The Darkness of Wallis Simpson (2 page)

He took away the towels. She can't dry herself, can't wrap her body in anything. She removes her dress and her underwear (which she washes every day in soap flakes, to make sure that a young bride is always clean and fragrant), runs hot water and climbs back into the tub and lies without moving, feeling warmth returning. But the water cools. She runs more. This cools in its turn. Wallis gets out and lies down on the bath mat, tries to wrap herself in the mat, which is worn and grey. She's twenty-one years old. Far away in Europe, men are dying in a war that seems to have no end. She wishes that Winfield Spencer would fly there and crash his plane into the snow and that bits of his body would be scattered in pools of blood over the hard crust of northern France.

Her Nightmare's like a war. It has no end. It's followed her through all her years since 1916. As though this was what she
deserved
, as though society had decreed: Bessiewallis, née Warfield, daughter of lovely Alice Montague and poor sickly Teackle Warfield who died of a consumption before his daughter could say his peculiar name, this pretty Bessie with her violet eyes, this girl with a cow's name is going to be cowed with shame. Men will spit on her. And worse. And at the end of it all, she'll be quite alone.

Wallis longs to sleep. Though the bedclothes weigh her down, because she's barely made of soft flesh any more, just sinew and bone, Wallis can sometimes drift off to sleep on some comforting tide of thought. And here comes one: she's in Baltimore, in the yard of her grandmother's house, 34 East Preston Street. She's fourteen or fifteen. She wears a bright ribbon in her dark hair. (Her Uncle Sol calls her ‘Minnehaha'.) She's helping Ruby, the coloured maid, to hang up sheets in a salt wind, in that wind from the sea which is so beneficial to the lungs, which should be breathed ninety-nine times a day to keep away the Disease that must not be named any more.

Obediently, she's breathing. The wind moves in the big linden tree, with its dear little buds of leaves not open yet. Gulls swoop round, up there in the blue Baltimore sky. The linen sheets on the line keep blowing against Wallis's body, like a touch from someone else, and this is so nice, it's almost wonderful. You could write a poem about this feeling, if you could make the words say what you felt.

At lunch, she asks her grandmother: ‘Could I write a poem, Grandma?'

‘Sit up, Bessiewallis,' her grandmother replies. Then, after some time and with a sniff, she declares: ‘Writing is very bad for the deportment. Luckily, not many women do it. In America, we leave poetry to the men.'

Grandmother Anna Emory Warfield holds herself so ramrod straight in her chair that not one inch of her spine touches the chair back. And she wants Bessiewallis to follow her example, to respect her Southern heritage, to remember she's a lady, to try never to be dull, to strive to be witty, yet to watch others, learn from them, listen to them, draw them into conversation: ‘That way, you will be a good hostess one day, dear, and preside over a dazzling table.'

A dazzling table? Bessiewallis imagines a million twinkling and flickering candles; yellow flames licking the glassware, wax pooling and dripping and falling into the soup, the tablecloth catching fire . . .

‘Where will this dazzling table be?' she enquires. And sees a rare smile cross the face of Anna Emory Warfield.

‘Where will it be? Why, I couldn't tell, dear. Except it will surely be in the South. It would never do to marry a Yankee.'

Marriage. It's the word on everybody's mind. And time is flying, swooping like the gulls. That's what the grown-ups keep implying. Not a moment to spare for poetry. No time for playing ‘catch' with Ruby, in and out of the sheets on the drying line. No time for play of any kind. Her paper dolls, ‘Mrs Astor' and ‘Mrs Vanderbilt', with their paper wardrobe of cocktail gowns, are back in the dark and dust of her closet, together with all the other bits and pieces of her childhood. She thinks sadly of them sometimes, Mrs A and Mrs V, so lonely, without any soirées to attend. But still time keeps accelerating along, like the new motor cars on Preston Street. In three years, Wallis is going to be a debutante. She is going to wear a lace gown and dance at the Bachelors' Cotillion. And out of the crowd of tail-coated young bachelors, with their white ties and their nervous smiles and their hair sleek with pomade, there she will find him, the One and Only.

