Another Woman’s Husband

by Gill Paul

  There was a pause while Susie processed this. ‘My grandmother? It’s not . . . It couldn’t be the painting, could it?’

  ‘Indeed it is!’

  There was a long pause, so long that Rachel called, ‘Hello? Are you still there?’ into the phone; then she realised that Susie was in tears.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Rachel chuckled. ‘I must stop making you cry.’

  As soon as she closed the shop, she drove to collect Alex from the flat then they set off towards Susie’s home, chatting along the way about Nicola and Richard, and some other unlikely pairings that had been established at the Saturday-night party. It had continued till the following morning, when Rachel had got up to find guests sprawled across sofas and chairs like a scene from a Toulouse-Lautrec bordello painting.

  They pulled into Susie’s driveway at 7.30 p.m. and she came out to greet them wearing long brown leather boots and a green Barbour jacket. ‘Follow me.’ She waved, her car keys dangling. ‘I’m going to take you to meet Grandma.’

  She climbed into her Land Rover and set off down the drive, taking a right turn at the end. Rachel followed for about two miles along country lanes before Susie took a left into a courtyard with a sign announcing Laurel Grove Care Home.

  They got out of the car and Alex carried the painting as they followed Susie inside. She had to sign them in at reception, then they were buzzed through to a crimson-carpeted corridor with a number of rooms leading off. She stopped at one and tapped on the door, calling, ‘Grandma? It’s me.’

  Rachel saw a frail, spindly woman in a chair by the window. Her shoulders were hunched and her chin rested on her breastbone as if her neck had collapsed in some degenerative process of age. Her hair was snow white and wispy like baby hair, and the hand she extended was curved in a claw shape.

  ‘This is my grandmother, Eleanor.’ Susie introduced them. Alex rested the painting against a wall to come forward and shake her hand.

  As well as a bed, there was a bookcase in the room and several shelves of trinkets, a wardrobe, and a door that Rachel could see led to an en suite. Susie brought some extra chairs from the corridor outside, one more than they needed, and arranged them in a semicircle round Eleanor.

  ‘These kind people have brought something for you,’ Susie said, and Alex lifted the painting and placed it on the spare chair just two feet in front of Eleanor. Rachel had cleaned off the cobwebs and mildew, and polished the wooden frame. There was a tear in the canvas backing that would have to be mended, but otherwise it wasn’t in bad shape.

  Eleanor clasped her hands beneath her chin and gazed at the painting in silence for quite some time, too emotional to speak.

  ‘Wasn’t she beautiful?’ she said at last, her voice croaky with age, her accent that of an aristocrat from a bygone era. ‘That’s my friend Mary.’ She shook her head slightly. ‘I never thought I’d see her again. Ralph would be so pleased.’

  ‘I think Alex and Rachel would like to hear the story of the painting,’ Susie prompted. ‘If you feel up to it.’

  ‘Oh yes, I’d love to. This brings back a time before the war, a time when we were all happy.’ As she spoke, she didn’t take her eyes off the painting, as if drinking in every detail: the curve of Mary’s hand on her lap, the pearl earrings, the vivacious eyes and warm smile.

  Eleanor began by explaining what Rachel already knew: that in 1912 she had attended the same school in Baltimore as Wallis Warfield and her best friend Mary Kirk. ‘They were a riot!’ she explained. ‘Everyone gravitated towards them because of their irreverent humour. Mary was the more open character while Wallis was difficult to get close to. She was secretive about her home life, and it was only decades later that Mary told me she was ashamed that her father had died and her mother was not very well off. Isn’t it silly how we worry about such things as children?’

  She told them that she had lost touch with the two girls after she left the school, but bumped into Mary at Petworth one day in the mid 1930s.

  ‘By that time it was well known in society circles that Wallis and the Prince of Wales were an item, and it was clear that Mary was in love with Wallis’s husband Ernest. I so hoped they would end up together.’ She paused, recollecting. ‘When Wallis heard of Mary and Ernest’s affair, they had a furious row and Mary came to stay with us for a while, to lie low. That’s when Ralph painted her.’ She gestured at the painting. ‘But he made the idiotic mistake of sending it to Wallis and Ernest’s address and Wallis kidnapped it. That was in 1936, and she held onto it for the next fifty years, until her death.’

