The duchess, p.31
The Duchess, page 31
Christmas came as something of a respite: he was obliged to spend it with his family at Sandringham. ‘Most boring place on earth,’ he complained.
‘It can’t be that bad,’ she said, reasonably.
‘You’re right, it’s worse. Ugliest house in the known universe.’
She had seen pictures of it in the newspapers, a great dark building bristling with gables, chimneys and towers. It was true that it was not attractive.
‘It’s even got its own time zone, did you know that?’
She listened in astonishment as he described how, by order of George V, the Sandringham clocks were all half an hour fast in order to extend the shooting day.
‘But the actual effect is to confuse everyone so we’re all in a permanent state of terror about being late and incurring the royal wrath.’
‘He cares about punctuality that much?’
The prince looked rueful. ‘You’ve no idea. My youngest brother Henry was away once for six months and when he came back he was a minute late for lunch. Papa was utterly vile to him.’
‘Well hopefully the new Duchess of Gloucester will help with that,’ she said comfortingly. Prince Henry had recently married a Scottish aristocrat called Alice Montagu Douglas Scott. On the basis of previous experience, Wallis and Ernest had refused the prince’s invitation to the wedding.
‘Well it won’t help with anything else,’ he groaned. ‘I’m the only one not married now. I’ll get my ear bent all Christmas.’
She smiled at him and said, with determined lightness. ‘Well you know what the answer to that is.’ She handed him her gift, which was a cigarette case decorated with a map of their summer travels. ‘Open it now,’ she urged.
The fair head shook. ‘I’ll open it with the others. On Christmas Eve.’
‘Not on Christmas Day?’
‘Ridiculous isn’t it? The royal family don’t even open their presents at the same time as everyone else.’
She smiled, but felt a clutch of concern. ‘David,’ she said, ‘please don’t open it with the family. Open it now.’ He unwrapped it and gazed at the engraved map for a long time. When he finally lifted his head, his expression was resolute. ‘I’m going to talk to Papa.’
‘About what?’
‘About you. I’m going to tell him that I’m going to marry you.’
She swallowed. ‘David, you mustn’t. Your father isn’t well.’ The old king had been ailing for some weeks.
‘Oh, he’ll recover. He’s indestructible.’ He flashed her a dazzling blue-eyed grin which she resolutely did not return.
He went – in his private plane. Letters flowed from Sandringham. ‘It really is ghastly here. The worst Christmas ever. Oh God the boredom … ’
‘A boy does miss a girl so terribly. I love you more and more every minute and no difficulties can possibly prevent our ultimate happiness … ’
‘You know your David will love you and look after you so long as he has breath in his eanum body.’ ‘Eanum’ was a word he seemed to have invented; she didn’t know where it came from. It meant small. ‘Let’s not bore ourselves with others on New Year’s night. Oh to be alone for ages and ages and then – ages and ages! God bless WE sweetheart. I’m sure he does – he must.’
The telephone shrilled constantly. ‘You’ll never guess,’ the prince shouted gleefully down the crackling line from Norfolk.
‘David! You haven’t … ?’
‘Told Papa? Don’t worry, Wallis, not a word. But it seems a little bird might have told him anyway. That blasted Archbishop of Canterbury, anyway. He’s staying here, the snobbish old sneak, and apparently my father said to him the other day that he hopes to God I never marry and have children and that nothing will come between Bertie and Lilibet and the throne.’
‘What?’
‘If only he knew how much I’d like the same thing myself. Bertie and Lilibet are more than welcome to it so far as I’m concerned. They’d both be better at it than me.’
‘You can’t say that!’
‘I just did! Hot diggety dog!’
New Year brought the prince back. As he had wished, and with Ernest in New York, they spent it alone at the Fort. They were gardening under a cold winter sun when a car drew up in a spray of gravel.
‘Bertie!’ exclaimed the prince, happily shoving his fork into some just-turned clods and hurrying to greet his brother. Wallis diplomatically remained where she was. While the prince’s younger brother was marginally politer to her than his wife, he was clearly no fan.
