Chapter Two

"That Woman"

Dower House, Downton, West Riding, Yorkshire, England, January 1937.

While she waited for Mama to return from upstairs, Mary chanced to look out of the window and, despite the warmth from the fire, she shivered. Outside, the fog seemed to be worse than ever. It had descended suddenly, quite without warning, not long after Mary had arrived here on foot from the abbey. No doubt Matthew would consider it a wanton extravagance but, given the circumstances, if, shortly before she was ready to leave, which would be in a hour or so's time, the fog persisted, she would ask Mama to have Clarke telephone the abbey and arrange for the motor to be sent down to collect her.

Glancing around the exquisitely appointed Drawing Room of the Dower House, Mary was struck again, as she had been several times in the last few years, how little this room had altered since her late grandmother lived here. True, some of the furnishings had changed: a new sofa, and the portrait of Papa over the fireplace, brought down from the abbey following his death in 1931. Standing in the corner, to the left of the fireplace, was another addition: the rectangular Murphy box radio in its walnut veneer case, to which Mama loved to listen while next to it, along with her reading glasses, was the latest edition of the Radio Times.

On the small table, next to where Mary was seated on the sofa, stood a clutch of photographs which would not have been here in Granny's time either: those of the children as they were now. Of course, there had been photographs of Robert and Simon as infants, and when they were very young. But Granny had passed away in 1926, the year of the General Strike. So there had never been pictures of Rebecca who had been born in 1928, nor of young Emily born in 1934. Of course, there were photographs of them here now, as indeed there were more recent ones of the boys who, later this year, would be aged seventeen and fifteen respectively, with Robert about to leave Ripon, and Simon whose fifteenth birthday was in three days' time, not far behind him. Mary sighed; time was passing so quickly.

As far as Robert was concerned, it would be up to Oxford. Quite what he would read, had not yet been decided. Perhaps History. After that, well, hopefully, he would find himself a nice young girl, and settle down. Apparently, he was quite taken with Virginia, the Bradleys' eldest girl, over at Welford Hall.

As for Simon, Mary despaired of him. Now almost fifteen, at times he seemed completely lost in his own little world of make believe, content to sit and "talk" with his teddy bear, Oscar, so much so, that Mary wondered if he was quite right in the head. While rare, cases of incipient madness, had occurred in the Crawley family before, the last of these several hundred years ago, during the seventeenth century, when on the outbreak of the English Civil War, for some unaccountable reason, a direct descendant of the eldest son of the second earl had chosen to support the cause of Parliament against the king.

Given the respective ages of the girls of nine and three, it was far too soon to be concerning herself about what the future might hold in store either for Rebecca or Emily.

All this apart, not that Mary would ever admit it, even to herself, the pace of change here in England over the last few years, frightened her. While she would concede that she was not as well informed about matters social and political as were Matthew, Tom, and Sybil, and that some changes had undoubtedly been for the better, there were not many that Mary herself would place in that particular category. Beyond the familiar, reassuring stone walls of Downton, everything else seemed to be falling apart. How otherwise explain … The very idea that a woman such as Mrs. …


Mary saw the door open and her mother came into the room, bearing a pile of newspapers, magazines, and cuttings, sent over to her during the last year by friends in the United States.

"Ah! So, you found them after all?"

Her mother smiled. Despite the passing years, and the death of Papa, save for the grey in her hair, in her appearance, Mary thought her mother to be the least changed of all of them, although from time to time Mama was becoming a little forgetful. With her next words, it was almost as if her mother had read her mind.

"Yes. For a while, I couldn't for the life of me think where I'd put them. Then I remembered: in the trunk at the end of my bed, the one I took with me when I sailed to America on board the Majestic back in '32. They were right at the bottom, beneath those things I kept of your father's. Locked away. As your grandmother would have said, "pas devant les domestiques".

Mary smiled.

"No, of course not".

Mama sat down next to her on the sofa; handed over the first of several cuttings from American newspapers.

