Another Woman’s Husband

by Gill Paul

  They visited Buckie in Massachusetts and spent a glorious week catching up. Mary sat on the porch watching as Henry charged around the garden, endlessly cheerful, finding entertainment in every rock and blade of grass. She kept a bowl by her side into which she threw up discreetly, so her little boy wouldn’t notice.

  ‘Buckie, don’t you think he’s the smartest child that ever was born?’ she cooed.

  ‘He’s certainly sweet as pie,’ her sister agreed, ‘and such a contented little man, despite the disruptions in his life. I do wish you could stay here instead of going back to a war zone. The Blitz sounds horrific.’

  Mary smiled. ‘You would be surprised to see how cheerful we all are in London. The British will fight to the last. And I am cheerful too, because when you have a husband like mine, life is good.’

  ‘But your illness . . .’ Buckie grimaced. ‘I can’t help worrying when I think of poor Mama.’

  ‘Medicine has advanced a lot since then. My lucky pills weren’t available when Mama was ill, but I have faith in Dr Hofstead. He’s a whizz – and rather easy on the eye,’ Mary twinkled.

  Back in New York, there was another appointment with Dr Hofstead, who was pleased with her early response to the drug, and visits to Renée du Pont and to Jacques and his new, much younger wife. The rest of the time Mary spent with her son, getting to know and love him more with every day that passed. It felt like a miracle that she and Ernest had created him. By the time she was two weeks into her stay, she knew there was no way she would be able to leave him there. It was impossible. The pain would kill her.

  And yet she had to go back to London because she missed Ernest so terribly. Every time she read of another bombing raid she was petrified for him. She needed both of her men together. At least the threat of imminent German invasion had passed after the RAF’s victory in the air war. Hitler seemed to have turned his attention to Russia; perhaps he wouldn’t bother to conquer Britain. That hope made up her mind.

  She rang the RAF telephone number in New York to ask if she could bring two more passengers on the return trip, one of them rather small. There was a nerve-racking overnight wait before they got back to her and said they had received permission to transport her son and his nanny so long as her son sat on a grown-up’s lap and didn’t cause any trouble.

  ‘Henry, we’re going on an adventure,’ she told him. ‘We’re going to fly like a bird in the sky, and we’re going home to see your daddy.’

  ‘Da-dee,’ he repeated with a big toothy grin, although he couldn’t possibly remember him.

  Ernest got special permission to meet their flight on the airfield, and he came running up the steps of the plane, swooping Henry into his arms and kissing Mary on the lips. She was so worn out from the journey that he called for a stretcher and took her straight by ambulance to a house he had rented for them in the Wiltshire countryside. The staff from their Holland Park house were already there, and the nurse tucked her up in bed and made her comfortable.

  The day after her arrival, Sir Launcelot came to examine her. She showed him the lucky pills she had been given in New York and he nodded sagely and said he had heard of them and so long as the side effects were not intolerable she should continue to take them. He did not think she would benefit from further radiotherapy, he said, but he administered a vitamin shot that would give her more pep.

  ‘Will I need to come to hospital?’ she asked. She was feeling so frail, it was hard to imagine how she would get there.

  ‘I suggest you stay here and enjoy spending time with your son,’ he replied.

  She caught his eye and saw a look that alarmed her: profound compassion. She nearly fell apart as the truth dawned on her, then she remembered her vow: it was wartime and she was going to be brave.

  As soon as Sir Launcelot left, Mary asked the nurse to wheel her in a bath chair to watch Henry playing in the garden. He was busy running his toy train along a wall at the edge of the terrace, but when he saw her, he came running for a hug.

  She held him tight, breathing in his scent, and wanted to hold him longer but he broke away. His lunchtime sandwich lay unfinished on a picnic table and he fetched it and pushed it to her lips, saying, ‘Eat up, Mama, eat up.’ She nibbled a little but her throat was too tight to swallow.

  It was a struggle to hold back the tidal wave of grief that she was not going to be part of this little boy’s future. Other people would read stories to him, teach him to play sports, help him choose a career. Others would watch as he opened his presents on Christmas morning, or when he dressed in uniform for his first day of school. Others would comfort him when he fell ill; it couldn’t be her. And none of them would love him as much as she did. He was going to lose so much.

