Another Woman’s Husband

by Gill Paul

  ‘Ernest has told me he will never divorce his wife,’ she complained. ‘What a flat tyre he turned out to be.’

  ‘It’s all for the best,’ Mary soothed.

  ‘Best for whom? Dorothea has no brains, a face and figure like a bison, and they don’t have any interests in common. I simply don’t know what is going through his mind.’

  ‘He’s not your type anyway,’ Mary told her. ‘Far too boring and bookish.’

  Wallis snorted. ‘Anyhow, Aunt Bessie has invited me to Europe for the summer and I’m going to accept. We’ll be staying on the French Riviera, so Gerald and Sara Murphy can introduce me to the “it” crowd.’

  ‘Darling, you’ll have a gay time. I wish I could come too. If only I didn’t have to look after Jacques . . . Poor dear would be lost without me!’

  When she hung up the telephone, Mary remained sitting in the hall chair for several minutes, pleased with herself. Wallis would surely find a new admirer amongst the glamorous set in the South of France, and the threat to Ernest and Dorothea’s marriage would have passed. She had been right to meddle. She just hoped Wallis never found out.

  Chapter 20

  Brighton, 9 September 1997

  RACHEL’S LOCAL TRAVEL AGENT HAD MANAGED TO secure a cheap return to New York, flying out on the Tuesday morning and back on Wednesday night’s red-eye. Alex didn’t comment when she told him and she felt guilty for letting him down, but once she was on the train to Heathrow, excitement took hold. It was years since her last visit to New York, and several months since she had seen Richard, but most of all she was thrilled at the prospect of inspecting the contents of the Van der Heyden wardrobes. She knew Richard wouldn’t have invited her if the sale wasn’t going to be well worth it.

  Rachel picked up some magazines to read on her flight to JFK, even though she’d had an early start and was hoping to snooze part of the way. She got a window seat and gazed out at the River Thames snaking its way into the city, growing less distinct by the second as they climbed through cloudless sky marked only by criss-crossing jet trails. It seemed no time before they were crossing the Irish Sea, skimming the rocky coast of Ireland then heading west across the petrol-blue Atlantic, featureless apart from sun blinking on white-crested choppiness.

  The previous day she’d had word from the insurers that, as she had feared, they were not going to pay up. She had immediately made an appointment with her bank manager and agreed a short-term extension of her overdraft facility, but she was pinning her hopes on the Van der Heyden sale to replenish her depleted stock. Until she could start making money again, her finances would deteriorate by the day, so a lot was resting on this trip.

  A stewardess handed her a breakfast tray: cheese and ham croissant, yoghurt, fruit salad. She ate the fruit and drank a cup of coffee before closing her eyes to try and sleep, but her mind was buzzing. She had shut her half-empty shop for the two days she would be away. Nicola could have looked after it – she was bound to be fastidious about security from now on – but something stopped Rachel from asking. It wasn’t that she hadn’t forgiven her, but she didn’t quite trust her in the same way. Besides, midweek takings when stock was low would barely cover her wages.

  She took out her Filofax and began to scribble a list of what she wanted at the wedding: registry office then a reception at the Bonne Auberge, their favourite French bistro; a bouquet with lilies of the valley; arty black-and-white photography. She would find her own dress: maybe a 1930s long-sleeved satin gown in ivory or cream.

  Turning the page, she came upon a cartoon by Alex. It showed a shaggy dog holding out his heart towards an elegant Siamese cat, and the caption read: What’s a classy dame like you doing with an old dog like me? Can’t get over my luck. She laughed, wondering when he had drawn it. He seemed to be apologising for being in a bad mood about her trip. His animal characters often expressed sentiments he found hard to say out loud. The first time he said ‘I love you’ to her had been in a speech bubble.

  She picked up a magazine whose headline proclaimed an article on Diana’s ‘troubled’ love life. There had been James Hewitt, the one Diana said in her Panorama interview had let her down badly; then James Gilbey, famous for calling her Squidgy in a phone call leaked to the media. Rachel thought of the platinum heart with the initial J and the number XVII, still zipped in her purse. Could one of those Jameses have given it to her? If so, what did the XVII stand for?

