Daughter of Empire (19 page)

Turmoil was engulfing the newly independent nation, the situation deteriorating with such frightening speed that Congress recalled my father from our brief holiday in Simla. They felt that his
advice would be valuable. We travelled back in an open police car as our car was stuck somewhere between Lucknow and Delhi, leaving Jim Scott, one of the ADCs, with the headache of having to get
eighty Muslim and 150 Hindu servants back to Delhi. Eventually it was decided to send them down to Ambala under an armed escort and then fly them home in groups. Our drivers were all Muslim so we
were driven back by the ADCs. In our party was an ecstatic Leela Nand, who was bursting with pride now that he had two ‘Excellencies’ to look after as well as me.

Delhi was a maelstrom. There was a stabbing on the estate soon after we returned and I could not go to the clinic or the canteen without an armed guard, which naturally I did not do as they were
needed elsewhere. Anyway, now that a curfew had been imposed, the clinic, which had been looking after two hundred people a day, had very few patients and the canteen was almost empty. The streets
were littered with fires and corpses and the ADCs began to find the job of ADC2 the most challenging, as my mother, undeterred by snipers, would get them to help her pick up any corpse she passed
in the street and take it to the infirmary. My father had told her that she must have an armed escort but initially she refused, for the same reasons that I had. There was no question of her
staying at home, however. She did change her mind after her vehicle was followed by a car full of what she described as ‘the most terrifying ruffians with guns sticking out everywhere’.
My father was delighted to know his orders, that armed plainclothes policemen should shadow his wife, had been carried out.

I remained astounded by my mother’s stamina and bravery. Before a visit to the Punjab the governor telephoned to say it must be cancelled because there was no way he could guarantee her
safety, but she insisted on going. The ADC reported that even before landing they could see an enormous crowd below, and when they descended from the plane it was apparent that this was an angry
gathering of Sikhs, shouting war cries and brandishing kirpans. Assessing the situation, my mother forbade her aides to follow and walked towards the crowd. As she approached, half a dozen of the
leaders detached themselves from the mob and moved towards her. The ADCs saw nothing but anger and danger. My mother, however, simply held out her arms towards the leaders, who, to everyone’s
astonishment, sheathed their weapons and held their arms out too. It was an extraordinary moment, which the ADCs could later only describe to us as one in which love overcame anger. The leaders and
my mother hugged and then she moved into the crowd, quickly followed by the ADCs. Her new friends then escorted her to the refugee camp and she was able to do the work she had come to do. There was
no question of her being afraid or considering herself brave. She had a job to do and she got on with doing it.

Back in Delhi, the hospitals were woefully vulnerable to attack, and my mother tore around, trying to procure them guards and fuel. Moreover, there was now also the problem of food shortages.
Shops were shut, supplies could not get through, and the labourers who produced the food had taken flight. We set up a rationing centre on the estate to feed the 5,000 residents and the 5,000
refugees we had taken in. By the middle of September, it was calculated that the remaining stores of food would last only one more week.

The only good news was that in Calcutta Gandhiji’s presence had prevented the terrible rioting that might otherwise have happened there. My father said he alone had accomplished what an
army brigade might not have been able to do. When he felt it was time to leave, Gandhiji returned to Delhi, and my father immediately went to talk to him about how best to contain the chaos in the
capital. A sort of war room had been set up in the Governor-General’s House. Lieutenant General ‘Pete’ Rees came down to head up what became known as the Military Emergency Staff,
who were to work out of ‘the Map Room’. I was drafted in as his PA, typing notes and lists, sending messages, as well as taking and making telephone calls for the general. This would
have been quite straightforward, had the telephones worked reliably, but they seemed to be forever ringing when you were unable to answer them. And as soon as you were asked to place an urgent
call, you would pick up the receiver and find that the line was dead. Most of the telephone operators had left the city. We worked in the Map Room from nine until six, seven days a week.

When cholera broke out in the refugee camps in Amritsar in the middle of September, my parents flew off with Panditji, Vallabhbhai Patel, Rajkumari Amrit Kaur and a delegation of representatives
to survey the movement of refugees in the Punjab. Jaya went with them as a translator and later told me just how appalled they all were by what they saw, by the sheer numbers of homeless people,
and the vast scale of the displacement. Jaya was impressed by my parents’ ability to act fairly and speedily and recounted to me how my mother was mobbed wherever she went – it was well
known among the refugees that soon after a visit from Lady Mountbatten, help would be close at hand.

The chaos continued throughout October. We were working twelve-hour days, living on bully beef and Spam, under martial law. In the midst of the mayhem, with the country fragmenting around us, it
didn’t take much to be persuaded by the ADCs that I should join them in seeking a little light relief in a makeshift nightclub set up in the house of an older, rather dashing Indian officer,
Brigadier ‘Kipper’ Cariappa. This was my first taste of nightclubbing and I loved it. Kipper had set up a room for dancing, a room for sitting out, and a bar. We were all high on a
blitz spirit. Until, that is, Panditji heard about our ‘club’ and had it closed down immediately.

In the midst of all this devastation, I wondered whether we would be able to get away to the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Philip in November. As a representative of Prince
Philip’s family, I had been asked to be a bridesmaid – I was lucky that Patricia was already married, otherwise I might have missed out on the privilege. Amid the turbulence of India,
the wedding seemed somewhat unreal to me, another world, but I was hoping we would manage to leave the troubles behind us for a short time.

