Читать книгу The Golden Hour - Beatriz Williams, Beatriz Williams - Страница 13

ON SATURDAY EVENING, I walked to Government House in my best summer dress of blueberry organza and a pair of tall peep-toe shoes that would have fared much better in a taxi, if I could have spared the dough. It wasn’t the distance; it was the stairs. Government House, as I said, sat at the top of George Street, aboard its very own hill, in order to ensure (or so it seemed to me, at the time) that the ordinary pedestrian arrived flushed and breathless for his appointment with the governor.

Still. As I passed Columbus on his pedestal and climbed the steps toward the familiar neoclassical facade of pink stucco—heavens, what a perfect representation of the Bahamian ideal—I had to admit to a certain human curiosity. Like everybody else, I knew Government House from the outside, as a passerby, an acquaintance. I hadn’t the least idea what lay inside. Now its portico expanded before me, all pink and white, Roman columns and tropical shutters, windows aglow, music and voices, a thing of welcome, alive. I paused at the top of the steps to pat my hair, to adjust my necklace of imitation pearls, to gather my composure while the noise of an engine clamored in my ears, and an enormous automobile roared beneath the pediment and slammed to a halt exactly at the front door. As I watched, too rapt to move, a stumpy man in a plain, poorly cut suit popped from the back seat and patted his pockets.

Now, in the many years since I inhabited the Bahamas, I’ve come to understand that memory is a capricious friend, and never more unreliable than when we trust it absolutely. But I’ll swear on any Bible you like that I identified Sir Harry Oakes right there on the portico of Government House that evening with photographic precision. I remember the sense of awe I felt as I said to myself, Why, that’s Harry Oakes. Maybe it was the car, or the confident electricity that inevitably surrounds the richest man in the British Empire. He had struck gold in Canada or someplace, after years and years of prospecting, one of the biggest strikes ever made, and now he lived here in the Bahamas, because of taxes. I guess he figured he had already paid his dues, like that Swedish fellow.

The car roared off. I slowed my steps to hang back, conscious that I had no companion, no escort, no friend of any kind. I was alone, as usual, and when you’re alone you must time your entrance carefully, you must carry yourself a certain way, you must manage every detail so nobody suspects your weakness. A fellow in a uniform stood just outside the door, exchanging words with Oakes, who continued to pat his pockets in that absentminded way, while I crossed the drive at a measured pace, presenting my hips just so. As I reached the portico, I heard an oath. It was delivered, needless to say, in a plain, rough, American kind of voice, and I froze, a few yards away. I’d heard he was a flinty fellow, Sir Harry Oakes, that he had a hot temper and small patience—no wonder he’d married late in life, when he was already rich—and here’s what I’d learned about men of temperament: stay the hell away, if you can help it.

But Oakes spun around and spotted me. In the course of patting his pockets, he’d discovered the same card I carried in my hand. He brandished it now. “In the gardens!” he bellowed. “The goddamn west entrance!”

“The west entrance?”

“Follow me.”

He stumped off—there’s no other way to describe it, as if he wore an invisible pair of iron boots—and I scrambled after him, because when the richest man in the British Empire tells you to follow him, you take your chances and follow, temperament be damned.

“Leonora Randolph,” I ventured, when I reached his shoulder.

He stopped and spun again. He couldn’t seem to turn like an ordinary man, but then he wasn’t ordinary, was he? He stuck out his hand. “Oakes,” he said, because of course there needed no further introduction.

I took the hand and shook it briskly. “I figured.”

Well, he laughed at that. We resumed walking, at a more amicable pace, and Oakes said, “Where do you come from, Miss Randolph?”

“Mrs. Randolph. I’m from New York City, mostly. I came down to Nassau a few weeks ago for a change of pace.”

“Change of pace, eh? I guess you’ve got your money’s worth.”

“I’ll say.”

“Your husband come with you?”

“My husband’s dead, Sir Harry.”

“I see.”—stomp, stomp—“Awfully sorry.”

“Don’t be. He was a louse.”

“A louse, eh? The lazy kind, or the drinking kind?”

