MARY RECOVERED QUICKLY FROM THE PHYSICAL side of the operation, but the mental side was harder. Although she was given special pads to fill the left side of her brassiere, she felt deformed and hideous. She would not let Ernest see the jagged dark red scar with criss-cross marks from the stitches. She couldn’t bear to look at it herself.
Sir Launcelot assured Ernest that the operation had been a complete success. Tests on the excised breast tissue showed the cancer had been contained, so Mary was expected to make a full recovery. She was back at home in Holland Park by the end of April, in time to hear Whistlebinkie utter his first recognisable word: ‘Dada’.
‘You may think he’s talking about you, Ernest,’ Mary joked feebly, ‘but I think he is a budding art historian and is commenting on the avant-garde movement of Marcel Duchamp.’
‘I’m sure you’re right, my dear. We have clearly produced a genius.’
They both laughed as they watched their genius son try to stuff his entire left hand into his mouth.
Mary could spend hours sitting on the floor watching him play. When he sat on her lap, he was fascinated by her necklaces and loved to pull the clip earrings from her earlobes. He was a contented little chap, entirely caught up in the moment, and she wished she could be the same but it was hard to shake off her depression following the operation.
The news from Europe only increased her gloom: during April, Hitler’s troops had invaded Denmark and Norway, then, on 10 May, came the invasion of Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands and France. Soon it looked as though there would be German troops on the Channel coast, and the thought petrified her.
Mary and Ernest spent a weekend with Eleanor and Ralph at the end of May, and were stunned into horrified silence to hear from their radio set of the surrender of King Leopold of Belgium and the evacuation of Dunkirk, as British troops were hastily brought home to avoid annihilation by the Germans.
‘I hear they are blaming the Duke of Windsor for leaking plans concerning the defence of Belgium to the Germans,’ Ralph said. ‘Did you read that story in the Times, Ernest?’
‘I did,’ he agreed, ‘but in wartime you can’t believe everything you read.’
‘I wouldn’t put it past him,’ Mary commented. ‘I don’t think he would deliberately betray his country, but he is rather naïve and – let’s be frank – not terribly clever. I can image some wily von Ribbentrop type tricking him into imparting secret knowledge if they flattered him enough.’
Ernest didn’t comment; he was more discreet than her, but she knew he shared her views of the former King’s lack of intellect.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ Mary confided in Eleanor once they had left the men to their brandy and cigars. ‘I don’t feel my baby is safe in London with the Germans getting ever closer, but Ernest has to be there. We have talked about sending the boy to America, but I can’t bear it. He’s too little. He wouldn’t recognise me when he saw me again.’
‘He’s welcome to stay here,’ Eleanor offered. ‘We’re not close to any targets the Germans might choose to aim at.’
‘Are you serious?’ Mary hugged her, overcome with relief. ‘I would love him to be here. His nanny would come too, so I hope you would have no trouble, and you are close enough that I could visit every weekend.’
‘That’s settled then. And if it means I get to see you every weekend, all the better.’
The Holland Park house felt vast and empty without Whistlebinkie’s gurgles and cries echoing in the hallway. When she entered a room, Mary kept looking round for him before remembering he wasn’t there. She telephoned every day and asked Eleanor to hold the receiver to his ear as she cooed down the phone. He always sounded happy; it was Mary who was miserable. For nine months her son had given a reason and purpose to her existence, and now he was gone she was empty and low.
When the Local Defence Volunteers movement was hastily set up by the War Office to organise security around vulnerable areas, Ernest was appointed a deputy group leader. That meant he had drills every evening and on Saturdays and Sundays as well. During weekdays he worked with the Admiralty, who had taken over his shipping business and were using it to help keep essential imports arriving. The days were long and Mary knew she had to find something to keep her occupied or else she would go mad. In June, she signed up for the Red Cross and was immediately sent on two courses: ‘First Aid’ and ‘Decontamination after Gas Attacks’. It was tiring but good to feel that she might be some use to her adopted country.
Still the occasional letter got through from Wallis. She and David had fled northern France in the dead of night when the Germans invaded, going first to their house in Biarritz and then to the Ritz Hotel in Madrid. Mr Churchill wants us to return to England, she wrote, but David insists he will not do so unless I am granted an HRH title. As for myself, I care little, although it seems odd that as his wife I cannot share his form of address.
She has gone mad, Mary thought. Who would even think of such a thing in wartime, when the country faced imminent invasion? She was careful never to criticise Wallis in front of Ernest, though. She didn’t want to risk hearing him defend her.
Through June the news was uniformly dreadful and Mary’s anxiety mushroomed: Italy declared war on Britain; German troops marched into Paris; and then France surrendered, agreeing to become a German ‘zone of occupation’. French commander General Weygand predicted: ‘In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken.’
Ernest’s sister Maud came for dinner, and over a meal of rabbit stew with carrots and boiled potatoes, she asked Ernest, ‘Don’t you think you should send the child to New York? The Germans could be here at any moment.’
Ernest mumbled something indistinct, so Mary replied for him. ‘We considered that, but he seems safe enough with our friends in the country.’
Maud looked alarmed. ‘What if they start rounding up Jews and sending them to camps, as I hear they are doing across Europe? Surely you can’t take that risk?’
Mary stared at Maud, then at Ernest, uncomprehending. ‘Do you have Jewish blood? Simpson is not a Jewish name.’
Ernest sighed heavily. ‘I saw no reason to alarm you,’ he said, ‘but as Maud has brought it up, I should tell you that our family were Jewish in the nineteenth century, when we had the surname Solomon. My father changed the name when he emigrated to New York in 1873 and set up his shipping firm.’
Mary could hardly breathe. All of a sudden she had visions of her baby in the arms of a Nazi in those high-topped leather boots. ‘They will check the records. They’ll find out,’ she said in panic. ‘You must come to New York, both of you. And your children, Maud. We must all go. I’ll find somewhere for us to stay.’
Ernest looked down at his hands. ‘I’m not going,’ he told her in a tone that she knew brooked no discussion. ‘I must stay and help my country, but I will understand if you want to take Whistlebinkie there for the duration of the war.’
Mary looked at him, aghast. She could not leave him alone in London, this man she had loved for so long. And yet she could not risk her precious, innocent son being taken captive. If the Germans were coming across the Channel, she had to get him to America – but she must stay with her husband. The answer was as clear as it was unbearably cruel.
‘With any luck the war will be over in months,’ Maud said, in a tone that made it plain she did not believe it.
Mary considered asking her sister Buckie to have Whistlebinkie, but she had no spare rooms, while Anne was too far away in Chicago. When by chance an invitation arrived from her old school friend Renée du Pont, inviting them to her luxurious Manhattan house, it seemed the only solution. Mary and Ernest talked long into the night. He tried to persuade her she must go too, but she had made up her mind and would not reconsider.
On 8 July, Ernest and Mary travelled to Holyhead with Whistlebinkie and his nanny and escorted them to their cabin on a passenger ship bound for New York. When the hooter sounded for all those who were not travelling to leave the ship, Mary gave her baby one last cuddle and kissed his tiny lips, then turned to walk away. She couldn’t cry, but every part of her body was shaking with grief. The pain was more appalling than she could ever have imagined.
As the gangplank was raised and the ship moved out into the Irish Sea, Ernest put his arm round her and gripped her tightly, as if he feared that otherwise she might leap into the water and swim after it.