“Tea?” she said, “or a proper drink? I told you I’m determined to bring cocktail hour to this damp city. I’m having a martini, if that helps you make up your mind.” She perched an elbow on her knee and brushed the backs of her fingers under her chin. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”
Thelma smiled, thinking irresistibly of Nada Mountbatten. “Go on,” she said, and Wallis picked up a crystal decanter. “Where’s Ernest?”
“At the office,” she said. “He’ll be home soon, I hope. I need him to have a word with the cook before everyone arrives.” She poured gin into a shaker. “You know, he’s been spending so much time at the office I began to suspect he was having an affair—but then I realized he couldn’t possibly afford to keep two women on his salary so I stopped worrying. Penury has its merits after all.” She poured the mixture into glasses, stirring them with olive-pinned toothpicks.
“Oh—it can’t be as bad as all that,” said Thelma, looking around the immaculate room once more.
Wallis brushed the arm of her chair, as though inspecting for pulls in the fabric. “Oh, we were well enough off when we first arrived, but the Depression’s been terrible for Ernest’s business and his father has decided he’s no longer supporting us...not that he can’t afford it.” She frowned, her features pulling into a grimace, then smiled languidly once more. “We moved here a few months ago, to economize. We’ve done it up well enough, I suppose, but it certainly lacks the grandeur you might find in other places. Such as your little bolt-hole, I’d imagine.”
Thelma demurred, thinking of her comfortable apartment. “It’s nothing special,” she said, “And not nearly as put together. You’ve a real talent for decorating.”
Wallis smirked. “I’d rather have the space.” She leaned forward, her collarbones rising from the neckline of her dress, the rim of her glass stained with a half-moon of red lipstick. “But enough about me. How are you? Keeping busy, I hope.”
“I suppose,” said Thelma. “It’s been nice, really, having a few weeks to myself, but I’m looking forward to David’s return.”
“I bet. How much longer? Two months?” Wallis shook her head. “All that time in a cold bed, I don’t think I could stand it...but then, your husband’s only a phone call away.”
“I doubt David would be too impressed if he heard that,” Thelma replied, trying to match Wallis’s casual tone. “He asked me to go on safari with him, you know—Duke. While David’s away. He wants to leave next week. I didn’t know what to say...it feels dishonest. Isn’t that odd? David would be furious...”
“For what? Going abroad with your husband?” said Wallis. “Surely he would see—well, if not reason, then certainly obligation?”
Thelma nodded slowly. “Obligation—that’s it, exactly,” she said. “I keep thinking about the end of it all. When David loses interest. Perhaps I ought to go to Kenya, keep Duke on good terms.”
Wallis raised her eyebrows. “You make it sound like a chore. Africa’s not exactly a second-rate holiday.”
Thelma sighed, tapping the stem of her cocktail glass. “We’re going for drinks on Sunday—he’ll want an answer, but I don’t know what to tell him. Listen to me, I sound so callous...”
“You aren’t callous at all,” said Wallis. “You ought to think ahead. You need to keep an eye on your future. But—speaking from a purely objective standpoint—is Duke really your only option?”
“What else could there be?”
“Marriage,” said Wallis, fishing an olive out of her cocktail glass.
“To David?” Thelma sat back. “It’s impossible.”
“Why?” said Wallis. “He’s crazy about you.”
“He’s also the Prince of Wales,” Thelma replied. “He isn’t—”
“What? Like other men?” Wallis tipped her head to one side, smirking. “A crown doesn’t make him special. He thinks with the same part of his anatomy as they all do.”
“He’s got different priorities,” said Thelma. “He’s not free—not really. He’s going to marry some foreign princess. And sooner rather than later, if his parents have anything to do with it.”
“Why should they have any say in the matter?”
“Because he’s the Prince of Wales!” said Thelma. She felt as though she were arguing against a brick wall: she would have a better chance of being elected Lord Mayor of London than marrying David.
