Another Woman’s Husband

by Gill Paul

  Chapter 13

  Brighton, 6 September 1997

  RACHEL OPENED HER SHOP ON THE DAY OF DIANA’S funeral, although the sun-drenched Brighton streets were near-empty and it seemed everyone was staying at home to watch television.

  Amongst the items she had found in her charity-shop trawl the previous day was a bias-cut silver and gold lamé evening gown with a handkerchief hem and two panels that knotted just below the hip line. There was no label, but it looked similar to a 1926 gown by the great French designer Madeleine Vionnet that was pictured in one of her fashion history books. Some of the seams were frayed and the ornamental knot had come loose, but Rachel had a reel of silver thread and she sat down to repair it, using her old Singer sewing machine controlled by a foot pedal.

  As she worked, her mind was on Diana. The thought that had haunted her in the week since the crash was whether Diana had had any idea she was dying while she was trapped in the car. She hoped not. The papers said she had been due to see her sons the following day after two weeks’ separation. Maybe she was thinking about them, hoping her injuries would not prevent her getting home. But she must have felt very alone, especially if she realised her lover was dead beside her.

  Just before eleven, the door opened and Nicola popped her head in, her expression nervous. She was wearing navy jogging bottoms and a grey T-shirt, her dark hair wet and straggly from the shower.

  ‘You’ve opened up, I see?’ She glanced around at the half-empty clothes rails and sparsely filled shelves. ‘Rachel, I can’t forgive myself for what I did. I’m so sorry. Have you heard from the insurers yet?’

  ‘Not yet. But don’t beat yourself up about it. We all make mistakes.’

  She didn’t feel cross with Nicola. It was her own fault for leaving the shop in someone else’s care. Nicola was warm, creative, sensitive, a good friend, but she was prone to flakiness. Details escaped her notice, and she was perpetually running late for something or other.

  ‘Is there anything I can do to help? I wish you would let me make amends.’

  Rachel glanced around. ‘I ordered new glass panels for the display cases and they were delivered yesterday. Do you want to try and slot them in?’

  Nicola bounced into the shop, pleased to be given a task. ‘Are you not watching Diana’s funeral?’ she asked, as she crouched on the floor to pull the first pane of glass from its cardboard covering. ‘You missed Wills and Harry walking behind the coffin. It was really moving.’

  Rachel thought of the tiny portable television set she kept in a cupboard to watch on slow days. Had the thief taken it? She got up to look, and there it was, nestled on a low shelf. She placed it on the counter, plugged it in and switched it on with mixed feelings. The funeral was bound to be a media circus, but she supposed it was history in the making.

  ‘Looks as though they’re just arriving at the Abbey,’ Nicola remarked, and she called out names as the cameras homed in on celebrities: ‘There’s Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman . . . And Tom Hanks with Rita. Diana would be pleased.’

  Rachel smiled and carried on with her sewing, wondering if Alex was filming the Hollywood contingent.

  The ceremony began and they listened in silence to Diana’s brother’s speech, in which he called her the most hunted woman of the modern age. Rachel got goose bumps thinking of those loathsome photographers clamouring around the Princess’s dying body. It seemed fitting that he had commented on the paparazzi. As the camera panned round the Abbey, she kept an eye out for Susie Hargreaves, but couldn’t see her.

  ‘You should stock up on Diana clothes in the shop,’ Nicola suggested. ‘They would go like hot cakes. Think shoulder pads, tiaras . . . Di liked a good tiara.’

  Rachel made a face. ‘No chance. I draw the line at the 1950s. I have an uneasy relationship with acrylic.’

  Too late she realised that Nicola’s jogging bottoms were acrylic, but it seemed no offence was taken.

  From time to time the television showed the scene in the streets outside the Abbey, and Nicola suddenly shrieked, ‘Look! There’s Alex!’

  Rachel glanced up from her sewing to see him standing behind a cameraman, giving directions. In the crowd around them, several people were sobbing openly: men and women of all ages, faces red and distorted with grief, leaning on each other for support. The few children present looked baffled by the outpouring of emotion, and Rachel felt the same way. They hadn’t known Diana. What was it really about?

