The Viceroy's Daughters (28 page)

All over London, audiences trickled out of theaters, where the duke's speech was broadcast, as they could not bear to stay for the rest of the play. In Wilton Place Irene listened to it with the Metcalfes:

Louis Greig
*
had told me not to cry as the King had wanted this through and through and I was not to dramatise his agony of heart. I could wish he had left Mr. Baldwin's fine eulogy of himself as the last picture as his little melodramatic epilogue of seven minutes had no greatness and was rather “hot”-making and mingy. But it made me howl all the same. His voice sounded thick and muddled too. I said it was emotion. Baba said the King was a tortured demented soul, quite different from Louis's view.

Monckton then drove the duke of Windsor back to Royal Lodge to say goodbye to his family. As it was midnight by then, Queen Mary and his sister Princess Mary soon left for London; the duke and his three brothers “chatted about everything except that which was in their minds,” according to Monckton. “We kissed, parted as freemasons, and he bowed to me as King,” wrote the new king, George VI. Then the duke and Monckton left for Portsmouth, the duke talking easily and cheerfully all the way: it had been arranged that he would leave for France that night on the destroyer HMS
Fury
, accompanied by courtiers Ulick Alexander and Piers (“Joey”) Legh.

So last-minute were the orders to the destroyer's captain, Cecil Howe, that he was obliged to borrow bed linen, crockery, glasses and an experienced steward from the royal yacht.
The
Fury
left Portsmouth at 2
a.m
. and because the weather was poor lay off the Isle of Wight for some hours so that the ex-king could get some sleep. But his nervous tension was such that he sat up in the wardroom until 4
a.m
., drinking brandy and talking of recent events. The
Fury
reached Boulogne at 3:40 the following afternoon, December 12, tying up at a berth sealed from public view, and the party set off by special Pullman for Austria, where the Baron Eugene de Rothschild had put one of his houses, Schloss Enzesfeld, near Vienna, at the duke's disposal.

A few days later, the diarist Chips Channon made a perceptive comment. “I heard that garrulous gossip, Malcolm Bullock, with an expertise of felinity, remark for me to overhear: ‘I don't know what the Archbishop meant, as the late King had no friends.' It is terribly true; only Fruity Metcalfe with his checks and his brogue. No other man friend did the King ever have.”

 

A young man called Dudley Forwood, an attaché at the British legation in Vienna, was staying with the Rothschilds for a visit planned to include Christmas when his ambassador, Sir Wolford Selby, called him from the embassy to tell him that the abdication had taken place and that he must return at once. Forwood drove through the night and when he arrived learned that the duke of Windsor was already on his way and that he, Forwood, was to be seconded as his equerry.

With the ambassador, he met the duke on his arrival in Vienna and they drove to Schloss Enzesfeld, set among low wooded hills and with golf and skiing nearby to provide the energetic diversions which the duke loved. Kitty Rothschild, who regarded the duke's visit as a great social coup, was waiting to welcome him, but her hopes of gaining a foothold in the duke's circle were to be disappointed, thanks to Wallis's paranoid jealousy.

There were misunderstandings from the start. The duke, depressed and frustrated at his separation from Wallis, was not an easy guest. It was not so much his habit of consoling himself by playing his drums loudly to a gramophone record until late at night while drinking too much brandy that worried the exhausted Legh as his attitude to his hostess.

While the former king expected everyone to conform to his wishes, Kitty, as a great beauty, was accustomed to have men fall in with hers. Out of courtesy he would go for a drive with her if she suggested it, hoping to entertain him, but these expeditions would irritate him intensely since all he really wanted to do was wait by the telephone for a call from Wallis Simpson.

Wallis, out of her depth, scared and angry, was not bearing up well. During hours of hysterical telephone conversations she berated her lover over virtually every detail of her life and his (in the three months the duke stayed at the schloss, he spent over eight hundred pounds
*
on telephone calls).

