Another Woman’s Husband

by Gill Paul

‘I’d like you to see a specialist. I’ll make a phone call and set it up.’

  Mary guessed she must have some kind of infection in the milk ducts. The nanny had told her it could be mastitis; that would explain the tenderness and her overwhelming tiredness.

  Nothing prepared her for the shock when Sir Launcelot Barrington-Ward finished his examination at his prestigious Harley Street surgery, called Ernest in from the waiting room, and told them both, ‘I’m afraid there is a tumour in the left side.’

  ‘Do you mean cancer?’ Mary asked, then words failed her. She remembered her mother’s agonising death from cancer and went rigid with fear. She couldn’t go through that. She wasn’t strong enough.

  ‘It’s early days, so removal of the breast should get rid of it. I would like to operate as soon as possible.’

  Ernest began to ask about practicalities in his calm, businesslike voice: who would perform the surgery, how long would it take to recover, were there any follow-up treatments, what were the statistical probabilities?

  Mary watched him talking but didn’t take in any of the words. She cupped a hand around her left breast, the one that was soon to be lopped off like dead wood. She didn’t mind for herself, but she was heartbroken for Ernest. It felt as if she would no longer be a complete woman; as if she would be less of a wife.

  Chapter 65

  London, April 1940

  MARY RECOVERED QUICKLY FROM THE PHYSICAL side of the operation, but the mental side was harder. Although she was given special pads to fill the left side of her brassiere, she felt deformed and hideous. She would not let Ernest see the jagged dark red scar with criss-cross marks from the stitches. She couldn’t bear to look at it herself.

  Sir Launcelot assured Ernest that the operation had been a complete success. Tests on the excised breast tissue showed the cancer had been contained, so Mary was expected to make a full recovery. She was back at home in Holland Park by the end of April, in time to hear Whistlebinkie utter his first recognisable word: ‘Dada’.

  ‘You may think he’s talking about you, Ernest,’ Mary joked feebly, ‘but I think he is a budding art historian and is commenting on the avant-garde movement of Marcel Duchamp.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right, my dear. We have clearly produced a genius.’

  They both laughed as they watched their genius son try to stuff his entire left hand into his mouth.

  Mary could spend hours sitting on the floor watching him play. When he sat on her lap, he was fascinated by her necklaces and loved to pull the clip earrings from her earlobes. He was a contented little chap, entirely caught up in the moment, and she wished she could be the same but it was hard to shake off her depression following the operation.

  The news from Europe only increased her gloom: during April, Hitler’s troops had invaded Denmark and Norway, then, on 10 May, came the invasion of Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands and France. Soon it looked as though there would be German troops on the Channel coast, and the thought petrified her.

  Mary and Ernest spent a weekend with Eleanor and Ralph at the end of May, and were stunned into horrified silence to hear from their radio set of the surrender of King Leopold of Belgium and the evacuation of Dunkirk, as British troops were hastily brought home to avoid annihilation by the Germans.

  ‘I hear they are blaming the Duke of Windsor for leaking plans concerning the defence of Belgium to the Germans,’ Ralph said. ‘Did you read that story in the Times, Ernest?’

  ‘I did,’ he agreed, ‘but in wartime you can’t believe everything you read.’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it past him,’ Mary commented. ‘I don’t think he would deliberately betray his country, but he is rather naïve and – let’s be frank – not terribly clever. I can image some wily von Ribbentrop type tricking him into imparting secret knowledge if they flattered him enough.’

  Ernest didn’t comment; he was more discreet than her, but she knew he shared her views of the former King’s lack of intellect.

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ Mary confided in Eleanor once they had left the men to their brandy and cigars. ‘I don’t feel my baby is safe in London with the Germans getting ever closer, but Ernest has to be there. We have talked about sending the boy to America, but I can’t bear it. He’s too little. He wouldn’t recognise me when he saw me again.’

  ‘He’s welcome to stay here,’ Eleanor offered. ‘We’re not close to any targets the Germans might choose to aim at.’

  ‘Are you serious?’ Mary hugged her, overcome with relief. ‘I would love him to be here. His nanny would come too, so I hope you would have no trouble, and you are close enough that I could visit every weekend.’

