by Kate Morton
In the bow of the window, with its rich velvet curtains that brushed the carpet (drawn always now against the German planes), a turned- leg table held an oval mirror, a set of sterling silver brushes, and a host of photographs in fancy frames. Each depicted a pair of young women, Penelope and Gwendolyn Caldicott, most of them official portraits with the studio’s name in cursive at the bottom corner, but a few taken candidly while they were attending this or that Society party. There was one photograph in particular that drew Dolly’s eye every time. The two Caldicott sisters were older here—thirty-five at least—and had been photographed by Cecil Beaton on a grand spiral staircase. Lady Gwendolyn was standing with one hand low on her hip, eyeballing the camera, while her sister was glancing at something (or someone) out of shot. The photograph had been taken at the party where Penelope fell in love, the night her sister’s world came tumbling down.
Poor Lady Gwendolyn, she wasn’t to know her life was set to change that night. She looked so pretty, too: it was impossible to believe that the old woman upstairs had ever been that young or striking. (Dolly, like all the young perhaps, didn’t for a second imagine the same fate lay in store for her.) It showed, she thought sadly, how heavily loss and betrayal could weigh on a person, poisoning them within, but also without. The satin evening dress Lady Gwendolyn was wearing in the photograph was dark in colour and luminous, bias-cut so that it clung lightly to her curves. Dolly had searched high and low in the wardrobes until she finally found it, draped over a hanger amongst a host of others—imagine her pleasure to discover it was deepest red, surely the most magnificent of all colours.
It was the first of Lady Gwendolyn’s dresses she ever tried on, but certainly not the last. No, before Kitty and the others had come, when nights at Campden Grove had been her own to do with as she wished, Dolly had spent a lot of time up here, a chair jammed beneath the doorknob as she stripped down to her underwear and played at dressing up. She’d sat at the turned-leg table sometimes, too, dusting clouds of powder across her bare decolletage, sorting through the drawers of diamond clasps, and tending her hair with the boar-bristle brush—what she’d have given to own a brush like that, with her own name, Dorothy, curled along its spine …
There wasn’t time for all that today, though. Dolly sat cross-legged on the velvet settee below the chandelier and set about peeling her banana. She closed her eyes as she took a first bite, letting out a sigh of supreme satisfaction—it was true, for-bidden (or at least severely rationed) fruits really were the sweetest. She ate her way right down to the bottom, relishing every mouthful, and then draped the skin delicately along the seat beside her. Pleasantly sated, Dolly dusted off her hands and got to work. She’d made a promise to Vivien and she intended to keep it.
Down on her knees by the racks of swaying dresses, she slid the hat box from where she’d stashed it. She’d made a start the previous day, slotting the perky velvet hat in with another and using the empty box to house the small pile of clothing she’d since assembled. It was the sort of thing Dolly could imagine she might have done for her own mother if things had turned out differently. The Women’s Voluntary Service, whose ranks she’d recently joined, was collecting unwanted items to be mended, moulded and made to make do, and Dolly was anxious to do her bit. Indeed, she wanted to thrill them with her contribution and, while she was at it, help Vivien, who was organising the drive.
At the last meeting, there’d been heated discussion about all the bits and bobs that were needed now the raids had in-creased—bandages, toys for homeless children, hospital pyjamas for soldiers—and Dolly had volunteered a load of unwanted clothing to be cut up and converted as necessary. Indeed, while the old dears bickered over who was the better seam-stress, and whose pattern they ought to use for the rag dolls, Dolly and Vivien (it sometimes seemed they were the only members under the age of a hundred!) had exchanged an amused glance and quietly got on with the rest of the business, murmuring to one another when they needed more thread or another piece of material, and trying to ignore the heated squawking all around them.
It had been lovely, spending time together like that; it was one of the main reasons Dolly had joined the WVS in the first place (that, and in hopes the Labour Exchange would be less likely to conscript her into something ghastly like munitions). With Lady Gwendolyn’s recent clinginess—she refused to spare Dolly for more than one Sunday each month—and Vivien’s brisk schedule as the perfect wife and volunteer, it was virtually impossible to see one another otherwise.