  The pain got worse. Instead of being concentrated in her chest, it moved to her bones, which ached with a deep, grinding sensation. The nurse gave her morphine injections but she hated the way they left her fuzzy-headed; during the day she tried to manage with codeine pills, even though they were less effective.

  She looked at Ernest’s face one night and realised how much he had aged in the last year. His hair and moustache were streaked with grey and his cheeks had subsided, giving him a jowly appearance, but he was still a handsome man. I wonder if he knows I am dying, Mary thought, or has he not accepted it? Typical Ernest with his English stiff upper lip; he would never raise the subject but carried on as if everything was normal and Mary was just a tad under the weather.

  ‘Where will you send Henry to school?’ she asked. ‘Eleanor wrote to me of a very good prep school near them called Westbourne House. He could be a boarder there but Eleanor and Ralph would keep an eye on him. They would invite him for tea every weekend if you were not able to visit.’

  ‘I’ll look into it.’ He nodded. ‘That’s kind of them.’

  ‘And make sure he reads. I want him to love books.’

  ‘I will. Of course I will.’

  She wanted her son to think of her, but not in a sad way. There were plenty of photographs, but suddenly she thought of the painting Wallis had hijacked.

  ‘Do you think my portrait is still in Wallis’s Paris house? What will the Nazis do with it?’

  Ernest cleared his throat. ‘I hear there has been an agreement that their house is not to be touched by Hitler’s troops. It has special protection.’

  Mary was incredulous. ‘They are dropping bombs on civilians in London yet going out of their way to protect Wallis’s possessions? And you tell me she and David were not in bed with the Nazis?’ She closed her eyes, too exhausted to argue. Yet again Wallis got special treatment.

  ‘After the war, will you try to get the painting back? That’s how I want Henry to remember me. Not like this.’ She looked down at her shrunken arms, which were black with bruising from injections.

  Ernest coughed into his handkerchief and held it over his face for a few moments before he could reply.

  Chapter 70

  Brighton, 23 December, 1997

  TWO DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS, ALEX WENT TO London to show the commissioning editor what was known as an ‘offline edit’ of the programme. He was worried the channel would ask for bits of footage he didn’t have when there was no time or budget left for a major reshoot.

  ‘They’ll probably want a nice neat ending that wraps up all the mysteries, and I’ll have to convince them it’s not possible.’ Questions had to be left floating in the air that might or might not be answered at some point in the future.

  Rachel got an email from Gazelle Films offering her a substantial sum of money in return for the use of her clothes – easily enough to pay off her overdraft and credit-card loan. It meant the shop was safe. She closed her eyes in silent gratitude, the months of worry finally at an end. If only Alex could have good news too, the day would be perfect. Whenever she had a spare moment, she wondered how he was faring.

  Late afternoon, he called from the train. ‘They love it! They completely understand the need for open-endedness. They even asked if I
’ll make another Diana programme next year, about her private humanitarian work: the hospital visits, the regular phone calls to people with terminal illnesses, the flowers and gifts she sent to sick children, the letters to the bereaved. I’ve amassed loads of material already. There was a lot the public never knew about while she was alive.’

  ‘Brilliant!’ Rachel cheered. ‘I’m proud of you. You’ve become television’s go-to Diana man.’

  ‘Darling, I have a confession to make,’ he said. ‘With everything that’s been going on, I haven’t had time to get you a Christmas present. Is there anything you want and I’ll hunt it down tomorrow?’

  ‘A Schiaparelli jacket,’ she replied, deadpan.

  ‘OK. Any serious suggestions?’

  ‘That is serious.’ Her cash-strapped customer had come back that very day, saying she had been unable to find anyone else to buy it, and Rachel had snapped it up.

  ‘Oh God, what have I let myself in for?’

  She told him about all the time-pressed husbands she was selling last-minute Christmas gifts to, and added, ‘But yours is by far the most expensive.’

