This was because on May 22, the “Pact of Steel”—the military alliance between Hitler and Mussolini—had been signed. The last thing the popular Grandi wanted to see was war between his country and England; when ordered by Mussolini to make a speech publicly and uncompromisingly justifying Il Duce’s policy, the ambassador at first refused. Then, under threat of being outlawed by his own country, he delivered the words he had been sent. Though only the staffs of the Italian and German embassies were present, Mussolini’s son-in-law and Italy’s foreign minister, Count Ciano, had already released the text to the Rome newspapers, whence it was picked up by the naturally hostile British press.
The next day Grandi called on Halifax, now foreign secretary, who (according to the count’s memoirs) said: “Dear Grandi, don’t take it to heart. Everyone understands. All that matters is that you should stay to work with us for peace.” But Halifax’s good wishes were of no avail and Grandi received a cable ordering him to leave for Rome forthwith. From Rome the count wrote a “touching” letter to Irene dated August 9; to his adored Baba he wrote elegiacally: “There are moments which mean a whole life. An afternoon at Kew Gardens in early spring. Two children playing at life, hand in hand. Blossoming trees, a golden rain of blossoms everywhere. Your dress, I remember, was designed with blossoms too. Both happy like birds. Was it a mistake not to end our day like birds do? It was.
“And you again, smiling, forgiving, heavenly, lovely and beautiful, on the dark platform of a station, going away forever . . .”
That last summer of peace, the Metcalfes had again been asked to stay with the Windsors at La Cröe so that Fruity could recuperate from his hernia operation. He was well aware that the gilded life, with its make-believe royal court, continued as if in a sealed capsule, with dinner parties in the white-and-gold dining room, neighbors like Maxine Elliott curtseying to the duchess, the duke scrutinizing every bill for possible economies while showering the duchess with jewels and furs, and therefore wrote to warn his friend that he would be a bit of a “washout” as a guest. “I am still walking with the aid of a stick . . . then I have to go to bed every night at 10:30. I would have to bring my servant and I would have to ask you and Wallis if you would permit me to wear a soft silk shirt and short coat [dinner jacket] as I just couldn’t face dressing up with a stiff collar or shirt etc. In other words your old friend Fruity would be an infernal nuisance and not worth the trouble and would only occupy one of your much-sought-after rooms and give little in return!”
The Windsors were undeterred by Fruity’s caveats and the three Metcalfes duly arrived at La Cröe. After Baba and David left at the end of July, Fruity stayed on, fulfilling, as he had done so many years earlier, the duties of a temporary aide-de-camp.
On August 1 he described in a letter to Baba
terrible wailings coming from the woods and first of all thought that one of the little dogs had got a slight go of rabies but after listening intently I heard the bagpipes. At 6 p.m. some very strange people arrived, evidently some “old time” friends of Wallis’s, and the Rogers family. Then H.R.H. appeared, escorting Wallis (I having acted up to this as ADC in waiting, introducing etc). His appearance was magnificent if a little strange considering the tropical heat. He was completely turned out as the Scotch laird about to go stalking— beautiful kilt, swords and all the aids. It staggered me a bit and I’m getting used to blows and surprises. Then from the woods rushed what might have been the whole Campbell family, complete with pipes and haggis etc. I was told they were Folk Lore dancers, here to promote better international feeling. Personally, I think that if they got into Germany I wouldn’t blame Hitler attacking anyone . . .
Over the next three weeks, the Riviera emptied. On August 19, Leslie Hore-Belisha, the war minister, who had been over for cocktails a day or two earlier, flew back to London. Walter Monckton had to cancel the visit to La Cröe that he had planned for the end of August; in London he sought to make arrangements to bring the Windsors home in the event of war. Irene, staying with friends in York, learned that Lord Halifax had gone south from his estate of Garrowby “in acute worry over Danzig.” The arrival of Vivien from Wootton just before dinner struck a further note of gloom: she told her aunt that her father was very worried, as Diana, having recently seen much of Hitler, said he was determined to seize Danzig. Irene was further depressed by the description of the telephone system at Garrowby. “It seems inconceivably incompetent for a Foreign Secretary. A private phone rings in the Tower, which is seldom heard, or Halifax is too bored to go up to it. I gather Chamberlain has no phone at all.”
