Dressing the Dearloves

by Kelly Doust

‘Well you wouldn’t, would you?’ Tabs said a little sharply. ‘We haven’t spoken in so long.’ She looked up and saw Sylvie’s stricken face, and her voice softened. ‘I was hoping you’d be in touch when I heard the news, but . . .’ Tabs sniffed. ‘I miss you, that’s all. I thought we were close. Weren’t we? I keep trying to catch up with you on Skype, but you never answer. And you don’t answer emails or texts, either – why?’

  Sylvie gulped down the sudden lump in her throat, unable to bear the confusion on her friend’s face. She knew she’d avoided Tabs over the past year or more – sometimes even while she’d been sitting in her apartment, staring at the walls and wondering what to do, unable to sleep with the thought of all her troubles . . . But there was no point in telling Tabs about all that. She’d just hated feeling so ashamed. She’d wanted nothing more than to talk to her friend, but she couldn’t deal with the inevitable questions about how it was all going, or her well-meaning concern, when everything she’d built was in the process of falling down around her like a house of cards.

  Then the bills had started coming in thick and fast, piling up on her desk and making her head spin so wildly she daren’t open them, and somehow it had seemed easier not to talk to anyone, and to pretend it wasn’t happening at all.

  ‘I’m sorry, Tabs.’ Sylvie swallowed. ‘I just got . . . overwhelmed. I promise I’ll make it up to you. You’re like a sister to me, you know that.’

  ‘I know,’ Tabs said, pinching her upper arm. ‘And you only hurt the ones you love. Just don’t forget that I’m here, okay? You can tell me anything – I won’t hold it against you. We’ve been through too much for that.’

  Sylvie nodded, biting her lip.

  How could she share everything with Tabs, though? It made no sense, even to her. She was so confused all the time, and humiliated. She’d made such a mess of things. It seemed impossible that her life would ever be right again, but Tabs’s words made her feel that she still had a home somewhere.

  Home.

  She looked out the kitchen window, into Penny’s neighbours’ garden, and at the children’s playhouse resting in the lower branches of a towering oak tree. Where was home these days, and what did the concept even mean, she wondered, when it felt like you were out of place wherever you went?

  GREAT HOUSES OF THE UNITED KINGDOM

  by Rory Kinnington

  An extract from the book published by Rizzoli, 2003

  A grand old property of elegant proportions, Somerset’s Bledesford Manor boasts some dazzling connections with the firmament of British high society. First visited by Elizabeth I back in 1578, the land it rests upon was given to Howard Dearlove – a lawyer and favourite of the Queen, who was gifted the honorary title of baron for his work at court – and took no less than two decades to build. Altered in the late seventeenth century, the manor was partially demolished to make way for new additions and was further restored in the early twentieth century. With a jewel-like gatekeeper’s residence hewn from local limestone and further stables and outbuildings, the house, along with its garden walls, is designated as Grade II listed, and is still called home by the Dearlove family today, with four generations living under the same roof.

  WHO’S WHO

  Tatler Magazine, April 1926

  When Archibald Dearlove finally married in the summer of 1913, the sound of hearts breaking could be heard across England and the continent. Heir to Somerset’s Bledesford Manor, Archibald (or Archie to his family and dearest chums) was considered quite the catch – tall, handsome, well travelled and, of course, fabulously wealthy. But it appears he made the perfect match with Rose, his wife of almost a decade now.

  Herself no stranger to gossip, Rose Dearlove jilted not one but two men at the altar before her marriage, and left a slew of admirers in her wake. A young, untitled woman of no particular standing, her great beauty and winsome ways quickly became famed across England, as Rose became one of the finest hostesses this country has ever seen.

  Mother to two sweet daughters (Elizabeth and Victoria; seven and four years of age respectively), she has single-handedly revived the salon tradition with her spectacular soirees. Indeed, when one receives an invitation to the Dearlove ancestral home in Somerset, one knows one has truly made it.

  Rose Dearlove is pictured here in a Coco Chanel gown of pale pink silk chiffon, with lace bodice and drop waist. It is said she only wears the latest fashions from Paris, picked up on various journeys with her husband to the Continent, where they partake in performances of the Opera, theatre and dance and purchase fine art from the very best auction houses and from Europe’s up-and-coming artists.

