Beatriz Williams - The Golden Hour

“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.