 

Christmas at Denham was also characterized by tensions and misery. There were thirteen for lunch, with only one servant to cope, and as Tom had given his manservant the day off Irene had to summon a housemaid from London to help out. Only after church did Tom appear, followed by Baba, Fruity and their children, for lunch. Tom's Father Christmas performance at four o'clock went off as brilliantly as usual and tea, with Christmas cake and crackers, followed by dancing around the tree and presents, was a great success.

From then on, things went steadily downhill. At six o'clock Fruity was delegated to drive Nanny and the twins back to London. Miserable at leaving his wife with the man he so detested, he said goodbye to Irene with tears in his eyes. Boxing Day was marked by a flaming row at dinner, instigated by Tom, in a foul temper at being away from his new bride and the more adult delights of Wootton. Since none of them knew that he was now married to Diana, they could not understand such an outburst of vitriol, triggered by so trivial a cause—the cook's not sending in a green vegetable at dinner. Working himself up, he swore that he would sack the entire staff, adding that Irene and Baba could get out too. Viv became scarlet in the face, tears sprang from Baba's eyes, Nick's spectacles misted up, Granny Mosley talked wildly to get to the end of dinner and Irene, who could take no more, ran out of the room.

Two days later Fruity returned and the season of goodwill ended with another monumental row, this time between him and Baba. Almost at once, Fruity left to ski in Kitzbühel. Baba concentrated on settling into the new house in Wilton Place, dumping her children on Nancy Astor, whom she managed to annoy by her casualness. “I do think you might have the decency to drop me a line when I am looking after your children,” wrote Nancy on January 12, 1937. Baba also heard from the irrepressible Dino Grandi:

Your letter has given me much pleasure and I thank you, darling. I enclose the photo you wish and I hope you will not forget entirely your “impossible” friend, who is and will remain—in his own way—nearer, much nearer, to you than you can possibly believe.

You ask me why I told you of being “dead.” I did it only because I felt, after everything which has happened, that that was the only decent way through which I could ask your forgiveness. The dead are easily forgiven and forgotten . . .

How is Irene? And your children? I am missing London so much, much more than you may imagine. But the future is open and I have many hopes in many ways . . . Naldera, darling, my sweet friend, I am yours.

G.

 

At Schloss Enzesfeld, Dudley Forwood was finding the crosscurrents of emotion a desperate strain.

It was a very bad time [he recalled later]. The Duke was in a great great state. I was only 24 and not very capable of dealing with a 42-year-old ex-King. I knew he had this curious devotion to Fruity so I telephoned him in his house in Wilton Place and said: “We really need you badly. Joey Legh has left and I'm not coping very well.” And Fruity in a typical Fruity way said: “I'll be on that airplane first thing tomorrow morning, boy.” And he was.

Before flying, Fruity telephoned the duke to ask him if he would like him to come for a short stay. “Would I like you to!” responded the duke enthusiastically.

Wallis thought otherwise. She now wrote to the duke: “Darling, I have just read in the paper that Lambe [a young naval officer appointed equerry in July 1936] is to return to London on the 19th [January]. Who is coming out in his place? You cannot be alone with Fruity. In the first place, he is not capable of handling the post and dealing with servants etc. In the second place, it is necessary that you have an equerry at all times. Surely you have some friends or your family for you to send someone to you. You must not be alone with Fruity: I won't have it.”

She may have genuinely felt that Fruity could not deal with letters or servants (although as an army officer dealing with men had been a prerequisite); more likely she feared Fruity's influence on the duke. They had shared a past long before Wallis came on the scene, they enjoyed sports in which she took little or no part—riding, skiing, golf—and a word or phrase could set them off into uncontrollable schoolboy giggles that mystified onlookers.

After an uncomfortable journey Fruity was met by an army of press photographers. At the schloss, where he was warmly welcomed, there were only Kitty Rothschild, the duke, Charles Lambe and Dudley Forwood, in a household run almost as if the duke were still king. At about nine-fifteen every morning Forwood would enter his bedroom, bare of personal possessions save for a number of large photographs of Wallis, to ask the duke, then just waking up, if he had any special plans. “Nao,” the duke would reply in his curious half-cockney accent, “I think we'll play a bit of golf.”

