Michael Ridpath: Shadows of War

It was the best he could do.

Fortunately, Conrad’s passport was at his parents’ house in Kensington Square, rather than the family home in Somerset. He would also need some civilian clothes: he could hardly travel in his uniform. Unfortunately it was likely that his father would be up in town. The most natural thing would be for Conrad to stay there that night and dine with his father, but Conrad thought Van had been absolutely correct in anticipating that Lord Oakford would want to interrogate him about his mission. Much better to sneak in, grab his things, sneak out, and stay at a hotel somewhere.

The plan worked. His father was out at the House of Lords, and Conrad left a message with his valet, Williamson, apologizing that he had missed him.

Telegram sent, travel documents in order, dressed in mufti and suitcase in hand, Conrad checked into a hotel in Bloomsbury.

Paris

Major Edward ‘Fruity’ Metcalfe skipped up the steps of the imposing house on the boulevard Suchet out by the bois de Boulogne, and rang the doorbell. The gendarme on duty outside nodded to him in recognition. Lights peeped out beneath the curtains which barely covered the tall windows of the four-storey property. There would be no German bombers that night, and the inhabitants of Paris knew it.

The door was promptly opened by a footman, and inside a butler as tall as Fruity stepped forward.

‘Good evening, Hale,’ said Fruity, handing the man his coat and hat.

‘Good evening, Major Metcalfe.’

‘You know we are dining with your former employer this evening?’

‘Please be sure to send my regards to Mr Bedaux, sir.’

‘If you like, Hale. But I don’t want to taunt him, what?’

Hale was the best butler in France. Everyone knew it, including both his former employer — Charles Bedaux, and his present employer — the Duke of Windsor.

‘Tell His Royal Highness I’m here, would you? I’ll wait.’

‘Very good, sir.’ Hale disappeared up the stairs, and Fruity settled in his favourite Louis the somethingth chair, crossed his long legs and lit up a cigarette. He stared at the absurdly ornate clock opposite him, its dial surrounded by an exploding sun of gold leaf, and listened to its familiar restful tick. One way or the other he had spent a lot of time over the last month waiting for the duke in this hallway. The duke would either be late or very late. Fruity didn’t mind: it was all part of the job.

Fruity was HRH the Duke of Windsor’s aide-de-camp, or equerry or something. He wasn’t quite sure what his official title was, which was fine, but he was becoming increasingly unsure whether he would even be paid for it, which wasn’t. The duke had found himself in a pickle when war had broken out, and Fruity had been willing to step into the breach. The British government had tied itself in knots trying to work out how the king-in-exile should be treated in the new war. The duke and his wife had returned to England from their house in Antibes to be met with official indifference. Fruity had done his duty, inviting the duke to stay at his own modest house in Sussex, and then joining him when the powers that be had finally found a job for him in France. That’s what friends were for. And whatever else he was, Fruity was the duke’s friend. Sometimes he wondered whether he was his only friend.

He heard the scrabble of paws on the stairway and stood up. Pookie, Detto and Prisie tumbled down. Fruity bent down to scratch the ears of the largest of the cairn terriers, Detto, his favourite. Detto wagged his tail, as did the other two. The younger one, the puppy, started yapping. They were all pleased to see Fruity; animals usually were.

‘Oh, Prisie, do be quiet!’

Fruity straightened up. ‘Hello, Wallis.’ He tried his best friendly smile, but it wasn’t returned. The duchess was smartly dressed for a night in alone, in an elegant black dress with a giant diamond brooch in the shape of a star sparkling from her forbiddingly flat chest. On anyone else, Fruity would have assumed it was fake, but Wallis never wore costume jewellery. She was, after all, the woman for whom a king had given up his throne.

‘Be sure to bring him back right away, Fruity.’

‘Of course, Wallis.’

‘No going on anywhere else?’

‘Straight home for us,’ Fruity said. Wallis’s strictures were completely unnecessary, more was the pity. In the old days in London, when the duke was the Prince of Wales, he and Fruity would have gone on to the Embassy Club after dinner, and stayed up all night drinking and dancing. And of course there were plenty of tempting places to visit in Paris. But the duke was even more scared of Wallis than Fruity was; there was absolutely no chance of him going on anywhere afterwards.

‘Fruity!’ The duke himself bounded down the stairs, dressed in black tie and dinner jacket, his mane of thick blond hair carefully parted and combed. He smiled broadly at Fruity, showing off those perfect gleaming teeth, his blue eyes twinkling. ‘Are you ready?’

Fruity grinned back. ‘I certainly am.’

The duke turned to his wife.

‘Give my love to Charles, Dave,’ Wallis said. Fruity winced. The duke’s family and his closest friends called him by the seventh of his many Christian names, ‘David’, instead of the first, ‘Edward’. But Dave?

‘And to Fern,’ the duchess went on. ‘I haven’t seen her for years. See if you can arrange for all of us to meet up soon, will you, sweetheart?’

‘I will, darling. Let’s go, Fruity!’

The duke’s Buick was waiting outside, piloted by his chauffeur Webster, with a former Scotland Yard detective in the front seat next to him. Fruity and the duke climbed in the back.

‘I was just writing up my notes for the Wombat,’ said the duke. ‘The Wombat’ was Major General Howard-Vyse, the senior British liaison officer at French headquarters.

‘I’d say it was rather a successful trip,’ Fruity said. They had just spent five days together touring a portion of the French lines.

‘I suppose so,’ said the duke. ‘But they are a frightful shower, the French, aren’t they? I’ve done my best to point it out tactfully, but it’s damned difficult.’

It was their third trip. The duke had been given a job at the British Mission to the French headquarters at Vincennes, reporting to the Wombat. In that role he was to inspect the French lines in a series of tours, but he had also been given the task of reporting back to the Chief of the Imperial General Staff in London with an assessment of the strengths and especially weaknesses of the French defences.

They had started near the Channel, where the powerful French 7 thArmy was poised to speed north following a German invasion of Belgium, and then worked their way east. Their most recent trip had been to the French 2 ndArmy stationed along the Meuse in the Ardennes, at the hinge where the Maginot Line along the Franco-German border met neutral Luxembourg and Belgium.

The duke was right: the 2 ndArmy was a frightful shower led by a complacent idiot, a general named Huntziger. But Fruity enjoyed driving around the lines with the Little Man, hundreds of miles from Wallis. The further he strayed from her petticoats, the more the duke loosened up, the more fun he was.

The Buick cruised down the wide avenue du Président-Wilson towards the centre of Paris. Headlights of oncoming motor cars were barely covered; strips of light spilled out between inadequate blinds in the cafés. Where London was battened down under a grim black cloak, Paris at night was lifting its hem to show some garter.

The Little Man might have to rush back to Mrs Nibs after dinner, but that didn’t mean Fruity had to.

‘How was Bedaux?’ the duke said. ‘I haven’t seen him for nearly two years now.’