The Royal Governess

by Wendy Holden

  Wallis’s perfectly groomed brows had drawn together. The little hands in the red gloves had clenched.

  Marion waited, but for what she could not guess. A howl of fury? A hiss of rage? A cold fear swept her. This woman was all-powerful, the mistress of the king. What had she been thinking?

  A sound now split the still air, sharp and shocking. “They want me to leave him alone!” Wallis bent over. She was shaking, but with laughter. Loud, disbelieving peals of mirth now shattered the evening calm.

  Marion’s heart plummeted. She had completely misread the situation. Mrs. Simpson had no intention of renouncing her royal lover. Why on earth would she?

  After a while, Wallis raised her head. She dabbed at her streaming eyes with a scarlet finger. Marion waited to hear she was an impertinent fool. She stared down at the gilded grass.

  “I would give him up, believe me,” she heard Wallis say. “There is nothing I would like more.”

  Marion jerked her head up, frowning. Had she imagined it?

  “Especially if it helps those little girls,” the other woman went on. “They’re sweet. I’d have liked to get to know them better. I never had any children of my own.” For a moment, she looked sad.

  From absolute despair, tremendous hope now gripped Marion. “So give him up, then. It would solve everything. Everyone would be so grateful. They’d . . .”

  She was talking fast, excitedly. Triumph blazed within her. She had done the impossible, made the breakthrough.

  She saw now that Wallis was gesturing at her, smiling. “Honey, it’s just not possible.”

  The world, which had been whirling, now slowed down and stopped. “But why not?” Marion practically wailed.

  “Because he won’t give me up,” Wallis replied, simply. “And you try saying no to someone who rules an entire empire and who has never been said no to in his life.”

  Marion remembered the besotted king at Royal Lodge. His adoring gaze in the Abbey. Everyone had thought it was Wallis who had the power. But not everyone had heard the spoiled, imperious creature in the Piccadilly hallway. God, how I hate being Prince of Wales.

  She took a deep breath. This all rang true. She could believe it, absolutely.

  “That’s why it’s so useless, everyone being against us.” The Baltimore drawl had a weary tone. “It just makes him all the more determined to get his own way.”

  He’ll do exactly as he likes, Miss Crawford. He always has done.

  Wallis frowned at her red gloves. “They’re doing everything to stop it. Lying about me, spying on me, trying to scupper my divorce . . .”

  Marion remembered the press blackout.

  “I’m surprised I haven’t had a motor accident by now.”

  The sprig of heather Marion had picked now rolled in her palm, thin and bare. She had rubbed away the blooms. All the luck had gone. She stared at it numbly. There was nothing to be done here. She could not save the Yorks after all.

  Nor could she save Wallis. Lilibet, it turned out, was not the only one in a gilded cage. But the difference was that no one cared about the king’s mistress, or wanted to help her. The exact opposite was true.

  “Oh, I know what they say about me.” Her tone was low, musing, as if she were talking to herself. “I’m a witch, I’m a dominatrix, I’m a sadomasochist, I’m a man. David has a mother fixation, a nanny fixation, a mental imbalance. Oh, and I’m a close friend of von Ribbentrop’s. You’re aware of that, no doubt? He sends me seventeen red carnations a day, one for each time we’ve made love?” She gave Marion a sharp look, which she answered with a reluctant nod. Mrs. Simpson’s supposed closeness to Hitler’s ambassador had shot like wildfire round the servant gossip circuit. “Von Brickendrop” was the duchess’s name for him because of his oafish manners.

  “Not true. I saw Ribbentrop only twice, both times at Emerald Cunard’s, at a lunch. Such lies they tell.” She gazed into the darkening distance. “And, for the record, I don’t want to be queen of England. Why would anyone? I can’t think of anything worse. For one thing, I’d have to come to this place every year. Insects. Rain. Bagpipes at dawn. The worst decor in the world. Hunting McPuke everywhere you look.”