There it was, in black and white, headline news, in the New York Daily Mirror.

Four stark words:-

KING TO

MARRY

'WALLY'

Mary glanced at the date: October 1936.

So what Mama had been saying earlier this afternoon, had been true. Not that Mary had any cause to doubt her. That, well in advance of the story appearing in the British newspapers which it now had done but only as recently as last month, the press on the other side of the Atlantic – here were copies of The New York Times, The Chicago Daily Tribune, as well as others too – had been openly reporting, what here in England had been only whispered about, in certain aristocratic circles: the affair between the former king and that ghastly American, Mrs. Wallis Warfield Simpson.

An article in the Chicago Tribune, dated 18th October 1936, commenting on the complete absence of reporting of the situation in the British Press, described it succinctly as: "... an excellent example of how, without official censorship, voluntary censorship is imposed by the newspapers on themselves in the matter". Here was a piece taken from the Milwaukee Journal - where on earth, wondered Mary, was Milwaukee - telling its readers how over in England, copies of American newspapers were being removed from news stands, and pages torn from Time Magazine, in a desperate attempt to prevent the British public from reading about their king's infatuation with the American divorcée from Baltimore.

Yet, for all their love of the lurid and sensational, the American newspapers did not have a monopoly on that sort of thing; indeed, far from it, given what some of the British gutter press had seen fit to print as news during the last few weeks, following hard on the heels of what had happened here in this very county, in Yorkshire, on Tuesday 1st December 1936. For on this date, in the West Riding, in Bradford of all places, the then almost unheard of Right Reverend Arthur Blunt, Bishop of Bradford, had addressed a diocesan conference on the forthcoming Coronation of Edward VIII, wherein he had effectively admonished the king for not having shown his need for divine guidance in the discharge of his high office, unaware that in his audience was a reporter from the Telegraph and Argus who communicated what the bishop had said to the Press Association.

This had been enough for the British Press to end its self-imposed censorship and now the gloves were off it became open season on the king and his affair with the soon-to-be twice divorced, Mrs. Ernest Simpson, whom the Dowager Queen Mary, apparently, referred to as "That woman". Quite apart from what the Bishop of Bradford had said in his address, there was a rumour doing the rounds - whether or not it was true was impossible to substantiate - that the king and his mistress, for that was undoubtedly what the woman was, even if she was still married to Mr. Simpson, had first met here in Yorkshire, again in the West Riding, at Nidd Hall, near Knaresborough, not far from the spa town of Harrogate.

As for the Dowager Queen's namesake, Mary, countess of Grantham, she also had no time for "That woman". Mary thought her to be manipulative and scheming, without a shred of moral decency, and possessing no sense of propriety or tradition. Others had called Mrs. Simpson a temptress, a social climber, a tactless boor, and a gold digger, and it was clear there was truth in all of these epithets. Notwithstanding the fact that Mary had never met her - nor despite the leg pulling of both Matthew and Tom did she wish to do so - the thought of That woman becoming queen was risible; she was thoroughly unsuitable.

However, mindful of what Matthew had told her, Mary had an equally low opinion of the former king; not that she had thought much of him before.

Along with Matthew, Mary had been presented to the Duke of Windsor, as he now was styled, but once. That had been at Scarborough in 1923, when he was Prince of Wales, and aged, Mary supposed, about thirty. Admittedly with the benefit of hindsight, which Matthew said was of no use to man nor beast, the prince had seemed abstracted. There was, no doubt a limit to how many times anyone could appear interested in a march past, but those who had been taking part in it were members of the British Legion; soldiers - veterans - of the Great War, the most appalling conflict the world had ever seen, which had ended barely five years earlier. It seemed odd to hear the word "veterans" being used to describe men who were only in their late twenties, but veterans they most undoubtedly were, marching proudly past the prince, who was taking the salute,

Yet, from where she had been standing, watching the proceedings unfold, Mary recalled thinking that the Prince of Wales, who had spoken in the most affected manner, sounding for all the world like an upper class Cockney, appeared bored to death, distracted, and did little to conceal it. He seemed anxious to be away, to be anywhere other than where he was. Of course, his ongoing liaisons with the likes of Freda Dudley Ward and thereafter Thelma Furness were then unknown, save by a small number of intimates and close friends.