The crisis escalated at terrifying speed. On August 21 came the news that destroyed the last faint hope of peace: Hitler had concluded a nonaggression pact with the Soviets. All hope of an alliance between Britain, France and Russia vanished and, with his eastern front secured, so did the sole remaining obstacle to Hitler’s plans. From now on, war was a matter of days away—although there were still those who refused to believe it. The king had no illusions, leaving Balmoral for London on August 23 for a privy council and visits from his prime minister and foreign secretary. Halifax gave a talk on the radio that evening which Irene found trite and uninspiring.
The countdown began. On August 25 all British nationals still in Berlin and all Germans in England were asked to leave. Passages to America and Canada were fully booked and the admiralty closed the Mediterranean to British shipping. The roads out of London were congested: many were getting away while they could before the evacuation of one and a half million people commenced in a few days’ time. The telephone system ground almost to a standstill with the number of calls, which took up to six hours to be put through by the overworked operators. The Emergency Defence Act was rushed through, giving the government the authority it needed to put the country on a war footing, and the acting Socialist leader [Arthur Greenwood] gave Labour’s assurance that the House would stand united against aggression. “The peril of war is imminent,” the prime minister told the House, “but I still go on hoping.”
Irene drove to Denham on August 26, to find Nick and Diana there with Tom, who asked her to take his mother, Viv and Nick up to Wootton the following day—he expected air raids to start the moment war broke out. Back in London she packed up her pictures and collection of crosses and sent them down to Denham. The next day her chauffeur drove them all to Wootton, which she thought Diana had furnished very badly (“only one small window in each bay opens so one suffocates”), perhaps because she so resented the sight of Hitler’s photograph by Diana’s bed. She removed the photographs of Göring and his baby from the sitting-room mantelpiece.
By August 29 the tension was palpable. German troops were massed on the Polish border and the midnight news reported that Nevile Henderson flew back to Berlin after the cabinet meeting and was still with Hitler and Ribbentrop at 11:30 p.m.
On September 1 Hitler struck, his troops invading Poland at dawn. Britain and France instructed their ambassadors to inform the German government that unless Germany withdrew, their respective countries would be forced to fulfill their obligations to Poland. In Britain the navy, army and air force were mobilized, blackout orders were given and the evacuation of mothers and children from large cities began. Irene learned that a group of six would arrive at nearby Uttoxeter from Birmingham the following day and somehow managed to find and hastily furnish a suitable cottage for them.
On her return to London she learned that James the footman had been called up; after saying goodbye to him, she and the cook covered the hall light and all the passage lights with blue paper to dim them, took out every plug in the drawing room and morning room and decided to live in the dining room with its thick curtains. “I feel that dear Viv is suffering very deeply underneath,” she wrote that night. “It is so cruel that she is facing what I did in 1914—all my world in ashes round me. How can such horror triumph? An unbounded conviction like Hitler’s moves mountains. I loathe his photograph by Diana’s bed and long to smash it to atoms.
I wonder what Tom and Diana are thinking of their hero?”
At La Cröe there was nothing to indicate that either Windsor realized the true gravity of the situation. True, the duke had sent a personal telegram to Hitler, followed by one (on August 29) to the king of Italy, asking him to intervene for the preservation of peace. Even when he was told on September I that the Germans had invaded Poland, he still refused to believe that Europe was teetering on the edge of war. “Oh, just another sensational report,” he said impatiently. When, that evening, the duke received a message from the king of Italy telling him that Italy intended to remain neutral, he was jubilant. The duchess was so convinced that the crisis would blow over that she was making arrangements to have the new butler’s wife brought out from England.
Fruity was under no illusions. That afternoon, he drove first to Cannes to see the British consul and then to Nice, to visit the travel agent Thomas Cook where, through charm, persuasiveness and the duke’s name, he managed to reserve a compartment on the 7:30 a.m. train to Paris the following morning for seven of the duke’s servants, his own valet and a secretary. Apart from the Windsors, only Fruity, the duchess’s Swiss lady’s maid and a few French servants were left at La Cröe.