  On Christmas morning, Alex was moved beyond words when he opened the photo album of his childhood. They sat in bed going through it, Rachel wearing the Schiaparelli jacket and Alex with a Christmas ribbon tied round his head. The memories flooded back as he told her the stories behind the photographs.

  ‘Mum loved clothes, just like you. I remember being so proud when we walked down the street because people would gawp at her . . .’ He turned the page. ‘I caught that fish in the Lake District but Dad had to kill it for me because I was too squeamish . . .’ Another page: ‘Did you know I was my school swimming champion at the age of ten?’

  He couldn’t remember some of the scenes but was touched to see evidence of his mother’s obvious love for him. ‘You just gave me my childhood back,’ he told Rachel.

  ‘Speaking of which . . .’ she said. ‘Susie rang yesterday to say her grandma is not keeping that painting the two of us lugged all the way back from Paris. She’s having a print made for herself then sending the original to Mary and Ernest’s son, who lives in Israel.’

  ‘That seems fitting, I suppose. How old is he?’

  Rachel did a quick calculation. ‘He must be in his late fifties.’

  ‘He’ll love it. It’s a gift full of history – like the one you gave me.’

  Rachel had also given him a biography of Wallis Simpson, and after breakfast, before starting to read it, he looked up von Ribbentrop in the index. ‘The seventeen roses are mentioned here,’ he said, and read out a passage from the book: ‘“Von Ribbentrop was sent to London with a brief to infiltrate and influence upper-class society. He began an affair with Wallis and reported every conversation he had with her directly to the Führer, who took a special interest, even acquiring film footage of her that he watched at his Obersalzburg hunting lodge.”’

  Rachel frowned. ‘I’m not sure I buy the theory that Ribbentrop bought her seventeen flowers because they’d slept together seventeen times. Why stop at seventeen? If he was seducing her to get to Edward, it would at least have been gallant to pretend he wanted to reach number eighteen. And if the affair was over, why still send her flowers and engrave a bracelet with that number? Besides, in the heat of passion, who counts?’

  Alex agreed with her. ‘Wallis became a hate figure after the abdication and I think there’s been a lot of misogyny in the way she’s been written about ever since. Lustful traitorous predator or the most misunderstood woman in history? I want to make a documentary that addresses that question.’

  They visited Rachel’s family on Boxing Day, and Alex’s on the 27th, then on Sunday the 28th they planned to have a lazy day before going back to work. They ate breakfast in bed, then Alex went to boot up the computer and check his emails while Rachel was in the shower.

  ‘Oh my God!’ she heard him shout, then seconds later the bathroom door burst open.

  ‘What is it?’ For a moment she feared bad news, but he was grinning from ear to ear.

  ‘I had an email from Monsieur Belmont back on Christmas Eve. I hadn’t checked my mails since then. Get this: the French police aren’t pressing charges against me because they don’t think the bracelet was Diana’s. They sent photos of the heart to her family and her butler, and word came back that none of them recognised it.’ He punched the air in triumph.

  ‘Of course they didn’t!’ Rachel shrieked. ‘That’s wonderful news.’

  He furrowed his brow. ‘They must be able to see that she was wearing it in photos taken earlier in the day. I wonder if they don’t want the added complication of prosecuting me over such a tiny piece of metal, when the investigation is already so multifaceted. Whatever the reason, it’s something of a relief not to face a year in jail.’

  ‘I would have rescued you,’ Rachel said. ‘And we could have gone on the run. It would have been exciting. But it’s probably better this way.’

  Chapter 71

  Wiltshire, September 1941

  MARY WATCHED FROM HER BED ON 28 SEPTEMBER as they celebrated Henry’s second birthday. Ernest had bought him a model railway track, complete with signal box, station and a couple of trains, and he got down on the floor to show him how to slot the pieces together, how to change the signal to let a train pass. Ernest made ‘woo-woo’ noises and Henry copied him. As she lay there, propped up on pillows, Mary thought she had never loved them more. She was filled with so much love, it made her feel as if she were floating.

