Kind heart and crown
Petronella Wyatt
My father liked to whip you up into a frenzy of frustration before he told you what you wanted to know. In the summer of 1980, he and my mother went about whispering to each other as if they were afraid to wake some djinn from its bottle. Eventually, however, he relented. 'Guess who is coming to dinner?' he asked in tones of trembling excitement. 'I don't know,' said I, feigning boredom. 'Reggie Kray?"You little squirt,' he yelled, The last Empress of India.' Oh,' I said bemused, 'will she be coming in a sari?' The last Empress of India,' roared my parent, 'is Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.'
I could not have been more incredulous if he had said Julius Caesar was dropping in for tea. But it turned out that they had become friendly through the racing world. The Queen Mother, I was to discover, liked all things racy, especially men. I was told I might watch her arrival from the top of the stairs. By eight, the other guests had arrived. At 8.15 precisely, the last Empress of India stepped into our house. She wore a long chiffon dress that might have been fashioned from icing. And the jewels. She appeared to be wearing the entire contents of King Solomon's mines.
Huge emeralds nestled on her breast and hung from her ears. A diamond diadem fitted her hair like an airy cap. If Hera had been watching from Olympus she would have expired from jealousy. Like her daughter Margaret, it seemed the Queen Mother loved both a tipple and a party. She remained until nearly one, clutching to the last a martini. The maid was so excited that she refused to wash any of the glasses out of which the Queen Mother had drunk. As she had drunk from six, my mother was exasperated, pointing out that there would be nothing for the family to drink from.
These dinners became regular. When I was 15, I was allowed to attend my first. Someone had told me that truly elegant women never bobbed like schoolgirls but swept low, almost to the floor. This person had done me no service. When the Queen Mother arrived I fell flat on the floor in front of her to find myself staring up into beady blue eyes above a gargantuan pink and yellow diamond choker. 'Have a little martini,' she said. 'There is nothing like a martini to get one over an awkward moment.'
When something complimentary is written about a member of the royal family, the
author is accused of being a sycophant. Well, sod that. In the first place, the Queen Mother was not a Windsor but a BowesLyon, a family with a down-to-earth humour and humanity. Second, it was by chance that she became queen. Third, not every royal in history was a stinker. Most were, but she wasn't. Her kindness to a shy teenage girl will never be forgotten. After that first meeting we began to share tentative confidences. She explained that she liked to give her lunch parties at Clarence House outside so that she might wear a hat. 'This is because my hair is thinning, dear. I am very vain, you know.'
A.N. Wilson wrote after being invited to one of our dinners that her teeth were black. I don't remember this to be so. In any case I wonder what he will look like when he is 85. It became fashionable to knock the Queen Mother. But who cares when the public loves ya? Once, on a racecourse, I had direct experience of this affection. It was true that the crowd, which included many Irish, was a particularly convivial one, buoyed up by good humour and a seamless camaraderie. It is not often that one has the fortune to walk with queens — and talk with crowds — but that day I did both.
I followed two steps behind the Queen Mother as my father escorted her to the paddock. The throng parted in a tacit gesture of enthusiasm. It began to whoop: 'We hope you live till 120'; 'We love you, ma'am'; 'You are the best of them'. My excitement mounted, till I began to delude myself into thinking they were cheering me. It was though I was being willed on to a sort of glorious immortality simply by being there.
She was, of course, no saint or push-over. She recognised in herself an amalgam of angel and devil, and never failed to say so. Her remarks about the Princess of Wales were as tart as those she made about Mrs Simpson. The younger, she believed, endangered the monarchy; the older, she confided, she had been a little jealous of. One afternoon at Sandown racecourse I found my father and her sitting over champagne and egg sandwiches. They were both belting out a chorus of `Chatanooga Choo Choo'. `Choo Choo,' she yelled. 'Come on, Lord Wyatt.'
In the summer of 1997 she came to lunch. The occasion was valedictory. Some intuition must have moved her, for when the wine was served she insisted on passing around her glass to every guest. 'We will have a loving cup,' she said. All were silent. The mood was broken by my irrepressible friend Andrew Roberts, who leant across the table. 'Tell me, ma'am,' he said, 'what was it like to have been the last Empress of India.' She beamed at him. 'It was fun while it lasted.'
Within four months my father was dead, She sent a wreath of pink and silver roses to the funeral. With the flowers now dried it crowns the head of a marble bust in the dining-room. I think both she and my father would have been amused.
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