Dolly worked swiftly and was inspecting a rather insipid blouse, trying to decide whether the Dior signature inside the seam should earn it a reprieve from reincarnation as a strip of bandages, when a thump downstairs made her start. The door slammed shut, promptly followed by Cook bellowing for the girl who came in of an afternoon to help with the cleaning. Dolly glanced at the wall clock—It was almost three, and time there-fore to wake the sleeping bear. She sealed the hat box and tucked it out of sight, smoothed her skirt, and prepared herself for yet another afternoon spent playing Old Maid.
‘Another letter from your Jimmy,’ said Kitty, waving it at Dolly when she came into the drawing room that night. She was sit-ting crosslegged on the chaise longue while Betty and Susan flicked through an old copy of Vogue beside her. They’d moved the grand piano out of the way months ago, much to Cook’s horror, and the fourth girl, Louisa, dressed only in her under-wear, was striking a series of rather perplexing callisthenics attitudes on the Bessarabian rug.
Dolly lit a cigarette and curled her legs beneath her in the old leather wingback chair. The others always saved the wingback chair for Dolly. No one ever said as much, but her position as Lady Gwendolyn’s companion conferred on her a certain status within their little household. Never mind that she’d only lived at 7 Campden Grove a month or two longer than they had, the girls were always turning to Dolly, asking all manner of questions about how things worked and whether they might be permitted to explore the nursery/servants’ rooms/kitchen. The whole thing had amused Dolly at first, but now she couldn’t think why: it seemed absolutely the right way for the girls to act.
Cigarette on her lip, she tore open the envelope. The letter was brief, written, it said, while he was standing like a pilchard in a packed troop train, and she picked through the scrawl to find the important bits: he’d been taking photographs of war damage somewhere up north, he was back in London for a few days and he was desperate to see her— was she free on Saturday night? Dolly could have squealed.
‘There’s the cat that got the cream,’ said Kitty. ‘Come on then, tell us what he says.’
Dolly kept her eyes averted. The letter wasn’t remotely juicy but it didn’t hurt to let the others think it was, especially Kitty, who was always telling them lurid details about her latest con-quest. ‘It’s personal,’ she said finally, adding a secretive smile for good measure.
‘Spoilsport.’ Kitty pouted. ‘Keeping a handsome RAF pilot all to yourself! When are we going to meet him anyway?’
‘Yes,’ Louisa chimed in, hands on her hips as she bent for-ward from the waist. ‘Bring him round one evening so we can see for ourselves that he’s the right sort of fellow for our Doll.’
Dolly eyed Louisa’s heaving bust as she bounced her hips from side to side. She couldn’t exactly remember how they’d got the impression Jimmy was with the RAF; a mix up many months ago and, at the time, Dolly had been struck by the idea. She hadn’t set them straight and now it seemed rather too late. ‘Sorry, girls,’ she said, folding the letter in half. ‘He’s far too busy at the moment—flying secret missions, war business, I’m really not at liberty to speak about the details—and even if he weren’t, you know the rules.’
‘Oh, come on,’ Kitty said, ‘the old battle axe’ll never know. She hasn’t been downstairs since horse-drawn carriages went out of fashion, and it’s not like any of us is going to tell.’
‘She knows more than you think,’ Dolly said. ‘Besides, she relies on me I’m the
closest thing she has to family. She’d let me go if she even suspected I was seeing a fellow.’
‘Would that be so bad?’ Kitty said. ‘You could come and work with us. One smile and my supervisor would take you in a jiffy. Bit of a lech, but jolly good fun once you know how to handle him.’
‘Oh yes!’ said Betty and Susan, who had a curious knack for unison. They looked up from their magazine. ‘Come and work with us.’
‘And give up my daily flaying? I hardly think so.’
Kitty laughed. ‘You’re mad, Doll. Mad or brave, I’m not sure which.’ Dolly shrugged; she certainly wasn’t going to discuss her reasons for staying with a gossip like Kitty.
