Abdication A Novel - By Juliet Nicolson Page 0,140
into the company of this group of individuals, all of whom held the Spanish Civil War at the forefront of their creative and political lives. For six weeks he had argued and listened, learned and laughed, raged and marvelled about politics, books, paintings, poetry, love, sex and death until the sun came up over the Seine.
“Ici, en ce moment, on peut trouver le sens de la vie et le but de vivre,” Miró had pronounced one evening.
And yet, Julian’s own reasons for living were incomplete. When after six weeks his companions came to a decision that it was time to leave Paris for Spain, Julian hesitated. If he joined them he would be closing down that part of his life that he was now certain mattered more than any other. He felt only a little guilty at having abandoned his mother to suffer her illness alone. He did not regret that he had missed a whole term of his law course. There would be time to catch up. But he had left Cuckmere without telling May what he felt about her and he did not want to wait any longer. He said goodbye to Peter and Eric at the Gare du Nord and boarded the Thursday morning train for Dieppe. If he was lucky he would arrive in London by the following afternoon in time for the weekend.
May finished writing in her diary and decided to walk over to Smart’s Picture House and see if the Friday afternoon newsreels were yet carrying the official news of the abdication. In the packed cinema May took the only available aisle seat in the back row. The sound of crunching peanuts was unusually subdued that evening, although the familiar mix of praise and abuse was still being hurled unabated at the screen.
A woman in the seat beside her was in a terrible state, wringing her hands and shaking. “How will we manage without him?” she said turning to May. She did not seem to expect an answer. Although the lights had already dimmed and the film had already begun to roll, she pushed past May and headed for the door.
May watched the black-and-white pictures moving in front of her, reaching instinctively up her woollen sleeve to check the silver bracelet was safely in its place, and running her finger along the slightly worn line of forget-me-nots. In front of her the scenes of snowfall in Argyllshire with the caption promising the “proverbial snowy Christmas” were followed first by news of the varsity match, and pictures of the victorious muddy faces of the Cambridge team, and then by coverage of a dreadful air accident. A Dutch plane had crashed into a row of terrace houses in Purley shortly after leaving Croydon Airport in fog and fourteen people had been killed. There was no mention at all of the abdication, no film of the hasty departure abroad of Mrs. Simpson a week earlier, no footage of the man who had been king up until the day before as he went between the Fort and the royal palaces working out the details of the biggest decision of his life.
Just as May was beginning to wonder if she had invented the whole royal spectacle as a distraction from the uncertainty of her future with Julian, a photograph of the Duke and Duchess of York appeared, captioned, “Our New King and Queen Elizabeth.” The film footage continued to roll amid collective gasps and cries of “God Bless them,” as the narrator’s voice with its cut-glass accent recounted how in 1923 the Duke of York had chosen “a charming Scottish bride” from Glamis Castle.
A castellated building at least ten times the size of the Fort filled the screen at the same time as a tall man in a cap appeared at the end of May’s row and indicated she should make room by budging along to the empty seat beside her. Barely glancing up, May sighed slightly with irritation as she moved across, while keeping her eyes firmly ahead on scenes of a curly-haired girl, wearing a white coat and holding the hand of her pearl-laden grandmother. “Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary is now in the direct line of accession to the throne,” the plummy voice announced as the newcomer beside her unwrapped a roll of newspaper, releasing the familiar vinegary smell into the air. May suddenly felt hungry. She had eaten very little these past few days despite Rachel’s protests that these were times for everyone to keep up