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.
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.
