Another Woman’s Husband

by Gill Paul

  Their driver made a U-turn and headed out of the tunnel the way they had come. Rachel glanced at her watch: nearly one in the morning. They had been there over half an hour. The ambulance was still in the same spot so she guessed Diana had not yet been freed from the wreck. She must be petrified.

  ‘Did you translate for the Princess? How was she?’

  Alex shook his head. ‘The doctor knew enough English. It looks as if she has a head wound, maybe a broken leg.’

  ‘And a broken heart too, if it was serious with Dodi. She’ll be very shocked.’

  They sat in silence holding hands the rest of the way to the hotel, and when they got to their room, Alex flicked on the television set. Every channel was showing pictures of the ambulance taking Diana to the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, where, the commentator assured viewers, a team of top specialists was waiting to take over her care. Rachel kicked off her heels, which had been pinching all evening, and listened from the bathroom as she wiped off her make-up, brushed her teeth and changed into a 1930s satin robe.

  When she returned to the bedroom, Alex was holding a small silver-coloured object. He stretched out his hand to show her. ‘This fell out of the car while the doctor was trying to move Diana. No one else noticed, so I picked it up.’

  Rachel took it from him. It was a tiny heart with the Roman numeral XVII engraved on one side. Seventeen. It was heavy and had a whitish tinge that made her think it was platinum rather than silver.

  ‘Do you think it’s hers?’

  Alex shrugged. ‘There weren’t any other women in the car.’

  Rachel turned it over. The back was engraved with the initial J. ‘You’d better give it to the police when we go to the station tomorrow,’ she said, and he nodded.

  ‘Yeah, will do.’

  On screen, the ambulance was shown pulling into the hospital grounds, and Rachel lay back on her pillow and closed her eyes, the scent of petrol still in her nostrils. What a strange night it had been: first the proposal and now this. She felt shell-shocked by it all.

  Chapter 5

  Paris, 31 August 1997

  ‘RACHEL, WAKE UP!’

  She came round slowly from the blankness of deep sleep. Alex was rubbing her shoulder.

  ‘She’s dead,’ he blurted, the words catching in his throat. In the background she could hear a murmur of French words emanating from the television set, their tone sombre, factual.

  Who was dead? She glanced at the clock by the bedside: 6 a.m. The events of a few hours earlier flashed into her brain and she rolled over to face him.

  ‘Do you mean Diana?’

  He nodded without taking his eyes off the screen.

  She felt a jolt of unreality and pulled herself to a sitting position. ‘How is that possible? You said she was talking in the car.’

  A press conference was being held. A man identified on the screen as ‘Sir Michael Jay, Ambassadeur du Royaume-Uni en France’ spoke in English: ‘The death of the Princess of Wales fills us all with deep shock and deep grief.’ His words translated into French scrolled along the bottom of the screen. A doctor explained that she had suffered catastrophic internal injuries, and that although they had resuscitated her at the scene and operated as soon as she reached the hospital, there was nothing that could be done.

  ‘I can’t believe it.’ Alex’s voice sounded wobbly. Rachel noticed he was still dressed, hadn’t got into bed.

  ‘Poor woman,’ she murmured. ‘All those photographers were taking her picture as she was dying. It was grotesque.’

  Someone on the television was speaking in French now, and Alex listened. ‘Her bodyguard is alive but seriously injured. I was right about the other two, the driver and Dodi Al-Fayed. They’re both dead.’

  Scrolling headlines confirmed his words.

  ‘Oh my God, her boys!’ Rachel exclaimed, the implications beginning to sink in. ‘I wonder if anyone has told them yet?’ She couldn’t remember what ages they were; in their early teens, perhaps.

  Alex was only half listening, still focused on the television. ‘The news anchor says they’ve informed Prince Charles and the Queen, but the boys will be told in the morning.’ The words caught in his throat again. His own mother had died when he was twelve, and there must be echoes for him of that traumatic time.

  Rachel put an arm round him, stroked his back, and he turned to her, stricken. ‘I don’t understand why they couldn’t save her. What the hell were they doing?’

