Famous Last Words (48 page)

Wallis scanned as much of the room as she could through the slice of open door and—at first—she was much relieved to discover there was nothing in view that would give the Duke away. But then she saw it: standing back in the shadows.

And on the bed—dear heaven!—a long black gown.

She caught her breath and put her hand against her mouth.

Oh please, Sir Harry: please stay angry. Don’t regain control of yourself. Don’t look around you. Don’t.

But she need not have prayed. Sir Harry was apoplectic.

Something to do with one of his sons and “that pervert de Marigny…”

“I changed my will, of course,” he was saying. “Him and Nancy won’t get a god damn penny. Not a god damn cent.

So there’s nothing more I can do on that score. She’s married to the twit and that’s the end of it. But now…” Oakes became incoherent with rage. “When I went in there tonight! There was ladies there!” He gave the word ‘ladies’ a twist of disgust that almost choked him. “Ladies…and my son! My son was there—and oh—oh—oh! There was boobies everywhere—

and men who was touching them: titty-touching in the presence of my son and one of them women was touching him.

My son. She had her hand on him. Had her hand right on

him! I tell you, Duke, if you don’t get off your behind and do something…do something. Do something. Why, there must be millions of ways! You could force a court order.

You could banish them; exile the bastards. You could…you could…Perverts!” Oakes at last sank down on the end of a chaise and put his face in his hands and wept.

The Duke of Windsor finally blinked.

“I’m not the government, you know,” he said. “I mean.

J’m not the Assembly and I can’t create the law. We found that out when we tried to change the books on gambling.

Harry.”

“But you could make demands. You could make demands.”

Oakes rose and sat down. “I mean, he’s only a

child. There has to be some law covers that, when he’s only a child.” Oakes rose again and stood in the very centre of the floor.

The Duke was watching him through the mirror, Wallis

watching him through the crack in the door. Oakes was

caught between them. For a minute he seemed unable to

move. When he spoke again, his voice was tired-and weakened by the expenditures of rage and bewilderment. “I can’t

believe,” he said, “that I’m standing here and you’re telling me there’s nothing you can do. When my son is exposed

to…when my son…when…1 can’t believe there’s nothing you can do.”

The Duke just waited, looking down and moving rings

and cuff-links around the surface of the dressing table.

“Banish the bastards. Exile…” Oakes whispered.

The Duke of Windsor smiled. “Harry,” he said. “It’s me

that’s in exile. Me that’s been banished… .”

And me, Wallis whispered.

“Can’t you understand?” said the Duke. “I’m nothing but a figurehead. I don’t have any power at all.”

Oakes clenched his fists. “You’re the Prince of Wales!”

he shouted hoarsely. “You’re the god damn Prince of Wales!”

The Duke did not reply, but turned away from the mirror in which Oakes stood reflected.

“My son…my daughter…and this place! This god damn place of which you’re the Governor! I’ll tell you what: if you don’t clean them out, I’ll clean ‘em out. I will! And I’ll send my kids away from here and my kids will never come back.

[j|’|lj| Never. And I’ll have a word with the papers, too. I will’. I will speak about this—and I will be heard! And you aren’t going to like that, Prince. You are not going to like what I have—what I will have to say: about this place—this place of which you are the Governor; this place where I cannot

get myself a legal casino… .” Oakes was shaking with fury, “.. .but where my son can get himself laid at the age of fifteen by a bunch of whores on whom you turn a blinded eye! You’re god damn right, you have no bloody power! You hen-pecked, impotent twit!”

Wallis paled.

But the Duke did not budge.

Oakes crossed the floor and stood so close to Wallis in her hiding place she could smell the wetness of his clothes and feel the heat of his anger. “And another thing,” he said, “I’m calling your credit, Duke. I want my money. All of it. Back.”

Fifty thousand dollars—in the last year alone.

Oakes pushed the door wide open, making a prison from

which the Duchess could not escape. She could not see, but she could feel the power in his hands as he pushed and

pushed and pushed against the door as if he knew she was there and meant to crush her. “You’re nothing but another human being. Your Royal Highness,” Oakes said, with a hint of astonishing gentleness in his voice. “And people ought not to have what you have unless they deserve it. All my life I fought for what I got, and it’s people like you I had to fight against. But it’s you that owes me, now. You owe me.

