The Darkness of Wallis Simpson (3 page)

‘
Et bien
?' says the companion.

To please the woman-man, not wanting to get her wrist slapped, Wallis nods, as though to say she understands why she's being shown all this, understands what's expected of her. But she can't see the darn stuff properly. What can she do, if she can't get anything in focus?

She feels her wrist being lifted, this marmoset's little limb, and then round the wrist is placed a heavy bracelet made up of . . . what? A glint of red. A sparkle of ice. Diamonds and rubies.

‘Now,' says the companion. ‘This you remember. I know you do.'

Rubies bright as blood, but staunched and contained, the blood kept from spilling by the hard bandage of diamonds. There's something beautiful about the arrangement of this, Wallis admits. She didn't see it a moment ago, but oh boy, there is. This one piece, taken out of the box, released from being with the rest, is a fabulous thing.

The companion's smiling approvingly. ‘Ah, I see it in your face,' she says. ‘It's come back to you, hasn't it?'

With her other hand, Wallis touches the bracelet, runs her finger round it, touch helping vision. She sees it bright and clear: the rubies crammed together in square clusters, ten or more to each cluster. The square-cut diamonds separating them and yet locking them in . . .

She's lost in it. She's AWOL in the bracelet.

Who made it? Whose mind saw this lovely symmetry? Shame you couldn't crunch it, munch it, grind your teeth on it till they ached, take its essence into you, get its mineral power into your lungs, into your liver, let it break up all the old sad flesh and clothe it with new.

She'd like to be left alone with these gems. Her teeth are brittle and not all her own, yet she'd still like to bite on this bracelet like a dog bites on a bone, like a baby bites on a teething ring. She wants to ask the interfering hag to leave, but words have gotten jumbled again, she can sense this. Nothing will come out right.

‘Very well,' coos the hag. ‘Now tell me what is inscribed on the clasp of this bracelet.'

Another of her tests. Another of her ways to spoil any fleeting moment of pleasure.

Wallis refuses to let a syllable of anything in any language come from her mouth. She lies down with her head on the pillow, cradling the bracelet. The jewel box falls on to the floor.

‘
Wallisse
!
Mon dieu
!'

She'll probably be slapped now, but she doesn't care. She's got the bracelet.

‘Wallisse! Talk to me. Don't pretend any more. Pretence is
so
ungrateful! He gave up an Empire for you. An Empire! And you pretend to remember nothing. But I 'ave sworn to myself I shall not rest, I shall not return to my legal practice nor go again into the world until you admit to me that you
do
remember. For, somewhere in you, you do. So now tell me please: there are two words inscribed on the bracelet and you will say what they are or I am going to 'ave to punish you. I am going to punish you very badly.'

The bracelet's pressed against Wallis's mouth. Who cares what words are inscribed on the fucking bracelet? It's the thing itself that's lovely, not the words. She lives in darkness most of the time, a ghost trapped in an old TV, but now the companion's given her something beautiful and she's damn well going to hang on to it.

But the hag won't leave her alone. There's murder in her voice.

‘I never thought you would be so obstinate. You are a
mule
! I dare not tell anybody what a crime you are committing. I'm too ashamed.'

Ashamed.

Wallis knows what this word means. The shame of things. Being told by her mother: ‘Bessie, I can't afford that school uniform, darlin'. But, see, I'm handy with the sewing machine. Make you one so good, nobody will tell the difference.' Except she always knew. Knew it was different. There was no store label in it. The pleats didn't fall perfectly right. The shame of those imperfect pleats.

‘Two words!' says the murdering hag. ‘Now tell me what they are!'

Two words. What could they possibly be? Didn't romantic people make a saga about
three
words?
I love you.
If you could claim that ‘I' is a word. Because it doesn't really feel like a word. More like a spool of film, whirring in darkness, snapping, breaking, spliced together again, whirring, flickering, showing you some scene or other, some far-off snow-flecked scene, only to break again, or else the projector breaks, just as you are beginning to recognise somebody or other, some castle in Germany, for instance, or that room in Baltimore where the school uniform was made, a drab room where Uncle Sol came and sometimes gave money to Alice Warfield, née Montague, sums of money that were never enough, never the same amount twice in a row, never something on which you could depend. The shame of that.