“And you don’t think the Prince of Wales can break with protocol, if he wants? He’s going to be the most powerful man in the world one day. You really don’t think he has that power?”
“I’ve never considered it,” said Thelma. Her mind crept back to that first weekend at Fort Belvedere: David’s casual proposal; her hasty rejection.
“You ought to,” said Wallis. “In any case, this doesn’t have to end with you returning to Furness. He would be generous, surely, in a divorce?”
“He would—but divorcing Duke doesn’t mean I’d marry David,” said Thelma. “More likely, I would end up alone.”
“Is that so terrible? You’re young, you’re beautiful—you could find someone else.” Wallis finished the dregs of her martini. “If you were to leave him, at least you’d be giving the prince an option that wasn’t on the table before. You’d be opening the door to greater possibilities. Who knows? He might surprise you.”
Thelma set her empty glass on the table. “Duke, or David?”
Wallis smiled and began to make a new set of drinks.
* * *
Thelma lingered over her conversation with Wallis for days. She wasn’t so naive as to think that David might truly, one day, be free to marry where his heart lay—despite his constant grumbling, Thelma knew he wouldn’t stand against the government, nor against the king and queen’s inevitable opposition.
Wallis, with her American boldness, would think nothing of a prince marrying a commoner. But Thelma had lived in London long enough to know what was acceptable, and what wasn’t. Marriage to David was out of the question.
But marriage to someone else? She thought back to her first divorce: living on Reggie and Gloria’s charity, listening to Mamma’s ceaseless criticisms. The sleepless nights and sneering publicity; the constant worry of being cast out of polite society without enough money to support herself. She would have money, this time. By divorcing Duke, Thelma would, perhaps, find further happiness—but she had no guarantee. Duke had come into her life by accident; David even more so. Could she rely on a third stroke of luck so easily, now that she was nearly thirty?
After her divorce from their father, Mamma had plunged into Gloria’s life, seeking fulfillment from her grandchild and smothering her own daughter in the process. Thelma pictured herself presiding over Tony with the matriarchal authority of a despot. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—countenance that, for herself or for her son.
But stability—Duke offered that. He also offered his love; he’d never stopped offering it, little though Thelma deserved it. Perhaps Thelma could, in time, find contentment: not like the love she had for David, but happiness of a different sort, mellowed through years of trial and understanding. Once David, by choice or compulsion, left her, did Thelma not owe Duke her constancy? Would that not be fitting? Was that not, in itself, love?
On the night that Thelma was to meet Duke, she arrived at the Embassy Club alone, in a backless evening dress that clung to her figure. She paused at the top of the stairs, scanning the room for the telltale glint of Duke’s red hair.
She walked down, noting Freda Dudley Ward, seated at a corner table, and Sibyl Colefax, who’d helped David decorate the Fort. She waved before turning back to her dining partner, a lithe young man with an easy smile. On the dance floor, the Duff Coopers waltzed slowly. Thelma had dined with them in Capri once: apparently, Lord Duff was a noted philanderer, but his wife accepted him back after every dalliance. They looked happy enough tonight, dancing cheek to ch
eek.
She smiled at Duke, who was waiting at the bottom of the staircase. “Thelma,” he said. “How beautiful you look.”
Even the flattering half-light of the Embassy Club couldn’t hide the fact that Duke, for the first time in their acquaintance, looked old. He’d lost any spare roundness in his face, thin lines pulling at the corners of his mouth. Compared to David’s perpetually youthful appearance, Duke looked like a grandfather: at his temples, his reddish hair had faded so far to blond that, were she feeling ungenerous, Thelma would have called it white.
She smiled, hoping to hide her shock: When had her husband stopped fighting against his years? He kissed her on the cheek, and her heart lurched at the fondness in his eyes. Those, at least, hadn’t changed.
“I ordered you a sherry,” he said, as he led her to their table. “But I wasn’t sure whether you’d eaten already. We can order something if you’re hungry.”
“Sherry’s lovely. I’ve already eaten but if you want something, by all means—”
“No,” he said. “No, I’m fine.”
