Famous Last Words (35 page)

That would show them, he thought. If I disappeared. And sent them a letter from the moon, saying here I am! Look up!

He laughed.

But, at once, he clapped his hand across his mouth, lest he be heard. Overheard.

If only 1 could laugh out loud, he thought.

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Do anything out loud.

Fart out loud.

Be me out loud.

Be me.

But no. It’s not allowed, aloud. If you cross the will of the world, it takes away your crown. And throws it in your face.

It would serve them right if I was lost forever. Sitting there all smug and telling me I can’t have the woman I love to be my wife. And me the King. How dare they? But they did.

And what if I did disappear? There’d be no one then to

tell me what to do; what not to do; no one to tell me who I am and who I’m not. I’d be on the moon, and they couldn’t get at me at all. Not even Wallis… .

That was when he decided to go to his secret place and

hide.

His secret place was the Martello Tower, which Doctor Ricardo used as a storage space for old trunks and boxes,

furniture and paintings, no longer wanted but too good to throw away. The Duke had discovered the Tower early on

in their stay, when he’d opened a door and there it was: an old musty room with a high-raftered ceiling and dirty stone walls. It had caught his imagination at once and he used it.

rather the way he had used Fort Belvedere when he was

King, as a place to retire into and take off the face. He had not even told the Duchess of its existence.

It was a boy’s place—perfect as Fort Belvedere had been: a place to go and bolt the door and do forbidden things and dream. A place to drink that extra bottle of Madeira, smoke those especially thick cigars and refuse to regret the past as everyone expected him to do. The joy of Fort Belvedere had been its gardens and its walls. Here in the Martello Tower, the joy was in his dreams.

He found it, now, without much trouble: falling forward down the blackened hall to the very end and feeling along the wall until the iron ring that served as a handle struck his wedding band. Turning it very slowly, fearing it would yelp and give him away, he raised the latch and let himself

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in through the little door that always made him think he was playing Alice in the Looking Glass the way he had done with his sister and his brothers hundreds of years ago at Sandringham, thousands of years ago at Balmoral, a million years ago at Windsor.

Once inside, and the door safely closed behind him, he

fumbled for his lighter, struck it with his thumb and made his way up the steps to the table in the centre. On the table there was a candelabra in which he had set three fresh candles that afternoon. Behind him on the wall there was a

sconce with two more. Having lighted all five, he flicked the lighter closed and into his pocket and marched to the trunk where he kept his supply of wines.

“I’ll show them,” he said, more or less aloud. “This ought to give them all a good scare. Barging in here with their tales of kidnap and mayhem. Assassins. And my friend de Estella.

How dare they?”

And he poured himself a very large glass of port.

Seated at the table, smoking—dreaming—he gazed heavylidded past the candle flames at the room with its great stone walls and its piles of ornate picture frames and its stacks of paintings and tall Baroque mirrors leaning back against the stands which barely supported them. A worn-out—exhausted—tapestry had long ago been suspended between

the table and the door, presumably to keep the draught from blowing out the lights in another age. The tapestry itself was a threadbare map of the ancient world with all its names in Latin and all its insignia meaningless now, its great gold crests, its crowns and coats of arms almost effaced by time and its seas eaten through by moths, its continents plundered by worms and mildew.

The Duke of Windsor took wry note of the presentations

of himself depicted in the mirrors. There were three of him—

tricked out in light and shadow—each one completely at odds with the others: something, he supposed, to do with the way each glass was set and the way each glass received the candlelight and threw it back.

In the furthest mirror he saw the Prince of Wales—with all his golden features intact and not a single line on his

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face. In the middle glass he saw himself precisely as he was: the very man who sat and stared with forty-six years of lines and pouches marking his eyes and mouth—though still some traces of the golden lad could be seen. But in the third mirror the shadows fell wrong somehow, and all he could see was a hunched old man without a face. It made him cringe.

