The duchess, p.26
The Duchess, page 26
When Wallis next glanced at the girls, their expressions seemed carved in stone.
Chapter Thirty-Four
She was among the first out of the chapel afterwards and back in the park. It was time to turn her thoughts towards the rest of the day; the rest of her life. She had left a note for Ernest, asking him to pack. But would there be lunch, or would they just go? She did not know.
The sun was more powerful now than it had been earlier. She removed her coat and felt the breeze on her sleeveless arms. She would miss the freedom and space of Windsor. Of course, she could come back here; the Great Park was open to all. But she doubted that she ever would, it would hardly be the same.
While it was hot on the path, the air felt cool between the trees. She glanced into the woodland and remembered the legend of the dark and turbulent spirit, Herne. Never in all her visits had she seen anything of the spectral hunter with his chains and his horns and his streaming blue light. It was all baloney, as Ernest had said.
She was almost at the statue of the man on horseback when she heard a roar behind her. It was a car engine, approaching so rapidly she barely had time to leap out of the way. It had an open top and she scowled at the driver, rude and careless idiot that he was.
He grinned back at her from under his wide tweed checked cap, his face hidden by goggles and his body concealed in a greatcoat. Brown leather gauntlets covered his hands. Then he pulled off the cap to reveal bright hair and pushed up the goggles so a familiar blue beam blazed out. Her heart turned over. ‘David!’
‘Like it? It’s my new American station wagon!’ Proudly, he stroked the padded leather back of the passenger seat.
The magnificent cream roadster was long and roofless, with ribbed leather seats, shining spokes, gleaming headlamps and glittering chrome fittings. ‘It’s beautiful.’
He turned the engine off, opened the door and got out. ‘I saw you in the chapel,’ he said. ‘I looked for you afterwards but you’d gone.’
I looked for you. She felt a ripple of delight. ‘It’s a beautiful place,’ she said. ‘Historic.’
‘It’s that all right. Vindsor is vun big history lesson! The St Chorge’s Chapel! Henry ze Eight is buried there. Ant Chane Seymour!’
She realised he was imitating his mother. And now he was drawing his brows, to assume the character of his father.
‘AND SOME OF QUEEN ANNE’S CHILDREN AS WELL! TALK ABOUT A MIXED GRILL. FUNNY OLD BUSLOAD TO BE GOING THROUGH ETERNITY TOGETHER!’
She laughed. ‘I just saw your family in the chapel.’
‘So did I. Worse luck.’ He twisted to look up at the statue above him and clapped one of the horse’s great bronze legs. ‘This is George III. The king who lost America. Know what my father says about this statue?’
‘That he shouldn’t have lost America?’
‘Hardly. My father hates America. If it hadn’t been lost already he’d have given it away himself. No, my father’s objection is that George was dressed up like a Roman.’ He drew his brows again. ‘DAMNED FOOL, DRESSING UP LIKE THAT! PRETENDING TO BE SOMETHING HE WASN’T! SHOULD HAVE THANKED GOD HE WAS BORN AN ENGLISHMAN!’
She laughed again.
‘But do you know what’s really funny about it?’ the prince mused. ‘George wasn’t English, he was German, and so, more or less, is Papa. And while we’re on the subject, if anything more perfectly encapsulates the condition of royalty than dressing up and pretending to be something we’re not, I can’t think what it is.’
Had something happened in the chapel? Was that why he had sat apart from his family? ‘What’s the matter?’ Wallis asked, gently.
He sank down with his back against the stone plinth. ‘The usual one,’ he said, stretching his legs out on the grass. ‘My father. And for the usual reason too.’
‘Your clothes?’
He stared at her, then laughed. ‘My wife.’
The world seemed to stop for a moment. Her legs seemed suddenly weak. She lowered herself, trembling, a few feet from where he sat, curling her legs under her, reaching for a daisy as a distraction. ‘Your … wife?’
Her mind was rioting. Surely he couldn’t mean … Thelma?
He asked me to marry him too. He asks everyone. It’s just a thing with him. Hadn’t Thelma once said that, at lunch at the Ritz? Had they somehow made up?
Queen Thelma? Was that even remotely imaginable?
