Famous Last Words (45 page)

propose. There is never any harm in listening. I can always turn you down, if I don’t like the terms. And you, Excellency, can of course always take the chance of turning me down.

Can’t you.”

von Ribbentrop did not reply. He was in retreat—inside his head; somewhat in shock—somewhat in wonder of this man’s impertinence; somewhat in anger—entirely afraid.

Schellenberg finished the wine in his glass and stood up.

He was handsome enough in his uniform to be intimidating just on that account alone. He was also in brutally fit condition, since he was so much in the field, von Ribbentrop,

by contrast, felt like a twisted and worn out dishrag. The

but the club proprietors and the millionaires had planted groves of exotic trees which, having all their growth at the top, afforded shade but little privacy. Privacy could only be attained by erecting walls and these, made of stucco, were surmounted with rows of jagged glass to ward off thieves and “peepers”. Hog Island was not a place I adored and I seldom ventured there. My dislike of it stemmed from the fact I could not disassociate the place from my fear of sharks.

It could only be reached from Nassau by ferryboat, and on IIIIIlL11!!! the very day of my arrival someone fell—or was pushed, as a prank—from the decks of this public conveyance and eaten by a shark in full view of fifty or sixty people who all stood by and did nothing.

The harbour at Nassau widens opposite the town, providing mooring space for private yachts and motor launches.

There is also room for pleasure ships such as the S.S.

Munargo, on its weekly run from New York, to manoeuvre

freely into port past crowds of fishing boats and tramp steamers bustling about their business delivering cargos of fish and crab. Many of the steamers come up from Cuba and

South America laden with tobacco, coffee and rum. Others come from Gulf State ports with oil and gasoline. Boston, New York and Charleston provide even more refined cargo: Scotch whisky, linen sheets, Philip Morris cigarettes and artichoke hearts in tins. And, when I was there, the Pan Am Clipper Service still had its daily flight from Miami, splashing down in the Bay and taxiing through the water traffic

to its levee at the foot of Mount Royal Road.

All day long there was a constant clamour of birds and

bells and shouts and steam whistles, intermingled with the cries of vendors in the Market Place and the songs of the Negro women clipping and baling sponges under the wooden awnings on the wharfs. By night, there was other music—

some of it calypso, drifting out towards Hog Island from the bars and cafes on the waterfront, some of it sophisticated swing, wafting back towards the town from the Porcupine and Paradise Beach Clubs.

Now that America had entered the war, there were not so many tourists on Bay Street as there had been. Nonetheless,

the population of the Island had jumped dramatically due to the influx of refugees and airmen’s wives. The airmen themselves were stationed elsewhere in the Bahamas with the RAF Bomber Command. Weekends, they would visit

Nassau and the streets filled up with blue—and blue being Wallis’s favourite colour, she would stand whole hours behind her blinds and watch with binoculars through the slats

as the blue parade of fair young men passed by—a river of golden heads.

It was to this place in the season of storms and hurricanes I arrived, June 3rd of 1943, to prepare the Duchess of Windsor for a sudden though undated departure for Europe. Her

strength of purpose and her famous patience with fate were finally wearing thin and I found her quite alarmingly “old”

and broken. She gave in very quickly to her temper; spoke unkindly of nearly everyone and was making enemies as

fast as Ford made motorcars: one a minute. Her assembly line of bitchy remarks was begun with perhaps her most

famous. When asked, after being introduced to Bahamian

society, what she thought of Nassau’s creme de la creme, the Duchess of Windsor replied: “I cannot answer that, since all I seem to have met is the Jait du lait.”

This venom was returned in kind, if not in words—since no one dared to speak her language aloud. Once while reviewing an Honour Guard the Duchess was made to stand

on the ground while the Duke received a helping hand onto a dais raised so high it almost obscured his wife—and all that was seen of her on that occasion was her hat. Her extravagance was bitterly complained of. too, though I know

for a fact she gave up many of her favourite foods and only wore so many changes of clothing—four a dav—for the simple reason that her system could not abide the humidity,

and the bathing ana showering facilities of Government

House were the worst I have ever seen in a residence that size. It was a nightmare place for anyone devoted as the Duchess was to personal cleanliness and impeccable appearance.

