CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Christmas was coming, and it had a strong Wallis Simpson flavor. Taking the girls to Woolworths as usual meant running the gamut of topical variations on the old carols. “Hark the herald angels sing / Mrs. Simpson’s pinched our king” was a popular variant. Jokes like “Edward the Eighth and Mrs. Simpson the Seven Eighths” had people laughing the length and breadth of the land.
Wallis’s actual position seemed anything but amusing. Marion had overheard several versions, from different people, of what had proved a disastrous dinner party at Balmoral. “She came toward me, smiling that triumphant smile,” the duchess declared in disgust. “I walked straight past her and said, ‘I have come to dine with the king!’”
Their talk together now had the quality of a dream. But had her plea had an effect? The press blackout had now been lifted, the unlikely catalyst being the Bishop of Bradford’s criticism of the king—for irregular church attendance—at a diocesan conference. All the newspapers now piled in, and the headlines claimed that Wallis had, after all, renounced her royal lover and fled to her friend in France.
People snorted at the idea, doubting the truth of it. Mrs. Simpson didn’t really mean it. She was treating the king mean in order to keep him keen. Why would she end the relationship? She had the king where she wanted him. Her claws were well and truly in. She was having the time of her life on the Riviera, treating the king like a servant and counting the jewels, money and days before she ascended the throne.
From Fort Belvedere came gossip about the agonized calls to Cannes. The connections were so bad that you could hear His Majesty screaming, weeping and begging from one end of the building to the other. “It doesn’t matter where you go, I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth,” he had yelled down the line to France. Wallis had been entirely correct in her predictions. Her situation was not triumphant, but desperate.
Knowing the real story, as Marion did, was a source of great secret satisfaction. She had the sense of being the one true witness to history in the making.
BUT HAD WALLIS really taken her for a fool? Marion had almost begun to question herself when, one afternoon, hands dangling with Christmas parcels, she returned to the Piccadilly house. She quickly mounted the wide gray stone front steps and knocked at the big double doors. Stamping her frozen heels, she thought with relief of the warm interior, the fires in the marble hearths, the fat iron radiators.
“It’s ’er! Look!” The shout came from behind her, someone on the street.
“Mrs. Simpson!”
Surprise jangled through Marion. But the Ritz Hotel was only just across the road, a few hundred yards in the other direction. Perhaps Wallis had been spotted going in.
A small crowd had gathered on the other side of the railings. “It’s ’er, innit?”
One of them shook a skinny fist. “Bleedin’ American whore!”
Marion’s jaw dropped. Her suit, while expertly tweaked by Norman, bore no resemblance to the Chanel creations in which Wallis habitually dressed. Her brown fur cape was fake. Moreover, and most importantly, she was twenty years younger. “It’s not me!” Marion called back.
One of the women shoved to the front. Her eyes glinted angrily in her dirty face. “Keep yer stinkin’ ’ands orf ’Is Majesty!”
“Go home, you whore! Leave our king alone!” Something whistled past Marion’s ear and smashed against the gray stone lintel. She stared at the yellow yolk flecked with shell, the transparent white running downward. Some of it had splashed on her fur.
Her teeth were chattering with terror. She banged on the front door with both fists, but it remained unyieldingly closed. She pressed her finger hard on the bell. “Please, Ainslie,” she begged. “Please open the door.”
When, after what seemed like years, Ainslie did, Marion threw herself across the threshold, her fingertips clawing the carpet as she landed on the floor. There was no question now that Wallis had been telling the truth.
But even that was not the worst of it. There had been a photographer at the back of the mob; presumably he too had thought she was Wallis. Initially, at least. Once she had turned and confronted them he had melted away. But not before their eyes had met and she had recognized Tom.
He had not helped her or defended her, as one might expect of someone to whom one once had been close. The door in her heart marked “Tom,” which had only been ajar anyway, slammed shut forever.
THE FESTIVE SEASON edged nearer. The Yorks should have been going to Sandringham and Marion to Scotland. But no one, for the moment, was going anywhere. Everyone was waiting. The storm was about to break.
The duke and duchess were rarely visible. The duke was constantly in meetings, the duchess in bed with a string of migraines. Marion, by now accustomed to keeping things normal in abnormal circumstances, set the girls to work on Christmas decorations. Whole heaps were made and Royal Lodge was liberally festooned with the results. In strange contrast to the gloomy atmosphere, the house was gay with handmade paper chains. Stockings shakily hand-knitted by small fingers lay stuffed with presents beneath the big, thick-needled Christmas tree. As usual, Alah was in for some powerfully colored Woolies bath salts.
The bathroom romps of old took place no longer, but the evening violent card games continued. What she had once deplored as too much excitement before bed now seemed to Marion useful in dissipating tension. Cries of “Brute!” and “Beast!” filled the woodsmoke-scented air as Lilibet and Margaret fought over Racing Demon. The leaping flames in the marble fireplace lit up the green Gothic paneling and brightened the gilt edges of the many pictures. At the high, arched windows, thick curtains were drawn cozily against the darkness. It was as happy and domesticated a scene as one could wish for, Marion would think, looking round. Under the circumstances, she was doing a good job. A great job.
One evening the flames in the fireplace flickered, as they rarely did, on the worn features of the Duke of York. His thin hand, a cigarette streaming between its fingers, dealt out vingt-et-un on the hearthrug. The duchess, as usual, was shut in her room.
“Everybody ready?” The duke looked around with a credible effort at a smile.
“Yes, Papa.”
Her father looked inquiringly at Lilibet. “T-twist or stick?”
“Stick.”
The duke turned to Marion. “Crawfie?”
“Twist,” she said, and was disappointed. Her five-card trick was not going to happen.
Now it was Margaret’s turn. With typical recklessness the youngest princess twisted, then twisted again, then threw her cards exasperatedly in the air. “Bust,” she groaned. The duke shook his head at her rashness. “You sh-sh-should be more careful, Meg.”
“It was Cousin Halifax,” Margaret said, predictably.
“Then Cousin Halifax should be more careful.” Lilibet turned up her cards as the duke, as bank, went bust as well. “Look,” she said delightedly. “A royal pontoon!”
The telephone rang in the hall. The duke’s expression, which had become warm and pliant in the firelight, now stiffened and froze. Ainslie came in. “Your Highness, it is Fort Belvedere on the line. His Majesty wishes to speak to you.”
The duchess appeared in the doorway in a long white nightdress. Free of makeup, her hair in a long black plait, she looked about sixteen. The girls looked up in surprise. “Mummy! You’re better!”
The duchess did not look better. She hurried to her husband’s side and took his hand. They left the room together.
Lilibet had won again, and her sister gone bust again, by the time a car started up outside. Over the cries of triumph and disaster, neither girl heard it. It crunched on the gravel drive, then faded into the distance. The vehicle had still not returned by the time Marion went to bed.