Chapter 2

Next to the Queen, Philip is trying not to make it obvious that he is nursing the hangover from hell. Why in God’s name did he drink so much last night? But it was his last chance to see Osla before Christmas.

It was fun, at least what Philip remembered of it. They danced at The 400 and then somehow a party congregated in Osla’s flat where they ate the Russian salad she made with powdered egg. Last night it hadn’t seemed disgusting, but the liquid paraffin dressing is still roiling in his stomach. He slept on the sofa and he should have stayed there instead of making the fatal error of returning to the flat in Chester Street where he found a letter from Mountbatten urging him to present himself at Windsor Castle as soon as possible.

Letters from Uncle Dickie are hard to ignore.

‘Your grandfather was a king,’ Mountbatten said the last time Philip had seen him. ‘You’re a prince, connected to most of the royal houses of Europe. But what have you got to call your own? Barely more than the clothes you stand up in.’

‘And that sweetheart of a car you gave me for my twenty-first birthday.’ Philip loves his MG.

Mountbatten was not to be diverted. ‘You know what I mean, Philip. You’re a personable fellow, and Lilibet will be Queen one day. Make yourself agreeable to her, as I hear you’re more than capable of doing. Dammit, you owe it to your family and to yourself. The war won’t last forever, and then what will you do? You’re not a British citizen and you won’t be able to stay in the Navy.’

Philip can’t imagine the war being over. It seems to have been going on forever. If Philip is as honest with himself as he tries to be, he has been enjoying the war.

There are flashes of terror, of course, but more of adrenalin and anticipation. In unguarded moments, the screams of injured men echo, and memories of flames and thrashing limbs and the vicious rat-tat-tatting of machine guns surge and spin in his head, leaving him stranded on the edge of an abyss, temporarily unable to catch his breath, but when that happens he simply pushes them away. It is war, that is all, and he hasn’t suffered so much as a scratch.

Philip prefers to think of the pitch of the ship and the dazzling Mediterranean light. The sense of liberation as they ease away from the quay. The stomach-clenching excitement when the order for battle stations crackles out of the speakers.

It is harder here, he thinks. The country is exhausted, its cities bombed, its people grey-faced and worn down by rationing and blackouts. In London, Philip walks past ruined buildings without noticing them anymore. Once, he was with a party heading for the Café Royal only to discover that it had been bombed barely minutes before. Dust still hung in the air. There were bodies lying on the pavement, men in evening dress, women in furs and diamonds that glittered in the moonlight. The looters were already there, stripping away jewels from the dead and dying, pulling up satin dresses to rip off nylon stockings.

Philip remembers stepping past and going on to The 400 instead.

That’s how it is during a war. Nobody knows when the next bomb will drop, when the torpedo will hit, when that Messerschmitt will slide out from behind a cloud and shoot you down. There’s a febrile edge to socialising. The knowledge that each night might be the last time you dance, or laugh over cocktails, or kiss a girl, makes it hard to be sensible and go home early to bed. So they stay up, determinedly dancing and drinking and laughing, squeezing every last drop of enjoyment out of an evening.

It is a world away from Windsor Castle. Here, in the Waterloo Chamber, there is little sign of the chaos and destruction elsewhere. The famous Lawrence portraits have been taken down and in their place – Philip squints to make sure he hasn’t imagined this – are bizarre cartoon characters. But otherwise little seems to have changed since the previous century. The King even leant across the Queen to tell Philip that the stage and curtains are the very same ones used by Queen Victoria’s children for their theatricals.

Philip’s head is aching, a ferocious grinding that jabs every time anyone shifts in a chair, sending it scraping across the floor. He feels fuzzy and stale. Perhaps he really is coming down with the flu that was his excuse for not arriving until last night?

‘Go and help with the pantomime,’ Mountbatten urged.

‘I’m not prancing around on stage making a fool of myself in front of the King!’

‘Make yourself useful backstage, then. There must be something you could do. It’d go down very well. The King and Queen like that kind of thing.’

The more Mountbatten pushes, the more Philip digs in his heels. He’s like a dog being dragged to a bath.

‘Philip, you’re halfway there.’ Uncle Dickie can’t understand why Philip is so reluctant to press his case. ‘The King said Lilibet was very taken with you when you saw them in ’41. She’s been writing to you, hasn’t she?’

‘Occasionally.’ Philip knows he’s being contrary but he can’t help himself. Elizabeth’s letters have been more than occasional. Written seriously in a childish hand, he has found them obscurely touching, though he will never admit as much to his ambitious uncle. He is deliberately keeping things light. He is grateful that she hasn’t embarrassed him by asking for his photograph, and he has been careful never to suggest that he would welcome one from her. That would be taking things a step too far. ‘She’s just a young girl, Uncle Dickie. She hasn’t got much to say.’

Mountbatten waved that away. ‘I hope you’re writing back?’

‘When I can. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s a war on.’

‘You seem to have time to go drinking and dancing on shore leave,’ his uncle had pointed out.

‘I do write.’ Not that he had much to say either.

The truth is that he has struggled to remember much about Elizabeth. A quiet girl, sturdy and sensible, she has always been there at various family events like his cousin Marina’s wedding to the Duke of Kent and naturally she had been at her father’s coronation, which Philip remembered clearly. They had played croquet together at the Naval College in 1939 when Uncle Dickie, that old intriguer, had somehow arranged for Philip to look after the two princesses while the King and Queen attended chapel. There had been mumps, or measles, or some medical reason why Elizabeth and Margaret hadn’t gone too.

Philip wouldn’t be surprised if Mountbatten had engineered the whole outbreak just to put his nephew in front of the King’s oldest daughter. Not that Philip thought it had done much good. Elizabeth was painfully shy, he seems to remember, and rather chunky. He had hardly been able to get a word out of her. There had been a good tea on the royal yacht, though. He remembers that.

Good Lord, his head hurts. If only he’d been able to find an aspirin but it wasn’t the kind of thing you asked for the moment you were ushered into the Crimson Drawing Room where the King and Queen were greeting their guests for the pantomime.

The last thing Philip wants to do right now is to sit through a pantomime. The Waterloo Chamber is so big it must be impossible to heat at the best of times but with the royal family anxious to share in the country’s wartime privations there isn’t so much as an electric bar to warm the air and the cold is penetrating. He envies the Queen her fur coat.

In spite of the cold, he’s very tired. Osla’s sofa isn’t the most comfortable of beds. The effort of suppressing a yawn leaves the muscles in his cheek aching. Surreptitiously he pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. The last thing he can afford to do is nod off. For all his recalcitrance, he knows Mountbatten is right and he needs to make a good impression on the King.