‘Sounds like Guy!’
‘It was a complete disaster. Tangier’s supposed to be neutral, a place where the Allies and the Axis meet, in the same way those soldiers played football with the Germans in the First War. Finely balanced diplomacy, Monty called it, with everyone trying desperately hard to learn everybody else’s secrets while at the same time not putting a foot wrong. Unique in the world. Until your friend Guy went and did that.’
‘What exactly is the “that” that he’s supposed to have done? He’s never said.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Betsey evasively, ‘I can’t have been listening.’ She was looking across the room at her sable coat, relic of a bygone age, slung across the back of a chair. She shivered. ‘These British summers, darling. Sometimes I wish I was back in Charleston.’
‘No, you don’t! You’re the queen of London, the biggest socialite our mighty American nation has ever produced. You reign supreme, and you love it.’
‘Amazing what good a few ol’ greenbacks can do in times of trouble!’
‘You make everybody happy with your parties. And now there you are, helping your prince find a better job for himself. Selfless! May I ask, does Granville know about him?’
‘Oh darling, he’s so busy with his airplanes and his diplomacy and his hands-across-the-sea. No time for romance.’
‘Your prince on the other hand . . .’
‘No time for anything else, Foxy!’ Her laugh tinkled across the room.
‘So can you help Guy?’
Betsey flapped her eyelids at her friend. ‘Are you two . . . ?’
‘Certainly not! I’m engaged to be married! It’s just that he needs a boost. The Tangier business took it out of him rather and, really, he shouldn’t be reduced to pen-pushing at Buck House.’
‘I’ll see what can be done,’ said Betsey. ‘And now I want to talk about Wallis and David.’
‘Yes?’
It was an unspoken competition between the two well-connected women – Foxy had known the Windsors longer, but did Betsey know them better? The age-old one-upmanship among those close to royalty was no different in wartime England than it had been in Tudor times.
‘I’m glad they’re safe, though the job they’ve got is a terrible snub. I just worry, stuck out there, miles from anywhere, that it’ll be the undoing of them.’
Foxy lit a cigarette. ‘I spoke to Wallis on the telephone a few weeks ago when they were in Palm Beach. She seemed pretty chipper.’
‘All the time they’re in America, yes. But they’re back in Nassau now and she’s hating it. He’s in a rage because everyone’s been ordered not to call her Your Royal Highness, while she hates the house – she told Nancy Carew “the dining room looks like a ski hut in Norway”. And she’s taken down the portrait of the King – that didn’t go down well.
‘They’ve been there for a year. They were allocated a certain amount of money to do the place up, and she spent a quarter of it on a dining table – a table, my dear! And then he keeps threatening to come back to London.’
‘I heard that,’ said Foxy, nodding. ‘Hugh says he’s making the Prime Minister’s life a misery over this HRH business, and he feels the Bahamas can govern themselves – they don’t need him, and he could do much more for the war effort back here in Britain.’
‘I like them both,’ said Betsey, ‘but they’re living in a dream world. He wants to come back and play at being a field marshal – the King’s never going to allow it.’
‘It’s more than that. He wants his status back. Five years ago he was king and emperor, the world at his feet; now he’s like the mayor of some coal-mining town up north. I definitely get the impression he believes that if Buckingham Palace is bombed again, and the King is killed, he’ll get his old job back. That’s the real reason he wants to come home. To stay close.’
‘I’d say Wallis prefers Palm Beach. No blackout, no air raids, no saluting. Plenty of champagne. And they curtsy to her.’
‘What do you think, then? She won’t come back with David?’
Betsey Cody smiled. ‘On the contrary, I think she will. She’d love to wear that crown!’
CHAPTER SIX
‘Ah, Aggie. Can you spare a moment?’
‘Will it take long, Mr Harford?’ Aggie slowly looked up from the letter she was reading. She had moved into Ed Brampton’s desk, a far more imposing affair than her modest workstation in the anteroom.
‘You never told me that Major Ed was related to Sir Topham.’
‘Everybody in this place is related to someone or other. That’s how it works here.’
‘Not me.’
‘You may not be related, Mr Harford, but somebody put in a good word for you. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.’
‘I don’t think so. But you? You’re related?’
‘I’m below-stairs,’ came the tart response. ‘We get our jobs from the Labour Exchange.’
Aggie was wearing a luminous shade of blue which caught the light a certain way, making Guy think of the strange turbaned Englishwoman in Tangier, the one whose tame peacock came each morning to lie on her eiderdown like an exotic bedspread.
‘Come on, now – tell me about Ed Brampton and the Master . . .’
‘Like I say, everyone’s related. The fellow who had Topsy’s job before him was Sir Derek Keppel – lovely old man, he was. His brother was married to Mrs Keppel – you know, the old king’s poppet.’
‘The one who lives at The Ritz?’
‘Mrs K occasionally puts her nose round the door here at the Palace too, but Kingy doesn’t approve. Doesn’t want his grandfather’s piece of stuff lording it around the place – which she’d do, given half the chance. She treats this place like a second home – knows all the footmen, gets them running errands, earwigs all the gossip then goes and blabs it back at The Ritz. She’s a pain in the backside.’
‘Well, I don’t suppose . . .’
‘Then there’s your boss, Tommy Lascelles. His cousin’s married to the Princess Royal. And the Master of the Horse, old Beaufort, he’s got Queen Mary staying with him at Badminton – his wife’s the King’s cousin. And so on.’
‘Fascinating, Aggie, but what I actually want to know is, what was it between Ed and Sir Topham? What sort of jobs was Ed asked to do – given he wasn’t actually supposed to be working directly for the Master of the Household?’
‘Well,’ said Aggie, ‘I could tell you a thing or two, but if you want the full story, it’s in that diary of his, wherever it ended up. Why do you want to know?’
‘Orders from above,’ lied Guy.
‘I’d find the diary if I were you. Meantime here are some more orders from above – a note from Tommy about your extra duties.’
‘Extra . . . ?’
‘It may take some time to replace Major Ed, and while we’re waiting, everyone has to do their bit.’
‘Go on,’ said Guy gloomily, ‘you may as well read it out.’