Page 71 of The Gathering Storm

‘Married ladies don’t go to work.’

‘Cynthia does,’ Charlotte pointed out.

‘Only for a few hours a week. And only until they have her replacement trained. Honestly, I wouldn’t mind if she wanted to, but her father wouldn’t like it. And she seems quite happy pottering at home.’ He examined his sister’s thoughtful face. ‘You may have to get used to it, Charley. Most men don’t like their wives to work.’

‘I thought Milo was different.’

‘Well, perhaps he is,’ Richard said hastily, and changed the subject. ‘Vienna for your honeymoon, I gather? Will that be nice in November?

‘Gosh, yes! Vienna’s better seen in cold weather, Milo says. In fact, it’s best in the snow, he says. And there’ll be plenty to do. Opera, ballet, concerts. The galleries and museums are wonderful, apparently. Lots of intellectual life – he says there’s a café on every corner, stuffed with philosophers and thinkers. The wonderful dancing horses. Riding in the park. The gilded palaces.’

‘The cake,’ Richard said solemnly. ‘I believe there is a great deal of cake in Vienna.’

She laughed and smacked his hand lightly. ‘Make fun of me if you want.’

‘Oh, I will. You’re my little sister. It’s expected.’

‘But we’ll have a heavenly time. And we can always do the traditional places another year – you know, Florence and Paris and so on.’

‘Be sure when you do that you book a Nevinson’s Holiday. Then I can come along as your courier.’

‘Ass!

‘I’m serious. You have to support my business. Remember I’m a poor second son – we have to make our own way in the world.’

‘Eldest sons sometimes have to, as well,’ she said. ‘Milo didn’t inherit anything. He’s having to do it all himself.’

‘Good for him! And when you’ve an hour or two to spare, you can explain to me exactly how he’s doing it, because nobody seems to know.’

‘Ass again!’ she said affectionately.

The King came back from South Wales in buoyant mood, having received a warm welcome wherever he went, which convinced him that the People were on his side. He summoned the Prime Minister to Buckingham Palace and informed him brightly that he was going to marry Wallis Simpson as soon as she was free, whether the government approved or not.

Eddie, who had been there, told Oliver about it afterwards. ‘Baldwin tried to persuade him that a shock like this could cause the Empire to break up, split the country and cause untold damage to the Crown. But I could see – I could actually see – that HM wasn’t listening. He was just waiting for Baldwin to stop talking. He had that fatuous half-smile on his face that tells me he’s thinking about her. And he said if they tried to stop him marrying her, he would abdicate.’

Oliver was shocked. ‘He actually said that?’

‘Yes, but I don’t think he meant it,’ Eddie said, running a hand through his hair in remembered frustration. ‘It was most peculiar. It was as if there were two conversations going on, Baldwin saying one thing and the King hearing something entirely different. Poor old Baldwin retired baffled in the end, practically in tears, and afterwards the King walked about the room in a state of high excitement asking what Baldwin was up to, and saying it was a plot by the PM and “the nebulous figures around him” – his words – to test the strength of his love for Mrs S.’

‘That’s madness,’ Oliver said flatly.

‘I think he is actually insane. He said to me that if their real intention was to make him give Wally up by pointing a big gun at his head then they had badly misjudged their man. He said they had struck at the very roots of his pride. He said only the most faint-hearted lover would fail to be roused by the challenge. Nothing Baldwin had said about the Empire, the Crown, the country stuck at all. “They” had impugned his love for Wally, and he was going to show them. D’you know what his last words to Baldwin were? As he shook his hand and sent him away, he said, “She is the most wonderful woman I’ve ever met.”’

Word soon got about that Baldwin had told Sir Donald Somervell, the Attorney General, to start work on drafting an Abdication Bill. Whether he had taken the King seriously, or was merely covering all angles, was unknown.

But Oliver witnessed for himself a few days later the proof that Eddie was right, and that to the King, abdication was simply a counter-threat to prove how serious he was about Mrs Simpson, and that he didn’t actually mean to carry it out. Oliver and Verena were guests at a dinner-party given by Chips Channon, at which the King and the Duke of Kent were present. The King was in high good humour. He had been telling Oliver and Kent about his trip to South Wales, and how the people loved him – ‘The miners lined up and lit their Davy lamps and sang “Men of Harlech” to me,’ and he suddenly broke off to say, beaming at his brother as if it were good news simply bursting out of him, ‘I must tell you, George, that I’m going to marry Wally Simpson.’

Kent looked stunned. Whatever rumours he must have heard, he had not before had a direct declaration from his brother. Seemingly at a loss, he asked, ‘What will she call herself?’

The King’s eyes twinkled with good humour. ‘What will she call herself? Why, what do you think? Queen of England, of course.’

‘She is going to be Queen?’ Kent gasped.

‘Yes, and Empress of India – the whole bag of tricks.’

He believed, Oliver realised then, that he could ‘get away with it’ – could marry Wally on his own terms and make her Queen, no matter what the government, the Royal Family, or anyone else thought about it. He was infatuated, in every sense of the word.

His good humour continued throughout the evening, amounting almost to a state of euphoria. Oliver noted that, whoever he was talking to, he would turn every few moments to gaze at Wally, seated next to Victor Cazalet, the MP for Chippenham, and his face would fill with a radiance of adoration. If it hadn’t been so mad, it would have been touching. Oliver looked at Wally in sheer wonder. How could this thin, plain, harsh-voiced woman be elevated in HM’s mind to archangel status?