Lunch is over and now, as Bessiewallis steps out into the Baltimore sun, going to Richmond Market with her grandmother, morning arrives in Paris, first as a grey presence in the room, a thing which has barely decided to stay, and then as a shaft of light, gold and soft at the window, where the heavy drapes are drawn back an inch or two. Wallis looks at this shaft. She's slept and not dreamed. She feels a bit better. She can see the damned window perfectly clearly. She thinks she may be able to say a few words today, in sensible American.

The companion is there. Her skin's pale brown, freckled in places, and stretched taut and hard over her skull. She lifts Wallis up in the bed. Pulls up her nightdress. Some aproned and uniformed girl Wallis can't remember seeing before shoves a pan under her. ‘
Fais pipi, ma Duchesse
,' says the companion. ‘
Fais un petit pipi pour moi
.'

Oh, Gawd. French.

As though speaking weren't hard enough. Speaking American. As though this weren't taxing already.

‘Speak English,' commands Wallis. And yeah, her voice is OK today. The woman-man smiles in surprise.

‘Good,' she says. (She is a ‘she', is she? Or a man in a costume? A man with a big chest?) ‘I see my
Duchesse
is feeling herself again. Bravo. Very good. So now do your little tinkle, my dear, and then I 'ave some things to show you. Things to help you remember. Today, I think, is going to be the day when you understand again.'

Wallis stares at the companion. (‘Never stare, Bessiewallis,' advises Grandma Anna. ‘Because it's a low-down thing to do. If you wish to make some internal interrogation, just hold a face fleetingly with your eyes.' But what the hell. She's long dead, Anna Emory Warfield. Baltimore changed. From brown to grey. The linden tree was felled. Why not stare at everything that remains?) The companion's hair is short and thick and grey. Her hands look tough.

The aproned girl is going round the room, tidying what already looks tidy enough. She, at least, thinks Wallis, has the decency not to stare at me while I'm trying to piss. The companion is shameless, though. She's stroking my hand, kissing my hair, and all while I'm sitting on the fucking pan.

‘Go away,' she says.

The woman-man looks so hurt for a moment, it's like something stabbed her in the heart. But she doesn't back off, just carries on with her stroking and kissing and now more French: ‘
Oui, ma Duchesse, oui, oui. Mais tu sais que tu ne comprends rien. Je suis la seule qui est là pour toi
. . .'

‘Oh for Christ's sake!' says Wallis, trying to push the companion away.

But she's too weak to push her away and now the man-woman is furious. ‘Don't say that!' she snaps. Then grabs Wallis's hand and slaps it. A nasty little stinging slap, like you might give to a dog. ‘Or I'll take the pan away and you can lie in a wet bed. Do you want to lie in a wet bed?'

Kissing her one minute, hitting her the next. A person out of a nightmare. There's no talking to such a creature. Wallis can say words today, but why should she? Why should she waste her precious breath talking to this hag?

She turns her face away. Sees the girl in the apron staring at her with such a sad pitying look, it makes her weep. Fuck all these people. Piss in the damned pan and be done with them. Have them draw the curtains again. Go back to darkness.

She empties her bladder. Tells them she's done. Between them, the girl and the companion lift her again and the companion, not the girl, presses a tissue between her legs to wipe her. Kisses her cheek as she does this, fuck her. Who is she to take such liberties?

Yet she remembers this, suddenly: the touch of a girl.

God, so long ago.

When?

Lying under stars. A coal brazier to warm them. Somehow exquisite, the burning brazier and the icy sky.

In China. With Katherine. Katherine who died. Her beautiful friend, Kitty.

Kissing each other, mouth on mouth, on a silken bed on the ground. Or was it something she dreamed? Was it something she wanted to do and never did? God knows.

The room is filled with light as Wallis tries to eat some breakfast: melba toast with butter, lemon tea, a slice of white peach. At least food like this still arrives in front of her, served on bone china so fine you can see light through it. The tea strainer is still silver. Imprinted on the butter is a pattern of acorns and leaves. The kitchen has taken trouble. But she feels she should be sharing her meal with someone. Sharing it with whom? All she can remember is the feel of an eager mouth, eating from her hand.

From her hand
?

