Abdication A Novel

Chapter EIGHTEEN





Wallis’s excitement about the forthcoming cruise on the Nahlin was proving infectious and for once Evangeline did not feel quite so left out.

“Of course, we have had to remove all the books from the ship’s library, in order to make enough space for everyone to have their privacy. But I don’t think anyone will mind sleeping in a slightly musty room and no one will miss those old books when there is so much else to do, don’t you agree, Vangey!”

Wallis had laughed, waving her hands in the air, drawing Evangeline’s attention to a charm bracelet from which dangled several different-coloured crosses. Noticing the direction of Evangeline’s gaze, Wallis explained.

“David inscribes the date on one of these crosses when something important happens that he wants me to remember. Look at this last one! Can you see that it says ‘God Save the King for Wallis 16.vii.36’ in his own handwriting? That’s to remember the day he avoided being shot at in the Mall! Isn’t he a hoot?”

Evangeline hoped without much conviction that the extra room on board the Nahlin had not been created to accommodate her. She loathed must. The yacht sounded wonderful though. She belonged to Lady Annie Henrietta Yule, the widow of a man who had made a colossal sum of money in India out of tea, jute and paper. Lady Yule had asked John Brown, the famous Clydebank shipyard, to build her the first privately owned steamship.

There was no limit to the extravagance to which the king intended to go, in order that he and his guests should enjoy their summer holiday. The crew, the food, the drink, the opportunities for lazing, dancing, sleeping and loving were all to be of the highest standard.

“David has even ordered a huge supply of golf balls to be packed on the ship so that it doesn’t matter how many he drives into the ocean!” Wallis chuckled.

However, security rather than luxury was the uppermost consideration in the minds of the king’s advisors. The Nahlin was to be guarded by two destroyers, the Glow Worm and the Grafton and, by chance, May’s brother had been billeted to join Royal Navy officers on board. Sam had been impressing his superiors since the day he joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve and the responsibility for guarding this precious cargo, and for making sure that certain papers of state were delivered to the Nahlin on a daily basis, was only entrusted to the most promising and reliable of young recruits.

Among the crew were several lads who had grown up on the Western Isles of Scotland, the connection with his maternal homeland making Sam happier than he had been since the day before hearing the news of his mother’s death. The crew was informed that the Nahlin had been rented for the month of August by the reclusive Duke of Lancaster, who no one knew anything about and no one could remember having actually met. But whoever he was the joint crews of the destroyers would ensure there would be no security mishaps for the mysterious duke.

Evangeline had packed her black bathing suit with some misgivings. She had been troubled by her ignorance of cruise wardrobes especially after Wallis’s advice on what to pack had not been any help at all, even though she was in no doubt that Wallis had planned her own shipboard trousseau with her usual meticulous flair and precision.

“Oh, just bring any old thing, Vangey!” Wallis had said airily. “I will be dressed most informally myself and David’s valet has only included one proper suit for the obligatory emergency royal funeral rig. Otherwise David plans to be as casual as he is at the Fort, and you know what that means?”

Evangeline knew only too well. The well-worn shorts that had done double duty as bathing trunks during the unfortunate rescue mission at the Fort swimming pool had made many subsequent appearances. Evangeline herself had not ventured into the water since the mishap. No unkind remarks had been made to her face but she suspected her little accident had been discussed extremely behind her back.

Evangeline had intermittently wondered if it might have been wiser to remain at Cuckmere for August, even though Philip had assured her he would just about manage the hosting of any country dinner parties on his own. Most of the time, however, he would remain in London but never too far from a telephone, just in case Joan woke up. His optimism was impressive. Joan had remained in hospital and had barely moved a muscle of her face since Myrtle’s abortive visit and she remained fearfully thin. The truth was Philip was so distressed by his wife’s unchanging condition that his visits had become too painful to endure except on the rarest of occasions.


The Royal party arrived in Yugoslavia on 10 August 1936 for the final leg of their outward journey to the coast, having exchanged the Orient Express for the Yugoslav royal train. While the party made a brief diplomatic stop to take tea with Prince Paul, a couple of well-informed photographers were waiting at the railway station, hoping to bag a shot that would confirm the shared holiday plans of the king and Mrs. Simpson. They had been rewarded with a single frame that they intended to sell for a tidy sum to as many European newspapers as possible.