There had, of course, also been that strange business of...


The Savoy Hotel, London, Tuesday 10th July 1923.

The trip up to town had come like a bolt from the blue - to celebrate, Matthew said, their forthcoming wedding anniversary. When Mary mentioned the expense of it all, Matthew, clearly feeling in a generous mood, had said damn' the cost. They would leave the boys here at the abbey with their grandparents, who would enjoy spoiling them, and Mary and he would travel up to town; really enjoy themselves. However, they would not stay at Crawley House but at an hotel - where they could be guaranteed privacy away from the prying eyes of well meaning servants. What about the Savoy? Carson could make the necessary arrangements. They could take in the sights, stroll along the Embankment, wander through St. James' Park, Mary could do a spot of shopping - while she did, he would go to his club - luncheons, quiet suppers, see a couple of shows, and so forth.


Mary made mention of Matthew's unexpected offer in her next letter to Sybil - they wrote to each other most weeks - and in her reply Sybil told her sister not to look a gift horse in the mouth. If Matthew wanted to spoil her rotten, then let him. Mary was of the same opinion. As for doing a spot of shopping, she would do rather more than that; a visit to her dress maker was long overdue. Even so, Mary could not help but think that something else lay behind this trip. Now, all these years later, she suspected that it had something to do with Matthew's work for the Foreign Office.


"Good Lord, what on earth was that?" Mary had only just fallen asleep, to be awoken abruptly by several loud bangs. To begin with she thought it was yet more thunder claps. Up here in London, the previous day had been unbearably hot and sticky and the summer storm, which had begun about 11pm, eventually became so loud in its intensity, that once their languid love-making was over, Mary had found it difficult to drift off to sleep.

With the noise still echoing through her head, sitting bolt upright in bed, Mary switched on the lamp beside her, only to find that Matthew was already awake, out of bed, hastily tying the belt of his dressing gown and shoving bare feet into slippers. Mary glanced over at the alarm clock. Saw to her surprise that it was but a little after half past two, while outside tremendous claps of thunder still reverberated over the capital, the sky lit up repeatedly by brilliant flashes of lightning, and accompanied by torrential rain.

"Darling, it's half past two in the morning! Where on earth are you going?" Mary stretched; smothered a yawn.

"To try and find out what's going on. Unless I'm very much mistaken, that was the sound of a revolver being fired several times. Now, stay where you are and lock the door behind me".

"A revolver? Are you certain?"
Matthew nodded.

"Pretty much, yes".

"Well, isn't that something the police should..."
"Indeed. All the same I want to try and find out what's happened".

"For God's sake, do be careful".

"You know me!" Matthew grinned broadly.

"I do, which is why I said what I did".

"Don't worry, old thing. Now, please, do as I ask!"

Mary nodded.

Thereafter, with the door securely locked, she sat up in bed, anxiously awaiting Matthew's return.


He was back within the hour to say that news of what had taken place was all over the hotel. Did Mary recall the man and the woman they had seen arguing on the pavement outside the theatre where The Merry Widow was playing?

"You mean the one you told me afterwards was an Egyptian prince?" she asked as Matthew climbed back into bed.

"Well, that's what he called himself. Prince Ali Kamel Fahmy Bey". Matthew plumped up his pillows.

"Called?"

Matthew nodded.

"Exactly so. And when you hear what I have to tell, I think you'll agree, that the choice of operetta - The Merry Widow - playing at that theatre - given what's now happened, was rather prophetic. Whatever the rights and wrongs of it, the couple who were also staying here, came back from that same theatre, and following a late supper in the restaurant downstairs, where they had another very public row, and yet another argument upstairs, the wife shot him dead in the corridor outside their suite with a revolver she kept hidden under her pillow!"