Two words.

Boarding House.

That's how they referred to it later, the place where she and her mother had to live after they left Preston Street. But ‘Boarding House' was a lie, a shameful lie. It was an Apartment House. Sets of rooms, not expensive, never dusted, but like proper apartments, let to tenants. Not a
Boarding House.
A place where they could be, the two of them, separate from Grandma Anna, with her black dresses and her keys to all the closets and her ancestral furniture that creaked in the dark. And then Mother came up with this swell idea: cook meals for the other tenants. Turn them into paying guests. Live off that. It was a fine scheme. And she'd do it right. She was a Montague. She knew what people liked to eat: prime rib, soft-shell crabs, terrapin . . .

So she'd buy these delicacies and boy, those people came along in dozens! Squab and crawfish. They guzzled it. Wallis went round, helping to serve them. ‘Minnehaha' was a popular waitress. She was preparing for her dazzling table. But those guzzlers wouldn't pay enough. They kept arguing about the cost of the meals. And then the tradespeople started sending round bills inked in red:
Terms strictly thirty days. No further credit can be extended.
And men began calling, threatening. ‘What's goin' on, Bessiewallis, dear?' asked the tenants, the guzzlers. ‘Oh, nothing, Miss Brightwell, nothing Mister Carpenter. Just some ole friends of the family . . .'

But it had to end. Alice Montague wanted it to be ‘the finest dining club in Baltimore history', but she couldn't do the sums right and so it failed and Alice didn't know what to do now or how to pay the tradesmen. And when she took yet more money from Uncle Sol she whispered: ‘Bessiewallis, I'm so ashamed.'

Wallis has fallen asleep, clutching the bracelet. When she wakes up, there's somebody new in the room. She can smell a man. She may be
gaga
but she still has a nose.

He's near her, but not right by the bed, just hovering somewhere, smoking a cigarette. He's probably waiting to see how
gaga
she is. Now and then, she can hear him coughing. She says out loud: ‘I hope there is a convenient ashtray.'

Now, the man comes close. His eyes look big and blue, as if he could be wearing eyeshadow. He puts a tender kiss on Wallis's head. ‘Duchess,' he says, ‘it's Cecil. How are you, darling?'

Cecil? Cecil who? And she wants to ask him: ‘What's all this “Duchess” business? When did that begin?'

But she can't get anything out and so the man, Cecil, says: ‘No need to tell me, Wally. Dying's a cunt.'

Then he sits where the companion often sits, but he seems gentle there, not ready to slap or growl. He goes on: ‘I was about to say “dying's a bugger” but ah, if only it were!' He laughs and the laugh becomes a cough. The man snaps out a silk handkerchief and coughs into that. Then he wipes his lips and asks: ‘Mind if I have another ciggie?'

She wants to say that thing she said about the ashtray, but no, one does not repeat oneself, it's terribly bad form, it's worse than staring. Only small minds resort to repetition.

Cecil has beautiful hands. With these, he inserts a cigarette into a long black cigarette holder and lights it. Then he sits there, perfectly suave and serene, taking in the smoke and blowing it out again. He wears something ruffled at his neck, a cravat or scarf. His jacket is white linen. She's glad he's there.

With her little claw, she holds out the beautiful bracelet to him.

‘Oh, yes,' he says, in his clipped English voice. ‘One of your favourites. What a girl you were for the jewels! Was it ever true about Queen Alexandra's emeralds?'

Emeralds?

Why do men have such wandering minds? You show them rubies and diamonds, but this doesn't seem to be enough; they drag in emeralds.

Wallis taps on the clasp of the bracelet with one long fingernail. ‘Words,' she says. ‘Two words.'

‘What are you saying, lovey?'

She taps again. ‘Two words.'

The man looks baffled. He brings the bracelet near to his eyes and squints at it. ‘Oh,' he says, ‘some inscription. That what you want me to see? What does it say?'

‘Two words.'