The Nahlin was moored in the harbour at Sibenik on the Dalmatian Coast, with the pleasing simplicity of the vessel’s three-hundred-foot outline reflected in the clear mirror of the Adriatic waters. The ship that was to be home to the royal party for the next four weeks gleamed white against a backdrop of tree-covered mountains, and the first sight of her took away the collective breath of her distinguished passengers.

“Oh my!” Evangeline exclaimed, overcome by a rare move to literary eloquence. “What happiness it will be to bask in the sunshine of eternal bliss!”

She had a feeling this might have been a quote from William Shakespeare, because it sure sounded like one. She wished Julian could be there to hear her say it instead of indulging himself in the hedonistic playgrounds of Berlin. She comforted herself by thinking how tired he would become of the empty-headed Lottie, and at the same time how relieved he would be to escape May’s persistent proposals for bicycle rides.

Finding themselves torn between the beauty of the ship and the unexpected sight of crowds of strangers gathered on the opposite side of the port, the king’s guests could not disguise their anxiety at what they had let themselves in for. The captain of the Nahlin estimated twenty thousand Yugoslavs—splendid in their national costume and alerted by the latest newspaper stories, complete with photographs—had come out to look. It was immediately evident that the Sibenik crowds were interested less in the figure of the king than in his female companion.

After a few days spent in absolute privacy cruising the sparkling waters, the holidaymakers docked at a small harbour off one of the Greek islands where it was confirmed that the pseudonymous cover of the Duke of Lancaster (in truth, one of the king’s own subsidiary titles) had been blown. With a look of doom mingled with disapproval, the king’s equerry, Sir John Aird, informed his employer that an everincreasing number of publications in America and Europe were covering the royal cruise and that interest in the king’s personal relationship with Mrs. Simpson was mounting by the day. As well as revealing the basic itinerary the newspapers had announced the names of “Britain’s king’s guests,” including “a divorced woman from Baltimore.”

The couple around whom so much speculation fizzed were sharing one end of the yacht, while the guests were marshalled in the state rooms at the other. Evangeline comforted herself that although the former library was indeed rather musty, she supposed she should count her lucky stars that she was on board at all. All her early hopes that the romantic focus of the cruise might be expanded were soon dashed. The guest list comprised the King’s various equerries as well as several safely married couples, including the formidable Lady Diana Cooper and her parliamentary husband Duff. Sadly Mrs. Merryman had decided to stay put for the summer on the other side of the Atlantic, as her presence would have made the ignominy of being an unmatched woman more bearable. There were of course several singletons among the crew, but even Evangeline had to concede that there wasn’t much chance of a middle-aged dame from Baltimore finding a non-English-speaking deckhand from Greece to be a suitable beau, in order to teach Julian a lesson in what he might be missing.

The guests settled into a routine of want-for-nothing indulgence. With staff at the ready to satisfy every whim, much of the time was spent doing nothing much at all. Lazing in the luxurious state rooms, stretching out on soft-cushioned and deep-mattressed chaise longues, eating fish that had been swimming in the warm waters beneath the boat only an hour earlier, puzzling over jigsaws, playing cards, reading, dozing, flirting and chatting of inconsequences all amounted to justifiable activity of a holiday nature. The king was certainly in a holiday mood. He had acquired a shrimping net that he would dangle in the water, while floating around the Nahlin in a small dingy. His cooperative subjects would lean over the side of the ship encouraging him.

“There’s a big one, sir,” they would say, pointing helpfully, while the king whooped like a schoolboy each time he trapped so much as a jellyfish. Around his neck two crosses on a silver chain glinted in the Mediterranean sun, matching the answering glint of those on the bracelet around Wallis’s wrist.

Whenever the guests wished to go on shore to explore the islands or to have dinner in a local restaurant, a pack of photographers waited to greet them; whenever the king disembarked for a morning of sightseeing, a jaunty holiday pipe in his mouth instead of the familiar cigarette, there would be loud shouts of “cheerio” in an exaggerated British accent. In Dubrovnik romantics reminded the royal couple how important it was to “long live love” by shouting “zivila ljubav” in their own language. One day the Nahlin slipped along the four-mile-long waterway that sliced through the isthmus joining the Peloponnesian peninsula to the Greek mainland. The towering sides of the Corinth Canal resembled the entrance to an Egyptian tomb, opening out not onto a long-abandoned burial place but instead onto the golden light of the Ionian Sea. The king remained on the bridge of the ship throughout the passage, mesmerised by the delicacy of the exercise, as the captain guided the Nahlin through the narrow cut. A pair of binoculars swung from his neck, and he was so engrossed in the manoeuvre that he appeared oblivious to the attention his half-naked state was attracting, delighting cheering onlookers with such informality. Evangeline noticed Lady Diana Cooper’s moue of disapproval as she watched the scene from the ship’s rail.