She took up her book instead. It was lying on the side table where she’d left it the night before. The book was new, the first she’d ever owned (except for the unread copy of Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management her mother had thrust so hopefully into her hands). She’d gone to Charing Cross Road especially on one of her Sundays off and bought it from a bookseller there.
‘The Reluctant Muse.’ Kitty leaned forward to read the cover. ‘Haven’t you already read that one?’
‘Twice, actually.’
‘That good?’
‘’Tis, rather.’
Kitty wrinkled her pretty little nose. ‘Not much of a reader myself.’ ‘No?’ Dolly wasn’t either, not usually, but Kitty didn’t need to know that.
‘Henry Jenkins? That name’s familiar … oh now, isn’t he the fellow across the street?’
Dolly gave a vague wave of her cigarette. ‘I believe he lives around here somewhere.’ Of course, it was the very reason she’d chosen the book. Once Lady Gwendolyn had let slip that Henry Jenkins was well known in literary circles for including rather too much fact in his fiction (‘a fellow I could mention was furious to find his dirty laundry aired. Threatened to bring a lawsuit but died before he had the chance—accident prone, just like his father. Lucky for Jenkins …’), Dolly’s curiosity had worked at her like a file. After careful discussion with the bookseller, she’d divined that The Reluctant Muse was about the love affair between a handsome author and his much younger wife, and had eagerly handed over her precious savings. Dolly had spent a delicious week thereafter, eye pressed up close to the window of the Jenkins’s marriage, learning all sorts of details she’d never have dared to ask Vivien outright.
‘Terrifically handsome chap,’ Louisa said, lying prone now on the rug, arching her spine cobra-style to blink at Dolly. ‘Married to that woman with the dark hair, the one who walks around like she’s got a broomstick up her—’
‘Oh!’ Betty and Susan, wide-eyed. ‘Her.’
‘Lucky girl,’ Kitty said. ‘I’d kill for a husband like him. Have you seen the way he looks at her? Like she’s a piece of perfection and he can’t quite believe his luck.’
‘I wouldn’t mind if he glanced my way,’ said Louisa. ‘How do you think a girl meets a man like him?’
Dolly knew the answer to that—how Vivien met Henry—it was right there in the book, but she didn’t volunteer it. Vivien was her friend. To discuss her like this, to know that the others had noticed her too, that they’d speculated and wondered and drawn their own conclusions, made Dolly’s ears burn with indignation. It was as if something that belonged to her, something precious and private that she cared about deeply, was being riffled through like—well, like a hat box of salvaged clothes.
‘I heard she’s not entirely well,’ Louisa said, ‘that’s why he never takes his eyes off her.’
Kitty scoffed. ‘She doesn’t look one bit ill to me. Quite the contrary. I’ve seen her reporting to the WVS canteen round on Church Street when I’m coming home of an evening.’ She lowered her voice and the other girls leaned close to hear her. ‘I heard it was because she had a wandering eye.’
‘Ooh,’ Betty and Susan cooed together, ‘A lover!’
‘Haven’t you noticed how careful she is?’ Kitty continued, to the rapt attention of the others. ‘Always greeting him at the door when he gets home, dressed to the nines and placing a glass of whisky in his waiting hand. Please! That’s not love. It’s a guilty conscience. You mark my words—that woman’s hiding something, and I think we all know what that something is.’
Dolly had heard as much as she could stand; in fact, she found herself in rather violent agreement with Lady Gwendolyn that the sooner the girls left number 7 Campden Grove, the bet-ter. They really were an unsophisticated lot. ‘Is that the time?’ she said, clapping her book closed. ‘I’m going to go and have my bath.’
Dolly waited until the water had reached the five-inch line and turned the tap off with her foot. She poked her big toe inside the spout to stop it dripping. She knew she ought to call someone about fixing it, but who was there left nowadays? Plumbers were too busy putting out fires and turning off exploded water mains to care about a little drip and it always seemed to settle down eventually. She rested her bare neck on the tub’s cool rim and adjusted herself to keep her curlers and kirby grips from digging into her head. She’d tied the whole lot up with a scarf so the steam wouldn’t make her hair lank—wishful thinking, of course, Dolly couldn’t remember the last time her bath had been steaming.