Her hair, for instance, began to fill her brushes to

such a frightening degree she had to send to New York for someone to come down and treat it once a month so she

would not go completely bald. And the Duke…

Her concern for the Duke was also taking its toll. This concern ran so deep she did not even voice it to her closest friends: or, rather, acquaintances—since she had no friends.

It was because of this reticence—so strongly at odds with her awesome willingness to speak her mind on other occasions—the rumour got started that she and the Duke were

parting. He appeared less and less when there were guests and Wallis—searching her vocabulary of lies—could not produce a single explanation that did not veer dangerously close to what she thought was the truth. He had already lost his nerve and now, she was convinced, he was losing his grasp of reality. The fact she could not mention this to anyone, put a strain on Wallis that was monumental.

“Henny” Henderson, the Duke’s valet, was born a nervous wreck. He always shook at the merest suggestion that anything or anyone new might be introduced into the world he

knew and in which he was secure. This made of him the

perfect servant: since neatness, precision and routine were the only means by which he was certain life could be maintained.

He adored the Duke of Windsor, and the Duke of

Windsor adored him back. “Henny” could do no wrong, and was even trusted with the make-up tables to hide those scars the Duke could not see himself. And there had to be someone, too, who could get the Duke in and out of the new and

strangely bewildering supportive clothing he had begun to wear: stockings that held his veins in place; braces that gave him a back; and other things… .

Always these “things” would arrive in boxes from foreign places such as Hamilton, Ontario and Echo Valley, Nevada and Hollywood, California.

On the day of this particular incident, the Duke was in his dressing-room making ready for a public appearance of

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which he was extremely apprehensive. Henderson entered

in a state of great agitation, having just returned from meeting the Pan Am Clipper. On board, the Duke had been assured, there would be a long-awaited parcel.

Now that parcel had reached the Royal presence, tied to the wrist of “Henny” Henderson with a thin and painful

piece of string.

“You’re looking awful fagged,” said the Duke.

“Well I ran,” said Henderson—petulant.

“Shouldn’t run,” said the Duke. “Isn’t good for the

heart….”

“But, sir, you insisted…”

” ‘Specially not in this dreadful heat. Heat up—feet up!

That’s my motto.” The Duke swirled the contents of a large crystal tumbler and took a tiny sip, very neat and careful so as not to stain the edge with the red on his lips.

“Do you think I might sit down, sir?” Henderson asked,

quite ashen.

” ‘Course,” said His Royal Highness. “Sit.” And he nodded towards an ottoman.

The Duke, who wore his underclothes and a blue silk robe, went over to the bureau where he kept his whisky and

poured himself and his valet a drink. He lighted a cigarette and waved away the cloud from around his face. He was

looking extremely handsome: Henderson had already done

his makeup.

“Well, well,” he said, like a child pronouncing the opening words of a serious and complicated game. “And what

have you brought me this time?”

“This box,” said Henderson—and began to untie the string from his wrist.

“Hand it over.”

The string was proving to be recalcitrant.

“Do hand it over. Do.”

Henderson finally broke the string and the Duke set down his whisky, reaching out and taking the box in both his hands. “Don’t watch,” he said. “You must close your eyes.”

“Oh, I don’t like this,” said Henny Henderson, half in the game, half out. “I don’t like this at all. I never did like

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surprises, sir.” He could hear a lot of papers rustling and string being scissored and something falling to the floor.

“Clumsy, clumsy me,” said the Duke. Then; “damn…”

and Henderson could hear the Duke of Windsor scrabbling about on the carpet. “Just keep your eyes shut. Don’t need your help.”

“Please, sir. Please,” said Henderson. “Don’t place anything wet in my hands. Nothing live, I beg of you.”

The Duke of Windsor laughed.

“There!” he said. “You can look now.”

Henderson opened his eyes—first one and then the other.

