Another Woman’s Husband

by Gill Paul

  ‘I shouldn’t speak ill of him,’ Wallis continued. ‘He’s a charming host and has been most generous to us. Look at this!’ She fished in a pocket of her suit and handed Mary a folded sheet of paper, cream with green letterhead. There was a tiny smile on her lips.

  Mary opened it to find a typed radiogram message: Wishing you a safe crossing and a speedy return to England. Edward P.

  ‘Is that from the Prince? To you?’ Mary exclaimed. ‘I had no idea you were so close.’

  ‘He’s such a darling. It arrived just as the ship was about to sail, and all the crew heard of it so I enjoyed the most flattering attention during the crossing. It’s good to have friends in high places!’

  Mary looked closely at Wallis, trying to fathom what was going on in her head, but her expression was inscrutable and she soon changed the subject to ask Jacques about the Manhattan property market.

  Later that evening, Mary crept into Wallis’s room in her nightgown, just as Wallis was cleaning her face with cold cream, massaging it upwards along the jawline.

  ‘Don’t you find ageing so dispiriting?’ Wallis asked, regarding her reflection in the mirror. ‘No, perhaps you don’t. You still have not a hint of a wrinkle, while I fight a daily battle against the collapse of my entire face.’

  Mary laughed. ‘Don’t be silly. No one would guess you to be a day over thirty.’

  ‘And yet we will both be forty in a few years. Positively ancient!’

  ‘You seem full of high spirits. Are you enjoying your place in the top echelon of English society?’ She sat on the bed just behind Wallis, watching her expression in the mirror.

  ‘Money’s been a bore. Shipping is in the doldrums and we’ve had to cut back on entertaining and the purchase of new clothes. I haven’t been to the Paris collections for the last two seasons and feel a positive frump!’ She used a pad of cotton to pat the cream from her face.

  ‘But you enjoy your time with the Prince. Tell me, do you find him attractive?’

  Wallis whirled round. ‘Goodness, no. Not in the romantic sense.’

  Mary narrowed her eyes, suddenly sure that Wallis was after the Prince, but that she had not admitted it to herself. For someone who was insecure about her family background and her financial circumstances, what greater coup could there be than adding him to her list of conquests? She would win his heart if she got the chance, not because she had fallen for him but because it would make her feel better about herself.

  Poor Ernest. What would he think of it? Would he stand being cuckolded the way Thelma’s husband had? She felt troubled for him.

  Wallis gave a beaming smile and threw her arms round Mary, laying her head on her shoulder. ‘It’s so good to see you. Whenever I visit you, wherever we both are, it always feels like home.’

  Chapter 35

  New York, November 1933

  AFTER WALLIS’S VISIT, THE REMAINDER OF 1933 was hard for Mary. Her father died suddenly, of a heart attack, and her mother, Edith, simply fell apart. She couldn’t adjust to life without him, but sat crying all day long, without eating, without dressing properly. As the childless daughter, the responsibility for looking after their mother fell to Mary, even though she was still suffering brutal back pain from her accident that made it hard to sleep at night.

  ‘I can’t leave her on her own,’ she told Jacques. ‘I must stay with her in Baltimore until she has begun to build a new life for herself.’

  ‘Why not bring her here, to Washington Square?’ he suggested. ‘I can help you to entertain her, and you will not be cut off from your own home and friends.’

  Mary thought this a generous offer: what man would relish the prospect of his mother-in-law moving in? Jacques was kind to Edith, sitting down to make conversation with her and always remaining patient with her tears and fretting – something Mary found increasingly trying. But he had begun drinking the best part of a bottle of red wine at dinner, and often he went out to join friends in the Village afterwards.

  Mary watched the level of the bottles silently at first, but finally she confronted him. ‘You have broken your word to me,’ she said. ‘I was clear that this was your last chance.’

  ‘It’s only wine,’ Jacques argued, as if that made everything all right. ‘I never drink spirits.’

  ‘It still has the effect of making you unpleasant company,’ she told him. ‘I love you, Jacques, but I can’t live like this. I know you had a terrible time in the war – Minnie told me about it and I sympathise – but I can’t bear it.’

