by Wendy Holden
“Really?” The duchess’s smile was stiff. Her tone conveyed doubt at the idea that only a truly exceptional woman would be interested in the head of the British Empire.
The king seemed oblivious to any irony, however. “Oh yes. She loves hearing about my visits to housing associations, the unemployed of the Welsh valleys, whoever.”
The duchess now caught sight of her daughters in the doorway and stretched out her hands as to a savior. “Margaret! Lilibet!”
Marion felt her insides contract. Would Wallis recognize her? Acknowledge her? As they approached, the big black eyes looked into hers for a second. Then they passed on.
* * *
• • •
THAT NIGHT, MARION woke suddenly. She had heard something. Was it Lilibet again? Straightening her shoes?
She took a deep, disappointed breath. She had hoped to jolly the princess out of any return to her obsessive, worried ways. But perhaps, especially after this afternoon’s visit, it wasn’t possible.
She got out of bed, wincing as her warm soles hit the ever-freezing floor. She opened the door and put her head out into the corridor. The sound seemed to be coming from Mrs. Knight’s room, a few doors down.
Marion went to her door and listened. It sounded . . . although, surely not. She listened again. Yes, definitely. No doubt about it now. Mrs. Knight the indomitable, Mrs. Knight the flint-faced, Mrs. Knight, of all people, was crying.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Marion knocked. There was a creak, a grunt and the sound of two large bare feet making contact with the lino.
Marion had never seen Mrs. Knight at bedtime, and she made for a peculiar sight. Over her voluminous white flannel nightgown, she wore her heavy black outdoor coat. It looked crumpled, as if she had been sleeping in it.
“Are you all right?” Marion asked. It was a stupid question. The woman’s square face glistened with tears.
The nanny now turned away. Her hair was down from its habitual bun. A long gray plait, never before seen, hung thinly down the length of the broad back.
“What’s the matter?”
“Him!” was the strangled reply.
The extraordinary possibility of some thwarted romance, some secret, treacherous lover, flashed across Marion’s mind. She blinked. “Him?”
Mrs. Knight whirled round, her gimlet eyes blazing. “He’ll do exactly as he likes, no matter what it means for everybody else.”
She was talking about the king, Marion realized. “You mean you think he’ll marry Mrs. Simpson?”
Mrs. Knight’s big white hand was clamped over her mouth. She nodded, eyes brimming. The hand came away. “And what will that mean for Lilibet?” she burst out.
Something shifted in Marion’s mind. So used was she to seeing Mrs. Knight as an obstacle, the idea that she might love the little princess had never occurred to her.
She stared at the coat again, obviously worn against the cold, and at the thin gray plait. It could have been thick, black and glossy once. Mrs. Knight had been young, and might even have been beautiful. But her youth and beauty had faded in the service of the family. As had her chances of marriage—her title was only a courtesy one—and children. Likely there had never been a lover, secret or otherwise. She had sacrificed everything.
Marion put her hand on the rough coat sleeve. All her resentment and dislike had gone. To understand was to forgive, and she could understand now. See the threat she must have appeared: a bumptious young woman taking charge of beloved Lilibet. The duchess would have explained little of what was happening, if anything.
“You really think he’ll marry her? But she’s foreign, a divorcée . . .” But even as she spoke the words she recognized their irrelevance. She had seen with her own eyes the depth of the king’s devotion. She remembered the overheard conversation with the archbishop. “But what if he has to abdicate?”
Mrs. Knight looked weary. “He’ll do exactly as he likes, Miss Crawford. He always has done. And it’s the likes of you and me that will have to clear up the mess.”
She made a possible national crisis sound like a nursery spillage. Marion squeezed the coat sleeve. “Oh, Mrs. Knight.”
“Call me Alah,” the other said gruffly. “It’s about time you did. We might just have a big job ahead of us. Looking after the heir to the throne.”