  Her portrait was painted by the well-regarded American society painter, John Singer Sargent, for an undisclosed sum (reproduced here). Note the sapphire necklace – rumoured to be worth tens of thousands of pounds – which was a gift from her husband Archibald on the occasion of her twenty-eighth birthday.

  5

  Lizzie: Bledesford, 1928

  ‘Shh . . . this way,’ whispered the little girl urgently, beckoning to Peregrine, her partner in crime.

  The bundle of fur at her feet let out a questioning miaow and swished his tail against her legs, pawing at the ribbon Lizzie had tied around his neck.

  Leaning down to scoop up the kitten in her arms, Lizzie nestled Peregrine close, angling him away from the spiky brooch of sapphire stones pinned to her breast and adjusting his collar in the low candlelight. Nuzzling her forehead against the cat’s soft fur, she whispered in a shell-pink ear, ‘Alors! Come with me, mon chaton.’

  Padding downstairs, Lizzie congratulated herself. She’d managed to escape the loud party in the drawing room, where Father had slopped his drink on her toes – not once, but twice – in a fit of agitation about ‘those wretched Germans’, and the air had been too close and stale for comfort. She’d also pilfered a slice of Prissie the scullery maid’s sponge cake, and given Nanny and Victoria the slip. Tonight was no night for babies, and her sister was too small for tonight’s game, she thought, licking cake crumbs from her fingers.

  Lizzie was wearing her favourite dress – a white muslin confection with a sash of peach satin, freshly starched for the party – and her grandmother’s brooch, which Mother had told her she could wear, just this once.

  ‘It’ll be yours when you’re older, darling, I’m saving it. It looks so beautiful with your eyes. Mind you be careful, though – I’m entrusting you to take good care.’

  Lizzie had solemnly crossed her heart and hoped to die.

  ‘No need for that, darling,’ laughed Mother, holding her close and peppering the back of her neck and ears with many small kisses.

  Much as she loved her little sister – hadn’t she begged her mother for a baby, ever since she was small? A playmate to dress and coddle, a real-life doll? – she wished sometimes that it could be just her and Mother. But even then, Mother would be busy. It would require no Victoria and no Nanny either, and no parties at Bledesford to absorb her – and that would never happen.

  ‘Your mother’s very sociable,’ Aunt Birdie told her once. ‘I don’t think she can bear to be alone.’ Birdie, her father’s older sister, was very different to her mother, Rose. Small and birdlike as her nickname suggested, Lizzie’s aunt was impressive in other ways. She travelled by herself to exotic places, with only her maidservant for company, whereas Mother never travelled alone – she was always accompanied by Papa or Mr Telford, or one of her many other ‘hangers-on’, as Papa disdainfully referred to them. Birdie was also older than Rose, and often sharp-tongued and shrewd. Lizzie was secretly scared of her.

  Lizzie caught sight of herself in a tall mirror as she made her way past Mother’s dressing room, and smiled at her reflection. Lifting her long skirt with one arm, she gave a little twirl. Peregrine squeaked in her arms, trying to wriggle free.

  ‘Shhh!’ she admonished, holding him more firmly against her chest.

  The dress was a little scratchy around its puffed sleeve cuffs, and didn�
��t much go with her slippers, but she loved the feel of the supple embroidered leather under her feet, and the way the dress fell around her like a fluid whip of meringue. The shoes were hand-stitched and inset with little circles of mirrored glass – they had been brought back for her by Aunt Birdie, from a recent visit to Morocco. Colourful and zany, they were as bright as a rainbow in all their strange, curly-toed glory – she had insisted upon wearing them this morning.

  ‘Oh, if you must,’ Nanny had grumbled. ‘I keep telling your mother, this obsession with clothes and fancy things is a shocking vanity. Do you want to stand out like a sore thumb?’

  Lizzie knew her mother didn’t give a fig about what Nanny thought. ‘The prettier, the better, my darling,’ she always said, stroking Lizzie’s hair. Besides, today was Lizzie’s eighth birthday, and she was grown. Nanny couldn’t tell her what to do, or what to wear on her birthday, she thought defiantly.