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with the war . . .’

  Mary continued: ‘A failed marriage is the last thing I ever wanted, but I can’t spend the rest of my life with a drinker. We tried our best, but I think we both know it is over.’

  He began to cry. ‘Please, Mary. Don’t do this.’

  She comforted him but felt sure of her decision. ‘We need not divorce, at least not straight away. We can continue to live in the house together, but I want you to move into the study. From now on, I will sleep alone.’

  It was a crushing disappointment, but Mary found she was more upset about giving up the idea of having a child than about the end of her marriage. She wasn’t angry with Jacques; she believed he had done his best to stop drinking and simply could not manage. She still cared what happened to him but she no longer loved him as a wife should.

  Just a month after her father’s death, Mary took her mother to a doctor, hoping to set her mind at rest about some unusual pains she claimed to be experiencing. Instead, the doctor diagnosed cancer, and a struggle began that consumed Mary for most of 1934. She was in constant pain from her back and still grieving for her father, and for the end of her marriage, when she had to nurse her mother through a painful and inexorable decline.

  Wallis wrote offering her sympathies and reporting on the latest news from London:

  Thelma Furness has returned to the States for a couple of months and asked me to help entertain the Prince in her absence, but already I find it a chore. He can be exhausting even when one is not his mistress because he needs a woman to help plan his entertainments, his decorative schemes at the Fort, even his ideas for international trade deals! Dear Ernest is being immensely patient about the amount of time the Prince requires of me.

  Mary bumped into Thelma at Mona Van der Heyden’s cocktail party in New York one February evening, and they greeted each other warmly. Thelma was wearing a flouncy shoulderless ball gown that threatened to slide down and expose her breasts if she moved too suddenly. With her smooth golden skin, shiny black hair and stunning features, she was every bit the Latin temptress.

  ‘Are you missing London?’ Mary asked. ‘Or is it good to be home?’

  ‘I was born in Switzerland,’ Thelma replied, ‘and grew up in Buenos Aires, so I’m never quite sure where home is. But I will always love New York. It’s more modern than anywhere else. It makes Londoners seem stuck in the past.’

  ‘I like that about them: those ancient buildings and all the traditions they preserve.’

  ‘You would soon get fed up with the ritual in royal circles, believe me.’ Thelma leaned in close, speaking confidentially. ‘It’s quite a bore.’

  ‘I hear Wallis is keeping an eye on the Prince during your absence,’ Mary ventured. ‘Does he need much looking after?’

  Thelma’s dark eyes twinkled with mirth. ‘I get six phone calls a day as a minimum, all of them about ridiculous details. The way they breed their royals in England seems to make them peculiarly incapable of taking decisions or coping with the modern world.’

  ‘So you came here for a rest?’ Mary smiled.

  ‘Something like that.’

  They were joined by other guests and the topic of conversation moved on, but Mary snuck a look at Thelma several times during the evening, wondering if she had any idea of the risk she was running by spending so long away from her lover. She was far more beautiful than Wallis; maybe her looks had lulled her into a false sense of security.

&nbs
p; Wallis wrote of gifts from the Prince: a few pieces of jewellery, money to buy clothes, and a Cairn puppy she referred to as Mr Loo, remarking gloomily: I do not seem to have a talent for toilet-training dogs and cannot feel any great affection for the messy newcomer. Ernest also received royal favour: a bolt of cloth in houndstooth-check tweed to be made into a coat by the Prince’s tailor, and admittance to the Prince’s Masonic lodge, an honour that would be vastly helpful to him in his business affairs. All this generosity, Wallis insisted to Mary, was recompense for the time she spent helping him to manage his social calendar, organising house parties and the like. Meanwhile, she still had to run their home at Bryanston Court. Keeping up with two men is making me move all the time, she wrote.