  ‘I hear Alex is making a documentary about the crash,’ Nicola said. ‘He thinks there was something suspicious about it. Do you agree?’

  Rachel didn’t want to be disloyal so kept her response neutral. ‘It seems to me that if you were going to bump someone off, there are easier ways. But I’ll see what he digs up. You never know.’

  ‘I hope it didn’t spoil your romantic weekend when he suddenly slipped into producer mode. I know what he can be like.’

  Rachel put down her sewing and, with a grin, held out her left hand to show Nicola the ring. ‘Au contraire . . . He asked me to marry him. I’m sorry we didn’t tell you before, but we were waiting till our news wasn’t overshadowed by Diana.’

  For a fleeting moment, an unguarded expression flickered across Nicola’s face: surprise, possibly alarm, maybe even horror. It was very quick, and afterwards Rachel wondered if she had imagined it.

  ‘But that’s wonderful!’ Nicola exclaimed, her mouth curving into a broad smile. She jumped up and rushed over to hug Rachel, almost knocking a cup of tea onto the lamé dress. ‘How on earth could you keep a secret like that all week?’

  ‘How could you not notice my ring last Monday? I kept waiting for you to ask about it – but I guess we had other things on our minds.’

  Nicola grabbed her hand for a closer look. ‘You know me – observational powers of a mole. It’s gorgeous. I’m so happy for you.’ She touched the twin diamonds with a fingertip. ‘Truly I am.’

  Chapter 14

  New York City, September 1919

  MARRIED LIFE WITH JACQUES WAS GLORIOUS. MARY loved the way he touched her, making her skin tingle, the way he made love so gently and ardently while whispering in his romantic French accent how beautiful she was and how much he adored her.

  She liked arranging their apartment, which overlooked Washington Square in Lower Manhattan, and planning meals to please Jacques when he got home from his new job as an insurance broker. She bought his favourite red wine to serve with dinner, although she didn’t much care for it herself, and she planned entertainments for them: poker evenings, or visits to tiny jazz clubs in the Village, just walking distance from home, where live bands played so close to the audience you could see the beads of sweat on their foreheads and hear every breath they inhaled. They mixed with other young married couples, either neighbours or Jacques’ business colleagues, dining at each other’s apartments, drinking and chatting late into the night. Occasionally they visited the Upper East Side home of Renée du Pont and her businessman husband John Donaldson, but they were hugely wealthy and Mary felt embarrassed about issuing return invitations to her much humbler address.

  Her happiness was complete when, a year after their wedding, she discovered she was expecting a child. She had missed two monthly bleeds before she called on a doctor, who confirmed the news. Jacques was beside himself with joy, and every day when he returned from the office he brought some small gift: flowers or bonbons for her, a rag doll for the little one.

  ‘I see you have decided the sex of our first child already.’ She smiled. ‘Have you consulted a fortune-teller?’

  ‘I can sense she is a girl, and that she will grow up to have your extraordinary beauty,’ he said, a hand cupping the barely-there curve of her belly.

  But one day, as she sat writing a letter to her mother, she felt a twisting of her insides so agonising she screamed out loud. The maid came running and Mary gasped for her to call a doctor and to telephone Jacques. By the time they arrived she was lying on the sofa, blood-soaked towels betwe
en her legs, racked with sobs.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she told Jacques. The disappointment etched on his face made her feel a failure as a wife. She hadn’t been able to keep his baby safe.

  ‘It’s all right, mon amour.’ He clutched her hand, squeezing her fingers hard.

  The doctor asked Jacques to leave the room while he conducted an intimate examination. He palpated Mary’s belly, checked the matter that had been expelled, took her pulse and temperature, then asked her permission to examine her private parts. She coloured deeply but gave her consent.

  ‘You have a little sore patch here,’ he said, touching it. ‘And another. Have you been feeling tired? Any joint pains, or skin rashes?’

  ‘I thought those were symptoms of pregnancy,’ she replied.

  The doctor scraped a little material into a test tube and promised to call on her again just as soon as the results of his tests came back.