She heard a car driving off. The prince reappeared alone with a letter in his hand. ‘It’s from Mamma at Sandringham. About Papa.’
Wallis’s hands flew to her face.
‘She says that there’s no immediate danger. But she suggests I propose myself for the coming weekend. I’m to be very casual about it so Papa doesn’t suspect.’
Wallis lowered her hands, relieved. ‘Well, that sounds fine. Panic over.’
The prince snorted. ‘Hardly. You don’t know my mother. That’s Mamma-speak for come immediately, he’s at death’s door.’
She met his despairing gaze with a sympathy that hid her relief. Finally, the end was in sight.
Driving away from the castellated building was like an escape. It was snowing thickly as she looked through the rear window up the whitened drive. In the past, this view had wrenched at her heart. No longer.
At Bryanston Court, Ernest was just back. She ran to him and hugged him tight. How sensible, solid and dependable he felt after so much that was impossible and impermanent.
He took one look at her exhausted face, her thin and wilting form, and put her straight to bed. She slept for twenty-four hours. When she got up, she suggested they go to the cinema. She felt desperate to do something ordinary, anonymous, inexpensive.
As the nearest one was at Marble Arch, not far away, they walked arm in arm through the snow. She felt unburdened, relieved. Never again would she complain about the dullness of life. Being at the centre of things was exciting but relentless. A type of imprisonment, even. She was glad that it was finished and she was free.
There was a newsreel before the film began. Behind decorative wrought-iron gates, the bulky facade of Sandringham flickered across the screen. There were crowds outside, huddled against the cold, their winter coats black against the white. A distant factotum was coming down the snowy drive, his gloved hand holding a long envelope. There was silence in the cinema as it was opened and the message framed and hung on the gate.
The king’s life is moving peacefully towards its close.
She closed her eyes. Poor David. The hour of his destiny had come. She would always love him and their time together was the defining moment of her life. But now, finally, they must go their separate ways.
The Duke of Windsor’s Funeral
St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, June 1972
The last notes of the Last Post faded into the stonework. The service had ended, and she watched as everyone leaving gave a solemn bow to the casket. Mountbatten’s took about five minutes. She was the last; worn by the strain she could manage only the briefest of nods. She felt David would understand; hers was sincere, at least.
The mood, she felt, seemed less one of sorrow for a lost leader than relief at reaching the end of an uncomfortable chapter. Everyone here was impatient for it to be over so they could be off.
But perhaps not everyone everywhere. Later she discovered what had been said in the House of Commons by Prime Minister Heath.
‘There must be men and women on Tyneside, and in Liverpool and South Wales, who are remembering today the slight, rather shy figure who came briefly into their lives, and sometimes into their homes, in those grim years …
‘I have no doubt that the duke by his conduct as Prince of Wales and as king had paved the way to a form of monarchy which today is more in tune with the times than would have been thought possible fifty years ago.’
David had achieved his aim. He had modernised the monarchy, enabled it to go on. Not that any of them seemed especially grateful.
Outside, the sun was fierce and bright. Something David had once said came back at her, about needing sunshine for a pageant. He had the sunshine, if not quite the pageant.
The light knifed her tired eyeballs, even beneath her veil. Grace materialised, furious, at her side. ‘Did you realise that your name wasn’t mentioned once, not once, throughout that entire service?’
Oh yes, she was about to say, but felt Philip take her arm. It seemed they were going to the Castle for lunch.
The other guests followed, loud and jovial as if leaving a wedding. She told Philip how kind Charles had been in supporting her. The reply was a dismissive snort. ‘Damned boy needs to get married. That’s his job now.’
Lunch was in a glittering gold and white room. There were several round tables. Mountbatten, inevitably, had been placed on one side of her. On the other was Philip. She suspected a pincer movement; they wanted something.
Louis had made several trips to the house in Paris. ‘Who are you going to leave that to?’ he would ask, picking up a figur- ine. ‘I think it should go to Charles.’
