Abdication A Novel

Chapter TWENTY-THREE





Early on Sunday morning, with the late November sunshine struggling to make any impact on the cold temperatures, May set out once again on the road from London to Fort Belvedere. Sir Philip was sitting in the front seat as he so often liked to do. He had been helping Mr. Monckton with legal advice for many weeks now and was planning to stay the night at the Fort. He had been given the small bedroom at the back of the house that was usually reserved for the use of a visiting valet and May had been given the rest of the day off.

“I fear these comings and goings from London might last a good few days yet, my dear, so try and conserve your strength while you can.”

May was pleased to get home to Oak Street and had been enjoying looking out of her attic window watching the scene below. Mrs. Cohen was scrubbing her front door step opposite. She was as lean as her husband had been fleshy. Next door Mrs. Smith was also hard at work on her own doorstep, her pride ensuring standards were kept up, even though her high spirits had been extinguished by widowhood. Mr. Smith’s desperate leap into the river, his two children holding trustingly to his hands, had not been forgotten by anyone on the street. It was common knowledge that the unwanted pregnancy, the catalyst for the tragedy, had been seen to by a kindly woman who lived above the butcher’s.

“Gave me a good price, she did, seeing we are all part of the same neighbourhood,” Mrs. Smith had informed Rachel with a touching acceptance of her lot.

At lunchtime the following day the children were at school while their parents were at work or busy inside their homes. The street was unusually still. No one was at home at number 52 Oak Street except May. On hearing a double knock on the door May took the rungs of her attic ladder at well-practised speed and skipped down the flight of stairs. There was always the unlikely hope that Julian would tire of Spain and turn up at Oak Street out of the blue as he had done once before.

Sam was waiting on the doorstep.

“Are you all right?” she asked him as he followed her into the house. “You look so pale.”

“Actually, would you mind if we went out?” he asked her. “I want to be with you. But not here. Somewhere where it’s just us? I was coming to see if you fancied a trip to Sydenham to see the Crystal Palace? If we hurry we could take the train to Forest Hill and still get there in the light.”

May quickly recovered from her disappointment that Sam was not Julian, and went to get her coat. She had seen so little of her brother recently. He had not been home on leave since before the birth of Joshua and had missed the whole drama of Mosley’s march.

They reached the park and sat down on a bench within sight of Paxton’s spectacular glass structure. The building had been designed as the showcase for Queen Victoria’s Great Exhibition and for eighty years it had been a source of pride for Londoners. Brother and sister stared in admiration at the biggest and most beautiful greenhouse they had ever seen before Sam reached deep into the pocket of his navy coat and drew out a white envelope covered with muddy fingerprints.

In handwriting familiar to May and Sam ever since it had appeared on the flyleaf of their first schoolbooks, the name May Gladys Thomas was inscribed on the front and beneath it Sam Benjamin Thomas. May looked at Sam, puzzled and alarmed.

“A friend, well actually you know him. William? From the consignment ship? Well, he brought this over with him last week and posted it from Liverpool. It arrived at my digs in Portsmouth yesterday,” Sam explained. “Bertha got in touch with him. After Mamma died she sorted through all her things and came across this letter. Apparently it was in a box containing a huge stash of correspondence with postmarks from India. Knowing William was a friend of mine, Bertha asked him to bring the letter with him to England when he next sailed.”

For the past few months, May’s grief had subsided like an exhausted butterfly beating its wings against a closed window. The sight of her mother’s writing threatened to revive the receding pain.

“You open it,” Sam said encouragingly. “Your name is on the top. Girls first.”

The seal on the envelope gave way easily and cleanly. The date at the top of the page was the date of their sailing to England, in December 1935. Sam moved closer to May on the bench and she began to read aloud.



My beloved children,

I have no idea in what circumstances you will read this letter, if indeed you ever will. What I would like best is to come over to England, and hold both your hands as we always do when there is something important to speak of, and then I would read this to you myself. The purpose in writing the letter is as much for myself as for both of you. Sometimes (as I know I have said so many times that it makes you groan), I feel that the very act of writing things down makes truths true and whole.

I want to begin by saying that the only consistent source of emotional happiness in my life has been my love for you, my children. And now, on the day in which you have both sailed away from me, perhaps to a new life that I will never know, I feel it is the right time to tell you the truths that, as my children, you have the right to know. So here is the story of my life as simply as I can set it down.

