IT WOULD HAVE BEEN A TIME OF PERFECT contentment for Mary as she felt the child grow in her belly had it not been for her anxiety about the steady trickle of alarming news from the Continent. Hitler’s army had annexed Austria the previous year, and had taken part of Czechoslovakia not long after. Almost every day it seemed there was more evidence of his greed for territory, and amongst their friends, all were convinced that war was coming.
Mary tried to ignore the news, worried that her anxiety might affect their baby, but sometimes she couldn’t stop herself.
‘Do you think Hitler will attack London?’ she asked Ernest. ‘Will we be safe here?’
‘I’ll stock up on sandbags and anti-aircraft guns,’ he joked, but Mary could not raise a chuckle. How would she protect her child against bombardment from the air?
‘Should we move to New York?’ she asked. ‘You could run the business from there, as you did before.’
‘I am a reservist,’ Ernest told her, ‘since I served in the last war. Besides, shipping will be crucial for keeping the country supplied with raw materials, so I must stay and do my duty. We will find a place where you and Junior are out of harm’s way.’
On 2 September, when he heard that Hitler’s troops had invaded Poland, Ernest decided they must leave town immediately in case German bombers made a pre-emptive strike on London. They loaded the car and drove to the home of some friends who lived near Ipswich, and that was where they were at 11.15 the following morning when Prime Minister Chamberlain made his chilling radio broadcast confirming that Britain and Germany were at war.
Mary burst into tears, and Ernest put his arms around her. ‘We are the lucky ones,’ he said. ‘At least we don’t have a son being sent off to fight.’
He had already arranged everything for the birth of their child. Mary was booked into a Surrey nursing home on 17 October. Ernest would stay in the hotel next door and commute to work in London each day. They had hired builders to construct an air-raid shelter under their house and planned to return once it was ready.
But just three weeks after the start of the war, on 26 September, Mary woke in the early hours with a cramping sensation in her belly. She reached around the bump and felt wetness between her legs.
‘Ernest!’ she screamed.
He switched on the light and realised that her waters had broken, soaking the mattress. Panic rose in her throat, making it impossible for her to speak, but Ernest took charge. A local doctor came and advised that he should get her to the nursing home as soon as possible. Ernest rang ahead so Mr Gilliat was pre-warned, and they set off into the night.
All the street lights were switched off in case of German bombers, so the roads were pitch black. Signs had been painted over so they would not help enemy invaders, but fortunately Ernest knew the way. Mary lay on the back seat, propped up on cushions with a towel wedged between her legs, praying that the baby would not come before they got to the nursing home.
Ernest spoke calmly and quietly – ‘Be strong, darling; not much further to go’ – and something about his authoritative tone made her trust him. She and the baby would be fine; he would make sure of it.
When they arrived, Mary was taken straight to surgery and the baby was delivered soon afterwards: a healthy boy weighing five pounds eleven ounces, who looked the spitting image of his father, with tufts of golden-blonde hair, a round face and calm eyes. Mary couldn’t stop sobbing as she kissed his tiny fingers and toes.
As soon as Ernest was allowed into the room, she said, ‘Come and meet your son.’
He cupped his hand around the downy head, and for the first time in all the years she had known him, Mary saw the glint of tears in his eyes.
‘Hello, little man,’ he said, his voice tender. ‘Welcome to the world.’
Mary and Ernest called their baby Ernest Henry Child Simpson, but he was soon known to all as Whistlebinkie, an endearment coined by Mary because he was so unbelievably small and cute.
They hired a nanny, but Mary preferred to keep him close during the day, rocking him in his bassinet and feeding him from the bottle Nanny made up. She loved the way he gazed at her with his boss eyes and the experimental noises he made as he discovered his vocal cords.
‘Have you noticed how puzzled he looks when he hiccups?’ she asked Ernest. ‘It makes me laugh every time.’
On 11 January, Whistlebinkie was christened at the Guards Chapel, wearing a long embroidered christening gown that was a Simpson family heirloom. The font was decorated with spring flowers and the baby waved his arms as if conducting an orchestra and beamed at the parson as he was sprinkled with holy water. Back home in Holland Park, Mary and Ernest entertained dozens of guests with glasses of champagne in their newly decorated drawing room, which had apricot walls, a chartreuse-green carpet and huge gold-framed mirrors.