  ‘That’s settled then. And if it means I get to see you every weekend, all the better.’

  The Holland Park house felt vast and empty without Whistlebinkie’s gurgles and cries echoing in the hallway. When she entered a room, Mary kept looking round for him before remembering he wasn’t there. She telephoned every day and asked Eleanor to hold the receiver to his ear as she cooed down the phone. He always sounded happy; it was Mary who was miserable. For nine months her son had given a reason and purpose to her existence, and now he was gone she was empty and low.

  When the Local Defence Volunteers movement was hastily set up by the War Office to organise security around vulnerable areas, Ernest was appointed a deputy group leader. That meant he had drills every evening and on Saturdays and Sundays as well. During weekdays he worked with the Admiralty, who had taken over his shipping business and were using it to help keep essential imports arriving. The days were long and Mary knew she had to find something to keep her occupied or else she would go mad. In June, she signed up for the Red Cross and was immediately sent on two courses: ‘First Aid’ and ‘Decontamination after Gas Attacks’. It was tiring but good to feel that she might be some use to her adopted country.

  Still the occasional letter got through from Wallis. She and David had fled northern France in the dead of night when the Germans invaded, going first to their house in Biarritz and then to the Ritz Hotel in Madrid. Mr Churchill wants us to return to England, she wrote, but David insists he will not do so unless I am granted an HRH title. As for myself, I care little, although it seems odd that as his wife I cannot share his form of address.

  She has gone mad, Mary thought. Who would even think of such a thing in wartime, when the country faced imminent invasion? She was careful never to criticise Wallis in front of Ernest, though. She didn’t want to risk hearing him defend her.

  Through June the news was uniformly dreadful and Mary’s anxiety mushroomed: Italy declared war on Britain; German troops marched into Paris; and then France surrendered, agreeing to become a German ‘zone of occupation’. French commander General Weygand predicted: ‘In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken.’

  Ernest’s sister Maud came for dinner, and over a meal of rabbit stew with carrots and boiled potatoes, she asked Ernest, ‘Don’t you think you should send the child to New York? The Germans could be here at any moment.’

  Ernest mumbled something indistinct, so Mary replied for him. ‘We considered that, but he seems safe enough with our friends in the country.’

  Maud looked alarmed. ‘What if they start rounding up Jews and sending them to camps, as I hear they are doing across Europe? Surely you can’t take that risk?’

  Mary stared at Maud, then at Ernest, uncomprehending. ‘Do you have Jewish blood? Simpson is not a Jewish name.’

  Ernest sighed heavily. ‘I saw no reason to alarm you,’ he said, ‘but as Maud has brought it up, I should tell you that our family were Jewish in the nineteenth century, when we had the surname Solomon. My father changed the name when he emigrated to New York in 1873 and set up his shipping firm.’

  Mary could hardly breathe. All of a sudden she had visions of her baby in the arms of a Nazi in those high-topped leather boots. ‘They will check the records. They’ll find out,’ she said in panic. ‘You must come to New York, bot
h of you. And your children, Maud. We must all go. I’ll find somewhere for us to stay.’

  Ernest looked down at his hands. ‘I’m not going,’ he told her in a tone that she knew brooked no discussion. ‘I must stay and help my country, but I will understand if you want to take Whistlebinkie there for the duration of the war.’

  Mary looked at him, aghast. She could not leave him alone in London, this man she had loved for so long. And yet she could not risk her precious, innocent son being taken captive. If the Germans were coming across the Channel, she had to get him to America – but she must stay with her husband. The answer was as clear as it was unbearably cruel.

  ‘With any luck the war will be over in months,’ Maud said, in a tone that made it plain she did not believe it.

  Mary considered asking her sister Buckie to have Whistlebinkie, but she had no spare rooms, while Anne was too far away in Chicago. When by chance an invitation arrived from her old school friend Renée du Pont, inviting them to her luxurious Manhattan house, it seemed the only solution. Mary and Ernest talked long into the night. He tried to persuade her she must go too, but she had made up her mind and would not reconsider.