She knows her brain's gotten all twisted up. That's what they mean by
gaga.
It's like a fog came down. She can recall the Great Fog in London in 1934 or 1935: men walking in front of buses, waving red flags; people coughing and dying; dirt on the wainscot. She can remember staring at the fog out of the window of her pale-green drawing room at Bryanston Court, and thinking how far she'd come from Preston Street, Baltimore, and how here in London she'd at last preside over a ‘dazzling table'. She can remember buying candles in Harrods, glassware in Goodes. She can remember the butcher's boy, arriving on his bicycle, with the choice cuts she'd ordered on the telephone. And she can remember her husband, her second husband, Ernest Simpson. The way he always looked too big and wide for his suits. The nice habit he had of draping his heavy arm round her thin shoulders, to warm her, to keep her safe. The smell of his pipe. His man's laugh, throaty and loud. She can remember dancing with Ernest in some smart club or other. ‘Isn't this just grand, what?' A striped taffeta dress. Champagne in shallow glasses. Air thick with smoke.
Tea for Two
.

But was he still there that day when she was looking out at the fog? Because, after that day, she's honestly got no memory of him any more. Did he die? Is there a grave in England she should visit? If so, somebody should darn well tell her. Ernest Simpson was a nice man.

Her breakfast tray's taken away and Wallis lies there and stares at her room. The furniture looks familiar, though she couldn't say from where. It just looks as if it could belong to her. Someone has arranged lilies in a tall vase. The silk drapes (Ernest always called them ‘curtains') are a restful blue, the kind of colour she might have chosen. On the dressing table is a collection of perfume bottles – or what Ernest said should be called ‘scent bottles', because perfume was a ‘common' word. Ernest was helpful like this. He taught his American wife a lot about England and its little rigid ways. But these bottles look empty, as though the ‘scent' in them went stale and was tipped down the john. Or else it was used up. Who knows?

Wallis turns her head and sees, on her night table, a large photograph in a silver frame. It's a picture of a young man. Who's put it there and why? Because for heaven's sake, the poor boy in the picture appears perfectly miserable! And this makes her smile, and really it
is
quite amusing how woebegone he seems. He can't be more than twenty-three. Youth should be a golden time. The boy in the photograph has some golden features, smooth skin, pale hair, ears snug to his head, but the anguish in his eyes! Heavens-to-betsy (as old Baltimore people used to say) what a world-weary look. It could make a girl depressed, when she'd got over laughing.

The companion comes in again. She always comes in, uninvited, without knocking, like she was once a butler.

‘Who's this?' Wallis asks her, pointing at the photograph.

The companion purses her lips, says: ‘Wallisse, you know that I refuse to answer such a stupid question. And I am getting very tired with your games.'

Games? Oh, if only there were games to play. Wouldn't that be wonderful? English country house games like hide-and-seek and croquet and sardines. Beautiful, terrifying, American games like poker. Mad, disreputable games in the evening, with borrowed wigs and men's clothes and a feeling of wanting to kiss people or bite their noses, or tell them you loved them. You could never get enough of games. They made life bearable. Now, there's no one left to play.

‘You see this?' asks the companion, opening a large leather box. ‘You remember what this is?'

‘Yes,' says Wallis. Because she does, she remembers the smell of it, that leather smell. But she has no idea what's inside.

‘So,' says the companion, ‘I 'ave not let you look at these objects for a little while, because the last time I showed them you were very naughty. Very, very naughty, Wallisse. But I think today is a good day.
N'est-ce pas
? I think today you are going to be sensible and tell me exactly what they are.'

OK, so the hag's gotten her intrigued for once.

‘It better be good,' says Wallis.

‘It is good,' says the companion, but where Wallis looks for a smile, there is none.

She opens the box. Removes a little flat cushion. She places the box on Wallis's lap. The weight of it's more painful than a meal tray.

Wallis peers into it. Laid out on pale chamois is a quantity of jewellery. In the morning light of the room she can see diamonds shining.

‘
Voilà
,' says the companion. ‘
Voilà, ma Duchesse
.'

Wallis's eyesight can't cope with intricate things any more. She could see the acorns on the butter – probably because, if you know something's there, you can see it better. But all these stones, these shapes blur into a snow-blind mass. Where are her spectacles?