Christmas with the Queen

Chapter 6 Olive

Chapter 6

Olive

Sandringham Estate, December 1952

T he exterior of the house was as impressive as I’d imagined, but not as old and palatial as I’d expected. There was a sense of welcome about it, a homeliness and warmth that made me feel a little less anxious about making a good impression. While my driver, Evans, spoke to someone making a delivery, I took the opportunity to check my reflection in the wing mirror of the car. The cold had brought a healthy glow to my cheeks and nose. My hair still looked nice. The winter light was flattering. I straightened the locket that hung from my necklace; something old for good luck. I rehearsed a confident smile, determined to make this unexpected opportunity count for something.

I watched as a rather sour-faced man dictated orders to a pair of young porters struggling with a Fortnum & Mason hamper that had just been delivered.

He eyed me warily and began to walk toward me. “Can I help you, miss?” he asked. He carried the same look Charlie Bullen gave to people he considered his subordinates.

“Oh, I’m with Evans. Well, not with him! He drove me from the train station. We’re to find a Mrs. Leonard, I believe?”

“And you are?”

“Olive Carter, sir. I’m with the BBC. I’m here to report on the Christmas presents—I mean, preparations .” I laughed at my mistake. “Sorry. I’m a little nervous!”

Mr. Sour-Face looked over my shoulder. “Is Bullen joining you?”

I leaned forward and lowered my voice. “I’m afraid Mr. Bullen is unwell. I’m here in his place.”

Sour-Face stared at me. “I see. I presume you’re his... secretary, perhaps?”

A little piece of my festive bubble burst. It was always the same—the assumption that a woman’s only possible role could be to support a more important man. I wondered if the queen had to put up with this tiresome attitude.

“Actually, I’m a reporter. The BBC is modernizing, Mr....”

“Andrews.”

I held out my hand. “Well, Mr. Andrews, it was very nice to meet you.” He shook my hand, although I could tell that it almost killed him to do so. “Are those two all right, by the way?” I asked, peering over his shoulder. “Did Fortnum and Mason send a hamper of bricks?”

The hamper was now firmly wedged in a narrow side door. The two porters had decided to assess the situation over a cigarette.

Just then, Evans made his way back over to me. “Sorry about that. Old pal from the war. Haven’t seen him in an age!” He looked at Sour-Face and offered a curt greeting. “Andrews.”

“Evans.”

The frostiness between them was painfully evident and terribly awkward.

“Ah, and right on cue, here’s Mrs. Leonard.” Evans called to a woman passing by the open door on the inside. “BBC for you, Eleanor! Shall I send her in?”

The woman peered around the door. Finally, a friendly face. “If she can get in. Yes!” As she spoke, two dogs barreled past her. “Susan! Sugar! Honestly, these two are like giddy children! If I don’t trip over one of them and break my neck, it will be a Christmas miracle!”

“Hectic today, isn’t it?” Evans called back.

“When is it not?”

The two of them exchanged a shy smile that suggested they wanted to chat further.

Sour-Face huffed out a breath, muttered something, and strode away. I wondered if Mrs. Leonard was the source of their disagreement, and, if so, I immediately took Evans’s side.

“Right then,” Evans said, turning his attention back to me. “I’ll leave you in the very capable hands of Mrs. Leonard. And try to relax, miss. They don’t bite!”

“The corgis?”

“The royal family!”

I stepped, inelegantly, over the stuck hamper, exchanged a flirtatious smile with the better-looking of the two porters, and finally, I was inside. I was actually inside Sandringham House!

I’d expected stuffy silence and footmen carrying gleaming trays of champagne, but what I found was bustle and noise as a heavy-set woman pushed a noisy vacuum cleaner over a large rug, and other staff putting up curtains and tending to arrangements of flowers. It was a house in disarray, just like every house in the run-up to Christmas. I stood to one side to make room for a large portrait being carried by two men in gray aprons and flat caps. Perhaps not so much like every house after all.

Mrs. Leonard offered a welcoming hand. “Eleanor Leonard. Frazzled housekeeper! Very pleased to meet you, Miss Carter. We were expecting you.”

“You were?”

She smiled. “Of course, dear. The palace press secretary informed us yesterday evening that you would be covering the BBC piece this year instead of Mr. Bullen. Poor Charlie. I do hope he recovers. He’ll be terribly missed. It seems as if everything will be different this year, but nothing stands still, does it, even if we might dearly wish it to.” She seemed to get lost in her thoughts for a moment. “Anyway, it’s lovely to have you, and we’ll make the best of it. Please, follow me.”

