Abdication: A Novel by Juliet Nicolson

feeling as if life had lurched forward a notch or two. If Evangeline herself remained innocent of the interlocking physical jigsaw that two human bodies were evidently capable of, she could at least glow in the reflected smugness of her newly worldly friend.
     
    Two decades ago Wallis had returned to Baltimore from China, where she had been living for two years with her first husband, Earl Winfield Spencer, a naval pilot known by everyone as Win. Evangeline had been looking forward to their reunion in Wallis’s old family home but had spoken little during the meeting as Wallis described the drama of the Orient and the horror of dealing with her husband’s alcoholic temper. After more than two hours of chat Wallis gave Evangeline a silver Chinese paperknife, engraved with flowers and sheathed in its own silver holder.
    “I bought it in a bazaar in Peking,” Wallis told her. “I thought you might like it.”
    Evangeline was moved by such thoughtfulness. Friendship was everything , she thought contentedly, as she put the knife in her bag and Wallis announced she had an even more special present to show her in the bedroom.
    “What do you think of this?” Wallis asked, her usual macaw-like voice suddenly unnaturally soft. In her hand was a flesh-coloured metal cylinder about four inches long and a generous inch in diameter. “We could have some fun with this, Vangey. I learned how in China. I could show you if you like.”
    Evangeline could smell Wallis’s spice-scented breath as her provocative expression was accompanied by the slow unbuttoning of Wallis’s beautiful silk blouse. Before Evangeline could move out of the way, Wallis had reached for the pussycat bow at the neck of Evangeline’s dress and loosened it with one short tug.
    “What in the world do you think you’re doing?” Evangeline cried, sending Wallis stumbling backwards with a forceful shove, the stifling intimacy of the bedroom suddenly intolerable as she made a rush for the front door.
    That horrible misunderstanding had reverberated in Evangeline’s thoughts during all the intervening years, and at first Evangeline hadvowed privately to have nothing more to do with her old schoolfriend. She had learned through the Baltimore grapevine that Wallis and Win had been divorced and that Wallis had gone on to marry an English shipping executive named Ernest Simpson was already known to her. Evangeline and Wallis had not met since the unfortunate incident in Wallis’s bedroom and no reference had ever been made to the occasion in their infrequent letters.
    Maybe that was all about to change, Evangeline wondered as she removed several folded pages from the envelope. The letterhead was unknown to her. Had Wallis and her new husband made friends with some sort of military family? What sort of people lived in a fort? There was no accounting for the English and their old-fashioned ways. Despite the incident in the bedroom Evangeline could not help looking forward to Wallis’s letters. They were always so amusing. Wallis had made Evangeline laugh at her aversion to Britain’s lumpy pillows and her unease with the complex etiquette at table. Why for example did the British fall upon their food as soon as it was placed in front of them, as if they had not eaten for months, instead of an hour or so earlier?
    “Do start, oh do ,” a hostess would apparently call down the table even though the butler had not yet completed his rounds and half the guests still had nothing to start on.
    Wallis had also written of her relief at finding a new husband, half English to boot, with whom she got on so well. Their relocation to Ernest’s mother’s home country and the fun they had been having over choosing antique furniture for their small flat had confirmed for Evangeline that this second marriage had been a good decision.
    Wallis had also described the filth of the capital city and how the sulphurous-smelling pea soupers, the greenish fog that Londoners called the