Famous Last Words (20 page)

Bedaux went on reading: ” ‘You are under siege. The press surrounds you like a pack of jackals. Would it not be best if you and your guest were to seek asylum elsewhere? May I humbly suggest the Chateau Cande, my home in the valley of the Loire? It is yours for the asking. My sympathetic regards to your honoured guest: my affectionate regards to

yourself. Charles E. Bedaux.’ “

He removed his spectacles and folded both the cable and the glasses into an inner pocket. I began to breathe again—

but only just. For of course the honoured guest at the Rogers’

Villa was Wallis Simpson, there since by law she must remain apart from the King until her divorce was final: otherwise there would be no divorce.

The silence extended for some minutes while I thought

about what Bedaux had just told me and while he got up

and crossed to a cabinet and poured two glasses of brandy.

von Ribbentrop must then be very high up in the cabal.

Also Ciano. It made sense—since they both had diplomatic access to practically every door in Europe. But Wallis? The thought was staggering. A King had just renounced his throne for this woman. Did it mean he had renounced it for the cabal as well? .

“I trust 1 need say no more,” said Bedaux, handing me the brandy.

“Only about the ‘honoured guest,’” 1 said. “I can’t quite make that real.”

Bedaux sat on the edge of his desk,

“Why not?” he asked.

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“Because the implications are…staggering, to say the least.”

I took a good sniff of the brandy. It was my turn not to look at the interlocutor. “Are you saying she’s one of these people?

One of this cabal?”

Then I did look at him, very quickly, to gauge his unguarded reaction.

He smiled.

“Put it this way,” he said. “We’re working on it. And that is where you come into the story.” Me. At last. “All-very well for me to send this cable from New York,” he said.

“But I do not know the lady and the lady does not know

me. But you, so I understand, have known the lady many

years… .” He tipped the brandy forward in his glass and turned it round and round. I nodded. “A word from you

would assure her, don’t you think, that my offer made a good deal of sense—and, of course, if she knew you trusted me then…Well.” He drank.

So I was to be his emissary.

“Am I to mention the cabal?” I asked.

“No, no. Not yet. All that comes later. What we need just now is liaison. Mister Mauberley. Liaison. One of us—in her pocket, so to speak. You can offer her assurances, of course. Now the King has abdicated, she is feeling, so I’m told, rather defeated. A little lost. But you can hold out hope.

Be sure you hold out hope. Mister Mauberley. And connect that hope with me. With me and with our unknown friends.

Though you mustn’t mention other names than mine. The

thing is to give the strongest impression possible—always remembering, of course, there are echelons in this that even I can’t name. Echelons above and beyond, shall we say, those names I have already let out of the bag. And in time—you may tell her she will know how very strong her allies are.”

His eyes were glittering. He could see the future: and the future he could see was glorious, since it held so much in store for Charles E. Bedaux. “Put it this way.” he said. “You may tell her there are larger kingdoms than the one she’s lost. That ought to catch her attention.”

The goblets had just been emptied and abandoned on the

leather surface of the desk. Bevond the windows dusk was

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coming on and the winter lamps had all been lighted on the bridges along the river. The Palace of Deputies was lighted up too as if they meant to sit all night. Snow was falling.

Settling into my overcoat, I asked if Isabella Loverso had taken up permanent residence in Paris. Had she deserted the Palazzo d’Aquila forever? And if so, had it to do with Wyndham’s ghost—or with the urgency of what was now

afoot?

Bedaux lowered his eyes, thought about his answer for a moment and then said; “surely. Mister Mauberley, you cannot imagine you are being drawn into a world, by joining

us, where one is not endangered.”

I did not reply to this for a while. I removed my gloves from my pockets, the silk Paisley scarf from my sleeve. Finally I said; “Baronessa Loverso is surely not in physical danger.”

Bedaux smiled. “Is there any other kind?”

“Perhaps not in your world, Mister Bedaux. But in my

world there is a dreadful danger in words.”.. Julia Franklin.

“Just so,” said Bedaux—and looked at his watch, indicating it was time for me to leave. I did up the buttons of

my overcoat. Picking up my homburg and putting on my left glove, I began to cross the floor towards the exit.

