Famous Last Words (25 page)

he was telling me the truth. But I still could not speak.

“Over all the world,” de Broca said, “there is darkness now. And where are you that was, who made in all your

writing words.to make a light?”

He looked very hard at me. So hard I wanted desperately to look away. But I refused. I admired this young man. I had read his poetry and 1 thought very highly of it. How could I look away, no matter what he said. Ernest had not looked away from the Marquesa. For a reason. If we are brave enough to put our words on paper, then we must be brave enough to have them turn on us.

“It is not my pleasure to have your company here.” de

Broca turned and extended his rebuke to include Isabella.

And then he looked at me again and said, “I am sorry to be your enemy. But am.”

And went away.

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The war, which now is in its closing hours, began with

silence in ^\e dawn of September 1st, 1939.

Some soldiers lying on the ground looked out across a

Polish m^dow from a German wood and listened for the

cock to cC°w-And when it did, the soldiers turned to one another aft6 said; shali we begin?

Four w^6^8 ^ter, Poland fell.

“The W^”—^e ^y other war—will come and go and be Darentt16512^ Dv dates in history books. A war is just a noise_th6 stench of death—a view, however wide or brief, of rubble^^d a cause for lamentation.

After ttis lamentation: praise. Over the rubble: shrines.

After the ?tench of death: the sweetness of flowers. After the noise’ th^ diminishing echo. Then all the shops will open and the fi^1 S°^d coins go down. “One dozen postal cards of war memorials, please. The coloured ones, if possible.”

And all tt^ figures cut in stone.

A war s J^t a place where we have been in exile from

our better dreams.

Madrid I”11*1’ 194(a

I was at (he Ritz on the Gran Via.

Madrid’ln ^it6 of ^ scars, was beautiful as ever; but the Madrelin^ were not so gay as I had remembered. There was a oinched ana ponderous look that ran like a common piece of news (”’”““gh sll their faces. My suspicion was they had not vet d^‘dsd how to tell their stories: how to relate what had befal^” them. Some had been on one side; most had

been on the other. Now, they must be reconciled and learn to live v^th one another in a state of mutual defeat and victory, though I did not envy them this I could not help

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but envy them the ending of their wars. General Franco was victorious. Life could now proceed.

The other news was all of the fall of France. Madrid was inundated with refugees from far away as Antibes and Nice and Marseilles. Every second face belonged to a foreigner.

In Spain they had a most dreadful practice of blaring the news over speakers in the streets. You could not escape it anywhere. The British were at Dunkirk, the Germans were about to invade the south of England, the Government of France had taken to its heels and was embarked on a fleet of sinking ships from Bordeaux. Reynaud had been deported, replaced by Petain—surely some kind of madness—or a joke.

Petain was eighty-three years old. Charles Eugene Bedaux, of course, would be in his element, since Petain and his cohort Laval were both in Bedaux’s pocket.

But I was in Madrid with Isabella Loverso. So was Wallis, with the Duke.

The circle closed around us there, though it still had the look of a bracelet set with diamonds. Three or four times we met together, telling of our escapades and escapes. We drank a lot of rich red wine and sat on balconies. The Duke had yellow teeth. Wallis was called Her Royal Highness, then. Isabella used a parasol to shade us from the sun. I wore the first new suit of whites I’d worn in over a year. One night, Wallis told the story of her life and left out China. I was very hurt. Then the Duke told the story of his life and left out having abdicated. Wallis was very pleased. Nonetheless these stories told the temper of the times and the

motto we had adopted: the truth is in our hands noiv.

Three occasions we met like this. Or four. And by the end of it, we knew each other’s lies. The conclusion of this time came suddenly. The Duke and Wallis were called away. Or perhaps it is more realistic to say, they were beckoned. Their initial destination was Lisbon, but the rumours already abounding of other destinations after that made it impossible to tell where they might turn up next.

A reception was given on the eve of their departure and I believe there must have been at least a hundred and fifty guests. Franco’s brother-in-law was host. There was an or

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chestra. And thirty footmen. The Duke of Alba came—a

cousin of the Duke of Windsor and as “British” as they come.