"Heavens!" Mary was appalled. This was London, capital of the British Empire, not the Wild West. Whatever next? Red Indians brandishing tomahawks, whooping their way down the corridors of the Savoy?

"Indeed".

"And his wife, or should I say widow, one of the Bright Young Things?"

Matthew shook his head.

"Hardly bright, scheming perhaps, and from what I have heard, none too young!"
"How very ungallant of you to say so!"
"Well, ungallant or not, I rather think it's time we both went to sleep. Unless, of course..."

Mary saw Matthew untying the drawstring of his pyjama trousers.

"Matthew Crawley..." Mary's arms went up about his neck, drawing him down upon her.

"I'll take that as a yes then!" laughed Matthew, his mouth seeking hers.

"How very convenient for you. But aren't you forgetting something, darling?"
"What?"

"That I might have a pistol hidden under my pillow!"

"You wouldn't ever shoot me, surely?"

"Have you forgotten?"
"Forgotten what?"
"That I hate to be thought predictable!"

Suffice it to say, that July night, there was no second shooting at the Savoy Hotel.


What Matthew had told Mary, in the privacy of their hotel bedroom early on the morning of 10th July, was true enough. Several months later, having been charged with the wilful murder of her young husband who, aged twenty two, had been ten years her junior, on 10th September 1923, Princess Fahmy Bey found herself on trial for her life at the Old Bailey. With its revelations of sexual cruelty and depravity, played out against the background of The Sheikh, the very popular film starring Rudolf Valentino which had been released the previous year, the case attracted considerable public interest. Indeed, there hadn't been such crowds gathered outside the Old Bailey since the trail of Dr. Crippen over ten years earlier.


Drawing Room, Downton Abbey, Sunday 16th September 1923.

"Good Lord! Well I never!" Mary laid aside the newspaper and looked directly at Matthew. "It would seem that I owe you five pounds!"

Matthew grinned.

"Ah, let me guess. The Fahmy trial? The Tragic Princess, as she has been dubbed by the press, found "Not Guilty"?"

"Yes, but how on earth did you know that she..."

Matthew laughed.

"First things first, you don't owe me a penny. That bet of ours was my little joke. I knew she would be acquitted".

"But how? She shot her husband. All that nonsense about her being frightened of him, he being a monster of depravity..."

"Yes, yes, I read how her husband was portrayed in court. All the same, there never was the slightest chance of her being found guilty".

"Why ever not?"
"Because, and this is strictly between ourselves, I have it on very good authority that the prosecution was prevented from cross-examining her regarding her colourful past".
"Colourful past?"
"As a... courtesan, in Paris, during the war".
"Courtesan?"
"Put more bluntly, as a common prostitute".

"But what had that to do..."
"Everything, when you know that Princess Fahmy, Marguerite Alibert, Maggie Meller, Margeurite Laurent, take your pick, she uses several different aliases, is the former mistress of the Prince of Wales, was his keep in Paris during the war. To have permitted the princess to be cross-examined on her past would have proved extremely embarrassing to His Royal Highness and that, my darling, could never be allowed to happen. So, with the prosecution hamstrung, and thanks to the skill of her defence counsel, Sir Edward Marshall Hall, the jury accepting her claim that while she had shot her husband, it had been self defence, duly found her not guilty of murder?"

"Correct. But that's not right, surely?"

"No, my darling, it isn't, but, whatever you may believe, justice isn't about right and wrong".

"What then?"

"It's to do with weighing the evidence. Whatever one's social class, all are equal before the law, and in cases such as this, the burden of proof required to secure a conviction is beyond reasonable doubt. And..."

"But surely..."
"While I'm certain that the evidence was there to secure a conviction, the way it was presented ensured that, right from the outset, the verdict returned by the jury would be one of Not Guilty".


Dower House, Downton, January 1937.

Mary had heard it several times before, and never found it funny; the popular joke that was doing the rounds:

Knock, knock.