  On 8 July, Ernest and Mary travelled to Holyhead with Whistlebinkie and his nanny and escorted them to their cabin on a passenger ship bound for New York. When the hooter sounded for all those who were not travelling to leave the ship, Mary gave her baby one last cuddle and kissed his tiny lips, then turned to walk away. She couldn’t cry, but every part of her body was shaking with grief. The pain was more appalling than she could ever have imagined.

  As the gangplank was raised and the ship moved out into the Irish Sea, Ernest put his arm round her and gripped her tightly, as if he feared that otherwise she might leap into the water and swim after it.

  Chapter 66

  London, September 1940

  AIR RAIDS ON THE CAPITAL BEGAN ON 7 SEPTEMBER 1940. As fires raged across London, Mary knew she had done the right thing in sending her son away, but two months on, she still missed him with an excruciating pain. It felt as if she had been viciously stabbed, and seeing another baby in the street caused the knife to twist. Children are safer in the country, the hoardings proclaimed, but her precious little part-Jewish boy was safest of all in America now that invasion seemed imminent.

  The bombers came every night for two months and Mary worked flat out in the first-aid station at Lancaster Road baths, where she had been posted after passing her courses: cleaning, disinfecting and bandaging flesh wounds, putting temporary splints on broken limbs, applying sterile gauze and bandages sprayed with tannic acid to burns. She had feared she might be squeamish, but when there was a patient in pain before her, she forgot her own feelings and did what she could. She worked late into the night and crawled home to sleep in the dawn, so she and Ernest were seldom there at the same time. A couple of days a week she took a picnic lunch to his office and sat there to eat with him, just so they had an hour alone together.

  There hadn’t been any letters from Wallis for a long while, but they read in the newspapers that she and David had been shipped off to the Bahamas, where he had been appointed governor.

  ‘Do you think it’s true that she is pro-Nazi, as the papers are saying?’ Mary asked Ernest over lunch one day.

  He pursed his lips. ‘Peter Pan may well be, but I rather credited Wallis with more intelligence. Who knows what influences she has been subject to in Europe since her marriage? Their new friends hardly seem salubrious.’

  ‘She was friends with von Ribbentrop back in 1935, was she not?’ Mary spoke tentatively. She wasn’t sure if Ernest had heard the rumours of their affair.

  He laughed. ‘I wouldn’t say friends exactly.’

  ‘But he sent her all those flowers . . .’

  ‘Ah yes, the seventeen roses. Did she never tell you the story behind them?’ He took a bite of his Spam sandwich.

  Mary was all ears as she waited for him to continue.

  ‘We met von Ribbentrop at Emerald Cunard’s one evening. We were all playing poker and Wallis was on a winning streak. She played quite ruthlessly, as you will remember.’ Mary smiled agreement. ‘Anyway, she won rather a lot of money from von Ribbentrop, and when he opened his wallet to pay her, he found that he was seventeen pounds short of the total. He apologised and promised he would bring the money round to Bryanston Court the following day. Wallis said: “But how can we trust the word of you Germans? Look how quick you were to break the Treaty of Versailles.”’

  Mary snorted with laughter. ‘Oh, that’s so Wallis! How did he react?’

  Ernest grinned. ‘He was ruffled at first, not sure how seriously to take her. I think he was about to launch into a lecture about the punitive nature of the terms of Versailles, but everyone else was laughing so he joined in. And he proved that Germans do have a sense of humour, contrary to the common belief, because he started sending her those bouquets of seventeen roses.’

  ‘I don’t know why she didn’t tell me,’ Mary exclaimed. ‘What an amusing story!’

  Ernest nodded. ‘It was at first, but it became rather embarrassing when the rumour spread that they were having an affair. I think Ribbentrop would have been happy to go to bed with her, because next he sent her a bracelet with the number seventeen engraved on a heart-shaped charm. She was worried Peter Pan would hear the stories so she hid that bracelet and I never once saw her wear it.’

  ‘So there was no affair?’ Mary still wasn’t convinced.

  Ernest finished his sandwich. ‘To tell you the truth, Wallis was never terribly keen on that side of things. She loved to flirt but it was mostly promise and no action. I doubt Peter Pan got a hand below her waist before they were married, and probably not often since then.’ He winked. ‘Take it from one who knows.’

