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Gone With the Windsors
Laurie Graham
The hilarious and touching novel from Laurie Graham – the fictional diary of the Queen’s best friend in pre-war London.Laurie Graham's brilliant novel is the fictional diary of Maybell Brumby, a wealthy American widow who arrives in London in 1932 and discovers that an old school friend is in town: Bessie Wallis Warfield, now Mrs Ernest Simpson. Maybell and Wally are made for one another. One has money and a foothold in high society, courtesy of a sister who married well. The other has ruthless ambition and enough energy to power the National Grid. Before the year is out, Wally has begun her seduction of the Prince of Wales, and as she clambers towards the throne she makes sure Maybell and her cheque book are always close at hand.So Maybell becomes an eye-witness to the Abdication Crisis. From her perch in Carlton Gardens, home of her influential brother-in-law Lord Melhuish, she has the perfect vantage point for observing the anxious, changing allegiances for and against Queen Wally, and the political contours of pre-war London.When the crisis comes and Wally flees to the south of France, she insists on Maybell going with her. 'Are you sure that's advisable, darling?' asks the King. 'Of course it is,' snaps Wally. 'She's the Paymaster General.' Maybell's diary records the marriage, the Windsors' exile, and the changing complexion of the Greatest Love Story. It takes the sound of German jackboots at the gate and personal tragedy to make her close its pages for the last time.
LAURIE GRAHAM
Gone With the Windsors
Copyright (#ulink_5ebfc2ee-d630-5566-b871-8fbc4e3c7bcb)
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/)
Copyright © Laurie Graham 2005
Laurie Graham asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Cover illustration © Rachel Ross
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780007146765
Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2012 ISBN: 9780007369836
Version: 2017-03-30
Praise (#ulink_ebb82ce5-922a-5239-8a23-88bb6e23a762)
From the reviews of Gone with the Windsors:
‘Graham succeeds in crystallising the lives of a social set whose raison d’être was the next poolside gin-fizz. Alongside le tout Baltimore, we await to see how far Wallis will jeopardise her hard-won security with Ernest for the title of “Queen of Nowhere”. It’s a testament to Graham’s pitch-perfect storytelling that we care’
Independent
‘Graham’s sunny control makes the abdication crisis sound as fresh and tangy as Wally’s favourite dinner party dessert, strawberry sherbet. Maybell Brumby is a wonderful, sassy creation: not exactly one of your heart-of-gold heroines, but, more entertainingly, one with a heart of gilt’
Sunday Times
‘With an enviable sleight of hand, Laurie Graham affectionately impales her hilariously oblivious heroine. I ate this book right up’
MARY GUTERSON, author of We Are All Fine Here
‘[An] absolute pleasure to read from start to finish … Wryly observed secondary characters are also a joy … By infusing her sharp satire and meticulous social observation with a certain sweetness, Laurie Graham proves herself a master of showing without ever needing to tell’
Time Out
‘Laugh-out-loud funny’
Daily Telegraph
‘Refreshing, honest and very funny … enjoyable without being thoughtless, smart without being superficial’
Scotsman
‘Maybell Brumby is a marvellous comic creation’
Scotland on Sunday
‘Laurie Graham is such a vivid, creative storyteller’
TLS
Dedication (#ulink_c87d5af2-87bc-5e6b-8b2e-a47d48de47d6)
To Howard
Contents
Cover (#u15ebf622-2a02-5587-8620-2a653fdaa1fd)
Title Page (#u19b226b2-e17f-5b85-b8f9-84e4b4137f35)
Copyright (#u052592af-511c-5b1b-a41e-68ca0e2d531d)
Praise (#ucd93e7c0-5e22-562a-9149-6daa12c9a923)
Dedication (#u4952aaad-de63-5a9a-afde-916e965cf20d)
10th March 1932, Sweet Air, Baltimore (#uda692f60-14e4-5e25-a2ed-5433138ad955)
1st January 1933 (#u6db920fc-3ace-5c8f-ba7f-7545468d4ebd)
1st January 1934 (#litres_trial_promo)
1st January 1935 (#litres_trial_promo)
2nd January 1936, Wilton Place (#litres_trial_promo)
1st January 1937 (#litres_trial_promo)
2nd January 1938 (#litres_trial_promo)
2nd January 1939 (#litres_trial_promo)
8th January 1940 (#litres_trial_promo)
8th January 1946, Sweet Air, Baltimore (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
By the Same Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
10th March 1932, Sweet Air, Baltimore (#ulink_372282c5-6f13-5cac-b840-14f9a1dabace)
Six months since Danforth Brumby surrendered to the first hint of kidney failure and left me a widow. It always was the risk in marrying an older man. Yesterday his headstone was raised, so now it’s time to look to the future. I still have my youth and my looks. Men are already flocking to my side and women are pursuing me as always for my advice and my vivacious presence at their dinner tables. Le tout Baltimore is impatient for my return to society, so tomorrow I shall drive into town, place my chinchilla in cold storage, and order a selection of spring outfits from Madame Lucille. A new chapter opens.