“Take your pick.”

“Did he beat you?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say beat.”

Oakes grunted. “Good riddance to the bastard, then. Why Nassau?”

“Why not Nassau?”

“The heat, for one thing. It’s goddamn July. My wife and kids left for Bar Harbor two months ago.”

“I don’t mind the heat at all, Sir Harry. Heaven knows it’s better than the cold.”

We had turned the corner of the mansion by now, and proceeded down a path that led, presumably, to the gardens at the rear. The music and chatter grew louder through the quicksand of warmth, the scent of blossom, the splay of palm fronds. Oakes raised his voice to bark, “Cold? Cold? A New York City winter’s nothing to the goddamn Yukon, believe me!”

“Well, I’ll take the tropics over either of them, any day. Even in July.”

“And I say you’re nuts. Nobody’s here! Just the locals and the riffraff. Like me!” He rapped his thigh with his invitation card and laughed.

“And Their Royal Highnesses.”

“They wouldn’t be here either, if they could help it. Here we are.”

We had reached an iron gate, where a sturdy, immaculate fellow wore his white uniform and white gloves bravely. He greeted Oakes by name. Oakes snatched my invitation card right from my fingers and thrust both of them, his and mine, toward this gatekeeper. “There you go, Marshall. This is Mrs. Randolph, just off the boat from New York.”

“The airliner, actually,” I said.

“The airliner. That new Pan American service from Miami, I’ll bet.”

“That’s the one.”

“Not afraid of flying, either. Good girl. Mrs. Randolph, this gentleman is George Marshall, butler at Government House. He’s the fellow who runs just about everything. Isn’t that right, Marshall?”

Marshall glanced down at my invitation card, glanced back up at me. I felt a cool inspection pass across my skin and my dress of blueberry organza, not unpleasant. “Good evening, Mrs. Randolph,” he said. “Welcome to Government House.”

“Good evening, Mr. Marshall. Delighted, I’m sure.”

“How’s the rum punch in there?” said Oakes.

“I mixed it myself an hour ago, sir.”

“Good, good. The duke?”

“Their Royal Highnesses are still receiving by the goldfish pond, I believe.”

Oakes took my elbow. “Come along, Mrs. Randolph. Might as well go in with reinforcements, I always say.”

Together we walked through the gate, toward the crackle of human noise. By the sound of things, the party was already in full swing. Against the twilight, the flares of perhaps a dozen or more lanterns flickered opulently, illuminating the garden in patches of gold, illuminating spiky palmettos and white jasmine and pink bougainvillea, illuminating people and more people, drinking and smoking and laughing. I turned my head to Oakes. “I thought you said nobody was here, except locals and riffraff.”

“Those are the locals, Mrs. Randolph. Conchie Joes, we call ’em. Merchants on Bay Street and their plump little wives. You’ll get to know their faces, believe me. The pond’s this way.”

I allowed him to lead me down the path, toward a cluster of lanterns that had attracted—like mosquitoes, I thought—several people dressed in bright colors, next to a rock-lined pool. Oakes was grumbling to himself. I asked him if something was wrong.

“Receiving lines,” he said. “Can’t stand ’em.”

“I’m sure they wouldn’t notice if you just slipped past.”

“Their Royal Highnesses,” he muttered. “Nothing royal about her. You know that, don’t you?”

I turned my head toward the man before me, the richest man in the British Empire. A dazzling fact, if you paused to consider it, but of course you couldn’t pause in the middle of a cocktail party and consider the pounds, shillings, and pence that belonged to the fellow walking at your elbow. You just gazed in pity at his thinning hair, his frown in profile, and said gently, “I do. I also know it’s wiser just to go along with things.”

He didn’t reply. I liked his face, his kind eyes and his even, sturdy, jowly features. Possibly I only imagined the ruggedness that clung to his skin, the hint of rock and earth, because I knew this about him. Or perhaps, when you spend half your life prospecting in the wilderness, no amount of Bahamas sunshine can burn away the scent of frontier.

