Famous Last Words (52 page)

died when I was still a child—a baby. Then my mother

Wandering off into their deaths before I could…catch them Gone before I could catch them up; that’s what I mean. Anc Win—he was so fine and handsome; truly, truly dashing h(

was. Lovely man he was, all bright and shining in his uni form, all white and beautiful—and sad.” She sighed. “h(

wandered off before I could catch him up—into a bottleChina—death. Oh, well…And Dmitri Karaskavin…neec I remind you? You, who loved him, too. Who could eve]

catch him up? Then Ernest…marching. Oh! How he wantec to be a soldier. Crazy. Me, I mean. I was crazy to have marriec him. I guess of all my men, I loved him least—if I loved hirr at all. But I never caught him—never could catch him, either Such a gentleman he was. And dull as a ditch. Elusive as a ditch. Does that make sense?”

“Perfect sense,” I said. “There’s nothing quite so elusive as a ditch. It starts somewhere…it ends somewhere…anc in between it catches little bits of everywhere else. A ditch is elusive as hell.”

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Wallis laughed. Then sobered. “Now I’ve lost David. Oh—

God—Maubie. Hugh. Dear friend. I can’t begin to tell you where he’s gone. He’s left me so far behind, I don’t know where I am. But I do know where I want to be. I’ve always known that. Always. And this ship, this ship that’s come.

This promise…This is my one last chance. Me, you see, I can catch up with…” She stared in the direction of her husband’s rooms. She touched her hair and smoothed her

skirt. “Of course,” she said, “I am the strongest. I have to make him follow. Don’t I? He has to follow me. And I never—

never, never understood that before. David has me to catch.

And we have to help him…”

We. Us. We. I looked away.

“Don’t, Hugh. Don’t look away. This is your last chance, as well as mine.”

She stared at me. I stared at her.

“Help me,” she said.

“I don’t know how,” I said.

Wallis turned—but only half—away. “Do you love me?”

“Yes.” I sat completely still.

“Hugh?”

But I could not look at her. I was afraid.

“It will always be said,” she said, “until the end of time, that the King gave up his throne for me. But you and I are the only ones who know or will ever know that I gave up my throne for him.”

It was true.

“And I want it back.”

Of course, there was no sleep that night and my room was filled with every ghost I could summon. Every death I had ever seen was played before my eyes. And I thought of

Beatrice in Much Ado: “do you Jove me?” “Yes.” “Kill

Claudio…” And I thought of Lucrezia Borgia, Agrippina, Messalina—while the geckoes struggled up the walls and

across the ceiling, searching for a fly to kill.

And all the while I did not sleep, I knew that Oakes was

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down the hall and knew that he was wakeful, too, and would not sleep. The air was stifling—not a hint of breeze—and the night was filled with the cries of birds and the tick of clocks and the voices of a thousand frogs and insects, scrabbling mice and the sudden barking of a dog that could smell

the fear in my room and knew the meaning of the fear. And I rose and pushed aside the netting, braving the corpses on the floor and the sudden convergence of all the mosquitoes round my head and in my ears, and I lunged for the door on my left and locked and bolted that and then went round to shutter after shutter, pulling them down and latching every one of them in place.

In the morning, white on white, and even my underclothing bleached as white as salt, I carried down the box of

corpses, wondering how it could be so light, so weightless in my hands, and gave it across the table to Mavis Boodle, noting unavoidably as I did the multitude of oranges she had killed and was squeezing into a glass to keep me alive.

At nine, 1 left the house and went downtown where I could find a telephone with no extension—certain no matter where I went that Harry Oakes would overhear.

I dialled a number Harry Reinhardt had made me memorize—waiting and waiting a very long time before there was

an answer.

“Meet me,” I said. And hung up.

I met with Harry Reinhardt late in the afternoon of July 6th in Rawson Square. We sat side by side on our usual bench.

“I need your help,” I said.

“Well—I’ve always known that. Mister Mauberley,” said

Reinhardt.

Yes; and I suppose he had from the moment he saw my

eyes.

“What can I do for you?”

