The Shadow Queen (42 page)

In mid-July she boarded the troop carrier USS
Chaumont
at Norfolk, Virginia, and, along with a handful of other Navy wives, set off for the Far East.

It was a long, slow, hot voyage. Her accommodation—a cabin in the bowels of the ship that she shared with two other Navy wives—was cramped and airless. The troops on board grew more unruly with every day that passed, and by the time the ship eased its way into the Panama Canal—after a sweltering forty-eight-hour wait to do so—fistfights were frequent.

Once in the Pacific, things grew worse, and as courts-martial began taking place, Wallis and the handful of other women on board kept to their cabins. Six weeks later, at Manila in the Philippines, they thankfully transferred to a far more comfortable ship, the
Empress of Canada
.

At last, and for the first time, Wallis began to enjoy the journey that was now nearly over. Five days later, on the fourth of September, one of the women she was sharing a cabin with shook her awake, saying, “You need to be on deck, Wallis. Hong Kong is in sight.”

The next couple of hours, as they steamed closer and closer to their destination, were magical. First they passed scatterings of deserted islands, the offshore breezes heavy with the fragrance of the wildflowers growing on them, and then three-masted junks began appearing, to be joined by sampans as Victoria Peak, Hong Kong Island’s most famous mountain, grew ever clearer, its topmost slopes gray and mauve and silver in the early morning sunshine.

For the women she was traveling with, Hong Kong was as far as they were going. Only Wallis carried a special intelligence-authorized naval passport that would enable her to travel to war-torn Shanghai and Peking.

Win was waiting on the dockside to greet her, as the McNamees had told her he would be. Tanned and wearing his summer-white officer’s uniform, he looked almost handsome once again.

“I’ve been told to take care of you until you have seen certain people here and to look after you until you leave for Shanghai,” he said, shaking hands with her as if she weren’t still his wife, but someone he had never met before. “I must say I’ve never known anyone like you for springing surprises, Wallis.” There was grudging respect in his voice. “This time, though, you may well have bitten off more than you can chew.”

“I appreciate your concern, Win, but my life is my own now to do with as I please.”

“As is mine.” All around them coolies were transferring steamer trunks and suitcases into rickshaws and taxis. Her own suitcase was relatively modest, and without waiting for a coolie to do so, Win picked it up and led the way toward a parked, open-top car.

“There’s something you need to know before we go a step further, Wallis.” Beneath his mustache his mouth was set in the grim, uncompromising line she knew so well. “There’s going to be no reconciliation between us. I’m involved in a relationship with a married woman. I don’t want it making things more complicated than it already is.”

“Don’t worry. As you well know, I want a divorce. If you’ve got someone else in your life now, perhaps you’ll stop being obstructive about giving me one.”

He heaved the suitcase onto the rear seat of the car, opened the passenger-side door for her, and said, his manner changing, “Things could have been very different between us, Wallis. I can’t help wishing that perhaps they had been.”

Though she had as little desire for a reconciliation as he had, there was a lump in her throat as she said sincerely, “So do I, Win.”

She seated herself in the car, thinking back to their wedding day and of how happy they had been, and of how their wedding night had turned that happiness to ashes.

It was her physical disability that had ruined their marriage, just as, eventually, it had ruined her relationship with Felipe. Felipe might never have accused her of not being a proper woman, as Win so often had, but she had been wrong in thinking her disability didn’t matter to him. When it had come to marriage it had mattered a great deal.

It hadn’t been Courtney Letts Stilwell’s family background and wealth that had ensured he had proposed to Courtney and not to her. It had been Courtney’s already proven ability to bear children.

As Win drove away from the dockside and they entered a narrow bustling street where bicycles, taxis, rickshaws, and cars were all vying for space, she wondered if, because she couldn’t be physically loved as other women were loved, she was destined to go through life never being truly loved at all.

It was a bleak prospect, and tears stung her eyes. She blinked them away, fast.

Self-pity was not in her nature, and she wasn’t going to begin giving in to it. She was in a country exotically strange and fascinating and she had an assignment to carry out, so important it had even earned her Win’s respect.

The street began to widen slightly and she glimpsed a small shop window piled high with jade jewelry. Her mouth watered. Perhaps when her business in Hong Kong was completed and before she left for Shanghai, she would be able to do some shopping. A jade necklace was just the balm her hurting heart needed.

“F
or a novice, you bought beautiful quality jade,” Mary Sadler said admiringly when Wallis asked for her opinion on the necklace she had bought. “You can tell the quality of jade by its translucency and coldness to the touch—and this is both very translucent and very cold.”

It was November and they were aboard a Canadian ship, the
Empress of Russia
, their destination far-distant Shanghai.

Reluctantly Wallis laid down the magazine she had been reading. It was one she had found in the ship’s lounge and was several months old. What had attracted her to it was its front-cover wedding photograph of Prince Edward’s younger brother, Bertie, and his bride, Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, and she had just been reading of how the bride, on her way into Westminster Abbey, had laid her bouquet on the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior.

“China is so vast it’s hard to comprehend,” Mary said, handing the necklace back to her, “but at least Hong Kong to Shanghai can be traveled by sea and in relative comfort. Shanghai to Peking has to be traveled by train, and though the Blue Express is relatively luxurious—a little like the Blue Train through France to the Riviera—it has become so dangerous the luxury can’t be enjoyed.”

Wallis dragged her thoughts away from the new Duchess of York’s memorably touching gesture.

“H
ow so?” They were seated in deck chairs, blankets across their knees.