  She shook her head, uncomprehending. A woman a couple of years younger than her; a mother. She supposed these tragedies happened all the time, but not to such globally famous people. Her parents’ generation always said they could remember what they were doing when they heard the news that President John F. Kennedy had been shot; this was clearly destined to become the touchstone moment for her generation – and she had been there.

  ‘Did you hear what she said in the car? Did she know how badly she was injured?’

  ‘I didn’t hear myself,’ Alex replied, ‘but one of the photographers told me she turned to look at Dodi and exclaimed, “Oh my God.” Then she said, “Leave me alone,” when one of them tried to help her. That’s all I know.’

  ‘She wasn’t bleeding, was she?’

  ‘A tiny trickle of blood on her forehead. Nothing on her clothes that I could see.’

  He had been close enough to reach out and touch the Princess had he wanted to, and he had seen enough of the other occupants of the car to know that two of them were dead. Rachel wondered if he was in shock.

  She got out of bed, filled the kettle with water from the bathroom tap and set it to boil. There were PG Tips tea bags and sachets of Nescafé along with cartons of long-life milk on a tray. She put tea bags in two of the cups and waited for the kettle to boil, watching the images on the television with a sense of unreality. There was the tunnel, still closed to traffic but with a street-cleaning truck already at work inside; the exterior of the hospital swarming with media types; archive footage of Balmoral, where the royals were staying.

  ‘They’re saying the paparazzi caused it,’ Alex told her. ‘They chased the Princess’s Mercedes from the Ritz Hotel, where she and Dodi had dinner. Perhaps one of them cut in front and the driver swerved to avoid him.’

  Rachel stirred milk into one of the cups of tea, noticing that her hand was trembling, then passed it to Alex.

  ‘Those cameras with the big long lenses were like guns. The photographers were feral. Lawless.’ She gave an involuntary shudder and her own tea slopped into its saucer.

  ‘It’s not a very tasteful way to earn a living, that’s for sure.’

  They watched the screen in silence, sipping the tea, which had a slight metallic taste. It was hard to accept that the iconic presence was gone for ever: Di in her flak jacket in an African village; in an evening gown at the ballet; or in those mumsy two-pieces she wore for the meet-and-greets that were part of modern royalty. If only they had got it wrong: a case of mistaken identity. If only she wasn’t dead.

  Out loud, Rachel said: ‘I wish it wasn’t true. I wish some nurse in the mortuary would suddenly notice her eyelashes flutter, or a tiny gasp for breath, and rush her back up to a ward where doctors manage to revive her.’

  Alex shook his head. ‘The doctors will have tried absolutely everything known to medical science. The eyes of the world were on them. To have saved her would have been a major coup. No, the only thing that concerns me is how slow they were in getting her to hospital. It must have been at least two hours after the accident. That could have made the difference between life and death.’

  Rachel felt goose bumps prick her skin. If only they could turn back the clock, do things differently. If only.

  They had planned to spend the day wandering round Montparnasse but both felt dazed from lack of sleep. Instead, they had café au lait in a street café. Alex ate an omelette but Rachel didn’t feel like food. When he had finished, they went straight to the Criminal Brigade headquarters to give their
statements.

  After half an hour sitting in a crowded waiting room that smelled of stale garlic, Rachel was taken to a windowless interview room. There was barely space to squeeze round the table and chairs set in the middle. She let the young female police officer take a photocopy of her passport and write down the name of the restaurant where they had dined, the bar where they had danced cheek-to-cheek after dinner and the hotel where they had stayed. The woman spoke only rudimentary English but Rachel refused her offer of waiting till later when a translator might be available and answered in school French. She had only seen the Princess from a distance, she said, because the photographers were in the way. She wanted to express how sickening it was to watch them snapping away, but the best she could do was, ‘Les photographes étaient horribles.’

  Her interview was soon over, but when she got back to the waiting room, Alex was nowhere to be seen. She sat down to wait, flicking through her guidebook. A smiling Frenchman leaned across and asked: ‘May I read your skirt?’ She was wearing a fifties swing skirt with a pattern of old French newspaper extracts set over illustrations of Paris’s tourist attractions. It had seemed appropriate for a visit to the city but now it felt twee. She smiled politely and returned to the guidebook.