Before him stood the Duke of Windsor, blue robed and

black socked, grinning from ear to ear with his yellow stained teeth. And cradled in his arm was what appeared to be the head of a life-sized doll from the mouth of which a pale, dry stream of sawdust saliva curved towards the carpet while the Duke reached up his hand to caress the white, wavy hair with which the head was crowned.

“A surprise,” the Duke said—as if Henny Henderson needed to be told it was a surprise—“for Her Royal Highness. And you aren’t to give this game away.”

Henderson rose to his feet. Speechless.

The head had been meticulously formed and was made,

or rather covered, with white kid leather. And the hair, which must have been human, was marcelled in a most

distinctive way. The whole effect created a visage more than vaguely familiar to the valet and therefore more than vaguely disturbing.

“I distinctly told them not to give it eyes,” the Duke was saying. “How very disappointing. But I see they’re only painted on—so perhaps they can be washed away. …”

Henderson opened his mouth and closed it. The Duke was

completely engrossed in the head and had begun to turn

away, as if to show it to the mirror—and it was only in the mirror that he saw the face was damaged. At first, he looked quite cross—but then he stuck his finger into the drooling mouth to stop the flow of sawdust and muttered; “loose lips sink ships.” His eyes caught Henderson watching. “And I might say the same to you,” he said.

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“Yes, sir.”

“Not a word. Not a single word.”

“No, sir.”

The Duke laid the head very gently back in its box and

retrieved his glass of whisky. “Am I right in thinking,” he said; “that Her Royal Highness is in possession of what I believe they call a dressmaker’s dummy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is it much in use, do you know?”

“I can’t really say, Your Royal Highness. But I can ask the seamstress. …”

“Do that. I should like the use of it for awhile. See what can be arranged.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Without—of course—suspicions being aroused.”

“Yes, sir.”

Suspicions?

Henderson went away extremely baffled. And not a little on the leery side. And the Duke retreated into the bathroom, where he ran a sink full of warm soapy water; into which he dipped his wash cloth and began to wipe away the painted eyes from the white kid face. And when this was done, he placed a Band Aid over the mouth.

As for me, I had been boarded out, so to speak, in one of Nassau’s most prominent houses: Westbourne—the home

of Sir Harry and Lady Oakes. It was here that Wallis and the Duke had stayed while awaiting completion of the renovations at Government House. But Westbourne itself was

awful—and more than merely ugly. It was graceless and

cluttered and it had no discernible shape. There were stairways running up against the outer walls and closed-in porches that were always damp and terraces that were always dry and verandahs, top and bottom, running all around the house.

Constantly, as I recall it, one was being looked at or walked

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in on by a servant or by one of Oakes’ sons who had just returned from boarding school. One of these sons in particular was extremely precocious, and might at any instant take it upon himself to walk through your bedroom, passing from one side of the house to the other without the slightest concern for what you might be doing or how you might be

dressed or what hour of the day or night it might be. But it was after all “his house,” and Oakes, who was inordinately fond and protective of his children, would brook no criticism, however gentle, of their behaviour. “If he wants to get to the other side and yours is the most convenient way, the thing to do is stand back and let’m pass.” It could not be more simple.

As for Oakes himself, Sir Harry and his gentle wife were an odd but somehow endearing couple, perfectly matched

as opposites. They-had met while on a cruise around the world in 1922. In those days Oakes was a feisty Canadian millionaire whose money was in new-found gold and she

was an Australian beauty whose father worked for the Government at Sydney. Eunice Maclntyre had been a stenographer

in a bank and that, till Harry Oakes, was the closest

she had come to a million. She was half his age and “towered”

above him—“towered” being Sir Harry’s word—by

more than three inches. She had the manners and he had

the money. This story has been told a hundred different ways. Mostly we call it CindereJia; sometimes we call it GoJdiggers. But in the case of Harry Oakes and Eunice

Maclntyre, the plain truth was they fell in love. They were married in 1923 and over the years became the parents of five extraordinarily beautiful children—children of a troubling beauty: vaguely disquieting. Eunice preferred not to