Laurie Graham - Gone With the Windsors

Of course, Flora will never learn to speak clearly listening to Doopie’s version of things. I may take her in hand.

Violet finally came home at six.

I said, “Don’t you think Flora’s rather backward with her speaking? She just copies Doopie, you know?”

“Oh,” she said, “they’ll sort that out when she goes to school. They did Rory.”

I said, “Well I feel sorry for her. She never goes anywhere.”

Violet said, “What nonsense. Doopie takes her across to St. James’s Park. They walk to Duck Island almost every day. And she was invited to the Yorks for tea yesterday but would she get dressed?”

I said, “That’s because no one has taught her properly. She sees you running out to committee meetings, hair uncombed, egg yolk on your blouse. It’s no wonder she thinks she can go to tea parties in bloomers and a liberty bodice.”

“Maybell,” she said, “Will you please go and bathe. Salty and Elspeth are coming at seven.”

I said, “First tell me if you ever heard of Thelma Furness and if so, what’s her scandalous story?”

She made a great business of closing the door to the drawing room, then said,

“Lady Furness is a friend of the Prince of Wales, but not the kind we mention in front of the children. Why do you ask?”

I said, “No reason. Wally knows the husband of one of her sisters. She probably thinks this is going to be her entrée to royal circles. She’s as ambitious as ever. She keeps quizzing me about our connections with the throne.”

“Well,” she said, “first of all, you have no connections. Secondly, those who do have them never speak of them. And thirdly, I would say it’s a very steep climb from acquaintance with the husband of a certain person’s sister to meeting Royalties, too steep even for Minnehaha.”

Violet has always taken herself far too seriously.

She said, “I hope it goes without saying, Lady F. is never to be mentioned in this house. And Maybell, hot water costs money. Please don’t have your bath too deep.”

Chance would be a fine thing.

Flora has renamed one of her dolls “Lady Furness” and has banished it to the back stairs. I grow fonder of the child.

All the talk is of Race Week. Violet said someone called Lightfoot might be willing to escort me to the Guards’ luncheon tent, but I recognize crumbs when I see them falling from my sister’s table. Three times today she’s asked, “Are you sure you won’t let Ettie Desborough squeeze you in?” Guilt.

Wally says, without a white badge, Royal Ascot isn’t royal at all, so why bother? The white badge is the Open Sesame to the inner sanctum, the Royal Enclosure, but seemingly impossible to get unless one is on intimate terms with the Prince of Wales. So we may just ignore Ascot. We’ll borrow Ernest’s driver and go shopping for bibelots in forgotten backwaters.

Wally and Ernest went to drinks with the Benny Thaws and met the unmentionable Thelma F. Wally says Connie and Thelma are both adorable and she’s meeting them for lunch on Monday. Pips says if they’re lunching with Wally, someone had better warn them to take along a fistful of their Morgan dollars.

Violet and Melhuish’s luggage has been taken to Windsor, not a great amount of it for three days of banquets and royal carriage rides. Wally says fashion is everything at Ascot, but I’m certain Violet hasn’t bought a single new gown. We might have had such fun shopping together, but no. She didn’t even ask my advice about hats. Wally would have been much more fun as a sister.

Violet and Melhuish left after lunch for Windsor. Ida Coote has been angling to stay with me while they’re out of town. She seems to have become some kind of nomad since she lost her money, always offering to air people’s villas or walk their dogs. She said, “You won’t want to be alone in that great big house, all those empty rooms, all those portraits with eyes that follow you.” But I’m not going to be alone. I shall have Violet’s staff to lick into shape. Anyway, Ida has only two topics of conversation: Ida and men. It’s all right for the occasional lunch, but a slumber party would be unendurable.

More rain. To Gamages for overshoes, then home for a nursery tea. Jello, grilled cheese, and gingerbread. Afterwards, we played at Royal Ascot, with dolls strapped to Ulick’s spaniel and Melhuish’s little ratting dog.

Gave Flora an almost, almost empty scent bottle. She wanted to know if I was going to live with them forever!

I’m a great hit with my niece, not least because I’ve decreed no fish will be served as long as I’m in command. I told her she could choose her favorite dinner, and she came down in her nightgown to deliver her demands: LAB SHOPS. SIRUB TART. GUSTARD.

I said, “Flora, wouldn’t you like to go to school?”

“No thank you,” she said.

I said, “Other little girls do.”

She said, “Lilibet York doesn’t.”

But Lilibet York is a princess. She’ll never need to use her brain the way we ordinary girls have to. At the very most, she might get called upon to be Queen, but only if they ran out of Kings. All highly unlikely.

A lot of huffing and puffing from the housekeeper over my menus. Flora’s choice tonight, then tomorrow a rib roast and ice cream.

She said, “I don’t know, madam. Her Ladyship didn’t say anything about specials. This kind of thing isn’t customary.”

I said, “I know it isn’t customary. That’s precisely why I’m ordering it.”

Such a fuss. All she has to do is telephone Harrold’s. They have everything.

“Carry on like this,” she said, half out of the door, “Her Ladyship won’t know the place when she gets back. We shall be all upside down with bilious attacks and overspending.”

I’ll deem it a failure if Violet doesn’t see a difference. I’ve already put a stop to the maid Trotman’s discussions. She now understands that if I say the tea is too strong I’m not inviting her to pour herself a cup to see whether she agrees. Give me a little longer and I’ll break that footman of breathing through his mouth.

Tomorrow with Wally to the rolling hills of Cotswoldshire and all those darling cottages with hairy roofs.

A profitable day in Chipping Norton, a most characteristic town, pretty little stone row houses with windows you can look right into from the sidewalk, ancient hostelries, all haunted, I’m sure, and such sweet, simple country folk. They seemed to find us quite fascinating.

We got Wally a set of silver-plated vanity boxes, quite good enough for a guest room. Also a bone china compote dish, with the tiniest hairline crack, and a very pretty set of Victorian creamers. Bryanston Court is the kind of apartment that needs all the help it can get. It has no features. Wally’s done the best she can with her Chinese pieces, but the place still looks half-dressed. I suppose when Ernest got his divorce, the invalid wife was awarded all his good things.

Wally’s going to give a dinner for the Benny Thaws and invite Thelma Furness, too.

I can’t wait.

Doopie was in good form last evening, chatting away in that funny, snuffly style of hers. Flora seems to understand all of it. We looked through Doopie’s albums, pictures I’d quite forgotten. Mother and Father with baby Violet, posed beside a potted palm. Me in a little cotton pinafore, with Doopie in her crib. That would have been before she lost her mind. Several photographs of our Season, too. Pips and Violet setting off for Mary Kirk’s tea dance. Me, Pips, Violet, and Wally in our finery before the Bachelors’ Cotillion. What a production that was. Wally and I used to practice our one-step together. “I’ll be the man,” she’d say. Homer Chute had taught her the tango, too, but that was far too racy for the Baltimore Bachelors’.