I was not in love on the day of my wedding. I married on an impulse, probably for security, possibly as an adventure, but whatever the reasons were, I soon realised I had made a terrible mistake. Duncan (as I will call him here) devoted more care to his work than to anything or anyone else. I was lonely. I missed Scotland. I missed my sister. I missed my parents. And I felt I had missed out on life’s opportunity to love and to be loved.

At the beginning of the Great War, Duncan left Barbados and joined the navy, expecting to be gone for just a few months and I stayed behind to care for our son, Sam, who was by then two years old. I longed for companionship and while Duncan was away I fell in love.

Gabriel Nischal Ramsay was half-Indian and his middle name, that suited him so well, meant “calm.” I used to call him Nishy. His British father, Mr. Ramsay, had worked for the maharaja of Jaipur looking after the regal elephants, just as his grandfather had before him. Time and science moved forward and, with the arrival of the motorcar, working elephants were no longer used for transport at the royal court. One of Mr. Ramsay’s chief responsibilities was to oversee the upkeep of the maharaja’s cars, a job in which he took pride and from which he derived much pleasure. Although Nishy’s parents were happy enough together, his mother, an English teacher to the royal children and a woman of great beauty, had a brief affair early in her marriage with the maharaja’s younger brother and conceived a child. Nishy’s phial of royal blood was well known to those at court, accepted although never discussed.

Looking for adventure, Nishy left the court at Rajasthan in 1912 and travelled to the West Indies, where he got a job at Duncan’s plantation. He worked hard and was well liked, particularly by Duncan. Soon Nishy was promoted to the role of deputy manager while in his spare time he made sure all was well with our car.

When Duncan was given leave for one wartime visit to the plantation in the early autumn of 1915 (and here I apologise to Sam for revealing something that no child should hear from his mother), I could not bear to be intimate with him.

Duncan took the rejection badly and a few weeks after he returned to the army—angry, and humiliated—I discovered I was pregnant with Nishy’s child. Nishy and I told no one except Bertha, a woman whose unconditional loyalty has sustained me throughout all these years. When our olive-skinned daughter, one-quarter Indian and blessed by royal blood, was born in the early summer of 1916 Nishy and I called her May after the month of her birth and a time of year when all the world seems full of hope and promise.

Duncan returned to Barbados in the summer of 1917, took one look at the year-old baby, saw the touch of darkness on her skin and realised what must have happened. There was a violent and dreadful row and Nishy, fearing for his life, returned at once to Rajasthan. He wanted me to follow him but Duncan’s threats of recrimination eroded my resolve. I prayed daily for the courage to scoop my children into my arms and escape to Nishy in India or to my parents in Scotland or to my sister and her family in London. I will never cease to regret that fear prevented me from doing so. I remained on the island, sustained by motherhood alone.

I have not seen Nishy since the day we were parted but we have written to each other every single week. For eighteen years I have brought my letter to the plantation office where Bertha’s husband, Tom, conceals it within the outgoing pile of mail. Nishy’s letter to me waits for collection from the Speightstown post office in an envelope addressed to Bertha. She continues to run the risk of being questioned about receiving letters from her cousin in India. When you, May, my daughter, began taking the post to Speightstown a few years ago, you were unaware that the documents you carried in your hands were letters of love between your parents. I have saved all Nishy’s letters and I hope that one day they will be given to you so you can both understand and forgive.

Duncan’s one condition in allowing you, May, to live in the family house was that neither you nor Sam should ever be told the truth of May’s parentage. I agreed to keep the secret. No one challenged the assumption that the beautiful child with her dark skin was Duncan’s daughter. Duncan’s own war injuries had resulted in a cruel infertility and with my infidelity, the loss of his manhood, and the death of an adored elder brother, he began to drink. In the navy, rum had been a fifth element, like air or water. The alcohol exacerbated his anger and his moods were and are often terrifying.

At first he could not bring himself to look at the new baby, aware perhaps that no child of such beauty could have been conceived out of anything other than love. But after a few years his behaviour towards you began to evolve into one of stifling affection. He told me that if he could not love you as a father he would love you “better than a father.” I did not object. I reasoned that it was better that he loved you too much than not at all.