When the other guests left the yacht to go on land, Evangeline took to staying behind in the shade of the yacht. During the first week she had been determined to keep up and join in. But she had found herself quite out of breath and also vertiginously queasy on the precariously narrow paths. These walkways had been created over centuries by hundreds of indigenous black and white goats who continued to crisscross the rocky islands without a stumble. But each step of a canvas-shoe would send hundreds of little pebbles cascading down the cliff face, each mini-avalanche eroding the breadth of the path still further. Most of the Nahlin guests learned to navigate their way with confidence but such physical agility was denied Evangeline and the beauty of the view, high above a light-dancing sea, was compromised by her fear of falling hundreds of feet below into the water.

Evangeline’s habit of dawdling, whether to recover her breath or retie her laces meant that she often ended up a good fifty yards behind the person in front of her. From time to time the king would stop to tie his own lace and everyone would wait for him to complete the task. If there was a knot in the lace he would pause for longer, and during these interludes Evangeline would catch up with her companions, each one trying hard not to stare at the king’s bottom, which was stuck up in the air, quite unselfconsciously, as he bent over his shoe. Despite the benefits afforded by the king’s recalcitrant laces, after a couple of hours of wheezing and clutching in terror at tuffets of wild thyme to steady herself, Evangeline was always relieved to arrive at a crumbling temple, a lunchtime shelter from the heat and the glare. But these ancient buildings were hard-won goals and she soon decided that the quietness on the empty yacht offered an appealing alternative.

Sometimes she pleaded seasickness. This excuse was a beauty as it succeeded in absolving her from joining a terror-laden swimming party. On other occasions she would announce a previously undeclared passion for jigsaw puzzles, sentencing herself to a frustrating morning staring at hundreds of bits of odd-shaped pale blue and white fragments of wood and the impossible challenge of reproducing an impressionist’s cloud-spattered sky.

Evangeline had a further reason for wanting to be alone. She had begun to notice the increasingly tense atmosphere that existed between Wallis and the king. Wallis was often impatient and critical of her besotted suitor, who hovered anxiously and ever closer to her as if the earth beneath her feet would crumble at the faintest upset. He would go to every length to accommodate Wallis, agree with her or fetch things for her, giving an impression that the role of king and subject had been reversed. Evangeline tried to make sense of it. Wallis of course was not exactly a “subject,” and maybe that was the nub of it: respect. It was neither asked for nor given.

Everyone who spent time with the king, even those whom he claimed as his closest friends, treated him with a deference they showed to no other living person—everyone except Wallis. The oddest thing about her critical manner was not the king’s unquestioning acceptance of such behaviour but the enjoyment he apparently derived from it. The more of a bully she became, the more he seemed to like it. There was something schoolmistressy about the way she spoke to him that reminded Evangeline of the way a mother treats a wayward child. Could it be that Queen Mary had never devoted the time to discipline her eldest son? Or perhaps the explanation lay with his father, George V, who had been by all accounts an excessive disciplinarian and had squeezed out the gentler motherly instincts of his shy and slightly frightened wife. Either way, their eldest son, now in his forties, appeared to have at last found a variation of the maternal bond he had craved for so long.

Whatever the explanation for the strangeness of the relationship, Wallis seemed tenser by the day. Evangeline even wondered if some sort of breaking point was imminent. If so, the buildup was not enjoyable to witness. She wished for the dozenth time that Julian or even May were there to talk to. Lady Diana seemed aware that something was up but Evangeline did not dare introduce the subject and Lady Diana did not invite chattiness. Besides Lady Diana had recently been struck down with a bout of tonsillitis and was confined to her cabin.

Turning these thoughts over in her mind while the others were safely on land and out of sight, Evangeline would sometimes take off her summer dress and lie down on the shady deck in her patched-up bathing suit, with no threat of being watched. Occasionally she would remove her sweltering wig and pop it on the stool beside her, while at the same time ensuring her exposed and sensitive scalp remained well out of the sun’s glare.