‘How dare he,’ David had exclaimed after one such visit. ‘He even tells me what he wants left to him.’
For the first course Philip made what, for him, was small talk. He complained about the separate royal households, how they ran them these days. Everyone had different addresses and offices that failed to share information, apparently.
During the lamb, Louis broke ranks. He asked her what she meant to do with the duke’s uniforms and orders. ‘I think you should hand them over to the queen. Not as his niece, but as the sovereign. That would be the dignified thing to do.’
She looked at him musingly. His speech in the chapel came back to her, in which she had not been named. Philip’s rudeness, Elizabeth’s jibes. ‘The dignified thing to do,’ she repeated.
Over dessert, the two Battenbergs, mouths full of rice pudding, moved in for the kill. ‘Have you thought about the will?’ Mountbatten nudged.
She toyed with her spoon. ‘The will?’ she said innocently. ‘What about it?’
Philip was unabashed. ‘Perhaps making out a new one? In favour of the duke’s family?’
Part of her wanted to laugh out loud. But another part of her paused for thought. She was tired, ill, old and lonely. This bitterness had gone on for too long. Perhaps throwing them something might make it all easier.
‘I could give my jewellery to Charles,’ she suggested. ‘His future wife could wear it.’
An intake of breath from Louis. ‘But weren’t all your best things stolen?’
She winced at the memory. There had been a robbery – in 1946. Her jewellery box had been refilled many times since. But Mountbatten’s rude dismissal annoyed her.
‘You’re right,’ she said lightly, shelving the idea and along with it any hope of the future Princess of Wales ever wearing her magnificent pieces. She would auction them for charity, for the Institut Pasteur, and if the Windsors wanted anything, they would have to bid for it. Serve them right.
Philip, on her other side, was enquiring, none too subtly, if she proposed to return to spend her last years in America. She looked him full in the face.
‘Don’t worry. I shan’t be coming back here, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
Chapter Forty-One
St James’s Palace, London, 1936
On the first stroke of ten, trumpeters in golden sleeves raised their instruments in a double fanfare. The sound rebounded from the age-worn red-brick walls of St James’s Palace. It was joined by another, deeper sound: the guns in the park behind. On a balcony draped with scarlet stood the Garter King of Arms, the ceremonial figure responsible for proclaiming a new monarch.
Resplendent in plumed bicorn hat, tights and a stiff tabard magnificently and colourfully embroidered with the devices of the United Kingdom, he seemed to Wallis like a figure from the Tudor court, not the one of the new King Edward. As he raised a large parchment scroll, this impression intensified. The pageantry was beautiful in its ancient splendour and moving in its seriousness. This was how things had been done for hundreds of years, in an unbroken line of tradition of which the prince was now part. She was watching history in the making.
She thought of how this same palace had been the scene of much carousing, a lot of it in recent weeks. But that must all be put aside now, along with the prince’s old life. She had not expected to be asked to the ceremony now underway; he would not be here himself. Tradition dictated that a monarch never witnessed his own proclamation.
Perhaps it was by way of a final leave-taking. That had been Ernest’s view, which was why he insisted she go alone. ‘He wants to show you he’s now king and has work to do.’ When he had called her from Sandringham on the morning of his father’s death, his obvious devastation had twisted her heart. ‘I can’t do it, Wallis,’ he had gulped, clearly on the verge of tears. ‘I’m the last person on earth who should be king.’
‘No,’ she insisted. ‘You’re the perfect person.’
‘I can’t face it. I hate everything about it. Courtiers, palaces, debutantes, receptions, paperwork, ceremonies, the Established Church. Oh, and did I mention stultifying routine, unvarying tradition, ancient hierarchical apparatus, attendant bishops and the seasonal peregrinations between royal palaces and estates?’
‘That’s exactly why you’re perfect,’ she told him. ‘You have a vision. You want to change it all. So go on, do it your way. Modernise it. You’ve talked about it for long enough. Now’s your chance to make it happen.’
