The Grand Duchess of Nowhere (2 page)

Eventually he didn’t need to sing the words. In sight of Grandma Queen, he’d simply whistle the tune. It was agony not to laugh
and then Grandma would take me to one side and ask me if I was quite well.

‘Is it women’s troubles, dear?’ she’d murmur. ‘You’ll find things get easier after you’ve had your first child.’

I will say she always treated me with kindness, even when I failed to become engaged. She recognised it was Ernie who was dragging things out. Mother was in a less forgiving mood. Just as Pa and I got back to Coburg, she was about to leave for Romania, to be with Missy for her confinement. We practically crossed on the doorstep.

She said, ‘What a waste of my time and effort. Are you sure you’re not discouraging him? I hope you’re not still thinking of Cyril Vladimirovich, young lady, because he’s quite out of the question.’

I promised her I’d never given a thought for Cyril, which wasn’t strictly true. I also omitted to mention my conversation with Aunt Louise.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘Ernie Hesse has had his last chance. As soon as Missy is well enough to spare me I shall come home and reconsider the Bourbons.’

Pa never talked about husbands. He usually left that side of things to Mother, but the very moment she’d left he sent for me.

He said, ‘No flim-flam, Ducky. A straight yes or no. If Ernie Hesse asks for you, will you have him?’

I said I would.

Pa said, ‘Then I’m going to write to your grandmamma and seal the affair, once and for all. If I don’t, your mother will have you spliced to one of those Spanish buffoons and I’ll never see you again. Bad enough business about Missy. Bloody Romania.’

It was the first time my father had ever hinted that he’d mind not seeing me if marriage took me far away. I began to cry.

‘Now, now,’ he said. ‘No need for any of that nonsense. Hesse
seems a bit of a lightweight to me but he has many points in his favour. Raised by English nurses, so he should be pretty sound. He has a nice establishment in Darmstadt. Comfortable, plain. Not filled with silly drapery. And I’ve heard he has excellent shooting at Wolfsgarten, though from what one observed of him at Balmoral it may be rather wasted on him. But whatever, this stalling cannot continue. It makes your mother irritable and whatever discommodes her discommodes me. It seems someone has to put some resolve into the little pansy and the person to do it is Her Majesty.’

And that was how it happened. Pa wrote to Grandma Queen, she wrote to Ernie and Ernie came to Coburg for my seventeenth birthday. He brought me a Cairngorm pin, to remind me of the fun we’d had at Balmoral.

He said, ‘I’ll try not to make you unhappy, Ducky.’

Mother was jolly cross when she found everything had been settled in her absence.

I said, ‘But I thought you wanted me to marry Ernie?’

‘I did,’ she said, ‘but not if he had to be dragooned into it by that interfering old woman. Your father had no business meddling. I had everything in hand. And a Cairngorm brooch! What kind of an engagement token is that? Such an unattractive stone, especially for someone with your colouring. He should have given you amethysts, at the very least.’

It wasn’t an auspicious start. Mother was begrudging, Ernie was glum and Grandma Queen was at her most bullying. The wedding must be in April, she said. Not inconsiderately in the middle of winter, as Missy’s had been, and not in the summer when the heat of Coburg would certainly kill her. She would arrive on 16th April and we should therefore have the wedding three days later, after she’d had time to recover from her journey. That was how our wedding date was set.

Mother had given me diamonds and pearls, but then Emperor Uncle Sasha and Aunt Minnie sent an emerald pendant, so Mother, never one to be outdone, added an emerald diadem to my wedding jewels. Then Ernie said he’d very much like me to wear his dear,
departed mother’s veil and I of course agreed and walked into my first conflict with his sister, Alexandra. Sunny.

She said, ‘You might have asked me before you presumed.’

I said, ‘But I didn’t presume. It was Ernie’s wish, that’s all. I really couldn’t care less what veil I wear. It’s just a piece of lace, and I’m only borrowing it for an hour.’

She said, ‘It’s not just a piece of lace. It’s the finest Honiton and it was our dear mother’s. I do hope you’ll take proper care of it.’

What did she think? That I was going to tear it up for a jelly bag?

‘Taking it all the way to Coburg,’ she said. ‘It poses such a risk.’

The family call her Sunny. I’ve never understood why. Frosty would suit her better. Or Cloudy.

