Beatriz Williams - The Golden Hour

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.”