As we drew closer, the cluster of people moved away, revealing a pair of familiar, ravishing figures, exactly the same height, one dark-haired and one fair. A half-dozen lanterns hung from the nearby palms. The light created a nimbus around them. What a show, I thought. What a goddamned brilliant show they put on. You almost wanted to applaud.

Oakes turned to me and said, “You know, you oughta meet my daughter Nancy. You’d like her.”

“Would I?”

“She could use someone like you, a few years older. Take her under your wing.”

I smiled. “Hasn’t she got a perfectly good mother?”

“Sure, she does. But girls that age.” He shook his head, and that was all, because we had reached the goldfish pond and the duchess and the duke, laughing warmly with a short, perspiring man who had materialized from nowhere. The duchess’s head turned in my direction. She wore a dress of pale blue silk and an expression of brief, unguarded discontent, and a shock ran down my limbs because I thought perhaps someone had made a terrible mistake—God knew what, maybe that invitation hadn’t been meant for me after all. But the duchess’s frown smoothed away as I reached her. Oh, the duchess. It’s a funny thing, when you encounter a face like that, a face you’ve seen frozen in a hundred two-dimensional photographs, and here it is before you, looking at you, alive. Those pungent blue eyes, that coronet of dark hair. That skin stretched over her cheeks and jaw, now endowed with breadth and depth and texture. Around her neck, a staggering circle of diamonds and rubies set off the blue of her eyes and her dress. How patriotic of her. She took my hand between two of hers and shook it firmly.

“My dear Mrs. Randolph! And Sir Harry. I see you’ve met our new recruit.”

“Recruit?” he demanded.

“The Red Cross. Mrs. Randolph’s volunteered her services.”

“The Red Cross? What the devil for? You don’t strike me as a Red Cross kind of gal.”

“Just doing my bit,” I said.

“But you’re American. You’ve got no part in this damned war.”

“Now, Sir Harry,” said the duchess, “the Red Cross has nothing to do with taking sides. We are a humanitarian organization.”

Well, Oakes rolled his eyes at this—as well he might—and stumped a few paces to the right, where he greeted the duke with about as much ceremony as he’d greeted the duke’s wife. Stuck his hand out and grunted something. The duchess and I exchanged weary little smiles, almost intimate. A fellow like that can bind two females instantly. A pair of diamond and ruby earrings clung to her earlobes, matching the necklace. I thought she glanced down to assess the imitation pearls around my collar, but maybe that was my imagination.

“I’m so terribly sorry to be late,” I said. “I didn’t realize about the entrance.”

“Not at all. I haven’t anyone left to greet, thank goodness, so we can get to know each other a bit.” She slipped her arm around mine. She smelled of face powder and perfume, and her arm was like her hand, bony and purposeful. “Don’t you look charming in that dress.”

I might have stuttered, so great was my amazement. “Why—well—this old thing?”

“Of course, you’ve got the kind of figure that suits any dress, you lucky duck. Now, stick with me. There’s somebody I want you to meet.”

“Meet me? I can’t imagine whom.”

She laughed. “David! David!”

Her husband stood a few feet away, dressed in a pale suit, speaking to the other man and to Oakes, who had turned toward them both. The duke’s head snapped in her direction. For an instant, his eyes bugged in a terrified way. The lanterns poured gold on the duke’s waving hair, his shocked, twitching, haggard face. Next to him, Oakes and the other fellow more or less disappeared—not physically, of course, but rendered invisible by the halo of glamour. “Yes, dear?” the duke asked, pitched anxiously toward his wife, not registering my presence in the slightest degree.

“David, it’s Mrs. Randolph at last.”

“Mrs. Randolph?”

“Yes, Mrs. Randolph. You remember, don’t you?” She grasped my elbow. “Mrs. Randolph, David. The girl I’ve been speaking about.”

“Oh! Oh, yes. Of course.” He held out his hand to me, and although he’d turned in my direction and fixed his gaze politely on my face, I thought his eyes were unfocused, that he wasn’t really looking at me. Not past me, mind you, the way some people do, searching out someone of greater interest, but the opposite direction. Inward, toward himself. “Duke of Windsor,” he said, pronouncing the word duke like an American, dook.