He had got out his cigarettes and was flicking his lighter. ‘My father thinks it’s high time I got married. He’s even got my cousin Louis Mountbatten to draw up a list of suitable European princesses for me to choose from.’ He drew in a lungful of smoke. ‘There are seventeen of them and the youngest is Thyra of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. She’s fifteen. I’m nearly forty, by the way.’
‘That’s quite an age gap,’ Wallis agreed. While relieved that the bride wasn’t Thelma, she could see this was little better.
He frowned, stubbing his cigarette out on the grass. ‘This is 1934, not five hundred years ago. I don’t want to pick a wife from a stable of aristocratic brood mares and lead one of them up the aisle of Westminster Abbey.’ He made a mocking clip-clop noise, and a gesture like holding reins.
She grinned. ‘No.’
‘It’s all so ridiculously old-fashioned. Society’s changed. Women have changed. They vote, go to university, train for professions, fly around in aeroplanes even.’ He lit another cigarette.
‘You want a wife who can fly a plane?’ Amy Johnson and Amelia Earhart had both made record-breaking flights recently.
He looked puzzled, then grinned. ‘Ha! Wouldn’t that be something? No, I mean the blasted monarchy should keep up. A modern king should be able to choose a wife who’s an equal partner, someone who can support, encourage and advise.’
‘Absolutely,’ she agreed. ‘Like Eleanor Roosevelt and FDR.’ The wife of the new president was rumoured to be as interested in social reform as her husband.
His face lit up. ‘Exactly! As an American, you can see that. It would be a whole new way of being queen. Changing a thousand years of royal history.’
She felt excited. It was a radical vision, but she could see the sense in it. ‘I think that’s a brilliant idea.’
He blew out a stream of smoke. ‘Well, it’s the only way I can see myself becoming king, that’s for sure.’
She looked at him closely. ‘How do you mean? You will become king, won’t you?’
He was regarding the distant castle with narrowed eyes. ‘I suppose so. But I increasingly wonder what the point is. Surely, in the modern age, the time of kings and princes is past. They seem so incredibly out of date to me.’
He had said something like this before, of course. I don’t know what any of it means or even why I’m doing it. But this seemed to take it a stage further. This was the family business he was denigrating. His own destiny he was doubting. ‘You can’t say that. You’re the Prince of Wales.’
‘Yes, but I’m entirely the wrong person. I hate it! I can’t tell you how utterly sick of it I am. I absolutely fucking loathe it.’
She was grappling with her disbelief. ‘But you have all your wonderful ideas. A prince with a social conscience.’
‘Wallis, you are amazing. You’re so can-do, so full of New World positivity. You say to me the things I say to myself, but you make it sound as if it could actually happen!’
‘But why can’t it?’ she demanded. ‘You’ve started your housing project now, haven’t you?’
He groaned. ‘Yes, but it hardly scratches the surface of what needs to be done. Which most people don’t want me to do anyway.’
‘But when you’re king, you’d be in charge!’
‘Wallis, you’re so delightfully American. Do you know what a constitutional monarchy actually is? It means they’ll block me at every turn. I’ll be reduced to dressing up and poncing about as usual.’
She had known he was frustrated, but not that he harboured such violent loathing. ‘But you’re so wonderful at poncing about,’ she said. ‘Everyone loves you.’
He couldn’t help laughing at this. ‘Well I don’t love them. I’m sick of being yelled and shrieked at. I get clapped on the back until I’m black and blue and my hand is shaken until it swells up like a football. They stab me as well.’
‘Stab you?’
He nodded.
‘Who stabs you?’
‘The old ladies.’ He sounded quite matter-of-fact about it.
‘Old ladies stab you?’
He squinted up at the burning sky. ‘After Armistice parades, when I’m meeting the veterans. There are always widows hovering about. They come up to me and as they get close I see them going for it.’
‘Going for it?’
‘The hatpin. Usually they keep it in the crook of their elbow. They whip it out and then shove it into me hard wherever the nearest point is. My arm usually.’
Her mouth had dropped open. ‘But … why?’
‘Why?’ He removed his cigarette and looked at it. ‘Because their sons or husbands or brothers, or all three, were killed in the war. They’re mad with grief and who better to take it out on than the person who symbolises what the whole of that appalling and pointless carnage was supposedly about. King and country.’