  Imagining soldiers at her heels, Lizzie now slipped out between the opened French doors and onto the back terrace, quickening her steps across the lawn and down the grassed ha-ha. They were headed towards her favourite place on the entire estate – no one would find them there. Of course, it was well past her bedtime, but she didn’t care. They’d had birthday cake for her on the lawn but Lizzie didn’t like any of the children that Mother had invited to high tea, so she’d been happy when they had been ferried home and the high tea had seamlessly turned into one of Mother’s impromptu parties. The adults were soon laughing and music had started to play. When the menfolk arrived, the servants set about constructing a champagne fountain in the drawing room, Papa pouring the first glass. There were cheers, and the men handed around cigars and slapped Papa on the back as they smoked.

  Lizzie watched the golden bubbles overflow, setting off a waterfall, and clapped her hands in delight. She wanted to stay and watch, and so when she saw Nanny Decker looking crossly for her, she hid behind the piano, tucking herself into the corner.

  But now she was at the door to the greenhouse. Lizzie adored the tropical humidity inside, the sultry feel of it against her skin. It was her special place, her favourite spot in all of Bledesford, although she loved the rest of it too. The orchards and the ballroom and the orangerie and the cellars . . . she loved her home fiercely.

  Despite her age, Lizzie had a very small inkling of what a great privilege it was to live here. How could she not, when the people in the village dipped curtsies when they walked past, and some of the older men even tugged their forelocks? Lizzie heard Nanny’s words echoing in her ears: ‘Your family’s very fortunate, Elizabeth. Not everyone is so lucky.’ Well, I know that, thought Lizzie. The beggars who lived in the local train station lessened in numbers after each passing frost, but the fires would always burn brightly in Bledesford’s grates, no matter what. It was Victoria who always noticed the beggars shivering on the station’s steps. ‘You have a soft heart, my darling,’ Mother told Victoria, giving her a silver coin to pass to a hollow-eyed man, and Lizzie felt a little prickle of protectiveness towards her sister. Mother was right, Victoria was hopelessly soft – she needed Lizzie to look after her. Lizzie liked to think there was nothing soft about her at all.

  The blue-grey cat shifted in her arms as they reached the door of the greenhouse, which was standing ajar in the inky blue night. Lizzie didn’t stop to consider why it might be open. Barely giving it another thought, she slipped inside.

  Padding soundlessly through the leaves and fronds, Lizzie imagined herself a spy or a detective. Sherlock Holmes, on the trail of a bloodthirsty killer. Yes, that was it, she thought, warming to her theme, she was on the hunt to solve a mystery!

  Moving swiftly down the greenhouse’s long passageway she stopped suddenly, balancing on her toes, so that the leather of her shoes creaked. Looking up, she saw the stars winking down at her through the roof panes, and the moon – so full and yellow in the night sky, like a big round of cheese – casting its glow past thick cast-iron struts, pooling on the floor in front of her. Lizzie recognised the constellations which Mother was always telling her about – Ursa Minor, Andromeda, Perseus and, her favourite, Cassiopeia – twinkling in the night sky like the constellations on her grandmother’s brooch.

  There it was again – a whisper. Something more than the mists of spray, showering out in fits and starts. Lizzie held her breath, feeling a stab of something. Fear. Was there someone else inside? The greenhouse was usually deserted after dark – even Mother didn’t come here once her gloves and pruning tools were put away for the day, and Henry the gardener had locked up. Thieves? Lizzie wondered. The furniture in Bledesford alone was worth a fortune . . . wasn’t Father always telling them so, raging at her and Victoria for playing anywhere near it? The portrait of Mother, hung up in the entrance hall, had been ‘ruinously’ expensive, or so Daddy had said, seemingly a thousand times. And the contents of the library – with its priceless first editions, collected in several languages – were irreplaceable. The Dearloves (the whole long, long line of them) liked to collect things, and they must always have the very best.

  She could hear voices now, talking. They were just beyond Mother’s prize orchids, and it was two people.

  ‘—but we need to try!’ a man said with a raised voice.