13th March 1932
A letter from sister Violet. Why not come to London, Maybell? she begs. It will lift you out of yourself. It’s impossible to remain sad for long in a house full of children.
Well, that is a matter of opinion.
Pips Waldo is here, she writes. You always liked Pips. And Judson Erlanger. Remember him? He’s married to one of the Chandos girls.
I’ll say I remember him! Judson Erlanger took me to the Princeton Ball.
It’s getting to be a real Little Baltimore over here, she concludes. And who knows, we may even find you another husband. Melhuish knows quite everyone.
I have already endured thirteen years of Violet’s condescension, brought on by her marriage to Donald Melhuish—Lord Melhuish as she reminds me with tedious regularity. The truth is, I could have snagged Melhuish for myself, had my tastes run to cold castles and men in skirts, but I allowed Violet to have him and I’ve said nothing since to disturb her smug satisfaction in her title and her connections and her lumpen Melhuish offspring. To some, it is given to tread the wilder track, to risk the ravine in order to conquer more majestic peaks, and I have always had a head for heights.
PS, she adds. You might think of spending some time with Doopie. She has missed you dreadfully.
So there we have it. Violet doesn’t want me in London for the zest I would undoubtedly bring to her life, nor does she particularly intend to find me a lord to marry. Tired of playing the angel of mercy, she hopes simply to saddle me with the retard.
What a trial Doopie has been to us all, a regrettable afterthought in a family already perfectly adorned by myself and Violet. If people must have children, two is certainly enough. But our misguided parents would have her, and they would allow her to arrive on my birthday, too.
“Maybell,” Father said, “you have the best birthday gift a girl could ask for.”
I had hoped for a new donkey cart, not an attention-seeking brat of a sister.
They named her Eveline and doted on every smile she smiled and every mew she mewed, but Sister Eveline didn’t impress me. Over and over, she’d allow a person to take away her pacifier, then look injured and start her sobbing. She never learned to say “No.” Then, after she caught inflammation of the brain, there could be no doubt about it. The child was a vegetable.
“Slow” was the word Mother used. “Slow, but special.”
The fact is, Eveline is stupid. Always was, always will be. I renamed her Stupid, but she’s so dumb she can’t even say it. “Doopie” is the best she has ever managed.
They tried her at Elementary School, but she was an embarrassment to us all, and it was soon decided that she would do just as well at home. She’s handy with a needle, I suppose. She can knit and crochet. And she’s quite the green-thumb, which used to endear her to Father.
“I had given up that Ficus for lost,” he’d say, “but Eveline has raised it from the dead.”
He claimed she knew every plant in the conservatory and talked to them like friends. Well, that says it all about Doopie’s powers of communication.
“Bayba,” she used to call me. And “Vite” was the best she ever managed for Violet.
“She does love you so,” Mother used to tell me. “Her eyes don’t leave you for an instant when you come into the room.”
There has never been any question of Doopie marrying, though I believe I am the only one who ever took the trouble to inform her of this. In 1914, when Violet was coming out, it was decided that because of the threat of war I had better come out, too. Just as well, because the Prussians quite ruined the 1915 season. Doopie helped with the trimming of our gowns.
“We’re invited to the Bachelor’s Club Cotillion,” I explained to her, “which is something that will never happen to you.”