On Sunday, September 3, the duke, about to have a swim, was told that the British ambassador was on the telephone from Paris. Ten minutes later he came back. “Great Britain has just declared war on Germany,” he said—and dived into the pool.
The duke’s solipsistic approach to a war that might see the end of his country, let alone of millions of lives, finally proved too much even for the loyal Fruity. As he wrote to Baba that momentous Sunday: “Certain people here are quite extraordinary. No one could understand how their minds work. On Friday it had all been settled for a plane to come out early Saturday morning to bring us home etc. At about 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. Walter [Monckton] spoke again. The conversation had to be in French which didn’t help any as Walter is about as bad as the Master here! It went on in the library. I went on reading my book in the drawing room as I did not think that anything could go wrong.”
Walter Monckton was telling the duke that he would arrive the following morning at ten in a plane to escort them home. The duke asked him petulantly why he, Walter, was coming since (as Monckton’s notes record) “he would take up space that could be occupied by the duchess’s luggage.” When the duke was told that he would be staying with the Metcalfes he said he would only come if his brother and his wife were prepared to have them at one of their houses; informed that this was impossible, he refused to leave. Fruity’s letter describes what happened next:
Well anyhow they came in to me after about half an hour and said “We are not going—the plane is coming for you and Miss Arnold [secretary] tomorrow.” I looked at them as if they really were mad—then they started off—“I refuse to go unless we are invited to stay at Windsor Castle and the invitation etc and plane, are sent personally by my brother etc.” I just sat still, held my head and listened for about 20 minutes and then I started. I said: “First of all, I’ll say that whatever I say is said speaking as your best friend. I speak only for your good and Wallis’s—understand that. After what I’ve said you can ask me to leave if you like but you’re going to listen now.
“You have just behaved like two spoilt children. You only think of yourselves. You don’t realise that there is at this moment a war going on, that women and children are being bombed and killed while you talk of your PRIDE. God, it makes me sick. You forget everything in only thinking of yourselves, your property, your money and your stupid pride. What you’ve now said to Walter has just bitched up everything. You talk of one of H.M. Government’s planes being sent out for Miss Arnold and for me!! You are just “nuts”! Do you really think for one instant they would send a plane over for me and Miss Arnold? It’s too absurd even to discuss.”
I said a lot more in the same strain. They never uttered. After this I said: “Now if this plane is sent out to fetch you, which I doubt very much, then get into it and be b——y grateful.” I went to bed then, it was 3:15 a.m. Well at 7:15 I was wakened by her maid telling me to get up! To arrange for a car to go to the flying field etc. Then at 8:00 “he” came into my room fully dressed and said: “We’ve decided to go on the plane.” I said: “Okay—if it comes—and now I’ll have a bath!” Of course there never was any plane as I knew they’d never send it— of course Walter would have repeated all the rot talked on the phone to the Head Boss in England.*
The Lady (?) here is in a panic, the worst fear I’ve ever seen or heard of, all on account of the aeroplane journey. Talks of jumping out etc. Every half hour it’s “I won’t go by plane! We will motor to Paris! Or Boulogne etc.” I point out the impossibility of doing this—roads blocked with troops, no hotels, etc. Today there is talk of a destroyer being sent out. Oh God, it’s such a madhouse. Now Winston is head of the Admiralty he will I think send a destroyer if the little man asks for it. It seems she would rather go by boat. We’ve got no servants here except Marcel and Robert and a pantry boy and two French maids. You should see “him” packing—it really is funny.
I am to go with the boss here, wherever he will go in this war, so please do this for me. Get in touch with Scotland Yard and let Major Whittle or Whattle (the awful thing is his correct name has gone clean out of my head) know that I am going to do this for the war and therefore cannot do Special Constable. I hope he will understand—speak to him yourself.
Fruity had made his choice. Fortuitously he had cut the cords that knotted him and Baba in such an unhappy tangle of emotions. By casting in his lot with the person who was, in one sense, his first love, he had released the two of them from the miseries and jealousies of their life together. Above all, while remaining married to the woman he adored, without either scandal or humiliation he had made it possible for each to lead their own life.
