by Gill Paul
‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’ Alex rose and placed a hand on her arm.
‘I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you.’ Seeming very distressed, she yanked her arm away and rushed from the room.
Rachel ran after her. ‘Susie, what is it?’
Alex had followed too. ‘Would you like to take a break for half an hour? I only have a few more questions.’
Susie was hurrying up the stairs. When she reached the first floor, she turned back. ‘I’m not answering any more. I should never have agreed to this. Please will you leave.’
She disappeared into a bedroom and closed the door hard. Rachel looked at Alex. He was scrolling through his notes, frowning in concentration.
‘We’d better stop, guys,’ he said to Pete and Kenny. ‘That’s a wrap.’
In the car on the way home, Rachel concentrated on her driving, upset about what had happened. She had closed the shop for the day in the hope of picking up more stock, and was coming back empty-handed all because Alex had upset Susie with his tactless questioning.
He either did not pick up on her mood or chose to ignore it. Most of the way back he was taking calls on his mobile: making decisions, setting up meetings, checking flight times. It appeared he was flying to Paris that evening to interview someone the following morning.
He got cut off mid conversation as he lost signal in a dip in the road, and after calling, ‘Hello? Hello?’ into the ether for a few moments he gave up.
‘You never told me what you said to Diana in the car,’ Rachel commented. ‘Susie obviously found it very moving.’ Could he have invented it? Somehow it sounded too glib.
He seemed puzzled. ‘I’m sure I told you that night, in the hotel.’
‘I would remember if you had.’
He shrugged. ‘It was a surreal night. I’m not sure I remember everything we talked about.’
Rachel was silent and Alex continued: ‘I think Susie knows something she’s not telling us. Did you get that impression?’
Rachel didn’t answer. The whole interview had been excruciating for her. It had felt horribly manipulative, almost as if Alex had been trying to make Susie cry for the cameras. Surely he wouldn’t do that? If he would, then he wasn’t the man she’d thought he was.
Chapter 33
Brighton, 22 October 1997
LATER, WHEN RACHEL PONDERED THE ABRUPT END of the interview with Susie, something niggled: it seemed as though it was the mention of Villa Windsor that had upset her the most. Alex had asked many more intrusive questions than that. Why had she leapt from her seat and refused to carry on when he asked if Diana and Dodi were thinking of living there? Did she know more about the visit than she was admitting?
On her way to Forgotten Dreams the next morning, Rachel stopped at a bookshop and bought one of the biographies of Diana that were stacked high on the table nearest the door. When she got to her shop, she made a cup of tea then checked the index.
There was just one entry for Hargreaves: a mention that when Diana’s mother, Frances Shand Kydd, left her father, Earl Spencer, she had stayed for a while with her old friend Elizabeth Hargreaves at their home near Chichester. In the court case that ensued, Frances lost custody of her children after her own mother, Lady Fermoy, testified against her, calling her ‘a bolter’. Women weren’t supposed to leave marriages in the 1960s, it seemed, no matter how unhappy.
There was nothing about the Villa Windsor. Rachel closed the book and checked the time: 10 a.m. Not too early to phone. She dialled Susie’s number.
‘I just wanted to check you were OK,’ she began. ‘And to say sorry the interview was gruelling.’
‘Honestly, don’t worry,’ Susie replied. ‘I’m so emotional at the moment, I burst into tears at the drop of a hat.’
‘I hope you weren’t upset by Alex’s questions . . .’ Rachel twirled the cord of the phone in her fingers.
‘No, I’m not an idiot. I knew that was what he would be looking for. The story of Diana’s charity work is not nearly as attractive to the media as tittle-tattle about her romances. That was always the case when she was alive and it remains true now. Poor Diana. She had terrible luck with men.’ There was a pause, as if she was inviting Rachel to ask more.
‘Did she often confide in you about her love life?’ Rachel held her breath, worried that Susie might find the question intrusive, but she didn’t appear to.