I made a slight curtsy. “Your Royal Highness. Leonora Randolph. I’m honored to—”

“Charmed, of course.” He dropped my hand—he had a grip that wasn’t so much limp as motionless, without life—and turned to the duchess. “Have you seen Thorpe about?”

“Not since he arrived.”

“Oh, damn.” The duke cast his nervous eyes about the palms and the shadows. “Neither have I.”

“Is something the matter?” she asked, but the duke was already bolting off. I suppose I stared after him, at least until his bright figure disappeared into the tangle of darker ones. I remember a feeling of disbelief—had I, or had I not, just met the former king of England, and did it matter if he hadn’t actually perceived my existence?—and then the tug of the duchess’s hand on my elbow.

“Mrs. Randolph, do you know Mr. Christie?” she said.

“I’m afraid not.” I held out my hand to the other man, who was plain and balding, thick-necked, green-eyed. His temples gleamed with perspiration. He was shorter even than Oakes, and next to Sir Harry’s bull shoulders, looked as slight as a lamb. “Leonora Randolph,” I said.

The man took my hand and smiled. “Harold Christie. Pleasure.”

His palm was damp. I extracted my fingers and said the pleasure was all mine. “I’ve already heard so many interesting things about you, Mr. Christie.”

“Ah.” He cast a glance to the duchess—nervous or modest, I couldn’t tell. “I hope—I hope—good things.”

“Aren’t you practically a one-man Bahamas development office? So they tell me.”

“Oh, it’s quite true,” said the duchess. “Mr. Christie’s done so much to improve the colony.”

Back and forth glanced Mr. Christie. “That’s too kind. I love the Bahamas, that’s all. Only doing what I can for them.”

“How awfully good of you,” I said.

“Turns a nice penny, too, from time to time,” said Oakes. “Isn’t that right, Christie? Turned a few of those pennies on my account.”

“From which your account profited considerably, I believe.”

“Don’t stop you borrowing a fortune from me, either. Eh, Christie? That Lyford Cay scheme of yours?”

“You’ll be begging me for a plot of your own there, when it’s finished.”

Oakes turned to me. “Wasteland. Wasteland all the way on the other end of the island, miles from town. If I could pull my money out of that one, I would. I must’ve been drunk when you asked me, Christie.”

Christie smiled. “Now, old fellow, I’m sure the ladies don’t wish to listen to our business talk.”

“On the contrary—”

“Tell me, what brings you here to our little paradise, Mrs. Randolph? Our oasis from this mad world? I certainly hope you mean to make a lengthy visit.”

“Careful,” said Oakes. “He’ll ply you with booze and get you investing in his damned schemes.”

As coincidence would have it, a waiter approached us right that second, bearing a tray on which a few champagne coupes glistened in the light of the lanterns. I reached out and snatched one by the stem. “How opulent. I haven’t seen champagne since I left New York. Poor old France and all.”

“We contrived to pack along a few bottles, when we left Paris in such a hurry,” said the duchess, plucking a stem, smiling softly, so I couldn’t help imagining a crew of stevedores unloading crate after crate at Prince George’s wharf, while a flush-faced supervisor begged them to take care.

I raised my glass. “We’re ever so grateful you found the time.”

Naturally, the champagne was sublime. I knew precious little about wine, but I knew that the Windsors ate and drank and wore only the best, and I imagined, if they smuggled champagne out of France as the Germans closed in, the champagne would be the finest vintage fizz that credit could buy.

“To victory,” said Mr. Christie. “May it arrive swiftly.”

I remember thinking, as I clicked my glass against that of Harold Christie, that he didn’t seem like much of a warrior.

BY THE TIME THE DUKE reappeared, I’d almost forgotten he existed to begin with. You know how it is during a party, how the minutes turn liquid and run into each other, how the words and faces form a separate universe in which you rotate endlessly on your axis, North Pole and South Pole tilted just so. Afterward, you never can remember the exact chronology, who said what, where and when it all occurred. And how.