‘I'm blind as a mole, darling. Shouldn't take photographs any more. Can't see what's in the fucking viewfinder half the fucking time. Let me get out the old lorgnette.'

Cecil lays down the cigarette in its holder on a porcelain dish. He conjures a pair of glasses from somewhere and puts them on and his blue eyes behind the glasses look violet and strange. He holds the bracelet close to the glasses, then away.

‘The light's bloody bad in here, Duchess.'

She waits. She trusts this man, this Cecil, even though he calls her ‘Duchess'. He'll tell her what the two words are and then she can rest. Then the hag won't take the bracelet away.

She waits a long time. There's an evening kind of sky at the window, indigo blue, that old blue of the cocktail hour. The cigarette in the porcelain dish has burned away.

‘Hold tight,' announces Cecil.

She thinks he means ‘wait for it, hold on, now there's going to be a surprise'. So she keeps waiting, looking at the sky, remembering how she taught Ernest to make a good martini, saying to him: ‘Nobody in England understands what to do between tea and dinner. So we're going to show them.'

‘That's what it says.'

‘What?'

‘Your two words, ducky. “Hold tight”. And then the date: “27
^th
March 1936”.'

Hold tight.

It's what they used to say on London buses. Going down Piccadilly towards Knightsbridge on a 19 or a 22.
Hold tight
. Pleased with her purchases from Fortnum's. A pound of smoked salmon. A jar of peaches in brandy. For a little supper with Ernest, just the two of them, in their new flat. Money at last. Chairs in their dining room upholstered in white leather. A silver cigar cutter from Asprey's at Ernest's elbow. His conversation so polite as he sipped the martini. His manners so British and perfect as he ate the smoked salmon. His eyes so gentle with appreciation.

Hold tight.

‘It's what they used to say on the buses.'

The man in the room explodes with laughter. ‘On the
buses
! Sweetheart, he never went on a bus in his life! What a card you are.'

‘“Move along inside”.'

‘Oh, you make me die!'

The man coughs and coughs, and then he's gone. There and choking one minute, gone the next. Like her poor father, Teackle, vanished before he could be properly known, before he could be a husband or a father, leaving Alice Montague and her daughter to the mercy of Uncle Sol.

And Wallis hides by the door of their apartment, the one where Mother used to serve up her turtle soup, her crowns of lamb, and watches as Sol puts his big, moist hands on Alice's waist. ‘Won't you hold me, Alice? I do so much for you. You never show me the least . . . Without me, you and Minnehaha . . . where would you be, baby?'

Wallis knows this can't be right, Sol's rubbery mouth on Alice's neck, his hands staining the silk dress she mends in the small hours of the Baltimore morning. How could this ever be right?

‘Leave my mother alone. Go away, Uncle Sol '

He goes. He crawls away down the stairs, wearing his black coat with the astrakhan collar, and they lock the door on him. They say: ‘Never again. Never ever again.'

But he never forgot.

The hag would have been proud of such a man, who remembered and remembered, right until death, beyond death, into the bureaucracy of death, into the Will which states that all his money, his Warfield fortune, all five million dollars of it shall be used to set up a home for Indigent Gentlewomen.

‘Indigent Gentlewomen'. Oh, you could laugh at that! You could imagine them, those indigent gentlewomen in their new ‘Home', throwing away their gentility at the poker table, on the nightly drinking spree, in clouds of tobacco smoke, in secret orders from lingerie catalogues, in the way they ambush the janitor, the gardeners, the doctor who comes to tend to their indigestion and their bunions. You could make up stories about them, laugh till you wept, if only it weren't so desperate a thing, to be a Warfield and to have nothing and for the Indigent Gentlewomen to have it all.

Five million bucks.

Just to
think
of that sum. To think of it back then when it could have bought the world. To think of it and have none of it. Not a dime.

The companion's back. They're going through the ritual with the pan again except that this kind of business hurts like hell and stinks like the dead. Tears burn Wallis's cheeks. If only food could melt away inside you and not have to come out again.

‘
Oh mon dieu, chérie. Quelle odeur
. . .'