  ‘Why did she want it?’ Rachel asked, glancing at the painting again.

  ‘Pure spite,’ Eleanor replied. ‘She couldn’t bear it that Mary was the prettier of the two, the even-tempered one and, eventually, the one who got Ernest. Wallis liked to be best at everything. She needed to win.’

  Susie chipped in. ‘When Diana told me that she was visiting Villa Windsor, I asked her to keep an eye out for the painting. Of course, there was always a chance Wallis had destroyed it.’

  ‘I was sure she wouldn’t have,’ Eleanor insisted. ‘Mary was the closest friend Wallis ever had, and this picture captures her to a T. It’s got her personality in the paint.’

  Susie took up the story again. ‘The Duchess was bedridden with dementia by the time Diana met her, so she wasn’t able to tell her about the painting’s whereabouts. Her affairs were being managed by a lawyer, who wouldn’t hear of anything being removed from the house. Then, after the Duchess died, her will left the bulk of her wealth to the Louis Pasteur Institute, so things became even more complicated.’ She reached over to hold her grandma’s hand. ‘When Mohamed Al-Fayed moved in to restore the house, I wrote to him about the painting but of course I couldn’t prove it belonged to us – it didn’t, in fact, because Ernest Simpson had paid for it. Al-Fayed’s secretary was very polite but suggested we bid for it at the auction of contents. I almost gave up at that point because I knew I wouldn’t be able to afford the kind of prices it might reach.’

  ‘I could never forget that picture.’ Eleanor had a distant look in her eyes, and Rachel wondered what memories it was conjuring for her. ‘Ralph died five years ago and it made me think about it even more. We have many of his other portraits in the house, but this was always his best.’

  ‘Did Wallis and Mary ever make up their argument?’ Rachel asked.

  ‘I doubt it.’ The old woman shook her head. ‘Mary was furious, simply furious. You see, Wallis wouldn’t let go of Ernest even once she was married to the Duke. She wrote him letters saying how much she missed him, how good life had been when they were together and how she wished things had worked out differently. She even told him that it was her dream they would end up together again one day. Ernest showed the letters to Mary, thinking honesty was the best policy, but they made her incandescent with rage. You can imagine!’

  ‘He should have told Wallis to stop writing,’ Alex said. ‘He should have put his foot down.’

  Eleanor nodded. ‘I agree, but that’s not the kind of man he was.’

  All of them had angled their seats to look at the portrait as they talked. ‘Were Mary and Ernest happy?’ Rachel asked.

  ‘I never saw a couple happier,’ the old woman breathed. ‘They had a baby called Ernest Henry. His father’s name.’

  ‘I know Ernest Simpson is dead, but is Mary still alive?’ Rachel asked.

  ‘Oh no, dear.’ Eleanor gave a little laugh. ‘I’m the last of that era. We were all born in the nineteenth century and now we’re at the end of the twentieth. It makes me feel ancient to think of it.’ She tapped Susie on the hand. ‘Do you think you could fetch something from my cupboard? The brown leather handbag on the top shelf.’

  Susie rose to her feet and opened the cupboard. Rachel noticed that there weren’t many clothes inside; maybe ten dresses. She supposed you didn’t need many when you reached the age of a hundred.

  Susie passed the bag to her grandmother. It was a stylish clutch
bag with a tortoiseshell clasp, and Rachel tried to guess what era it was from. Possibly the 1930s. Her guess was soon confirmed.

  ‘Wallis gave that to Mary for her fortieth birthday back in 1936, two days before the huge argument when they fell out with each other. Of course, Mary didn’t want it after that, so she gave it to me, but I never used it. It seemed unlucky somehow. Now I just keep photographs inside.’

  She opened the clasp, sorted through a handful of dog-eared black-and-white pictures and passed one to Rachel. There was Ernest Simpson, instantly recognisable with his slicked dark hair and moustache, alongside a smiling Mary, who was cradling a baby wearing a christening robe.

  Rachel’s eye was caught by something else in the pile of photos: the edge of a Constance Spry business card with its oval illustration of old-fashioned roses. She pointed to it. ‘Did Susie tell you I found a Mainbocher dress at the house that appears to have been Wallis’s?’