Up he popped, anyway, just as the duchess was introducing me to two of her guests, a straw-haired mother and her teenage daughter. He jumped midsentence in front of the duchess’s attention, the way a tennis player lunges for a ball, slicing neatly between us. A thick piece of hair had fallen from the shield atop his head. He pushed it back and said, “Darling, I can’t seem to find him!”

“Who?”

“Thorpe, darling. Thorpe.”

“Yes? Where is he?”

“That’s the trouble. I’ve looked all over.”

“Then I suppose we’ll just have to start things off without him,” said the duchess. “David, darling, will you please get everyone’s attention?”

David—I beg your pardon, the Duke of Windsor—cast about for something or other, his long-abandoned cocktail glass perhaps, because he wound up snatching my champagne coupe and striking it forcefully with the manicured nail of his index finger. When that produced no discernible sound, he shoved it back to me and clapped his hands. “Good evening!” he called. “Good evening, all!”

At the sound of his voice, the din of voices went absolutely silent. The strangest thing, that instant silence, as if everybody had been waiting for this signal, even the birds, as if nothing else in the world held the slightest interest. Several dozen faces turned toward us, none of them quite sober. The duke smiled, and what a dazzling smile it was. Red-lipped and toothsome. He’d practiced it all his life.

“Good evening, my dear friends. We’re so—ah, my wife and I, we’re delighted to have so many of you gathered here tonight in our humble abode”—here he paused expertly for a ripple of chuckles—“in service of, really, an absolutely tremendous cause. I am just absolutely speechless with pride at all the great work my wife has done as president of the Red Cross chapter here in the Bahamas, which we couldn’t possibly accomplish without your generous support. But my wife, I believe, has more to tell you about all that. Darling? Her Royal Highness, the Duchess of Windsor.”

Nobody chuckled, nobody gave the least sign of knowing that the Duchess of Windsor was not, in fact, royal: by express decree of those who were. Certainly not Wallis herself. She painted on a thin, beautiful smile and stepped to her husband’s side. For the first time, I noticed that she wore a jeweled brooch pinned to her breast, the same brooch as in the photograph in Life magazine, and what do you know? It was a flamingo. She waved her ring-crusted hand. “Hello, everybody!”

Everybody murmured Hello!

“As David said. Thank you all for gathering here with us tonight. In a few minutes I’ll be coming round, cap outstretched, along with—I hope, anyway—someone who seems to have gone … oh, there he is!” Her face transformed, so that I realized she hadn’t really been smiling before, and now she was. She looked over my right shoulder, where a cluster of palms bordered the rock garden. “Mr. Thorpe! Where have you been hiding? Mr. Benedict Thorpe, ladies and gentlemen, a dear friend of mine and David’s, a scientist of international repute and a true patriot of our British Empire.”

She began to clap, and the crowd, shifting and straining to catch a glimpse of this true British patriot, burst into applause. Though I kept my gaze trained on the duchess—what a show she was, after all—I clapped along. I mean, it would have been rude otherwise, wouldn’t it? A scientist of international repute. I confess, I wasn’t that interested in science, at the time, but I could appreciate the affinity in others. Science was the future, after all. Everybody said so.

“Mr. Thorpe—hello, everybody!—Mr. Thorpe’s agreed to help me collect donations for the Red Cross tonight, a cause close to both our hearts, isn’t that right, Thorpe? In fact, it’s Mr. Thorpe’s own hat we’re going to pass around, so don’t be niggardly!” She paused for laughter. She still hadn’t taken her eyes from that patch of garden from which this Thorpe had emerged. I felt a stir of curiosity—or maybe even premonition, who knows—and turned my head at last to catch a glimpse. A palmetto spread its fronds between us, blocking my view. Before me, the duchess waved her hand. “Step up, Thorpus. Don’t be shy!”

The crowd stirred, making way. I turned and stepped back with everyone else. A pair of shoulders swept past. In the slight draft of his passing, I smelled not the tang of cigarettes or cocktails or perspiration—those were endemic—but a soap of some kind, or else cologne, hair oil, whatever it was, and I believe I made a gasp of recognition. There was applause, delighted voices. The fellow stepped to the duchess’s side and swept off his hat—he wore a towering silk topper for the occasion—to reveal that hair, short, glistening, ruddy-blond, and I covered my mouth with my hand. His spectacles were just slightly crooked.