‘Sometimes, yes. She was stuck in a terrible pattern of picking wrong ’uns, then getting needy and anxious and driving them away. You know her mother left home when she was six? I always think it’s harder for those who’ve lost a parent in childhood to form healthy relationships in later life.’
That was Alex, Rachel mused. He lost a parent. But he certainly didn’t come across as needy or anxious. Out loud, she asked: ‘Do you think it might have worked with Dodi?’
‘I have no idea if he would have been the one to break the mould, but he seemed nice. I’m just glad she was happy in her final weeks.’ Her voice trembled.
Rachel remembered the other reason for her phone call. ‘We didn’t have a chance to go through any clothes. Do you want to set a date?’
‘How about Friday?’ Susie suggested.
Rachel couldn’t afford to close the shop on a Friday; it was one of her busier days, when women were seeking new outfits for the weekend. She would have to ask Nicola to help for the first time since the break-in. ‘Let me check and get back to you,’ she said.
‘I can’t do Friday,’ Nicola replied straight away.
‘What’s up? Have you got a hot date?’ Rachel asked. Nicola usually found her next boyfriend soon after the door closed on the last.
‘I should be so lucky,’ Nicola replied. ‘No, I’m going to London for the day. Sorry.’
Rachel rang Susie back. ‘I can’t get cover for Friday. Is there another time you can manage?’
‘Why not come this evening?’ Susie suggested. ‘You can drive across after the shop closes. I’ll even throw in a light supper.’
That was a relief: it meant there was no residual awkwardness over Alex’s interview; it sounded as though she still wanted to be friends.
Rachel spent the afternoon cleaning the shop, washing the window inside and out, dusting and polishing shelves, and as she worked her mind strayed back to her recent arguments with Alex. Combined with the stress of trying to save the shop, they were wearing her down. The interview with Susie had revealed a side of him she disliked: he had come across as ruthless, using her for his own purposes rather than treating her as a woman who had recently lost a close friend. It was as if his brain had been infected by this crash conspiracy nonsense and he thought everyone who couldn’t see his point of view was stupid.
Had he invented the words he claimed to have said to Diana while she was trapped in the car? That would be unforgivable. Rachel felt as if he was losing sight of the fact that this had been a tragedy in which three human beings had died and one had been seriously injured. He should be more respectful. In her view, he shouldn’t be making this programme at all.
Later, when Alex called from Paris, she mentioned that she had spoken to Susie, and that she had recovered from her earlier distress.
He snapped back: ‘Are you implying that she was distressed because of the nasty questions I tricked her into answering? Why are you always having a go at me these days?’
‘That’s not fair!’ she protested.
‘I could really use your support right now, but perhaps that’s too much to ask.’
‘It was my introduction that got you the interview in the first place.’ He wouldn’t have heard of Susie without her, because she wasn’t one of the Sloane set with whom Diana used to be photographed having lunch in Fulham restaurants; she wasn’t mentioned in the biography Rachel had bought.
Alex wasn’t finished. ‘I keep getting the feeling you’re criticising me from your lofty position of moral superiority. It’s not your most attractive quality.’
Rachel gaspe
d at the criticism. She opened her mouth to snap that she thought what he was doing was shoddy, but stopped herself just in time. She would talk to him at the weekend rather than having a full-scale argument on the phone.
‘I’m flying back on Thursday evening,’ Alex told her, ‘but I’ll stay at Kenny’s in London so I can get to the office first thing Friday morning.’
‘Nicola’s got some secret mission in London on Friday,’ Rachel told him. ‘Maybe you two could catch the train together.’
‘Has she?’ he asked, and she could tell from a false note in his voice that he already knew. That was odd.
‘Do you have any idea what it’s about? She avoided telling me.’
‘Haven’t a clue!’ Alex replied, then made a feeble excuse to get off the phone before she could question him further.
Rachel mulled it over and decided they must be planning a wedding surprise for her. Maybe Nicola was helping him to choose a special present. If that was the case, she wished they would tell her. Even as a child, she had never been keen on surprises.