  Marion chuckled. The American was a woman after her own heart. Wallis flashed her a grin. “And the food is beyond disgusting. Haven’t seen a green vegetable since I got here. And they’ve never even heard of a club sandwich.” She shook her sleek head.

  Against the deepening gold of sunset, her tailored shoulders were sharply outlined. Marion saw them rise in a sigh. “I didn’t want to come to Balmoral, believe me. And how was I to know about that darned hospital? David never told me he was supposed to be opening a ward. I never asked him to come meet me. I’d have been perfectly happy getting a cab from the station. But he insisted on coming and now it’s all my fault. The wicked witch strikes again.”

  She looked suddenly weary and old. Marion wondered abruptly how old, exactly. A good twenty years more than her; as, for that matter, was the king. They were middle-aged people, really.

  Wallis glanced at her watch, stood up and brushed down her clothes. “Gotta go. There’s a dinner tonight at the castle—God only knows what the menu will be. And those Yorks of yours are coming. I’m supposed to be hosting. Better get back and polish my p’s and q’s.”

  Marion scrambled to her feet too. Wallis had already set off down the path. Her hands were in her pockets, her head down, concentrating on the darkening way.

  “I’m so sorry about it all,” she offered, hurrying after the other figure. It was an accurate summation of her feelings. The situation was a mess, and worse than she had thought. Worst of all was the obvious fact that there was clearly no way out of it. They were hurtling toward some dramatic denouement whose outcome would damage everyone—the monarchy included. For what would the country say, when finally it found out?

  “Mr. Baldwin says I should leave Britain,” Wallis said over her shoulder, as if hearing her thoughts. “I have a friend with a villa in Cannes. But it would do no good. David would only follow me.”

  “I can see that,” Marion said, picking her way over the tree roots. “It’s really difficult. Actually, it must be terrifying.” To be so alone, against the world. She could hardly imagine it.

  “It can be,” Wallis admitted. “People shout at me. They write nasty things on my house walls and throw bricks through my windows.”

  Marion frowned. “But I thought the only people who knew were the newspaper proprietors.”

  “Yes,” Wallis placidly agreed. “It’s them that do it. They pay people. Poor Mr. Loo is terrified.”

  “Your . . . butler?” She imagined an Asian factotum of some sort.

  Wallis, ducking under a branch, laughed loudly. “Actually, he’s my dog. David gave him to me.”

  How brave she was, Marion thought. How courageous, tactful, intelligent and witty as well. How generous and perfectly groomed. It was so ironic. She would make a perfect queen.

  Wallis stopped, turned, smiled her red flashing smile and put out her little red glove to squeeze Marion’s hand for a moment. “Don’t look so worried, honey. I can cope. I’m a tough girl. And if a tough girl can’t cope with tough times, what’s the point of a tough girl?”

  They were near the castle now, at the point where the paths divided, one to Balmoral, the other to Birkhall. The sun had now set and all was in shadow. But she could see, even so, that Mrs. Simpson was regarding her closely. “You need to be a tough girl too, honey.”

  “Yes.”

  “You love someone in that family as well.”

  Understanding dawned. “Lilibet?”

  The last of the light caught the nodding, glossy black head. “And if you don’t get out, it’ll end badly for you too.” A hand suddenly grasped Marion’s once more. “Look, I can’t have children. That ship has sailed for me. But not for you; not yet.�
� The hand squeezed. “Get out in time. Promise me?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Christmas was coming, and it had a strong Wallis Simpson flavor. Taking the girls to Woolworths as usual meant running the gamut of topical variations on the old carols. “Hark the herald angels sing / Mrs. Simpson’s pinched our king” was a popular variant. Jokes like “Edward the Eighth and Mrs. Simpson the Seven Eighths” had people laughing the length and breadth of the land.

  Wallis’s actual position seemed anything but amusing. Marion had overheard several versions, from different people, of what had proved a disastrous dinner party at Balmoral. “She came toward me, smiling that triumphant smile,” the duchess declared in disgust. “I walked straight past her and said, ‘I have come to dine with the king!’”