  Eleanor nodded. ‘That’s right. It was in a parcel from Mary’s dressmaker. She’d been copying it. I only found it years later and the original was far too small for me, but I wore the copy for quite some time. It had lovely colours: pink, purple and apricot.’

  Rachel continued: ‘I ask because there was a florist’s card just like that in the pocket of Wallis’s dress. It read, “Now do you trust us?” I guess we’ll never know what it meant.’

  Eleanor pulled the Constance Spry card from her piles of photographs and passed it over. In what looked like the same handwriting was the message See you in Berlin. Rachel looked at her questioningly.

  ‘Joachim von Ribbentrop,’ Eleanor explained. ‘He and Wallis were having an affair. Mary wasn’t sure if it was true, but I was. This card came with a bouquet he sent Wallis in 1936, the year before she and Edward met Hitler in Berlin. It proves they’d been planning the visit well before the abdication.’

  Alex looked at Rachel as he made the connection. ‘A bracelet was found at the Duchess of Windsor’s house with a heart charm on it that had a J engraved on one side and the Roman numerals XVII on the other.’

  ‘That would be from him.’ Eleanor nodded. ‘He used to send her bouquets of seventeen roses, supposedly because that was the number of times they slept together. Ernest thought it was to do with a gambling debt, but she would hardly have told him the truth, would she?’ She shook her head in disgust. ‘Ribbentrop pursued her relentlessly to get to Edward. The two of them were completely in his pocket. I’ve always thought some secret cabinet papers will be released, or some Nazi documents unearthed, to prove they actually helped the German war effort. Maybe not in my lifetime, but probably in yours.’

  Alex glanced at Rachel. ‘That sounds like my next project. Perhaps I’ll do some digging. Gentle, non-obsessive digging.’

  Chapter 68

  London, April 1941

  ‘I’LL TELL YOU ONE GOOD THING ABOUT THIS WAR,’ Mary quipped to another first-aider at the baths. ‘I’ve lost almost a stone on rations. I call it the Hitler Diet.’

  ‘I’ve lost a bit too,’ her friend replied, pulling at her loose waistband. ‘My weakness used to be toast and jam, but I can’t stand these National Loaves, and there’s no sugar to waste on jam.’

  ‘You look peaky, Mary,’ someone chipped in. ‘Have you been burning the candle?’

  ‘We have a bit,’ Mary said. ‘I must try to get more sleep. Are you listening, Luftwaffe?’ She tilted her head and called up to the sky.

  Being in close contact with so many different people, she picked up lots of colds, sore throats and ticklish coughs, but fortunately Ernest appeared to have a strong constitution because he never caught them from her. She sniffled and hacked her way through the winter on her own.

  Grey, overcast weather turned almost overnight to spring. Mary walked out one sunny morning and smelled greenness in the air, felt warmth on her face. Two pigeons made her laugh by copulating on the pavement right in front of her: the female spread her tail feathers and the male jumped on top for all of five seconds before flying off. ‘Poor thing,’ Mary soothed. ‘He was a cad.’

  She was on her way to an appointment with Sir Launcelot Barrington-Ward for her six-monthly check-up. She was not remotely concerned as she had passed the last one with flying colours, so had told Ernest he need not take time off work.

  ‘How long have you had that cough?’ Sir Launcelot asked, moving his stethoscope around her chest.

  ‘On and off all winter,’ Mary said, and explained about her first-aid work.

  ‘You’ve lost a lot of weight,’ he commented. ‘Have you been having night sweats?’

  ‘Only if the Jerries drop a bomb too close,’ she answered. ‘Why?’

  ‘I’d like to run a few tests,’ he said, then, seeing the alarm on her face, added, ‘Just to be on the safe side.’

  That afternoon she had all manner of tests and X-rays, and when another doctor was brought in to examine her as well, she began to get anxious.

  ‘Can you at least tell me what you’re looking for?’ she asked.

  ‘Perhaps we should get Ernest to come,’ Sir Launcelot replied. ‘Do you want to telephone him?’

  ‘No, I want you to tell me what you suspect. I can take it.’

  And that was when Sir Launcelot told her they thought the cancer had spread to her lungs, and they wanted to operate urgently.