* * *
• • •
SHE WENT ROUND to Rotherhithe the next day. She felt she didn’t care who knew it. If even Mrs. Knight could give way and reveal her inmost feelings, then surely she could go round and find out about Valentine.
She wore the suit Norman had altered for the Kents’ wedding and made herself up carefully. Her hair, recently cut, revealed her neck and cheekbones. She hurried down the foggy street, her heels hammering on the cobbles.
“He’s not here,” Philip said, opening the battered front door.
She caught her breath sharply in her throat. “He’s gone to Spain?”
Philip sighed. “You’d better come in.”
She sat in the kitchen. Thick evening light streamed richly through the dirty window, irradiating unwashed pans stacked in unsteady towers. She thought of the crowded party, and all the laughter.
Philip explained the route. As she had suspected, Valentine had gone with Esmond. The first stop was Marseilles in the hope of boarding a cargo ship. After that they had sailed to Valencia and were sent to a training camp at Albacete. “He’s fine, I’m sure,” Philip insisted, when it was established there had not been any news for a while.
When Marion left the house, she leaned briefly against it, as if saying goodbye to something. She knew, however, that she had said goodbye to Valentine long ago, if indeed he had been hers in the first place. Their romance was an illusion; the reality had been betrayal and hurt. Why was she behaving like this?
Because, she knew, she had a big ball of love inside her, with no one to give it to and nowhere to put it. Apart from one place, of course. As she descended into the Underground, the little girl’s face glowed in her head. She had Lilibet, after all. Lilibet, to whom she now felt as close as a mother.
* * *
• • •
FOR THIS YEAR’S Scottish holiday, the Yorks had eschewed the castle for Birkhall, a nearby house on the Balmoral estate. The official reason was that they needed the extra space. But as rumor had it that Mrs. Simpson was a guest of the king, the real motive was not hard to guess.
Birkhall was quite different from the castle. It was a large, rambling, white-painted building formed of several houses knocked together, some of which were clearly very old. It was a romantic-looking place, fitting the Valley of the Dee’s landscape much more naturally than did its somewhat incongruous neighbor.
Inside was also easier on the eye: pine paneling and framed cartoons of long-defunct Victorian politicians rather than endless tartan, stags and Prince Albert. Marion’s bedroom here was less bleak than at the bigger houses, with an actual carpet, and a dressing table.
She was sitting at it now, sweeping the little brush through the cake of mascara. That was better. She blinked and widened her big brown eyes. Was that a new line on her forehead?
A droop at the sides of her mouth? Hurriedly she slicked on red lipstick, raised her chin, smiled at herself, got up and went outside.
The Birkhall gardens were pretty and bright with thick lawns and a stream that plunged merrily between fringes of rhododendron and laburnum.
The many trees, their leaves detached by the near-constant Scottish breeze, meant optimum conditions for Happy Days, a game Marion had taught Lilibet. You had to catch leaves before they reached the ground, and each captured leaf represented a “happy day” for the future. Lilibet was adept at it, laughing and leaping at the twirling forms tossed by the peaty Scottish breezes.
Hair tumbling over her face as she jumped, the princess was the pi
cture of merry abandon. Seeing Dookie at Lilibet’s heels, trying to snap at some happy dog days of his own, Marion felt affection even for him.
“I’m going to have a very happy life,” the princess announced with satisfaction, proffering a skirtful of leaves. She peered at Marion’s haul. “Oh, dear Crawfie.” She bit her red lip. “It doesn’t look like you are!”
Marion smiled. “Only because I let you catch most of the leaves. I sacrificed my happy days for you, you see.”
A short distance away the Yorks were sitting on the lawns, reading; the duchess was cackling at P. G. Wodehouse. “So amusing!” she was saying to her husband. The duke did not look amused. He was frowning over The Times, which reported more rising unemployment figures and accompanying unrest and demonstrations.
“Oh really, Bertie,” said the duchess, impatiently. “Those men are being exploited for political ends. Everyone says so. Marching from one end of the country to the other is hardly the best way of dealing with their problems.”