Who's there?

Edward Rex.

Edward Rex who?

Edward wrecks the Coronation


As she read on, Mary came to the inescapable conclusion that she would have been well placed to have given the former king a lesson or two about what doing one's duty entailed. For, while she was not greatly enamoured of some of the duties that she was expected to perform as countess of Grantham, most of which she had inherited from Mama, nonetheless, Mary undertook all of them with both grace and good humour; such as presenting the prizes at Robert and Simon's school's Speech Day. When, one year, in the motor on the way home, she had been informed that several of Robert's pals thought "Crawley's mater to be an absolute stonker!" Matthew had laughed, and Mary herself had been secretly rather pleased... even if her unknown admirers were all only twelve years old.

However, in her capacity of President of the Annual Downton Flower Show, having to sit and listen to Mrs. Postlethwaite drone on interminably about how to grow chrysanthemums - "mums" as she insisted on calling them - was enough to try the patience of a saint.

And, as one of the Trustees of the Crawley almshouses - which had been founded by Dame Elizabeth Crawley in 1590 - spending an entire day, apart from luncheon, considering, clause by clause, a detailed report prepared by a firm of architects in York, commissioned to undertake the restoration of the buildings, including the provision of modern sanitation, proved extremely taxing. By the time the recommendations in the report had been adopted in full by the twelve Trustees, Mary felt herself to be sufficiently knowledgeable about domestic plumbing that, given a blowtorch, she could have replaced all of the outworn pipework herself.


While Mama sat beside the fire and looked at the Radio Times, Mary leafed through a couple of the American magazines. The stark realities of what had been going on were also reported here, in graphic detail, along with numerous photographs, including several of the couple taken on board a lavishly appointed steam yacht called the Nahlin, which the former king had chartered for the summer of 1936 for a cruise in the Adriatic. There were photographs of him wearing nothing but a pair of shorts, while in others Mrs. Simpson appeared attired in a one-piece bathing suit and rubber swimming cap. Try as she might, Mary could not imagine His Late Majesty King George V or his wife Her Majesty Queen Mary thus clad appearing in a magazine article.

There was a further account, this time of the start of the voyage, in the New York Times for 31st July 1936 under the headline:-

EDWARD VIII PLANS DALMATIAN

CRUISE; Charters Lady Yule's 1,391-

Ton Yacht Nahlin for Trip to Eastern

Mediterranean. TO EMBARK AT

DUBROVNIK Interest Centers on

Route British Monarch Will Take to

Reach Port in Yugoslavia.

A piece in The New Yorker magazine caught Mary's eye. Although the writer, a woman by the name of Flanner, had been careful not to mention the relationship between the king and Mrs. Simpson, given what Mary now knew, it was there for anyone to see who had the wit to understand what was being hinted at.

Of all the Americans dwelling in London, Mrs. Ernest Aldrich Simpson of Baltimore is the most discussed by Americans …

Mrs. Simpson's position in London is without precedent in history, for an American.

She particularly enjoys middle-aged statesmen, since they are in a position to know and are good talkers …

When abroad, she keeps her eye open for tasty local specialties…

It really was too awful.


Rosenberg, Lower Austria, January 1937.

Tonight, after dinner, here in the Drawing Room, while over by the tiled stove, with Fritz curled at his feet - these days he did a very great deal of sleeping - Papa read the newspapers, and Mama played on the floor with Kurt, as outside the chill of the winter's night drew down, Max, aged fourteen, sat in the window seat tracing the frost patterns of ferns and leaves on the glass with his forefinger. Beyond the window he could see nothing at all for, late this afternoon, a thick mist had rolled in unexpectedly from the north, grey and opaque, smothering everything in its path. On seeing it from his bedroom window, Max had recalled to mind some of the English folk tales Mama had read to him when he was little boy: of witches and wizards, of goblins and sprites, of jack-o-lanterns and fetches, of ghosties and ghoulies, and long-leggedy beasties, and things that go bump in the night.