  Ernest was by Mary’s side, holding her hand, when she came round from the lung operation, and she knew from his face that the news was not good. He had never been good at dissembling. One moment she had been a wife and mother with two or three decades in front of her; the next, the rug was pulled from under her feet. She made a decision then and there not to weep and wail, but to make the best of it. It was wartime; everyone was suffering.

  ‘How long have I got?’ she asked when Sir Launcelot came to check on her.

  ‘Goodness, it’s not a case of that,’ he assured her. ‘We’ve taken out all we can, and once you’ve recovered from the operation, we’re going to start you on a course of radiotherapy. It can be very successful at clearing up any remaining cancer cells. You’ll come to the hospital every day for three weeks and the procedure will only take an hour. Be positive, Mrs Simpson. Look to the future.’

  The radiotherapy was horrid, like fire on raw skin, and left her chest with thickened red burns that kept her from sleeping at night. Mary had fresh sympathy for all the burns victims she had treated at the first-aid station, with their weeping, oozing wounds. How had they been so uncomplaining?

  ‘As soon as I finish radiotherapy, I want to go and see Whistlebinkie,’ she begged Ernest. ‘Can you get me to America?’

  He hesitated. ‘It will be tricky. There are German U-boats patrolling the Atlantic, so passenger shipping has come to a halt.’

  ‘I need to see my boy,’ she said firmly. ‘You’ll find a way; I know you’ll find a way.’

  Ernest asked at the Admiralty without success, while with every day that passed, Mary felt herself get weaker. By June it was hard to walk any distance because of her shortness of breath. She spent most of her time on the daybed in the drawing room writing letters to her sisters and composing her will. She didn’t tell many friends of her illness because she didn’t want them to feel awkward and struggle to find platitudes. She and Ernest seldom discussed it either; they talked about practicalities, such as hiring a live-in nurse. Mary tried to stay positive, but with every day her yearning to see Whistlebinkie grew more intense, till she could think of nothing else.

  It was the end of June, just after Hitler’s troops had invaded Russia, when Ernest came home with news.

  ‘How do you feel about flying?’ he asked. ‘Winston Churchill heard of our plight and has offered you a place on a clipper flying to New York, and a return flight four weeks later.’

  Mary’s stomach lurched. She had been up in a plane with Jacques once and it had made her very sick, but she would grab any chance to see her boy.

  ‘It’s very kind of him, but why should Winston C
hurchill concern himself with me?’ she asked. ‘I imagine he’s terribly busy right now.’

  Ernest cleared his throat. ‘I think it’s felt that I behaved honourably over the divorce from Wallis, and that they owe me a favour. I wish I could accompany you, but it’s impossible.’ He looked stricken. ‘You will come back, won’t you?’

  ‘Oh Ernest. Of course I will. How could you ever doubt it?’ She caught his hand, pulled him down to her level and kissed him tenderly.

  Chapter 69

  New York, July 1941

  MARY COULDN’T BELIEVE HOW HUGE HER SON HAD grown in little over a year. He would be two in September, but she thought he looked at least three or four as he ran across the hotel lobby to where she sat in a wheelchair pushed by her nurse. He stopped just before he reached her and stared in awe.

  ‘This is your mama,’ the nanny told him, lifting him onto Mary’s lap.

  She hugged him, burying her face in his blonde curls, then drew back to look at him. He was even more like Ernest than before, with his chubby face and serious dark eyes. He touched her face with a hand that still had a bracelet of fat round the wrist, then he spotted her pearl earring and pulled it off.

  ‘’Allo, Mama,’ he said, and it was one of the most precious moments of her life.

  ‘You are such a big boy,’ she said, ‘I can’t call you Whistlebinkie any more. I’m going to call you Henry.’ She had never felt comfortable calling him Ernest; that was her husband’s name.

  They stayed in a suite in the Waldorf while Mary consulted a New York doctor who had been recommended by Renée du Pont: a handsome man in his thirties called Dr Hofstead who did a lot of research into cancer. After reading her case notes, he advised that she take a new drug made from apricot kernels, which he said had been very successful in fighting her type of the disease. It might make her nauseous, he warned, but she was delighted to try his new approach, and optimistically referred to the prescription he gave as her ‘lucky pills’.