Famous Last Words (49 page)

Elsa knew. And if that were so, then the very bowels of gossip had been opened and would gush the whole wild

tale upon the world.

“How did you discover this,” she said at last: resigned but already regaining her command of the situation—thinking ahead and wondering how Elsa Maxwell might be silenced.

“Well—I saw her,” said Elsa with triumphant simplicity.

“Saw her?” Wallis could not quite take this in.

“But of course. Upstairs. Just now. In His Royal Highness’

bedroom.”

“His bedroom?”

“Yes. The Queen. The Queen. Queen…” Elsa looked at

us and lowered her voice so far it became bassoprqfundo ^_ ^_. molto sotto voce. “Mary,” she sighed. And smiled. “And ^^Bfil^^^^^i’-i ^flilllll on—y011 ^““Id ta!^ sbout ‘majesty’. The way she stood there. The carriage. The bearing. The dignity. The dress. The hat. …”

“The dress. The hat… .” Wallis repeated. And then there was an instant flood of relief. “Oh! You mean Queen Mary.”

Elsa gave Wallis a look of disdain. As if she could be

fooled. “Yes, Wallis. I said ‘Queen Mary’.”

Wallis took Elsa by the arm and propelled her into a corner.

“You realize what would happen if anyone should discover this. The Queen’s very safety depends upon it.”

Elsa said; “dear. Do you really think I’d breathe a word?”

Wallis said; “yes. I do. And you mustn’t. Or I shall have you arrested.”

Elsa stared.

Wallis said; “yes. I would. It’s that important.”

Elsa sighed. “Well,” she said. “At least it explains a lot.

I mean…about the laundry hampers these last eight weeks or so. And all that strange conglomeration of underthings.

The knickers. The camisoles. The corselets…” She restrained a guffaw. “I thought they were yours.”

This set them both to laughing.

The crisis had passed.

“Dear,” said Wallis. “The day I wear a corset, you will not.”

Nothing was ever quite so satisfying in the presence of Elsa Maxwell as having the very last word.

Later that night, the Duke of Windsor sat on the edge of his bed with his mother’s head balanced on his lap.

He had removed the black toque with its dyed mauve sprig of clipped and trimmed feathers and the long strands of pearls that were Queen Mary’s trademark and his posture was forlorn and defeated.

He was looking at the dressmaker’s dummy borrowed from

his wife’s seamstress and at the long and elegant gown with which it was adorned.

It was a failure.

Head and body could not be made one. Whatever Elsa

might have said to Wallis concerning ‘dignity’, ‘bearing’ and ‘carriage’ there could never be dignity and bearing and carriage to equal those of his mother. Not that he was slighting Wallis. But the head and the body could not be made one: and that was all there was to it.

And so—what now?

What of the mantle of majesty he had wanted so for his

wife that he had given up a portion of his reason to attain

it? Gone. He could not—for all his strengths and charm—

attain the very least of it: her right to be called Her Royal j; Highness—let alone Queen. He would have to accede. And—

in that moment—sitting there on his bed at the approach of that midnight in July of 1943, he did accede. With his mother’s head in his lap and the shadow of his wife flung up against the wall, the Duke of Windsor knew he was condemned

forever to be hidden by the shadow of his wife: a shadow that would lengthen till it all but shuttered out his own: just as his mother’s had in that moment when she made him

feed the birds and had left him there alone to find his way from a room without the benefit of lights.

Well.

There was still one thing.

The mirror.

And there he sat—waiting. Hours.

When, at last, he could not sit still any longer—he held his mother’s head up close beside his own and stared. Slowly—

very slowly—he withdrew the Band Aid from across her

mouth and watched as all the sawdust fell away into the darkness, out of sight.

And in the morning, he went out all by himself—and

found a place to incinerate the head: until not a trace of it remained.