And the Infante Alfonso—dressed as an air cadet—also a cousin, with the brass-coloured hair of a German prince.

The implications of regal incest are truly alarming. How have the Royal Houses of Europe not all bled to death?

But the most prestigious guest of all, outside of those I have named, was von Ribbentrop himself. We had never

met, and 1 was surprised at how nervous his presence made me.

There was so much saluting and shaking of hands and

bobbing and “heiling” I wondered where we were. It was

almost impossible to grasp a single word of English from the air, though all of this was ostensibly taking place in honour of an English King. And that “King” himself spoke German all evening long. Diplomacy.

The whole reception reeked of intrigue and wine, and 1

knew to the very perfume of the clothes and the acrid smell of guttering candles—thousands of them—what it was to sit in the presence of Cesare Borgia, wondering who would be the first to fall into a poisoned plate.

Someone, somewhere had been busy; Isabella and myself

were to share a table with von Ribbentrop. Isabella now seemed taller than ever, possibly because she had lost much weight and begun to pile her hair in the newest fashion, up from the back of her head to the front, exposing her neck.

She was dressed, as so many of the women were, in white, with jewels across her bosom, each of the facets catching every candle’s flicker. She also carried, and used, a fan. The heat in Madrid that summer was the worst in thirty years and the night of that reception was the hottest of the month.

von Ribbentrop wore his whitest of uniforms, with a silver globe surmounted by eagle’s wings sewn to his sleeve. I could not help but think of Isabella’s Palazzo d’Aquila, with all its eagles being adored by a medieval crowd of princes peeling from the walls.

There was a rustling sound. And a murmur.

Everyone turned. Even the candles burned in a new di

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rection. All eyes were levelled. Everyone fell.

The Duke of Windsor was standing—suddenly all alone

in a doorway. Smiling like a boy. We bowed and curtsied.

But every mind was spinning in the same direction: where was she?

The Duke was pale. But his hair was still the same, entirely spun from gold, and his eyes, though somewhat dulled with quite legitimate fatigue, were still that magic shade of blue one thinks he’s taken out a patent on.

Still facing him, we rose. And then, as one who cuts a

ribbon, or reveals a painting on a wall, the Duke of Windsor made a magician’s gesture with his hand, opening its palm towards the ceiling, just as if Wallis might appear by magic out of nowhere, standing on his lifeline or his heartline.

Every gaze turned upward.

There she was: resplendent. Wallis descending in a gold glass cage.

Her hair was elaborately piled as I had never seen it used before and held in place with lethal pins, and her body was sheathed in cerulean silk over which she wore a Mandarin’s robe embroidered with a flight of birds. Her cage, of course, was a lift embossed with gold but every wall and even the floor was glass and it fell, like a flake of ice, without a sound.

Her eyes, as she descended were triumphant. Something

about her made me afraid.

Isabella sat between myself and von Ribbentrop. The chef had outdone himself: our meal consisted of salmon; grouse and pheasant; marinated onions and oranges; roast suckling pig: an aspic of truffles, garnished with sprigs of watercress and coriander leaves; a coffee and caramel “custard” the English call a Spanish cream; a water ice of lime—to Isabella’s joy—and finally, a host of nuts and oranges in a

myriad of silver bowls and then, without the dread formality of men and women separated, snuff from horns, cigars and the Duke’s Madeira shuffled up and down the tables while the guests were free to rise and mingle, seating themselves

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in new combinations. Isabella was beckoned away by the

Marques de Estella and Wallis came across to sit in her place between von Ribbentrop and me.

That night I overheard a conversation between them that lifted me almost from my chair.

In 1936 I had written in the Daily Mail; “whni is needed now is a new kind of leader—someone like a flag, whose very presence makes us rise. Nol a Mussolini, of whom we are afraid. Not a Hitler, who drives us (o our feel. But an emblem whose magnetism pulls us upward.” And now I

was to learn how well my words expressed the cabal’s intentions.

There we were, in the very room with the very

leader who had been chosen. And his wife.

