Abdication: A Novel (16 page)

What is more, Wallis explained, she was not going to invite any of those London hostesses who came so regularly to dine at Bryanston Court. This was not an occasion for Sybil, Emerald or Margot or even Diana, entertaining as all those society lionesses all could be. They were
all coming with Chips next week anyway. No, this was to be more of a family party, even though they would be a little cramped around the dining-room table.

“I usually limit my dinners to six people as that is what my most regular guests like best, but tomorrow a table of twelve will make a happy exception.” And would they have some fun, she promised! Wallis was looking forward to meeting Lady Joan and her husband once again and was delighted to include not only their daughter, Bettina, and son, Rupert, in the invitation, but also his friend Julian from university and Julian’s girlfriend, Charlotte.

“Don’t you just love the younger generation?” Wallis had twinkled at her old school friend. “Especially the male part of it!”

Evangeline had agreed with her wholeheartedly.

Despite the insistence on the casualness of the evening ahead, Evangeline had taken particular trouble with her choice of clothes. Wallis had just returned from a shopping trip to Paris where she had ordered a complete spring wardrobe from Mainbocher, the most fashionable of all Parisian dressmakers.

“The king insists on indulging me with so many lovely new clothes!” she had said with a smug look at Evangeline, who privately vowed to herself she would not be outdone in the fashion stakes, particularly when that charming young man Julian was going to be present. Of course there were a few years in age between herself and the young undergraduate, she was the first to acknowledge, but people cared so much less about that sort of thing these days, didn’t they? And after all people often remarked on the youthful quality of Evangeline’s complexion.

The Blunts assembled in the Hamilton Terrace drawing room and drank a glass of champagne while waiting for May to bring the Rolls to the front door.

Charlotte was sitting on the leather arm of the semicircular fire fender, crossing and uncrossing her legs, and occasionally reaching
down to smooth her silk stockings from ankle to knee in a gesture that Evangeline felt to be inappropriately provocative. Bettina was wearing a floor-length silver sheath dress and she was telling her parents about the ball she had been to the night before. Evangeline, ever up to the minute with the fashion pages, noticed that dangling from Bettina’s arm was the very latest thing in chic: a velvet evening bag with a working watch for a clasp. Goodness knows which eligible young man had been persuaded to make this silly girl such an extravagant gift. The young woman’s habit of using French words and phrases within perfectly good English sentences seemed to Evangeline both affected and irritating. She knew from the roll of Philip’s eyes that he shared her opinion.

“Oh honestly, Mummy, every joke told by the spotty specimen I got stuck with was
such
old
chapeau
. But then things looked up when
le grand fromage
himself arrived hot foot from
Nombre
ten!
Quel
excitement!”

The silver sheath shimmered as Bettina darted around the room, swinging her velvet bag and doing little pirouettes as she spoke. But no one was really listening.

Evangeline sat in the corner, hoping that the experimental and girlish “natural curl” that she had agreed to wear—finished off with a large, dressy feather—would be an improvement on the habitually static appearance of her wig.

She tried to adjust the shoulder straps of her cutaway black silk evening gown without Philip, Rupert, Joan, Bettina or Charlotte noticing. The notion that she would be dressed in something beyond the limitations that her body could tolerate had been worrying her since breakfast. Even before she had removed the dressmaker’s cotton sleeve that protected the gown from attracting dust, she suspected her choice had been a mistake. And she had been correct. Despite the efforts of Wallis’s own seamstress the straps were struggling to hold up the bodice and already cutting into her exposed shoulders, forming ugly raised
welts. She remembered all over again why she was usually so careful not to expose too much flesh and became resigned to wearing the matching and concealing shawl, even though Wallis had assured her that her apartment would be warmly heated.

In the middle of this undignified hitching and tugging the door opened and Julian stood there looking straight at her. He was wearing a red velvet tie and winked at her from behind his glasses before announcing that he had seen May waiting for them in the hall and were they all ready to leave? Immediately Evangeline began to feel more confident of the enjoyment the evening surely now promised, crossing her fingers tightly, as she always did when she wanted a bit of luck to come her way.

Julian spent a great deal of time with the Blunt family, even though Evangeline had been unable to identify the basis for Rupert and Julian’s friendship. The two undergraduates were so different; one all loud bluster and back slapping, the other quieter, cerebral, and yet unhesitatingly flirtatious. Julian’s charm rarely landed on Rupert’s obnoxious, loudmouthed sister, however the quiet conversations that Evangeline had observed between Julian and Joan made her wonder whether it was his need for a warmhearted mother that brought Julian back again and again both to Cuckmere and to St. John’s Wood. Encouraged by the sight of that fleeting wink, she failed to repress a bubbly thought that maybe there was another, a recent addition to the household, whose presence persuaded him to return so often.

Bryanston Court was a large purpose-built apartment building just round the corner from Marble Arch. Wallis’s guests walked through the imposing entrance lobby, lit by a magnificent central chandelier, past a polished Georgian table on which two huge Chinese vases sat resplendent. Across the shining marble floor the concertinaed lift gate shut behind them, assuring further elegance ahead. Conscious of Wallis’s pledge to find her friend a beau, Evangeline was hoping that Wallis
would seat her next to Julian. She was also looking forward to the dinner itself. Mr. and Mrs. Simpson prided themselves on serving delicious food.

“You know, Vangey, how we folks from the South love to provide our guests with a good table, and Ernest has always been something of a gourmet, you know,” she had said with unexpected pride on the telephone earlier that afternoon, leading Evangeline to question momentarily whether Wallis’s feelings for the king yet came anywhere near replacing those she still had for her husband.

