Famous Last Words (34 page)

comfort. If anyone came too close, he would say; “don’t interrupt…” Only Wallis was allowed to approach beyond the barrier he kept about his person, maintained at precisely the reach of an outstretched arm and gauged according to the knowledge that a snake can only strike the distance of its own length.

Part of the barrier the Duke maintained was the “mask”

he wore of bandages. Sir Alan Paisley had been quite right.

The Duke had “walked through a mirror” at the Villa Cascais.

He had not only walked through a mirror, he had fallen on top of all its glass. A Portuguese doctor was rushed to the Villa as soon as it was known what had actually taken place in the Martello Tower. He was paid a gross amount of money—

some of it supplied by the Duke’s Spanish host—to treat the wounds and was paid even more to keep his mouth shut

regarding the whole affair.

The wounds were more or less superficial but had required some stitching. They had bled profusely as all wounds do where the face is involved and the veins are close to the surface. Even when fully healed they would leave a tracery

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of scars the Duke would have for the rest of his life. The palms of his hands, a place on his neck and the leading edge of his left thigh had also been gashed, though it was only the thigh that required closing. The doctor had provided a regimen of dressings, ointments and surgical powders and had said; “sea air will do the rest. The salt is excellent for wounds, though His Royal Highness must avoid the sun.”

Day by day the dressings were less and less painful and the subsequent bandages were little more than double layers of folded gauze. Before the voyage was over they were dispensed with altogether. Excepting, of course, the bandages

on the thigh and the palms of the hands. Anyone the Duke was forced into contact with was told there had been an accident involving an automobile and that nothing was being said because, until the Windsors arrived in the Bahamas, nothing was being said about their whereabouts or even their existence.

The Royal suite was one of two on the uppermost deck.

It consisted, besides the salon, of separate staterooms and bathrooms for the Duke and Duchess and a cabin for Major Gerrard. Across the passageway, the former American Ambassador to France, Anthony Biddle, and his wife had a suite

of equal size though not of equal opulence, the chintz being faded and the carpets worn. Together, the Windsors and the Biddies commandeered an entire rear section of the deck.

The Biddies had lifted a brace of potted palms from their hotel in Lisbon and these, together with an awning, provided cover from prying eyes whenever the Windsors dared the

daylight—and provided “comfort and convenience” for the Biddies’ harlequin Great Dane.

The Duchess played her gramophone. She was preoccupied

with paranoic thoughts concerning Major Gerrard. Major

Gerrard never gave them a moment’s privacy once they stepped outside their suite. If the Duchess so much as crossed the passageway to borrow a magazine. Major Gerrard was there in his doorway watching her. If she wanted a breath of air at night she noted the burning eye of his cigarette in the dark. Every move she made was monitored. Of course, she realized it was his job to guarantee their safety. On the other

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hand, who could guarantee their safety from him? Hadn’t they been warned: “Beware of British friends?” How did

she know, for instance, the Duke had not been pushed through the mirror? And Gerrard firing his gun… .It alarmed her.

Who was he firing at? She was also dreadfully afraid at having lost all touch with von Ribbentrop. The last real contact she’d had had been a month ago in Spain. After

which—not a word.

The Duke, meanwhile, played “doctor” to himself. He

fiddled endlessly with his bandages and scabs. He also began to tipple. Scotch as well as the ever-present Madeira. Wallis at first put the drinking down to fear and frustration. So much had happened: all of it so alarming. Anyone would

take to drink for a while just to survive the shock, let alone being caged in the prison of this ship. She even began to drink a little more herself, mostly martinis. But she couldn’t get drunk. Not even drowsy. The Duke, on the other hand, was increasingly prone to staring at space through the smoke of his endless chain of cigarettes and cigars with the glass set out before him like a buoy in the fog; ringing its edge with his fingernail: tap-tap-tapping—always out of sync with the rhythm of her music.

Frankie and Johnny were lovers,

Oh Lordy, how they could love!

They swore to be true to each other,

True as the stars above…

One day she tried to look directly into his eyes. But they were spooked and fled.