29
Britain at War
Britain’s war began with the dropping of three million leaflets over the Ruhr, Germany’s with the sinking of the passenger liner Athenia by a U-boat, in direct contravention of the rules of submarine warfare. If nothing else, it showed the direction the war would take.
At Wootton, Irene had listened with horror to Chamberlain’s broadcast announcement of war. That night she sang “Onward Christian Soldiers” with Micky when she put him to bed. After the ten-thirty news she and Nick walked in the moonlight that streaked the long avenue and lay in a broad band across the lawn. She dreaded the idea of Diana’s arrival, with her devotion to fascism and Hitler.
Irene spent the first few days of the war searching out blackout material for Wootton’s huge windows. She eventually managed to find fifty-six yards of black cloth, which she took back to Wootton in triumph. Then, helped by Nanny and Grimwood, the Wootton chef, she began the laborious process of taking down all the curtains, stitching the black material in as a lining and rehanging them, often wobbling perilously at the top of a shaky ladder as she fixed pelmets near the high ceilings. When the material ran out she used black paint to cover the windows. She had the bumpers and running boards of her car painted white and its headlights filtered to give only a dim glow. She wrote to Campbell Steward, chairman of the Bureau of Information, and Harold Holt, organizer of concerts all over England, to ask if they might have a job for her. In London she offered a room in her house as a rest room for Voluntary Aid Detachments and reduced her own living space to a dining-sitting room to save light, fuel and work.
On September 11 Diana sent a wire—to Vivien, not Irene—to say she was arriving that evening with her two boys, Desmond and Jonathan. After dinner they all listened to the news. “I felt Diana hated it and it made me uneasy,” Irene wrote that night. “So I listened to the Lord Mayor’s appeal for the Red Cross nervously, much more so Anthony Eden’s 20-minute address on the enormities of Hitler and his regime, which drew a protest from Diana. She talks blandly of Tom carrying on the Movement during the war. I felt very strongly I could not be with her for long
because of that attitude.” Irene left the following day.
After the duke of Windsor had refused the offer of a royal aircraft, Walter Monckton had flown to Antibes in a dilapidated Leopard Moth on September 7, partly to persuade the Windsors to leave France and partly to discuss what the duke was going to do during the war. Monckton had spent much time in England lobbying on behalf of a suitable and fitting job for him.
The king had first thought of a civilian post under the regional commissioner for Wales, then of an attachment to the British Military Mission, which was shortly to leave for Paris. The king’s advisers did not want to give the duke too central a role: Queen Elizabeth feared lest her brother-in-law, with his well-known charm and glamour, would overshadow her husband at this most difficult time. Everyone felt that if the Windsors returned to the Fort they would be a good deal too close for comfort and possibly the focus of a rival court.
It did not take the duke long to decide that he would prefer the Military Mission, although it meant—temporarily at any rate—giving up his rank of field marshal. He now asked for a destroyer to transport them instead of a plane, and the long-suffering Monckton flew back to arrange this. A message was sent to the British embassy in Paris informing them: “The Duke of Windsor should be ready to embark at 1700 at Cherbourg on Tuesday 11 September.” When Baba had heard from Fruity that no accommodation had been offered the Windsors by anyone, anywhere—least of all by the royal family—she invited them to the Metcalfe house in Ashdown Forest. As all the arrangements had to be made from Downing Street and as Monckton could not speak French, she was called on constantly to help.
The Windsor party left Antibes in three cars, spending two nights en route. One temporary chauffeur drove the Windsors and Fruity, with the dogs, in the duke’s car, another drove the duchess’s car, with the lady’s maid and another servant, a third drove a Ford station wagon piled with luggage. In Paris, the duchess’s invaluable secretary, Mrs. Bedford, had bought extra suitcases, packed the clothes they wanted to take, dispatched what she could through the British embassy and even managed to get the duchess’s precious furs out of storage. Then they set off for Cherbourg, where they were met by Randolph Churchill, in the uniform of the 4th Hussars, representing his father, and the duke’s cousin and old friend Lord Louis Mountbatten, commanding the newly built destroyer HMS Kelly. First the luggage and the duke’s car were loaded on board, and finally the party, the duke carrying one dog, the duchess another and the lady’s maid the third, walked up the gangplank.
The Viceroy's Daughters Page 35