  That conversation buoyed Mary enormously. She remembered Wallis saying, ‘Don’t let them go south of the Mason–Dixon line,’ during her marriage to Win. Had she never developed a taste for sexual relations afterwards? Personally, Mary had always adored that side of things.

  The winter of 1940–41 brought almost nightly bombardments in London, but if anything the people grew more defiant. ‘We can take it!’ the injured patients at Lancaster Gate baths told each other. ‘Hitler will never win because we will never surrender.’

  Mary took some teasing that America had not entered the war. ‘Are you the only one they’re sending, love? Oh well, you might not be able to fly a Spitfire but at least you’re a beauty.’

  Ernest and Mary began to hold cocktail parties on Friday evenings for any friends who were in town. They were lively affairs with plentiful alcohol, and guests often ended up dancing to the jazz records Mary had brought over from the States. If the air-raid siren sounded, everyone grabbed a bottle and the party continued downstairs in the shelter. It was good to catch up with old friends and forget about the war for a few hours, and if they got tight, they could sleep it off the next morning.

  ‘Do you ever hear from Wallis?’ Georgia Sitwell asked Mary one night. ‘Is she happy in the Bahamas?’

  ‘I don’t know how she could be happy married to that nervous, difficult man,’ Mary replied.

  Georgia shrugged. ‘She went to great lengths to win him, so she must have seen something beyond a crown.’

  ‘Truth be told, she never intended to marry him. Events just got out of control and she couldn’t back down.’ Mary managed to stop herself from adding, ‘Serves her right.’

  The only subject she could not discuss with anyone was her baby son. Letters arrived every couple of weeks, and Mary fell apart with grief each time. Once there was a photograph showing him walking with Nanny holding his hands, and the reminder of all the stages of his growth that she was missing was insufferable. At least he looked plump and happy in the picture; that was her only comfort.

  Chapter 67

  Brighton, 18 December 1997

  RACHEL AND ALEX ARRIVED IN BRIGHTON JUST after 6 p.m., by which time the registry office had closed and the
ir wedding guests were enjoying a glass of champagne in the Bonne Auberge. A cheer went up as they walked in, hauling their luggage and a large, unwieldy parcel, and that set the mood for an evening full of laughter. All Rachel’s favourite people were in the room, and she darted from one to the next, chatting and hugging and quaffing champagne.

  ‘We’re going to reschedule the registry office for next spring,’ she told the guests. ‘I’ll send out fresh invites as soon as I have a date.’

  The 1930s wedding cake was splendid, as was her bouquet of lilies of the valley, which Nicola had collected from the florist’s. She looked beautiful in her fifties silk dress, and Rachel noticed that Richard seemed to be spending a lot of time at her table.

  ‘Nicola’s single,’ she whispered discreetly, and he gave her a grin and a thumbs-up.

  At the renamed ‘Not-the-Wedding-After-Party’ two days later, Rachel noticed Nicola and Richard sitting amongst the coats in her bedroom, talking earnestly. She went to rescue some quiche from the oven, to top up glasses and socialise, and when she next looked, they were still in the same spot, still talking.

  ‘I can’t believe you never introduced us before. He’s gorgeous!’ Nicola whispered when she came to the kitchen to refill their glasses.

  Rachel was delighted. ‘I’m glad to see you two are getting on. He’s not your usual type.’

  ‘Why not?’ Nicola’s face fell.

  ‘Because he’s a nice guy.’

  Nicola beamed and did a little dance, elbows pumping, hips wiggling.

  On the evening of Monday 22 December, Rachel and Alex drove to West Sussex to visit Susie Hargreaves. Rachel had telephoned the day after they got back from Paris to say she had a Christmas present for her.

  Susie sounded surprised and a bit embarrassed. ‘You have? I’m sorry, I didn’t think to . . . I haven’t bought any presents this year . . .’

  ‘Don’t worry. I didn’t pay for this. And it’s more for your grandmother than for you. I got it in Paris. Can Alex and I bring it down?’