by Hannah Emery
This could be it, Evelyn thought. Now that she had Victoria, everything might be better. Her world might become brighter again. Because the world for the past year, since her wedding day, had simply been Lace Antiques, and what lay behind its white door: the dark, narrow staircase, the carpet that swirled with roses and smelled of old cigarette ash and trodden-in Chanel and secret footsteps. The pink-tiled bathroom, square and cold. Evelyn’s bedroom, reeking of sleep, and now, the darling pink skin of her baby.
But now, perhaps Evelyn could start to go out more. Now that she had a huge navy-blue pram and wasn’t heavy and tired she could perhaps walk around Silenshore and feel more like herself again. When her parents had first disappeared, and the rumours were flying around the town about who they might have owed money to, who might have chased them away, she’d stayed inside all the time because she’d been frightened that somebody might recognise her. One stale, slow day, when Jack was out buying strange things covered in dust, Evelyn had even told a lone customer that she came from far away, just to see if he would believe her. It seemed that he did. So she told another person, and another, until everybody thought the same. There was no reason to doubt Evelyn’s lack of connection with the castle. She knew she didn’t look like a princess or a film star any more. How could she, surrounded by old things, standing at a square counter day after day, week after week?
But even when enough time had passed that the rumours about the du Rêve girl being left behind had faded, and people were less likely to remember her as the old Evelyn du Rêve with the bright-gold hair and the brilliant blue eyes, Evelyn still stayed behind the dusty curtains of Lace Antiques. It was as though she’d forgotten how to go out.
She’d waited for London, of course. But the month they were meant to go, Jack had heard that there was a man in Silenshore who wanted to buy a caseload of antiques, and had said that going to London just then would be stupid. So they’d waited for a better time to move away: Evelyn upstairs hunting for hidden notes from her parents that she never found; Jack downstairs in the shop. Marriage was strange and lonely. It wasn’t at all how Evelyn had imagined it to be. If they could just get to London, she’d thought at first, then her life would be the glittering party she’d intended. But as the months went by, Evelyn realised that they weren’t going to London now, or any time soon. Jack probably had never even planned to go. He’d just said it so that Evelyn would marry him, although she wasn’t sure why he’d wanted that so much because he didn’t seem to particularly like her, except for at night, when he grunted and tugged at her and thrust against her as though they were animals.
But now, Evelyn thought, as she stared down her darling Victoria with her raven-black hair, perhaps none of that mattered. Perhaps now life would finally begin.
Evelyn managed to take care of the baby, who was rather subdued from the moment she was born. She slept easily in her wooden crib next to Evelyn, and when she cried, Evelyn took her in her arms, or latched her onto her breast until Victoria’s miniature eyelids fluttered closed once more and Evelyn could sleep again.
Jack did not involve himself with Evelyn or Victoria. He took to sleeping in the spare bedroom, because Victoria snuffled and shuffled in her sleep, and it was not easy attending auctions and keeping on top of the shop and its stock when he was tired.
When Victoria was a few months old, Evelyn decided to try on some of her old dresses that she’d brought with her from the castle when she married Jack, before she’d blown up like a balloon to carry Victoria. Her stomach had returned nicely to its original shape without much coaxing at all because Evelyn never really ate much these days. Her face, she knew, had lost the plumpness that Victoria had brought to it. It was time, she decided, to be herself again.
She took out some skirts and blouses that she hadn’t worn at all that year, and placed them, together with her yellow crepe dress, on her bed. This was the dress she’d worn the day she’d met Jack. She needed to find her matching shoes to wear too, now that her ankles were back to their normal size. Evelyn dragged a chair across the room and clambered onto it, pulling down a small suitcase from on top of the wardrobe. Perhaps they would be in there: she still hadn’t properly unpacked all of her things since living with Jack.
As Evelyn pulled the case open, she saw not shoes, but a doll: a round head fringed with shimmering hair. As she pulled the doll from the case, an image of Mary, the evacuee, filled her mind. Evelyn pushed its black hair from its glassy eyes, then held it tight as though it was a real child. Although she’d brought the doll with her when she’d moved to the flat above Lace Antiques, she hadn’t really looked at it since she’d been here. Now, holding the doll transported her back to the times when she’d stormed through the castle playing games with the evacuees, the times when she’d believed that the castle and its riches was something to be left behind for a more exciting life.
