Beatriz Williams - The Golden Hour

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London, SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in the UK by HarperCollins Publishers 2019

Copyright © Beatriz Williams

Cover design by Ellie Game @HarperCollins Publishers 2019

Cover photographs © Lee Avison/Arcangel Images (woman and foreground), Shutterstock.com(trees, hedges and background)

Beatriz Williams asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008380274

Ebook Edition © August 2019 ISBN: 9780008380281

Version: 2019-08-06

To women and men everywhere who live with depression.

You are loved. You are needed. The night will pass.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

In August 1940 …

PART I

Lulu: December 1943 (London)

Lulu: June 1941 (The Bahamas)

Elfriede: July 1900 (Switzerland)

Lulu: July 1941 (The Bahamas)

Elfriede: August 1900 (Switzerland)

Lulu: July 1941 (The Bahamas)

Elfriede: September 1900 (Switzerland)

Lulu: July 1941 (The Bahamas)

PART II

Lulu: December 1943 (London)

Elfriede: October 1900 (Germany)

Lulu: December 1941 (The Bahamas)

Elfriede: November 1900 (Germany)

Lulu: December 1941 (The Bahamas)

PART III

Lulu: December 1943 (London)

Elfriede: June 1905 (Florida)

Lulu: June 1942 (The Bahamas)

Elfriede: July 1905 (Florida)

Lulu: June 1942 (The Bahamas)

Elfriede: August 1905 (Berlin)

PART IV

Lulu: December 1943 (Scotland)

Lulu: July 1943 (The Bahamas)

Elfriede: June 1916 (Scotland)

Lulu: July 1943 (The Bahamas)

Elfriede: August 1916 (Scotland)

Lulu: December 1943 (Scotland)

Lulu: July 1943 (The Bahamas)

Lulu: December 1943 (Scotland)

PART V

Lulu: November 1943 (The Bahamas)

PART VI

Ursula: January 1944 (Germany)

Lulu: March 1944 (Switzerland)

Elfriede: March 1944 (Switzerland)

Epilogue. Lulu: June 1951 (RMS Queen Mary, At Sea)

Historical Note

Acknowledgments

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Beatriz Williams

About the Publisher

In August 1940, the Duke of Windsor is appointed governor of the Bahamas by his brother, George VI, on the recommendation of Winston Churchill.

While the former king feels the appointment is beneath his station, he accepts, in the expectation that loyal service in this colonial outpost will lead to more prestigious assignments in the future.

But despite an exemplary public record of governorship for the duration of the Second World War, and the energetic support of the Duchess of Windsor as the governor’s wife, the duke is never again asked to serve his country in an official capacity.

IN THE FOYER of the Basil Hotel in Cadogan Gardens, atop the tea-colored wallpaper, a sign advises guests that blackout hours will be observed strictly . Another sign reminds us that enemy ears are listening. The wallpaper’s crowded with tiny orange flowers that seem to have started out life as pink, and they put me in mind of a story I once read about a woman who stares at the wallpaper in her room until she goes batty. Although that wallpaper was yellow, as I recall, so I may have some time to go.

I consult my watch. Three twenty-two.

Outside the windows, the air’s darkening fast. Some combination of coal smoke and December fog and the early hour at which the sun goes down at this latitude, as if the wallpaper and the signboards and the piles of rubble across the street aren’t enough to make you melancholy. I check the watch again—three twenty-three, impossible—and my gaze happens to catch that of the desk clerk. He’s examining me over the top of a rickety pair of reading glasses, because he hasn’t liked the look of me from the beginning. Why should he? A woman shows up at your London hotel in the middle of December, the middle of wartime, tanned skin, American accent, unmistakable scent of the foreign about her. She pays for her room in advance and carries only a small suitcase. Now she’s awaiting some no-good rendezvous, right in the middle of your dank, shabby, respectable foyer, and you ought to telephone the authorities, just to be on the safe side. In fact, you probably have telephoned the authorities.

The clerk’s gaze flicks to the window, and then to the clock above the mantel behind me. He steps away from the reception desk and goes to pull down the blackout shades, to close the heavy chintz curtains. His limbs are frail and stiff; his suit was tailored in maybe the previous century. When he moves, his white hair flies away from his skull, and I catch a whiff of cologne that reminds me of a barbershop. I consider whether I should rise and help him. I consider whether he’d kill me for it.

Well. Not kill me exactly, not the literal act of murder. It seems the killing of people has got inside my head somehow. War will do that. War will turn killing into a commonplace act, a thing men do to each other every day, every instant, for no particular reason except not to be killed yourself, so that you start to expect it everywhere, murder hangs darkly over you and around you like an atmosphere. The valley of the shadow of death, that’s war. Killing for no particular reason. At least in regular life, when somebody kills somebody else, he generally has a damned good reason, at least so far as the killer’s concerned. It’s personal, it’s singular. As I observe the feathery movement of the clerk’s hair in the draft, I wonder how much reason a fellow like that needed to kill someone. We all have our breaking points, you know.

A bell jingles. The front door opens. A blast of chill air whooshes inside, along with a pale woman in a worn coat and a brown fedora, almost like a man’s. She brushes the damp from her sleeves and looks around, spies the clerk, who’s just crossing the foyer on his way back to the desk.