  The article claimed that there had been a number of married men amongst Diana’s dalliances in the early nineties. It must have been difficult for the Princess to find lovers, Rachel mused. She was rich and beautiful, but most normal men would run a mile from the media interest she attracted. Alone and vulnerable as she negotiated her divorce from the heir to the throne, perhaps a married man had seemed a good idea. Discretion would be in his interests too, and if he was a slightly older father figure, perhaps she hoped he could offer wisdom and the security she craved.

  Diana had ricocheted from one unsuitable liaison to the next in her late twenties and early thirties – just as Rachel herself had. She ticked off her own list of failed love affairs. One man who was separated from his wife but tellingly not divorced, and who jumped whenever his ex snapped her fingers. Another who lived in Rome; he had been an exciting lover for a few expensive months before she realised the relationship had nowhere to go because neither was willing to relocate. And then the man she’d been dating just before she met Alex, who had been serially unfaithful to her. She had broken up with him as soon as she found out but had been wounded by the experience. Her ego was bruised, if not her heart, and when Nicola invited her to her birthday party soon afterwards, Rachel decided to wear her Chanel ‘little black dress’ accessorised with six long strings of pearls. The right outfit could always boost her confidence.

  She had made a large birthday cake and was carrying it awkwardly in front of her, with a bottle of wine and a gift swinging in an overstuffed shoulder bag, when one of her stiletto heels got caught in a drain cover down the road from Nicola’s flat. She tugged at her foot but it came out of the shoe, which remained firmly stuck in the drain. Stockinged foot resting on the pavement, she was glancing around, looking for somewhere to put the cake down, when a man appeared by her side.

  ‘Allow me,’ he said. He crouched and wiggled the shoe to dislodge it then, still on bended knee, held it out for her to insert her foot.

  ‘Like Prince Charming,’ she giggled.

  ‘And the shoe fits!’ he announced triumphantly.

  He stood up and she saw that he was a tall, slim man with sandy hair and a winning smile. He wasn’t conventionally handsome but he had an interesting face, one you wanted to look at.

  ‘Are you by any chance going to Nicola’s?’ he asked. It wasn’t a huge feat of deduction since her name was iced on top of the cake.

  ‘Impressive detective work,’ she smiled.

  He nodded his head towards the cake. ‘Maybe you should let me carry that the rest of the way, in case of any more footwear malfunctions.’

  ‘OK,’ she agreed. ‘So long as you don’t claim the credit for baking it.’

  He laughed out loud. ‘Nicola would never believe that. Trust me.’

  Once inside the party, Alex fetched her a glass of wine, getting a beer for himself. He clearly knew most of the guests; several groups called greetings and beckoned him to join them, but he hovered by Rachel’s side, clearly keen to chat to her.

  ‘You look as though you work in fashion,’ he guessed. ‘Am I right?’

  She told him about Forgotten Dreams and he told her about his TV production company, based in a tiny office in north London. He had been living near there until recently but when rents grew astronomical he headed south to the seaside town where he’d attended art college and where a lot of his friends still lived – including Nicola.

  People who wandered over to talk to Alex soon took the hint that he did not want to interrupt his conversation with Rachel. They sat in a corner togeth
er and somehow segued into reminiscing about their favourite childhood TV programmes: The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Doctor Who and Star Trek were his choices, while she said she liked Bewitched and demonstrated the side-to-side nose twitch that Samantha used to cast spells.

  ‘It’s worked,’ Alex said, gazing into her eyes, his voice a little husky.

  ‘It should do,’ she replied. ‘You have no idea how many hours I spent practising in the mirror.’

  He touched her hand, just a feather touch. ‘When will I see you again?’ he asked. ‘Dinner tomorrow night?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said straight away, feeling a tug of lust in her belly.

  The relationship progressed quickly: he had been staying in a friend’s spare room while looking for a place of his own but somehow there seemed no point when he and Rachel wanted to spend every night together. She gave him a door key, despite feeling nervous that she was jumping in too deep, too quickly. Since then he had never given her any cause to doubt him: he was consistently romantic and attentive – and, most important of all, they had fun.