They lapsed into silence. Thelma watched the band and Duke waved away the maître d’.
“You’ve been well?” asked Thelma.
“Well enough. Business has taken a bit of a knock, but we missed the worst of it.” He sipped his drink. “Averill and Dickie are in good health. I know you keep up on each other, you and the children. Dickie’s well—he’s met someone, so Averill tells me. She’s the only one who would, Dickie plays it all rather close to his chest, but so long as he’s happy.”
“That’s good,” said Thelma.
“...and Averill’s told me, under no uncertain terms, that I’m not to host any parties for her in the coming season. Obstinate, that one—won’t see reason half the time, and the other half she’s made up her mind already.”
“She sounds exactly like her father,” said Thelma.
“I shouldn’t be so hard on her.”
“It’s not a bad thing, a headstrong daughter.”
Duke nodded. “She wants to come to Nairobi with me,” he said.
Thelma pretended she hadn’t heard him. “Always on the hunt, that girl. Have you been to Scotland recently?”
After their second cocktail Duke asked her to dance, placing his hand on the small of her back as though it belonged there. The years fell from his face and Thelma looked past the white in his hair, the new furrows in his cheeks, and she realized how easy it would be to return to him at the end of it all. He straightened, looking once more like the man she had married: not young, but younger. A man in his prime.
The song ended and Thelma stepped back. She looked up at Duke—so much taller than David—and he smiled.
“You’ve gotten better,” she said, and he lifted her hand to his lips. He pulled away, holding her gaze longer than necessary as she tightened her grip on his fingers.
Then he glanced over her shoulder and stiffened. He released her with a hasty cough, smoothing his jacket lapels.
It felt as though the dance floor had emptied. Thelma and Duke, clearly, hadn’t gone unnoticed. Freddie had the decency to look away as Thelma caught her eye; Lady Duff Cooper leaned into her husband and murmured something, her marble face impassive—but Sibyl Colefax, hand draped around her partner’s neck, looked at Thelma with her eyebrows raised.
“I think I’m done dancing,” said Thelma. She walked back to the table, her face reddening. Duke sat, scraping his chair away from Thelma’s, taking longer than usual to trim and light his cigar as Thelma waited for a fresh drink. Once again, Duke looked old—but he looked weary, now, too.
Others had taken over the scrap of floor that Thelma and Duke had left, but people continued to glance in their direction. Lady Londonderry’s daughter Margaret, seated at a crowded table, played with a folded fan, her lips set in a thin line as her eyes slid from Thelma back to one of her companions.
There would always be whispers about the woman who’d had an affair with the Prince of Wales—and about the man who’d accepted her back. They would say he did it for advantage: to curry favor with the future king, or perhaps because he enjoyed a prince’s cast-offs. He would always see David when he looked at Thelma—he was seeing David now, Thelma knew, an unnamed presence conjured by the faces of those around them.
He’d had his dalliances, too, but while Duke’s mistresses would sink into obscurity with each passing year, every mention of the Prince of Wales—Duke’s sovereign—would be a lasting reminder of Thelma’s infidelity.
Regardless of what happened with David, too much had passed between Thelma and Duke—too much pain, too much resentment, on both sides now—for them to ever find true happiness again. Thelma’s selfish preoccupations—her comfort, her security—would always be the draw that pulled her back.
He deserves more, thought Thelma. He deserved to find someone for whom he wouldn’t be second best; someone who viewed him as more than a safe harbor.
Thelma had been that girl once. Perhaps.
She stood first, sliding her engagement ring from her finger. It wouldn’t do, for them to leave together. Duke closed his eyes, his jaw clenched, as Thelma placed the ring on the table.
“Thank you,” she said leaning down to kiss the crown of his head.