There were tales of such things in Austria too: of the horned Krampus half-goat, half demon who punished naughty children at Christmas. Max could say for certain that he had never seen the Krampus which either meant that Max was very good, which he knew not to be the case, or else the creature itself did not exist. But then it had to, because no less a person than the Chancellor himself, Herr Dollfuss, had banned any mention being made of the Krampus. Quite why, Max didn't know. All the same the Chancellor hadn't banned the Tatzelwurm, a dragon like animal with the face of a cat that was said to inhabit the snowy fastness of the Alps. What that said about its existence... However, with the coming of the full dark, Max could almost believe in the existence of such things. There had been times, with some of the stories Danny had spun Rob and he about Ireland, tales of banshees and leprechauns when, out of the corner of his eye Max half believed that he... But then Danny was Irish; had what Mama called a touch of the Blarney, named for a village in Ireland.


While Max had written to both Danny and Rob only a few days ago, telling them of Christmas at Rosenberg, he had seen them last summer when they and their fathers had met up in the Isle of Man where Uncle Tom was racing in the TT. A photograph of Max sitting astride his uncle's motorcycle now had pride of place on Mama's desk. However, it would be the end of this year before Max saw his cousins again - at Downton Abbey, where they were to spend Christmas together.

Of course, Mama had told him a very great deal about her childhood home in England, he had seen many photographs of both it and the surrounding estate, while upstairs, hanging in Mama's Writing Room there was a painting Downton Abbey By Moonlight. If all went according to plan, Max would finally see the abbey for the very first time later this year - so too Papa and little Kurt.

Sadly, things did always not work out, as had been the case when the three boys and their fathers were to have met at the Grand Prix at Bremgarten in the summer of 1934. That had not happened because, after enjoying a long period of comparatively good health, Max had suffered several severe internal bleeds, necessitating two long and painful blood transfusions. Thankfully, that was now all behind him, which was why last year, with Papa giving a series of lectures on the excavations at Samaria, in London, Cambridge, and Oxford, in recompense, Friedrich had quietly made arrangements with Matthew and Tom to meet up in the Isle of Man, bringing along with them both Danny and Rob.


As for this year's trip to England, the Schönborns were to make the journey by air; just as Max and his father had done last year when they had flown from Berlin to Croydon. Max's only regret, apart from having to wait until the end of the year to see his cousins again, was that there would be no chance of travelling on board the Hindenburg, Germany's enormous new airship. In size, at some 245 metres in length and with a diameter of 41.2 metres, she dwarfed everything else in the skies. However, her flights were from Frankfurt in Germany, across the Atlantic to Lakehurst in the United States, or else down to South America, bound for Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

And then, tonight, at dinner, something unexpected had happened.


With the excavations at Samaria sponsored by the Archaeological Institute in Vienna now coming to an end, having already canvassed the matter earlier today with Edith, Papa had asked Max if, he would like to come with him out to Palestine for what would, undoubtedly, be the last season of digging there. Max was overjoyed to be asked and accepted his father's suggestion with alacrity. What he did not know, was that Mama had serious misgivings about the wisdom of what Papa intended proposing. While both of them had agreed long since not to wrap Max up in cotton wool, to let him, within reason, enjoy life to the full, Edith thought this whole enterprise to be a step too far. Was there not some form of uprising in Palestine against British rule? Friedrich allayed her fears; said that there had been, but that the disturbances there were now over, the revolt suppressed. With this being so, given that it would be only for a short time while the excavations at Samaria were wound down, with Friedrich having asked Max, and he in turn having promised faithfully to take the utmost care and repay the trust his parents were placing in him, Edith agreed to what had been suggested.


O'Connell Street, Dublin, Irish Free State, January 1937.