  It was a week later when he returned, and at first he seemed embarrassed to tell her and Jacques the outcome. ‘I’m afraid to say you have syphilis,’ he mumbled. ‘A disease that is transmitted through sexual relations.’

  ‘That’s not possible,’ Mary cried, her face burning with shame. ‘I have only ever been with my husband.’

  Jacques looked pale and shocked. ‘I had it several years ago but was assured it had been cured.’

  ‘Which treatment did you use?’ the doctor asked.

  ‘I applied mercury every day for several weeks and it burned the sores away. How can the disease still be there?’ He seemed close to tears.

  Mary stared at him, wondering how he had caught syphilis. She had not known there were others before her. Why had he not told her?

  ‘Mercury is the old-fashioned approach. We have a new treatment now, a drug called Salvarsan. I will give you both daily injections for a month. If you refrain from marital relations during that time, you will both be cured. Give yourself a few months to recover,’ he counselled Mary, ‘and then there is no reason why you should not fall pregnant again.’

  Jacques was crying silently, trying to wipe his tears without her noticing.

  Mary had to ask. ‘Is it because of the syphilis that I lost my baby?’

  The doctor bowed his head. ‘I’m afraid so, yes.’

  Jacques gave a loud sob, leapt up and ran from the room.

  Later that evening, he cried on her shoulder as he told her about the girl who had infected him during the first months of the war, when he was lonely and had sought comfort. He had not realised that she had offered the same comfort to many other soldiers, and had been devastated when the army medic diagnosed the disease.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ Mary soothed, stroking his head. He smelled of wine and she guessed he had drunk a few glasses to take the edge off his anguish. ‘At least there is a sure way to cure it.’

  That should have been the end of it, but Mary found it hard not to dwell on the girl Jacques had taken to his bed. How had she caught syphilis? Had there been any other girlfriends apart from her? He refused to answer further questions, saying it had all happened long before he met Mary and there was no point in dragging up the past because it would only hurt her more, but his reticence led her to imagine the worst. It also made her wary of resuming marital relations, in case the infection recurred, but eventually her burning desire for a child overcame her deep humiliation.

  She fell pregnant again just over a year after they finished the course of Salvarsan, but almost as soon as the diagnosis was confirmed, she miscarried.

  ‘It was too soon,’ the doctor advised. ‘Your body wasn’t ready. Give it time.’

  In May 1921, while Mary was still in mourning for the second child she had lost, a letter arrived from Wallis: Dearest Mary, I wonder if I might visit you and Jackie for a few days later this month? I must talk to you on a matter of vital importance.

  She was surprised, as they had drifted apart since Wallis had been living on the West Coast. They still corresponded, but much less frequently. Weeks would go by with no news, and when a letter did arrive from San Diego, it was full of descriptions of glamorous parties Wallis had attended in the fashionable Hotel de Coronado and movie stars she had met, including John Barrymore (‘the most hilarious drunk’) and Charlie Chaplin (‘a peculiar little man’).

  Mary wasn’t sure what to reply. She didn’t feel like company, would find it hard to put on a gregarious mask and pretend to be the person she used to be as a teenager when she and Wallis were close. But at the same time, she couldn’t bear to let her friend down, so she replied asking when Wallis would like to arrive.

  A maid showed Wallis straight into the drawing room and Mary leapt to her feet to embrace her. On first glance, she could tell something was terribly wrong. Wallis had always been skinny, but now she was skeletally thin, with dark shadows under her eyes, and she looked a good five years older than her age of twenty-five.

  She threw herself onto a chair and blurted out, ‘I’m leaving Win,’ before bursting into a torrent of weeping, her face buried in her hands.

  Mary hadn’t seen her cry like that since Mr Rasin died. She knelt by her feet, and took Wallis’s hands in her own. ‘Oh you poor dear. Are things really so bad?’

  ‘They’re worse than bad,’ Wallis sobbed. ‘I have to leave him but no one will support me. Uncle Sol says he won’t let me bring disgrace on the family. Mother says that being a successful wife is an “exercise in understanding”, and that I must try harder. But it’s like serving a life sentence in jail. I won’t do it. I can’t!’ She cried even louder, and Mary took a handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed at the tears.