We walked through several rooms, all tastefully furnished with comfortable-looking chairs and elegant sofas. My eyes flitted from left to right, mesmerized by enormous gilt-framed portraits of deceased royals and an entire cabinet of gleaming jade ornaments and Faberg é eggs. Next, we passed through a room that resembled something belonging to French aristocracy, decorated in delicate pastel colors of greens and pinks and furnished with ornate chairs and settees, then continued through a corridor filled with cabinets of guns. It was an intriguing mixture of country house and museum.

I imagined Lucy beside me, armed with a barrage of questions. She was such an inquisitive child, keen to understand the world and all its mysteries. I always answered her as honestly and fully as I could, partly because I’d been an inquisitive child myself and understood her thirst for knowledge, but mostly because I knew the inevitable day would come when I would have to tell her the truth about her father. And when it did, I’d promised myself I would answer all the questions she might have.

“It’s not a bit like I’d expected,” I remarked, turning my focus back to my present surroundings.

Mrs. Leonard laughed. “Not quite the grand palace or turreted castle, is it! Catches everyone by surprise.”

We had just reached a room Mrs. Leonard called the Long Library, when a rather harassed-looking young woman hurried over to us.

“’Scuse me, Mrs. Leonard. Could you spare a minute? Nancy’s taken a tumble off the ladder.”

“Heavens! I told her to wait until I got back!” Mrs. Leonard turned to me. “Take a seat in the library, Miss Carter. I’m so sorry. I won’t be long.”

She was an age. I twiddled my thumbs until I was convinced she’d forgotten about me, then decided to go and look for her.

I wandered back through several rooms, until I came across the woman with the vacuum cleaner. “Excuse me. Hello! I’m from the BBC! Do you have a moment?”

I had to shout above the noise of the vacuum cleaner until she switched it off. “What’s that you say?”

“I’m from the BBC. I’m doing a report on preparations for Christmas at Sandringham—for a special program on the wireless. What is it you do here?” My pencil was poised over my notepad.

She stared at me as if I were the Ghost of Christmas Past. “What do I do here?”

I nodded encouragingly. Perhaps she was hard of hearing. “Your job? What is it like to work here? Have you ever met the queen?”

She shook her head and switched the vacuum cleaner back on as I jumped to one side to stop her vacuuming my shoes.

I tried again with the florist. “Hello! I’m with the BBC. I’m doing a piece...”

She turned to me and smiled. “Sorry, love. I’m ever so busy—have to get these finished and then a dozen more to do. You couldn’t pass me that spray of eucalyptus, could you?”

I wasn’t sure which was the eucalyptus—flowery things all looked and smelled the same to me—so I passed her a few green things, wished her a happy Christmas as an afterthought, and wandered back to the safety of the library, my notepad blank.

This wasn’t going to be as easy as I’d thought it would be. Not getting in the way was virtually impossible, and everyone was too busy to explain what they were doing. I was also starving. Deflated and tired from the journey, I sank into a chair in a little alcove beside the fireplace and waited for something interesting to happen.

Mrs. Leonard eventually returned, full of apologies and a rather grim story about Nancy’s broken ankle. She tipped her head in the direction of another door. “Have you eaten? Or been offered so much as a cup of tea?”

I shook my head. “Neither. But I don’t want to intrude. Everyone’s clearly very busy.”

“I’m so sorry. You must think us terribly rude. It’s been one of those days, I’m afraid. Come with me. We might as well start in the kitchens. Truth be told, that’s where the heart of this home sits anyway. Same as any other, I suppose. If you want to know about the royal family—about any family—you need to start there.”

I smiled. It was true. All the Carter family dramas seemed to play out in the kitchen. It was the place where we came together, where we sat down to eat, where we talked about our day, where new boyfriends sat through their first agonizing experience of a Carter family gathering. It was where we laughed and cried, where birthdays were celebrated, where friends and neighbors gathered during happy moments and sad ones. Above all, our kitchen was the place where I had shared a pot of tea with my father and listened to his warm gentle wisdom as I nursed a hangover or a broken heart.

While I didn’t expect to find the queen in Sandringham’s kitchens having a heart-to-heart with someone over a pot of tea, I still hoped to find some insight there into her tastes and traditions, and into the hearts and minds of the men and women who worked in the royal kitchens. What did it take to cook for the queen?

I would take the required notes for Charlie Bullen’s predictable report, but there was nothing to stop me preparing a separate piece of my own. A short piece on the queen’s dining choices would keep Tom Harding happy, but an inside scoop on the royal chefs would surely be more interesting for our listeners. As I followed Mrs. Leonard down a long corridor, I scribbled a note on my pad: A MENU FOR A MONARCH—Olive Carter discovers the secrets of the chefs behind the royal Christmas feast.