Mary quirked an eyebrow. “Luke McNamee didn’t tell you?”

Wallis slid the necklace back into her handbag. “He told me I could expect to be caught up in violence at any time. He didn’t specifically mention the Blue Express.”

“Naughty of him, but then if he had, you might have had second thoughts about agreeing to go on to Peking.”

“It’s not too late for second thoughts.” Wallis’s voice had wry humor in it. “So what is the problem with the train, Mary? Is the food bad beyond description?”

“In spring, last year, one group of passengers didn’t have the chance to find out. Bandits stopped the train while they were asleep, overpowered the guards, and then forced everyone aboard off it.”

“If they were intent on robbing them, why didn’t they rob them on the train?”

“They weren’t intent on robbing them. They captured them in order to hold them for ransom.”

A chill, not caused by the stiff ocean breeze, ran through Wallis.

“What was the outcome?”

“The women—one of them was Lucy Aldrich, John D. Rockefeller Junior’s sister-in-law—made such slow progress over what was mountainous ground that the bandits released them, leaving them to find their own way back to civilization. In the end, five million Chinese dollars were paid for the release of the men. Since then, although no further Europeans have been kidnapped, bandits boarding the train and demanding what they call ‘tribute’ has become a regular occurrence. If you’ve been given a pistol, and I assume you have—and that you’ve been taught how to use it—keep it where you can easily get to it.”

M
ary knew so much about everything and was so calm and unflappable, Wallis wished that her journey to Peking were going to be taken in her company.

“Not a chance, I’m afraid,” Mary said when, two days later, she voiced this hope over dinner in the
Empress of Russia
’s dining room. “I’m joining Frank in Shanghai and not moving even a yard toward Peking. You won’t want to either when you’ve experienced life behind the safe walls of the International Settlement.”

“How safe are the walls?”

“Very. The walls are massive and manned by American, British, French, Italian, and Japanese infantry. Outside is chaos. Shanghai is a city jam-packed with refugees, brothels, opium dens. There can’t be a more dangerous city on the face of the earth. Inside is another world—one of cosmopolitan sophistication. The Majestic Hotel and the Astor House Hotel—where we will be staying—have every Western comfort imaginable.”

She reached for her wineglass. “The Astor House Hotel’s Winter Garden ballroom is the most beautiful I have ever seen. As for the shopping …” She took a sip of wine and raised her eyes to heaven. “In the Yellow Lantern, the curio shop just off the hotel’s lobby, you can find every kind of Oriental antique imaginable.”

“And silks and embroideries?” Wallis’s interest was intense.

“It’s an Aladdin’s cave of them, plus it’s the place to go if you are looking for more jade—or for pearls.”

Wallis thought she might very well be looking for both jade and pearls. Her Navy allowance was slim, but on the previous two ships she had sailed on, the
Chaumont
and the
Empress of Canada
, she had indulged in her love of poker and her winnings had been substantial—as had her winnings on the
Empress of Russia
. It wasn’t a way of getting by that her Episcopalian grandmother would have approved of, but it was one she had relied on steadily ever since Pensacola.

O
nce Wallis was installed in the Astor House, her first port of call was the nearby British consulate. It was a measure of how important her mission as a courier was regarded that she was greeted not by a minor official, but by the consul general.

“I understand from Mrs. Sadler that your journey from Hong Kong was without unpleasant incident,” he said affably as she handed over to him top-secret documents that had been by her side since leaving Washington. “However, I must stress to you that Shanghai is a city consumed by hatred for all Westerners—as, indeed, is the whole of China. Resentment for the way the country and its people have been exploited by foreigners over the last two hundred years is a major reason for the bloodily violent political upheavals now taking place. Within the International Settlement, as long as you are everywhere escorted, you are relatively safe. It is not, however, safe for you to continue on to Peking. The risk of capture by bandits is too high and there would be enormous consequences if the documents you would be carrying fell into their hands. For the moment I must ask you to remain in Shanghai. When the railway line to Peking has been secured, you will then be able to carry on with your instructions from Washington.”

W
allis was quite happy to stay in Shanghai; the civil war raging outside the walls of the International Settlement gave the entire city an aura of danger and excitement. The Astor House was less than a block away from the International Settlement’s protective walls, and she could often hear bursts of gunfire and hear shouts and screams as the British-controlled police force clashed with Communist Chinese protesters.

As the weeks passed, letters began to arrive for her from the States. One, in her mother’s handwriting, arrived black-edged, and she opened it with her heart in her mouth, terrified she was about to be plunged into grief for the loss of her dearly loved Aunt Bessie.

To her vast relief her mother was merely marking the anniversary of a death.

Corinne’s husband, Henry Mustin, had died of pneumonia the previous year.

… And I can’t get over what a terrible, terrible tragedy it was
,

her mother wrote in her spidery handwriting.

Diving into an ice-cold sea to rescue a cadet who had fallen overboard was such a brave thing to do and though he didn’t die in the water, but died in his bed of pneumonia, he wouldn’t have caught pneumonia if it hadn’t been for his heroic action. Corinne is distraught and I don’t blame her. Good husbands don’t grow on trees
.

Wallis made a wry moue. She knew that last sentence all too well.

There was a hastily written postscript at the bottom of the page.

PS I’ve got myself a new beau. His name is Charles Gordon Allen and he is a legal clerk in the Veterans’ Administration. He says you can obtain a divorce on the grounds of separation if you can show you’ve been separated for three years and live in Virginia for a year while the divorce is being processed
.