And I guess that says it all.” There was the slightest pause, and then Oakes said, “Goodbye…” and was gone. There was no more pressure on the door. And Wallis could breathe again.

She heard Oakes going away and down the stairs. She

looked in through the crack at David.

He was seated before the mirror: wool-backed and blond

and utterly still. From the shadows, off to the right, the “thing” itself was watching him. And he was watching it, with its pale kid face and its broken mouth with the BandAid pasted over its lips. And its crown of marcelled hair.

And—on the bed—the dress.

Wallis shut her eyes. You’re nothing but another human

being; she heard Oakes shout in her mind. And then she

opened her eyes and thought: whatever that might be.

Down in the hallway, to which I had finally been admitted by the nervous aide, I watched Sir Harry make his exit from the scene and heard him drive away with Sydney. The hall, in spite of its chandeliers, its tiles and its modest grandeur, had taken on the feel of a hospital waiting-room.

I was wet and I wanted to delay my entrance to the poker salon. The aide, who had only seen me once or twice before and was not yet sure of who I was, stood over near the door to the portico, looking for all the world as though it was his job to keep the storm outside from entering. I sat in a highbacked chair and made a rainy puddle round my feet. Then-was silence now that Oakes had gone, and all we could hear was the thunder.

Wallis, coming down, was like an actress in a film. She used the stairs quite consciously and made <”. scene of dignified bereavement. The “star” upstairs had died, and here

came the widow, walking into the future, music swelling up with every measured step she took. The aide and I were watching, he at attention, me from my puddle, rising.

Wallis paused at the bottom.

“Mister Hugh Selwyn Mauberley,” the aide announced.

“Yes,” said the Duchess. “We’ve met.” And coming across towards me, she put out her hand, over which I bowed in order to kiss the tips of her fingers. But I found no fingers there to kiss.

She had made a fist—and the fist was so tight I had to help her force it open.

“Thank you,” she said. And when I looked, I could see

the enamel over her features had cracked.

And then she led me away, the two of us walking, all

unaware, across the frozen sea of the tiles—and I thought: if the ship doesn’t come, we will walk like this all the way to Europe, with her hand on my arm.

349

Sir Harry Oakes’ neighbours were now alarmed.

First, he had sent his children away and then his wife.

Then he had fired over half his servants—Mavis Boodle

remaining. Next thing people knew, he was living “all alone”

at Westbourne and wouldn’t answer the telephone. In the evenings, after Mavis had gone, I had to answer it for him—

and some times I could hear him picking up the extension: click—and his breathing. Unlike Wallis, he was new to the spying game.

He began to walk around in workman’s boots and old

fatigues. He ceased to be a gentleman entirely—not that he’d ever been much good at it. Now he was even dirty. He never washed and was always unkempt.

He pulled up the flowers in his garden. He made a great fire and burned them all. He appeared one day with an axe and cut down all the little trees that grew along the edge of his drive. He drove his car around his lawns and chewed up all the grass.

Some years before, when he’d first arrived and begun to buy up all the land that Harold Christie had for sale, the first thing Oakes had done was plant a thousand trees. Evergreens mostly—spruce and pine and other trees that liked a sandy, shallow soil. They had been his pride and joy, these trees—

and everyone had said; “a man who plants so many trees

where no trees were before can’t be all bad.” It had been the first good sign that Harry Oakes was civilized. Now he went down to the Public Works and came back out along the road with an army truck and trailer. When the trailer was unloaded, what came down the ramp was a dirty yellow bulldozer.

“What’s he want with a bulldozer?” Mavis asked.

One of the other servants answered, “Maybe he’s going

to build that big hotel and gambling casino hisself.”

But this was not the case. For days, what he did was go out early in the mornings, while the sun was still at a tolerable angle in the sky, and knock down trees—all the thousand trees and more he’d planted and nourished and cultivated over the past ten years. He destroyed them—every one.