One member of the crew became endearingly attentive to Evangeline. Georgio spoke nothing but Greek but he would always spot Evangeline sitting on her own, bent over a half-completed jigsaw of a wooden Renoir seascape. Her concentration was instantly and willingly sidetracked whenever the muscular young Greek appeared beside her, indicating with loud smacking noises of his fingers to his lips, that he would be happy to bring Evangeline something refreshing to drink, or maybe one of the chef’s pastry and honey cakes.

One afternoon when the rest of the party had gone ashore to look at a temple that predated the birth of Christ by five hundred years, Evangeline had chosen a favourite chair in the shade, near where the retractable sea ladder was stowed. As Georgio came up the ladder from the sea, she was about to call out in greeting when she saw he was not alone. Georgio did not notice Evangeline in the afternoon shadow because all his attention was focused on the figure that was following him up the steps from the water. A young woman appeared at the top of the ladder wearing a matching two-piece garment of pink gingham that had never featured in any of Evangeline’s fashion magazines. A brassiere encasing a pair of enviably firm breasts was separated from its matching pants by a flat, milk-chocolate torso. Georgio helped her onto the deck, his wet green trunks clinging to every contour of his formidable physique.

Motioning with a finger to his lips for the girl to stay silent, Georgio was doing all he could to contain his laughter. As the dripping couple stood together on the firm surface of the boat the semi-naked woman gripped the salty wet material of her swimming pants and licking her lips with the tip of a raspberry-pink tongue, she squeezed. A fine horizontal jet of water shot into the air before falling in shimmering droplets onto the deck. The party trick was answered by an appreciative kiss blown through the air from Georgio’s moistened lips.

Evangeline was unable to look away. Hand in hand the couple disappeared below deck, as Evangeline stared after them. Suddenly there was a movement in the shadows opposite. Muffled in a blanket, a bowl of yoghurt and a thermometer on the table beside her, Lady Diana Cooper was looking over at Evangeline and smiling very broadly indeed. Evangeline, flattered by the invitation to conspiracy, smiled back.

A sailor was polishing the handrail near the ladder up which Georgio and his friend had recently climbed. Evangeline thought she recognised May’s brother from the day when May had pointed him out at the maiden voyage of the Queen Mary.

“Sam?” she said enquiringly.

“Oh, Miss Nettlefold, what a nice surprise it is to see you!” Sam knew how fond his sister was of this large American lady and how kind she had been to May after the accident with the dog.

“Sam, what in the world are you doing here?” she asked.

He explained that he was one of several sailors who had been brought aboard from the Glow Worm and the Grafton to help out with the evening’s dinner party.

“Oh you have come from what Lady Diana calls the ‘nanny boats’?” Evangeline asked, looking over to Lady Diana with a smile, emboldened by her recent overture of friendliness.

But Sam was beginning to look uncomfortable. The family blush seeped up from his neck.

“Oh right. That’s good. And it’s very bald to be here. I mean nice.” Sam was mumbling. “Sorry, Miss Nettlefold. I hope you will excuse me. I must get on.”

As Evangeline went to her room in the former library to change for dinner and to contemplate the art of erotic arousal, she tried to work out exactly what Sam had said. Only when looking in the mirror for any horrible sign of sunburn did his words become clear. Appalled by her reflection, she opened the door to an urgent knock. Georgio was grinning as he held up what looked like a small limp black rodent.

“Lady Diana. She find it,” he explained, handing over the wig.


The king of Greece and his own house party were to arrive for dinner on the Nahlin from a nearby island, escorted across the water in a square scarlet gondola rowed by two oarsmen from the nanny boats. Edward VIII’s own piper stood on deck playing “Over the Sea to Skye,” one of the few tunes in his limited repertoire.

The king of England was the last member of the party to appear on deck. He was wearing a natty pair of white flannel trousers, blazer and a yachting cap and looked terrific. Wallis appeared equally glamorous, in an ankle-length white pleated skirt and a cream silk short-sleeved shirt with a square nautical collar edged in brilliant blue ribbon. Evangeline had not seen Wallis in the same outfit twice throughout the cruise except at lunchtime when a sunhat of white broderie anglaise resembling a baby’s bonnet would make its appearance as protection against the full glare of the sun. Beneath the rickrack trimming, Wallis’s adult face looked frankly absurd. One morning the bonnet was in its customary place at breakfast and, as Lady Diana Cooper’s glance travelled swiftly across the table from the bonnet to Evangeline, the two women’s eyes were, for a second, locked in a conspiratorial mirth born out of mutual contempt. Evangeline had felt a brief surge of hope that this beautiful, intimidating, clever, funny woman might wish to deepen her acquaintance with Evangeline into something bordering on friendship.

