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.”
Nobody chuckled, nobody gave the least sign of knowing that the Duchess of Windsor was not, in fact, royal: by express decree of those who were. Certainly not Wallis herself. She painted on a thin, beautiful smile and stepped to her husband’s side. For the first time, I noticed that she wore a jeweled brooch pinned to her breast, the same brooch as in the photograph in Life magazine, and what do you know? It was a flamingo. She waved her ring-crusted hand. “Hello, everybody!”
Everybody murmured Hello!
“As David said. Thank you all for gathering here with us tonight. In a few minutes I’ll be coming round, cap outstretched, along with—I hope, anyway—someone who seems to have gone … oh, there he is!” Her face transformed, so that I realized she hadn’t really been smiling before, and now she was. She looked over my right shoulder, where a cluster of palms bordered the rock garden. “Mr. Thorpe! Where have you been hiding? Mr. Benedict Thorpe, ladies and gentlemen, a dear friend of mine and David’s, a scientist of international repute and a true patriot of our British Empire.”
She began to clap, and the crowd, shifting and straining to catch a glimpse of this true British patriot, burst into applause. Though I kept my gaze trained on the duchess—what a show she was, after all—I clapped along. I mean, it would have been rude otherwise, wouldn’t it? A scientist of international repute. I confess, I wasn’t that interested in science, at the time, but I could appreciate the affinity in others. Science was the future, after all. Everybody said so.
“Mr. Thorpe—hello, everybody!—Mr. Thorpe’s agreed to help me collect donations for the Red Cross tonight, a cause close to both our hearts, isn’t that right, Thorpe? In fact, it’s Mr. Thorpe’s own hat we’re going to pass around, so don’t be niggardly!” She paused for laughter. She still hadn’t taken her eyes from that patch of garden from which this Thorpe had emerged. I felt a stir of curiosity—or maybe even premonition, who knows—and turned my head at last to catch a glimpse. A palmetto spread its fronds between us, blocking my view. Before me, the duchess waved her hand. “Step up, Thorpus. Don’t be shy!”
The crowd stirred, making way. I turned and stepped back with everyone else. A pair of shoulders swept past. In the slight draft of his passing, I smelled not the tang of cigarettes or cocktails or perspiration—those were endemic—but a soap of some kind, or else cologne, hair oil, whatever it was, and I believe I made a gasp of recognition. There was applause, delighted voices. The fellow stepped to the duchess’s side and swept off his hat—he wore a towering silk topper for the occasion—to reveal that hair, short, glistening, ruddy-blond, and I covered my mouth with my hand. His spectacles were just slightly crooked.
He beamed across the crowd, left to right, and to my great relief his gaze passed right over me, though I stood in front, next to the duke. My cheeks ached, and I realized I was smiling back, even though he wasn’t looking in my direction. Thorpe, I thought. He had a name. Thorpe.
“Right ho, chaps,” he said. “Ladies. Let’s make this quick and painless, shall we? Empty your pockets, so I don’t have to go round the room again with my pistol.”
BEFORE THE COLLECTION PARTY PASSED by, I slipped between guests and up the path toward the governor’s residence. I don’t believe I started out with any conscious intent. A breath of air, that’s what I murmured as I sidled my way through the crowd, and this was true enough. Certainly I wanted air, and once free of the smokiness and perspiration of the party, I found air in abundance. I also saw a pair of French doors standing open to the evening air, allowing a glimpse of a hallway, and not a footman in sight.
Now, it wasn’t as if I meant any harm. I had just sipped champagne with the duchess, I even felt a stir of liking for her, a warmth I hadn’t expected. When somebody pays you compliments, pays you the favor of her attention and interest, you can’t help but think she must be a person of great taste and discernment. I meant no disrespect toward either of them, duke or duchess; or their privacy. There was only curiosity, and the desire to escape, and a certain surge of audacity that visits me from time to time, and also the possibility—duchesses could be fickle, after all—that I might never again have the opportunity to enter this building and see its rooms for myself. Which, in retrospect, is just the sort of logic that lands a girl in trouble, in love affairs as in houses that don’t belong to her.
Thus the inevitable. Instead of soothing my lungs and returning to the party or else to my own little room at the Prince George, snug and sound, I continued down that hall, the entire width of Government House, until I arrived at the door on the opposite side. I made no hesitation whatsoever. Hesitation’s fatal, my father always told me, when he could be bothered to speak to me at all; deliberate all you like upon a course of action, but once you’ve made your decision, don’t for God’s sake waver. I laid my hand on the doorknob and opened it to find some sort of library. The duke’s own study, perhaps. There was a desk and a fireplace, hissing the last remains of a good solid fire. The furniture was up-to-date, the upholstery fresh. I felt the duchess’s taste hanging in the air, coating every surface, every detail, every Union Jack pillow, every club chair. Even in her absence, she possessed a magnificent presence.
Now we’re getting somewhere, I thought.
I made a progress along the walls, examining each picture as one might examine the contents of an art gallery or a museum. I daresay I imagined I might discover some clue to the essential mystery of them—the Windsors, I mean—this exquisitely dressed pair of sybaritic bigots who had the power to fascinate millions, even those who weren’t the slightest bit interested in fashion or luxury or jewelry or parties. This painting: Had the duchess chosen it for its form and its meaning
