Abdication A Novel

Chapter SIXTEEN





One day in late July Evangeline was invited by Wallis to join what she called a “family-only” weekend party at the Fort. Wallis’s splendid aunt, Mrs. Bessie Merryman, had arrived for a short visit from New York and soon the three Americans were catching up on news from back home. The Queen Mary had sailed into New York Harbor for the first time to a huge welcome. A heat wave in North Dakota had reached over 120 degrees Fahrenheit, resulting in a series of terrible fires that had killed many people. Mrs. Merryman was reading Gone With the Wind, a marvellous new novel about life on a plantation in the Deep South. She recommended it.

As if in mind of high temperatures, the king announced he was going to have a steam bath and disappeared into the basement, reemerging some time later dressed in his evening clothes, scarlet in the face, and beaming as he gleamed. The steam bath, along with the bathrooms en suite and the central heating system, were all additions to the Fort that the king had made himself under the influence of the luxuries of the New World, which he had visited several times when Prince of Wales. Not even Chatsworth could boast such modern comforts, he told his guests with pride.

After dining on oysters brought up from the duchy’s own oyster beds in Cornwall, accompanied by several glasses of pink champagne, the king had impressed Wallis’s aunt by playing a song from the Scottish Highlands on his bagpipes. Gratified by her applause, the king told her that there were some who failed to share his passion for the pipes. The conductor Thomas Beecham had once been bold enough to remark to the king himself that he preferred the sound when safely seated the other side of a mountain.

The next morning, after standing on the highest point of the garden and showing “Aunt Bess”—as the king affectionately called her—the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral through his eyeglass, the king had insisted on a Saturday afternoon expedition to have tea with his brother Bertie.

“David just loves his new car,” Wallis explained to her aunt indulgently. “It’s an American station wagon, would you believe? Yes! And he far prefers it to the stuffy old Rolls.”

“And where are we going in this lovely new car, Wallis darling?” her aunt asked, amused by her niece’s sudden enthusiasm for machinery.

“Oh, we’re going to take a short hop over to see the Duke of York at Windsor,” Wallis replied as she went to her room to put on her driving hat.

As the party from the Fort arrived, whirling with a dramatic flourish twice around the circular driveway at Royal Lodge, the Duke and Duchess of York were waiting for them at the front door.

“Don’t you think it’s a bbbbb, a bbb a bbb-it rrracey for the lanes of BBBerkshire, David?” Bertie began.

“Oh goodness, Bertie, you are an old stick in the mud,” retorted his brother, grinding out his cigarette in the gravel. “This car is all the rage, don’t you know? Have you seen the way it moves? Wallis arranged it for me! Isn’t she the most clever girl?”

Elizabeth stood at her husband’s side, her brilliant blue eyes radiating scepticism. Evangeline knew of Wallis’s suspicions that “Bertie’s little wife” disapproved of her and assumed this disapproval to be founded on jealousy. Wallis was convinced that the Duchess of York secretly regretted settling for the second son in the family. Bertie was without doubt the less exciting brother and Wallis was keen to cushion these tense family meetings with other people, preferably outsiders. However, on that particular afternoon the atmosphere over at the lodge was lightened by the arrival of the king’s young niece Elizabeth.

“You like my new car, don’t you, Lilibet? More fun than others, isn’t it? It’s like settling for a bowler instead of a stuffy old topper, isn’t it?”

Elizabeth and the king got along famously with one another. They had a running joke that involved Lilibet curtseying to her uncle every time she saw him. At her every appearance, whether emerging from the shadow of a tree, peering round a door or popping up from behind the car, the sight of this charming child always prompted the same question from her uncle. “Have you forgotten your manners, Lilibet?”

In response the curly-blond ten-year-old would stretch the pockets of her jodhpurs outwards with her hands as if she was wearing a full ball gown and drop down to the ground in one respectful sweep. And every time uncle and niece would roar with laughter.

Inside the lodge tea was served, with orange juice for Lilibet and her six-year-old sister, Margaret Rose. Evangeline was enchanted by the girls. Lilibet reminded her of Florence down at Cuckmere Park. Both girls were exactly the same age, but Evangeline was conscious of the difference between them. One had all the freedom in the world, while the other was restricted by the weighty protocol that came with being the niece of a king.


The next morning, back at Fort Belvedere, Wallis was busy attending to matters of the household, instructing the servants to anticipate her guests’ every whim. Wallis’s preference for blond-haired staff was evident beneath the white lacy caps of the housemaids. The king was pruning his ubiquitous rhododendrons as he did at every spare opportunity, as well as weeding the herbaceous borders. Mrs. Merryman was catching up on her sleep in the blue bedroom upstairs, just across the corridor from her niece. Evangeline seized her moment. Struggling into her stretchy black swimming costume with its clever front fastening and thigh-concealing overskirt, it occurred to her that it was not unlike a ballet dress that might be worn by Tchaikovsky’s black swan. Fleetingly she wondered if Julian was enjoying those cunning elasticated swimming trunks she had given him before adding her raincoat over the top of her costume as an extra layer of concealment and hurrying out of the front door.

