He didn’t say such things to her often, but every time he did, they sung through her like electricity down a wire. Nobody could be as serious about love as Philip could. Or as serious about anything. Or as funny. Or as damned complicated. Her mother was right.
He brushed a tear away from her face. ‘Now, stop fretting. It doesn’t suit you.’
After an argument like that, and all those weeks of tension, and the sudden clearing of the air, there was only one thing to do – but it would have to wait. Bobo was knocking at the door and there was more than a hint of urgency in her voice as she pointed out the time.
Much later, in the middle of the night, Philip had gone back to his room and the Queen lay wide awake. Jet lag, she supposed. It reminded her a little of the night Anne had had toothache, but that had been fraught, and now she felt more relaxed than she had in months.
She thought about poor William Pinder, who turned out to be a loyal servant of the Crown, but had been hounded by his own organisation. How awful that he had felt so desperate he had armed himself with a service pistol.
And then there was Boy Browning, back home in Menabilly. Philip had blithely said his head of household was taking the summer off for a bit of a health cure, but Daphne du Maurier had told her at Balmoral that the general was very unwell, mentally and physically, and she wasn’t sure if he would return to work.
It occurred to the Queen, not for the first time, that women were treated like delicate flowers, cosseted and protected at every turn. Men were always leaping forward to throw their cloaks over metaphorical puddles. But she was quite as strong as them, if not stronger. Men were like oak trees: they fell hard when things went wrong. She thought of herself more as a willow, bending in the wind and weather.
Willows reminded her of the river near Windsor, and of the lake at Buckingham Palace. What would Anne be doing? she wondered. It was morning already in England. Would she be at her schoolwork, or outside in the fresh autumn air? And what about Charles? Would she ever tell him about the plot that never happened? Probably not.
Thinking about her children, she finally fell asleep.
Chapter 57
The Americans made it plain at every turn: they didn’t want a monarch of their own again, but they were absolutely delighted to welcome this one for a while.
They weren’t enthusiastic in the same way that English people were. Everything was bigger, bolder, louder. They pressed against barriers, requiring police officers to restrain them. They shouted and hollered. They thronged the streets for miles, wherever the royal couple went.
After three days in Washington, it was time for the final leg of the journey. This time, they took the train up the East Coast to New York.
The Queen had been quite specific about the way she wanted to see this city for the first time, because she had envisaged it so clearly. The train took her all the way to Staten Island, from where she and Philip could take the governor’s launch past the Statue of Liberty to the tip of Manhattan.
The view of the looming skyscrapers was everything she had imagined – as long as one ignored the helicopters circling overhead, taking pictures. She was as excited as any tourist. It was only a shame that they could carve out a single day for her to visit.
She and Philip would have to make the most of the hours ahead, because their plane left tonight.
To call those next few hours a whirlwind would be an understatement. If Washington had rolled out the red carpet, New York flung it far and wide across the city.
Sir Hugh told her the television channels were proclaiming that there were a million people on the streets. Fifth Avenue was packed with faces and flags at every window of its multi-storeyed buildings, which were almost obscured by the blizzard of ticker tape. An elevator swept them up to the top of the Empire State Building, from where Manhattan lay spread out at their feet, as wonderful and extraordinary as she had imagined. This was ‘new America’, and to her own surprise she thought it the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
The royal couple’s base was to be at the Waldorf Astoria. They were supposed to have the Presidential Suite, but King Farouk, who was there before them, had been taken ill and couldn’t be moved. Instead, she and Philip were given a thousand unnecessary apologies and Suite 42, which had undergone a very rapid makeover in their honour.
Looking down from one of the highest windows in New York as she changed for lunch, she saw the city fall back into its normal rhythm, as traffic began to clog the roads that had been cleared for her parade.
‘I could stay here all day!’ she called across to Philip, who was getting changed in the bedroom across the suite’s hallway.
‘Well, don’t! They’ve laid on a banquet.’
They had, and after that expansive lunch they whisked her – as much as anyone could be ‘whisked’ in this city – down wide avenues to the United Nations, where she made a speech in praise of the ideals of peace and cooperation that drove the new Commonwealth.
Now, evening was approaching. Their only evening in the city. The Queen retired to her bedroom in Suite 42 to rest, but couldn’t, and found herself looking out of the window at the little lines of tiny yellow taxis, far below.
Knowing she would want to capture the moment, Bobo had set her camera on the dressing table, so she could take pictures of the scene to show the children later. The day had been astonishing from start to finish. The train, the Statue of Liberty, the United Nations, the ticker-tape parade . . . And now here she was, in the world’s tallest hotel, and it was about to be full of fun and dancing.
She remembered a Cole Porter song that she and Philip had danced to in the moonlight at Cliveden: ‘I Happen to Like New York’. It made perfect sense now.
Her evening gown was hung out, ready for her to change into. In a minute, she would get Bobo to draw her a bath. They had allowed ninety minutes in her schedule to get ready. She would need less than half that time, which left a few precious minutes for relaxation and reflection.
The parade! All those happy, excited people, so keen to see her they had to be held back by the police. The ticker tape rising so high on the wind they could still see it whipping around at the top of the Empire State Building. What a view that had been! She hummed to herself.
I happen to like New York.
Feeling almost guilty with self-indulgent enjoyment of this private moment, she sat at the dressing table, where Bobo had laid out everything she would need. There were the earrings, the necklace, the diamond tiara, her lipstick from Helena Rubinstein, her scent, her powder . . . She pictured all the other ladies in the hotel, and in other hotels and apartments in New York, getting ready for this evening too. They probably took longer over it than she would. She was so used to it by now. With experience, she could adjust her hair and put on her tiara in under two minutes.
Regarding herself in the mirror, she lifted the tiara and positioned it on her head, for effect. All her pieces of jewellery had titles, and this was Queen Alexandra’s Kokoshnik tiara – a great wall of diamonds commissioned by her great-grandmother when she was Princess of Wales. The Queen had already worn it in Canada and knew exactly how she would fit it into her hairstyle later. It took practice. Only one way was truly reliable in the end.