Whatever the truth, Ernest and Wallis were jointly proud to have “brought on” Mrs. Ralph in her culinary skills. Initially a kitchen maid to Lady Curzon’s French chef, Mrs. Ralph had been trained at the hands of a master. By the time she came to Bryanston Court she had developed a flair in the pastry and sauce departments that few could rival. Her preference for vegetables steamed al dente instead of the British boiled-to-slush method had been much remarked on by Wallis’s guests.

If Ernest encouraged a concern for the menus, Wallis’s own particular taste was evident in the furnishings. An unusual yellow and black Italian painted table and a William and Mary walnut chest both looked perfect in the pale green painted drawing room with its heavy cream curtains. Glass vases of Madonna lilies were placed on every surface, filling the air with a sweet, decaying smell that was intensified by the overheated apartment. Fragile, pink-edged orchids rose from cane baskets in the corners of the drawing room. A pair of gold leaf and ebony blackamoors doing handstands at each end of a side table were balancing small trays on the soles of their feet on which matching arrangements of whitewashed leaves with white roses had been placed, proof that Mrs. Spry had been working her magic here earlier in the day. A letter rack on the small desk in the corner was visibly stashed with thick white cards printed with the two words “At Home” in copperplate across the centre.

After a cocktail or two had been prepared with some expertise at a low table by Wallis herself and Evangeline had acquainted herself with Slipper, the dear little cairn terrier that had been a gift to Wallis from the king, the guests were invited to gather in the pretty dining room. The walls were covered in a bucolic blue and white French paper depicting cows and milkmaids, and the table laid for twelve glowed with the visual warmth of a dozen lit candles. Small bowls of miniature pink rosebuds had been positioned at each guest’s place and an elevated silver stand at the very centre held a generous cascade of out-of-season Muscat grapes. The place settings were magnificent with the gold cutlery that Wallis had confided to Evangeline was on loan from the king.

“He loves to make sure I have everything just so!”

Eleven people assembled in the charming room and stood leaning over the backs of the white leather chairs, allocated their place in turn by Wallis as she consulted a handwritten seating plan of the table.

“Now you are here, Vangey, though don’t forget your wrap. Those poor shoulders look as if they could do with a little protection.”

Comforting herself that she could catch up on news with Julian at another time, Evangeline took the chair that Wallis indicated, between Ernest Simpson and George Hunter.

“‘Of course, you know Ernest already I think? And we have been friends with Kitty and George since our earliest days in London,” Wallis explained as she moved away to seat her other guests. Evangeline had indeed met Ernest on a couple of occasions, finding him the most congenial of companions. She greeted him with a kiss before extending a hand to George Hunter.

“I have not yet had the pleasure, Mr. Hunter. Are you in the shipping line of business with Ernest?”

“Oh no, Miss Nettlefold, I confess I have never been bothered by the nuisance of having to go to an office.”

As the guests spoke among themselves, Wallis slipped out of the dining room, returning moments later with a small fair-haired man, evidently so familiar with the Simpson apartment that he straightaway took his place next to Wallis at the top of the table with Lady Joan on his right. For as much as half a minute the new guest’s arrival was so unobtrusive that it went almost unnoticed among the energetically chattering guests. But gradually a feeling grew that the quality of oxygen in the room had been enhanced, and deference and respect settled on the assembled company as attention was concentrated on the twelfth amongst them. The women dropped a middling low curtsey just where they stood at their chairs and the men bowed in the manner appropriate for a private party, using the dignified nod of a neck bow as opposed to the dramatic bend from the waist they had been trained as schoolboys to reserve for state occasions.

“So sorry I am late,” the king said, all cheery informality and smiling at each guest in turn as, exercising his prerogative, he was the first to sit down, indicating with a hand that they should all join him.

General conversation resumed. The king leant across the table to speak to Sir Philip, his voice audible to all, with its hard-to-place accent that combined a touch of American with an unlikely dash of London’s East End. As the individual spinach soufflés were placed in front of each guest, the deep green of the aerated surface contrasting deliciously with the lighter colour of the accompanying watercress sauce, Wallis encouraged them all with a firm “Do start!” and directed a meaningful look towards Evangeline.

Soon the conversation turned from talk of the tiresome length of the dark winter months to the political news of the week. The empty soufflé dishes were cleared and the king lit a cigarette. Wallis put her hand so briefly on his that Evangeline only just caught the gesture. The king immediately stubbed out the lighted end, a film of ash floating onto the black waistcoat he wore beneath his dinner jacket. Hitler’s
soldiers had reoccupied the Rhineland in violation of the rules laid down by the Treaty of Versailles six months after the end of the Great War. Some people felt that Hitler was only reentering his “own back garden.” But others took it to be a worrying indication of things to come. Had not the Italians allied themselves with Germany against the rest of Europe after their invasion of Abyssinia the preceding October? And this latest development in the Rhineland came on top of the recent reintroduction of conscription in Germany.

The king was the first to reassure the assembled company. War is a dreadful thing of course, as he could himself testify, having spent many months in the army, often equipped with little more than his dependable bicycle during a spell right up there with the finest of men at the front line.

“But may I remind you,” he said firmly, “that not only was the Rhineland formerly part of legitimate German territory, but Adolf Hitler himself has seen a war at firsthand. He too suffered the appalling effects of gas, lost friends and family.”

The king stressed that he was certain the führer would not want his experience to be repeated in his lifetime. Julian could see Rupert smiling in agreement. He knew that smile. It was the one that appeared on Rupert’s face every time the fascists were given some sort of conversational endorsement. Bettina was nodding vigorously and indiscriminately at every syllable the king uttered. At one moment she joined in with her own observation.

“Oh yes, sir! I
do
agree. I hate it when people are
très
unkind about the Germans. I think they are the giddy limit. Rupert and I are going off to the Olympics in Berlin in August with
Pommes Frites
Channon and I bet it will be
perfâitment
fun over there!”