He beamed across the crowd, left to right, and to my great relief his gaze passed right over me, though I stood in front, next to the duke. My cheeks ached, and I realized I was smiling back, even though he wasn’t looking in my direction. Thorpe, I thought. He had a name. Thorpe.

“Right ho, chaps,” he said. “Ladies. Let’s make this quick and painless, shall we? Empty your pockets, so I don’t have to go round the room again with my pistol.”

BEFORE THE COLLECTION PARTY PASSED by, I slipped between guests and up the path toward the governor’s residence. I don’t believe I started out with any conscious intent. A breath of air, that’s what I murmured as I sidled my way through the crowd, and this was true enough. Certainly I wanted air, and once free of the smokiness and perspiration of the party, I found air in abundance. I also saw a pair of French doors standing open to the evening air, allowing a glimpse of a hallway, and not a footman in sight.

Now, it wasn’t as if I meant any harm. I had just sipped champagne with the duchess, I even felt a stir of liking for her, a warmth I hadn’t expected. When somebody pays you compliments, pays you the favor of her attention and interest, you can’t help but think she must be a person of great taste and discernment. I meant no disrespect toward either of them, duke or duchess; or their privacy. There was only curiosity, and the desire to escape, and a certain surge of audacity that visits me from time to time, and also the possibility—duchesses could be fickle, after all—that I might never again have the opportunity to enter this building and see its rooms for myself. Which, in retrospect, is just the sort of logic that lands a girl in trouble, in love affairs as in houses that don’t belong to her.

Thus the inevitable. Instead of soothing my lungs and returning to the party or else to my own little room at the Prince George, snug and sound, I continued down that hall, the entire width of Government House, until I arrived at the door on the opposite side. I made no hesitation whatsoever. Hesitation’s fatal, my father always told me, when he could be bothered to speak to me at all; deliberate all you like upon a course of action, but once you’ve made your decision, don’t for God’s sake waver. I laid my hand on the doorknob and opened it to find some sort of library. The duke’s own study, perhaps. There was a desk and a fireplace, hissing the last remains of a good solid fire. The furniture was up-to-date, the upholstery fresh. I felt the duchess’s taste hanging in the air, coating every surface, every detail, every Union Jack pillow, every club chair. Even in her absence, she possessed a magnificent presence.

Now we’re getting somewhere, I thought.

I made a progress along the walls, examining each picture as one might examine the contents of an art gallery or a museum. I daresay I imagined I might discover some clue to the essential mystery of them—the Windsors, I mean—this exquisitely dressed pair of sybaritic bigots who had the power to fascinate millions, even those who weren’t the slightest bit interested in fashion or luxury or jewelry or parties. This painting: Had the duchess chosen it for its form and its meaning or because the colors married so perfectly with the upholstery on her new sofa? I dragged my hand along the back of the sofa and made my way to the desk, orderly, untroubled by paperwork, adorned by photographs of Wallis. I had this idea—I remember it clearly—that if I opened any of the drawers in this desk, I would find them empty. I actually saw myself opening those drawers, as in a dream; I saw their emptiness. This fine, polished, beautifully proportioned desk, made of empty drawers. I curled my fingers around a brass handle. I don’t believe I meant to pull it. Even if I had, the voice would have stopped me.

“My dear Mrs. Randolph. Are you looking for something?”

I spun to the door—not the one leading to the main hallway, but the door on the opposite side of the room, toward the back of the house, where the duchess stood in her beautiful blue gown with the jeweled flamingo on her breast. She was smiling.

“I—I seem to have taken a wrong turn,” I said.

She moved forward. “It’s a lovely room, isn’t it? I had it redecorated. I had the whole place redecorated. It was a dump when we arrived.”

“So I heard.”

“Shabby and leaky and everything. Uninhabitable, really.”

“You’ve done wonders. It looks just terrific.”