Wallis had been so caught up with the king throughout the cruise that Evangeline continued to question what she was doing on board the Nahlin at all. During long airless nights in the old library she considered whether the invitation to join the yacht had been borne out of nothing more than Wallis’s guilt. The idea that Evangeline was some sort of pitiable figure, the charity child that Lady Myrtle had so cruelly identified, did little for her confidence. Rather than enjoying herself on the cruise, her perceived ostracism only exacerbated her resentment of her old school friend. Evangeline was determined to make further affable overtures to Lady Diana.

As the piper continued with his wailing tune, Sam stood to attention with the other sailors, his skin once again restored to its usual pale and unblemished state. The king of Greece’s party had almost reached the Nahlin and Wallis tried to stand up, ready with her greeting. But the hem of her skirt had become caught on a leg of her chair and she fell suddenly and awkwardly backwards. Sam moved forward to the deck to release the trapped material but was beaten to it. As the king of England scrabbled on the deck, crumpling the knees of his perfectly laundered trousers, Wallis hissed at him loudly enough for everyone on deck to hear her.

“David! What are you doing? This is the most extraordinary performance I have ever seen! Are you mad?” Catching hold of his hand, she gripped it fiercely.

The king rose from the floor, his crestfallen expression bearing the mark of Wallis’s rebuke as he picked up one of Mrs. Simpson’s fingers and, bringing it up to his open mouth, kissed it.

Guests and crew alike had watched the humiliating episode, wondering with some foreboding where all this kingly subservience was leading. The attention of the foreign press on the king and Mrs. Simpson could perhaps be contained from the British public for a while, but small public indiscretions such as witnessed on the deck of the Nahlin only contributed to an ever-widening circle of gossip.


Eventually after one long sunny and largely indolent month the cruise came to an end and the guests dispersed in different directions. For Evangeline the magnificence of the Parthenon remained with her as the best moment of her holiday, a day when even she had managed the long climb up the Acropolis to the summit. In the sweltering heat of the last day of August she had reached the walls of the astonishing temple, so settled in its ancient place. Wandering into the vast open space of the Parthenon, built by an ancient civilisation for the virgin goddess Athena, she noticed Lady Diana and, eager for the chance to put the wig incident behind them, walked quickly towards her elegant straw-hatted figure. But she was not fast enough. Lady Diana’s husband had beaten her to it. Together the pair stood, their backs to Evangeline, presenting a unity that was unmistakably intimate. Evangeline moved away from them and looked out at the sea. The colour of the water reminded her of the glitter of the sapphire brooch that Wallis often wore, fashioned from her favourite gemstone.

“It matches the colour of my eyes so well, don’t you think, Vangey?” Wallis had asked with a coy little smirk.

Dragging her thoughts away from the woman who had puzzled and influenced her since her schooldays, Evangeline wondered if she would be able to find the right words to evoke the visual power of Greece, or to convey something of the extraordinary beauty of Athens. She knew who it was she so desperately wished to impress with her observations. But the prospect of warm baths and steady land beneath her feet convinced Evangeline that the end of the holiday had arrived not a moment too soon. It was already September by the time they disembarked from the Nahlin for the last time. Evangeline and Wallis continued their journey to Paris while the king returned to London alone. He intended to spend the last two weeks of the month up at Balmoral and hoped his decision would please Queen Mary, a stickler for all traditions, especially the royal family’s annual Scottish break. His relationship with his mother had deteriorated over the past few months as Queen Mary made her disapproval of Wallis increasingly obvious. Her son hoped he might be able to repair the damage although he was not looking forward to returning to “real life.”

“Striped trousers and coats again. Back to school,” he grimaced to Wallis and Evangeline, as he said his goodbyes.