  Rachel worried sometimes that it had been too easy. They seldom argued, and if they did, it was quickly over. Maybe this was what other people felt when they fell in love; maybe she had been doing things the hard way before. She had no misgivings about marrying Alex and having his children, then spending the rest of her life with him.

  The stuffy air of the aeroplane cabin and the diamond light piercing the window made her drowsy and she closed her eyes. Her thoughts drifted back to the woman who was alleged to have got engaged in Paris the same night as her. Would Dodi have been the right man for Diana? Would she have had children with him?

  Rachel dozed for a while but was wakened by the rattling trolley of the stewardess bringing drinks. She accepted a cup of tea and took a sip then picked up another magazine. This one had an article about the final twenty-four hours of Diana’s life, starting as she swam with Dodi in the sea off Sardinia and ending in the mortuary of a Paris hospital.

  Paparazzi had captured most of the time Diana had spent in Paris. There she was shading her eyes from the sun as she arrived at Le Bourget airport on the afternoon of 30 August, dressed in an oatmeal trouser suit with a black top and dark sunglasses. They didn’t have an image of her at Villa Windsor but showed the house instead, and added the detail that Diana and Dodi had been meeting an Italian interior designer who was going to remodel it for them. Next they pictured her arriving at the Ritz, where she had her hair done; you could see the difference in the before and after pictures, as she went from tousled to coiffed. The following image showed Diana dressed for dinner that evening in slim white trousers, black jacket and black top, and the article explained their change of plans: the paparazzi were staking out the restaurant where Dodi had wanted them to eat, so they dined at the Ritz instead.

  Suddenly Rachel noticed something else. When Diana arrived at the Ritz to have her hair done, the silver-coloured bracelet Alex had mentioned was on her right wrist. It looked as though a charm was dangling from it. She stretched down to her handbag, tucked under the seat in front, pulled out her purse and retrieved the platinum heart from its zipped pocket. It looked the same shape and size as the one shown in the magazine. She polished it on her sleeve, turned it over in her hand, feeling the weight, running her finger over the engravings. Definitely platinum, she thought; it was much shinier than silver.

  She looked to see if there was a clearer shot of the bracelet in any of the other pictures. In the shot taken at Le Bourget, Diana’s wrist was clearly visible and she was not wearing a bracelet, just a gold watch on her left wrist. But she was wearing it when she arrived at the Ritz that afternoon. When had she put it on? She had not been back to Dodi’s flat, and hadn’t changed her clothes in the intervening period.

  In the evening shots she wore gold earrings, and there was that bracelet again, still on her right wrist, alongside a pearl bracelet now. There was a gold ring on her right hand but nothing on her engagement finger. Strange to wear gold, pearl and platinum jewellery together; she clearly hadn’t given it much thought.

  Suddenly Rachel realised that all the photographs in which Diana was wearing the silvery bracelet were taken after the Villa Windsor visit. Perhaps she had been given it while they were there. Maybe it was a gift from Dodi and the engravings marked a significant date in their relationship. Rachel felt like a detective, and wondered if anyone else would notice this detail, or if she was the only one.

  Chapter 21

  New York, 9 September 1997

  RICHARD LIVED IN THE LOFT OF A BUILDING ON Bleecker Street, above a nightclub called The Bitter End. Rachel was stunned by the vast open-plan space, topped by a glass skylight roof. There was a sitting area in one corner, a double bed in another, a dining table and kitchen at the far end, a camp bed with a folding screen around it, which she assumed was for her, and acres of wooden floorboards in between.

  ‘This place would be great for skateboarding,’ she commented. ‘Is that why you bought it?’

  ‘I’m only renting,’ he said, ‘but isn’t it cool? I love this area.’

  ‘You look well.’ She smiled, taking in his Black Watch tartan trousers, which he’d teamed with a black T-shirt. He was tanned, his fair hair sun-bleached, and he had a trendy new pair of bright-blue-rimmed glasses. ‘It’s wonderful to see you.’

  ‘You too.’ He kissed her on both cheeks. ‘It’s been far too long.’

  Richard made a pot of coffee while she freshened up in the tiny old-fashioned bathroom, where the plumbing looked as old as the century and the cistern gurgled as it refilled.