‘What do you reckon?’ Mary asked Georgia Sitwell. ‘I fear we may accidentally have hired a colour-blind designer.’
‘It’s lovely,’ Georgia reassured her. ‘Very . . . warm.’
Four months into the war, without any sign of German aerial bombardment, Londoners were beginning to wonder if the danger had been exaggerated, and many of those who had left town ventured back. Life went on more or less as normal apart from the rationing of petrol, bacon, butter and sugar.
There was one benefit to the war as far as Mary was concerned, which was that Wallis’s letters did not arrive so often. The blue envelopes with their loopy handwriting always put her in a foul mood, even before she read the contents.
In January 1940, Wallis wrote to Ernest: We should both love to live in England again but the royal family will not see us. They refuse to allocate a suitable house for our use, so we have no choice but to remain in France for the duration.
‘Thank goodness!’ Mary breathed. She did not want that woman in the same country as her and her family.
Wallis wrote that she had volunteered for the French Red Cross and was busy delivering plasma, bandages and cigarettes to hospitals in eastern France, while Peter Pan was working for the British Military Mission. She felt aggrieved that the British had not found her a role that would use her talents and contacts, but her offer had been turned down. She added that she missed Ernest and was sad about the way things had turned out. Some day, I dream that you and I will grow old together once all this nonsense is out of the way.
Mary ripped that letter in half and threw it in the fire. ‘This nonsense’ presumably meant their marriages to other people. She felt more secure in her position now that she had given Ernest a son and heir, but in her less confident moments she wondered if he secretly hankered after Wallis. If not, why maintain a correspondence with her?
Most of the time she was too busy to worry. Ernest was an attentive husband and there was certainly no doubting his devotion to Whistlebinkie. Every evening when he got home from the office, he would lean over the bassinet and kiss those soft curls that smelled of soap, milk and that delicious baby fragrance, before turning to Mary and asking, ‘How was your day, dear? Shall I pour you a little tipple?’
When spring arrived in London, announced by the dazzling yellow flowers of a forsythia bush in their garden, Mary was feeling under the weather. She had not managed to lose her baby weight, and if she walked any distance she felt giddy and sick. She was tired most of the time, often needing a catnap in the afternoon, and her breasts were sore although the milk had long since dried up.
‘I think you should see a doctor,’ Ernest suggested. ‘Perhaps he will prescribe a tonic.’
Their doctor did a full examination, taking Mary’s blood pressure and drawing some blood for tests, looking in her eyes and mouth, taking her pulse and asking lots of questions.
‘Perhaps I should check your breasts, since you say they hurt,’ he mumbled, seeming embarrassed.
Mary stripped off her blouse and lay back on the surgery’s daybed. The doctor unfastened her bra and began to knead her breasts. She winced when it hurt in a couple of places and he nodded as if that confirmed something.
‘I’d like you to see a specialist. I’ll make a phone call and set it up.’
Mary guessed she must have some kind of infection in the milk ducts. The nanny had told her it could be mastitis; that would explain the tenderness and her overwhelming tiredness.
Nothing prepared her for the shock when Sir Launcelot Barrington-Ward finished his examination at his prestigious Harley Street surgery, called Ernest in from the waiting room, and told them both, ‘I’m afraid there is a tumour in the left side.’
‘Do you mean cancer?’ Mary asked, then words failed her. She remembered her mother’s agonising death from cancer and went rigid with fear. She couldn’t go through that. She wasn’t strong enough.
‘It’s early days, so removal of the breast should get rid of it. I would like to operate as soon as possible.’
Ernest began to ask about practicalities in his calm, businesslike voice: who would perform the surgery, how long would it take to recover, were there any follow-up treatments, what were the statistical probabilities?
Mary watched him talking but didn’t take in any of the words. She cupped a hand around her left breast, the one that was soon to be lopped off like dead wood. She didn’t mind for herself, but she was heartbroken for Ernest. It felt as if she would no longer be a complete woman; as if she would be less of a wife.