dinner I sat next to PM. Across from her was Senator John Heinz, Jack’s son, soon to be killed in a plane crash. “Isn’t he beautiful,” PM muttered to me. I complimented her on her taste. As dinner ended, after-dinner guests poked their heads through the tent flaps: the first head belonged to Rex Harrison. When, finally, the Queen rose I ended up on the lawn where Rex, querulous as always, said, “Who was that awful-looking man sitting next to the Queen?” I said he was in charge of the Heinz interests in Ireland and so he was the largest single employer in an island that was not to become prosperous until the premiership of Charlie Haughey.

After the dancing was done we returned to the lodge where PM gave us a reading from a book of mine called Duluth. Some of the descriptions were very graphic but the several young men who had come back to the lodge with the house party were, happily, clueless. As PM shut the book, she said, “I don’t know what there is in me that is so low and base, that I love this book.” I can answer that now that years and death have separated us: she was far too intelligent for her station in life. She often had a bad press, the usual fate of wits in a literal society. “Also,” she said, “it was inevitable: when there are two sisters and one is the Queen who must be the source of honor and all that is good while the other must be the focus of the most creative malice, the evil sister.” She was stoic; nothing to be done but one can note her kindness to friends, to those employees whose pensions she paid out of fairly meager resources, not to mention her steadfast loyalty to a system that never in the end did as much for her as she sacrificed for it.