The princess had sent me a sweet letter about the bridesmaids’ dresses and the ball the night before the wedding. I had managed to get to the
durzi
in Connaught Circus to have a
dress made up from some sari material. I feared we would not be able to leave India, however, as there seemed to be no end to the violence. And indeed, at the end of October, when NWFP tribesmen
marched upon Srinagar and Indian troops were sent in to face them, I realised there would be no chance of getting away. My parents agreed that it would be madness for us to leave for England at
such a time of trouble. But Panditji thought differently and persuaded them, saying that we should go in order
not
to draw attention to the Kashmir crisis. And so, on 9 November, in spite of
our great anxiety, we flew to London for ten days.

12

T
he last national celebration, the Victory Parade only a year before, was triumphant but not light-hearted. The Royal Wedding was to be a moment
for the country to rejoice, the first opportunity in years to see so many foreign royals on British soil, after the bleak years of separation that had kept them apart. Unsurprisingly, then, people
began to stake out positions along the route in the days before the wedding, and even the promise of rain did nothing to put off the campers intent on glimpsing the heir to the throne on her
wedding day.

My seven co-bridesmaids had attended several fittings for their dresses over a period of many weeks. There was only time for me to have two, but the expertise of the designer, Norman Hartnell,
and his team meant that the dress fitted perfectly. Our white dresses had an ethereal beauty – tight waisted with full skirts of many layers of tulle, over white satin petticoats. As they
were sleeveless, tulle fichus were draped over our shoulders and fastened with a large satin bow at the front of the bodice. These were edged with a series of star-shaped lily heads created from
seed pearls and crystal beads. Our skirts were also sprinkled with the same design, echoing, as we would discover, the pattern covering the bride’s tulle train. The fine handiwork in the
dresses was set off perfectly by delicate tiaras of silver orange blossom and ears of corn. We wore long white gloves, fastened by a row of half a dozen little pearl buttons, so that we could
release our hands when it came to eating. I was over the moon to have such a beautiful dress.

During the reception and ball before the wedding, the royal visitors gathered together, the atmosphere one of great excitement as kings and queens, princes and princesses who hadn’t seen
each other for six years were reunited. So many had been displaced by the war, including high-spirited Queen Frederika of Greece, known as Freddie, who had been exiled to South Africa; Queen Ena,
estranged wife of my philandering godfather King Alfonso, who had been in Italy and Switzerland since the 1930s; and King Michael of Romania, who had been crowned king aged five, then exiled to
England, and had only just returned to Romania (where a month later he was forced to abdicate at gunpoint by Stalin-backed communists).

I was delighted to see Uncle Gustav and Aunt Louise, my father’s sister, and to catch up on family news. I didn’t know this at the time but was told later that, during one of the
balls, Prince George of Denmark asked Aunt Alice whether she might put a word in for him as my suitor. My father, always one to know his mind, said a firm ‘no’, as he believed I was too
young and needed to see a bit more of the world before settling down. It was a privilege for us to be in the company of the legendary King Haakon of Norway. He was deeply revered by his countrymen
as a war hero, a symbol of his people’s resistance, for when the Germans overran Norway, he would not collaborate but remained defiantly in his palace and rode out on his white horse through
the streets of Oslo every day. Crown Princess Juliana of the Netherlands caused a stir, remarking that ‘Everyone’s jewellery is
so
dirty’, which may or may not have been
the case; to me it was just remarkable that all those royal jewels had survived the war. Most pieces had only just come out of storage for the occasion. It was typical of Princess Juliana to say
such a thing, for she was very practical and down to earth. When she had been in exile in Canada, her friends and neighbours had noted that she lived happily as one of them without airs or graces.
Interestingly, her mother, Queen Wilhelmina, had been an important symbol of Dutch resistance and had brought her government to London. Churchill had described Queen Wilhelmina as the only real man
in all the governments-in-exile in London. She was soon to abdicate in favour of her plain-speaking daughter.

The day of the wedding was like being part of a fairy tale. We got ready in Buckingham Palace and the atmosphere was a mixture of frenzy and calm as the professional dressers helped us prepare.
As with every wedding there were several moments of panic before the bride was finally ready. As she was having her veil fitted, the tiara broke, so an aide had to be bundled into a taxi and sent
across London to the jeweller’s. Furthermore, the princess wished to wear the pearls that her father had given her, but after a frantic search, someone remembered that they had been left on
display with the other wedding presents at St James’s Palace. Her secretary, Lieutenant Colonel Charteris, was dispatched to retrieve them. Then, just as the bride was about to leave for
Westminster Abbey, her bouquet could not be found, and once again there was a lot of rushing around until it was discovered – it had been popped in a cupboard where it would remain cool.
Throughout this, the bride remained unflustered and calm.

We travelled by car to Westminster Abbey as the crowd cheered its heart out. At the abbey, those close enough to the barriers were rewarded for their perseverance, as they were the first to see
the bride emerge, resplendent in her beautiful dress and veil. Being one of the tallest, I was in the last pair of bridesmaids in the procession, with Princess Margaret and Princess Alexandra at
the front to make sure that Princess Elizabeth’s veil was in place and the train unfurled before we set off down the aisle. In the rehearsal we had all been warned to veer to the right to
avoid walking on the grave of the Unknown Warrior, but one of the little pages, Prince Michael of Kent, stepped right on it.