‘My darling, darling, darling!’ she cried. ‘My little Charlotte! Let me look at you.’ Charlotte was strained to that great bosom which was not exactly the best position for being seen. ‘It has seemed so long. And they give us two hours … It is wicked and it is cruel. Torture designed by de old Begum, I’ll swear.’
She laughed wildly.
‘Oh, Mamma,’ said Charlotte, ‘I am so happy to see you again. I’ve missed you so much.’
‘My angel! My blessed love! My Lottie love!’ The embrace was suffocating. ‘And what do you think I have suffered, eh? Kept from my own baby … my little Lottie girl. Ah, I always longed for a child and when I had one they took her away from me.’
‘We’re together now, Mamma, for two hours.’
Caroline grimaced and put up a hand. Charlotte noticed the flashing rings, which looked incongruous because of the grime under the nails. Her mother was the strangest and most eccentric person she had ever known.
‘They had to agree to this. Oh, the wicked old things! They tried to prove Willie was my boy and they couldn’t … they couldn’t!’
Nobody had ever been so frank with Charlotte as her mother was. Caroline did not believe in hiding facts and Charlotte was nearly twelve years old … old enough to know what went on in the world.
‘And how is Willie?’ asked Charlotte.
‘Willikins is adorable. What I should do without that angel I can’t tell you. Do you know this, my love, if I could have you with me and Willikins too, I’d ask nothing more.’
‘If only that were possible!’ sighed Charlotte.
‘But you are going to be a queen one day. Nothing is going to alter that. My little Charlotte … Queen of England. Then you won’t keep your poor old Mamma in the background, will you?’
‘I would always have you with me.’
‘My blessed angel! And soon we shall have done with this two hours a week. It is ridiculous. Why only two hours a week? I shall not accept it. One of these days I shall come and carry you away by force and we will live at Montague House happy ever after.’
But in spite of these protestations of affection Charlotte did feel unsure about her mother. What had really happened about that horrid little brat Willikins? She remembered him, from the days when she had been allowed to visit Montague House, as a hideously spoiled child whom her mother doted on and who kicked with rage when he couldn’t have his own way.
She would not have wanted to live at Montague House; one was never quite sure what was going to happen there. There were so many strange people coming and going and the wild games they played at parties, while exciting for a time, left one bewildered. Perhaps she had been too young in the old days when she used to visit Blackheath to understand what it was all about. Now it would be different. She was almost grown up. And it seemed to her now that although she was fascinated by Montague House she would not all the time have wanted the kind of life which was lived there.
In her heart she longed for a quiet dignified household like that in Tilney Street.
‘I suppose,’ said the Princess of Wales, with a grimace, ‘that we shall have to present ourselves to Madam the Duchess.’
She spoke ironically. Was that the way in which one should speak of one’s mother?
So they went to the dingy room where the Duchess of Brunswick held her Drawing Room. It was pathetic. This was no palace – just a room in a dingy old house. She had two attendants but she behaved as though she had a retinue.
She sat in an old chair as though it were a throne and she glanced haughtily about her as the attendant at the door called: ‘Her Highness the Princess of Wales and the Princess Charlotte.’
The Duchess of Brunswick peered at her granddaughter.
‘Come and sit near me, Charlotte,’ she said. She added, waving a hand: ‘Chairs for the Princesses.’
These were brought. The Princess of Wales sat down, legs apart, a hand on either knee, in exactly the manner Charlotte had often been told princesses should not sit.
Charlotte looked round the room. She thought it was one of the dirtiest she had ever seen and there was scarcely any furniture. She felt sorry for the old lady who was trying to cling to her royalty in such surroundings and she was angry too when she thought of all the apartments which could have been put at her disposal. There was Kensington Palace, Windsor, Buckingham House, Kew, even St James’s. It was a shame.
‘Grandmamma,’ she said impulsively, ‘You should not be here. You should have a fine apartment.’
‘My dear Charlotte, I am an exile. I must perforce take what is given me.’
‘But it’s a … shame.’
‘It’s de old Begum’s doing,’ said Caroline with a short laugh. ‘She hates us all, and she’s glad to think of an old enemy living in such a place.’
What a wicked old woman the Queen was! thought Charlotte. How could she behave so to her own sister-in-law?
The Duchess suddenly became rather tearful. ‘I had expected something different, Charlotte, my dear, I will confess. Once I was a very important lady of this land. The Princess Royal, and my brother doted on me. That’s the King, you know. This is not his fault. Poor man, I always said he had a kind heart though an addled head. He would have done better than this. But he’s in a sad state, poor George. It was a shock to me when I saw him. He goes on and on and on … and one has no idea what he’s talking about.’
‘“Eh, what?”’ mimicked the Princess of Wales. ‘But he’s a kind man and when I first came over I wished I’d come to marry him instead of the Prince of Wales. Then it would have been a different story, I can tell you. He had rather a fancy for me. Charlotte, my pet, you would have had six or seven brothers and sisters by now if I’d married dear addle-headed George!’
‘You were always so indiscreet,’ said the Duchess, becoming suddenly haughty. ‘Restrain yourself, Caroline.’ She turned to her granddaughter. ‘Your mother caused us great anxiety in her childhood. She was so wild. I could tell you things. Perhaps I will one day. They used to say I was indiscreet. Madam de Hertzfeldt … she was my husband’s mistress … was installed when I arrived. “I have no intention of giving up my mistress because I have acquired a wife,” he told me. How would you have liked that?’
‘Charlotte would have loved him,’ said the Princess of Wales. ‘He was a great man … a great soldier.’
‘He fell at Jena. That wicked Napoleon! When shall we again sleep soundly in our beds? To think of his soldiers now … in our beautiful country … but I never thought much of it. England was my home … and it was consolation when I returned here. But I did not expect to return to this … squalor. How can I keep up the state due to my rank here? That is what I should like to know. But that wicked old woman … she always hated me. It was clear from the moment she arrived. Mecklenburg-Strelitz! She ought to have been humble. And so she appeared to be. Sly as a fox … though she looks more like a crocodile. Queen Charlotte! Oh, she would have liked to show her authority. “Oh no, no,” I said … and my mother was alive then and George was in leading strings, you might say. It was our Mamma who said which way he should go, not little Charlotte.’
‘De old Begum,’ chuckled the Princess of Wales.
Charlotte was astonished by the freedom with which they both expressed their dislike of the Queen, and while she was a little repelled, she was fascinated. From the gossip of these two she could learn more than she could through the chatter of servants and even the cartoons and snippets from the papers which the sly Mrs Udney brought to her notice.