The duchess paused at the corner of the desk, the opposite diagonal, and rested her fingers on the edge. “It’s not what he’s used to, of course. I did my best, but he ought to live in a palace, he ought to be doing something bigger. That’s what he’s used to. What he was raised for. Instead …”

I didn’t know what to say. I had the feeling this was a test of some kind, and my answer would determine the course of my future association with the Windsors, or whether we had any association at all. Would determine the course of my existence altogether. The initial shock had passed, thank God. My face had begun to cool. I flexed my fingers, I drew in a long, steady breath and exhaled it slowly.

“You’re both doing such a terrific job,” I said. “Your talents are wasted in a place like this.”

“How kind.”

“Really, though. The Red Cross. It’s such a smashing success. All those women, working so hard. Only you could raise all that money, organize everything so perfectly—”

The duchess laughed and turned her head. “Would you care for a drink, Mrs. Randolph? David keeps a few bottles handy in here. He’s forbidden to start drinking before seven, but once the clock strikes, why …”

“No, thank you.”

But she was already moving away, already opening the door to a cabinet of gleaming wood, the kind of cabinet you thought must hold important papers and that kind of thing, but actually contained about a dozen various bottles of liquor, several glasses, a siphon, a bucket.

“There’s no ice, I’m afraid,” she said, “but you don’t mind that, do you?”

“No.”

“Brandy? I like a glass of brandy in the evenings.”

“I really shouldn’t.”

“Why not?” She turned to me. “You certainly look as if you could use a drink.”

“I like to keep my wits about me.”

“I see.” She closed the cabinet door. She stood about fifteen or twenty feet away, about as elegant as a woman could possibly look, but then she had the kind of figure that sets off clothes to their best advantage. Long and angular, lean to the point of nonexistence; not exactly attractive by itself, but irresistible as a foil to what covered those bones, that flesh. Like all Southern ladies, she moved gracefully, shaping the air as she went. Her thin, tight, scarlet smile contained electricity. “Now, don’t be afraid,” she said.

“I’m not.”

“Yes, you are. Most people are. But I don’t bite.”

“If you did, I’d bite back.”

The duchess laughed. “You brave thing. That’s exactly what I was hoping you’d say.”

“I can’t tell you how relieved I am to hear it.”

She gestured to the window seat. “Can we sit a moment? I have a question for you, Mrs. Randolph. A proposition.”

I hesitated only long enough to catch my breath. “Of course.”

We sat. The window faced north, toward the twinkling of lights that rimmed the shore and the sudden blackness of the ocean. The stars were invisible. I smelled the duchess’s perfume, her cigarettes. Around us lay that beautiful, masculine room of wood and photographs and, beyond that, the faint music from the party in the garden. I folded my hands in my lap and said again how lovely the place looked.

“Naturally the papers had nothing but bad things to say,” she told me. “How extravagant I was. How out of touch with the common man. Never mind that the house—Government House, don’t forget, the very seat and symbol of government, of the British Empire—was riddled with mildew and falling apart. Anyway, we paid for a great deal of the redecoration out of our own pockets. A great deal.”

“I hadn’t heard that.”

“Of course you hadn’t. They’re all against me. I’m sure you read about our little tour this fall, how many pieces of luggage went along with us.”

“I can’t remember the number,” I said modestly.

“A hundred and forty-six, they said, which wasn’t remotely true, it was no more than seventy-three, and anyway it wasn’t just ours. It belonged to our entourage as well. Our private secretary, Miss Drewes, and Major Phillips—that’s David’s aide-de-camp—and so on. But each and every story they print has to conform to this—this idea they have about me. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what that is. And it’s all very frustrating. One can’t answer back. One can try, of course, but that only makes one sound petulant.”

“The duchess doth protest too much.”

“Exactly. I see you understand the business, Mrs. Randolph.”

“What business?”

“Journalism.” Her smile took on a feline quality. “You’re a journalist yourself, aren’t you?”

I sort of choked. “Journalist?”

“Yes. Metropolitan magazine, isn’t that right?”