‘Do you really think I can?’
‘Absolutely!’
‘You believe in me, Wallis?’
‘Yes!’
The next time they spoke, he had sounded almost triumphant. ‘Guess what my first act as king was? To turn those blasted clocks back to the right time.’
‘Well that makes sense,’ she agreed, ‘Sandringham’s the centre of the British Empire now. Synchronicity is very important.’
There was laughter on the other end. ‘Well, yes. All that. And it threw that wretched archbishop’s Sunday service right out of whack as well.’
His second act had been to fly his plane back to London, the first king in history to do so. This thoroughly contemporary gesture made a dramatic contrast with the medieval scene before her. But he had always intended to bring the modern world to the ancient one.
Indeed, he had already started. He had told the nation that he would ‘follow in my father’s footsteps and work, as he did throughout his life, for the happiness and welfare of all classes of my subjects’. His first tour as monarch would be to the Glasgow slums. She felt proud that he was putting his plan into action, making it clear that helping the needy and unfortunate was his priority. The naysayers were wrong, even Ernest was wrong. The monarchy could be modern and relevant.
The King of Arms raised his voice to lift it above the sound of the booming guns. ‘Prince Edward is with one voice and the consent of tongue and heart proclaimed our only lawful and rightful liege lord Edward the Eighth …’
He raised his magnificent feathered hat to reveal a head as bald and white as a peeled egg, which made her smile. With his glasses and moustache, the formerly imposing ceremonial figure now looked like a dressed-up bank manager.
‘The king! The king!’ cried the other people in the room with her, raising their hats in unison. She did not know them, but they knew her. She had been aware throughout the ceremony of the scrutiny of two in particular: a pompous sandy-haired short man in uniform, who was obviously a courtier, and the disapproving woman with him, a thin-haired, thin-blooded aristocratic type, equally obviously his wife. She felt heartily glad that this was the last occasion on which she would encounter such people.
And then, quite suddenly, he was there, lighting up the shadowy room, sweeping like a sudden wind through people bowing and dipping in curtseys. He hurried straight across the room to the window where she stood. Delight rushed through her. Rising from her curtsey she admonished him, in laughing astonishment. ‘Are you supposed to be here?’
He beamed at her, teeth clamped round a cigarette as ever, blue eyes dancing. ‘I was going to stick to the tradition. Then at the last moment I asked myself what was so wrong in seeing myself proclaimed king? So here I am.’
And why should he not, she thought. He seemed so glowing, youthful and vital in these gloomy surroundings, against a backdrop of such ancient tradition. ‘Nice customs curtsey to great kings,’ she said. ‘Henry V,’ she added, as he was looking quizzical. She had learnt it at school but no line had ever come back before now.
He laughed again. ‘Cripes, Wallis, don’t come over all literary on me. Last thing I need just now!’ He suddenly spotted the sandy-haired man and his wife, both of whom clearly thought there was quite a lot wrong in overturning the tradition. Their expressions, which combined outrage with obsequiousness, were so comical that Wallis turned away, smiling, to the window.
‘Alec! Helen!’ The king went over to greet them, his heels sharp on the polished floor. She was still peering out of the window into the court below when she heard her own name called. ‘Wallis, come and meet Alec Hardinge. He’s my private secretary. And this is Helen, his wife.’
Extending her hand to the Hardinges, she thought how apt their name was. They both looked flinty to the core. The chill glint in their eyes reminded her of Elizabeth. ‘Congratulations on the new appointment,’ she smiled to Alec, whose mean little mouth bunched up even further.
The king clapped him cheerfully on the back. ‘Oh, it’s not new! Alec’s one of the old guard. He was PS to my father but as he knows the ropes I thought I’d keep him on. He’s already hard at it, arranging this visit to Glasgow. Right, Alec?’
The man’s small, pale eyes flicked uncertainly to his wife before returning to his sovereign. ‘Sir, I’m glad you brought that up because …’
But the king was waving at someone else now. ‘Tommy! Come over and meet Wallis!’
