The Final Curtsey by Margaret Rhodes Read Free Book Online

eleven o’clock on the morning of Sunday 3 September. We three girls were in Crathie Kirk for
the morning service at this time. The Minister, a small, spare man called Dr Lamb preached a highly emotional sermon and told his flock that the uneasy peace which had prevailed since the end of
the First World War was now over. It seemed unreal, yet in a strange way it was exciting and it was impossible not to dream of adventure and derring-do. We were so utterly ignorant about the actual
horrors of war.
    Our routine continued. Every evening at six the King and Queen would telephone and speak to their daughters. We had a French governess, Georgina Guerin, who when the war got fully under way,
would return to France and become a leading light in the Resistance. There was also one of the Queen’s Ladies-in-Waiting, Lettice Bowlby, to keep an eye on us. Our two carers were not best of
friends and behind her back Georgina called Lettice ‘la sale Bowlbee’. I was just fourteen, Princess Elizabeth thirteen and Princess Margaret was only nine. We were at war but
nothing much was happening. There was no sign of Panzer divisions or enemy parachutists. We did lessons of a sort; rode our ponies, went on picnics, all the usual things. Then the week before
Christmas the Queen telephoned to say it was safe for the Princesses to go to Sandringham in Norfolk, even though it was close to one of the coast lines where a German invasion was considered most
likely. I returned to Carberry for our family Christmas. I tried on my gas mask, just to be on the safe side, and awaited what was to come.

 
    CHAPTER THREE
Wartime with the Windsors
    The war made its impact on our daily lives at Carberry as it did for all families. My two brothers put on khaki and set off to join their regiments, John to the Black Watch and
Andrew to the Cameron Highlanders. Occasionally there were air raids: to begin with we trailed down to the front hall, which as the most ancient part of the house had the thickest walls, and sat
there shivering until the all-clear whined. But soon we gave even that up and remained comfortably tucked up in bed, listening to the thumping of the guns defending the Forth Bridge. Sometimes I
was unable to resist the temptation to get dressed and wander solitary in the grounds watching the search lights weaving strange and beautiful patterns in the blackness of the night. Every so often
a silver speck would be trapped, as if transfixed on the point of a spear and the guns would then thunder their defiance.
    Once I was out seeking to shoot a rabbit or pigeon for the pot with my .22 rifle, when I heard an aeroplane coming; it was flying very low. I could easily see the Swastika on its wings, so I
immediately fired my whole magazine of eight bullets at it, in the vain hope that I might just hit the petrol tank. Alas, it flew away unscathed, but I felt better for having made a tiny personal
contribution to the war effort.
    In those days I almost had Carberry to myself. My father was busy in Edinburgh and my mother had joined the Women’s Voluntary Service, now the WRVS. My eldest sister, Elizabeth, was a VAD
in an Edinburgh hospital and very aware of the presence of God in her life. She came under the spell of an order of Anglican nuns of which she later became a lay member. My next sister, Jean, had
enjoyed a rather wild coming-out season and was a born flirt. Even at the age of eighty she had lost none of her charm and attraction. When she was first grown up my parents allowed her to have a
weekend party at our house Maryland only on the condition that she was strictly chaperoned throughout. A lady duly arrived from a wonderful organisation called Universal Aunts. Jean found her
presence something of a hindrance to her idea of having fun. She solved it by telling the poor woman that all her young male guests, every man of them from the Household Cavalry, had been recalled
to barracks and that therefore the weekend was