“David…?”

Nothing.

“David, please. I can’t stand this any more. I can’t do this any more. I’m worn down. Lost. 1 don’t know where you are.

It isn’t fair. We have to get each other through this—whatever this is. So please…Either come out here and join me—or at least let me in so I can hide with you. Please.”

“Don’t interrupt.”

“God damn it!” she shouted at him—and stood up so

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quickly her chair fell over. “Come out! Come out of there!

Stand up! STAND UP. Don’t you remember who you are!”

The little blue fish came round towards her and settled, suddenly calm, suddenly still.

“Was,” he said.

“Oh no,” she said, her voice lowered, deadly. “Oh no you don’t. You can’t get away with that with me. Never. I won’t let you.” She stood right in front of him. “You are, and you will always be, the King.”

The fish went into hiding again. The blinds were drawn.

He wept.

Wallis spoke quite calmly now. She didn’t even tremble.

“Cry all you want,” she said. “Nothing will be changed. You don’t understand,” she said. “You have never understood.

J have a Job to do.” She looked at him, frozen; wishing she could freeze him, too.

She turned around and picked up the chair and set it

carefully, deliberately, precisely back in place: just as if there had been stage marks to set it on.

“And just in case it might have slipped your mind what

that job might be—it is to keep you alive. You—the King, David. You—who can still be anything. And will be.” She turned away from him just so as not to see the tears. They alarmed her, because they made her so angry. “I have the advantage over you, David,” she said. “Because what I want is something I’ve never had. And wanting something you’ve never had makes all the difference in the world.”

“Does it?”

“Yes.”

“You think I’ve never wanted something I couldn’t have?

Just because I was King?”

“You’ve done pretty well,” she said. “Just because you

were King.”

“Have I?”

“Yes.”

He put more whisky into his glass and stared at it for a moment before he spoke again. “I wanted you,” he said.

“Yes. And you got me, too.”

There wasn’t any reply to this; so she turned around and looked at him.

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He was staring at her; ice at last.

“Did I?” he said.

But even this didn’t hurt her. In fact, she smiled. “Good,”

she said. “Very good, David. Excellent.” She made sure the smile was fixed before she spoke again. “You’re learning.”

When the S.S. Excalibur put into port in the Azores, there was a ban on going ashore. The Duke would not have gone at any rate. He was hiding in his cabin, sitting in his corner.

But Wallis went out on deck and stood underneath the awning with Anthony and Margaret Biddle and watched the new

passengers coming on board and the stevedores loading crates of oranges and wine.

“Look down there,” Margaret Biddle said. “There—over

there. Isn’t that someone we know?”

Wallis and Anthony Biddle looked.

“Down where?”

“Over there, by those enormous packing cases. The thin

young man in the alpaca suit.”

Wallis looked.

The thin young man was directing the loading of four

wooden crates, two of which were twenty feet long and one of which was almost forty feet long.

“What on earth do you think they can be?”

“I don’t know. But whatever they are, he wants them

treated like glass.”

“And you think we know him?”

“Well, I don’t quite remember…but he is familiar. Don’t you think?”

“Maybe he’s a movie star,” said Wallis.

“He could be. Certainly handsome enough.”

Anthony Biddle suddenly said, “It’s an aeroplane.”

“An aeroplane? In boxes?” His wife was incredulous.

“Yes. You see there?”

“Oh yes…The propeller.”

The propeller was not in any kind of wrapping. And it

looked as if the young man might be going to bring it onto the ship himself.

” ‘tisn’t Lindbergh, is it?” said Margaret Biddle.

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“No,“said Wallis. “I know him very well—and he’s much,

I i:!i ||! much taller than that.”

“You’ve met him, Peggy,” Anthony Biddle said. “How

can you possibly think that’s Lindbergh?”

“Well…the aeroplane.”

Wallis laughed.

Then Anthony Biddle said; “look. You can see the name

of the ‘plane on the crate just coming up.”

All three leaned out towards the swaying box.

ICARUS, it said.