“P-perhaps,” the duke conceded. “But it is the only way they know.” He laid aside the paper and sighed. “They’re d-d-desperate, Elizabeth. I wish there was something we c-c-could do to h-help.”
“Bertie, we already help.”
“Yes, b-but opening the odd f-fete. W-what difference does that m-make?”
His wife sat up in her deck chair. “It’s a lot more than that. We distract them from themselves and their poor miserable lives. Give them something to believe in. National allegiance. Continuity.” The duchess paused and took a swig of champagne. “Always remember, Bertie—when it comes to royalty, nothing succeeds like succession.”
Marion, catching leaves with Lilibet, envied the duchess her robust, uncomplicated view of the world. She had always known there was steel beneath the floating misty blue, and it seemed to be coming ever more to the fore.
Ainslie appeared, gliding across the lawn. “Cometh the hour, cometh the man!” The duchess gaily waved her empty champagne glass.
The butler had no bottle in his hand, however. Marion watched as he hurried to the duke’s side and murmured something in his ear. The duke gasped in horror and leaped to his feet.
“Bertie! What is it?”
“Aberdeen H-hospital! D-David! We must go . . .”
They hurried off toward the house.
Lilibet stared at Marion. “What’s the matter? Is Uncle David ill?”
“In a manner of speaking, quite possibly,” Ainslie murmured as he returned to the house.
* * *
• • •
THE EVENING PAPER arrived at Birkhall in the mid-afternoon, before the duke and duchess returned. Marion, in the house to fetch tennis racquets, saw it lying on the hall table.
She picked it up. The front page had two photographs, both taken that afternoon. One showed the Yorks stepping in for the king, who had become indisposed at the last minute and unable to open Aberdeen Hospital’s new wing.
The other was of the king himself, in obvious good health, wearing driving goggles and a gay smile at Aberdeen railway station.
“Mrs. Simpson’s train was late,” Ainslie remarked as he crossed the hall. “His Majesty had to hang around waiting. Seemed to think his goggles would stop people from recognizing him. But everyone did, of course. Apart from one policeman who told him to move his car.”
“So she’s here,” Marion said slowly. And in what seemed absolutely farcical circumstances.
“Aberdeen, I fear, will never forgive him,” was Ainslie’s verdict. “Nor the rest of Scotland, now the story’s out.”
That evening, Marion went for a walk. She had a headache. There had been many of late. Her own inner struggles seemed one likely reason; her employers’ another.
On her return to Birkhall, the duchess had blazed through the door like an avenging angel, face taut with fury. She had picked up the newspaper, seen the headline and hurled it across the hall. “So absurd for him to go in person to meet that woman! You and I have been made to look absolute idiots, Bertie!”
That woman seemed to hang over the estate like a great black Chanel-suited cloud. Marion decided to go up to the cairns, above it all, in the high, fresh air.
She climbed up the hill, feeling better with every step. With the curlew calling, the water rushing and the grouse in the blooming heather, Birkhall and its problems soon seemed far away. After a while, the great pointed piles loomed through the trees.
Here was the Purchase Cairn, the very first, built to commemorate the acquisition of the estate. Marion and Lilibet agreed that it looked exactly like the prow of a rowing boat that had fallen from the sky and sunk halfway into the ground.
And here was the great, flat-sided pyramid dedicated to “The Great and Good Prince Consort by His Broken-Hearted Widow.” She stood before it, recalling the conversation with Lilibet about love. Do people really fall down, on the floor?
Her heart twisted within her. Lilibet was growing up. Soon, in not so many years, she would herself embark on the perilous high seas of romantic affection. Hopefully, she would have better luck. As for Marion herself, it increasingly seemed as if love had passed her by altogether.
She leaned against the cairn and let the tears slide down her face.
“Whatever’s the matter?” asked a curious voice behind her. Marion gasped, and whirled round.
