Noël turned blandly firm. “My dear, if they chose you, they know you can do it. So do it. You’re going to be absolutely wonderful, so please don’t say another word.”
I needed some of his confidence for my own venture next day. I told him about the invitation. “What do I do when I meet the princesses?”
“You say ‘ma’am’ and you curtsy,” said Noël with all the authority of a prince of royal blood.
“‘Ma’am’? I’m old enough to be their grandmother, and I’ve never curtsied in my life.”
“It’s time to learn then,” he said. “Here, I’ll show you. Watch me, and then you try.” He got up and, with Jean and her mother watching goggle-eyed, proceeded to stick back his left foot, flex his knees, and bow his head as gracefully as a dowager duchess. The next day when I was introduced, I remembered the “ma’am” but decided that maybe I hadn’t had as much practice as Noël, so I’d better not risk the curtsy.
Strict and stringent food rationing was in force in Britain, yet everybody on the set had contributed ration coupons for butter, meat, eggs, and every conceivable delicacy so that the young visitors—Elizabeth was nineteen, Margaret fifteen—could be served high tea.
I have never seen two girls dig into food the way they did. You could swear they hadn’t had a decent meal in years. There was cold lobster with mayonnaise, white-meat sandwiches of chicken, little French pastries, strawberries big as golf balls. The princesses tucked into the lot.
Elizabeth was already very regal and dignified, but Margaret was not that way at all. Through the windows, we could see a mob of people waiting outside the studio’s big iron entrance gates. “Just look at those people out there,” I said. “Don’t you get tired of crowds?”
“Oh, you’ve no idea,” Margaret said. “This goes on every day. You know, because people have to be able to see us, we can wear only white, pink, or baby blue. And I’m so sick of baby blue and pink. I can never put on anything like black, for instance.” She was obviously itching to try dressing like a femme fatale.
“It’s exactly like being a movie star,” I said.