“Jcarus,” said Wallis. “What a strange, strange name to give an aeroplane. I mean—didn’t Icarus fall?”

“That right. He flew too close to the sun.”

Wallis looked at the thin young man.

“He’s very handsome. Very. I wonder who he is.”

“We can ask the Purser.”

“Yes. And maybe—” said Wallis, grinning “—maybe we

can get him to sit at our table.”

But he could not be made to sit at anybody’s table. All his meals were taken privately in his stateroom. The excuse he made was simple enough. He was a writer, and he had a

book to finish.

His name was Lorenzo de Broca.

Wallis had now tried every ruse in the book to extricate her husband from the depths-into which his accident and his exile had thrown him: all but one.

One mid-Atlantic afternoon, there was a storm and Wallis said to the Duke; “do come and bundle up with me. We can keep each other warm.”

Surprisingly—though perhaps because of the drink—he

was meek as a child. She was even able to lead him by the fingertips.

Outside the waves began to pile up over the prow of the ship and the sky turned a kind of tropical green and the water black. The air was filled with a howling noise and the plates of the hull gave off a cracking sound, as if Excah’bur might break apart in long curved strips of steel and sink into the sea.

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Wallis removed her dress and her underclothes and her

dark silk stockings and climbed beneath the sheets and blanket wearing only her slip. The Duke stood watching her, his sea legs splayed to hold him up, his cigarette in one hand, glass of Madeira in the other; and all the time she was undressing he was “undressing” too. But all he removed was

his bandages, dropping them down into a brown paper bag, one of the many brown paper bags thrown every evening

after dark into the wake of the ship. Once his wife was in and safely out of sight, he climbed in after her, as one who climbs aboard a lifeboat terrified of drowning, but claiming he is calm.

For a moment, once the Duke was in his place against the hull, they were silent. Wallis was the first to speak. “All right?” she whispered. He nodded. “Now?” she whispered.

“Yes.” “Good”—and she reached out sideways and pulled

a photograph there beside her closer over the top of the table.

“Now,” she said, and turned to the Duke, “it’s your turn.”

The Duke of Windsor—rising to an elbow—reached across his wife for the photograph and made the last adjustment.

Then he lay back and sighed.

“Is she watching?” Wallis whispered.

“Yes.”

“Can she see us both?”

“Indeed.”

“Good.” Wallis smiled. “Then—shall we?”

“Yes.”

The photograph was the one that Wallis always kept by her bed, no matter where they were. It rested on a velvet mat, with purple facings, and it showed Her Majesty Queen Mary, the Duke of Windsor’s mother, dressed in mourning. And

what is more, she could not close her eyes or turn away as her son and his wife began their ritual.

In the aftermath of their battle on the bed, the Duke of Windsor slept. Drugged with pain and alcohol and perspiring

profusely as one who is ill with a rare, incomprehensible disease, he began to dream. Darkness fell. The storm broke.

It rained.

.. .the lights went out…

…the Duke heard whispers…“tenho medo…da escuridao.

. .espaJhar-se…”

Three people—four perhaps—fumbled their way down

the stairs against the opposite bannister and, while they passed, the Duke of Windsor paused. Slowly the whispering faded round the corners and was gone.

He was alone.

The dream and the event were melded into one, except

that in the dream the darkness widened out in all directions.

Everytime he dreamt, the dream was edgeless and the bottom of the stairs on which he sat could not be seen or imagined.

Perhaps there was no bottom. Maybe there was nothing there but a drop into space. Sometimes in the dream there was a sudden tilting of the stairs and the Duke was forced to cling to the railings, fighting gravity and dizziness in order not to fall. And he would hang there with his eyes closed, sometimes it seemed for hours, until the stairs were righted again and he could breathe.

It had not seemed real when it happened: now, as he

dreamt, it was real as knives.

He was alone.

Wallis was somewhere, lost in the house. Soldiers had

broken in from the sea and told him there was a kidnap plot.

Now there were voices crying “assassinof” It would never end.

But here he was alone in the dark and none of them knew where he was. None of them could find him and, if he wanted to, he could take this moment to disappear completely.