Daughter of Empire (26 page)

I listened intently that evening as the Queen made a speech to her subjects around the world, speaking of her wish to unite her people. When she said ‘I have in sincerity pledged myself to
your service, as so many of you are pledged to mine. Throughout my life and with all my heart I shall strive to be worthy of your trust. In this resolve I have my husband to support me. He shares
my ideals and my affection for you,’ I knew this to be true.

16

T
he Commonwealth Tour was to resume in early November 1953. Once again I was not happy at the thought of going away for nearly six months as I was
still very much in love with George and wanted to see him as much as possible. I had a sense that my parents were relieved I was going away, for while they liked George, they felt I wouldn’t
be happy living in Lebanon. My mother thought he was a ‘sweet man with impeccable manners’, but my father teased me that George always wore fingerless leather gloves for waterskiing and
a similar pair for driving and he was puzzled by the fact that George always dressed entirely in black. It would be even longer than usual before George and I could meet again. We were used to
writing long, detailed, intimate letters and I consoled myself that, so far, our feelings for each other had not been changed by spending so much time apart. He was such a romantic, but after I
refused another of his marriage proposals he ended one of his letters by saying that I had a ‘pumping machine instead of a heart’. I was somewhat affronted but it soon became a joke
between us.

I had to prepare for the tour, and while this time I already had a wardrobe full of dresses, bags, hats and gloves, now that the princess was Queen, the whole thing was on a much grander scale.
Henriette had remarried, so the other lady-in-waiting was to be Lady Alice Egerton, whom I knew from Malta. We were to take turns at being in attendance unless we were both required for very formal
occasions such as the opening of Parliament. I liked Alice, who I knew would be a caustic and amusing companion, but I still felt forlorn and lonely at the prospect of the tour and was grateful to
Patricia for coming down to the King George V Dock to see me off. This time I was not flying out to Bermuda and going on to Jamaica with the Queen and Prince Philip but instead was part of the
advance party sailing out on board SS
Gothic
. As soon as I embarked I could see that the party on board
Gothic
consisted of several senior members of the royal household I scarcely
knew and an atmosphere redolent of Buckingham Palace prevailed. This time we would be in the presence of Sir Michael Adeane, the Queen’s private secretary, who held the same rank as a cabinet
minister. Martin Charteris, her assistant private secretary, was flying out to Bermuda with her. It was a bit like the first day at a new school, and I was once again filled with dread at the
prospect of being away for so long. I decided to hide in my cabin until we left the dock, but as it turned out, owing to the presence of the formidable Miss Bramford, this unsettled me even
more.

Miss Bramford was to be my lady’s maid, inherited from a previous lady-in-waiting. I had never had a lady’s maid but had been told that it was essential for the tour because of the
crowded programme of official events, timed to the minute, that required many changes of clothing, with no time for packing, unpacking, ironing crumpled dresses or finding the appropriate
accessories. Miss Bramford was small, late middle aged and extremely well spoken, and I was immediately intimidated by her presence as she bustled around my cabin. I went up on deck, where,
shivering and homesick already, I had a strong urge to jump ashore and take the first plane out to Malta or Ethiopia, where my parents were visiting Emperor Haile Selassie with the Mediterranean
Fleet. When Admiral Sir Conolly Abel Smith came to tell me that my father had sent a lovely farewell signal, I wobbled all over again.

Going out of the dock through the lock into the mouth of the Thames took us over an hour. The passage was so narrow that from the centre of the deck you couldn’t see the water at all,
which gave the disconcerting impression of sailing over land. Our departure was neither romantic nor impressive. The water was dirty and the docks were deserted, bleak and cold, the scene made all
the more desolate by a knot of five or six children who had come with their parents to wave us off. They stood forlornly huddled, together with a photographer whose occasional flash lit up the dirt
and drabness of the dock. I waved with as much enthusiasm as I could muster, though not terribly heartily, I am sorry to say. It was only when we passed through and the surrounding lights played on
the water that the outline of the docks began to look rather lovely. I went down below, hoping that Miss Bramford had retired to bed.

We were to be at sea for a fortnight before meeting up with the rest of our party, and this certainly gave everyone on board
Gothic
a chance to get to know each other. I found that the
senior members of the royal household were much less pompous and intimidating than they had at first appeared. Apart from members of the royal household, those on board consisted of the Royal Navy
party (of which Conolly was in charge); the officers and crew of
Gothic
; and the press party, an essential element of the tour’s PR. There were six senior press representatives on
board for the trip to Jamaica, including my old friends from the previous tour, John Turner, the newsreel cameraman, and the very tall broadcast journalist Godfrey Talbot – he of the very
British voice. It soon became clear that they all shared a lively passion for taking photographs and they were endlessly pursuing us around the deck with their Brownies and colour film cameras,
which became somewhat tiresome. But all in all they were a great team, and contributed an enormous amount of fun to the general melee.

It took me a while to find my sea legs, but by the third day we had all begun to engage in tremendous bouts of deck tennis, quoits and deck croquet, which we played with wooden blocks instead of
balls. In the afternoons, there were terrific canasta sessions, at which I was rather good, and also liar dice, at which I was extraordinarily bad. Nearly every night there was a cocktail party
before dinner. And so, as our so-called relaxed programme continued, I began to believe – incorrectly as it turned out – that the
actual
programme of the tour would come as a
rest cure.