  Alex took ages – at least another hour – and when he emerged he was pale and tense. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ he whispered, taking her hand, pulling her to her feet.

  ‘How did it go?’ she asked once they were out in the warm sunshine.

  ‘Awful! The officer was quite hostile. I had to mark on a chart exactly where I was standing and try and tell them where each of the photographers was. He showed me pictures of the seven men they’ve arrested, but I only recognised a couple. It wasn’t them I was focusing on.’

  ‘Of course not.’ She slipped an arm through his. ‘Did you give them the little heart?’

  He cleared his throat. ‘I didn’t like to. They seemed antagonistic, and the last thing I want is to be charged with tampering with a crime scene.’

  Rachel was worried. ‘What if you can be seen picking it up in the CCTV footage?’

  ‘I dunno.’ He looked sideways at her. ‘I guess I’ve got time to come up with an excuse. Amnesia, dementia, something like that.’

  ‘I’ll vouch for it,’ she said in an attempt at humour.

  He pulled the heart from his pocket. ‘Can you keep it in your bag?’ he asked. ‘I’m scared I might lose it.’

  She zipped it into the loose-change compartment of her purse.

  Back at the hotel, the aloof receptionist informed them that because they hadn’t checked out before noon, they would be charged for an extra day’s stay.

  ‘In that case, I’m going to get some kip,’ Alex announced. ‘OK with you? I’m beat.’

  Rachel agreed. It seemed a shame when they had five hours left in Paris before they had to head for the airport, but she felt dizzy with exhaustion.

  Alex switched on the TV as soon as they got into the room, and they saw Prince Charles and Diana’s two sisters arriving at the hospital. Rachel blinked back tears as she tried to imagine how she would feel if her own sister died.

  ‘Charles is the last person Diana would want there,’ Alex commented, stepping out of his trousers. He pulled back the sheet and within seconds of lying down he was asleep.

  Rachel studied him for a minute: his sandy hair tousled on the pillow, his strong back, the curve of his calf. Then she retrieved the remote control from beneath his arm and stopped to watch as Mohamed Al-Fayed emerged from the hospital with bowed head. The poor man. The news broadcasts were almost exclusively about Diana, while Dodi and the driver were relegated to afterthoughts. She gave a little shiver and clicked off the TV.

  Chapter 6

  Baltimore, October 1914

  ‘MISS MARY, IT’S FOR YOU,’ THE HOUSEKEEPER called and Mary leapt from her seat in the morning room, clutching a large white envelope to her chest as she ran into the hallway.

  ‘Hi, Wallie,’ she trilled down the mouthpiece in the top of the candlestick-style transmitter, holding the cylindrical receiver to her ear. ‘Has your mail arrived?’ She bit her lip.

  ‘It sure has,’ came the deep voice, ‘and I’m holding a Bachelors’ Cotillion invitation right here in my hand!’ Wallis could barely contain her excitement. ‘I assume you got one too?’

  ‘Yes!’ Mary giggled in delight. ‘Oh, thank God!’ She had been worried Wallis might not receive the prestigious invitation because her mother was not wealthy, and they lived in an apartment in a less salubrious part of town. But the extended Warfield family had connections in the right places and Wallis would go to the ball. It would have meant social death to be excluded.

  ‘We have so much to discuss. Shall I come over?’

  ‘Yes, but hurry! There are only six weeks to go!’

  Mary was still in her morning housecoat with curling papers in her hair, but there was no need to get dressed for a visit from Wallis, who spent so much time in the Kirk household she practically lived there. At least once a week she stayed over, and the girls spent several hours together each day.

  When Wallis arrived, they scurried up to Mary’s bedroom to talk in peace, away from her sisters’ interruptions. First they examined each other’s invitations, then dived into the most important topic of the day: what they were going to wear. Because of the war raging in Europe, each debutante had been asked to sign a pledge that they would not indulge in the usual ‘rivalry of elegance’ and ‘extravagance in entertaining’ that season. Both Wallis and Mary had signed, but it made the clothing choice even more tricky: they could not look too fancy, but they still wanted to be ‘très chic’, as Wallis put it.

