Page 73 of The Gathering Storm

‘What will you do?’

She was silent a long moment. ‘I’m going to go away. Promise me you won’t say anything to David? I can’t tell him because I know what would happen. I’ll make up some excuse about being fitted for gowns in Paris, and go abroad until after the Coronation. Or perhaps for ever,’ she added, in a low voice. Another pause. Then she said, ‘I think everyone would like that – apart from him, of course. After a while my name will be forgotten.’ She brooded, staring at her hands in her lap. ‘It’s all Ernest’s fault. I never wanted the divorce. And Mary – she was always jealous of me. This last month … You don’t know what it’s like, Emma. Used by politicians, hated by jealous women, accused of everything. I’ll never forgive the American press for what they’ve done, stirring up people against me. I’m flattened out.’

‘You’ll come about,’ Emma said.

Wally looked up sharply. ‘Of course I will. I’ll get out from under this load some time. But just now … My God, Emma, I’m so darn tired.’

The British press had kept quiet, and only a thin little trickle had leaked out to those with access to the American press. But on the 1st of December, the Bishop of Bradford, addressing the annual diocesan conference, criticised the King for his non-attendance at church. The criticism had necessarily to be indirect, so he couched it in oblique terms – so oblique that the press barons believed he was referring to the situation with Mrs Simpson. When the speech was reported in a northern newspaper, they thought the paper had broken ranks, and they were afraid of being left behind. The flood-gates burst: on the 2nd, there were photographs of the King and Mrs Simpson everywhere, articles and critical editorials in the leading papers.

The King and Wally were at the Fort, and it came as a terrible shock. Accompanied by Eddie, who was equerrying, the King drove up to London and summoned Baldwin to a meeting at Buckingham Palace. As the car passed an underground station, the King said, ‘Look at that!’ The paper-seller at the station entrance had his placard on display, and the words stood out, heavy black on white, like a bellow: ‘THE KING AND MRS SIMPSON’.

‘How dare they?’ he cried, his face darkening.

It was in an ill mood that he received Baldwin, furious about the bishop’s impertinence and the treachery of the press. Baldwin tried to calm him, but he had no good news to impart: he’d had the replies from the Dominions. The prime ministers were strongly opposed to a morganatic marriage; so were the Cabinet, the leader of the Opposition and the leader of the Liberals. Indeed, in Canada, Australia and New Zealand they would not countenance any kind of marriage between the monarch and a twice-divorced woman.

‘Well, there are very few people in Canada and Australia,’ the King snapped, ‘so their opinion doesn’t count for a great deal.’

Patiently, kindly, as though talking to a child, the Prime Minister tried to make him understand the responsibilities of the Crown, to see that there were things more important than his personal life, but he said stubbornly, furiously, that the only important thing was their happiness, his and Mrs Simpson’s, and that the people understood that, if the government didn’t. He should make a broadcast, he said, place himself at the mercy of his people.

Baldwin paled, and said it would be unconstitutional to appeal to the people over the heads of their elected representatives. It would be a threat to democracy itself. The King’s reply was that Mrs Simpson was the most wonderful woman in the world and he was determined to marry her. Two minds with such divergent templates could never come together. The audience limped to an end.

‘One more thing, sir,’ Baldwin said, as the King prepared to depart. ‘I think it only fair to warn you that Geoffrey Dawson, the editor of The Times, has told me he is to publish a very hostile leader tomorrow, a strong attack on Mrs Simpson.’

‘But you mustn’t let him!’ the King exclaimed. ‘You must have it stopped!’

‘Sir, I cannot do that. It is not within my power. We have a free press in this country. The government cannot interfere with it.’

Baldwin did not say ‘even if it wanted to’, but Eddie supplied it in his mind. Dawson was a staunch supporter of the government, unlike Harmsworth or Beaverbrook.

The King was silent on the way back to the Fort. At one point, Eddie dared to ask him, ‘Do you mean to abdicate, sir?’

‘Oh, no,’ the King said. ‘I think I might go to Switzerland, and let them have to call me back. Then I’ll say I’m only coming back if Mrs Simpson is by my side.’

At the Fort, he told her about the hostile leader expected in The Times the next morning, and said it was no longer safe for her to stay, even at the Fort. He had evidently been thinking it out during the journey. ‘Kath and Herman Rogers keep offering us their villa at Cannes. You must go there, and stay until it’s safe to come back. Perry Brownlow can travel with you, and the detective. Ladbroke can drive you to Newhaven and you can catch the ten o’clock ferry to Dieppe. You can be at the villa by Sunday afternoon.’

Wally, white and exhausted, only nodded. She had nothing more to argue; she was only relieved to be getting away.

Tears flooded his eyes. ‘You must wait for me, darling,’ he said. ‘No matter how long it takes. I will never give you up.’

‘My patience with him is frayed to the limit,’ Eddie said, when he dined with Kit and Emma on Sunday night, his current period as equerry over, ‘but even I couldn’t help being moved when they said goodbye.’

‘Tears?’ Kit asked.

‘Floods. He clung to her hand until the last minute – she had to wind the window up to make him let go. And he said, “Wherever you reach tonight, no matter what time it is, you must telephone me. God bless you, my darling.” Then she drove off, and he watched until the car was out of sight.’

‘It sounds like something in a movie,’ Kit said.

‘All day yesterday he kept talking about her, wondering where she was, how far they’d got, when she would telephone. I’ve been hoping that once she was out of the way he’d gradually return to normal and we might work on him. But I’m not sure that’s going to happen. Without her, he’s like a lost dog. He doesn’t seem to function at all. He must have told me a dozen times that she was the most wonderful woman in the world, and the best friend he ever had.’

‘Let’s hope the press don’t get on her trail.’

‘She’s terrified of assassination,’ Eddie said. ‘She wrote out her will before she left, you know, just in case.’ He brooded a moment. ‘I had a few words with her, while they were carrying her bags down. She said to me, “You and the others must find a way to make the King forget this marriage completely. He must end the crisis and keep the throne.” I said something noncommittal, and she looked at me pretty sharply, and said, “Do you think I wanted any of this? I have to get away to keep my sanity.” So I said I didn’t think any of us could change the King’s mind about anything, and she said, “You must try. The Coronation has to go ahead. And one day, perhaps, I can come back as royal mistress. That’s all I wanted.”’

Kit shook his head. ‘I expect she really means it now. But it was open to her at any point to withdraw the divorce application. She still could.’

‘I don’t think she thinks of that,’ Eddie said. ‘I think she feels completely helpless.’

‘You men don’t understand what it is to be a woman,’ Emma said. ‘We have no power to direct our lives. Men command us, until we lose all will of our own.’