So this is history as she is never writ, I thought. Some day far in the future, some dread academic, much too careful of his research, looking back through the biased glasses of a dozen other “historians”, will set this moment down on

paper. And will get it wrong. Because he will not acknowledge that history is made in the electric moment, and its

flowering is all in chance. At the heart of everything that shakes the world, there need be nothing more than a casual remark that has been overheard and acted on. There is more in history of impulse than we dare to know. Yes, they will get it wrong. They will write that Wallis created her world in six premeditated days—alone, like Almighty God. And that on the seventh day, she rested, still alone. It was not so.

If what I mean is not yet clear, then think of God as being Himself created by another being who one day whispered

in His ear: “begin”.

von Ribbentrop sweated. His eyes were grey and deceptively cool. His lips were extremely sensuous. Wet. His hands were never still. His blond hair thinning. The cleft in his chin very deep. His manners—imperious; sexually intimidating, careful, smiling. He exuded the promise of a secret vice.

There was something said about “how much Her Royal

Highness has tragically lost.”

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Wallis looked at the table. Yes.

von Ribbentrop moved one hand a little closer over the

cloth, like a crab, moving sideways. 1 thought I had never seen such enormous fingers. I was spellbound, wondering if he would dare to touch her.

“Things go so well for us now,” he said, meaning the

Germans and the War. “Many, many kingdoms falling into

our lap. And crowns.”

Wallis looked up at this. And smiled.

“Not the crown of England, Excellency,” she said. “I believe that has fallen into another lap than yours. A rather

knock-kneed lap, if I recall.”

von Ribbentrop smiled and shrugged. “There are other

crowns,” he said, “than the one your sister-in-law is wearing.

Not, of course, that England’s crown is irretrievable.

Still…Your Royal Highness perhaps does not understand there are crowns that have never yet been worn by anyone.”

von Ribbentrop looked away. The whole room glittered. He was drawing her attention to the circle of which she was the centre.

“You have won great success these last three years,” he said. “All these people now look up to you—many of whom looked down, in their time.”

Wallis sobered. It was so. There was no one “in that room who had not kissed her hand. Excepting the Infante of Spain, who need not—yet.

“How long do you think we might have to wait?” she

asked.

“Does it matter?” von Ribbentrop said. “We should not

be too anxious. After all, we are now the masters of time.

The sequence is what counts. Be patient, madam. Never run before the event. Be patient. We have time. Wait.”

Wallis lifted her fingers into view. Not knowing where to rest her eyes, she gazed at her hand and turned her rings.

I could feel her shudder as she fondled her wrist, her veins, her pulse. And then her eyes, inadvertently, fell on mine and she swallowed very hard and looked away at her husband.

von Ribbentrop was already looking at the Duke, who

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must have sensed our concentration for he turned and waved in our direction. Wallis gave him a dazzling smile.

And this was how I came. inadvertently, to name our

enterprise. Something had fallen into place with all the talk of “patience” and of “waiting”, I guess, and it clicked when Wallis smiled at the Duke. It was the Crown she had married—we all knew that—only to have it whisked away. And

for the longest time, it had completely disappeared. But Wallis had now seen it hoving into view again—distant, it was true, but there: within her sights.

“You’re just like Penelope.” I said. I was only joking.

“You’ve had every kind of suitor—me included—but you’ve turned us all down. Because you’re still waiting: for the one true love of your life to return. Not Odysseus, of course…”

Wallis laughed and reached across and tapped my hand

affectionately. “He’s right, you know,” she said to von Ribbentrop.

“I am still waiting.”

von Ribbentrop did not appear to have heard precisely

what we were saying. “I like it very much,” he said. “We shall adopt it as our nom de guerre. Penelope. Yes?”

Yes.

So there we sat: von Ribbentrop, myself and Wallis. Three lean cats and one bowl of cream. The Crown.

“Our motto,” von Ribbentrop said; “shall be ‘we wait.’ “

The whole of Madrid was like an empty room. von Ribbentrop had gone; the Duke and Wallis had gone. The long pale