by Kelly Doust
‘I know. I’m quite fascinated. It would be good to know more.’ Wendy leaned over the table, lowering her voice to a confidential whisper. ‘About Birdie, especially. She was such an interesting character. She kept all these diaries of her visits to other countries and encounters with the natives. I’ve read some of them – you should take a look. There’s lots of fabulous photographs as well. In her own way she was a bit of an anthropologist, just like that Margaret Mead woman, back in times when not everywhere in the world had been mapped out and explored. And she loved Rose. I gather she got on better with Rose than with her own brother.’ Wendy snorted an abrupt laugh. ‘I’m not sure that Lizzie appreciated Birdie, though – Birdie was such an adventurer, and as you know Lizzie’s a bit of a stickler for tradition. But I think it’s because of Birdie’s support, in a difficult marriage, that Rose finally blossomed to become the woman she did. Before her tragic end, of course.’
‘What do you mean, “difficult”?’ This was the first Sylvie had heard about Archie and Rose having anything less than the glittering society marriage – one that had always been held up to her, by Lizzie, as the acme of marital perfection.
‘Oh, something Lizzie said, about them quarrelling all the time. She hated the shouting, she said. She lets quite a few things slip these days, when she’s not feeling herself.’
Sylvie was fascinated. ‘Mum, Rufus said something odd, something that I’d never heard before.’
‘What’s that, darling?’
Sylvie lowered her voice. ‘Well— He thought perhaps Rose didn’t die in Paris. That there was a cover-up of some sort. Isn’t that strange?’
‘Gosh!’ Wendy’s eyebrows raised in surprise. ‘How on earth did he come to that conclusion?’
‘Something in a letter from one of Rose’s friends. He thinks that she didn’t die at all, but wanted to escape and make a new life for herself . . . and that Archie lied to everyone about her being dead.’
‘Goodness me. That seems rather far-fetched. And darling, that would mean she left her daughters behind, and I can’t see how any mother could do that . . . Though . . .’ Wendy pulled herself up short, and Sylvie realised with a shock that was exactly what Gigi had done. Her mother coughed and looked away. Wendy had always tried to appear neutral about Gigi around Sylvie, but she could see the criticism plain and clear in her mother’s eyes.
‘Yes. Well . . . Who knows what was really going on, but now that you’ve said that about Rose and Archie, I’m wondering if there’s not some truth to it.’ Sylvie drummed her fingertips against her teacup, thinking.
Wendy leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘Look, darling, I’ve done a little quiet digging myself over the years, but I’ve never taken it very far out of respect for Lizzie. Though she has said some very unusual things lately . . . But it would be a terrible shock to her to find out that her mother left them.’
Sylvie suddenly felt a little unbalanced. Rose had always seemed so beautiful, so unreachable, so perfect. But perhaps even perfect people had secrets.
‘Darling,’ said Wendy, her eyes bright with excitement, ‘perhaps we owe it to the family to explore this Rufus chap’s ideas further. What do you think?’
‘I agree. He promised to send me some information soon – we didn’t really get a proper chance to discuss everything. We were out with Jon and Penns – you know what they’re like.’
‘Quite distracting.’
Sylvie smiled back, suddenly liking her mother very much. ‘Quite.’
Wendy clapped her hands together. ‘I tell you what, Sylvie, the local historical society might be able to help as well. They’re bound to have some material on the family – they collect everything. We should speak to them. We could pop in our way home, see what they say. It can’t hurt, can it?’
Hurt? No, Sylvie thought. But there was something about the whole situation that made her slightly uneasy. What skeletons were they going to discover in the Dearlove closet?
‘Hello, Pam. I didn’t realise you worked here.’
‘Wendy! Good to see you, pet. I’ve just started volunteering for a couple of days a week. Is this your daughter? Well, well, I see the resemblance to Robin. Not a bit like you, is she?’
Sylvie grinned.
‘Pam and I have a friendly competition going on between us,’ Wendy said, starting to explain how she knew the older, apple-cheeked woman, before Pam interrupted her, speaking authoritatively.