As at Downton, so too across the Irish Sea, in Dublin. For, as Tom stepped out from his offices on Talbot Street, to walk down to the station at Westland Row to catch the early evening train to Blackrock, it was to find not only the air cold and crisp, as might be expected on a January evening but that the city was fogbound too. Save for a pale, watery, yellow glow, the street lamps gave little light, and Tom soon found that it was impossible to see more than a few feet in front. Familiar landmarks, such as the Pillar and the massive columned portico of the GPO, while still there, had, for the present, disappeared. On the pavement dark, muffled figures loomed suddenly before him and then just as promptly disappeared, swallowed up by the murk. Away to Tom's right came the disembodied shouts of women who, despite the fog, were still selling fruit and vegetables from their makeshift stalls of upturned wooden crates set against the kerb, as trams and motors clanged and snarled their way along O'Connell Street; while from off the river came the mournful sound of hooters from the barges on the Liffey.

Closer to the river, the fog became even thicker. From the direction of the invisible domed bulk of the Customs House, there came a ghostly rumble as, unseen, empty barrels were rolled along granite setts. Tom thought the noise was from down on Eden Quay but he couldn't be certain, with the fog blanketing off some sounds whilst letting others through. Then, just ahead of him something baulked large. In an instant, he recognised it for what it was: the bronze statue of Daniel O'Connell, the figure set upon a granite column, with beneath it a frieze of smaller figures including one representing the 'Maid of Erin', her right hand raised pointing to O'Connell, her liberator, and holding in her left hand a copy of the 1829 Act of Catholic Emancipation, while at the base four wingèd victories, these symbolising the virtues attributed to O'Connell of patriotism, courage, eloquence and fidelity, the figures themselves shrouded in mist and beaded with moisture.

The statue stood close to the north side of the bridge, named, as was the street, for the same man. Through the murk, glimpsing beneath the ornate lamps the rake of motors parked slantwise between the tram lines, Tom realised that, blundering along in the fog, he had walked further than he thought. It was now, as he made his way towards the bridge, that Tom saw him, although to begin with, because of the fog, he couldn't quite be sure: a young man walking ahead of him, dressed in a cloth cap, black donkey jacket, brown corduroy trousers and boots, a leather satchel slung nonchalantly over his right shoulder, bound, Tom assumed, for the station at Westland Row.

"Danny!"

Answer came there none. The figure disappeared and Tom wondered if he had been mistaken as to the young man's identity.

Ahead of him, the mist swirled, thicker than ever. A moment later, he all but stumbled into Danny who was standing in the middle of the broad pavement, waiting for his father to catch him up. As he did so, Danny smiled broadly; sketched the brim of his cap in a mock salute.

"Da! Jaysus, what a night! Why, ya can't see more than a few feet in front of ya".

Tom nodded.

"For sure. I thought I saw ya earlier, from the office window, before the fog came down, standing outside there on the pavement".
"Ya did".
"So, why didn't ya come up?"

"I thought ya might be busy". Averting his gaze, so that his father should not see his face, Danny clasped his hands, leaned forward over the parapet of the bridge. The stone was cold as ice, but paying it no heed, Danny stood staring ahead, past where the Customs House lay hidden in the fog, while a Guinness barge, its funnel lowered for the bridge, chugged its way down the Liffey, towards the wharves and the distant sea.

"We both know for sure that isn't true".

"I've gone and joined the Volunteers".

"Ah, after what ya said last night, I wondered if ya might".

"What will Ma say, do ya ti'nk?"
"Do ya need to ask me that, son?"

Danny shook his head.

"Da, is there somewhere we could go and talk?"
"For sure!" Tom clapped his son around the shoulders. "This way".

Turning back from the bridge, dodging both the ringing trams and growling motors, deftly swerving to avoid a laden, lumbering horse drawn dray belonging to Gilbeys, Tom and Danny crossed the street, made their way down a flight of steps which brought them onto Bachelors' Walk, and so to the Ha'penny Bridge. Having crossed the arching, narrow, cast iron structure, they came out on Wellington Quay, on the south side of the river, close to the Merchants' Arch, off which Tom knew of a bar, one which he had used many times in the past, as a meeting place for some of his more disreputable contacts.


