Abdication: A Novel (2 page)
Read Abdication: A Novel Online
Authors: Juliet Nicolson
Tags: #Literary, #General, #Historical, #Fiction
A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by Juliet Nicolson
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Atria Books hardcover edition May 2012
and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at
www.simonspeakers.com
.
Designed by Dana Sloan
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nicolson, Juliet.
Abdication : a novel / by Juliet Nicolson. — 1st Atria Books hardcover ed.
p. cm.
1. Windsor, Edward, Duke of, 1894–1972—Fiction. 2. Windsor, Wallis Warfield, Duchess of, 1896–1986—Fiction. 3. Aristocracy (Social class)—Fiction. 4. London (England)—Social life and customs—20th century—Fiction. 5. Secrets—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6064.I27A23 2012
823'.914—dc23 2012006993
ISBN: 978-1-4516-5883-5
ISBN: 978-1-4516-5884-2 (ebook)
For Clemmie and Flora and Charlie
with all my love,
and more
.
Contents
O
n a gloomy February afternoon in 1936 a young woman of nineteen years brought the dark blue Rolls-Royce slowly to a halt. Managing the mahogany steering wheel with surprising ease for someone so slight, May Thomas parked the car outside the country home of a middle-aged man and his married mistress.
The journey from London to Sunningdale had taken about an hour and shortly before reaching the town May edged the car along the boundary of Windsor Great Park before turning off the road into an unmarked opening. She was enjoying the unaccustomed feeling of stylish authority given to her by the new chauffeur’s uniform of blue trousers, jacket and matching navy blue cap with its shiny patent leather peak. Driving through a pair of wide open and crisply painted white gates, she took the car slowly up a rising avenue of plump-trunked oak trees and thick rhododendron bushes. There were signs that substantial clearances had been made within the undergrowth but in some places, where the tangle of branches at the top formed a thick canopy, the snow had failed to make its way down into this melancholy landscape.
As the sand-coloured house—although no one could actually call it that—appeared round a bend, lit up by an ingenious series of concealed electric floodlights, May was relieved that she was only dropping
off her passenger and would not be required to stay the night. The series of battlements surrounding the central tower that protruded from a mass of crenelated buildings were very un-house like; and yet the building’s diminutive size made it ineligible for the status of castle. May was reminded of a picture she had seen in one of her brother Sam’s old cowboy books, a turreted fort out of which an invading Red Indian leapt complete with bow and arrow.
A woman in a slim-fitting and tightly belted black dress with long sleeves and a white collar was standing at the front door. She looked a bit like a nurse or a school matron. As May eased the car slowly alongside her, the woman stepped forward and opened the car door.
“Evangeline, my dear!” said the woman in a hard-edged accent that sounded like coins rubbing up against each other in a pocket. “You have no idea how pleased I am to see you!”
May’s passenger was struggling to get out of the car. In fact, Miss Evangeline Nettlefold was wedged between the back seat and the back of the front passenger seat and the harder she struggled to get free the more stuck she became. A little dog, a Pekinese that had been sitting on his owner’s lap throughout the journey, appeared to be having an asthma attack and when May ran round to the other side of the car to release her passenger she saw that the dog had drooled onto a patch of Miss Nettlefold’s grey wool skirt, leaving a black stain on the front panel.
After an awkward tussle between May, Miss Nettlefold and a now frothing dog, the large woman found herself suddenly catapulted into the open air.
“Oh, Wallis, you know me! Too many delicious English cookies for my own good!” she apologised, in a surprisingly unflustered and rather beautiful voice. Her chubby cheeks resembled pink gobstoppers. “But how
divine
it is to be here at last.”
And with a wave to May, she turned towards the front door, her fur coat flapping open in the wind. The two women immediately fell into conversation, glancing briefly backwards in May’s direction before vanishing inside. Miss Nettlefold’s arm had been tucked tightly into that of her hostess, a woman with an unnaturally wide smile, a doll-like body, high shoulders and an enormous head. She reminded May of someone, although May could not quite identify the memory. After several deep breaths of cold winter air May returned to the car, removed her cap and shook her hair free. She was about to resume her place at the wheel when she noticed the flat square package on the front seat. The brown paper parcel was imprinted with a store logo, a sharp-edged four leaf clover separating the letters “H” and “K.”
“I brought this all the way from Baltimore,” Miss Nettlefold had told May when they set off from St. John’s Wood that afternoon. “Can you put it somewhere safe for me? Knowing my luck, if I find a space for it here in the back with me and Wiggle, I will probably sit on it, and records have a funny way of snapping when sat on, don’t you find?”
With the parcel safely under one arm May returned to the front door and pulled the bell. A black-suited butler answered the ring. He was as compact and elegant as a Russian Sobranie.
“Sorry to trouble you, sir, but Miss Nettlefold has left something in the car.”
“I will make sure she gets it immediately,” he replied with unequivocal authority. But May felt uneasy. From early on in her life she had discovered that trust must be earned.
“If you don’t mind,” she said, raising her voice to a level beyond the tremble that threatened to unseat her resolve, “Miss Nettlefold left the package in my care and I would like to make sure she gets it myself.”
“I assure you, Miss, that if you give the package to me it will be delivered safely to Miss Nettlefold.”
But May kept her composure, holding on to the parcel tightly and wishing she had remembered to put her cap back on her head. A short silence elapsed between them.
“Oh well, you better follow me,” the cigarette-slim butler snapped, before moistening his lips with a thin tongue.
Walking a pace behind the stiff back ahead of her, May followed the butler into a short passageway, which billowed out into a high-ceilinged hall painted white, the starkness relieved by eight bright yellow leather chairs positioned in each of the octagonal corners. May’s hard-soled driving shoes clicked in echoing reply to those of the butler as they crossed the black and white marble floor. A pretty maid in a pink uniform, a lace-edged hat perched on her blond hair put her head round a corner.
“Excuse me, Mr. Osborne,” she said. “Miss Spry is on the telephone and wants to know whether it would be convenient to come over later and do the flowers for the weekend?”