As soon as Wallis and Evangeline arrived at the Meurice, a hotel familiar to Wallis from a couple of visits to the Parisian dressmaker earlier in the year, Wallis succumbed to an extreme tiredness. She had planned to visit the Avenue Georges V salon of her favourite couturier, Mainbocher, but she announced apologetically that a day or two to rest and recover her health was in order. The holiday seemed to have exhausted rather than energised her. The elasticity of her wide grin had sagged and she was even thinner than usual. Her quick wit and high spiritedness had noticeably ebbed over the past two weeks and been replaced with frequent outbursts of irritability, largely directed at the king himself.

“I am in such a gale, Vangey darling. I have a mountain of correspondence to deal with, and a difficult letter to write, so will you forgive me if I leave you to your own devices for the evening? If anyone asks, tell them I have a cold. Matter of fact, I am feeling pretty ropey. Overdone things a little, I guess.”

Several large envelopes addressed to Wallis in her aunt Bessie’s handwriting were awaiting her arrival at the hotel. Evangeline’s brother had also sent over a small packet of cuttings from the Baltimore and New York papers, among them a photograph of a scene on board the Nahlin of Wallis’s manicured hand resting gently on the king’s naked forearm. Goodness knows where the photograph had originated but the intimacy between the pair was undeniable. An accompanying note from Evangeline’s brother informed her that a New York publishing company already had a biography of Wallis in the works, titled From Baltimore to Balmoral.

For the whole of the next day Wallis refused to see anyone. She remained in her room, ordering room service to bring her plates of cold trout and salad and ears of American corn that were then left half-eaten on trays outside her bedroom door for every passer-by to see until the waiter came to remove them. The following morning Evangeline knocked on Wallis’s door and, not hearing an answer, turned the handle. Wallis was still in bed, her usually immaculate centre parting marking an untidy line across her scalp. She was wearing a pale, peach-coloured bed jacket made of a silky material and edged in swans’ down. The washed-out colour emphasised the sallowness of her complexion. Wallis had long suffered from terrible skin problems and Evangeline knew that the celebrated smoothness of her face was courtesy of Mrs. Gladys Furlonger, a queen in her own right, not of a kingdom but of the art of facial massage. In Mrs. Furlonger’s hands lay the secret to eternal youth, until the effect of her pricey ministrations wore off. Denied Mrs. Furlonger’s healing magic and exposed to undue amounts of Mediterranean sun despite the baby bonnet, Wallis looked worn out, unattractive and beaten. For a moment Evangeline felt a combined surge of pity and affection.

“Vangey, come and sit here,” Wallis said softly, patting a coverlet almost invisible beneath the mass of newspaper clippings scattered across it. “Thank the Lord you are here. You are my oldest and dearest friend, especially now that rat Mary has betrayed me.”

Evangeline folded her arms across her chest, determined not to allow her hands to be caught in that claustrophobic knuckly grip. Wallis had begun to sniff and soon tears were running with abandon down her cheeks, making little rivulets through a thick coating of Elizabeth Arden foundation.

“What is it, Wallis darling?” Sensing an imminent confession, Evangeline’s lovely voice was full of compassion.

“I just can’t do it, Evangeline. Do you hear me? I cannot and I will not.”

There was a pause followed by an extended indrawn sigh. Evangeline waited.

“The date for my divorce hearing has already been fixed for late next month. Ernest has agreed to some sort of arrangement suggested by the king and both men assure me all is amicable between them. Ernest is too sweet to make any fuss, though I confess I sometimes wish he would. But Vangey, I don’t think I can go through with it. Ernest and I belong together. Mary means nothing to him, I know that much. And I also know some people consider Ernest a bit dull, but for me he is a safe pair of hands. We get along together just fine.” Wallis went on, her voice emphasising the inflexibility of her resolve. “That’s it. Ernest gives me security. That is definitely what he gives me. So I must escape from David as soon as possible. I never ever meant it to go as far as this. Never.”

“Surely you cannot mean this?” Evangeline interrupted, her own voice now trembling a little but Wallis waved her silent, struggling to steady herself as she continued with her extended confession.

“He keeps quoting the Bible at me, Vangey. He says there is a time to weep, a time to smile, a time to rend, a time to sew … and …”

And breaking off for a surprisingly fierce laugh, Wallis continued.

“And he does not mean those damn tapestries that he is always stitching away at. Anyway, he says there is a time for everything and that now is his time to marry. God help me, Vangey, but what kind of a mess have I gotten myself into here? I feel I am going to go mad! In fact, I think I am getting ill again. Not just this damned cold but all those stomach troubles that I had earlier in the year have returned.”