  ‘There, there,’ she soothed. ‘We will think of a solution. Let me call for refreshments.’

  Wallis managed to calm herself in the presence of the maid. Once she had left the room, Mary asked: ‘Now tell me what is so wrong with your marriage. Is Win unhappy too?’

  ‘He’s a drunk,’ Wallis said bitterly. ‘A violent, brutish drunk who doesn’t love me. I don’t think he ever did.’

  ‘Of course he loves you. It’s clear to everyone.’ Mary wasn’t being entirely truthful; she had rarely seen Win behave in a loving manner towards Wallis. ‘And hasn’t he stopped drinking now that we have Prohibition?’ The 18th Amendment, passed the previous year, had banned the manufacture and sale of alcohol throughout the United States.

  ‘Of course not! Alcohol is more popular than ever now that it’s hard to buy. Isn’t it the same in New York?’

  Mary admitted that they always kept some wine and bourbon in the house; she wasn’t sure where Jacques bought it and thought it better not to know.

  ‘It’s not just the drinking,’ Wallis continued. ‘It’s his completely unreasonable behaviour. Several times now he has locked me in the bathroom and left me there all day while he went out. Can you imagine? One time he even hog-tied me to the bed. You don’t do that to someone you love, do you?’

  Mary was horrified but not entirely surprised. She remembered the smashed glass in Pensacola, the cruel words, the moodiness. ‘Why does he tie you up?’

  Wallis turned away. ‘It’s his pathetic jealousy. To his mind, every man I speak to is a secret paramour. If I dare to dance with another man at a party, all hell breaks loose. Win calls me names you wouldn’t believe when he’s fried: tells me I’m a whore and that I have a face like a horse. Oh God, Mary, it’s unbearable.’ Her lip was trembling, and she was clearly on the verge of another crying jag.

  ‘Does he hit you?’ Mary whispered.

  ‘A slap now and again. I can put up with that; it’s the way he talks to me that is the worst kind of cruelty.’ She shook her head. ‘I have to divorce him while I’m still young enough to get another husband. I don’t want to leave it too late.’

  ‘Divorce is a big step, though.’ Mary had heard of couples divorcing but there were no divorcees in her social circle. Adultery was the only grounds on which a divorce would be granted in New York State, and it always caused a huge scandal
. ‘What would you live on?’

  Wallis looked worried. ‘Win must surely pay me some alimony; don’t you think? And I suppose I could get a job . . .’ she continued doubtfully.

  Mary knew Wallis had never wanted to work; she would consider it beneath her to be tied to an office or a shop job. No, she would want to find another husband as soon as she possibly could. And no doubt she would succeed.

  Wallis changed her clothes before Jacques arrived home from the office and greeted him in a black organdie dress trimmed with white lace.

  ‘You look très élégant,’ he told her admiringly.

  ‘Black is the spring colour in France this year,’ she told him. ‘If a frock isn’t all black, then it’s black and white.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Mary remarked cheerily, looking down. ‘I’m completely out of date with my cerise gown from last fall. You’ll have to buy me a new one, dear.’

  Jacques embraced her. ‘Anything you want, mon amour.’

  Over dinner, Wallis monopolised the conversation to ask Jacques’ advice on her situation. ‘Perhaps you can recommend insurance products to suit impoverished single women,’ she suggested. ‘Once I am on my own, I will rely on my gentleman friends.’

  ‘You won’t be single for five minutes when word gets out,’ he replied gallantly. ‘In fact, I’m sure I spotted a line round the block. Perhaps we can invite them in for interviews later.’

  ‘Oh yes!’ Mary giggled. ‘Can we choose your next husband for you? Two heads are better than one.’

  ‘Of course,’ Wallis agreed. ‘But I want someone just like Jackie: every bit as handsome, with his wit and perspicacity and that divine French accent. Do you by any chance have a twin?’ She placed a hand on his arm and Mary felt a fleeting twinge of irritation.

  ‘You should visit Paris,’ Jacques suggested, shifting his arm to pick up his glass. ‘You won’t be able to move for Frenchmen falling at your feet.’