Christmas with the Queen

Chapter 54 Jack

Chapter 54

Jack

Royal Yacht Britannia , Chatham Islands, December 1956

W e disembarked at the Chatham Islands for a brief official visit, before pushing on to Antarctica. The seas had turned rough and many of the more valuable goods—grand pianos, the state banquet silver and china, and the Royal Marine band’s instruments—were tied down and stowed. We struggled with meal preparations in the galley kitchen, giving me flashbacks to my time in the Navy.

Despite the pitching and rolling, we enjoyed a relaxed Christmas Eve. Everyone was in good spirits as we hung red and green streamers from the piping and rafters, and along the walls where we could. Someone had thought to play a joke on the duke and drew a ridiculous face on a large gold balloon along with the words, “A Happy Christmas Dukie.” We all got a good laugh out of it.

Max and I, and the rest of the kitchen staff, busied ourselves preparing for the Christmas meal the next day. When we’d finished, some went in search of entertainment, but Max and I plopped down in a chair in the lounge and kicked up our feet.

“I have something I want to say to you,” Max said.

“What is it, boss?”

“First of all, I’m happy for you. For you and Mason. Your restaurant is going to be a roaring success, I have no doubt.”

I couldn’t help but feel a pang of sadness. I had grown close to Max the last couple of years, in particular while we were away, and this felt like a goodbye.

“I hope you’ll stop by on your days off,” I said. “Try the house special.”

He laughed. “I will! I’ll need to satisfy my gumbo cravings. But, speaking seriously, and what I really wanted to say, is that you are an exceptional chef and an exceptional man.”

“What’s gotten into you tonight?” I asked with a grin.

“I suppose being at the bottom of the world, close to the end of the year, makes a man reflect on things. Do you think you will be ready to open Andrea’s once we are back?”

“Mason has been hiring staff while I’ve been away, and I’ll need about a month to finalize things, order the foodstuffs, run through routines and rules with the staff. But nearly everything else was set before I left.”

“It won’t be the same at the palace without you two. You will be missed.”

“I’ll miss you, too, my friend.” We shook hands and then stood, wrapping each other in a bear hug and pounding each other on the back.

I headed to my cabin, my thoughts drifting to my friends back home, how they would be celebrating Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in the northern hemisphere. Ryan and Maggie with the children, Mason and Rosie spending their first Christmas together as husband and wife, and, above all else, Olive and Lucy.

I wondered if Olive was at Sandringham again. I thought about her kindness and adorable clumsiness. My heart lurched as I pictured her, the tip of her pen poised against her lip as she pondered her words. And I pictured Lucy. Since I’d learned the truth, I’d conjured the image of her sweet little face in my mind a thousand times. How had I missed the similarity? Her light hair and green eyes, the same as mine. How had I missed it all?

As I slipped into sleep, my mind filled with a vision of Olive, smiling in that beautiful, infectious way of hers, and the look in her eyes as they met mine.

An hour later, voices drifted through the cabin and several crew members poured into our shared room in the mess deck.

“Get up!” one of the men shouted. “It’s time for the speech!”

I sat up in bed, nearly knocking my head on the bunk suspended above mine. I pulled on a sweater and stumbled into a pair of boots and followed the rest of the crew. It was the early hours of the morning, but we wanted to honor the queen and celebrate with our countrymen.

I joined the crew in the lounge as the duke made a joke, and then shuttered himself away in his private salon. He was to deliver part of the Christmas Day broadcast and didn’t seem the least bit nervous.

The broadcast began, as always, with the national anthem, but in a change to usual proceedings, the voice we heard next was Philip’s rather than the queen’s. He sounded happy and confident, relaxed and assured. We hung on his every word, listening intently, proud of him and of the bond that had formed between us all at sea—the kind of camaraderie that came from sharing an adventure together. It was unspoken, but we all understood the deeper message within the duke’s words—that the voyage had changed him, put his loyalties into perspective, and had also changed his views on what was important and what wasn’t.

The voyage had changed me, too.

There was a moment’s delay when the duke’s broadcast ended, and the next voice we heard was the queen’s, just as Philip joined us.