She just smiled. How much of what one says penetrates her brain one never can tell, but she always seems contented enough. The only question was what would become of her. Father seemed to think that two sisters and a Trust Fund answered the case, but I was never consulted. And when Danforth Brumby asked for my hand, nobody asked him if he’d mind having a half-wit in the attic someday.
Violet thought she’d made her escape, I guess, settling overseas. I suppose she thought an idiot couldn’t be sent on a sea voyage. But when the time came, after Father passed over and Mother had to be placed in the care of a full-time nurse, it so happened that Brumby and I were much burdened with the renovations at Sweet Air. It would have been most unsuitable for Doopie to move in with us. She might have bumped into a marble pillar awaiting installation and brought it tumbling on top of her, or wandered into the path of some falling beam. It was safer by far to send her to Violet. We provided her with a chaperone, and they traveled first class, and everything has worked out for the best. From their army of peasant retainers, Violet and Melhuish have been able to furnish her with the simple companionship she requires and then, with the arrival of the babies, she has gained a nursery full of playmates.
So, I will not fall for Violet’s sly attempt at luring me to England. I see her little game. She hopes to catch me while I’m weakened by grief, and change the arrangements for Doopie. Well, they seem perfectly satisfactory to me. I shall stay where I am and reign over Baltimore.
20th March 1932
Stepsons are sent to try us. The earth has barely settled on his father’s grave, and Junior is demanding to know my plans for Sweet Air. Do I expect to stay on, alone in such a large and isolated house? And if I were to think of selling, he knows his father would have wanted the place kept in the family. Junior has never liked me. He’s never forgiven me for replacing his sainted mother and making Danforth smile again. He obviously hopes to spook me out of the place and then pick it up at a knockdown price. He’ll probably come around tapping on windows and making hooty owl noises. Well, he’ll find Maybell Brumby is made of sterner stuff than that.
24th March 1932
Randolph Putnam pressed me to join him for luncheon today, but I declined. I find him too eager, and anyway I’d already agreed to take tea with Nora Sedley Cordle. One social obligation a day is enough for anyone, especially where Nora is involved. She sat behind her Reed and Barton teapot, pretending friendship, but I read her like a book. She’s hoping I’ll give up Sweet Air, too. I always was a challenge to her social ambitions and now I suppose she’s hoping I’ll get me to a nunnery. Well, one thing I can tell her. She may be a Daughter of the American Revolution, but she had better learn to leave the ruffled neckline to those of us who can carry it off.
1st April 1932
The telephone keeps ringing and no one speaks. Today a package arrived, The World’s Most Chilling Ghost Stories. Junior must take me for a fool.
3rd April 1932
Not sleeping well. I’ve instructed Missie not to answer the telephone after ten p.m.
7th April 1932
Randolph Putnam crossed the street to tell me how strained I look and recommend I take myself off to Palm Beach for a while. And leave Nora Sedley Cordle to consolidate the gains she made while I was in mourning? I think not!
10th April 1932
A quantity of horse manure was deposited on the front steps during the night. Missie says she was wakened by the sound of unearthly laughter and didn’t close her eyes again till morning. Much theatrical yawning when she brought in my breakfast tray. Just what one needs at a time like this: the help falling asleep on their feet.
12th April 1932
Another letter from Violet. The most extraordinary thing, she wrote. You’ll never guess who has appeared on the scene. She then digresses, recounting in unnecessary detail various antics of the brood. Ulick won a trophy for shooting. Flora wet her drawers at Lady Londonderry’s. Rory fell off his new pony and knocked out two teeth. On and on it went without at all getting to the point. Violet’s meanderings are so fatiguing. I had to turn two pages before I learned who it was who had so extraordinarily appeared on the scene. Minnehaha, no less. Wally Warfield! Well!
I ran into Pips Waldo, she writes, who told me all she knew. Apparently, she’s married to someone who was in the Guards but is now in business. They have a little place somewhere north of Marble Arch, and from what Pips has heard, she’s quite on the make.
I can imagine. Her mother didn’t have a dime, but Wally never allowed that to hold her back. She had sharp elbows and a calculating mind, and she didn’t miss a trick. Great fun though. School was much more interesting once Wally was around.