Turning towards him, I tried as hard as I could to look into his face and not to falter. I thought of my father, walking

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on the roof of the Arlington Hotel. Those who jump to their death have cause…1 looked at Harry’s mouth—his lips—

his alligator eyes…and those who leap have purpose.

I leapt.

“I need a death,” I said.

A little smile appeared at the corner of his lips.

“All right,” he said. “Just tell me where and when and

who…”

It was done. My fall was over. All the way down.

That was Tuesday.

Two days to go. The plan had been to get the Windsors

away in the dark of Thursday night as late as possible. But all at once we appeared to be thwarted. There was Harry Oakes to deal with—and there was a sudden change announced regarding the departure of the S.S. Munargo.

Oakes was now a matter entirely out of my hands. He was Reinhardt’s affair and I drank myself half blind in order to drive it from my mind. At least I tried—but it didn’t work.

I have found this almost always to be true. When you need the most to be sober, two drinks will put you under the table. But when you need the most to be drunk, a gallon will not even slur the speech, let alone knock you out.

The Munargo was leaving Thursday a.m.—predawn—instead of on Friday. Thus, we had to get the Windsors away,

in order to maintain our ruse, on the Wednesday.

Mister Howard and a certain Miss Comfort were to act as surrogates on board the ship and would lock themselves in their cabins all the way to New York. They had no notion why this was being asked of them, but their loyalty was such they looked upon it all as a “lark” and poor little Mister Howard—with his livid pride—was made to feel he had

finally redeemed his prestige in the eyes of “Henny” Henderson.

Henderson, panic-stricken, was being left behind

altogether.

And so, on the night of Wednesday July 7th, 1943, the

Duke and Duchess of Windsor, six small dogs, a great deal of luggage, Mister Howard, Miss Comfort and a military

escort climbed or were pushed or were thrust into half-adozen motor cars and driven away from Government House

in the early stages of a storm that by 3:00 a.m. would become a hurricane.

Mister Howard wore the Duke of Windsor’s uniform as

a Major General and Miss Comfort wore a dark grey suit and a tailored coat belonging to the Duchess—plus one of Wallis’s most becoming hats, with a suitable veil. As for the Windsors themselves, the Duke had almost to be carried, he was in such dreadful shape—and Wallis, aching with the roar of triumph she was not allowed to voice was trying her best to smile a little sadly at the fact they were going away and would be gone so dreadfully long….

When she came to me in the line-up of those who had

been assembled to say goodbye, she allowed me to lift and to kiss her hand but then—all at once—she kissed me herself on the cheek. And she whispered; “we have won.”

And then they drove away in the rain.

Reinhardt and I were to join them on the silver yacht,

though we were to go there by a different route. Nevertheless, it is true that in that moment I had said goodbye to and seen the last of the woman I had loved—as a dog loves its mistress—for the past two decades. Wallis, Duchess of Windsor,

would never be that woman again.

The early hours of the evening had been cloudless and starry.

Now, there was a roaring wind and the first sheets of rain were blowing across the lawns at Westbourne and turning them into reflecting pools in which the lights of the Staff Car Wallis had assigned to me were dipped, like fingers searching for something lost. I could see there was another motor car—though I did not recognize it—parked in the

driveway.

Reinhardt had told me this would be our rendezvous: and

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from here, we would leave together to join the others aboard the yacht. I assumed, therefore, the motor car was his. I got out near the gates and ran the rest of the way to the house.

Once inside the house, my first impression was of silence: then of the emptiness around me, usually filled with the brooding, paranoid presence of Oakes.

“Reinhardt?” I said. Not very loud. “Reinhardt?”

There was no reply.

I was more afraid than I can say.

There were so many fearful images in my mind. The death I had asked for had been so ill-defined I could not make it real. Certainly I could not make it happen in a place familiar as this house had become. “The dark” is where Harry Oakes would die, not here with all these lights and the mess he’d left in the kitchen and the mud he’d tracked on Mavis Boodle’s floor and his army boots kicked over by the umbrella

stand. Surely he would be out somewhere in the dark; or maybe in the sea; not here.