Mavis Boodle had grown up full of wonder that the paradise she lived in was so filled with death and decay. The shores of her childhood were littered with the refuse of storms and far off civilizations. The bones of ships and horses washed in through her dreams, her only memory of the SpanishAmerican war. A convoy of transports had been harried

through the straits by a hurricane and two of the transports had gone down carrying their cargo of cavalry mounts. The sharks had done the rest, but the remains of their feasting had been carried over the reefs and into the lagoons by stormy tides. Mavis did not remember much of the cause

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of all this wreckage, since hurricanes came and went on a regular basis all through her life. But the tangled bones of the ships and the skulls of the horses, filled with tiny feeding crabs had haunted her memory always. They, and the stark bleached icons of her dead parents were the stones on which she stood forever, looking out at life with hand-shaded eyes, scanning the future for some returning figure—any returning figure—ship or horse; mother or father, fleshed in hope.

Anything would have satisfied her, just so long as it came back living, or bearing news of life.

Often, during the time when Harry Oakes was knocking

down his trees, Mavis Boodle would finish a portion of her work and then, unable to sustain her tolerance of watching so much destruction, she would wander down and sit as

near the shallows as she could get. I, through my binoculars, could see her back as she sat far off, and the parasol with which she warded off the sun. Once, I recall she returned with a scowl on her face because her favourite trees had just become the latest victims of Harry Oakes’ rampage. “I have been counting the birds,” she said, “and wondering where it is they come from when they drop so sudden from the

sky. And, where will they sit, Mister Mauberley, now all Sir Harry’s trees is gone?” And then she said, the scowl expanding till it even seemed to affect her shoulders; “I took

to noticing they never mourn their dead—the birds—but eats ‘em.” Then she looked beyond the windows to the noise of Sir Harry wrecking trees and said, “There’s a lesson there, in the birds, somewhere.”

On July 3rd, a Saturday, Mavis came back happy from the shore and she said, “There’s a ship out there. A big, long silvery ship way out. You ought to go and take your binoculars, Mister Mauberley, and see. Looks like a ship from a

fairy tale.”

When I saw it first, that evening in the sun, I could only think of the Ndhlin, seven years before and almost to the

day. It was, in effect, a sort of spirit-ship—a mirror ship, a spectre, lying out beyond the reef—and the last thing lit by the dying sun as it fell behind the island. I knew, of course, it had come for Wallis and the Duke and I prayed it had come for me, as it had before in its first incarnation; me and ten thousand others, surrogates for all the world as we ran and tumbled down that hill in Dubrovnik. Only now there was no one standing; no one hoisted onto another’s shoulder; no one crying long live love! and death to darkness.’; no one lighting torches and crying through the streets Eduardo! No one carried the moon or put it in the sky. There was nothing, now, but the shaking out of one bright sheet of light that fluttered and fell and was drowned in the sea and the night by which the ship was hidden, falling across us all.

Oakes was seated in his kitchens eating “rations” which included sourdough bread he had made himself. He was

weeping all the time he ate.

I have never known a human being to be so incessantly

despairing. It was always either too hot or too cold a day.

“If only it would rain; if only the sun would shine. I can’t stand all these people; where have all the people gone?” It was a tirade of sighs and moans from dawn to dusk. His

concerns were not entirely selfish and he cranked and complained as much in behalf of others as he ever did in his

own behalf. “The niggers here are dreadful unhappy,” he told me once. “Poorest niggers I ever saw outside of Africa.

Something’s got to be done about it, you know. ‘specially the children. Nothing, nothing, nothing to look forward to.

And that, of course, is the whole point of life,” he said; “having something to look forward to… .” His saying that reminded me of my father. And Oakes’ face, like Ezra’s, was always screwed up around a question—though the question was a mystery. Or was it? It occurs to me that always, always inside of Oakes’ head there was a voice to which he paid the kind of heed that drives the saner voices into silence—

until its whinings and complaints are the only thing to be heard.

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“You ever go to bed with the Duchess?” he asked—with

butter running down his chin.

“Of course not,” I said. I was tense and testy, having seen the ship and knowing what it meant. I was waiting for the messenger to get in touch and uncertain how this would be done.

