Gone With the Windsors. Laurie Graham

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      Interesting people at the Benny Thaws’ party last night. Boss and Ethel Croker from Michigan. Ethel was a Navy wife before she met Boss. She knew Wally from China. Somehow Ethel seemed more pleased to see Wally than Wally did to see Ethel.

      20th June 1932

      Wally’s birthday. I gave her a calfskin guest book and lunch at the Dorch. Ernest gave her a fountain pen. What a dull old stick he is.

      We’ve been worked off our feet all afternoon planning her dinner party. There’s so much to do. The menu to be decided and the placement, new table linens and stemware to be purchased, conversational topics to be studied. Wally reads the newspapers cover to cover every day, and she’s skimmed through centuries of history and philosophy while having her hair done. She says one hardly ever needs to plod through an entire book.

      21st June 1932

      Lunch with Pips, who had invited along Ethel Croker, as she put it, “to help us join up a few more dots in Minnehaha’s Chinese period.”

      Ethel’s nice. Overdressed and hair an unhappy shade of brass, but very sweet and chatty. Ethel was in Panama, waiting for a transport to Hong Kong. When she joined the ship, they berthed her with Wally, and they became friends.

      She said, “God knows, you needed a friend. It was hell in a sardine can. Heat and storms and doughboys fighting with knives. Five weeks of it.”

      She and Wally both got Navy quarters on Kowloon when they arrived.

      She said, “She did try with Win Spencer, you know? She really did. I don’t know why, because he was a bastard. If I’d been her, I’d have left him. But then he left her, added insult to injury. She went off the deep end a bit after that. Man crazy. And travel crazy. I went with her on a trip to Shanghai, to take her mind off Win, but I couldn’t keep pace with her. I was a married woman, you know? There was a lot of talk about Wally. Still, it’s all a long time ago now.”

      Ethel’s made a good marriage with Boss Croker. They say he’s Mr. Frozen Fish.

      She said, “It’d be nice to catch up with Wally again. He seems all right, the new husband? A bit serious, but he doesn’t look like a drinker. I’ll bet he doesn’t hit her.”

      Poor Wally. No wonder she grabbed Ernest when he came along.

      She’s still a man short for Tuesday’s dinner. Pips says the obvious solution is to drop a lone woman, the prime candidate being me. She predicts Wally will ask me to fall on my sword, but I shall absolutely refuse. Given my outlay on guest towels from Liberty, the very least I’m owed is dinner with the fabled Lady Furness. If the situation is desperate, I’ll suggest George Lightfoot. He seemed to me the kind of man who could fit in anywhere.

      23rd June 1932

      Pips was quite wrong. Wally couldn’t care less about odd numbers.

      She said, “This may be London, but aren’t we Americans, Maybell? Don’t we do things our own way? More women than men, so what? Anyhow, Nada Milford Haven is coming, and to all intents and purposes, she’s a man. It’s going to give my table a rather avant-garde complexion.”

      One thing about Wally, she’s always made necessity the mother of invention.

      The menu is now decided. We’re to have caviar, followed by grilled squab, iced camembert, and then strawberry sherbet. It remains to be seen though whether Ernest will cough up for caviar. He seems to keep Wally very short.

      I said, “Well, if it doesn’t run to caviar, you can always serve soup.”

      “Never,” she said. “Take it from me, Maybell, soup is the ruin of a good dinner.”

      I’m quite agog to meet this Milford Haven person. I wonder whether she wears pants!

      26th June 1932

      Violet’s put out because she assumed I’d be free on Tuesday evening and now finds I’m engaged. The Nicholases of Greece and the Harewoods are dining. She said, “Now who am I going to pair with Lightfoot? I was depending on you. Surely, if it’s only Minnehaha, you can chuck?”

      I have agreed to stay for one drink, provided Melhuish has his driver at the ready, engine ticking over, to whisk me to Bryanston Court. It’s like Baltimore all over again. Everyone wants me.

      27th June 1932

      A working lunch with Wally, putting the final touches. We’ll be eleven. An interesting number. She’s placing me between a decorator called MacMullen and a German commercial attaché. She promises me he speaks English.

      Ernest telephone while I was there. I heard her say, “Of course we must. First impressions! There’s nothing worse than being offered caviar and then needing a magnifying glass to see it on your plate.”

      I must say, when it came to paying, I was rather shocked at her lavishness. Beluga, sevruga, and ossetra! She calls it an overture of caviars, but I could hear Ernest worrying away at the other end.

      “Ernest,” she barked, “Think of it as an investment in our future. Do you want to meet the Prince of Wales or not?”

      Pips says she doesn’t eat caviar anyway, so there’s one economy that could have been made.

      29th June 1932

      Flora came hammering on my door at some unearthly hour, found me prostrated by migraine, and fetched Doopie to minister to me. Cold compresses and a draught of something pleasantly medicinal. Flora said it’s called Dog Hair.

      Whatever it was, it made me sleep, and I woke restored. I think my headache must have been brought on by an unhappy mixture of beverages. A whiskey and soda with Violet and her guests, and then two deceptively strong Russian cocktails at Wally’s.

      The dinner was a qualified success. I found the squab a little dry, but the sherbet was delicious and my linens and crystal looked superb. The German did speak English but seemed to find Thelma Furness so fascinating he omitted to turn between courses, and Freddie Crosbie became engrossed in conversation with Benny Thaw, which left me easy prey for Nada Milford Haven who was seated across the table. Wally says she’s not only a marchioness but also a Romanov. I can well believe it. She may have been wearing a gown but that didn’t prevent her foot from romanoving up and down between my knees.

      Thelma Furness and her sister both have pale, pale complexions and wild black eyebrows. They’re exotic rather than pretty. The Prince of Wales can surely take his pick of the most beautiful women in the world, so he obviously has a taste for the unusual. They’re both very sweet though, and Thelma doesn’t at all trade on her special position. She has a child apparently. I wonder whose it is? Pips says Lord Furness stays in the south of France with a tootsie, so as to leave the field clear for the Prince.

      Flora has been tiptoeing in and out, waiting for me to be awake enough to inspect a little story she wrote this morning. It was about a good aunt who buys candy and ice cream but then gets sent away by the bad aunts.

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