  By summer, Mary was hearing gossip at friends’ soirées that Wallis was ‘the Prince’s new girl’. They claimed Thelma had been furious on her return to England to find that her telephone calls were no longer put through the Fort Belvedere switchboard. Mary wrote to Wallis questioning her about this, and received a reply saying that the gossips were, as usual, wrong. Their relationship was entirely innocent: I think I do amuse him, she wrote. I’m the comedy relief, and we like to dance together, but I always have Ernest hanging round my neck, so all is safe. She added, for emphasis: The Prince likes my company, but he is certainly not in love with me.

  Mary believed she was telling the truth, even when she heard that Wallis had accompanied the Prince’s party for a several-weeks-long holiday in Biarritz, leaving Ernest behind in London. Aunt Bessie was there as chaperone, but Mary couldn’t imagine her getting in the way of any budding romance.

  When Bessie returned to America in the fall, she telephoned Mary, very concerned about what she had witnessed.

  ‘He follows Wallis like a lapdog,’ she said. ‘He even has a hangdog expression with those baggy eyes of his. I was appalled by his lack of dignity; this is the man who will one day be King of England.’

  ‘How does Wallis react to the adulation?’ Mary asked.

  ‘Hmm . . . You know her as well as I do. She’s always happy to accept expensive gifts, and she gives the Prince her undivided attention whenever they’re together. But I saw her hide from him one morning when she could not face any more of his childish demands. She slid behind a pergola and covered herself with foliage! It was all I could do to stop myself laughing out loud and giving the game away.’

  ‘Oh dear. Is it not treasonable to refuse the advances of a royal?’ Mary felt concerned. Wallis was weaving a complex web.

  ‘I’m worried that my niece is in great danger of ending up without either a husband or a prince. Ernest’s pride can surely only take so much battering before he protests in the strongest terms. And you’ve seen the ruthless way the Prince disposed of Thelma when he had no further use for her.’ She paused for effect. ‘Wallis must beware or the same fate awaits her – but worse, because at least Thelma has Vanderbilt money to fall back on.’

  Mary had mixed feelings after this conversation. Part of her was secretly proud that the girl who had been her best friend for over twenty years had captured the heart of a prince. It was a shame he was not more manly, someone with wit and intelligence; all the same, it was a great adventure.

  But poor Ernest must sit through many an evening with the pair, watching the fawning behaviour without being able to criticise. How did you say to a prince, ‘Keep your hands off my wife, sir’? Especially when it seemed your wife was encouraging him.

  In October 1934, Mary’s mother finally died, a blessed relief after weeks of confusion induced by the morphine that did little to quell the vicious pains racking her body. Wallis wrote urging Mary to get on the first sailing to Southampton and stay with them as long as she wished so they might look after her. You helped me after my mother died; please let me return the favour, she begged.

  Although wary after her last visit, Mary yearned to see Wallis and Ernest, and to flee to a life of gaiety that did not involve tending invalids. She sailed on the Mauretania, and when she reached Southampton this time she knew exactly how to get the train. She hired her own taxicab from a rank at Waterloo and gave the address – ‘Bryanston Court, please’ – feeling proud for managing.

  It was six thirty, KT hour in the Simpson household, and she was looking forward to a glass of something intoxicating. Normally the babble of conversation could be heard in the hall, but as the maid took her coat and hat, she could just hear a low murmur of voices. She opened the door and there were Wallis, Ernest and the Prince of Wales sitting in a circle by the fire, glasses in hand.

  Ernest leapt to his feet and came over to greet her. ‘You made it. Well done, my dear.’

  Wallis rose and embraced her, then turned to the Prince. ‘David, you remember my old schoolfriend Mary, don’t you?’

  Mary belatedly remembered her curtsey. Should she have done that on entering? And when had Wallis started calling him David?

  ‘Welcome to England,’ the Prince said, ‘and to our cosy cocktail set.’

  Ernest pulled up a chair and fetched her a drink, without asking what she would like. She took a sip and was pleased he had remembered her favourite gin and lemon cocktail.

  ‘Was the crossing very rough?’ the Prince asked, drawing on a cigarette. ‘October can be a difficult month.’

  ‘I am seasick even in dead calm,’ she said. ‘The only remedy is gin.’

