The Darkness of Wallis Simpson (6 page)

What?

Did she hear right?

Oh, boy. First it's death they're describing; now they're yelling something about resurrection. What kind of crazy stuff is getting spoken on this snowy morning?

Wallis decides she'd better ask them. She reaches up and tries to open her window, but windows in France are so damned tall and heavy, you can never get them to move. So she taps on the glass, with her nails, which are still long and painted red as rubies. Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap. And suddenly they turn. All the people turn, moving their umbrellas, and look up. She sees their faces, pink-cheeked in the snow. They stare at her. With their mouths hanging open. They look like they're seeing a ghost. And then they begin to move towards her. ‘Wallis!' they call. ‘Wallis! Wallis . . . !'

And oh, she can remember this: people calling her name. People reaching out their hands to her, trying to touch her. ‘Wallis! Wallis!' It was so swell for a while for a girl from Baltimore. Better than being a deb at the Bachelors' Cotillion. Better than being a bride with orange blossom in her hair. Better than presiding over a dazzling table. It was what she'd always wanted. Always. To be loved; for people to say her name with love.

But it never lasted. Did it? God knows why not. First they loved her, like Win had loved her, and reached for her with their hands, and then, for no reason she can recall, they began to insult her, started calling her a bitch, an American bitch, threw rotten eggs at her car. Their love had been so beautiful and then, one day, it turned to hate . . .

Wallis lets fall the curtains and curls up on the carpet, knees tucked into her bony chest. She sees that she's wearing a white silk nightgown with a trim of Brussels lace. She's always been careful about her clothes. She just hopes there's no unsightly stain on the
derrière.

The calling of her name goes on and on. ‘Wallis! Wallis!' It's like some familiar music, long ago faded and gone.

Wallis. Wallis. Wallis!

She likes it. She hopes they'll go on calling for ever.

And now, suddenly, there's a flicker of memory, like a candle being lit in her mind: the one who loved her name so much was the pale little man. It was he who used to say it, over and over, like the saying of it was a kind of prayer or mantra or consoling nursery rhyme. ‘Wallis, my Wallis . . . Wallis, my Wallis . . .'

He said it sweetly, caressingly. He said it like no one else had ever said it. And he never got mad at her. Never called her an American bitch. He got mad at the world, but never at her. Perhaps he was the only one, out of everybody in the whole damn universe (including Ernest who just disappeared into the London smog) who loved her? Because it was he, too, wasn't it, who gave her jewels? He told her some of them should have been Cookie's but fuck that, he said, they were hers now and nobody was ever going to take them away.

And not only jewels. Yeah, it's coming back now. It was he who used to buy her caviar – as much as she liked, whenever she wanted it. And boy, how she'd loved that! She just craved it like she'd never craved any other food. She knew it was expensive, she knew that ninety-nine per cent of people in the world had never tasted it, but too bad. She was one of the one per cent. Lucky her. Lucky Bessiewallis Warfield from Baltimore.

Lying very still on the floor, with the crowd still calling outside, Wallis thinks, with a smile, that she could use a spoonful of caviar now, its texture so soft and strange. It would be the one thing she could eat. And, still smiling, she decides that really she wouldn't mind if the little man came into the room and helped her back into the bed, so that she could be comfortable as she ate it. He had such gentle hands. With these hands, more gentle than a woman's, he used to spoon caviar into her mouth. Spoon it into her mouth! What an adorable, dippy little rite! Who else ever did a thing like that? And his blue eyes used to smile into hers. Smile with such love and adoration. And then he'd ask, gently: ‘Is that lovely, darling? Is that delicious for my darling?'

Darling. My darling.

She said these words, too. Didn't she? Said them to him. Said them often, and with tenderness. Sure she did.

So OK, this must be it, the thing she had to dredge up from the darkness. When the
Maître
comes pestering her next time, this is what she'll tell her: ‘I've remembered him,' she'll say. ‘He was too pale to have a name. I always called him darling.'

And then the whole darn thing will be put to rest.

How It Stacks Up

She says to him: ‘On your birthday, McCreedy, what d'you want to do?'