  Their talk together now had the quality of a dream. But had her plea had an effect? The press blackout had now been lifted, the unlikely catalyst being the Bishop of Bradford’s criticism of the king—for irregular church attendance—at a diocesan conference. All the newspapers now piled in, and the headlines claimed that Wallis had, after all, renounced her royal lover and fled to her friend in France.

  People snorted at the idea, doubting the truth of it. Mrs. Simpson didn’t really mean it. She was treating the king mean in order to keep him keen. Why would she end the relationship? She had the king where she wanted him. Her claws were well and truly in. She was having the time of her life on the Riviera, treating the king like a servant and counting the jewels, money and days before she ascended the throne.

  From Fort Belvedere came gossip about the agonized calls to Cannes. The connections were so bad that you could hear His Majesty screaming, weeping and begging from one end of the building to the other. “It doesn’t matter where you go, I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth,” he had yelled down the line to France. Wallis had been entirely correct in her predictions. Her situation was not triumphant, but desperate.

  Knowing the real story, as Marion did, was a source of great secret satisfaction. She had the sense of being the one true witness to history in the making.

  * * *

  • • •

  BUT HAD WALLIS really taken her for a fool? Marion had almost begun to question herself when, one afternoon, hands dangling with Christmas parcels, she returned to the Piccadilly house. She quickly mounted the wide gray stone front steps and knocked at the big double doors. Stamping her frozen heels, she thought with relief of the warm interior, the fires in the marble hearths, the fat iron radiators.

  “It’s ’er! Look!” The shout came from behind her, someone on the street.

  “Mrs. Simpson!”

  Surprise jangled through Marion. But the Ritz Hotel was only just across the road, a few hundred yards in the other direction. Perhaps Wallis had been spotted going in.

  A small crowd had gathered on the other side of the railings. “It’s ’er, innit?”

  One of them shook a skinny fist. “Bleedin’ American whore!”

  Marion’s jaw dropped. Her suit, while expertly tweaked by Norman, bore no resemblance to the Chanel creations in which Wallis habitually dressed. Her brown fur cape was fake. Moreover, and most importantly, she was twenty years younger. “It’s not me!” Marion called back.

  One of the women shoved to the front. Her eyes glinted angrily in her dirty face. “Keep yer stinkin’ ’ands orf ’Is Majesty!”

  “Go home, you whore! Leave our king alone!” Something whistled past Marion’s ear and smashed against the gray stone lintel. She stared at the yellow yolk flecked with shell, the transparent white running downward. Some of it had splashed on her fur.

  Her teeth were chattering with terror. She banged on the front door with both fists, but it remained unyieldingly closed. She pressed her finger hard on the bell. “Please, Ainslie,” she begged. “Please open the door.”

  When, after what seemed like years, Ainslie did, Marion threw herself across the threshold, her fingertips clawing the carpet as she landed on the floor. There was no question now that Wallis had been telling the truth.

  But even that was not the worst of it. There had been a photographer at the back of the mob; presumably he too had thought she was Wallis. Initially, at least. Once she had turned and confronted them he had melted away. But not before their eyes had met and she had recognized Tom.

  He had not helped her or defended her, as one might expect of someone to whom one once had been close. The door in her heart marked “Tom,” which had only been ajar anyway, slammed shut forever.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE FESTIVE SEASON edged nearer. The Yorks should have been going to Sandringham and Marion to Scotland. But no one, for the moment, was going anywhere. Everyone was waiting. The storm was about to break.

  The duke and duchess were rarely visible. The duke was constantly in meetings, the duchess in bed with a string of migraines. Marion, by now accustomed to keeping things normal in abnormal circumstances, set the girls to work on Christmas decorations. Whole heaps were made and Royal Lodge was liberally festooned with the results. In strange contrast to the gloomy atmosphere, the house was gay with handmade paper chains. Stockings shakily hand-knitted by small fingers lay stuffed with presents beneath the big, thick-needled Christmas tree. As usual, Alah was in for some powerfully colored Woolies bath salts.