‘Your mother bakes me under the table – that’s what she means. We both enter all the same county shows and she steals the trophy every time.’
‘Pft, that’s not true! You won the gold medal recently, what are you talking about?’
‘Only because you didn’t enter. I take it your daughter being home is the reason?’
‘Yes, well, that and . . . there’s a lot going on at the moment . . .’
‘How can I help you?’ asked Pam, sensing the shift in Wendy’s tone.
‘We were wondering if you had anything on Rose and Archibald Dearlove, and Birdie – sorry, Beatrice Dearlove. We’re doing a little bit of family research.’
‘Oh, I’m sure we have lots on all of them. You have quite the impressive ancestral line, Sylvie. Quite legendary in these parts. Let me take a look in our files and see what I can come up with. Do you mind waiting just a moment?’
‘Of course.’ Wendy squeezed Sylvie’s hand. ‘Not at all.’
‘I’ll be back in a jiffy.’
Minutes later, Pam emerged with a thick box binder bulging with papers and clippings and photographs.
‘Here we go. Apparently they’ve been talking about scanning all of these for years, but there’s no budget to speak of . . . Righty-o, let’s take a look, shall we?’
Pam opened the binder and spread its contents out over the wooden counter, turning them around to face Sylvie and Wendy.
THE LAST DEARLOVE RETURNS TO BLEDESFORD read the headline of one article.
Mrs Reginald Fortescue – née Dearlove – finally returned to Bledesford Manor last month, after the 37-bedroom mansion was requisitioned by troops during the war. Sadly, Elizabeth Fortescue’s husband and sister were killed in France and the London bombings respectively. She brings back with her a two-year-old daughter, Gigi Dearlove-Fortescue, and is said to be arranging a fundraising luncheon and croquet match for the War Widows charity . . .
‘Ah, this is Beatrice,’ Pam said with satisfaction, pulling out a photograph of a diminutive woman standing next to two African tribesmen wearing traditional loincloths and clutching two massive spears. Although only half their size, Birdie looked completely at home in front of the mud and thatch-roofed hut on the edge of what looked like a village, mangy chickens pecking at her feet as she squinted sternly at the camera.
‘That’s her,’ said Wendy, fingering the edge of the portrait. ‘Like I said, she was a courageous soul.’
Sylvie wondered at the admiration in her mother’s voice.
‘Rose, Rose . . . Ah, there you are.’ Pam pushed a yellowing handwritten card across the counter. Composed entirely in French, the heavy gilt-edged card featured a lithographed drawing of a Poirot clown scaling a ladder to toast the smiling moon and, to the right of the page, a menu:
Bledesford Manor – 29 Avril 1927
Beurre d’Isigny
Crevettes – Radis
Mortadelle de Bologne
Langouste Vénitienne
Caisse de Ris de Veau á la Lucullus
Chateaubriand Béarnaise
Sorbet au Marasquin
Dindes truffées
Pâté de Foies Gras de Strasbourg
Salade Russe
Parfait Praline
Glaces Diables Roses
Solferinos
Petits fours
Café – Thé – Liqueurs
Vins:
Madeire – St Nicolas de Bourgueil
Vouvray – Saint-Émilion
Champagne
‘That was one of your great-great-gr
andmother’s most famous dinners,’ said Pam. She pushed a clipping across the counter. ‘I believe she had Dame Nellie Melba singing . . . You’ll appreciate that, Wendy.’
Sylvie looked at her mother enquiringly. ‘She was a famous Australian opera singer, a close personal friend of Rose’s, despite the age difference.’
‘Oh.’ Seeing all the documents fanned out before them, Sylvie felt quite overwhelmed again by her family’s public past. It was easy to forget, when she was living on the other side of the Atlantic, how widely known they all were, and how impossible it was to live up to their reputations, either privately or otherwise. She wondered how her mother had coped with it, when she first married her father. She could imagine Lizzie would have been quite overbearing about it all . . . Being here now was bringing it back to her, the familiar feeling of heaviness, the weight of her family’s past upon her shoulders. It’s what had prompted her to move away in the first place and forge a new life for herself in a country that knew nothing about her family, her famous relatives. A place where she could make her mark on her own terms. But look at where that had got her – broke, anxious and back in England anyway.
