The royals - Kitty Kelley [35]
The dutiful daughter was growing up. She had her own lady-in-waiting, her own bedroom suite, and her own chauffeur-driven Daimler. She had never gone to school or visited a foreign country and had yet to draw her own bath, prepare a meal, or pay a bill; but she was selecting her own clothes. While her future subjects were still restricted to clothing coupons and wearing skirts made of curtains and trousers cut down from overcoats, she had her own couturier and was ordering strapless satin evening gowns.
“I’d like a car of my own, too,” she told a friend, “but there’s so damn much family talk about which make I must have that I don’t think I’ll ever get one.”
Everything pertaining to Elizabeth was subject to intense discussion. Her father was not a man of initiative. Afraid of putting the wrong foot forward, he worried constantly about appearances and what people might think. He did not feel secure about making a decision until he had consulted all his courtiers. His wife, who rarely worried about anything, could not always make up her mind about what was best for their older daughter. So whether it was a car, a fur coat, or a new horse for Elizabeth, it was never a casual decision for her parents.
“They wanted the best for her,” recalled Crawfie, her governess, “and it is never easy for parents to decide what that best is.”
The only topic the King and Queen quickly reached agreement on was Philip of Greece. They felt their daughter was far too interested in the navy lieutenant, but only because she had not met any other men. So they started organizing tea dances, dinner parties, theater outings, and formal balls so she could meet the eligible sons of the aristocracy. They also invited the single military officers stationed near Windsor Castle. Elizabeth pronounced the chinless aristocrats as “pompous, stuffy, and boring,” and her sister dismissed the officers as afflicted with “bad teeth, thick lips, and foul-smelling breath.” Her parents’ diversionary tactic was not lost on her grandmother Queen Mary, who referred to the cluster of young officers suddenly popping up at the Palace as “the Body Guard.” Queen Mary’s lady-in-waiting thought the King was simply an overpossessive father who could not face the prospect of his elder daughter’s falling in love. “He’s desperate,” she said.
In 1946, when Philip returned to England, Elizabeth invited him to visit the family at Balmoral. She had not seen him for over three years. It had been Christmas of 1943 when he had chased her through the corridors of Windsor Castle, wearing a huge set of clattering false teeth that made her scream with laughter.
“I once or twice spent Christmas at Windsor, because I’d nowhere particular to go,” Philip admitted many years later. “I suppose if I’d just been a casual acquaintance, it would all have been frightfully significant. But if you’re related—I mean, I knew half the people there, they were all relations—it isn’t so extraordinary to be on kind of family relationship terms with somebody. You don’t necessarily have to think about marriage.”
At the time, Elizabeth had delighted in her cousin’s* juvenile antics and practical jokes, especially when he offered her nuts from a can and a toy snake popped out or when he handed her dinner rolls and made what she called “rude intestinal noises.” She had laughed so hard at the time, she couldn’t continue eating. Drawn to Philip’s broad slapstick humor and his handsome good looks, she could hardly wait to see him again. She began asking her governess about love and marriage.
“What, Crawfie,” she asked, “makes a person fall in love?”
“I would try to explain to her the deep common interests that cannot only first draw a man and a woman together immediately, but hold them together for life,