She always calls him McCreedy. You'd have thought by now, after being his wife for so long, she'd have started to call him John, but she never does. He calls her Hilda; she calls him McCreedy, like he was a stranger, like he was a footballer she'd seen on the telly.

‘I don't know,' he says. ‘What'll we do, then?'

‘Forty-six,' she says. ‘You'd better think of something.'

‘Go out . . .?' he says.

‘Out where?'

The pub, he thinks, but doesn't say. With the fellas from work. Get the Guinness down. Tell some old Dublin jokes. Laugh till you can't laugh any more.

‘What'd the kids like?' he says.

She lights a ciggie. Her twentieth or thirtieth that Sunday, he's stopped counting. Smoke pours out of her mouth, thick and blue. ‘Never mind the kids, McCreedy,' she says. ‘It's your fuckin' birthday.'

‘Go back to Ireland,' he says. ‘That's what I'd like. Go back there for good.'

She stubs out the ciggie. She's always changing her mind about everything, minute to minute. ‘When you've got a sensible answer,' she says, ‘let me know what it is.'

And she leaves him, click-clack on her worn-out heels, pats her hair, opens the kitchen door and lets it slam behind her.

McCreedy stares at the ashtray. Time she was dead, he thinks. Time the smoking killed her.

He goes out into the garden where his nine-year-old daughter, Katy, is playing on her own. Katy and the garden have something in common: they're both small and it looks like they'll never be beautiful, no matter how hard anyone tries. Because Katy resembles her dad. Short neck. Short sight. Pigeon toes. More's the pity.

Now, the two of them are in the neglected garden together, with the north London September sun quite warm on them, and McCreedy says to the daughter he tries so hard to love: ‘What'll we do on my birthday, then, Katy?'

She's playing with her tarty little dolls that have tits and miniature underwear. She holds them by their shapely legs and their golden tresses wave around like flags. ‘Dunno,' she says. ‘What?'

He sits on a plastic garden chair and she lays her nymphos side by side in a pram. ‘Cindy and Barbie are getting stung,' she whines.

‘Who's stinging them, darlin'?'

‘Nettles. Look. Cut 'em down, can't you?'

‘Oh no,' he says, staring at where they grow so fiercely, crowding out the roses Hilda planted years ago. ‘Saving those, sweetheart.'

‘Why?'

‘For soup. Nettle soup – to make you beautiful.'

‘Will it?' she says.

‘Sure it will. You wait and see.'

Later in the day, when his son Michael comes in, McCreedy stops him before he escapes up to his room. He's thirteen. On his white neck is a red mark that looks like a love bite.

‘Wha' you staring at?' says Michael.

‘Nothing,' says McCreedy.

‘Wha', then? Wha'?'

‘Your mother was wondering what we might do on me birthday. If you had any thoughts about it . . . ?'

Michael shrugs. He knows he's untouchable, invincible. He's the future. He doesn't have to give the present any attention.

‘No,' he says. ‘Not specially. How old are you anyway?'

‘Forty-five. Or it might be a year more.'

‘Which?'

‘I don't remember.'

‘Fuck off, Dad. Everyone remembers their fuckin' age.'

‘Well, I don't. Not since I left Ireland. I used to always know it then, but that's long ago.'

‘Ask Mum, then. She'll know.'

And Michael goes on up the stairs, scuffing the carpet with the bulbous, smelly trainers he wears. No thoughts. No ideas. Not specially.

Again, McCreedy is alone.

But they have to do something. Like Christmas, a birthday is
there
: an obstacle in the road you can't quite squeeze round.

So McCreedy goes to see his friend Spiro, who runs a little restaurant two streets away, and tells him they'll come early Saturday evening, about seven so Katy won't get too tired, and can Spiro do steak or cutlets because Hilda won't eat any Greek stews or fish.

‘No problem, John,' says Spiro. ‘And we make you a cake?'

‘No,' says McCreedy. ‘No bloody cake. Just do some nice meat.'

Then Spiro takes down a bottle and pours two thimbles of brandy for himself and McCreedy. It's five in the afternoon and they're alone in the place, sitting on stools under the fishing nets that drape the ceiling.