Passing the old battlements, with some two dozen ancient cannons ranged along their front, Evangeline half slithered down the slope that led to the high walls surrounding the swimming pool. Climbing roses tumbled over the stone, and a few petals had fallen in the wind, making a confetti puddle on the grass below. Several years ago, the king had transformed the area around an old lily pond into something resembling an outdoor sitting room with comfortable upholstered chaises to stretch out on and little trolleys filled with everything necessary to fulfil the urge to drink and smoke.

At the centre of this beautifully arranged scene, the pool glittered in the morning light. The pool was the hub of summer life at the Fort. On tables in front of the curved wall into which a long low stone bench was set, the drinks trays were already in place. A dazzling choice of wines, spirits and jugs of freshly squeezed orange juice faced the thirsty guest. Any Sunday morning weariness might be relieved by a champagne cocktail or the restorative elixir of a Bloody Mary, a mixture that had arrived two years earlier on the menu at the St. Regis Hotel in New York when Wallis was visiting friends in the city. Wallis liked to be up with the very latest in fashion so Evangeline was not surprised to see this spicy concoction of tomato juice and vodka make its way to the Fort luncheon table. Buffet lunch would follow a few hours later, a meal unrecognisable from an average British alfresco menu. Evangeline had been to several lunch parties in Philip’s constituency half an hour’s drive from Cuckmere, where undercooked slices of chicken accompanied by slices of overcooked egg and congealed swirls of mayonnaise meant that she returned home ravenous.

Lunch at the Fort was eaten on guests’ knees while seated in the cushioned cane chairs by the side of the pool. The spread changed in composition daily and was always supervised by Wallis. The Fort staff would lay monogrammed white cloths over the trestle tables, spread out the buffet, cover the dishes with little bead-scattered cloches made of fine-meshed wire to keep the flies and wasps away, and retire to the kitchen, leaving the guests to help themselves. There was a deliberate code of informality. The king insisted it should be that way. Guests could choose to eat as much or as little as they wished and although people may have remarked on the extreme slenderness of Mrs. Simpson’s frame, everyone agreed there was no faulting her when it came to providing mouthwatering menus.

Those fortunate enough to be staying for the weekend would find thick ham roasted in honey, piled high onto blue willow patterned plates. There would be a whole salmon, cold with an herb dressing, and biscuity pastry cases filled with mushrooms settled within a rich cheese and parsley sauce, still warm from the oven. Silver lids concealed mounds of waxy new potatoes with knobs of butter melting and seeping deep into the dish. Bowls of homegrown baby broad beans, as small and irregular as green-coloured sea pearls, sat beside plates of tender stemmed asparagus tied in bundles with black cotton bows. Nutty avocados, sent down each day to the Fort in a green Harrods van, were added to lettuces picked from the kitchen garden only moments earlier. And club sandwiches of cold turkey, tomato, and pickle were piled between layers of toast and pinioned to avoid collapse by a wooden sausage stick. The Fort staff was sceptical about this American innovation but there was no deterring Mrs. Simpson about something when she had made her mind up. For pudding there were bowls of sweet strawberries and raspberries and blueberries gathered from the Fort fruit cages and trays of meringues sandwiched together with whipped, sugared cream from the Windsor Home Farm. There had been one much talked of error when Wallis had served a local dish from her home in the southern United States. A diamond-backed terrapin had been sent over in a refrigerated container from Baltimore. Wallis explained that her mother had often prepared the dish and that it had become a family favourite. Apart from the single portion that Wallis placed on her own plate, complete with a wedge of lemon, the rejected reptile was returned to the kitchen intact.

That Sunday morning, several hours before lunch, Evangeline removed her coat and laid it on one of the chairs. She stood alone at the top of the pool steps and put out a tentative toe. Not too unbearably cold, she thought to herself. I can do this. I can. I must. I will dazzle them all with my confidence on board the Nahlin in August. People will be amazed at my prowess as a swimmer.

Moss grew in velvety clumps around the edge of the pool, and the sounds of wildlife coming from the nearby undergrowth were a little too close for Evangeline’s liking. But willing away her lifelong fear of water she began to walk down the steps. She could hear the bells of St. George’s chapel at Windsor Castle, some six miles in the distance, ringing out for the early Sunday service, and the birds calling gaily to one another in the nearby trees.

Evangeline braced herself to take two more steps. The water was lapping at her waist now and the overskirt was floating out around her as if her body was the jam in the middle of a doughnut. Only one more step to go, and she would be afloat. But as she put out her hand to steady herself on the edge of the pool before making the final plunge, her fingers encountered something slippery, and living. Evangeline let out a scream, shoving the startled frog away from her, but at the same time losing her balance as she fell with force into the water. Managing to recover her footing she was relieved to discover that the water level had come no further up her body than her rib cage and she began to wade back to the steps. But the violence of her fall had disconnected several of the hooks at the front of her bathing dress leaving Evangeline’s bosom exposed to the air. Before she had succeeded in getting any of the hooks to close, a man came running from the surrounding woods and down the path towards her.

“Help is here,” he shouted, and with a small splash the King of England dived neatly into the pool.