“Yes. That is, no. That is, the magazine sent me out here to gather a little background information—”

“Now, Mrs. Randolph—”

“—I’ve never written a word for them. Not a word.” I paused. “How did you know about that?”

“Oh, I hear things. It’s my business to hear things. Not for myself, you understand, but for David’s sake. All these stories in the press, these terrible things they print, it upsets him so much. I try to protect him, of course, but it’s impossible. He will read them all.”

I started to rise, and then remembered you weren’t supposed to stand except with permission, and then remembered I was American, after all, not subject to such rules. I rose. I nearly said Mrs. Simpson and caught myself just in time. “Ma’am,” I said instead, “I can’t imagine why you’re telling me all this.”

“Oh, I understand, believe me,” she said. “You’ve got a job to do. A girl’s got to make her way in the world. I also suspect there was no Mr. Randolph. Am I correct?”

There was a noise through the window, a spray of brilliant laughter. The duchess gave no sign of hearing it, not a flinch.

“Oh, the husband’s real enough,” I said. “At least, he was real. But even a dead husband gives a girl on her own a bit more respectability.”

“Of course. A girl like you, for example, a girl with no one to stand up for her. I understand completely. You haven’t got a fortune. Just an allowance of some kind, I presume?” She tilted her head, narrowed her eyes intelligently. “Or not even that?”

“I’m afraid that’s none of—”

“Mrs. Randolph.” She rose to meet me. “What if you were to become a journalist?”

“Become a journalist?”

“A column of your very own, weekly or monthly, whatever suits. Syndicated in all the papers, or exclusive to Metropolitan, as you like.”

“What kind of column?”

“Why, reporting from Nassau, from the middle of society, all our busy little doings here. Intriguing tidbits. The kind of details that only an intimate friend of the Windsors might know. Surely that would be of interest to readers in America?”

The exact shade of her eyes was so particular, so remarkable, a plush, vivid lavender, they had a name for it: Wallis blue. Her wedding dress, I’m told, matched that shade exactly. And I don’t blame her. Those eyes, they held you in thrall, especially when she wanted them to. When she channeled the full force of her charm through them and into you. On that July day, the duchess was as much a mystery to me as to everyone else who wasn’t married to her, and maybe even—maybe especially—to the fellow who was. I perhaps thought her morals a little wanting, her ethics a little thin, her mind a little shallow, her clothing a little fabulous and perhaps the most interesting thing about her. As for me, I was a pedigree twenty-five-year-old feline, blessed with a sleek, dark pelt and composure in spades, polished to a sheen by decent schooling and a little over a year of college, followed by a swift, brutal tutorial in the outside world to harden the skin beneath. I thought I was plenty of match for a woman like that, the Duchess of Windsor, the former Mrs. Ernest Simpson, the former Mrs. Earl Winfield Spencer, yes, that woman, striking, thin-lipped, blue-eyed, lantern-jawed, who nearly toppled the British Crown by the force of her ambition.

But here’s the thing. You cannot possibly know somebody you’ve never met. You can observe her in a thousand photographs, a hundred newsreels, and not understand a thing about her. That person on the magazine cover is a character in a play, a character in a book, a character of her own creation and your imagination, and this immaculate namesake bears no more than a passing resemblance to the original. Remember that, please. You don’t know her. You know only the fascinating fiction she’s presented to you. Surely that would be of interest to readers in America, she had said.

“I bet it would,” I answered.

Until that instant, I hadn’t noticed the tension in her face. That tautness, I thought it was her natural state. Now everything loosened, her eyes and cheekbones and mouth, that fragile skin, like the softening of frosting on a cake. She looked almost human. I thought this couldn’t be happening, I couldn’t be standing here. She couldn’t be offering me this prize. There must be some trick. But her eyes were so blue.

“Then we understand each other?” she said.

“I believe so.”

“Good.”

She held out her hand to me, and I clasped it. The coldness shocked me, but what did I expect? I always seemed to simmer a degree or two warmer than other women. I opened my mouth to ask her particulars, how all these lovely plans might be set into motion, but she spoke first.

“Let’s return to our guests, shall we? There are so many people I’d like you to meet.”