I couldn’t help but watch his face. As soon as Her Majesty’s voice filled the room, instant fondness registered in his usually guarded eyes, and for a moment, they glistened. He clearly missed his wife and family, even if he was enjoying his foray across the world’s seas.

I pictured Olive there, too, at the queen’s side, and wondered what she was thinking. I was tired of being hurt, tired of being angry. I missed her terribly. I wanted to take her in my arms, but the truth was, after how I’d behaved—leaving her in a whirlwind of hurt and anger, ignoring her telephone calls, and leaving the country for five months—I still wasn’t sure how we could move past it all when I returned.

On the last day of the year, a cry rippled through the corridors as we crossed the Antarctic Circle. The duke was setting a record for the royal family with our voyage to the land of perpetual winter, and I was proud to be a part of that moment. I couldn’t wrap my mind around what it meant to be sailing to the most remote part of the world. None of us could, and we spent a lot of time theorizing, discussing the stars, the change in sea, sky, and temperature, the sensation of leaving everything and everyone behind.

Being so far away from home affected us all. I became particularly introspective, profoundly moved by the remote landscape. I marveled at the vastness of the world’s beauty, at how small I was within its sphere. I understood on a new fundamental level that my pains and joys were mere moments in an ever-moving, ever-evolving world far beyond me, one person, one flicker in space and time. It was comforting to know I was part of something greater, and I found myself releasing the last of my resentments about the way my carefully laid plans had slowly and systematically been turned on their head, one after the other.

“Let’s have a celebration, shall we?” Max announced to the staff. “It’s New Year’s Eve, after all.”

In the lounge, several men were sharing cigars, a few wore poorly constructed paper hats, and one of the deckhands was pouring measures of spirits and passing them around. When we all had one, we raised our glasses.

“To breaking records, to traveling to the bottom of the world, to—”

“Going home to our women!” someone shouted.

Laughter broke out and we all clinked our glasses against one another as the duke joined us. He was puffing on a cigar. On this voyage, he’d seemed more alive than I’d ever seen him, even on the previous royal tour. He was brimming with awe and wonder and passion for the natural world. I’d mentioned to Max that I wouldn’t be surprised to see the duke spearhead some environmental causes in the future.

“Your Highness, good evening,” I said when he sat down beside me. “There’s a whiff of cold air around you, sir. Been up on deck?”

“Yes. Bloody freezing. I went in search of a moment alone, but my thoughts seemed to follow me.”

“They tend to do that.”

“So do headlines, apparently,” he added. “Bloody vultures. Always looking to spark trouble on the home front.”

“I’m having a bit of trouble on the home front myself, sir.”

“A woman?”

I nodded. “It’s messy and complicated. I left under a cloud, and now I don’t know what to say to her when we return, how to make things right.”

His eyes met mine. “My advice? Don’t waste another minute. Life is complicated but love is not, and neither is forgiveness. That is more important than almost anything.”

His words struck me to my core. He was right. Of course he was right. After all of the rumors that had circulated about his relationship with Her Majesty, he must know a thing or two about forgiveness.

“You’re a good man, sir. And a wise one.”

He chuckled softly. “I’m not sure Lilibet would agree.”

I smiled as a deckhand began singing “Auld Lang Syne,” to ring in the new year.

Max came over and linked his arm through mine. “Come on, boy. Sing along. Loud and clear!”

I smiled and offered my other arm to the duke, and we all lifted our hands up and down and shouted our boisterous song to the stars, saying farewell to another year.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot

And never brought to mind?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot

And the days of auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear

For auld lang syne

We’ll drink a cup of kindness yet

For the sake of auld lang syne

As we sang and toasted to old friends, beneath the garlands and tinsel, on the other side of the world from dear old London and everyone I loved, I knew I didn’t want to spend another Christmas without Olive, or without my daughter.

When everything else was stripped away, when I let go of all the questions of why things had happened, and why Olive hadn’t told me about Lucy until now, what remained was simple: I loved them both.

Philip was right. Life was the complicated part, but there was nothing complicated about love.