Wallis fell back against the pillows as if defeated by life. Both women were shocked into silence by the implications of what Wallis was saying.

“Pass me my sable wrap from over there, Vangey, will you, there’s a dear.” Wallis instructed eventually, indicating a chair with a feeble wave of the hand.

The knuckly fingers were naked of their usual cluster of rings but as Wallis pulled the fur around her bony shoulders she seemed to gather a new strength.

“I want to add one more thing, Evangeline, in case you are in any doubt about my intentions. I want you to know that I am convinced of one unshakeable truth. David and I as a married pair would create disaster together!”

She reached over to the small table beside the bed and picked up a sealed blue airmail envelope. Her voice was much calmer now.

“I am going to tell you a secret, Vangey. I want you to know that I have broken the whole thing off. Matter of fact, I have written to David to tell him that this is the end of it.” Wallis waved the blue envelope at Evangeline. “I have told him that we would never make each other happy. The money and the jewels, well, most of the jewels, perhaps not the sapphires, will be sent back to him. And when I get back to England I am going to return to Ernest and then we will all go back to America and you will come with me and we will find you another Wiggle as a reward for being the most stalwart of all friends. Perhaps the king would still let you have Slipper’s puppy. What do you say, darling Vangey?”

The tears had dried and the old familiar confidence had returned as unexpectedly as the appearance of stars on a cloudy night. Evangeline was so taken aback by this dramatic turn of events that she could only stare at Wallis openmouthed. Of course she had not been the only cruise member to notice the signs that all was not right between Wallis and the king, but this momentous decision was a volte-face that even Evangeline had not anticipated. The idea of giving up the unconditional adoration of a man was inconceivable to Evangeline, in any circumstances. But to give up the love of a king was something that only a lunatic would consider.

And yet Evangeline found herself moved by Wallis’s confession and by the trust Wallis had placed in her by making it. The two of them would be proper friends again. They could make plans together. Their lives would be set in some kind of direction. Rapidly Evangeline thought through some of the consequences of Wallis’s decision. Evangeline was certain that the king would put up a pretty fierce fight to keep Wallis. She had seen too often the way he looked at her. Despite (or was it because of?) the firm way in which Wallis treated him there was no question that he was deeply in love with her. Nevertheless, Wallis was stubborn. Whatever obstacles the king might put in her way, Wallis would triumph. Of that Evangeline was certain.

Evangeline felt an unfamiliar rush of relief. It had been a difficult year but one which she would look back on with much affection especially for the time spent with the Blunts before Joan’s terrible illness. She wondered how she could have doubted the loyalty of her old school friend. In an unprecedented gesture, Evangeline found herself stretching out her own plump hand and giving Wallis’s naked knuckles a reassuring squeeze. It felt like gripping a leftover Sunday joint after poor Wiggle had chewed all remaining flesh from it.

“I admire you, Wallis,” she said, overcoming the impulse to withdraw her hand. “Most women would not have the courage that you have just demonstrated. And I want you to know you can count on my friendship. Your trust in confiding in me will never be forgotten.”



After returning to England, Evangeline heard nothing from Wallis for more than two weeks. She was not concerned. She knew that patching up things with Ernest and the unravelling of all the legal procedures previously set in motion for the divorce would take a while. And then there would be the business of moving back into number 5 Bryanston Court from the house in Regent’s Park that Wallis had taken after the temporary rupture with her husband. She expected that Wallis had already booked the passage for the three of them to New York. Wallis had promised they would all sail on the new Queen Mary as a treat.

One evening Evangeline was dining alone in St. John’s Wood with Philip. She had stopped reading all the newspapers, even the clippings sent by her brother from America. She was tired of all the false rumours that swirled through the European and American press and the British papers were so self-censorious about what they could and could not print that she saw no point in reading them either. The wireless had become her favourite means of staying in touch.

With a smug sense of knowing better, she listened to Philip mentioning stories that Wallis had been in Scotland with the king, the Mountbattens and those old friends of hers, the Hunters. The rumours had been confirmed in yesterday’s Times Court Circular, he said. There had been some critical muttering in the House that the king had begged off an official “kinging” engagement while up in Scotland, only to be seen by a press photographer driving himself to Aberdeen railway station to meet “a special guest.” Philip had also heard that the tartan halls of Balmoral, still decorated with the original plaids chosen by Queen Victoria, had witnessed quite unprecedented levels of gaiety over the past two weeks. With a knowing smile, Evangeline assured Philip that the rumours were definitely unfounded. The Times Court Circular must have included Wallis’s name by mistake. Tapping the side of her nose Evangeline apologised that she could not fill him in any further on Wallis’s plans as she was sworn to secrecy.