At once he was uncomfortably aware the images were

staring back at him, could see him, so he took a good long pull at the drink and settled the glass very quietly in front of him before he dared raise his eyes again. When he did, what he saw was his own apparently severed hands with

their perfect fingernails and curious knuckles and yellow tobacco stains laid out before him. And he thought of everything they had touched and held and dallied with, and of

everything they had willingly—unwillingly—relinquished.

Wilfully sometimes; sometimes letting go completely unaware.

Sad, he thought. I have sad hands.

“No don’t. You mustn’t weep,” said the Prince of Wales

from the furthest mirror. “No weeping allowed.”

“He’s right,” said the King-Duke of Windsor in the centre of the triptych. “If you do they’ll hear you somewhere. Then we’ll all be sunk.”

The huddled man—the faceless man—said nothing.

The Duke looked up at the Prince of Wales.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I haven’t wept since I was a child.”

“You forget,” said the Prince of Wales. “How quickly you forget…”

The Duke took a drink of port and said; “forget what?”

“How afraid you were, when you were me,” said the

Prince of Wales.

“When I was you? But I am you.”

“Oh no,” said the Prince of Wales. “Ask anyone. They’ll say you gave me up a long time ago.”

“When? Why?”

“I can’t really say precisely when—but I felt you letting go sometime around the ending of the War. You were having such a good time. And you’d learned not to cringe any more and how to stand on your own two feet and all my uses had become passe. Excepting, of course, my face. And my in

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signia. Clever you. How you learned to trade on what I was!

How you learned—in my name—how to get what you wanted!

Everything!”

“But I worked for you,” said the Duke. “I worked so hard for you.”

“Yes. That’s true,” said the Prince. “And I admit I profited, to some degree. I grew in stature, I suppose. The world came running: that I know. But the truth is, you kept most of the spoils. You had all the fun—and I was left to moulder.”

“Moulder? What a dreadful word.”

“Of course it’s a dreadful word. But it’s apt. I mouldered.

I crumbled. Our father hated you. But it was me that paid.

It was me that was curtailed, while you went off and had a good time at the Fort.”

“But…”

“No. Don’t interrupt,” said the Prince. “I’m telling you the truth. The fact is, that was when we lost the throne.

Because you destroyed my credibility. If ever I needed anything after that, I found it increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to get it. Everything you inherited when you inherited

me, you spent. On yourself. And when the moment came

for me to assert myself—not you, but me—they said; well you can’t be trusted any more. Imagine! And our father, lying on his death-bed, saying; do not let the Crown fall into David’s hands…When the Crown is what I had been born for, raised for and had suffered for, you destroyed every vestige of chance it would be mine. And when the moment came, and you needed me, and you said; I want the Crown—

and Waliis too, I didn’t even have a voice any longer. I was just a thing in the cupboard, hung up on a nail and taken out for parties whenever you thought it would be fun to play.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yes. But the trouble is it’s you, not me, you’re sorry for,”

said the Prince of Wales. “You hated me—and you hated

being me. And you got away from me as fast as you could.

And when you left, you absconded with all that was mine, including the Crown. And you gave that to Bertie. As if he wanted it!”

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“I know. He didn’t want it at all… .”

“But I did. And—look what you’ve done. When 1 think

of what we had,” said the Prince of Wales. “And how it

ended…”

“We have Wallis,” said the Duke, with a note of hopefulness.

“You have Wallis,” said the Prince of Wales.

“I’m sorry,” said the Duke.

“You’ve said that,” said the Prince of Wales.

“But I am!”

“Prove it.”

“How can I?”

“Get back the Crown.”

“But I don’t want the Crown if”

The Duke of Windsor staggered to his feet, knocking over the glass of port as he veered around the end of the table towards the Prince of Wales. And the Prince of Wales loomed up, huge, before him, all his features distorted and ugly.

“Be quiet,” said the old, old man, whose face could not be seen. “You’ll give us all away… .”

