The Gown(98)

“No, sir,” Miriam said. “None at all.”

“Good, good. Well, I’d better go upstairs to say farewell to the princess, and see if those pearls have shown up.”

Mr. Hartnell slipped away, and then Flora was hailing the bridesmaids, for it was a quarter to eleven already. How had an entire hour gone by?

“My ladies, if everyone is ready you do need to be downstairs in the Grand Hall very shortly. Do you have your wraps? Yes? Please follow the footman who is waiting in the corridor.”

Then they were gone, a flock of glittering swans, and when Miriam turned to survey the room she was appalled to see what a shambles it had become. She bent to collect Lady Mary’s dressing gown, but stopped short at Flora’s voice.

“Don’t worry about that. Come along to see the princess before she leaves. We need to hurry, though.”

Flora led them downstairs and along yet another sumptuously gilded corridor, and then they entered the grandest space Miriam had yet seen. “The Marble Hall,” Flora explained as they hastened along. True to its name, the space was lined with shining marble columns and decorated with a museum’s worth of monumental oil paintings and classical sculptures. Servants were lined up on either side, their excited whispers sweeping back and forth, all of them waiting to see the princess in her wedding finery.

“They’ll be coming down the Grand Staircase in a minute,” Flora explained, “and once they go into the Grand Hall we’ll be able to see them through the colonnade. Oh—I think they’ve arrived.”

Miriam hadn’t expected that the princess would look so beautiful, but she did, her smile wide and engaging, her lovely eyes radiant with happiness. The king was holding her arm, and the queen had appeared, and fluttering around them were the bridesmaids, their ranks bolstered by Princess Margaret and a much younger girl who couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven years old. Princess Alexandra, she supposed. There were two little boys in kilts and lace-trimmed shirts, both of them looking as if they were plotting some kind of mischief, and her heart nearly stopped when one of them came very close to stomping on the delicate train.

But then the queen and Princess Margaret and the bridesmaids and the little boys were summoned to their carriages, which left the king and Princess Elizabeth standing alone in the middle of the hall, and as they looked at one another, his expression so tender and adoring, Miriam felt a pang of guilt to be intruding on such a private moment. She shut her eyes for an instant, and when she opened them again the princess and her father were walking away, arm in arm, to their waiting carriage.

“Well, now we can breathe,” Flora said in an ordinary voice, and around them everyone else was talking and exchanging smiles of relief and looking at their wristwatches. Miriam and Betty followed her upstairs, and they spent a few minutes helping to tidy the room where they’d spent the past hour. Only when the crowd outside let out an earthshaking roar did it occur to Miriam to go to the nearest window.

She hadn’t realized it before, but they were at the front of the palace. The view was incomparable, for she could see all the way up the broad avenue before them, and along either side of it were masses of people, thousands upon thousands, and every last one of them was cheering.

“What can you see?” Betty asked.

“There is a carriage, about halfway along the avenue, with many men on horseback, too. The crowds are very deep on either side of— What do you call it?”

“The Mall,” Betty said, coming forward to stand by Miriam. “I was out there on VE Day. The king and queen stood on the balcony, and the princesses, and Mr. Churchill, too. I was so far back I could hardly see, but my friends lifted me up on their shoulders and we had a pair of binoculars. I could just see them, little specks they were, and I was so happy. In all my life I’ve never felt so happy as I was that day.”

They stood and watched the carriage disappear from sight, and then they gathered their things, including the sewing basket that Miriam hadn’t once opened, and followed Flora downstairs to the side entrance. Monsieur Hartnell and the others arrived only a minute or two later, and Miriam was relieved to see that he was in far better spirits than he’d been earlier.

“Miss Dassin and Miss Pearce—the rest of our happy band. Shall we be off?”

“Isn’t Miss Yvonne coming with us?” Betty asked.

“She’ll stay until after the photographs have been taken,” Monsieur Hartnell explained. “Fortunately, the rest of us are free to spend the rest of the day as we please, and I plan on going straight home to bed.”

“May I leave on my own? By foot?” Miriam asked him.

“Hoping to join in the festivities? By all means. Tell the bobby at the gate that you were here with me. And thank you again for your splendid work.”

In moments she was walking down Buckingham Palace Road, only rather than melt into the crowd, as Monsieur Hartnell had assumed, she made her way south, against the current of merrymaking well-wishers surging toward the palace and the burgeoning crowds. It was rather touching, the way everyone seemed so avid for a glimpse of the royal family on their distant balcony, and it was sobering, too, to imagine how the princess would feel when she stood before the multitude in a few hours and thanked them with her smile and a wave of her hand. How did she not find it unendurable?

It was raining again, and Victoria Station was just ahead, so she ran inside, hoping she’d be able to find the entrance to its Underground stop without going back into the rain. She’d never had cause to use the stop before, nor the rail station above—