“As we went into lunch today,” I said, “the Baronessa

indicated some concern about the trustworthiness of Francois Coty. …” I looked at Bedaux. “If that is the case, then perhaps you should tell me what he was doing at our table?”

“A perfectly legitimate question, and one I’m glad to be able to answer because the answer may be of value to you some day.”

I put on my other glove.

Bedaux said; “you have heard of Monsieur Coty’s organization, Solidarite Francaise?”

“Yes. Thugs.”

“Precisely.”

“And…?”

“And, Mister Mauberley? And? You mean you have to

ask?”

“Yes, I do mean that.”

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Bedaux sighed. “Put it this way,” he said. “From time to time, Monsieur Coty and his friends are useful to us. It is that simple.”

I bit my tongue. “Oh,” I said. “I see.”

He opened the door into the outer office. The clatter of a ticker-tape machine splattered rifle-fire from behind a glass partition.

“Good fortune on your journey,” said Bedaux.

“I thank you. I will do the best I can,” I said.

In the mirrors, Bedaux was now effectively lost; just a voice with many deflections. “I need hardly tell you how grateful…” he began.

“No. Please don’t say so,” I said. “I am only too glad to be of service.”

As I turned in the direction of Mademoiselle Liage and

her huge round desk, I almost collided with a young man standing there who was about to enter Bedaux’s office.

Alligator eyes.

I stood transfixed.

“There you are. Harry,” said Bedaux. His tone was no

longer the same. It was wary now, and flat. “I was told to expect you.”

The young man walked straight past me into Bedaux’s

office. The door closed. Bang. And the ticker-tape fired off another fusillade.

I stood there, quite unable to move. It was the same young man who had stood behind Diana, so insolently staring at us all while Ned was buried. My mind was unable to deliver any reason why he should be here in Bedaux’s office. I turned to Mademoiselle Liage, only to discover she too was transfixed.

With fear.

“Would you be so good as to tell me his name?” 1 stuttered, taking my cue from the ticker-tape.

Unblinking, she said; “he is Mr. Reinhardt.”

Harry Reinhardt.

One of us?

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La Mediterrannee was the overnight train that ran between Paris and Nice. The whole point of taking this particular train lav in the convenience of being able to sleep through the journey and arrive refreshed. But 1 could not sleep.

Instead, I sat in my pajamas and robe. holding my attache case in my lap. staring out through the streaming windows at the pouring night with its smouldering towns and its drowning cities dishevelled at the edges of the dark with their lights all guttering but not gone out. Other trains passed us, heading northward, dragging their screaming cars along the tracks by the hair and I would wince and close my eyes.

But 1 could not keep them closed. For every time I shut them Reinhardt’s alligator eves stared back from the dark inside my mind.

La Mediterrannee is blue—like the train in the poster in Charles E. Bedaux’s office. At times during the night ride I felt as if I were in a dream watching myself, even to the point of seeing my own figure, robed and immaculate in

pale blue silk and spanking white cotton, seated in the lighted window with my hair precisely parted and the collar of my pajama jacket open at the neck. with each point laid in perfect place: Hugh Selwyn Mauberley—an advertisement

for insomnia.

And chastity. Like a priest who has taken a vow but who lives out his life with a Priapus in his lap. I would not—

could not bow to my desire for women or for other men. It is far too simple, I suppose, to say this had to do with my father’s leap and my mother’s madness. But something of my fear of physical contact and commitment had to do with that. Something to do with the fear of descent and the fear of being powerless in the presence of desire. Such as the desire that rose against my will when I saw Harry Reinhardt’s inhuman eyes. Inhuman and. therefore, without the impediment of moral choice. There was nothing—nothing one

could not imagine him doing.

But this was dangerous. This was appallingly dangerous.

At last. after passing Grenoble, 1 slept—very slightly fallen over. resting against the glass. In my dream, the only dream that night, the small yellow Flat from the poster crashed

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against a wall. 1 could not see who the victims were. But the driver emerged unscathed: Harry Reinhardt.