A woman was standing there, a woman in a long, elegant coat of houndstooth check. Her gleaming black high heels showed no sign of the walk they must have made up from the valley, and her jet-black, center-parted hair was immaculate. Her pale face, with its pearly sheen, showed no sign of exertion, but there was concern in the large dark eyes and the red-lipsticked mouth was stretched in sympathy.
“You can tell me all about your troubles, honey,” said Wallis Simpson, with a weary smile. “And then I can tell you all about mine.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The shock was absolute. All of a sudden, from out of the wooded twilight, the wicked witch of Lilibet’s nightmares was upon her. The scheming seducer, the brazen disturber of royal peace. She was so surprised she could not speak.
Mrs. Simpson, however, seemed perfectly at ease. “I know you, don’t I?” she said in the warm Baltimore drawl Marion remembered. “You’re the girl who came to the Fort that time.”
“Yes. But I thought you’d forgotten. When you came to Royal Lodge.”
A wry, red-lipsticked smile. “It seemed safer for you that way, honey.”
It took a few seconds for realization to land. Wallis had been protecting her. “Thank you.”
An amused glance. “You’re welcome, honey.”
Marion’s mind was racing. Her initial impression had been the right one after all. Mrs. Simpson was not the selfish social-climbing monster of popular legend. She was sympathetic and sensitive to other people. Even humble governesses. She could so easily have betrayed their earlier meeting, if only to score a petty point and annoy the Duchess of York. Yet she had not.
She felt a sudden, keen sense of the unfairness of it all. Wallis seemed to be a good person, but those she worked for regarded her as that woman, a creature too horrible even to deserve naming. A threat to not only their happiness but their whole way of life.
Marion longed, somehow, to bring the two sides together. There was so much misunderstanding. But as soon as the idea struck, she dismissed it. It was out of the question. Things had gone too far. The only connection between the two sides was her, for all the good that was.
For all the good that was. She pulled the thought back and considered it. And yet, might it not be? She had thought she had no power at all. But might she, Marion Crawford, humble governess, be able to influence the great?
The idea gathered pace in her head. Mrs. Simpson was sympathetic toward her. Could she really succeed? But crazy things happened. In this family more than most. There was
hope, definitely.
She felt breathless. The possibility was dizzying. Dazzling. If it worked, she would have saved the Yorks. Saved the monarchy too, possibly. How grateful they would all be! They might put up a cairn to her as well.
These thoughts had taken mere seconds. Wallis, meanwhile, was tucking her beautiful coat underneath her. “Shall we sit?”
This woman who loomed so large in everyone’s imagination was so tiny in real life. And so, so thin. She lived on black coffee and grapefruit, people said. She weighed herself every day and starved if the scale was a fraction over seven and a half stones.
Marion perched on the boulder next to her, gathering her courage. Her heart thundered and nausea swirled in her belly. An intense autumn sunset spilled gold over the grass. She bent and picked a piece of heather, a particularly rich and purple one.
“C’mon, honey.” Wallis softly touched her hand with a gloved one of her own. The gloves were exquisite: bright red and skin-tight. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”
The word crouched on Marion’s tongue, ready to spring. She thought of Margaret on the diving board. Lilibet’s cheerful voice. Come on, Margaret! Jump in!
Dare she jump in? She braced herself. “You,” she said, in a rushed breath.
Wallis, who had been leaning forward, jerked back in surprise. “Me?”
Marion looked pleadingly into the black eyes. “They’re all so frightened. The little girls especially. They’re terrified of what will happen if you marry the king.”
Wallis’s brow, less smooth up close than it appeared from afar, scrunched. “They want me to leave him alone?” She spoke slowly, her tone neutral.
A still silence followed, so still that it seemed that even the birds were holding their breath. The cairns behind them, now sunk in shadow, seemed to be listening too. Testaments to many a royal event of the past, they awaited developments on the latest.