  There was no way she could avoid taking morphine now, as pain rampaged through her body, stamping on the nerve endings, hammering on her skull and brutally kicking her spine. She needed an oxygen mask to hand for when she couldn’t catch her breath. The nanny brought Henry to her room for short visits, when he gave her a flower or one of his paintings or sang her a little song he had learned.

  ‘Thank you, darling,’ she whispered. ‘Mama is very proud of her funny little man.’

  She knew she would have to let go of him soon – give him a last-ever hug and kiss, then slip away.

  Sometimes she was unable to open her eyes because of the pain and exhaustion, but she could still hear life going on around her. There were moments when she was overwhelmed with sorrow at all she was leaving behind. They had a future she would not be part of. It was too cruel.

  She slept for longer periods and had complicated dreams in which people from her past appeared. Wallis was often there, a dark presence she did not trust. They were at a party and Wallis beckoned her across the room, but in the dream Mary didn’t want to go; another time they were rowing on a lake and there was something about the familiar face with those penetrating eyes that made her wary. When she awoke, it was a relief to hear Ernest breathing in bed alongside her.

  On the night of 1 October, he stayed awake stroking her hair as waves of pain ebbed and flowed. Her eyes were shut most of the time as she kept very still, trying to breathe through the agony. She was aware of the nurse coming to check on her at one point, and when the door closed, she opened her eyelids to see apricot sky through a crack in the curtains. Another new day.

  ‘Are you there?’ she whispered to Ernest.

  ‘Yes, darling,’ he replied straight away.

  There was a question she had been meaning to ask him, a very important question, and now was the time.

  ‘Promise me you won’t go back to Wallis once I’m gone,’ she said, gasping for breath between the words.

  She heard a sob. Ernest was crying. That was odd: he never cried.

  ‘How could you even think it?’ he said through his tears. ‘I loved you long before I met Wallis. You must know that, Mary. In my heart it was only ever you.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. She was surprised, but it made her happy, like a warm, comforting glow.

  That was the last word she uttered. Her rattly breathing grew easier as she slipped into a coma, from which she would never wake.

  Chapter 72


  Brighton, 28 December 1997

  AS ALEX SAT READING HIS BIOGRAPHY OF WALLIS that evening, Rachel made an attempt to tidy the flat, putting away Christmas presents and sweeping the pine needles from under the tree. The sheets of cardboard John Sturkey had wrapped the painting in were stacked in the hall, and as Rachel lifted them to carry them down to the bins, something slipped to the floor: a faded blue envelope with large loopy writing on the outside.

  She picked it up and saw it was addressed to Mrs Mary Simpson, 11 Upper Phillimore Gardens, London W8, and that the stamp on the corner was from the Bahamas. Peering inside, she saw some sheets of blue notepaper covered in handwriting. Where had it come from? She remembered the rip in the canvas at the back of the painting; it must have been hidden in there and had fallen out during the journey.

  The pages were disintegrating at the folds, so Rachel took great care as she pulled them out and laid them on the floor, arranging them in order. At the top of the first page, there was a W with a crown on top. It had to be Wallis. The date was 4 October 1941.

  My dear Mary,

  I hear on the international grapevine that you have cancer, so perhaps it is time for us to bury the hatchet – and not in each other’s backs. We’ve been through too much over the years to let a man come between us. Don’t forget we’re the sisters who chose each other. You and I are family.

  Do you ever look back and wish we could have been satisfied with ordinary lives? Perhaps me married to Carter Osburn and you with Prosser Tabb? We could have had luncheon at the Baltimore Country Club and discussed the latest fashions in Fuechsl’s. Frankly, the very thought makes me yawn, and I imagine it does you too.

  I hope we can meet again at the end of this ridiculous, unnecessary war. Hitler never wanted to fight the Brits, you know. He’s got the greatest respect for them, but that treacherous Mr Churchill and his clique forced him into it. Britain can never expect to win. They should sue for peace before any more lives are lost and they will find the Germans to be reasonable people. Von Ribbentrop assures me that the Führer has no desire to change the English way of life, although he teases that he would reinstate David as king with me by his side. Wouldn’t we have a gay time? I fancy getting my hands on the Crown Jewels and staging a coronation. You could be my chief lady-in-waiting!