She stared at him. ‘Don’t you do anything about it? Couldn’t you have them arrested or something?’
‘Probably. But I don’t want to. I don’t blame them at all. In their shoes I would do the same.’ He raked a hand through his bright-blonde hair. ‘This might sound strange, but it feels like the only occasion where my presence as a royal does any actual good.’
He stood up and stretched. ‘Well, Wallis. What a conversation. I haven’t known you long, but I’ve never come across anyone I find so easy to talk to. It’s as if we’ve known each other for ever.’ He smiled, holding her in the blue spotlight. ‘I feel that too,’ she replied, simply.
‘I can’t tell you what a relief it is, to have someone who understands. No one else does. Papa finds fault at every opportunity. Complains about me to everyone else too. The other day he told the Archbishop of Canterbury that once he’s dead I’ll ruin myself in a year. Charming, eh?’
She gasped. ‘But how unfair! He should be proud of you. Your ideas are wonderful.’
‘He wouldn’t see it that way. Papa only looks backwards, never forward. The entire twentieth century is anathema to him.’ He blew out a column of smoke. ‘He’s not interested in progression or modernity in any form.’
‘So that’s why he hates America?’ The remark had puzzled her since he had said it.
‘Yes, and because he knows I love it. If I’m honest I bought an American car partly to annoy him.’ He glanced at the gleaming roadster with a sort of defiant pride. Then he sighed and seemed to deflate. ‘It feels like such a struggle though. This wedding thing. Sometimes I feel tempted to give in and to marry whoever they want me to. Just for some peace.’
She was getting up too, striking the grass from her dress. ‘But you can’t! You should marry the person you want to. How can you be a good king if you’re not happy? You can’t be the right sort of king with the wrong sort of wife.’
He was staring at her. ‘That’s true,’ he said slowly. ‘I can’t be the right sort of king with the wrong sort of wife.’
Then he beamed, started up the engine and patted the seat beside him. ‘Hop in, Wallis. We’re going on a journey!’
Chapter Thirty-Five
She had never in her life driven as fast as this. The road was a single grey blur and the trees a rush of green. A great roaring filled her ears. She clasped her hat with one hand but had nothing to steady herself with the other. He glanced at her, grinning beneath his goggles. ‘Hang on to me,’ he shouted as they rounded a corner. He changed up a gear, and went even faster. A pair of low white entrance lodges shot past. Then a drive bordered with rhododendron in full bloom, brightly coloured. Ahead was a pale-pink house of vaguely Oriental design. It looked like a cake, she thought.
He roared up to it and turned in a semi-circle. A wave of gravel lifted in his wake. He stopped, turned off the engine and smiled. ‘I thought we’d pay a call on Bertie. Show him the new car.’
So this was Royal Lodge. How funny that two such serious people lived in such a trivial-looking building.
The front door, at the top of a flight of wide, shallow steps, was pale green. It now flew open and the eldest princess appeared, still in her coat. They must only just have got back from the chapel. ‘It’s Uncle David!’ Elizabeth hammered down the steps to greet the newcomer.
He pressed the horn and laughed. ‘Lilibet! Oh, and Margaret too!’
The younger princess had appeared and ran down the steps after her sister.
‘Uncle David! Uncle David!’ He was clearly a great favourite, Wallis saw with surprise. Not all relations with his family were terrible, then.
She was still clinging to the prince, she realised as the duke and duchess now appeared. She sprang away as if he were burning hot, but it was too late. The cold violet stare was on her. ‘D-D-David!’ exclaimed the duke. As usual he looked and sounded harassed. ‘To wh-wh-what …’
‘… do we owe the pleasure?’ put in his wife smoothly, placing on his arm a hand that was yet gloved from church. But the glance that she slid Wallis hinted that it was no pleasure at all, not in her case.
The prince drummed his gloved hands on the steering wheel. His goggles glinted in the sun. ‘Thought you’d like to see my new wheels! Come and try it out, Bertie!’
Wallis felt fear churn within. Surely he wasn’t intending to leave her here with Elizabeth?
The duke looked doubtfully at his wife, then longingly back at the gleaming car. Lilibet and Margaret were dancing excitedly round it. ‘Poop poop!’ Margaret was shouting, pointing at the big brass horn. ‘Poop poop!’