  Lizzie jumped in her skin and then stopped, freezing in her tracks. She could see them quite clearly in the moonlight, only a few feet away. A man and a woman. The man’s voice was familiar, but Lizzie couldn’t quite place it. Straining to hear, she dared not move a muscle.

  ‘You don’t understand. I just can’t.’ The woman’s tone was plaintive and not loud, but Lizzie heard her clearly. Her heart beat wildly in her chest.

  The man let out a sigh of frustration. ‘God, there has to be another solution. You can’t stay here, it’s inconceivable!’ Drawing a ragged breath, he pulled her closer to his chest. ‘Please, come away with me. I can’t bear being without you . . . This is killing me.’

  ‘Maybe . . .’

  ‘Please,’ he said again, gripping the woman’s shoulders, so that Lizzie thought he might shake her.

  The woman remained passive and quiet, like a rag doll. Lizzie realised she was crying, tears rolling down her cheeks and sparkling in the moonlight.

  Lizzie’s eyes swam, and the ground shifted beneath her. Peregrine gave a surprised squeak, deafening in the silence.

  The man froze, looking about sharply.

  Lizzie crouched beside a planter box, heartbeat throbbing in her ears. She scraped her leg on the way down and bit back a cry. The man moved towards them.

  Screwing her eyes shut, Lizzie promised God that she would be a good girl from now on, if she could just stay hidden. She would listen to Nanny, and she would do as she was told.

  Sensing her distraction, Peregrine wriggled out of her grasp and bolted for the open door.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ the man said, only a few feet away from her. Lizzie held her breath. ‘Just a cat.’

  The woman’s shoulders slumped in the darkness. Lizzie wondered what was happening.

  ‘Lizzie won’t . . .’ she said, and the little girl startled at her name.

  ‘. . . she wouldn’t ever – she loves her father too much,’ said the woman, letting out a bitter laugh. ‘But I’m terrified, Henry. He’s frightening me.’ The silvery sheen of starlight highlighted the curve of her cheek.

  Henry the gardener, Henry-not-her-father, that’s who it was. The man. Who was now caressing Mother, and kissing her blindly, wiping away her tears.

  Lizzie’s insides turned to liquid. She felt horrible all of a sudden, witness to something unnatural. With a muffled moan in the darkness, her mother melted further into Henry’s arms, and Lizzie wished more than anything that she could be spirited far, far away.

  Then they were gone. A gust of air touched her face as they swept past, soft eddies of heat breaking against her cheek. The door swung shut behind them with a loud bang and Lizzie stayed where she was. Utterly still, until she was sure they were
gone.

  Overcome by the stinging in her thighs, Lizzie told her legs to stand up, fighting pins and needles which made her wobble to her feet. A sob escaped her.

  Alone in the greenhouse, terribly shocked, Lizzie was frightened and in the dark.

  Bledesford suddenly felt to her like a very unfamiliar place.

  6

  Tabs reached her arm out of the driver’s side window and hit the speaker button again.

  ‘Nothing’s happening. Is it working?’

  ‘Let me see,’ Sylvie said, craning her neck to look past Tabs. The tiny light on the intercom box was off, and the gates seemed to be shut tight. Always imposing, they looked more rusted and immovable than ever. It seemed like nobody had come or gone in decades, but how could that be? If she didn’t know better, she would think Bledesford had been put under a spell . . . The strange thought flitted through her mind, dismissed in an instant. She put out her cigarette – she’d been chain-smoking the entire way here – and sprayed some essential oil perfume all over herself, hoping it would mask the smell from her mother.

  ‘Maybe just pull over here,’ Sylvie said, pointing to the overgrown grass verge out front. ‘We might need to call up to the house.’ Surely someone would be by shortly with a delivery or something? People were usually always coming and going from Bledesford; what on earth was going on?

  Tabs drove the little silver Fiat Punto right up onto the grass and turned off the engine. Sylvie dug out her mobile and rang her parents’ home number, but the dial tone rang out.

  Sylvie grabbed her slouchy leather handbag, slung it over her shoulder and crunched across the gravel in low suede ankle boots. Tabs got out as well, slamming the door behind her.

  Sylvie managed to swing one gate inwards, but it was fairly hard going – she could only seem to open up a gap wide enough to squeeze herself through.