She blinked at the ceiling as strains of dance music drifted up from the wireless downstairs. It really was a lovely room, black and white tiles and lots of silver rails and taps. Lady Gwendolyn’s ghastly nephew, Peregrine, would have a pink fit if he saw the lines strung across it with knickers and brassieres and stockings hung out to dry. The thought rather pleased Dolly.
She reached over the side of the tub and took up her cigarette in one hand, The Reluctant Muse in the other. Keeping both clear of the water (it wasn’t hard—five inches didn’t go far) she flicked through until she found the scene she was looking for. Humphrey, the clever but unhappy writer, has been invited by his old headmaster to return to his school and talk to the boys about literature, followed by dinner in his master’s private quarters. He’s just excused himself from the table and left the residence to stroll back through the darkling garden to the spot where he’s parked his car, and is thinking about the direction his life has taken, the regrets he’s acquired and the ‘cruel passing of time’, when he reaches the estate’s old lake and something catches his eye:
Humphrey dimmed his flashlight and stayed where he was, quiet and still in the shadows of the bathing house. In the nearby clearing on the bank of the lake, glass lanterns had been strung from the branches and candles flickered in the warm night air. A girl on the threshold of adulthood was standing amongst them, feet bare and only the simplest of summer dresses grazing her knees. Her dark hair fell loose in waves over her shoulders and moonlight dripped over the scene to cast silver along her profile. Humphrey could see that her lips were moving, as if she spoke the lines of a poem beneath her breath.
Her face was exquisite—cat-like eyes, arched brows, lips that were curled for singing—yet it was her hands that entranced him. While the rest of her body was perfectly still, her fingers were moving together in front of her body, the small but graceful motions of a person weaving together invisible threads. It wouldn’t have surprised Humphrey to learn that she was sending forth instructions to the sun and moon.
He had known women before, beautiful women who flattered and seduced, but this girl was different. There was beauty in her focus, a purity of purpose that reminded him of a child’s, though she was most certainly a woman. To find her in these natural surrounds, to observe the free flow of her body, the wild, romance of her face, enchanted him.
Humphrey stepped out of the shadows. The girl saw him but she didn’t start. She smiled as if she’d been expecting him and gestured towards the rippling lake, ‘There’s some-thing magical about swimming in the moonlight, don’t you think?’
It was the end of a chapter and the end of her cigarette, and Dolly disposed of both. The water was growing tepid and she wanted to wash herself before it turned any colder. She lathered her arms thoughtf
ully, wondering as she rinsed off the soap if that was the way Jimmy felt about her.
Dolly climbed out of the tub and slipped a towel from the rack. She caught sight of herself unexpectedly in the mirror and stopped very still trying to imagine what a stranger might see when he looked at her. Brown hair, brown eyes—not too close together thank goodness, a rather perky nose. She knew she was pretty, she’d known that since she was eleven years old and the postman began to behave strangely when he saw her in the street; but was her beauty of a different kind from Vivien’s? Would a man like Henry Jenkins have stopped, spell-bound, to watch her whisper in the moonlight?
Because, of course, Viola was Vivien. Aside from the bio-graphical similarities, there was the description of the girl standing in moonlight by the lake, her curled lips, feline eyes, the way she was staring so intently at something no one else could see. Why, it might have been written about Dolly’s view of Vivien from Lady Gwendolyn’s window.
She moved closer to the mirror. She could hear her own breathing in the still of the bathroom. What must it have been like, she wondered, for Vivien to know that she had made a man like Henry Jenkins, older, more experienced, and with an entree to literature and Society’s finest circles, so enchanted? How like a real princess must she have felt when he proposed marriage, when he swept her away from the humdrum of her normal existence and took her back to London, a life in which she blossomed from a wild young girl into a pearl-wearing, Chanel No 5-scented beauty, dashing about on her husband’s arm as the pair of them held court in the most glamorous clubs and restaurants. That was the Vivien Dolly knew; and, she suspected, the one she more resembled.
