The Royal Librarian by Daisy Wood

Author:Daisy Wood [Wood, Daisy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-01-12T17:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

Windsor Castle, June 1938

Sophie spent her first few weeks at Windsor familiarising herself with the letters, state reports, household accounts and private diaries stored in the Royal Archives, going back hundreds of years. The Librarian also showed her the castle’s Royal Bindery, where several men were kept busy repairing and conserving books under the direction of an expert bookbinder from Venice. He asked her to keep track of their progress and identify other volumes needing attention, since this was another area in which the department had fallen behind. Sophie was careful never to imply that his previous assistant had been remiss in any way, because she had (inevitably) been a great friend of Miss Preston, who still visited her now that she was married and living in the town. Sophie and Miss Preston kept each other at arm’s length but managed an adequate working relationship, interacting only when strictly necessary and occasionally going so far as to comment on the weather. When she was in the office, as opposed to up in the Muniments Room, Sophie was aware of Miss Preston’s simmering resentment on the other side of the room, and it made her nervous. Many of the other staff were suspicious of her accent, she could tell, and opinion could easily be whipped up against her.

At mealtimes, Sophie sat with Mags and JB or on her own with a book, while Miss Preston had taken to eating with the Department of Supply in the basement of the Clarence Tower. Each of the towers had its own function and staff – its own personality, almost – down to the house- and kitchenmaids. The princesses, Mags had told Sophie, slept with their nurses in the Lancaster Tower when they came to visit, some distance from their parents’ apartments: a forbidding place with stone staircases and winding passages that must have been freezing in winter.

When Sophie could find her way around the archive and was known to the housekeeper, the Superintendent of the Castle and other senior members of staff, the Librarian took her to Frogmore House, beyond the golf course across the Home Park.

‘Miss Klein is to be given access to all parts of the house and its contents,’ he told the housekeeper who let them in. ‘She’s acting on my authority.’

‘But these here boxes that have arrived from the Duke are his private things for safekeeping,’ the woman replied. ‘Not intended for the archive, I believe.’

‘Nevertheless, Mrs Bruton, they must all be assessed if they’re to be stored here,’ he said. ‘We’ve come across state papers among his possessions before.’

‘If you say so.’ The woman looked Sophie up and down, pursing her lips. She was tall and thin, with sloping shoulders and an expression that would have curdled milk.

Several times in the course of that first morning, Sophie had caught Mrs Bruton watching her from the doorway, her arms folded. ‘Thank you,’ she’d said eventually, getting up to close the door. ‘If I need any help, I shall come and find you.

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