hardened into something more resembling a mask than a human face. The eyebrows are a painted caricature of their former selves. As for him. He’s haggard and goggle-eyed, and his thick gold hair is turning thin and gray. But it’s them, all right. You can’t mistake them. Their expressions are frozen in shock. We meet eyes, and I can tell they recognize me. I can tell they’ve witnessed the entire scene, the necking and the children, the late, golden sunlight drenching us.
For a moment, as we stand there arrested in silent, mutual recognition, I’m reminded of the duchess once telling me—I can’t remember where or when—how she hoped that their faithful years of service in this dump, as she called it, would lead to bigger things. I think she expected a governorship in Australia or Canada. Something suited to their station and his imagined abilities. And in these two stricken faces, which seem to have aged twice those seven and a half calendar years since I’ve seen them last, I believe I read the story of all those disappointed hopes, the glister, the vapid pointlessness of their lives. Standing before them, on a patch of wooden deck in the middle of the ocean, I imagine those painted faces are like shells around a hollow core.
Possibly I should say something. Certainly I should feel something. But I do neither of those things. I simply can’t summon them up. The strap of my dress hangs down my arm—I can feel it tickle my skin—so I secure it back atop my shoulder and proceed in the same direction as Thorpe and the children, toward the hatchway that leads to the staircase that leads to our humble cabin, where perhaps Wilfred and Maggie and Jack will eventually fall asleep and I can sneak into my husband’s bunk for the kind of silent, giggling, undercover lovemaking that is our present lot in life.
As I pass them, I nod my head and say good evening.
Good evening, Mrs. Thorpe, says the duke.
His wife remains silent. But salt breeze nudges her hair, and the setting sun flickers on her jewels.
Historical Note
My book ideas come from all kinds of sources, from newspapers or cocktail parties or when I’m researching something else, and this one started with my editor, Rachel Kahan. I was heading off to the Bahamas with my husband for a long-anticipated Weekend Away from the Kids, and she reminded me the Duke of Windsor had been governor of the then-British colony during the Second World War, and wouldn’t that be a terrific setting for a book?
So I did a little research, and I spoke with our hosts—Sean and Kara Nottage, who are lucky enough to make their home in Lyford Cay—and discovered all kinds of fascinating lore about the Windsors and the island they called home for nearly five years. It took some time, however, for the right story to take shape in my head. Generally speaking, while my novels take place in historical settings, I prefer to write from the perspective of a fictional protagonist, and in order to navigate all the significant episodes in wartime Nassau without taking a historical figure as narrator, I had to make a giant, complex imaginative leap. Lulu was the product of that leap.
Most of the major events in this novel actually took place, and many of the characters Lulu encounters actually existed. The murder of Sir Harry Oakes remains one of the most intriguing unsolved mysteries of the twentieth century, and I’m not the first novelist to take on the subject. Each detail of his life and his untimely end are as accurate as I could make them, and I refer anyone interested in further research to the excellent Blood and Fire, written by the journalist and Bahamas native John Marquis, and to Alfred de Marigny’s memoir A Conspiracy of Crowns, both of which were indispensable to my understanding of the crime and the personalities involved. Keep in mind, however, that this novel is a work of fiction, and both Lulu’s involvement in the affairs of the Windsors and her speculation as to the true identity of the murderer derive solely from my imagination as inspired by the known evidence.
As for the Windsors themselves, endless ink has already been spilled trying to get to the bottom of them. I recommend Anne Sebba’s That Woman and Philip Ziegler’s King Edward VIII for a wealth of biographical information and psychological insight into one of the most notorious couples of the century, as well as Andrew Morton’s 17 Carnations for an examination of the case against the Windsors’ activities—and possibly their loyalties—during the Second World War. I have tried to be fair, however, and the short memoir The Windsors I Knew, written by Jean Hardcastle-Taylor (formerly Miss Drewes, the Windsors’ private secretary during their Bahamas years, who makes a few appearances in The Golden Hour) provides a fascinating counterpoint to the largely negative portrait of the couple that emerges from history. Many of the details of everyday life inside Government House—including the red bows tied around the necks of the Windsors’ beloved Cairn terriers during the Christmas season—come from this invaluable source.
As for the larger historical context of the Bahamas, I consulted a variety of sources, both popular and academic, in trying to understand the racial and social history of the colony. I count Gail Saunders’s Race and Class in the Colonial Bahamas, 1880–1960 as the most comprehensive study, but Owen Platt’s The Royal Governor . . . and the Duchess and Sir Orville Turnquest’s What Manner of Man Is This? The Duke of Windsor’s Years in The Bahamas lent crucial details and insight. I also spent hours scouring old maps and sources to imagine Nassau and New Providence Island as they existed decades ago, before the enormous development that took place in the postwar years. While The Golden Hour is not, and was not intended to be, a scholarly history of the Bahamas and the Windsors, I’ve striven to re-create this setting and its real-life inhabitants as accurately as possible.
As for the scenes in wartime Europe, I’m indebted to Lynne Olson’s excellent and absorbing books—Last Hope Island and Citizens of London, for starters—for providing context and spurring my imagination, and to Max Hastings’s The Secret War for further background on the intelligence services during the Second World War. To understand the operation of the escape lines that channeled Allied pilots and other refugees out of German-occupied territories, I read Peter Eisner’s exhilarating The Freedom Line, which I highly recommend as a first-class example of narrative nonfiction.
From the beginning, I wanted to weave Lulu’s story with that of another character, Elfriede von Kleist Thorpe, who first appeared offstage as the (supposedly) deceased mother of Johann von Kleist in my earlier novel, Along the Infinite Sea. Having given her such a tragic backstory, I wanted to write more about my German woman who wove her fate into Great Britain at such an interesting moment in history, and then bore a son of possibly murky national loyalty. To understand her and prewar Germany further, I had the great pleasure of reading the brilliant and utterly mesmerizing 1913: The Year Before the Storm by Florian Illies, which catapulted me straight into my setting, wholly inspired. Elfriede forms the moral backbone of The Golden Hour, and her journey is that of women everywhere.