  ‘Mother is taking me to Fuechsl’s tomorrow,’ Mary said. ‘I wanted to go today in case all the best frocks sell out, but she’s having tea with a friend. Will you come and help me choose? We can look for one for you too . . .’ Her voice trailed off. Wallis’s mother would never be able to afford the prices at the town’s most fashionable shop.

  ‘Of course I’ll come with you, but I’ve already decided what I want to wear. Look at this.’ Wallis reached into a pocket and produced a picture torn from a magazine. ‘It’s Irene Castle in Watch Your Step on Broadway. Look how pretty her dress is!’

  It had a satin bodice and a chiffon skirt that fell to just below the knee, with bands of satin and pearl-encrusted embroidery looping around.

  ‘It’s divine,’ Mary breathed. ‘A dream of a frock. But if you got one like this, what would you wear on your shoulders?’

  ‘There could be chiffon over the shoulders, like so.’ Wallis swept her hands to demonstrate. ‘I’ll get Mother’s dressmaker to make it up in white.’ A shadow passed across her face. ‘First I’ll have to persuade Uncle Sol to part with the money. I’ll give it my best Southern charm, and emphasise how important it is for the family name that I shine on my society debut. Heavens to Betsy! I might even meet a rich husband there and that would get me off his hands.’

  Mary laughed. They’d often talked about the qualities they wanted in a future husband. Mary hoped for someone kind, who shared her interest in reading and music so they could swap books and go to concerts together. Wallis had always been clear that she wanted a wealthy husband, and Mary could understand why. Uncle Sol, her late father’s brother, doled out money inconsistently, sometimes leaving Wallis and her mother in near penury, then stepping in just before the rent was due or the coal merchant was about to stop supplying them. A rich husband would give her the financial security she craved. Of course, it went without saying that their future spouses must be handsome and charming, with impeccable dress sense and a fine line in repartee.

  After they had exhausted the subject of their outfits, down to the last accessory, they discussed who they would take along. Each debutante could invite two or three partners, usually family members. Wallis had already decided upon her cousin Henry and the husband of her cousin Lelia.

  ‘I will tell Henry that if n
o one else asks, he must dance every dance with me,’ she insisted. ‘I couldn’t bear to be a wallflower, not with everyone watching.’

  ‘For goodness’ sake, you would never be a wallflower,’ Mary protested. ‘I’ve never known a girl have so many admirers. Carter Osburn would dance every single dance with you given the chance.’

  They discussed which boys of their acquaintance could be guaranteed to ask them for dances and which might need a nudge. Their invited guests must be briefed to step in if there seemed to be even a remote possibility of them having to sit out a number.

  ‘This will be the most important evening of our lives so far,’ Wallis said dramatically. ‘Possibly the most important ever.’

  The evening of 7 December came, and all their careful plans went like clockwork. They arrived at the Lyric Theatre on the arms of their escorts, clutching their bouquets. Wallis looked ravishing, and when Mary went over to greet her, she noticed she was wearing a hint of rouge on each cheek, something that was considered a little ‘fast’.

  ‘You look beautiful, Miss Warfield,’ she beamed.

  ‘You too, kiddo. Let the fun begin!’

  The first impression inside the theatre was of a profusion of flowers; boxes of each girl’s favourite bloom arranged next to each other merged into one long, lush scented garland. The seats had been removed to create a dance floor and the stage was decorated as a magical forest bower where supper would be served. The band struck up the first number and for the next few hours Wallis and Mary scarcely saw each other as they were whirled round the floor by a succession of partners. They danced the one-step, the foxtrot and the German waltz to songs like ‘When You Wore a Tulip’, ‘Land of My Best Girl’ and ‘Tsin-Tsin’. The final song, ‘Parfum d’Amour’, was played just after eleven, but that still wasn’t the end of the evening. A young crowd, including Wallis and Mary, jumped into automobiles and drove to the Baltimore Country Club, where they danced till dawn was streaking the sky as if with a giant brushstroke of orangey-pink paint.