Glancing over, Wendy registered Sylvie’s expression and started wrapping things up. ‘Could we make copies of these please, Pam? Do you have a photocopier?’
‘Of course, it’s right over there,’ she said, indicating the hulking machine sitting in the corner behind the entry door. ‘It’s 10p a page.’
As Wendy carefully fed each piece of paper, clipping and photograph into the dated copier, Sylvie stared vacantly out the window, looking at the neat little garden in front and the climbing roses tangled around the fence, before registering, with a start, a familiar face heading up the pathway.
The bell chimed above the door as a man entered, his shirt straining over a large frame and feet clomping across the floor in size 11 boots. A clod of earth fell off the back of one heel as he approached the counter.
‘Oh, hello, Nick,’ said Wendy, looking up. ‘Whatever are you doing here?’
Nick wheeled around, breaking into a huge smile. ‘Wendy! And Sylv – what a coincidence! I was just coming to see if I could find out some information about the Bledesford gardens, actually.’ He looked a little sheepish, and Wendy suddenly glanced at her watch.
‘Goodness! Is that the time? Sylvie, my love, we need to get back – I completely forgot about Lizzie’s medication. She’ll be ready for another dose right about now. Sorry, Nick – we’ll see you soon, yes?’
‘Uh, yeah . . .’ Nick trailed off as Wendy gathered up the copies at lightning speed and shoved the binder full of clippings back at Pam over the counter.
‘Sorry, dears – must dash!’
Raising his hand, Nick waved at Sylvie as Wendy grabbed her by the wrist, pulling her out the door of the historical society cottage.
‘See you later!’
‘Bye . . .’ Sylvie barely drew breath before they were out the door and down the path, jumping into the old Land Rover and speeding down the lane towards home.
24
The atmosphere in the attic was close and stuffy. Nick had made a good effort at patching up the hole in the roof but Sylvie was beginning to wonder if perhaps they should have left the hole just to allow in some breeze. She wiped at the dampness at the base of her neck, pulling away a brightly sequinned scarf and tucking it in a pocket as her phone pinged with a message.
Ben. Again. Swallowing down a lump in her throat, she deleted the message without reading it and turned her phone face-down on the wooden bench.
Despite the heat and airlessness up here, Sylvie felt somehow comforted by being in the midst of her family’s collection. The house was quiet, save for the gentle whisper of the wind against the eaves, and she could almost detect a gentle hum radiating from the clothes, thanking her for her interest.
‘Silly,’ she murmured to herself, shaking her head. She’d better watch it, Sylvie thought. She might be going just a bit mad. But there was something about being here, amongst her family’s beautiful hats, shoes and shawls and so many other bits and bobs of past lives, that made her happy somehow. Content. Over the past few weeks she had come to realise that this attic was the place that made her happiest in all of Bledesford, setting her flighty, panicky heart at ease.
Sylvie picked up the silver headdress – the one Rufus had mentioned in their meeting – from a shelf and inspected it. She’d removed all the dust and repaired some of the bent prongs and now it looked almost new. Lately she’d been spending so much time up here going through the frocks and scarves, doing a bit of mending and trying things on for size – and she’d also (though she could barely admit it even to herself) been doing a tiny bit of drawing and designing again. She found herself being inspired by the line of a dress, or a jacket, and thinking, If I just took out the shoulder pads . . . or, If I make the line longer here, it would work in a modern way, and almost without thinking about it, she’d started working up some sketches of key pieces for a small capsule collection. Her hands flew across the page as she felt the bubble of inspiration well up inside her again, fresh and new, feeling giddy as an addict after a rush.
Pulling out a pale pink peignoir with matching satin slip, Sylvie read the initials on the breast pocket. V.R.D. Victoria Rose Dearlove. All of the women in her family had inherited her great-great-grandmother’s name within their own – it was just what the Dearloves did.
Sylvie was suddenly startled from her thoughts by her mother calling her from downstairs. She descended the attic steps and stood in the hall, hanging her head over the staircase railing.