Ernie had three darling sisters, Vicky, Irene and Ella, all long married, all perfectly sweet and welcoming to me. And then there was Sunny, the baby of the family, not yet settled and as cross as two sticks that I was about to displace her as First Lady of Darmstadt. People reckon her marriage to Nicky has been a great love match but I still say she only did what she did when she did so as to steal my thunder.

Missy and Nando were the first to arrive for the wedding, good and early as I’d begged her to because I had a million things I needed to ask her. It was worth getting married to have Missy’s company for a while. I found her changed though. She fussed endlessly over baby Carol and expected me to adore him, which I found impossible because he smelled of cheese. It’s different when the child is your own.

I said, ‘You know what I need to ask you.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But Mother has asked me not to say too much.’

All she would say was that The Thing wasn’t so bad because it only took about a minute, but childbirth was hell. She was expecting again, already.

She said, ‘Getting the baby out takes days. I quite thought I’d die. Mother says it gets easier after the first one but I’d rather hoped not to find out. At least, not so soon.’

She’d taken up douching after Carol was born but Nando sometimes came back for seconds.

‘Often, actually,’ she said. ‘He’s quite insatiable.’

And that was probably how she’d been caught. Between douches.

‘But this will be positively the last time it happens,’ she said. ‘Mother’s going to have a word. She’s going to suggest to Nando that he get himself a little ballerina.’

The other guests began to arrive. Aunt Louise sent her regrets, to Mother’s great relief, but practically everyone else came. The Battenbergs, the Connaughts, the Henry Prussias, the Kaiser Wilhelms, Uncle Bertie Wales, Grandma Queen and, of course, Mother’s people: Grand Duke Uncle Paul, Grand Duke Uncle Serge and Ernie’s sister Ella, and Cyril’s parents, Grand Duke Uncle Vladimir and Aunt Miechen. Not Cyril though, and I was glad. Better not to see him. I’d cast my die. Actually very few of the Russian cousins came, with the notable exception of Nicky and he had his own selfish reasons that were nothing at all to do with gracing my wedding.

I was never pretty. Missy was dealt that card. ‘Striking’ was the word they used when a compliment was required for me. I’m too tall to be doted on and my skin was always too dark to compete with the porcelain dolls. Mother always predicted I’d ruin my complexion, haring about in the midday sun and turning the colour of a Hindoostani, and I fear she was right. But I wasn’t such a fool as to be jealous of prettier girls. I was a better rider than any of them. It would have been nice though, on my wedding day, to be the cynosure for just five minutes.

We had the civil ceremony first, as soon as Grandma Queen was
up and dressed. Ernst Ludwig Karl Albrecht Wilhelm and Victoria Melita. It was strange to hear our names read out like that. We’d always been, always will be, Ernie and Ducky.

Grandma Queen said, ‘Such a pity you couldn’t be married at Windsor, but at least you chose Coburg. Grandpa in Heaven would be so happy. I’m sure he’s smiling down on you.’

As soon as the civil ceremony was over and we were married in the eyes of the Duchy, everyone went down to the chapel to take their seats and see us married in the eyes of God. I was left alone with my bridesmaids. Even Pa abandoned me. It was his job to offer Grandma Queen his arm.

I had planned to have just two bridesmaids, my younger sisters, Baby Bee and Sandra, but Mother said an odd number looked better in procession and the next thing I knew Poor Cousin Dora had been foisted upon me.

It was Dora who burbled out the news, as we sat in Mother’s dressing room waiting to go down.

She said, ‘Isn’t it thrilling, about Ernie’s sister?’

I said, ‘What’s thrilling? Which sister?’

‘Why, Sunny, of course,’ she said. ‘Haven’t you’ve heard? Nicky has asked her to marry him and Sunny said yes.’

I didn’t pay too much attention to it at the time, what with trying to quell my nervous stomach and the remark having been made by Dora. It was widely known that Poor Cousin Dora wasn’t quite all there. And Tsesarevich Nicky had been pursuing Sunny for years but she’d always refused him because of the church thing. Someday Nicky would be Tsar of Russia and his wife would have to be Orthodox but Sunny couldn’t bear the thought of converting. So there was no reason on earth why Sunny should suddenly have said yes, and on my wedding day.