At Nice 1 hired a Daimler with a chauffeur and was driven out along the Antibes road to the besieged and beautiful Villa Lou Viei. It was surrounded by an encampment of

reporters and photographers—whose fingers were particularly long, so I felt it would be wise to hide my face behind a newspaper. Thus the famous photograph of a Daimler passing through the gates at the Villa Lou Viei with what appeared to be the late King Edward VIII riding in the back

seat. In fact it was nothing more than his picture, blown up to cover the entire front page of Le Monde. Smiling.

Waiting in the gardens, Wallis looked like a ghost. She was thin and drawn, even plain in her appearance. She had wept, it seemed, for weeks.

“Well,” she said, “it seems we are back in China and

another man has left us stranded here with empty hands.”

“Yes.”

“Either murdered—or a suicide.” She was trying, I think, to smile.

“Yes. But we will never know. And it’s senseless to conjecture, now it’s done.”

“Is it?” No more smiling now and no more attempts. There was a sense of rising anger in her voice. Of rage. But constricted.

“Yes. And you know it is.”

“Do I?”

“Yes.”

I knew I must be very careful now. The edge of her voice was dangerous. She could be lost. not only to me, but to us, if I failed to say precisely the thing she needed to hear. Or

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if I cut her off from saying precisely the thing she needed to say.

“I am still expected to marry him… .”

“Yes.”

She turned aside, with both hands clenched. “It is vile,”

she said. “Unfair and vile what they have made him do.”

She looked at her hands and raised them so they swept out through the air around her, charged with inexpressible exasperation.

“All the promises,” she said. “The promises.

dear God.” She looked away. “I was going to be Queen. Did you know that?”

“Yes.”

“What was it, then? A lie? A hoax? Or…”

Now she looked down at her shoes. “I hate him,” she said.

“I do,” she said. “I hate him.”

All I could do was wait.

Finally, she lifted her gaze and stared at the sea beyond the wall and shouted; “hate.”

Very quickly I turned her and she threw her hands up to strike me—me or anyone would do—and I pressed her hand very firmly against her lips to silence her, allowing her the impression she had silenced herself and was growing calm.

i| Still holding onto her, I told her why she must marry the King. 1 told her about the centre of the world and that it was always a free arena there; anyone could hold the stage who had the power. “Be visible,” I said. “Be unavoidable.” 1

said. “Be there,” I said. And I said, “There’s a banker now who will stake you all the way.”

I could feel her slowly subside. And I could feel her readjusting her weight so she finally carried it all herself. And

I let her go.

Then I told her who the bankers were and I said, “There is nothing now that is impossible. Only so long as you marry the King.”

She thought about it for a moment—only for a moment—

and then she burst out laughing. “You’re aware, of course,”

she said, “this means I will have to spend the rest of my life wearing low-heeled pumps.”

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Six months later, on Thursday, June 3rd, 1937, the newly created Duke of Windsor married Wallis Warfield of Baltimore in a ceremony at the Chateau de Cande, forty miles

south of Paris in the valley of the Loire.

The Duchess was attended by her close friend, Mrs Herman Livingston Rogers of Cannes. The wedding dress was

crepe silk with a jacket, created by the American couturier, Mainbocher. The dress, designed as a two-piece gown, was the epitome of simplicity with a long. slim skirt and a highcollared neckline. The jacket was corseted and closed with

nine small buttons covered in the distinctive blue of the dress itself. This particular shade was created especially for the occasion and had already been dubbed “Wallis Blue”.

It was slightly darker in tone than “pastel”.

The Duke’s best man was Major Edward D. (“fruity”)

Metcalfe. Both wore the traditional cutaway with boutonnier.

None of His Royal Highness’s family was present.

The guest list numbered less than twenty, and among them were Mr Hugh Selwyn Mauberley and Mr and Mrs Charles

E. Bedaux. whose home provided the wedding site.

A wedding is not my favourite ceremony. The predominant image has always been of my parents standing side by side-darkened by the shadow of their future. And when it is said “be joined together…“all I can see is my mother’s hand, withdrawn—her precious hand that must not be held too