“Reinhardt?”

I went to the bottom of the stairs.

I knew I must climb. The climbing was part of the nightmare.

Going up, I noted there were smears on the wall; stains on the rug; a broken spindle; mud—or something—on the bannister. Oakes at his best as the grumpy badger in his winter lair. The “something” on the bannister was more than likely jam, and the smears would be made by his elbows, greased as he worked on his bad-tempered partner, the big yellow bulldozer parked on the lawn.

Reaching the top of the stairs, I went into the guest room on my right, beyond which I could see the lights in Sir Harry’s room.

I gave the partly opened door a push.

What I saw at first was just the shape of the room. On my left, a curtained window—closed against the storm—and a door that led to the ubiquitous verandah, awash in the rain.

On my right, there was a bed and beyond that a painted

Chinese screen standing open, hiding the rest of the room from view.

I had only been in Sir Harry’s bedroom once before, but I was certain there should be two beds there—though only one was visible.

Harry Reinhardt was sitting, with his back against the

headboard. Beside him lay his leather coat. His clothes were wet and stained and his hair was plastered against his skull.

Just exactly as I had seen him first at Edward Allenby’s funeral. Always—the rain. He held up his hands for me to see and they were smeared with blood.

I stared.

“Everyone get away all right?” he said.

I nodded.

I was watching him. That’s all. Just watching him. I wanted to see what his eyes might do.

They were watching me. He was smiling.

“Where is Harry Oakes?” I said.

Reinhardt did not reply.

“Harry?” I said. “Where is he?”

“Everything’s taken care of.”

He laid his hands—palms up—on top of his knees and

shifted along the bed until there was room for me to sit.

“Sit down,” he said.

I sat.

For a moment, he studied his hands, curling the fingers—

stretching them out. And then the hands lay stilled and red.

“I’ve always wondered,” he said, “why animals lick each other’s wounds…”

There was a pause.

“Maybe,” he said, “they like the taste of blood.”

“I beg your pardon?…”

I closed my eyes. I was so afraid.

He reached up then and pressed my face into his bloody

palm. “That’s right,” he said. “You lick it clean.” And he pressed again—so hard this time that my lips were forced apart and I began to lick because 1 had no choice.

^’

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I do not know for certain how it was I was made to sleep, but I suspect Harry Reinhardt did it by applying pressure to the arteries in my neck. However long I lay there, whether unconscious or asleep, it was long enough for Harry Reinhardt to make his escape. When I first awoke I was not aware

of anything being wrong. I could see the Chinese screen and I remember thinking how charming it was with its Imperial Courtyard filled with mandarins and courtiers and its shaded verandahs—so much wider than the verandahs at Westbourne.

. .And then I knew where I was.

But the air…

It was all so curious.

The air was filled with feathers. White, soft, snow-like feathers, gently and relentlessly swirling in the stream of an electric fan that was buzzing on the far side of the room. The room itself was very ill lit but there was light enough to see I was not alone.

The screen had been moved and it now stood six feet

further off than when I had first made my entrance. But its removal proved that my memory of there being two beds

had been correct. It was just that all the time I had been lying there with Harry Reinhardt, the screen had obscured the other bed—and now it was revealed.

It is very hard to tell the rest of this, I suppose because I’ve tried so hard to make it leave my mind. But it won’t.

In the air, although there wasn’t any fire, there was the smell of it. Also the smell of kerosene. Or something very like it. I could not really tell.

On the bed beside the one on which I sat lay the body of Harry Oakes. He was dressed in a pair of striped pyjamas and was lying on his back. One arm was caught underneath his body and the other was flung between his legs in that gesture so often made by boys in their sleep against the atavistic fear that Lilith will come in the dark with her scissors.

. ..

Oakes had been battered all around the face and head, but his features were still completely recognizable. Only his blood obscured them—and the feathers floating in the air,

escaped from a mangled pillow. Some of the feathers were caught in smears of spittle and gore, and others were fluttering very close to the body, like butterflies afraid to alight where so much death had been spread in their way.