But it turned out that Poor Cousin Dora was right. At the
wedding breakfast, my new sister-in-law’s forthcoming engagement was the talk of the room and Cousin Nicky was flushed and beaming like a loon. The official announcement was to be made the next day. I suppose that was their feeble idea of good manners.

When it came time for Ernie and me to leave, I felt the crowd that gathered to wave us off was rather going through the motions. Their minds were already on the next wedding. And what a wedding it would be. A Romanov wedding! The Tsesarevich’s wedding. Only Aunt Miechen whispered a kindness to me as Ernie and I made our way to the carriage.

‘Don’t mind Sunny,’ she said. ‘If the Russians can make an Empress of her, it will be a miracle. But you, dear girl, look every inch the Grand Duchess.’

Even Ernie was caught up in the excitement about Sunny and Nicky. We took the train from Coburg to Darmstadt and then drove in a little park drag to Wolfsgarten for our wedding night and he never once told me how lovely I looked or what a splendid girl I was. All he could talk about was Sunny.

‘Bloody fine match,’ he kept saying. ‘I used to think Nicky was a bit of a nitwit but he’s handled Sunny very well. He’s been patient, been persistent. Slowly reeled her in. Think of it, Ducky. Someday you’ll be sister-in-law to the Empress of Russia.’

We played rummy and Mansion of Bliss until midnight. Then Ernie said, ‘Well, Ducky, dear, I don’t think we can put it off any longer.’

We went to bed. And yet again my sister proved to have been an unreliable tutor. Far from being over in a minute, The Thing seemed to take forever and when Ernie fell asleep I was by no means certain whether it had concluded satisfactorily or was to be resumed after an intermission, like Act II of an operetta.

It had never been discussed how things would be arranged between Sunny and me. She was accustomed to running Ernie’s household and she regarded me as a child. She’d told me so. But heavens,
I
wasn’t the one who still consulted my nanny on everything, and anyway, Ernie had made me his wife and his Duchess and I was determined Sunny shouldn’t trespass on my territory. As Missy said, ‘Let her go off and marry little Nicky, if she wants to play House.’

I rather hoped Sunny would move out to one of the shooting lodges for the duration of her engagement and leave us in peace, but then something even better was decided. She was to go to England, to stay with her sister, Vicky Battenberg. Vicky would instruct her in the rudiments of Married Life, and Grandma Queen would advise her on how to conduct herself as a future Empress. She was gone for three blissful months and by August, when she returned, I had quite established myself with the people of Hesse. They cheered and took off their hats when they saw my carriage. I even started a fashion for wearing mauve.

But back Sunny did come, and as stony-faced as ever. Worse still, everyone was predicting a long engagement because she was still digging in her heels about converting to the Orthodox Church.

Ernie said, ‘She knows she’ll have to do it, so she might just
as well get on with it. The Russians won’t tolerate a Lutheran Empress. Ella did it when she married Serge and I don’t remember her making such a fuss.’

But Sunny continued weeping and trembling and wringing her hands. It was all too boring. Anyone would really have thought the Romanovs were asking her to sacrifice a goat.

For weeks, the three of us played a variation of Musical Chairs. Musical Residences. When Ernie and I were in Darmstadt, Sunny stayed in the country and whenever we went out to Schloss Wolfsgarten she would come to town. On one occasion our carriages actually crossed on the road. It was the best we could manage. Ernie, of course, didn’t care to hear a word of criticism of Sunny from me. He reserved that privilege for himself.

‘She’s a thoroughly sweet girl,’ he’d say. ‘A bit nervy, that’s all. You’re just not seeing her at her best.’

To add to my burden, I had, somewhat amazingly, fallen pregnant. I was as sick as a dog and whilst I didn’t mind Ernie giving up all pretence of sharing my bed, I’d have appreciated a little husbandly tenderness.

‘Splendid work, Ducky,’ was all he said. ‘How terribly clever of us to hit the bull’s-eye, first try practically.’

I thought it was because of me, you see? The way Ernie had to work so hard to get to the point, the way he came to our bed looking like a man who’s about to have a tooth pulled. Missy said Nando came back for seconds. Ernie just seemed relieved when it was over.

I did ask him, once, if there was something I did wrong.

‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘Not at all. Perfect wife. Couldn’t ask for better.’ For a while I thought perhaps Missy was to blame for my expectations. I should have liked to ask someone else, but who? There was no one. One could hardly ask one’s maid.