Forwood would pass this information on to the senior valet, who would set up a long table, spread with baize, on which he would place all the duke's golf suits, each with its matching shoes, shirt and socks. From these the duke would select his outfit, have his bath and descend in his dressing gown to a breakfast of kippers (sent from Fortnum and Mason) and Oxford marmalade, after which he would dress. Forwood, who would have arranged a game with the golf pro, would accompany him around the course, walking the three dogs, Cora, Jaggs and Wallis's dog Slipper, all on leashes.

Back at the schloss, the duke would change into a suit for the light luncheon—a little cheese, some fruit—that he invariably favored. Dinner in the evening, cooked by the French chef, was more elaborate—and meant another change of clothes. Apart from the work of the servants, whatever the duke did required the attention of someone, at once, no matter what they happened to be doing.

“All his life he went on behaving as if he were still what he once had been,” commented Dudley Forwood. “He could never accept that he was now, in real terms, a nobody.” In this he was aided and abetted by Mrs. Simpson, who nagged him violently over the telephone about the way he was living, the people around him and her own fears and problems, all with the underlying refrain that he must stand up for his rights and extract more money from his brother.

When Fruity arrived he was delighted to find the duke in his old friendly, affectionate, amusing form. That night, they sat up talking almost until dawn; the next morning Fruity discovered that, just as in the old days, the duke's energy was formidable, with everything done to excess. Now that he had a skiing companion they skied until it was too dark to see, then played poker all night.

From Schloss Enzesfeld Fruity wrote Baba a series of letters that reveal an immediate and accurate grasp of the situation, from the duke's frenetic desire to cram his days until his wedding to his utter subjugation to Wallis.

“I've never seen HRH better,” begins the first, written on January 22, 1937.

Happy, cheerful, no regrets
about anything
—he talked to W for hours after we'd finished playing poker. The conversation did
not
seem to go well. Talks of marriage early in May, no date fixed. Has NO idea of returning to England for a year or two at least. Do not think he misses England or
anything
connected with it one little bit—he seems glad to be free of it. I think Kitty has got on his nerves. She won't leave. He gets quite short with her at times. Says he wants to be with men only and doesn't want any women about. Yesterday spent the day in Vienna. Turkish bath all evening, he and I, then shopping, then big cocktail party at the Embassy. I never leave him.

Lambe left today for England but Greenacre has just arrived—he was sent out from England before they knew I was coming. I'm glad, as he does the letters etc. Tonight he was told at dinner that H. M. wanted to talk on phone to him. He said he couldn't take the call but asked for it to be put through at 10
p.m
. The answer to this was that H. M. said he would talk at 6:45 tomorrow as he was too busy to talk at any other time. It was pathetic to see HRH's face. He couldn't believe it! He's been so used to having everything done as he wishes. I'm afraid he's going to have many more shocks like this.

 

Fruity's comment was all too true. The negotiations for a financial settlement were dragging (they were eventually resolved satisfactorily) and the duke, who all his life had played the role of elder brother to the full, continued to telephone the new king with advice on the questions of the day which, as Walter Monckton wrote, “often ran counter to the advice which the King was getting from his responsible Ministers in the government.” Eventually, Monckton was charged with the delicate task of visiting Schloss Enzesfeld and conveying to the duke that these calls must cease.

The rest of Fruity's letter was equally accurate. “[H.R.H.] is just living through each day until he can be with W. The 27 April is the date. He ticks off each day on a calendar beside his bed. Lots of people are marked down as never having heard from them, e.g., Hugh and Helen and Emerald he's mentioned. He tells me he didn't know till about an hour before he left England when he was going to. Goodbye dearest one,
all
my love I send you. You've been very wonderful to me and helped me so much. Without you I wouldn't be here; and this is a great success, and I am so happy I am here.”

Two days later, exhausted from day-long skiing on poor snow and talking until the small hours every night—the duke would wander in and out of Fruity's room until 4
a.m
.—he repeated that Kitty was getting on the duke's nerves.