‘Commiserations,' says Spiro.

‘Ta,' says McCreedy.

They drink and Spiro pours them another. He's a good man, thinks McCreedy. Far from home, like me, but making a go of it. Not complaining. And he does lovely chips.

He tells Hilda it's all booked and arranged, she can take it off her mind, and she looks pleased for once. ‘All right,' she says, ‘good. But don't go and spoil it by going out first and gettin' sloshed, will yer?'

‘Why would I?' says McCreedy.

And he wouldn't have, he thinks later, honest to God, if only the presents had been better. But Hilda has no imagination. Where her imagination should be, there's an old tea stain.

Socks, they gave him. A ‘Mr Grumpy' T-shirt. Tobacco. Katy draws a house in felt tip, folds it in half like a card, forgets to write anything in it.

He has to tell someone how pathetic this seems to him, how the T-shirt is grounds for divorce, isn't it?

‘Absolutely,' say his mates in the pub. ‘Fuckin' socks as well. Socks is grounds.'

They've done the pub up. It feels almost like you're drinking somewhere classy, except it's the same landlord with his face like a dough ball, and the same drinkers, mostly Irish, McCreedy's known for fifteen years. And they all, after a couple of pints, start to feel comfortable and full of friendliness, and the world outside goes still and quiet. And McCreedy loves this feeling of the quiet outside and the laughter within. It reminds him of something he once had and knows he's lost. It's the best.

He wants to prolong it. Just let everything unwind nice and slowly here. But he tells his mates: ‘Kick me out at seven. Make sure I'm gone.'

And they promise. In between drinks, they say: ‘Plenty of time yet, John, hours of time.' And the pub fills up and starts to get its Saturday night roar. And a spike-haired girl he's seen before comes up to him for a light and stays by him and he buys her a lager. She smells of leather and her skin's creamy-white and she tells him she went to Ireland once and got bitten by a horse. And she shows him the scar of the bite on her shoulder and he touches it and thinks, she's what I'd like for my birthday. I'd like to lie down with this girl and feel the spikes of her hair touch my body.

He's only twenty minutes late at the restaurant. You'd think it was two hours from the look on Hilda's face, and when he says he's sorry, she turns her head away, like she can't bear the sight nor smell nor sound of him.

‘Well,' he says, ‘did you order?'

‘Nettle soup,' says Katy, who's wearing a funny little velvet hat. ‘I want nettle soup.'

‘Fuck off, Katy,' says Michael.

‘That's enough, Michael,' Hilda snaps.

She's ordered a gin and tonic. She's billowing smoke out into the room. The menus sit in a pile, pushed aside, like she thinks she isn't going to understand a single thing in them.

McCreedy takes one and opens it.
Dolmades. Keftedes. Horiatiki.
Even the lettering's weird.

‘Hey!' he calls, tilting his chair backwards and feeling himself almost fall. ‘Spiro!'

But Spiro's in the kitchen, as he should have remembered, and it's Elena, Spiro's wife, with her mournful face, who comes over with the order pad. McCreedy tells her, listen, none of this foreign-sounding stuff, just meat, steak or chops, with chips, OK, and a pint of Guinness and Coke or something for the kids.

‘Lilt,' says Michael.

‘Lilt, then, for him,' says McCreedy.

‘Which you want?' says Elena.

‘One Lilt. One Coke for Katy.'

‘Which you want, steak, pork chops, pork kebab?'

‘Not pork, do you, Hilda?'

‘Steak.'

‘Steak for her. And for me. You want steak, Michael?'

‘Yeh.'

‘Katy, love?'

‘You said nettle soup would—'

‘Not now. Pork or steak?'

She hides under the sad little hat. It's like she's got no neck at all. And now she's going to start crying.

‘It's OK,' says McCreedy. ‘She'll have steak. Small portion. With chips.'

‘How you want them – rare, medium, well done?'

‘Well done,' says Hilda and passes Elena the rest of the menus, like she wants them out of her sight. Then she hands Katy a red paper napkin and the child holds it round her mouth like a gag and her tears are just enough to moisten its edge. She glares at her father over the top of the napkin.