When the telephone eventually rang a week later on Joan’s long-unused desk in St. John’s Wood, Evangeline picked up the receiver and on hearing Wallis’s steady voice at the other end was pleased to know that her recovery from the momentous Paris decision had been speedy. Wallis was certainly a woman of considerable resilience.

“Vangey, darling. How are you?”

“Never better, Wallis my dear, and looking forward to seeing you.”

“Ah yes, well there is a slight difficulty about making any plans for the week or so I’m afraid,” Wallis replied, sounding apologetic. “I expect you have seen from the Court Circular that I have been away up in Scotland? Well, without going into matters that I feel are best left unspoken now,” and at this point Wallis’s voice assumed a conspiratorial tone, “I am going to lie low for a while. I have been staying at Claridge’s but as a matter of fact I am just off to spend a few days in a little house in Felixstowe in Suffolk. Kitty and George Hunter are coming with me so I won’t be on my own, just in case you were worrying. That legal matter, you understand, for which I want only my closest married friends near me. But there is nothing to worry about. Sorry that I can’t stop to talk just now. There are so many people making demands on my time. On my return from Suffolk I think we have dinner engagements every night for three weeks! But I will be back on the horn just as soon as I can.”

And then, just before hanging up she added something.

“Oh, and Vangey, be a dear and agree to walk Slipper’s puppy while I am away? I have asked Osborne to have him brought up from the Fort and delivered to Hamilton Terrace. We have taken up your suggestion and called him Loafer, just to keep the shoe theme going, and to remind him he belongs to an American! I know you will be pleased to take care of the precious animal for me.”

The voice was extinguished with a click so sudden that Evangeline had no time to respond. Clearly the conversation in Paris had meant nothing. Talk about basking in the sunny company of kings! Surely Wallis must realise her mistake in prolonging her relationship with the king instead of returning at once to Ernest? Was she entirely lacking in common decency by not ending her dalliance now? What was in her head by going through with the divorce from her husband? Had Wallis not learned her lesson with her first marriage that decent men like Ernest were hard to come by? The business with Mary Raffray had surely only come about because Wallis had inadvertently pushed Ernest into it. After all, if one’s wife were conducting a steamy relationship with a king, most men would run for the arms of another woman. Fickle, that’s what Wallis was, Evangeline concluded, the sort of female who is seduced by position, sycophancy, power and gemstones. As well as the betrayal she had made to the hapless Ernest, Wallis’s behaviour amounted just as much to a betrayal of Evangeline herself. And the assumption of the woman, lumbering Evangeline with the dog without so much as an “if you please” was the final straw.

Evangeline remained sitting at Joan’s desk considering the nature of treachery. She was angry and tried to calm herself down by analysing the reasons for her anger, even forcing herself to admit that she had drawn pleasure from the gradual collapse of Wallis’s relationship with the king. The concept of “W. E.”—the combined initials of the two names of the lovers, Wallis and Edward, their own private cipher—had nauseated her while at the same time brought up the memory of her and Wallis’s own schoolgirl code: Gel-lis. Suddenly Evangeline was overwhelmingly and dangerously jealous, the oath of friendship she had made so recently in the hotel in Paris wholly invalidated.

Evangeline opened Joan’s telephone book, and turned to the entry marked Sir John Reith. As soon as the call was answered she came straight to the point.

“Oh, Sir John. This is Evangeline Nettlefold speaking. You remember? Well, yes, I do recall you saying something to me about the velvet voice! Most kind! I have been thinking over our delightful conversation at Philip’s dinner at Cuckmere back in the summer, and I have decided I would be more than happy to take up your suggestion that I introduce a flavour of my country to your listeners. I have just one proviso. Could we keep the plan to ourselves for now? I would like it to be a surprise for Wallis.”

And having arranged to meet at a discreet rendezvous to discuss the idea further, Evangeline put the receiver gently back in its cradle feeling that perhaps she was gaining the upper hand at last.