Sunday, October 30
th 1994
Nothing is predictable about London– apart from the weather. Typically, this particular Sunday in late autumn was miserable and only the hardiest people had ventured out. The overcast sky remained an obstinate steel grey, the clouds depositing a river of rain on the city below. Intermittent gusts of wind were blowing, turning umbrellas inside out. From Big Ben in the West End to Bow Bells in the east, the rain fell and landed in a steady drip from the grey stone of the famous London steeples.
In the early afternoon, out of the shadows of Buckingham Palace, an elegant
limousine in the traditional ‘Edinburgh Green’ colour rolled smoothly from the Royal Mews and turned into Lower Grosvenor Place. The standard at the front of the car danced drunkenly from side to side as it was buffeted by the wind. Turning left into Warwick Row, the car followed the road into Buckingham Gate on its short, but significant, journey.
Rain fell like a sheet of glass against the windscreen. “Bloody weather”, the driver muttered to himself as he turned the car’s wipers to full speed. Peering into the greyness outside, he circled slowly around the imposing Victoria Memorial, ‘the great wedding cake’ with its three ornate tiers and statues.
Today the area around it was deserted. No tourists, no cameras – nobody wanted pictures or holiday memories on a day like this. At the bottom of the memorial the black lions bared their teeth, roaring at the sky. Up above, Queen Victoria sat regally on her throne, surrounded by mermaids and sea creatures, gazing down on the never-ending flow of traffic below. To crown it all, on the pinnacle, were the golden wings of a variety of birds that flew in the shape of a V – as if they stood for defiance, claiming victory.
The chauffeur had made this brief trip countless times before. Everything was as usual. Only today, as he steered the car around the monument, he happened to glance at the white marbled face of the Queen. To his disbelief, he could almost swear she was smiling. Instead of the usual look of disdain and severity, that famously unamused mouth seemed to have been curled up with pleasure.
He shook his head and looked again, but still the hint of a smile was there. Now he knew he was going mad. A poor light, his empty stomach, both had combined to play tricks on his eyes. He needed a holiday.
Disconcerted, he drew the car to a halt outside the black gates of the Palace. With a sigh, he waited as they rolled slowly back for the car to enter. He’d been driving in London for far too long he decided – statues don’t smile, especially not one in the image of that inscrutable monarch.
The gates opened and he made his way across the gravel. Veering right, to the side of the palace, the car came to rest under a white covered archway that lay concealed from the street.
Turning the engine off, he acknowledged the police presence awaiting his arrival. He could stay in the car – they would alert his royal passenger. As he sat, with the rain drumming down on the roof of the car, he mulled over what he thought he had seen.
“I’m not telling the wife, that’s for sure. She said working for this family was taking over my life”.
He must have driven past that statue over a thousand times. And in all those times, Queen Victoria’s image had been as always – severe and disdainful. But today she was smiling, as if she were encouraging him on his journey. As if, for once, she was pleased.
Across the courtyard, several floors above the waiting car, in one of the grand rooms of the palace, stood the Duke. He was dressed, and as ready as he would ever be to embark on this extraordinary journey.
Alone in the room, he stood looking in the chevalier mirror and studied the image that stared back at him. He was slim and tall, over six feet – a dapper, suave, proper English gentleman – even if he was not English and now rather formidable in years.
He could still see the evidence of his younger self in the craggy, chiseled face in the mirror. There were those who might consider him handsome yet – in an austere, authoritarian way. And, if he said so himself, he could still make the women smile, occasionally even his wife which, after fifty years of marriage, was an achievement.
Many years ago he had had to accept that he would spend the rest of his married life walking at least one step behind her. He would have to take a back seat as she garnered all the praise and attention that went with being Her Majesty, whilst he was merely a royal consort.
He had accepted this as a necessity of falling in love and marrying this particular woman. But that did not mean that he was comfortable with the public role that had been foisted on him. His strong, forceful independent nature would never allow that to be.
What made it bearable was that, in private, he ruled the roost. Elizabeth, or Lilibet as she had been known as a young child, in the years before the thought of ever being Queen Elizabeth II would have been ridiculous, would always defer to him and everyone knew it. Whenever there was a family dispute of any kind, if a last word was to be had, it would be his. And today had been no exception. Words had been had but his decision was, as usual, final.
Today, for the first time in history, he was taking a trip on his own to a country that had been avoided by his wife and family for over fifty years. This day had been a long time in coming. In fact, it was one that many, including him, had thought would never happen. But finally, after many years and much political maneuvering amongst a myriad of factions, the day had arrived.
He had to admit that he had been putting it off. But a promise was a promise – and the wishes of a courageous, dying, old woman could not be ignored any longer. Particularly as that woman was his own beloved mother.
Resolute and determined, he drew himself up to his full height, took one last look in the mirror, inhaled a long breath, and descended down to the waiting car, attended by his police escort and his private secretary. Soon, this would be over and his life would return to the long line of royal duties that were normality for him and Lilibet, his wife, Queen Elizabeth II.
They were probably the most famous family in the world. His wife reigned over one third of the planet. Yet very few people knew about him. His was a rags to riches story, born royal but poor as a church mouse, he had inherited the good looks of his parents. His mother was beautiful, his father often described as a Greek God because he was a Greek Prince – even though he was, in fact, of Danish descent. But it was these looks and his links to royalty all over the world that had catapulted him out of penury.
As his life had been a relative secret from the British people and, therefore, the world, it stood to reason that few knew, or took any interest in, his mother. And he had never really known her either. Absent from his life since the age of nine; his life had resembled that of a stray pup. As nine year old child, he once described himself as ‘Philip, of no Fixed Abode’.
He had been born on the island of Cyprus in June 1921, the youngest child with four elder sisters to a large, extended family that had had great wealth. Whilst at school he never knew where he would spend the holidays. Then, at the last moment, he would receive a message or telegram and he would be travelling from Germany to England, from England to France, from France to Greece.
His was a peripatetic life – a boy that didn’t really belong anywhere. He had a large family who would temporarily embrace him before his wanderings began again.
His mother would send him letters or cards whenever she could, although she was largely absent from his life. But still, many decades later, he clung on to a loving memory from his early childhood that had endured over the years.
Today he was travelling to see her, to make a speech about her. What would he say? What could he say? There was so much he didn’t know and so little that he understood. He thought of his mother and wondered how best to describe her?
There was no doubt that, in her time, she had been an enigmatic figure of mystery and beauty. She bought him a gramophone player when he was small, which went everywhere with him. Sometimes she disappeared for several years. At others she wrote letters to him asking him to live with her, so that she could rescue him.
He knew that she had been a woman of deep religious and spiritual convictions. She had been a nurse, a humanitarian and a healer. All her instincts had been to rescue and save others, without a thought that the person who most needed it was her.
In the end, it was Philip who finally rescued her. In the last two years of her life, he and Lilibet had insisted that she come to live with them at Buckingham Palace. She was there for two years until her death, which was probably the longest time he had ever spent with her as an adult. And then she was gone again, this time forever.
Even after her death, she still had the power to shock and amaze. In her will, she asked that she should be buried, not in England, but Israel – a country that no one from the royal family had ever even visited. And today, many years after her death and burial at Windsor,Philip was making that trip.
It was an unconventionally historical day for British royalty. It was not something that would be on the evening news or even in the court circulars. It would fly underneath the radar. Philip understood that.
Here was a woman, his mother, who had wandered silently through history whilst she affected it, changed it and made it. Was it any wonder that, on this day when her dying wishes were finally being fulfilled, Alice’s great grandmother was smiling?