Thirty-Six
October 14, 1934
New York, USA
Even during her years living in New York, Thelma had never thought much of the city’s architecture. Where London’s buildings held the story of a city built over generations, with its Georgian mansions and modern apartment blocks standing cheek by jowl, New York, by contrast, looked as though it had been built in a day. In a sense, perhaps it had: the city’s downtown skyscrapers were all of a piece, the same gray stones stacked in the same stern lines, commissioned by Astors and Rockefellers over the same fifty-year period. Each building had its own undeniable magnificence, of course, and strove to say something about American exceptionalism—yet it seemed a special irony that, taken all together, the buildings that made up a city that professed to be unique looked so very monolithic.
The New York Supreme Court building, however, managed to stand out: a distinguished Roman-style block with ornate pillars that looked almost quaint next to its gleaming deco neighbors.
Seated in the back of Gloria’s Rolls Royce, Thelma was amazed at the number of people who’d come to watch Gloria’s arrival: hundreds stood on the courthouse’s shallow front steps, not just newspapermen but women and children, men in shiny suits seated with their elbows on their knees, shouting insults and encouragement in equal measure.
The car pulled to a stop and a woman holding a small child in a threadbare overcoat elbowed her way to the fore of the crowd. The child peered in the window, his eyes dull.
“Don’t they have anything better to do?” said Thelma.
“No,” said Gloria listlessly. “They’re all out of work.” She looked out the window without seeing, impervious to the flashbulbs and the noise.
Thelma recoiled as a man, shoved forward by the tidal surge of people, fell against the car’s rear end. “Vultures,” she muttered.
Burkan, squeezed between them, shook his head. “Allies,” he replied, rifling through his briefcase. “If we can get them to see reason.” Gloria’s team had traveled to the courthouse in three cars: Gloria, Thelma and Burkan in the second; Harry, Consuelo and Edith in the third. The first had carried a team of private detectives, hired on Burkan’s recommendation, to investigate the threats against Gloria that leaked through the mailbox with alarming regularity.
The private detectives were earning their keep, thought Thelma as she watched them push the crowd back from the motorcar. They formed a cordon and cleared a pathway up the courthouse steps before opening Thelma’s door.
She stepped out.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”
A red-fac
ed woman pushed to the front of the crowd, throwing herself into the arms of a detective who held her back, though not nearly far enough for Thelma’s comfort. Spittle flew from her mouth.
“Slut! Lesbian whore!”
Thelma put a restraining arm against the car door, to warn Gloria not to get out. It didn’t matter to the woman whether she was shouting at Thelma or Gloria: to her, they were one and the same. She hurled something at Thelma and it landed at her feet with a clatter: a crucifix on a length of twine.
“That’s for your daughter!” she hissed. “May God protect her from your sins!”
Burkan stepped out of the car and put an arm around Thelma. “That’s enough,” he said, and the detective shoved the woman aside.
Thelma blinked back tears, her heart pounding a frantic tattoo. Knowing that reporters had watched the whole interaction, she exhaled. Her eyes slid up the pillars that lined the courthouse’s portico, to the words that ran across the top of the building: The True Administration of Justice is the Firmest Pillar of Good Government.
“Are you all right?” asked Burkan, helping Gloria out of the car.
Thelma nodded and took Gloria’s hand. “Are you ready?”
Gloria looked up at the courthouse. Without a word—without a glance to either side—she began to climb the stairs.
* * *
The sound dampened immediately after they stepped into the courthouse, the quiet of the entrance hall a sanctuary after the harsh welcome outside. Gloria led Thelma and Burkan toward central rotunda—an austere, circular atrium with a green-and-white marble sunburst on the floor and five hallways that radiated out like the spokes of a wheel. The mural on the domed ceiling was only half-finished, figures sketched out with partially painted finery, the artist’s ladder leaning against a limestone pillar.
The rotunda was busy, and people walked past Thelma and Gloria without a second glance. A solemn-looking couple stood nearby, deep in a whispered conversation, and it was something of a comfort to Thelma that, contrary to what those waiting outside might think, the world was not revolving around Gloria’s trial.
The Woman Before Wallis Page 26