  ‘So what’s new?’ he asked when she emerged. ‘Tell all.’

  She had already mentioned on the phone that she was engaged, but now she showed him her ring and he made admiring noises.

  ‘Gorgeous.’

  ‘Alex chose it himself,’ she said proudly, sitting down at the table.

  ‘He’s good at jewellery. I remember when you two had only been dating a couple of months he bought you those pearl earrings surrounded by tiny chips of diamanté. It was impressive that he noticed you wore clip-ons not pierced earrings, and he managed to choose a style that would suit you.’

  ‘He’s got an eye for it,’ Rachel admitted, ‘but I’ve trained him to keep receipts.’

  ‘I’m really happy for you both. Now, where’s my invitation?’

  She laughed. ‘Mum’s organising the wedding, but don’t worry – you’re on the list.’

  ‘Tell me about the proposal. Did he get down on bended knee?’

  ‘Not quite.’ She shook her head. ‘We were in Paris for the weekend and it was all perfect – until later that night our cab screeched to a halt in the Alma Tunnel right behind Diana’s wrecked Mercedes, which put a dampener on things.’

  ‘Oh my God!’ He patted her hand across the table, concern in his eyes. ‘That must have been traumatic.’

  ‘It was horrible, with all the photographers milling around, snapping away . . .’ She paused. ‘I’ve been dreaming about it ever since; just general anxiety dreams in which I feel I should be doing something to help but don’t know what.’

  As she spoke, an image came to her from a few nights earlier. ‘In one dream, I was pulling on Diana’s hand, trying to drag her out of the wreck, but her fingers kept slipping from my grip.’

  Richard stirred his coffee. ‘I helped some survivors out of a fatal car wreck once and it haunted me for years. Don’t underestimate how much it affects you.’

  He was the first person Rachel had told about it who hadn’t wanted all the gory details, and she appreciated that. ‘Anyway, Diana’s funeral is over and life in the UK is returning more or less to normal – apart from me having a half-empty shop. Tell me about this sale you’re organising.’

  He rubbed his hands and grinned. ‘The Van der Heydens were one of the New York society families, up there with the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts and the du Ponts. It was the Jazz Age, when Louis Armstrong and Jel
ly Roll Morton were playing dance music and the more daring white people slipped out to speakeasies to drink cocktails, or to the Cotton Club or the Savoy dance hall in Harlem. And their dresses . . .’ He kissed his fingertips. ‘Have I got a treat in store for you!’

  They walked down shady, tree-lined Bleecker Street, with cafés spilling onto the sidewalks and metal fire escapes making the building frontages look like a giant game of snakes and ladders. After turning down a cross-street, they walked a couple of blocks north and skirted across the corner of Washington Square. Chess players were huddled around little tables, deep in concentration, and everywhere there were street performers: musicians, jugglers, mime artists and break-dancers. They looked incongruous amidst the historic buildings that ringed the park and the memorial arch at the north side but had clearly made this their home territory.

  Richard had keys to a warehouse down a side street and he unlocked the door and led her into a hangar where rows of clothing hung under plastic sheets, with code numbers on each rail.

  ‘Let me get you the listing,’ he said, and disappeared into an office.

  Rachel inhaled the musty, dusty scent, excited by the prospect of looking through this collection. Richard’s description sounded alluring.

  ‘Some of them are in lots, some for individual sale,’ he said. ‘You’ll see guide prices in the margin. Do you want to browse on your own for a while? I’ve got some admin to do.’

  ‘I can’t wait,’ she breathed.

  She lifted the plastic from the first row to find some extraordinary dresses by well-known designers of the 1920s: a cerise satin gown by Piguet, draped in chiffon scarves decorated with silver leaves, and with matching harem pants to wear underneath; a Vionnet black crêpe gown with a black lace bodice; a coral velvet gown by Worth with pearl strands strung from the bodice over the arms, like fairy wings; a Chanel dancing frock in flouncy black and pink chiffon. She doubted she would be able to afford any of them, but made notes beside the ones she liked, estimating the price she could charge in her shop, then calculating how much she could afford to pay in dollars, allowing for the auctioneer’s fee, the exchange rate, plus shipping and import duties.