Wallis laughed. ‘I’m guessing you’ve read the Wind in the Willows.’
Lilibet looked up from examining the car with her sister. ‘You’re an American,’ she said with surprise.
‘That’s right. I am.’
She was hoping for the great monkey grin, and here it came, transforming the princess’s serious face. ‘I know you!’ she exclaimed. ‘You’re the lady who winked at us in the chapel!’ She turned to her mother. ‘Mummie! This is the lady I told you about!’
Wallis’s heart sank. Her fame had gone before her, it seemed. Elizabeth did not reply, just took her daughter’s hand and steered her firmly away.
‘You can honk it if you like,’ the prince was telling Margaret, demonstrating the device’s mighty blast. The younger princess squeezed the great black rubber bulb and squealed with delight at the noise it made.
‘Come on, Bertie!’ urged his brother again, gaily.
The duchess’s gloved hand pressed her husband’s arm. ‘Go on,’ Wallis heard her mutter. ‘Get it over with. I’ll show her round the garden.’
‘You can use it as a shooting-brake you know!’ added the prince, invitingly.
This appeal to the duke’s hunting interests broke the deadlock. He bounded over and Wallis was obliged to get out. Her heart was beating so hard it thumped in her ears. She could even hear it over Lilibet’s honking. The car roared away and as the engine faded, it seemed to Wallis that never had silence been quite so silent.
Another woman had appeared on the steps. Wallis thought she recognised her from St George’s Chapel, sitting behind the Yorks. She was young and exceptionally tall, with lovely skin and chestnut hair. She had intelligent eyes either side of a large nose and there was about her, as she looked at the duchess, an air of apprehension.
The duchess ushered her daughters towards the newcomer. ‘A walk in the woods before elevenses, perhaps, Crawfie?’ Crawfie did not need to be told twice.
‘Where are we going?’ Lilibet could be heard asking indignantly as she and Margaret were marched towards the trees. ‘We never walk at this time of day, Crawfie! Crawfie?’
Elizabeth smiled at Wallis. It did not quite reach her eyes, or anywhere near them. ‘Would you care to see the garden?’
Elizabeth was a fast walker. Her legs were short, but they were quick. Whenever Wallis drew level she managed to move ahead to oblige her to follow a few steps behind, rather in the manner of a lady’s maid.
‘Dahlias,’ she said, sticking a hand out at one side. ‘Roses,’ she added, gesturing with the other.
The two royal gardens formed a striking contrast, Wallis thought. Whereas the Fort’s was carefully contrived to look natural, the opposite was the case at Royal Lodge, where the flowerbeds were laid out in squares like a box of chocolates. The colours, as she had noticed on her way up the drive, were glaring and assertive, rather than the Fort’s subtler shades.
She tried to make friendly remarks about the weather, but these were pointedly ignored. It seemed the Duchess of York asked the questions.
‘And how is Mr Simpson?’
Wallis blinked. ‘Oh. Ernest’s very well, thank you. He’s back at the Fort.’
The duchess bent to pull up a weed by the path. ‘He didn’t go with you to church?’
Wallis smiled. ‘Ernest’s not much of a churchgoer, I’m afraid.’
The violet eyes looked at her sharply. ‘And you are?’
It was unmistakeably an attack. Wallis looked round her brightly. Time for a change of subject. ‘You have a very nice garden here.’
‘My husband is an expert gardener. His particular passion is rhododendrons. Do you admire rhododendrons, Mrs Simpson?’
‘Well …’ Wallis began. Rhododendrons had never struck her as especially attractive, with their leggy, woody branches and dark, dusty leaves. She certainly couldn’t imagine being passionate about them.
‘Bertie once wrote a very amusing letter to our friend Lady Stair,’ Elizabeth went on. ‘He substituted the names of rhododendrons for certain words. For example, he thanked Lady Stair for giving him an Agapetum time.’
Wallis looked back at her blankly. ‘Agap …?’
‘Agapetum. It’s a variety of rhododendron. The name means “delightful”.’
Understanding dawned. ‘Oh I see! Agapetum time, delightful time.’ As jokes went, it seemed on the laboured side.