Ernie and I still did other things together: received well-wishers, cut ribbons, decided where to place the many vases we’d been given. We didn’t quarrel and we generally dined together. But if we didn’t have company, Ernie would go out directly after dessert and always to somewhere wives weren’t invited. The sketching club, the glee club, the Three Thistles club. I threatened to set up my own club, strictly for girls, and Ernie said, ‘I hardly think that would be a success, Ducky. Girls don’t go in for chumming.’

The evenings dragged. I used to wander along the passages, opening doors that didn’t particularly interest me, listening to ticking clocks that were eating up the minutes of my life. I longed for a visit from Missy but there was no hope of that. She was unimaginably far away and had just given birth to another child. Mother said I should apply myself to embroidering my own baby’s layette and writing thank-you letters for our wedding presents but I just couldn’t summon the will. I was seventeen and it seemed my life was over.

But then in October, when my spirits were low at the prospect of the winter that stretched before me, a crisis broke the monotony. Emperor Uncle Sasha became so ill that Tsesarevich Nicky wrote to Sunny and begged her to come to Russia at once, to be his comfort and support.

Ernie said, ‘The chap’s in a perfect funk. He writes, “If the Tsar should die”. Well of course he’s going to die. His kidneys are in ruins. And it’s not as though someone just sprung this on Nicky. It was only ever a matter of time until he succeeded. Sometimes I wonder if he’s made of the right stuff to be Emperor.’

Sunny and her beloved Nanny Orchard left immediately for Simferopol, in the Crimea. They were to be met at the station there and taken on by carriage to Livadia, where the Imperial family was gathered. Every morning Ernie looked for news and Sunny’s first letter was quite cheerful. Far from being on his death bed, Emperor
Uncle Sasha had been up and dressed when she arrived. He’d come out to the front step to greet her and kiss her hand.

Ernie said, ‘So typical of Nicky, panicking like a mouse in a cat’s paw.’

I said, ‘You’ve changed your tune. You told me Uncle Sasha was certainly dying.’

‘We’re all dying, Ducky,’ he said. ‘But Sasha’s a strong man. He could come through this, live a little longer. However, as Sunny has travelled all that way they may as well have the wedding while she’s there, don’t you think? No sense trundling to and fro, and it seems Nicky desperately needs her at his side. She’ll put some spine into him.’

Emperor Uncle Sasha may have been up and dressed when Sunny arrived, but it was his last great effort. Ten days later he was dead and Tsar Nicholas II was in pieces. He’d never wanted to be Emperor, he didn’t know how to be Emperor. In sum, he was a blubbing wreck. This I had from Mother whose report came from her brother, Uncle Vladimir. He and the other uncles were all at Livadia, trying to make a man of Tsar Nicky.

Sunny’s version of things, in her letter to Ernie, was rather different. Emperor Uncle Sasha’s doctors hadn’t kept Nicky properly informed, the government ministers ignored him in a most disrespectful way, and the uncles were now intimidating him. Furthermore, Dowager Empress Aunt Minnie was being horrid to her, aloof, and not welcoming at all.

As Ernie pointed out in his reply, the Dowager Empress perhaps had more important things on her mind, such as burying her beloved husband. He advised Sunny to be mindful of Aunt Minnie’s grief, to put an end to her wavering and be received into the Orthodox Church. Above all, to stay in Russia and be married to Nicky as soon as possible.

I’ll come to you there
, he wrote,
never fear. You may always depend on me, but you must now be brave, grow up and help Nicky to face his destiny. I very much doubt he can be a resolute Tsar without your help
.

It was rather comical to see Ernie lecturing others on the need to grow up, but it was a good letter. I did have something of a hand in its composition. And by the time Sunny received it she had anticipated Ernie’s advice and converted. Princess Alexandra of Hesse became Grand Duchess Alexandra Fyodorovna and the wedding was fixed to take place one week after Uncle Sasha’s funeral.

Ernie’s trunk was packed in haste. We agreed it was best if I didn’t make the long journey to Petersburg, given my condition, and so I spent my eighteenth birthday alone, rattling around in Schloss Darmstadt, eating too much cake and trying different, slenderising styles of pinning up my hair. My consolation was that Russia was very distant and its Empresses travel very little. The thorn of Sunny had been removed from my side, permanently. Or so I thought.