  The bathroom romps of old took place no longer, but the evening violent card games continued. What she had once deplored as too much excitement before bed now seemed to Marion useful in dissipating tension. Cries of “Brute!” and “Beast!” filled the woodsmoke-scented air as Lilibet and Margaret fought over Racing Demon. The leaping flames in the marble fireplace lit up the green Gothic paneling and brightened the gilt edges of the many pictures. At the high, arched windows, thick curtains were drawn cozily against the darkness. It was as happy and domesticated a scene as one could wish for, Marion would think, looking round. Under the circumstances, she was doing a good job. A great job.

  One evening the flames in the fireplace flickered, as they rarely did, on the worn features of the Duke of York. His thin hand, a cigarette streaming between its fingers, dealt out vingt-et-un on the hearthrug. The duchess, as usual, was shut in her room.

  “Everybody ready?” The duke looked around with a credible effort at a smile.

  “Yes, Papa.”

  Her father looked inquiringly at Lilibet. “T-twist or stick?”

  “Stick.”

  The duke turned to Marion. “Crawfie?”

  “Twist,” she said, and was disappointed. Her five-card trick was not going to happen.

  Now it was Margaret’s turn. With typical recklessness the youngest princess twisted, then twisted again, then threw her cards exasperatedly in the air. “Bust,” she groaned. The duke shook his head at her rashness. “You sh-sh-should be more careful, Meg.”

  “It was Cousin Halifax,” Margaret said, predictably.

  “Then Cousin Halifax should be more careful.” Lilibet turned up her cards as the duke, as bank, went bust as well. “Look,” she said delightedly. “A royal pontoon!”

  The telephone rang in the hall. The duke’s expression, which had become warm and pliant in the firelight, now stiffened and froze. Ainslie came in. “Your Highness, it is Fort Belvedere on the line. His Majesty wishes to speak to you.”

  The duchess appeared in the doorway in a long white nightdress. Free of makeup, her hair in a long black plait, she looked about sixteen. The girls looked up in surprise. “Mummy! You’re better!”

  The duchess did not look better. She hurried to her husband’s side and took his hand. They left the room together.

  Lilibet had won again, and her sister gone bust again, by the time a car started up outside. Over the cries of triumph and disaster, neither girl heard it. It crunched on the gravel drive, then faded into the distance. The vehicle had still not returned by the time M
arion went to bed.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Next morning, she stood outside the duchess’s white bedroom door. She had been sent for, but the door remained shut. Voices were coming from inside, low and urgent. She decided to wait, not to knock.

  The bedroom door suddenly opened and Queen Mary appeared on the landing. She seemed to have shrunk and aged even beyond her considerable years. Normally ramrod-erect, she was stooped. Even her bust looked smaller.

  As Marion rose from her curtsey, the old queen surveyed her gloomily. “Vell, Miss Crawfort. Zis is a pretty kettle of fish, nein?” She stomped away, leaning heavily on her parasol.

  From the threshold of the bedroom, the figure in the blue and yellow bed looked tiny. It lay propped up with pillows, dark hair in a plait flowing over a lace bed jacket. A white hand raised. A faint voice spoke. “Do come in, Crawfie.”

  Marion crossed the pale blue carpet. To her surprise, the hand extended; it seemed she was to come right up to the bedside and take it. The duchess rarely engaged in physical contact, but now the small white fingers lightly held hers. The great blue-violet eyes turned toward her.

  “I’m afraid,” she said murmurously, “that there are going to be great changes in our lives, Crawfie.”

  A clang went through Marion. So it had happened. The crown had passed from one brother to the other, and the woman lying in this bed was no longer the Duchess of York.

  “Your Majesty.” For the second time in almost as many minutes, Marion curtseyed to a queen. Her thoughts were rolling over one another. Tumbling together were relief and regret. And surprise that, after so much waiting and wondering, it had happened so fast.

  “The move to Buckingham Palace is bound to be a painful one,” the queen continued in her voice of soft regret. She seemed to be alluding to something.