The others were dunked in the pool and tormented in various ways but all we had to endure was having our faces dabbed with huge powder puffs. I feel sure that if you had been there we would have been made to sit on the greased pole and beat each other with pillows until we fell into the pool at the very least.

Chapter 31

South Africa, February 1947

Vanguard steams into Table Bay early on a fresh February morning. On deck, Elizabeth and Margaret shade their eyes against the early morning sun. They can see Cape Town and, beyond, the famous Table Mountain, its flat top draped in a cloth of dense white mist.

Although she is sorry to leave the carefree voyage behind, Elizabeth is wide-eyed at the colour and abundance in South Africa. January in London was bitter, tired, and grey. In Cape Town the sky is blue, the light is crystalline. The shop windows are full. The market stalls are piled high with fruit and vegetables: after the years of rationing, Elizabeth finds herself gaping at the redness of the tomatoes, the yellowness of the bananas, the bobbly green avocadoes. She is presented with a fresh peach and when she bites into the blush-coloured flesh, the sweetness explodes in her mouth and she smiles as she wipes the juice dribbling down her chin. It is nothing like the tinned peaches she has had before. It is the most delicious thing she has ever eaten, she decides.

The South Africans have built a special train for the tour. Elizabeth gasps when she sees it. With its fourteen carriages painted ivory and white, each decorated with the royal crest, The White Train gleams in the brilliant light as it streaks through the spectacular landscape. It curves around hills and mountains, arrows across the dusty veldt. She writes to Philip every evening.

We each have our own bedroom and bathroom. There is a drawing room and a dining room, and Papa has a study and Mummy has her own sitting room. All on the train! There is even a post office, which I will use to send this letter to you, and a telephone exchange which is connected at the main stops so Papa can keep in touch with events at home.

I know you have been to South Africa so I don’t need to explain how beautiful the country is but I have never seen such light before. So different from the lovely Scottish summer light. Here it is diamond hard and it outlines every tiny thing so sharply that I keep having to blink.

Elizabeth pauses, her pen still in her hand, as she looks out at the veldt. It stretches away to a distant horizon where the sky is flushed a deep red barred with strips of purple cloud. Her bedroom on the train is furnished with a desk at the window and when the train has stopped for the night, as now, she likes to sit and write to Philip.

The view is distracting though. She keeps stopping to stare at the stupendous scale of it. The train has rumbled across endless stretches of golden grassland all day, broken only by the occasional acacia tree or the glimpse of mountains in the far distance. She and Margaret hung out of the window to watch a herd of zebras galloping away from the train.

Dipping her pen in the ink, Elizabeth returns to her letter to tell Philip about the wildlife they have glimpsed.

We saw some giraffes today, too. They are such extraordinary creatures and it was exciting to see them in the wild. They kept their distance but didn’t seem too bothered by the train but turned their heads to watch us as we went by.

Sometimes we see people, too, just standing with their horses by the side of the track in the middle of nowhere, waiting to wave at us. Peter (do you remember Papa’s equerry?) says that some of them may have ridden more than fifty miles to see us. I always feel terrible if we don’t see them in time to wave back. Everyone in South Africa has been so very welcoming. If I didn’t feel guilty knowing how much people at home are suffering in the winter, I would be loving it – although I do wish you could be here too.

I don’t think Mummy and Papa are enjoying the tour so much. Everything is new and exciting for Margaret and me but for them it is quite wearing and poor Papa in particular finds it exhausting. He doesn’t like the way the Afrikaner police order us around at times. He calls them the Gestapo. I’m afraid his temper is on a very short fuse.

She hopes Philip will understand that things are so tense that there is no question of raising the subject of announcing their engagement. She worries about her father. His nerves are so on edge that he seems unable to relax. Once, by the Indian Ocean, he ordered the train to stop by a broad beach. Looking out of the window, Elizabeth saw the police roping off a path across the sand between two vast crowds of people. She watched her father climb down from the train wearing a blue bathrobe and carrying a towel, watched him walk across the sand to the sea. It seemed to take a long time and by the time he reached the ocean he was a tiny solitary figure, jumping up and down in the surf. Elizabeth remembers the tightness of her throat as she watched him. He looked so terribly lonely.

With pity came a trickle of disquiet. Was that her future? Was that what being a sovereign meant? Always divided from the rest of the world, always watched, always alone?

But her father has her mother, Elizabeth reminds herself, just as she would have Philip. She wouldn’t be alone any more than the King is. It was just a solitary swim, after all.

Elizabeth refills the pen with ink and remembers to tell Philip about their visit to Cecil Rhodes’s grave in the Motopo Hills, set atop a bare hillside among strange round boulders.

Mummy set off in ridiculous high-heels, totally unsuitable for climbing a steep, rocky mountain. So like her! Of course they were soon pinching horribly and she could barely walk. I gave her my sandals in the end and I walked up in my stockinged feet, which was a novel experience for me.

The path had been dusty and she’d been able to feel the grit digging into the soles of her feet, but it had been strangely liberating too, to feel so connected to the hot earth.

There is so much to tell Philip! Every day there are new experiences. Elizabeth’s favourite time, though, is the early morning when the sky is glowing with the gold of the sun hauling itself over the horizon and the air is cool. The train stops at night, and someone has provided horses so she and Margaret can ride before breakfast across the veldt or along some empty sweep of beach. Peter Townsend usually accompanies them, with one or two security guards following at a distance.

Elizabeth tucks the letter into its envelope, writes Philip’s name and address carefully on the front and seals it up before sending it to the train’s post office. She likes to write to him and feel the connection still. Her senses are so overloaded here, she is afraid she might combust, and thinking about Philip keeps her anchored. This trip is wonderful, but knowing she has him to go home to is the next best thing to having him here.

She is still thinking about Philip the next morning when she gets up early and jumps down from the carriage to find Margaret and Peter already waiting for her. Three young South African boys are holding a horse each and they smile shyly in response to Elizabeth’s greeting. Elizabeth is given a frisky chestnut mare with dark, liquid eyes and a saucy toss to her head.

Elizabeth strokes the horse’s nose and they take the measure of each other. The mare, she senses, is afraid that she is in for a sedate ride, and Elizabeth is able to promise her that there will be no holding back. She swings into the saddle, loving the responsive feel of the horse beneath her.

‘Let’s go,’ she says, smiling.