British Mandated Palestine, January 1937.

In stinging squalls of freezing rain, on the steeply graded single track railway line that linked the ancient Mediterranean port of Jaffa with Jerusalem, beneath a thick pall of dirty black smoke, hauled by two locomotives, whistles screaming, a British military train was storming its way through the Judean Hills.

Somewhere between Artuf and Battir, just as the second of the two engines crossed over a small bridge - at this time of the year, swollen by the winter rains the stream flowing beneath it had become a raging torrent - the explosive charge detonated. There followed a terrific roar, the sounds of splintering wood and rending steel, accompanied by cries and screams, as a huge column of debris and dust rose upwards into the slate grey sky. The second engine and its tender toppled off the line, dragging with it the first three box vans, down into the fast flowing, icy waters of the stream; the rest of the train coming to a stand on the very edge of the shattered bridge.

Friedrich had been wrong.

Here in Palestine, the Arab revolt against British rule was very far from over.


Dower House, Downton, Yorkshire, England, January 1937.

Intuitively, Mary sensed that her mother's eyes were upon her and looking up, she found she was not mistaken.

Cora smiled, then nodded her head.

"I maybe American, but I can't stand That woman either. So, I agree with Mr. Coward, England does not want a Queen Cutie. Now, my darling, this dreadful business aside, what is it you're not telling me? What is it that was so urgent you had to come down here this afternoon with the weather as it is? After all, with it being Simon's birthday on Thursday, I was coming up to the house then for tea".

For a moment, Mary said nothing; looked down at the carpet. Then, raising her head, her eyes met those of her mother.

"I never could keep anything from you, could I? Not even when I was a child".
Cora gave her a rueful smile.

"No, my darling. So what is it?"

"It's Matthew," Mary said quietly.

Author's Note:

The Bishop of Bradford tried to disassociate himself from being the catalyst which allowed the British Press to expose what was going on, saying that, at the time of his address, he had never even heard of Wallis Simpson.

It is generally accepted that Edward VIII and Mrs. Simpson first met at Burrough Court in Leicestershire, in 1931.

The British Legion, founded in 1921 to provide a voice for former members of the armed forces, became the Royal British Legion in 1925. These days it is best known for its annual Poppy Appeal, held in the weeks before Remembrance Sunday.

The thunderstorm which struck London on the night of 9th-10th July 1923 was truly spectacular. Starting about 11pm, it lasted until 5am the following morning.

There is no doubt that the trial of Marguerite Alibert was deliberately "thrown" in order to protect the Prince of Wales; that in exchange for keeping quiet about their affair, she was guaranteed an acquittal.

At the time of the shooting, The Merry Widow was playing at Daly's Theatre on Cranbourne Street, just off Leicester Square.

According to Edward VIII's then equerry, John Aird, the Nahlin was "furnished rather like a Calais whore-house". The boat's owner, Lady Annie Henrietta Yule (1874-1950) was teetotal which did not suit the king who, not known for his literary interests, had the books from the on board library thrown out, and the space turned into a bar. Given what is now known of his behaviour, modern day opinion of Edward VIII, first as Prince of Wales and then briefly as king, is not what it was in the 1920s and 30s. A petulant, spoilt, wilful man who wanted all the trappings of royalty but none of its responsibilities, content to let others not only pay for him, but also follow respectfully in his wake clearing up one resulting mess after another. These days, history is repeating itself.

Flanner - Janet Flanner (1892-1978) an American writer and journalist, Paris correspondent of The New Yorker magazine from 1925 until she retired in 1975.

Queen Cutie - Winston Churchill said at a dinner party in 1936 that the king should be allowed to marry his cutie - Mrs. Simpson. The playwright and impresario, Noël Coward, retorted pithily: "England does not wish for a Queen Cutie".

Chancellor Dollfuss banned the Krampus tradition because of its pagan origins.

The Volunteers - Irishmen from the Free State and from the North who went out to Spain to fight on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War.