Throughout the years Duncan’s regard, even love for you, Sam, remained intact. He was proud of you and it was only because of that pride and the hope that you gave him amidst his own failure, that he agreed you should both go to England. My own fears for your safety were softened by knowing you would be in the care of Nathanial, who I trust with you both on my sister’s life.

I count the days I have already spent without you and wonder how long I can continue with an existence that feels so empty. Duncan is angrier than ever. He blames himself for letting you go just as he blamed himself for leaving me during the war.

But if he had not left me then I would never have known the love of Nishy, nor spent three years with my beloved son all to myself, nor had the joy of becoming the mother to my precious daughter.

Whatever happens to me, never forget that I have always been

Your adoring

Mamma



May put the letter back in the envelope feeling dazed. The tragedy on the beach no longer seemed accidental. She put her arm round her brother’s shoulders.

“I hated Duncan too,” Sam said quietly, his use of the first name for his father unmistakably cold. Sam had been five years old when Duncan returned home from the war. He was old enough to remember the day on which he had witnessed his mother’s terror, a day when his father and Nishy—gentle and soft-spoken, with his dark skin and the pointed beard—had had a huge argument. And Sam also remembered how his mother had continued to weep long after Nishy had inexplicably disappeared. Sam stood up from the bench, put his hands into his pockets and kicked at the few remaining autumn leaves that were skipping across the wide, deserted avenues of the park. A fireball of a sun was already setting ahead of them.

“I saw what Duncan did to Mum. When he was away at the war I came to love Nishy too. After he left I saw Mum’s unhappiness and I saw how strangely Duncan behaved towards you. He sort of loved you yet at the same time he could speak so unkindly to you. It was almost as if he possessed you. But he was my father and I was not sure what to do. Now I am not sure I will ever forgive myself for doing nothing.”

May looked at Sam through her tears before glancing down at her hands. For the first time in her life their colour seemed beautiful. She pushed one of them deep into the pocket of her brother’s coat, hoping her touch would confirm that she blamed him for nothing. But she did not want Sam’s opinion of his father to be damaged further. She knew then that she would never tell him the full truth of Duncan’s abuse. Her mother had never known of Duncan’s secret bedtime nips and his subsequent mistreatment of the girl who was not his daughter, and May was glad. Her mother had suffered enough and Sam should not be made to inherit that suffering.

Their hands remained linked as they made their way out of the park and towards the underground. They continued to talk. They promised each other that they would write to Nishy, the man who had made their mother so happy. And they would write to Bertha and to Tom to thank them for their courageous selflessness. And they pledged to one another that if they ever saw Duncan again they would confront him together, fearlessly.


They returned home early that evening from the Crystal Palace exhausted. A few hours later the famous building was almost completely destroyed by fire. The colossal blaze stained the whole sky red and was rumoured to have started with a smouldering cigarette thrown carelessly into a dusty grating. The Times reported how it had been possible to read newsprint at several hundred yards distance so bright were the flames. Soot-blackened goldfish had been seen swimming in a fountain filled with the fallen debris of stone effigies of British kings. Days later, smoke had continued to swirl around the two central water towers that had miraculously escaped intact. Rachel swore that she had actually heard the roof of the Egyptian Hall fall in.

“The man on the wireless said the noise of the crash had travelled five miles. And Mrs. Cohen said her Benjamin saw the glow from down at the coast. Are you listening to me, Simon?”

But Simon was listening to the news on the wireless.

“I don’t know about buildings,” he replied, “but it looks like something else is about to go up in flames.”


May said nothing to the Greenfelds or the Castors about the revelations contained within her mother’s letter. The news of her mother’s love affair made her long more than anything to talk to Julian but she did not know when her chance would come. He had sent her a postcard to say he had arrived safely in Paris and that he would write again when he reached Spain. Since then she had heard nothing more. She was grateful that her work for Sir Philip had become even more demanding. There were more letters and reports to type and more telephone calls to make, to receive and to field than she could remember. And the secretarial work had somehow to be squeezed in between driving to and from the relentless number of meetings, lunches and dinners that packed Sir Philip’s every waking hour. At least May had no time yet to dwell either on the momentous discovery about her parentage, or on Julian’s silence.

Sometimes she dropped Sir Philip off at Number 10, sometimes she waited late into the night outside the Houses of Parliament until he emerged looking ever more anxious. The story of “the king’s matter” finally reached the daily newspapers on Thursday 3 December, triggered by a public remark from a voluble cleric.

The Bishop of Bradford had put a question to the diocesan conference about whether the king had a comprehensive understanding of the full spiritual significance of the upcoming coronation. The British press, silent for so long over the king’s relationship with Mrs. Simpson, allowed themselves to interpret the Bishop’s doubts as their long-awaited licence to reveal the whole story.

Each morning for a week Sir Philip had sat in the front seat of the car either on the way to the House of Commons or to Fort Belvedere, reading The Times aloud as May drove him through the streets of London and the lanes of Berkshire. Under a headline entitled “King and Monarchy,” The Times revealed how parts of the foreign press were “predicting a marriage incompatible with the throne.” The prime minister had not yet commented publicly although the surprisingly modest prime ministerial car was often parked in the Fort driveway during those few frenetic days. On Friday 4 December, under another headline, “A King’s Marriage,” The Times reported that Mr. Baldwin had assured the House that “no constitutional difficulty exists at present” and a couple of days later two lines at last gave some information concerning the woman at the centre of the whole drama.

“Mrs. Simpson left England on Thursday night. It is believed her destination is Cannes.”

On Sunday May was again given the day off and went to the pictures with Rachel. Both women joined the cinema audience as they jumped to their feet and sung the national anthem louder than ever followed by a rousing round of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”

Mrs. Simpson had released a personal statement to the press.

“Mrs. Simpson is willing to withdraw forthwith from a situation that has been rendered both unhappy and untenable,” it read.

“Well I never. The cheek of it!” Rachel fumed. “She might have thought of that before, Simon, don’t you think? What must his mother be feeling now? It’s Queen Mary who I feel sorry for. Queen or no queen, she’s a mother, and must be as worried as any of us would be.”

On each successive day of the following week members of parliament packed the chamber in anticipation of a statement from Stanley Baldwin. Each day they returned home no wiser about the king’s final decision. Sir Philip and Mr. Monckton were only two of the advisors who hurried through the doors of the Fort, Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament and 10 Downing Street. Chauffeurs in the employ of the archbishop of Canterbury; the prime minister; Mr. Neville Chamberlain, the chancellor; Mr. Anthony Eden, the foreign secretary; and Mr. John Simon, the home secretary, gathered in servants’ halls and in car parks and in the street with the drivers working for Mr. Winston Churchill, Mr. Duff Cooper and Sir Oswald Mosley.

May was well known to most of these drivers. During the preceding eleven months she had spent long hours in their company, waiting for Sir Philip and their employers to conclude meetings on which major national decisions depended. If at first these hard-talking, tobacco-inhaling chauffeurs had shown surprise at a woman’s inclusion among their number, they, like the taxi drivers, had quickly come to respect her for her professionalism and secretly to admire her for her comeliness. Indeed, there was more curiosity in Sir Oswald’s driver than in May. Over packets of Woodbines and cups of tea the man who had driven the leader of the British fascists to the march at Cable Street and once to Cuckmere Park was asked to justify his presence within this distinguished group.

“From what I hear on my side of the glass screen,” he explained, “Mr. Baldwin thinks Sir Oswald could help in making the king see sense about his fancy woman. And he’s not all bad, Sir Oswald, you know. He has ideas that some people find appealing. Take my missus for example. She says Mosley wants to give women a good deal, what with offering them the same party member rights as a man. Her women friends agree with her that Sir Oswald talks sense. Can’t see it myself,” he added. “But a job’s a job, isn’t it?”

The other drivers muttered their support for Mosley’s inclusion in the king’s team of advisors. All the chauffeurs were united in their fear that the monarchy was on the verge of collapse and when they were joined late in the proceedings by the driver employed by the Duke of York they all speculated on the role his boss might be playing in a few days’ time.


On Thursday 10 December Sir Philip climbed wearily into the front seat of the blue Rolls-Royce. As May pulled away from the kerb Sir Philip took off his hat and buried his head in his hands. The car crossed over Westminster Bridge, the murky grey water beneath running at speed with the turning tide and Sir Philip tugged his fingers through his long uncombed hair. Eventually he spoke.

“Thank God it is all over. Edward VIII has signed the documents and Mr. Baldwin read us the statement this afternoon. By tomorrow Britain will have a new king, and you and I will deserve a rest.”