During the second week, I spent much of the time impersonating the Queen. As regular worship was an important part of the royal couple’s life, it was felt that we should rehearse a church
service – as well as several other types of occasion – and for this I was asked to represent the Queen. Unfortunately, as we took up our positions, the ship lurched sideways and I
couldn’t make up my mind whether ‘the Queen’ should stand firmly with her feet wide apart during the national anthem or stand with her feet together and risk falling over. To
begin with, Jeremy Hall, the naval equerry from New Zealand, stood in for Prince Philip, but he reduced me to helpless giggles and nobody could take the rehearsal seriously. The next time, my old
friend Mike Cowan, the Queen’s Australian equerry, stood in for the prince and he made sure everyone took it seriously, and two unsuspecting stand-ins and the stills photographer were made to
do deep bows when presented to me. The rehearsals turned out to be a good idea, as none of the stewards knew how to deal with a formal dinner party. Oulton, the sergeant footman, watched as we
staged a mock party, hissing instructions from the wings and making us feel as though we were actors in a rather bad play.

We arrived in Jamaica twelve days after leaving London. In the light of dawn, Kingston harbour was a remarkable sight – a narrow stretch of sand and grass lay beyond the water and very
steep hills, covered in dense vegetation, rose up dramatically behind. I had imagined Kingston to be a sprawling city, so was surprised to discover that it was nothing more than a shanty town
consisting of a couple of long main streets. Coming ashore, I was a little apprehensive as the governor, Sir Hugh Foot, had signalled to the ship some days earlier to say that as soon as we landed
he wanted to ‘kidnap’ Johnny Althorp, the Queen’s equerry, and me, and take us to King’s House for discussions with him and Lady Foot. Arriving at the house, I was stopped
in my tracks by the beauty of its setting – the lawns were a vibrant green following the rainy season, and the flowerbeds were vivid with pink and white bougainvillea, red poinsettia and the
many colours of cannas. At the end of the garden, beyond the ‘Royal Cotton tree – so called because of its immense size – was a superb view of the foothills of the Blue
Mountains.

The governor and Lady Foot – mischievously nicknamed ‘The Feet’ by Princess Margaret on a previous visit – had pushed Jamaica into a complete state of panic. Preparations
for the tour had been going on for the past nine months and there had been intensive rehearsals for every single function. Now our arrival had thrown everyone into ecstasies of excitement, and with
a heavy sense of doom, Johnny and I realised that we were to be seized and ‘rehearsed with’ throughout our stay.

Lady Foot was charming but imperious. As soon as I arrived she took me on a tour of inspection of the house as the Queen and Prince Philip would be staying with her and her husband. The layout
was so simple that even I, who always managed to get myself lost, felt confident I had committed it to memory, and yet Lady Foot told me to retrace my steps to ensure that I knew every corner.
Minutes later, she informed me how many times a day the Queen would be changing her dress. When I assured her that the Queen would have no intention of changing three times in one morning, she was
driven to exclaim, ‘But we can’t have a crumpled Queen!’ Lady Foot then took me to the Queen’s bedroom and asked whether it was correct for the governor’s wife to show
the Queen into her bedroom or whether she must remain on the threshold and so presumably shout out directions as to the geography of the room from a distance. I tried to indicate that formality
should not outweigh practicality, but she obviously felt that no detail was too small to discuss. This, then, was my initiation into the strange behaviour, or the total loss of common sense, that
occurs during a royal tour. I had been warned by the other, more experienced members of the party that often people went into complete overdrive.

The governor came from an influential left-wing family – his brother was the Labour MP Michael Foot – and he was a charismatic man, with a progressive attitude. After my experiences
in India, it was refreshing to hear him say that it never occurred to either the white or black inhabitants of the island that parties should not be mixed. I found him fascinating to talk to;
nevertheless, after a day’s conscientious observance of the Foots’ enthusiastic rehearsal schedule, I made a bold bid for freedom, asking the governor to lend Conolly and me two ponies.
He was somewhat shocked that I should want to ride ‘at a time like this’ but he acquiesced. Being used to my own company, I desperately needed to escape from all the people and
overwhelming preparations, and as the admiral and I rode through the grounds of King’s House, around two enormous fields of waist-high grasses, I began to feel calmer. My pony was called
Admiral and the admiral’s pony was Sailor Boy, something I found infinitely funnier than he did. Conolly had taken it upon himself to stand
in loco parentis
for me, which was touching
but also somewhat frustrating. Once he knew that I would be arriving back on board
Gothic
after him following a night out in Kingston, he told Commander Colin Madden to send a boat back to
shore to wait for me. Colin had passed the order on to the officer of the watch, adding, ‘When Lady Pamela comes on board, tell her that she’s a damn nuisance and I’m very
angry.’ The officer of the watch that night happened to be the sixth officer, the baby of the party. No sooner had I stepped on board than he came up and with a tremendous salute took a deep
breath and said: ‘Ma’am. Commander Madden says that you’re a damned nuisance and he’s very angry. Thank you, ma’am.’