November gave way to December. The Duke of Maidstone came home, miserably, from his short exile in Chicago. He had been stripped without warning or explanation of almost all his family’s ancient roles in the pageantry of the monarchy. The best he could do was ask, tremulously, if his son might be able to resume them again when he inherited. But the jury was out. His shooting invitations were rescinded. The duchess started to worry about his heart.
In Johannesburg, Tony Radnor-Milne tried to give the impression that he had always wanted a life of wine-making and investment, five thousand miles away from his businesses, his soon-to-be-ex-wife’s abbey, and two mistresses he was very fond of. He had asked them to join him, but each had politely declined. There was no explicit reason why he couldn’t return to England, but nor did it seem wise to try. Treason was still treason, and his brother seemed to think his arrival at Heathrow wouldn’t be looked on kindly.
It was the not exactly knowing that cut deep. It made him feel as if he was doing this to himself, and he sensed that was intentional. He had no idea Her Majesty could be so calculatedly cruel. He didn’t think she had it in her.
As Christmas approached, it was traditional for people who were going to receive medals in the New Year’s Honours List to be told privately a few weeks before, so they could prepare for the congratulations that would follow.
To his astonishment, Fred Darbishire was on that list. He was being given an MBE, ‘for services to the Metropolitan Police’. He had no idea what services those were, specifically, but he liked to imagine the look George Venables – who had no such ribbons on his dress uniform – would give him. His wife was thrilled and that was what really mattered. She would get to watch him receive his medal at Buckingham Palace. They would make a day of it.
Meanwhile, the royal household decamped to Sandringham in Norfolk, to spend the festive period by the sea. On Christmas Eve, a postcard arrived addressed to Her Majesty, with a postmark from Cuba. It read simply, ‘
‘I guess that’s where she went,’ Joan said, having made sure it was at the top of the basket containing the Queen’s private correspondence.
‘Nursing,’ the Queen observed. ‘Good.’
She was feeling nervous, because in forty-eight hours she would be addressing millions across the nation and the Commonwealth, live on television, and she knew she had to connect with them. She would welcome them into her home, the first time they would see her there, and talk about being frightened – of the future, of technology, of rapid change – and about the deeply held values that got her through. She hoped Daphne was right about it, but regardless of what Daphne thought, it was what the Queen wanted to say.
She had had moments of feeling enormously frightened this year, but she had worked through them and done the right thing, or at least, she hoped she had. Promising a life of public service made everything straightforward in the end: you knew what you were supposed to do. Nursing, in that context, sounded like an excellent choice for Lucie Seymour.
‘I have something for you,’ the Queen said to Joan. She opened her desk drawer and took out a narrow, wrapped box.
‘Shall I open it now?’ Joan asked.
‘Why not save it until you’re at home with your father?’
Joan travelled to Cambridge by train that evening, and unwrapped the box on Christmas morning, in her father’s rooms at St Anselm’s. It was a blue cardboard affair, bearing the name of one of the royal jewellers. Inside, was a smaller box made of silver and blue enamel, with the royal cipher engraved below the clasp.
‘That’s very nice,’ Vincent McGraw said approvingly. ‘What’s it for?’
Joan smiled at her father. ‘I think it’s for keeping secrets.’
‘No doubt. I mean, what are you actually going to keep in it?’
Joan thought about it. Hector Ross had given her a single string of iridescent, perfectly matched, absolutely illicit pearls before she left for Sandringham. ‘You need these,’ he’d explained briskly, sweeping her hair aside to attach them around her neck. ‘Office uniform.’ She was wearing them now.
‘More secrets,’ she said.
Sharp-eyed readers may recognise number 22, the Arts and Crafts house in Cresswell Place where the dubious academics stayed, as the mews house of Agatha Christie. She was one of the first people to do up a traditional servants’ house in the 1920s and set her short story ‘Murder in the Mews’ there. With admirable generosity, she lent the place to a couple of friends, who ended up introducing her to her future husband, Max Mallowan. Sometimes good deeds
Duke Ellington actually met the Queen at a white-tie event at the Leeds Music Festival in 1958, so I have borrowed their exchange for a private event a year earlier. This is what he said about meeting the royal couple:
