“If it’s that damned Colonel Cavello again he can go fuck himself. I don’t want to go to Morocco—or devote my time here to getting Francisco Franco’s name in the paper.”
“It’s not Cavello. It’s nobody I’ve ever seen here before.”
“I’m busy. I’m thinking. I’ve got a long piece to write, Bill.”
“Long pieces. Long Spanish days. Take the time. Who knows?” Laingen finished his drink, then smiled. He was happy here.
Spencer leaned back in his chair, then flung out his arms and yawned; he ran his hands through his now sun-bleached, graying hair and sighed. He would investigate. The diversion would help distract from the tension.
The huge, airy lobby was filled with people sitting or moving about beneath the slowly revolving ceiling fans, many of them in uniform and most of them Spaniards. None of them paid any attention whatsoever to Spencer, however. He walked about the room, glancing into faces, receiving nothing but curiosity or hostility in reply. Then, to the side, he glimpsed a blur of white. He paused, closing his eyes a moment, taking a deep breath, calming himself and trying to concentrate his senses against what might be hallucination derived from fatigue. When he felt restored to normal, he turned, and looked again.
When they had first met in Paris in 1931, and shortly afterward had an unhappy dispute, he had written her a long, ardent, and fatalistic letter, telling her that the quarrel was compelling evidence that they were badly suited for each other and that she would be wise to continue with her husband and certainly to find a friend more worthy of her than he had been. It had been a cynical letter, disapproving of romance and human trust, laced with more than a little self-pity, and utterly calculated to make her wish not to have anything to do with him again. It also made clear that he deeply loved her, but that was phrased bitterly, so that she would understand that he expected nothing of it.
A day later she appeared in the lobby of his cheap hotel in Montparnasse, perched atop a radiator by the entrance stairs, having waited for him perhaps for an hour or more, unannounced, unsure that he would soon descend or even that he was there. When he had seen her there, an aristocratic blond apparition in that grimy green-painted squalor, seen her eyes so steady on him and her expression so full of the need to convince him of her fairness and decency and affection, he fell in love all over again. He fell in love forever.
And now there she was again, not on a radiator, but in a deep chair. Again she wore white, but this time a thin cotton dress, and sandals. She was tanned. She may have been in Madrid for several days looking for him.
But he had no words for her. None would come. He hesitated. He was oddly dressed in desert boots, wrinkled white cotton trousers, a dark-blue shirt, and a khaki bush jacket. She, as always, was so fashionably perfect. Spencer rubbed his chin. He had, at least, remembered to shave.
When he came before her, all he could say was “Dear God.”
She stood up. “How about ‘dear Whitney?’”
“‘Dear Whitney,’” he repeated.
“That’s not much, is it? Let’s try, ‘dearest Whitney.’”
He took both her hands as she offered them. “You look marvelous. You’re so tan. I thought it’d been raining in Paris.”
“I stopped for a week in Biarritz. I wanted to think, on my own, about what I was doing.”
This hotel lobby was not the place for the conversation that was coming next.
“Let’s go someplace,” he said, taking her arm as they started toward the hotel’s main entrance. The touch of her bare skin thrilled and upset him.
He had no idea precisely where to go. The plaza was very bright with sunlight, and wonderfully pleasant. There was now a strong breeze, swaying the tree tops in the Parque del Retiro to the left. They stood a moment. He stared into her face, feeling like a child who had discovered he’d been given a present at Christmas he’d been yearning for all year. He wanted to touch her finely boned cheeks, to kiss those extraordinary blue eyes, run his hands through the long blond hair that was falling over her brow. This was the most beautiful woman in the world. He stood still, feeling awkward and uncomposed, but greatly excited.
“Why are you here?” he asked.
“Because you’re here.”
“How did you know where to find me?”
“Bill Laingen told me before he came down.”
“Good old Bill.”
“I asked him to. I’d been after him for weeks to find out for me where you were.”
Spencer looked about again. A file of troops was marching along the far edge of the square. Nearer, some politician or agitator was haranguing a small crowd. Spencer found himself thinking of the riot in the Place de la Concorde the previous fall.
“We should go somewhere,” he repeated “Have you ever been to Madrid before?”
“I’ve never been to Spain. Charles said there was only the bullfighting, and he despises bullfighting.”
“There’s more. Come on. I’ll take you to the Prado.”
“Jim! I didn’t come all the way down here to go to a museum. I came to see you. I need—we need to talk.”
“Just one painting.” He took her hand. It was like their first time together, going to the Louvre.
They entered the cool, cavernous, echoing building as the Spanish did, reverently, as if they were going into a cathedral.
“What is it, this one picture?” she asked, keeping her voice low. “A Velasquez, a Goya, an El Greco?”
“No,” he said. “It’s Hemingway’s favorite painting.”
When they reached it, he watched her face. A look of surprise came and went, and then her hand went to her chin as she studied it.
“She’s very beautiful,” Whitney said.
“It’s called ‘Portrait of a Woman,’ by Andrea del Sarto. Hemingway told us once in Harry’s Bar that this was the only woman for whom he ever had any lasting love.”
“Having read his books, I believe it,” she said. She stepped back. “Well, it’s quite wonderful, but it’s not the greatest painting in the world. Now, show me your favorite painting.”
“My favorite painting isn’t here,” he said. “It’s in the National Galleries of Scotland. It’s John Singer Sargent’s ‘Lady Agnew of Lochnaw.’ If she had blond hair and blue eyes, she’d be you, except she’s not quite so beautiful.”
“Is that why it’s your favorite? It’s a facsimile of me? I’ve given you photographs.”
“It’s my favorite because you have sometimes looked at me the way she is looking at the artist. You still do often, in my dreams.”
“Jim, please. Let’s find a place to talk.”
“All right. I know a café on the Calle Del Santa Isabel.”
They walked through the botanical gardens, holding hands like youthful lovers. She looked about at the flowers as they passed, a bemused expression on her face, which suddenly clouded.
“All this beauty,” she said, “but such ugliness here, too. They’ve painted slogans all over the walls, in blood-red paint.”
“A lot of that’s from the elections, but they put on new ones every day. I’m afraid the elections aren’t really over.”
“There was a dead man in the street by the railroad station. They were dragging him away as I came out. He had a sign around his neck. And in the cab, I glanced down a side street. There was a crowd of people chasing a nun, with sticks!”
“Do you remember the riots last October in Paris? I know you didn’t pay much attention to them.” He paused, regretting that. “I mean, you weren’t there. But as awful as they were, what’s going to happen here will be infinitely worse. That’s why I’ve come. That’s why I’ll be here a long time.”
She dropped his hand and they walked along in silence. In fact, she did not speak again until they were seated at their shaded outdoor table and he had ordered them each a chilled manzanilla.
“You said we had to talk,” he said with an amiable smile. “But you’ve said nothing.”
She
was staring down at her hands.
“I love you, Jim. That’s what I’ve come down to say.”
“You said that the night before I left.”
“Well, you left and were gone for months and I still love you. More than that, I know how much I love you. Your going away made me measure it, or try. It’s really more than I can measure.”
“Then you must know how much I love you.”
“Even though you went away.”
“Even though I went away. Perhaps especially because of that. I went away because I loved you so much and I couldn’t go on, I couldn’t accept what you were proposing.”
Their drinks came. She ignored hers. He sipped his. When he set down his glass, she put her hand on his and looked searchingly into his eyes.
“There’s something else I came down to say,” she said. She paused, glanced away, then back. “I can’t divorce Charles. Not if I want to stay in France. He simply won’t permit it and his church won’t permit it. He wants me to remain his wife, under any circumstances. And even if it were possible, I’m not sure I’d be able to go through it. I am so fond of him. He’s been so kind to me. He’s my family.”
“Well, my dear. That leaves us precisely where we were when I took ship for America.”
“No, it doesn’t, Jim.” She took his hand in both of hers now. “I was trying to create my own perfect little world and put you in your perfect little place inside it. I was thinking like a spoiled little girl. I wanted everything exactly my way, as Charles always arranged it, as my parents always arranged it for me. I’m so sorry for that.”
He only sighed.
“Jim, I’ve changed. I’ve changed a lot. The only fixed thing in this for me is that I can’t get a divorce. Otherwise, I want you on any terms, on your terms. Charles understands all this. Like a proper French gentleman, he has a mistress, for heaven’s sake. I don’t want to be your mistress, Jim. I want to be your love. For life. I want to be with your whenever I can. Whenever you can.”
“Whitney.”
“I’m not going to say ‘please,’ Jim. I’m not going to beg, or cry. I’m not that kind of woman. I know it’s not enough, but it’s all that I can offer. It’s more than I would offer to any other man, including Charles. It’s all we have, Jim. But it could work. We could have our love this way—forever.”
“There is no forever.”
“Please, Jim. Oh, dear. I’ve said it.”
She released his hands and sat back, as though relaxing from the completion of some enormous task. She took a sip of her manzanilla, now gone a little warm, and then sought his reply with her eyes. He could see her age now in her face. The young girl was gone and she was fully a woman. She had never looked more beautiful. The most beautiful woman in the world. Yet she had never looked more vulnerable. He could see the self—the gentle, loving person—behind the beauty.
He drummed on the tabletop, then finished his drink.
“I’d like to think about all this,” he said.
“Of course,” she said. “I plan to be here a week, unless they start rioting and shooting. Unless you decide to say no.”
“I have to get back to the hotel. I’m trying to set up a broadcast connection to New York for tonight.”
“I couldn’t get a room in your hotel. I’m in the Wellington.”
“It’s nearby. I’ll walk you there.”
They went back this time through the park, ignoring the sidewalk and instead strolling over the grass. They passed children playing and an old man asleep against the trunk of a tree. A small bird cried out and in darting flight passed in front of them, alighting for one brief instant on a branch, then flitting away to a higher one in another tree. The coolness was so unreal beneath such a bright and clear Spanish sky.
He did not take her arm or hand and she did not offer either. Because their conversation was still incomplete, because the great problem between them was so unresolved, physical contact was suspended. Everything between them was suspended.
“Jim,” she said. “If there is a revolution here I’m so afraid you’ll get hurt or killed. That’s what’s been on my mind most.”
“It’s on my mind once in a while, too. I don’t do this because I love the sound of bullets, the way George Washington once said he did. And you can killed anywhere. I was almost killed just crossing the Atlantic on an ocean liner.”
They walked on.
“All right,” he said. “Just for you, I promise not to get killed.”
They walked on still further. He paused, then led them on a few more paces, then stopped again, for good.
He took a deep, sighing breath. There were tiny tears at the edges of her eyes.
“All right,” he said. “I guess I’ve thought about all this long enough.”
“And the answer is no?”
“The answer is yes. Of course, damn it. Certainement. Absolument. Your terms, my terms, however we can do it. We’re the best you and I are ever going to get. You’re the—”
She didn’t let him finish, and he probably would not have in any event. They came together shamelessly, thigh to thigh, chest to chest, arms enfolding each other so tightly they seemed as one. Her kiss was as warm and sweet as any he had had with her in his dreams. He was dizzy from it, yet he could feel the breeze and hear the sounds around them in the park with almost supernatural clarity.
They swayed slightly and turned slightly, their eyes still closed, their lips and bodies still together. An unwanted image crossed his mind of this same sylvan loveliness piled high with bloodied corpses in months to come, but as long as they held each other, as long as there was the scent of her, the feel of her, the brush of her golden hair against his cheek, then indeed he and Whitney and what they had would go on forever and ever.
She stepped back, her hands moving to his arms. She looked at him deeply.
“Everything will be all right,” she said. “There is nothing in the world that’s going to happen that can hurt us. Not here in Spain, not anywhere. We’re going to go on as I said and everything will be all right. It will be wonderfully and perfectly all right.”
And then she came close and held him tightly again, and the breeze came and ruffled their clothes and hair. He stopped listening to the sounds of the park.
EPILOGUE
Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David Windsor was proclaimed King Edward VIII in the ceremonies attendant to the Proclamation of Accession at St. James Palace shortly following the death of his father in January 1936. Wallis Warfield Simpson, her husband conveniently in America, stood at his side. Within months, the story of their romance broke in the American press, favorably so in the newspapers of her admirer, William Randolph Hearst. When Mrs. Simpson later that year filed papers for divorce, and it was granted, allowing her to remarry by April 1937, the British press took up the story, forcing a constitutional and political crisis that resulted in the king’s abdication that December. His brother, Albert Frederick Arthur George, the Duke of York, took the throne as George VI. Edward dined with him the night before, drinking whiskey while having a pedicure. Edward left the throne with a personal fortune of at least $32 million and an agreement was negotiated that guaranteed him an annual income of about $1.2 million a year.
He and Wallis Simpson were married in France in June 1937, with Fruity Metcalfe as best man. Part of their honeymoon was ironically spent in an Austrian schloss lent them by the famous French-Jewish de Rothschild family. In the fall of that year, they journeyed to Nazi Germany as stellar visiting guests.
Edward and Wallis spent much of their remaining lives as exiles living in Paris and New York. In 1940, after the Nazi conquest of France, they stayed for a time in Portugal, where they were a target of then–German Foreign Minister Joseph Ribbentrop, who planned to capture them and enlist them in a plot to restore Edward to the throne of England once the Nazis had conquered Great Britain. Prime Minister Winston Churchill persuaded Edward to leave Portugal and become British governor of the
Bahama Islands, an assignment at which the by then Duke and Duchess of Windsor proved abysmal failures.
After the war the duke devoted himself largely to golf, his garden, his wife, and her social life, creating a sort of cardboard version of a royal court both in Paris and New York. Though he returned to England for royal funerals and other official occasions, he was never again embraced by the royal family. Queen Elizabeth II paid him an obligatory and strained visit in Paris shortly before his death in 1972.
Wallis Warfield Spencer Simpson Windsor never received a royal title, though other nonroyal spouses, such as Edward’s sister-in-law Elizabeth, wife of his brother King George VI, had received one upon their marriage. Edward persisted in calling Wallis “Her Royal Highness” after their marriage, but even such loyalists as Chips Channon and Lady Diana Cooper blanched at that.
The Duchess of Windsor devoted herself to her role as queen of what was called “café society” in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, and to acquiring jewelry and expensive clothes. By the time of his death, the duke’s fortune was much dissipated. In the 1950s her most frequent escort on her social rounds was not so much the duke as a wealthy and notorious homosexual named Jimmy Donahue, though the three of them were also frequently together. She later dropped Donahue after he began making public remarks about her sexual skills.
On the occasion of the duke’s death, the Duchess of Windsor was invited to be a guest at Buckingham Palace for the funeral, but the royal family was absent during her stay. Later in the 1970s, the duchess’s mental and physical health deteriorated rapidly. By 1979 she was bedridden and unable to communicate coherently. For much of the rest of her life, she was a virtual vegetable. Among her last lucid remarks was one expressing her fear that the royal family would not allow her to be buried next to her husband. It proved to be unfounded after she died in 1986 at the age of ninety.
Her jewels were bought up by actress Elizabeth Taylor, Arab speculators, and others for more than $18 million the next year at an auction held by Sotheby’s in Geneva. Sotheby’s hyped the sale by proclaiming the baubles that English high society had found so gaudy and tasteless as totems of “the love story of the century.”
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