The Darkness of Wallis Simpson by Rose Tremain Read Free Book Online Page B

Wallis, my Wallis . . .’
    He said it sweetly, caressingly. He said it like no one else had ever said it. And he never got mad at her. Never called her an American bitch. He got mad at the world, but never at her. Perhaps he was the only one, out of everybody in the whole damn universe (including Ernest who just disappeared into the London smog) who loved her? Because it was he, too, wasn’t it, who gave her jewels? He told her some of them should have been Cookie’s but fuck that, he said, they were hers now and nobody was ever going to take them away.
    And not only jewels. Yeah, it’s coming back now. It was he who used to buy her caviar – as much as she liked, whenever she wanted it. And boy, how she’d loved that! She just craved it like she’d never craved any other food. She knew it was expensive, she knew that ninety-nine per cent of people in the world had never tasted it, but too bad. She was one of the one per cent. Lucky her. Lucky Bessiewallis Warfield from Baltimore.
    Lying very still on the floor, with the crowd still calling outside, Wallis thinks, with a smile, that she could use a spoonful of caviar now, its texture so soft and strange. It would be the one thing she could eat. And, still smiling, she decides that really she wouldn’t mind if the little man came into the room and helped her back into the bed, so that she could be comfortable as she ate it. He had such gentle hands. With these hands, more gentle than a woman’s, he used to spoon caviar into her mouth. Spoon it into her mouth! What an adorable, dippy little rite! Who else ever did a thing like that? And his blue eyes used to smile into hers. Smile with such love and adoration. And then he’d ask, gently: ‘Is that lovely, darling? Is that delicious for my darling?’
    Darling. My darling.
    She said these words, too. Didn’t she? Said them to him. Said them often, and with tenderness. Sure she did.
    So OK, this must be it, the thing she had to dredge up from the darkness. When the Maître comes pestering her next time, this is what she’ll tell her: ‘I’ve remembered him,’ she’ll say. ‘He was too pale to have a name. I always called him darling.’
    And then the whole darn thing will be put to rest.

How It Stacks Up

She says to him: ‘On your birthday, McCreedy, what d’you want to do?’
    She always calls him McCreedy. You’d have thought by now, after being his wife for so long, she’d have started to call him John, but she never does. He calls her Hilda; she calls him McCreedy, like he was a stranger, like he was a footballer she’d seen on the telly.
    â€˜I don’t know,’ he says. ‘What’ll we do, then?’
    â€˜Forty-six,’ she says. ‘You’d better think of something.’
    â€˜Go out . . .?’ he says.
    â€˜Out where?’
    The pub, he thinks, but doesn’t say. With the fellas from work. Get the Guinness down. Tell some old Dublin jokes. Laugh till you can’t laugh any more.
    â€˜What’d the kids like?’ he says.
    She lights a ciggie. Her twentieth or thirtieth that Sunday, he’s stopped counting. Smoke pours out of her mouth, thick and blue. ‘Never mind the kids, McCreedy,’ she says. ‘It’s your fuckin’ birthday.’
    â€˜Go back to Ireland,’ he says. ‘That’s what I’d like. Go back there for good.’
    She stubs out the ciggie. She’s always changing her mind about everything, minute to minute. ‘When you’ve got a sensible answer,’ she says, ‘let me know what it is.’
    And she leaves him, click-clack on her worn-out heels, pats her hair, opens the kitchen door and lets it slam behind her.
    McCreedy stares at the ashtray. Time she was dead, he thinks. Time the smoking killed her.
    He goes out into the garden where his nine-year-old daughter, Katy, is playing on her own. Katy