The royals - Kitty Kelley [26]
The biggest investment of time and attention was made in Elizabeth as the future sovereign, and she became as orderly, dutiful, and responsible as her father. “She is exactly the daughter that plain, conscientious King George and matronly Queen Elizabeth deserve,” said Time magazine. “And that is precisely what her future subjects want her to be.” Elizabeth shared her father’s passion for horses, grouse shooting, and deer stalking. Like him, she did not much enjoy going to church. When a minister in Scotland promised to give her a book, she thanked him and asked that it not be about God. “I know everything about Him,” she said.
She inherited her father’s broad vaudevillian sense of humor, and together they laughed at the exaggerated antics of slapstick clowns wearing droopy drawers and doing pratfalls. Margaret, more like her mother, preferred sophisticated comedy and drawing room repartee. She was so spoiled as a child that her servants found her “terrible” and “absolutely impossible,” but her proud and indulgent parents saw her outrageous behavior as merely “entertaining and engaging.” They didn’t bother holding Margaret accountable because she was never going to be Queen. As she once joked: “I don’t have to be dour and dutiful like Lilibet. I can be as beastly as I want.”
Inside the fortress of Windsor Castle the two Princesses bickered on occasion but became each other’s best friends for life, with the older sister assuming the mentor’s role.
“Margaret almost forgot to say ‘Thank you,’ Crawfie,” Elizabeth reported to her governess, “but I gave her a nudge, and she said it beautifully.”
Yet when Elizabeth became patrol leader for her own troop of Girl Guides, she spared no one, including her chatterbox sister.
“Here,” she told Margaret, “I am not your sister, and I’ll permit no slackness.”
Margaret stuck out her tongue, not at all intimidated by her future sovereign. “You look after your empire,” she told her at one point, “and I’ll look after myself.”
Nor was Margaret above berating the future Queen of England for overeating, especially when she indulged in sweets.
“Lilibet,” she said, “that’s the fourteenth chocolate biscuit you’ve eaten. You’re as bad as Mother—you don’t know when to stop.”
Mother knew best how to handle her outspoken younger daughter. She simply ignored her, declining to react to any of Margaret’s taunts.
“Mummy, why are you wearing those dreadful hairpins?” Margaret asked her mother one day. “They do not match your hair.”
“Oh, darling,” said the Queen before gliding off with a smile. “Are they really so awful?”
The two little Princesses shared the small, isolated world of royalty, where everyone tried to entertain them because that’s what the King and Queen wanted—especially the King, who felt guilty that the war was depriving his daughters of a normal life. “Poor darlings,” he wrote in his diary, “they have never had any fun yet.” So he seized every opportunity to amuse them.
When Noel Coward began filming In Which We Serve, the movie based on the heroic exploits of Louis Mountbatten and the ship he commanded, HMS Kelly, the King and Queen were invited to visit the set, and they took the two little Princesses, who were entranced by the world of make-believe.
The King enjoyed the company of the glamorous Mountbatten, despite his excessive ambition and blatant self-promotions. The King secretly envied his cousin’s dashing style and easy charm as he sailed along the surface of life without dropping anchor. The King even tolerated Mountbatten’s exaggerated vanity and seemed more amused