What if?
I do quite like to imagine sometimes – what if?
Men never married women like that. It was a well known fact in every West End Club, on every Golf Course and in every Working Mens’ Bar. In any place where men gathered together it was an acknowledged fact. That was not the sort of woman you would take home to meet your mother, not if you were Tom Smith, not if you were the Honourable Farquar Farquarson. She was a fast woman, an American, used goods. Unthinkable to us, let alone to our King. God forbid that he should introduce her to Queen Mary!
He was still young and a bit wild. He liked his booze and his smart friends, and why not? You couldn’t blame Edward for wanting to live a bit fast. His parents, after all, were an example to us all, but a bit dull. He could keep this woman on the side if he wanted. Look at his Grandfather. But when it came to it he would do the right thing and settle down with a suitable Princess who knew her duty, and how to keep her mouth shut and give him children. True, his younger brother had married a commoner, but she was such a pretty ladylike little thing, and anyway, she would never be the Queen.
The Politicians, the Newspaper Barons, the Archbishops and the Bishops all looked on in their silent conspiracy. A problem never spoken is a problem that might go away. No point in forcing the issue. Watch and wait, watch and pray.
There would have to be a Coronation. Time was passing inexorably. Heavily involved in affairs of state the new King stayed in his palace. His lady, bored by these serious preoccupations, took herself off to Paris for the shopping trip of a lifetime. There were jewels and clothes to be bought for her new life. They would have to accept her, all those old men of stone. They would just have to – she didn’t doubt that.
It was about 1 a.m. when she left the party to be driven back to her Hotel. She had drunk champagne, a lot of champagne; who hadn’t? She wouldn’t have noticed if her driver had had a little too much to drink too.
As the Bugatti sped along the Boulevard she hummed a jazzy tune and drummed her immaculate scarlet nails on the soft leather seat. She did not notice another car coming up on the left. Coming up fast and much too close. The impact of the collision sent her car careering off the road and into a concrete wall, crumpling it and its occupants into a hideous concertina of tortured metal. They took her to hospital, but Wallis Simpson was most definitely dead.
There was no reason to delay the Coronation. She wasn’t anyone of any particular importance after all. Just one of his set, “the fast woman”. The machinery swung into place. The Politicians, the Newspaper Barons, the Archbishops and the Bishops pulled out all the stops to make it the grandest occasion possible.
At breakfast the morning after the great day, the little Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret tussled for possession of the Newspapers with the best photographs and had to be admonished, mildly, by their mother. Elizabeth thought Uncle Eddie looked very sad in most of the pictures . She thought it must be the Crown that was hurting him. She remembered her daddy had told her, looking very serious and thoughtful, that it was a very heavy thing.
Their parents hardly glanced at the papers. They looked into each other’s eyes and smiled. Mummy even gave daddy a little kiss, and daddy took her hands and pressed them to his lips. The princesses giggled and looked down at their plates, but it was good to see them happy. They had been no fun lately.
And later, in Berlin, looking at those same pictures in in his pile of Newspapers over a modest breakfast of warm crusty rolls and hot black coffee, Adolf Hitler smiled too