“And you,” said the Duke of Windsor, turning on the old, old man. “I don’t even know who you are.”

“You will,” said the old, old man. “You will.”

The Duke of Windsor became sarcastic, as he so often did when drunk, and he said, “Who are you, then? The Ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Come?”

“Come here,” said the old, old man. “I want you to see

me as I really am.”

The Duke of Windsor righted his glass and filled it again with plum-coloured port. He picked up the candelabra then and approached the shrouded figure in the mirror.

“Put away the candles,” said the old, old man. “Put them away. Come closer.”

The Duke of Windsor did as he was told and set the candelabra behind him on the table. He walked up closer then

to the old, old man.

The old, old man was wearing evening dress—very like

the Duke’s, but darker: dustier and without the rich, thick sheen of the Duke’s lapels. It was a suit of clothes as old,

it seemed, as the tapestry across the room. The Duke’s first impression that the old, old man was faceless had not been quite correct, for looking at him now more closely, the Duke could see there was a nose, a shadowed brow and the merest hint of two black holes where the eyes should be. These holes contained, like wells, the watery reflections of wavering light. And all around the old man’s head there was a

blaze of glassy fire.

The Duke stood looking in at the old, old man and after a moment they each took a mouthful of port and savoured it before they swallowed.

“Well,” said the Duke at last. “Here I am. What is it you want?”

“You,” said the old, old man. “You. Because without you I will die.”

“Should I care if you die,” said the Duke of Windsor, “not even knowing who you are?”

“Look again,” said the old, old man. “Is there nothing

here you recognize?”

The Duke leaned closer, scanning whatever features he

could see, but recognizing nothing. “No,” he said. “Nothing.”

“Now bring round the lights and look again,” said the

figure in the mirror, “and you will understand what it is I want of you. Bring them round and look again.”

The Duke of Windsor turned and lifted up the candelabra, holding it out arm’s length before him and turning yet again to confront the old, old man.

But the old, old man had been transformed.

Before the Duke of Windsor stood a glittering image quite unlike any image he had ever seen before. And yet it was himself he saw. It was himself undoubtedly, in beyond the shimmering candle flames—each flame crowned with its

own corona and each corona with its own reflection, and all the reflections surrounding his own reflection floating in the dark beyond the shining surface of the glass… .

“Blow out the lights,” said the old, old man, “and I will tell you who I am.”

But the Duke of Windsor was transfixed. And the old man

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smiled because he knew what it was to be transfixed by

light. “Blow out the lights and I will tell you who I am,” he said.

The Duke of Windsor blew out the candles, one by one.

Before him stood the old, old man, faceless and shabby

and worn, as before, with his eyes like wells on a starless night.

“You told me you would tell me who you are,” said the

Duke of Windsor. “You said you would tell me your name…”

“I am…” said the old, old man whose voice was already winding down.

“Oh please don’t fade away,” said the Duke of Windsor.

“You said you would tell me your name.”

“My name,” said the old, old man, “…my name is splendour.”

But his voice was dying inside the glass.

“Vai e]e.’” another voice shouted. “Vai ele? Vai ele.’”

The Duke of Windsor was leaning back against the table.

“0 assassino!”

Whose voice was that? Where was he now?

He took the lighter from his pocket, fumbling with it,

failing to make it work. Out in the hall, there was a lot of shouting now and even the sound of breaking windows.

At last he was able to strike a light and flame the candles.

Beyond the door he could hear the soldiers running, knowing it must be the soldiers because of the sound of their

boots.

“Help,” he said, very quietly at first. “Help.”

And then he heard the sound of rifle butts crashing against the door.

“Help!” he said. “Help…” Turning from side to side, confused by all the noise, confused by all the wine and brandy he had drunk, confused by all the light and cries everywhere of help and vai ele and o assassino. And he

seemed to be surrounded by dozens of figures flickering on and off in the candlelight and the candlelight falling, apparently, sideways as he himself turned this way and that.