‘Mum – what is it?’
‘Can you come down here, please?’ Wendy shouted up to her. ‘We’ve something to discuss.’ Her voice wavered. ‘Could you please locate your father as well? I think he’s in the barn. I’m going to give Gigi a call and see if she can come up to the house. Family meeting. Five minutes.’
Fifteen minutes later they were all seated at the table, Sylvie nursing a glass of red wine. It was one of her parents’ better bottles from the cellar – French, a burgundy – and it was really very good.
‘But that’s great news! What did Mark say?’
‘He said there’s been a “substantial offer”,’ Wendy said breathlessly. ‘We’ve been speaking regularly of course and there hasn’t been any other interest. Just the other day he was saying we might need to drop our price . . . This couldn’t have come at a better time – we’ve spent all of the extra loan we had approved already, and of course we haven’t even finished. And Mark said they don’t mind if we stay on for a while, while they get plans underway with the council. We can stay on at Bledesford until they’re ready to start.’
‘The council?’ Robin asked, sitting up straighter. ‘Start what?’ he asked sharply. ‘What do you mean, Wendy?’
Wendy swallowed. ‘They’re willing to offer us one hundred and ten percent of what we’re asking, contingent on them getting approval, of course. They don’t think it will take too long, though. And they’re willing to give us ten percent of our current asking price if we accept now. That would go some way to paying off the mortgage, wouldn’t it?’ she said, clapping her hands together.
Robin slumped back in his seat, letting out a low whistle.
‘Approval for what?’ asked Gigi. ‘Come on, Wendy, spit it out.’
‘Well,’ Wendy said, taking a deep breath. ‘They love the house. But they don’t want to keep it as it is – they want to divide it up into flats. They’ll keep the façade in place, but the plan is to tear out the interior and start again. They’re also talking of subdividing the land to create an estate of homes, sort of like a whole new suburb, with shops and everything . . . It’ll be a new community. Can you imagine?’ she asked, shaking her head in amazement.
They all sat watching her silently.
‘Well – what do you think?’ she asked when she realised no one had said anything.
Robin frowned. ‘I don’t know, Wendy.
Isn’t it a bit . . . extreme? I can’t imagine Bledesford being broken up like that. Or torn down, more like. It sounds like they’re going to make a hash of it. It’s been a manor for centuries.’
‘I know,’ Wendy said, shaking her head ‘But five million pounds, Robin . . .’ Her laugh sounded oddly high-pitched to Sylvie, almost on the verge of hysterical. ‘Can you imagine what we could do with that money? They’re even talking about turning the barn into a Waitrose, if you can believe it, for people to do their grocery shopping! And building bars and restaurants and the like. On the other side of the ha-ha, they’re talking about setting up a retirement village, with health services and doctors and twenty-four-hour help on call . . . Isn’t that just unbelievable? You know, I should ask if we can have a place for Lizzie. Perhaps that’s something we could negotiate into the sale?’
‘I think she’d rather die, Wendy, than live here under those circumstances, don’t you?’ Gigi sounded unimpressed. ‘She’s going to hate it, absolutely hate it.’
Wendy looked stung.
‘Who’s to say that we don’t hang on for ages, only for them to pull out at the last minute?’ Robin asked, tapping the table moodily.
Wendy looked just about ready to cry, but brandished Sylvie’s tablet from her lap, calling up her email account. ‘Here, I can assure you both that they’re deadly serious. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have bothered with all of this . . .’
Typing in a couple of commands, she brought up something on the screen.
‘Mark said they’ve had a draftsman draw up some initial plans for us to take a look at. He sent them over this afternoon.’
She turned the tablet around, for them to take a look. On the screen was a map of Bledesford Manor and the estate surrounding it. But the map looked nothing like Bledesford as it currently stood. Beside the widened river was a bike path leading down towards the Henshaws’ and zigzagging its way through Bledesford’s grounds. Miniature-sized people, with tiny red T-shirts and jeans or yellow A-line skirts, wandered around the various amenities, which were dotted about the grounds along with banks of newly planted shrubs and trees. There were children playing in a park and tootling about on their bikes.