“Funny, the way he gave up owning the world to have

her,” said Oakes. “And what a ride she’s given him. All the way up—and all the way down. I don’t understand. , .” He belched. “You think she’s drained him dry—or what?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

“He looks like a man who has to spend all day just getting himself prepared to think about having an erection. All his juice is gone—and I figure she has to be the cause of that.”

“It’s none of your business, Sir Harry.”

“Oh? I think it is. I think it is and I think it ought to be, when a man who’s supposed to be our leader can’t get off his arse because his wife has put the pliers where they’ll hurt. Came down a great long fall, that man—and I think it’s all her doing.”

“Well you’re wrong.”

“Whose doing is it, then?” said Oakes. “Something’s certainly made him incapable—afraid…”

The telephone rang.

Oakes did not stir. It was just as though it had not rung at all.

It rang again. Oakes did not appear to hear.

“Someone ought to be doing something,” he said. “Standing up for values, decency, the law…”

I rose. The telephone was across the room in the housekeeper’s office, which was just a glassed-in cubby-hole with

shelves, a desk and a chair.

“.. .somebody ought to be reminding him of who he is

and force him to stand up straight…”

I went inside and picked the receiver off the wall.

“…somebody ought to…”

“Yes?”

For a moment there was silence on the line—though not tt blank and empty silence. It was the silence of someone

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waiting to make sure the voice he was hearing was the voice he wanted to hear.

“You have the Oakes’ residence,” I said, “and this is H.S.

Mauberley speaking. Hello.”

“You’ve been waiting for a message,” said the voice at the other end, at last. “What is the watchword, please?”

Oakes was completely preoccupied.

“Do you weave?” I said.

“Yes I do,” said the voice. “But every night I unravel it.”

The voice was coming from a thousand miles away.

“And what am I to do?” I asked.

“In an hour you’re to meet the messenger in Rawson

Square.”

“But it’s almost eleven o’clock.”

“You’re to be in Rawson Square in an hour,” said the

voice again—and the line went dead.

Hanging up, I realized nothing had been said about how

I might recognize the messenger. But then I thought; of course, he’ll recognize me.

“You going somewhere?” said Oakes.

“Just out,” I said. “For a walk. Don’t fuss. I may be gone some time.”

“I know,” said Oakes.

I stared at him, alarmed.

“You’re going downtown to pick up one of those whores

in Rawson Square.”

I blinked.

“Well, I warn you,” he said. “You’d better not bring her here. I won’t have any more whores underneath this roof.”

The air was filled with the smell of bougainvillaea. Down along Prince George’s wharf there was music. Other music, as always, drifted back across the Bay from the Porcupine Club.

It was hot, but not unpleasant. Many people were out to get a breath of air, and a few of them were sitting in the oval of the park on benches in amongst the flowers.

I was wearing my whites and my Panama hat, though there

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on Bay Street, Nassau, these could hardly be called a trademark.

Every second man you saw who wasn’t wearing uniform

was wearing whites of some description—though I dare

say mine were the only whites that night from Venice.

Having hired a cab, I was early. Walking round the oval, taking my time and pausing under each of the lamps so I might be seen distinctly, I got no reaction to my presence.

Nor did I see anyone I either recognized or who looked a likely candidate. No one even said “hello”—which I thought was a trifle unfriendly. And sad. I had always wondered what it would be like to be middle-aged and undesirable.

Now I knew; though of course I could probably make myself “desirable” enough if I knew how to play the predator.

Where were all the whores Sir Harry had spoken of? Not

a sign of anyone I would have called a whore. Just a few Airmen lolling on benches in pairs and trios and otherwise couples ranging in age from the very young to the very old.

I went up onto Bay Street then and crossed from the park to the Square. And there they were. The whores—though

not a multitude. I sat down fairly close to the street, afraid to penetrate too deeply into the Square lest my intentions be misinterpreted. Watching, every once in a while I could see that one of the Airmen broke away from his friends and plucked up his courage and crossed, as I had, over Bay Street and into the Square. They, however, had every intention of penetrating further into the dark than I.

The promised hour was drawing to a close. Hugh Selwyn