21^st January 1936

Darling,

He has gone. At five to midnight.

All the family were with him as he breathed his last.

I am told that the Queen, who has maintained a long vigil at his bedside, instantly turned to her eldest son and, bowing, took his hand in hers and kissed it. ‘God Save the King,’ she said unfalteringly before stepping back with a small curtsey.

The King is dead.

The house is now brimming with the quiet efficiency of state.

It is two o’clock in the morning now. I have just returned from visiting the old King in his room to pay my respects and thank him for his life of duty. Like all our generation, I have seen too many dead men, but none has ever had a more peaceful face.

The new King will return to London tomorrow to present himself to privy councillors who, no matter how they judge him, must swear allegiance to him.

He is taking his own aeroplane to do so, apparently creating a kingly precedent. His father never flew in his life.

I will write again tomorrow, but for now I am going to get some sleep.

Thank you for the clothes parcel. Tomorrow will be all hands to the pump.

With grateful love,

Tommy

Chapter Fifteen

Dunfermline, 21^st January 1936

Maggie’s eyes were swollen with tears. Whether they were for the dead King or Marion’s insistence on returning to Windsor and Royal Lodge, she couldn’t have told you.

‘Surely they can do without you for another day?’

Marion had reached the end of her forbearance. She had been awake since Alah had telephoned in the early hours. The poor woman had sobbed down the telephone, hardly able to get her words out. And now, dealing with her mother’s bleating was the last straw.

‘Mother!’ she snapped. ‘This is not about me staying here to comfort you! It’s my job to go to London and comfort two little girls who have lost their grandfather! Read the telegram if you don’t believe me.’ She handed the flimsy piece of paper to her mother. ‘The Duchess isn’t well. She has flu. The Duke is in mourning. The girls need me and that’s that.’

‘What about me? I need you.’

‘Stop it!’

‘You’ve changed, Marion. You used to be a loving daughter but now …’

‘Pass me my cardigan, would you?’

Pathetically, Maggie looked around her. Her daughter’s rumpled single bed was a mess of discarded hangers and clothes.

‘Which one?’

‘The blue one. You’re sitting on it.’

Marion was in no mood to bend to her mother’s neediness. Her head and heart were aching with the enormity of the King’s death. She desperately wanted to be back in London, to bring reassurance to the Princesses and to the household. So much must be happening and it was vital that the girls were protected from all the emotional upset. The Duchess would need to know that life around her would carry on, to give her the time to soothe her husband in his grief and pick up the threads of public duty and royal continuance.