Chapter 34
Paris, 9 July 1931
MARY WAS RELEASED FROM THE AMERICAN Hospital after a week of treatment, still unable to stagger more than a couple of steps on her own. She moved into the apartment Aunt Minnie had leased, where a nurse came to massage her legs and back every day, then supported her as she tried to relearn how to walk. She still had debilitating pins and needles down her legs, especially the right one, and the summer heat made her feel constantly exhausted and ener vated.
One bright spot was getting to know Jacques’ aunt. Minnie was an artist, and she often sat in the square opposite their apartment painting the trees, the buildings and the passers-by, using thick brushstrokes and bold colours. She was also a wonderful cook, who made chicken roasted with whole bulbs of garlic and steaks in pepper sauce, buying all the ingredients fresh from the market each day. Mary grew plump with her forced inactivity and had to find a dressmaker to let out her clothes. Ernest sent parcels of books from London, so she was never short of reading material, and letters came regularly from the Côte d’Azur, enquiring anxiously about her progress.
I still feel very shocked by your accident, Wallis wrote, and the realisation that I came so close to losing you. It’s made me wary of going out on the hairpin roads around here with their vertiginous drops to the sea. Instead, I’m spending my summer quietly on the beach by the house and dining at local restaurants.
‘That’s not like her at all,’ Mary commented to Minnie. ‘She’s usually only happy in a crowd.’
They often talked about Jacques, and Minnie told her how adorable he had been as a little boy, how he charmed everyone with his happy nature. It made Mary nostalgic for the man she had fallen in love with, the chivalrous pilot who’d brought her French perfume and pale yellow roses, and played her French music on his phonograph.
‘Did he ever mention that he was a war hero?’ Minnie asked, and Mary was astonished. ‘No, I’m sure he didn’t,’ Minnie answered herself. ‘He never speaks of it, but he was awarded a medal for rescuing a fellow pilot from a burning plane. He felt he didn’t deserve it because he said any of them would have done the same.’
‘I’ve never seen a medal among his possessions.’ Mary was wide-eyed at this new insight into her husband.
‘He told me once, near the beginning of the war, that he’d seen some appalling sights; when their fuel tanks exploded, the airmen’s faces melted like candle wax and their screams were like those of wild animals rather than human beings. Then he stopped talking about it, but I know that each one of those pilots was braced to die an agonising death whenever they took to the air. And yet after the war, they were expected to return to normal family life and forget all about it.’ She shook her head at the ludicrousness of the notion.
‘He won’t ever speak about the war. I’ve asked many times,’ Mary said.
‘I just want to explain to you: I’m sure he is not the only man who used the bottle to try and forget. Have some patience with him.’
By September, when Mary was judged fit to sail home, she was looking forward to seeing Jacques and hopeful that the four months’ separation plus the shock of her accident would bring about a real change in their marriage.
She could still only walk with the help of sticks, so Jacques came on board to help her hobble down onto the quay.
‘I will never, ever drink again,’ he told her in the taxicab back to Washington Square. ‘I want us to pretend we are newly-weds starting afresh. And I want us to try for another baby. Can we do that?’
She looked at him and saw a man with a ruddy complexion, thickened waistline, thinning hair and eyes that had lost their zest, but underneath it all he was still her Jacques, her first love. ‘Yes, let’s try,’ she said, and meant it.
Lovemaking had to be cautious because of Mary’s back problems. She could lie on one side but not the other, and sometimes sciatica caused a sensation like an electric shock to travel down her leg, making her kick out involuntarily. Jacques learned to massage her the way the nurse had done in Paris, and he was especially tender when touching her scars. He was trying, but Mary didn’t feel like a newly-wed; somehow that spark had gone.
If only she could have a baby, she would never leave Jacques because she would not deprive the child of its father. But she was thirty-five years old and it was probably too late. Every time her monthly bleed came, she fell into a depression. She loved him, but if they weren’t going to have a child, she wasn’t sure she loved him enough to grow old with him. Was that terrible of her? If she left, what would she do with her life? She could not go back to work in the shop because she couldn’t stand up for long. And she could not move to London, because no matter how affectionate Wallis was being now, the stinging hurt of being called the ‘house pest’ had not faded.
