nothing for it. I’d have to find an agency and hire a suitable girl, hoping that I could find some way to pay her at the end of the trip.
I was still dressed in my visiting-the-palace clothes so I set off again, scouring Mayfair for the right sort of domestic agency. I didn’t dare return to the one that had supplied me with Mildred once before. The proprietress was so impossibly regal that she made the queen look positively middle class. I wandered along Piccadilly and up to Berkeley Square. Luckily the rain had slowed to a misty drizzle. I finally found what looked like a suitable agency on Bond Street. The woman behind the desk was another dragon—perhaps it was a requirement of the profession.
“Let me get this straight, my lady. You wish to employ a lady’s maid to accompany you to Romania?”
“That’s right.”
“And when would this be?”
“Next week.”
“Next week?” Her eyebrows shot upward. “I think it would be highly unlikely that I could find you the right sort of young woman to fill this position within one week. I can think of one or two who might be persuaded, but you’d have to pay her a premium.”
“What sort of premium?”
Then she named an amount that I should have thought sufficient to run Castle Rannoch for a year. She must have seen me swallow hard, because she added, “We only handle the highest caliber of young women, you know.”
I left in deep despondency. My brother could never find that sort of money, even if Fig would ever let him hand it over to me. It would have to be Belinda or nobody. As I walked through the growing twilight I pictured Belinda and all the sort of things that could go wrong with that arrangement. I was doomed whatever I did. Then I heard a newsboy calling out the headlines of the day in broad Cockney. That immediately made me think of the one person I had not yet turned to. My grandfather always had an answer for even the toughest problems. And even if he couldn’t conjure a maid out of thin air, it was like a tonic just to see him. I almost ran to the Bond Street tube station and was soon speeding across London into darkest Essex.
I suppose I should explain that whereas my father was Queen Victoria’s grandson, my mother had started life as the daughter of a Cockney policeman. She had become a famous actress and left her past behind when she married my father—only to bolt from him again when I was two.
The tube train was packed by the time it left central London and I emerged rather the worse for wear. It was raining hard again as I left the train. I was always glad to see my grandfather’s little house, with its neat, pocket handkerchief- sized lawn and its cheerful garden gnomes, but never more so than that evening. A light shone out of the frosted glass panes on the front door as I trudged up the path. I knocked and waited. Eventually the door opened a crack, and a pair of bright boot-button eyes regarded me.
“Whatcher want?” a gravelly voice demanded.
“Granddad, it’s me, Georgie.”
The door was flung open wide and there was my grandfather’s cheerful Cockney face beaming at me. “Well, I’m blowed. Talk about a sight for sore eyes. Come on in, ducks. Come in.”
I stepped into his narrow front hall and he hugged me in spite of my wet overcoat.
“Blimey, you look like a drowned rat,” he said, holding me at arm’s length and grinning at me, his head to one side like a cheerful sparrow. “What on earth are you doing here, out on such a miserable night? ’Ere. You’re not in some kind of trouble again, are you?”
“Not really in trouble,” I said, “but I do need your help.”
“Let me take your coat, love. Come into the kitchen and take a load off your plates of meat.”
“My what?”
“Yer feet, love. Ain’t I taught you no Cockney rhyming slang yet?”
He hung up my coat then ushered me down the hall to his tiny square of kitchen, which was already occupied by one person. “Look what the cat brought
I was still dressed in my visiting-the-palace clothes so I set off again, scouring Mayfair for the right sort of domestic agency. I didn’t dare return to the one that had supplied me with Mildred once before. The proprietress was so impossibly regal that she made the queen look positively middle class. I wandered along Piccadilly and up to Berkeley Square. Luckily the rain had slowed to a misty drizzle. I finally found what looked like a suitable agency on Bond Street. The woman behind the desk was another dragon—perhaps it was a requirement of the profession.
“Let me get this straight, my lady. You wish to employ a lady’s maid to accompany you to Romania?”
“That’s right.”
“And when would this be?”
“Next week.”
“Next week?” Her eyebrows shot upward. “I think it would be highly unlikely that I could find you the right sort of young woman to fill this position within one week. I can think of one or two who might be persuaded, but you’d have to pay her a premium.”
“What sort of premium?”
Then she named an amount that I should have thought sufficient to run Castle Rannoch for a year. She must have seen me swallow hard, because she added, “We only handle the highest caliber of young women, you know.”
I left in deep despondency. My brother could never find that sort of money, even if Fig would ever let him hand it over to me. It would have to be Belinda or nobody. As I walked through the growing twilight I pictured Belinda and all the sort of things that could go wrong with that arrangement. I was doomed whatever I did. Then I heard a newsboy calling out the headlines of the day in broad Cockney. That immediately made me think of the one person I had not yet turned to. My grandfather always had an answer for even the toughest problems. And even if he couldn’t conjure a maid out of thin air, it was like a tonic just to see him. I almost ran to the Bond Street tube station and was soon speeding across London into darkest Essex.
I suppose I should explain that whereas my father was Queen Victoria’s grandson, my mother had started life as the daughter of a Cockney policeman. She had become a famous actress and left her past behind when she married my father—only to bolt from him again when I was two.
The tube train was packed by the time it left central London and I emerged rather the worse for wear. It was raining hard again as I left the train. I was always glad to see my grandfather’s little house, with its neat, pocket handkerchief- sized lawn and its cheerful garden gnomes, but never more so than that evening. A light shone out of the frosted glass panes on the front door as I trudged up the path. I knocked and waited. Eventually the door opened a crack, and a pair of bright boot-button eyes regarded me.
“Whatcher want?” a gravelly voice demanded.
“Granddad, it’s me, Georgie.”
The door was flung open wide and there was my grandfather’s cheerful Cockney face beaming at me. “Well, I’m blowed. Talk about a sight for sore eyes. Come on in, ducks. Come in.”
I stepped into his narrow front hall and he hugged me in spite of my wet overcoat.
“Blimey, you look like a drowned rat,” he said, holding me at arm’s length and grinning at me, his head to one side like a cheerful sparrow. “What on earth are you doing here, out on such a miserable night? ’Ere. You’re not in some kind of trouble again, are you?”
“Not really in trouble,” I said, “but I do need your help.”
“Let me take your coat, love. Come into the kitchen and take a load off your plates of meat.”
“My what?”
“Yer feet, love. Ain’t I taught you no Cockney rhyming slang yet?”
He hung up my coat then ushered me down the hall to his tiny square of kitchen, which was already occupied by one person. “Look what the cat brought
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