  ‘Does it not take all the glamour out of drinking in America now they’ve repealed the Prohibition laws?’ Wallis asked. ‘You would have loved the 21 Club, David. A doorman checked you out through a peephole before you could get in, and if the barman suspected a police raid, he pressed a button that flipped the bar shelves so the bottles hurtled down a chute.’

  While she spoke, the Prince did not take his eyes off her. ‘Has this establishment gone out of business now?’ he asked Mary.

  ‘Not at all. It still remains, although it’s rather easier to gain admittance and they no longer smash the stock.’

  The Prince drained his drink and held out his glass towards Ernest. ‘Might I have another, old boy? You do mix the perfect martini.’

  Ernest started to rise, but Wallis put a restraining hand on the Prince’s arm. ‘Now, now, David. One is enough. There will be wine with dinner.’

  To Mary’s amazement, the Prince backed down without a murmur. If only it had been so easy with Jacques!

  When dinner was ready, they went through to the dining room, with its huge mirror-topped table. Four places had been set at one end.

  ‘We’re having English nursery food,’ Wallis announced. ‘A dish called shepherd’s pie.’

  As they ate the meal, the Prince pumped Mary for anecdotes about Wallis’s school days, and she told him about the girls at Oldfields getting into trouble for writing to boys, and how Wallis was the first to own up. He chuckled at that, even more so when Mary explained how they used to mock the school motto about gentleness and courtesy.

  ‘Would you courteously pass the salt, Miss Kirk,’ Wallis mimicked.

  The Prince reached for the salt cellar, accidentally nudging Wallis’s glass and causing it to topple over. She jerked her chair back so the wine wouldn’t drip onto her gown, and snapped, ‘For God’s sake, David. Be more careful. I can’t stand clumsiness.’

  Mary was aghast. How could she speak that way to the heir to the throne? The Prince’s face was crestfallen as he tried to mop up the spill with his napkin. Ernest rang the bell for the maid. Mary looked at him, expecting some reaction, but his expression was neutral.

  As she lay in the circular bed later that night, reviewing the evening, a thought popped into Mary’s head. The way Wallis treated the Prince with a complete lack of deference was similar to the way she used to act with poor Carter Osburn back in the Baltimore days. He too used to hang on her every word; he too was a milksop. Wallis had only indulged him because she liked his car. Perhaps she was only indulging this one because she liked his crown.

  Chapter 36

  West
Sussex, 22 October 1997

  SUSIE LED RACHEL TO A FIRST-FLOOR GUEST bedroom in the west wing of her house. There was a four-poster bed opposite the door, and bay windows on two walls since the room was situated in a corner of the building. The carpet was worn and there were brown patches on the ceiling and flaking paint on the walls, but Rachel thought it would be lovely when redecorated.

  ‘I have absolutely no idea what’s in here,’ Susie said, lifting the lid of a mahogany chest carved with a Chinese dragon. ‘My parents seldom used this room. As a kid, I found the west wing rather spooky.’

  The smell that arose was a mixture of faded mothballs, old wood, mustiness and a hint of ancient fabric impregnated with perfume. Rachel leant over and took a deep breath, filling her lungs.

  ‘My favourite smell,’ she said. ‘The smell of history.’

  The garments inside had been folded with layers of tissue paper between them. Susie removed the top layer, and pulled out a ladies’ mustard mohair swagger coat, passing it to Rachel with a grimace. Rachel checked the lining and saw it was in good condition. The label read Forstmann, an American company.

  ‘It’s 1950s. Not my taste but I could try it in the shop,’ she said, laying it on the bed.

  Next there was a hideous 1960s polyester mini dress with lime green and pink swirls.

  ‘That’s definitely one for the charity shop,’ Susie giggled, catching Rachel’s mock shudder. They put it in a separate pile.

  There was a Jackie-Kennedy-style navy-blue suit with cream piping, a belted beige suede jacket, several skirts and pairs of trousers, most from the sixties or seventies, and then Rachel’s eye was caught by an exotic floral print on a cornflower-blue background. She pulled out the item: a short-sleeved slim-fitting tunic and, underneath, a matching long, slender skirt. They were exquisite. Inside, the label read Mainbocher Inc. in blue capitals.