From Wallis’s letters that winter, it was clear that she and Ernest were becoming more of a fixture in the Prince of Wales’s social circle. They even entertained him and Thelma at Bryanston Court in January 1932, and Wallis wrote listing the menu for Mary: black bean soup, lobster, fried chicken and a raspberry soufflé. She felt proud of her cook, she wrote; everything had gone exactly as planned. Mary smiled, knowing that Wallis would have run the entire event with military precision, with nothing left to chance.
Soon afterwards, the Prince invited Ernest and Wallis to spend a weekend at his home, Fort Belvedere, near Windsor, and she wrote describing the visit:
He wore a kilt, for goodness’ sake! I have been in Britain some years but still can’t get used to the sight of a man in a skirt. This impression of femininity was compounded when I came downstairs to find him working at some needlepoint, making a cover for his backgammon set. What can one say? He is the Prince of Wales, and can do as he wishes.
She described the Fort – like an enchanted castle – and the two Cairn terriers, Cora and Jaggs, that Wallis had to pretend to like: You know me, Mary. I find dogs rather unhygienic, but when in Rome . . . Ernest got along marvellously with their host over a shared love of history: dates and circumstances were flying back and forth across the table like ping-pong balls. Mary was glad of that. Ernest needed his intellectual stimulation, and he was proud of his English heritage so was bound to feel honoured by their connection with royalty.
It was a difficult year for Mary and Jacques, with the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash continuing to restrict their financial situation. Mary consulted a specialist about her failure to get pregnant, and was told that he could not rule out the accident in Paris having caused some long-term damage to her innards that would make conception difficult or perhaps impossible. She was devastated by this news. All she asked for was a child, and it seemed her last chance might have been stolen by a distracted taxi driver in a random moment. Anger burned inside her like a hot coal, but she kept the news from Jacques. He seemed preoccupied with his work, as deal after deal fell through. The first time he came home in the evening with the smell of wine on hi
s breath, she did not even comment. She’d been expecting it.
In March 1933, Mary was overjoyed when Wallis came to stay for a few days, on a quick trip to see her Aunt Bessie. She arrived like a tornado, blasting fresh air and energy into the household, and entertaining them with gossip from London.
‘We visit the Prince’s home most weekends when he is not off “princing”,’ she told them. ‘Thelma seems to appreciate my help in entertaining the crowd. The Prince is trying to tempt me to take up needlework, but I told him, “Where I grew up, the help take care of that.”’
Jacques handed Wallis a bourbon with water and poured himself a glass of wine, ‘just to keep her company’. Mary noted this but did not comment, and Wallis seemed to forget that Mary had written to her of his promise never to drink again.
‘How do you pass weekends at the Fort?’ Mary asked.
Wallis sipped her drink, smiling slowly. ‘We go for walks, play cards, do the most fiendish jigsaw puzzles, and in the evening there is often dancing. The Prince is a good dancer, light on his feet, with a true sense of rhythm.’
‘It sounds as though your admiration for him is growing,’ Mary probed. ‘I wasn’t sure if you liked him before.’
Wallis cocked her head to one side. ‘He’s a strange man.’
Mary was curious. ‘In what way strange?’
‘He’s most particular: he will only eat certain foods prepared in a certain way, and generally eats very little at all; he’s very keen on exercise in the fresh air and windows being kept open even in freezing-cold weather; and his clothes must be just so, with no creases. Should he get the slightest mark on a sleeve, he will rush to change, even if it means holding up dinner for everyone else. I suppose when you are a prince you become accustomed to people pandering to your whims.’
Mary noticed that while Wallis was speaking, the level of drink in Jacques’ glass had risen from almost empty to two-thirds full. He was sitting beside the table on which the bottle stood and must have topped it up surreptitiously.