No one now would voluntarily go near him. I was growing

more and more alarmed. I was afraid. After all, he^was sworn to some kind of vengeance—and now all the trees were gone, there would only be human beings to turn it against. Oakes was dangerous and unpredictable. Up on his bulldozer,

screeching its gears and bellowing its horn, he was like a mad rogue elephant run amok and trampling down the world around him.

But no one ever got close enough to see the tears that

streaked the dust on his face—and I only saw them myself through my binoculars. And he wept all the time he worked, and he cried at night, when he thought that I had gone to sleep.

He kept this up for two whole weeks, and then there was a silence.

That was when his neighbours started locking their doors.

And I started locking mine.

Elsa Maxwell, squat as a toad, was not notorious for tact.

There was nothing she would not say or do, if the spirit moved her. Consequently, it was she who blundered upon

Queen Mary in the course of making a foray into the forbidden area of the Royal apartments.

It was Thursday, July 1st and Elsa had come to spend the whole week because of the Fourth of July holiday. Early in the evening she left the poker table and went to look for a washroom. That week—it so happened—the washrooms in the public section of the Mansion were undergoing repairs and the only one of them in service was occupied at the time of Elsa’s need. But Elsa’s need was greater than her trepidation, so she simply marched up the stairs and turned to the left.

“Afterwards”—as Hemingway would say—she reentered

the passage and was about to descend the stairs when her attention was caught by the sight of an open door: and beyond that open door—the sight of a woman in a long black

dress. Elsa now prowled eagerly forward unhampered by

discretion; stepping into the Duke’s private quarters beyond

She announced herself with one of her sumptuous coughs.

Elsa was slightly asthmatic. And she had her excuses at the ready, like an ace up her sleeve. But she was not prepared for what she saw, and therefore all her excuses dropped to the floor. As she did herself.

“Your Majesty…” she said. And hoisted her skirts in order to manage a curtsey.

The Queen was standing just beyond the open door that

led into the Duke of Windsor’s bedroom. She was wearing black and, also, one of her famous hats.

Rising, Elsa reshuffled her pack of resources and was about to launch into an elaborate story about the Duchess having sent her up to enquire if the Duke would not come down

and join them at cards when…the door swung closed in her face and the light all around her dimmed.

“How strange,” she said to the air. And the suddenly

empty room in which she now found herself standing took on a sinister silence. Doors were so seldom shut in Elsa’s face—and whenever they were, it was always with some

comment or expletive preceding the slam. But this was different.

…This was the Queen… .And… .

Elsa retreated hastily.

Down in the poker room, Elsa Maxwell drew the Duchess of Windsor aside and whispered urgently. “Why in the name of heaven didn’t you tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

“Your secret. Your secret.” Elsa’s eyes were dancing into every corner of Wallis’s expression—trapping every nuance of the effect her words were having. “Your secret.

You know…” And Elsa made a furtive gesture towards the upper reaches of the house.

“No,” said Wallis. “I don’t know. What are you talking

about?”

Elsa looked across at the rest of us, seated—innocent—

looking at our cards and trying to overhear her conversation with the Duchess.

“Wallis dear, please,” said Elsa. “Don’t be coy. I know.”

Wallis felt an urgent need to be seated, but there was

nowhere near enough to sit. It appeared to her stranded reason that Elsa could only have discovered one thing—

since only one ‘secret’ existed worthy of so much excitement j||lll| and that was Penelope. But how? By what means?

I ||’| Elsa—seeing she had the Duchess on the run—pursued. ^––––^^^^^^—^^^^^^^^_ ^er eves ^llcd up with knowing brightness and she said; ^^^^^^^^S^^I^^^^^^^^^^^^^^BI I “°^—l ^now lt 311. now.” And then she said and did the ^I^^^^BJI | | most frightening thing that anyone could say or do to Wallis—

K’^^Hll I I given the circumstance. She winked—and curtsied and mutII^HIll llj, III tered: “Your Majesty. …”

Wallis—whose lifelong episodes of feeling faint could be numbered on one hand—nearly passed out cold on the spot.