Mary and the other children had only stayed with them in the castle for a few months in the end. London was as safe as anywhere, it appeared. Nothing was happening. It was a phony war. And so battered suitcases were packed, parents were telegrammed and suddenly Evelyn was alone in the castle again. She wrote to Mary often. Wonderful Mary, who gave away her only doll because she knew Evelyn loved the way its dress and hair sparkled in the light.
Once it was clear that the war was perhaps not so phony, another batch of sniffing, amazed children were dispatched to Castle du Rêve. None of them were like Mary. These were all young boys with grey shorts and scabbed knees, who spoke to Evelyn so infrequently that in the end she often forgot that they were there. She had stuffed the doll away, and, along with the millions of other people whose letters had suddenly stopped, tried to forget. She’d thought about Mary again when she’d told her mother that she was going to stay with her in London, then ended up meeting Jack and staying and marrying him instead. Now, the thought of how that white lie had turned dark and black made Evelyn feel quite sick.
Pressing the doll to her flat chest, Evelyn remembered pieces of conversation with Mary; precious words that she had turned over and over in her mind for months after Mary had left the castle.
You’re glamorous, Evelyn. That’s why I think you’ll end up in Hollywood, covered head to toe in diamonds.
The war’s going to change everything, Evelyn. And when it does, you should be ready.
Mary would be disappointed to see Evelyn now, her only company a doll that should never have been hers. She placed the doll back into the suitcase gently, and pulled the crepe dress from the bed, fingering the thick yellow fabric before pulling it over her pale shoulders. She would make something of her life, for Mary if nobody else.
As she stared in the mirror in the corner of the bedroom, she saw Jack appear behind her. His eyes locked onto hers.
‘You look beautiful,’ he said. His words weren’t soft, but sharp. ‘Come to London with me. You can come to the auction. You might have your uses there.’
It was as though wearing the yellow dress again and thinking about Mary and her own old dreams of being a star had unlocked something; it was as though even Jack knew that now was the time for their lives to really begin. Evelyn packed a little case for her and Victoria, her heart singing.
Jack was attentive to them both as they sat on the juddering train, his arm hooked around Evelyn’s shoulders the whole way. When they arrived, he took her to Oxford Street, bought her more lipsticks and another bottle of Chanel No 5 perfume, and a new red dress from Horrockses Fashions. Maybe, now that he had brought Evelyn to London for the day and treated her nicely, he was finally considering moving here? Maybe he had almost saved enough money for the move, and would tell her that she needed to pack up any day now. They could be in London for Christmas, and perhaps, in London, Jack would be a happier man.
When they went into a shop that was brimming with paintings of fields and dogs and horses, and golden frames stacked one on top of another, Jack nodded at the man behind the counter.
‘Lace,’ the man muttered
to Jack in greeting, his eyes on Evelyn. ‘What can I do for you?’
Evelyn took Victoria from her pram, bouncing her in her arms while the men talked. Victoria wrapped her plump little fingers around Evelyn’s as they muttered about prices and artists and the costs of framing. Eventually, the men shook hands on a deal and Jack and Evelyn stepped back out of the shop into the bustling street. It was beginning to rain, the sky black with unspent showers.
‘I got that painting for half the price he had it marked for. I’ll make a nice amount on that. Bastards like him never took me seriously before,’ he said to Evelyn as she pushed the pram along, weaving it through the crowds and the umbrellas and puddles. ‘They thought I was worthless. I’ve shown them today.’
Evelyn nodded, knowing that this wasn’t altogether true. She’d seen the way that the man in the shop had looked at her. She’d seen them both glance at her, heard Jack promise him something in a whisper, although she couldn’t hear exactly what. They still thought Jack was worthless. But they would give him half-price paintings if they thought he might give something in return. She looked down at her yellow dress, her fitted coat, suddenly hating them.
As time went on, Jack took Evelyn to more shops, more auctions, and introduced her to more men, who stared at her as though she were a painting herself. Nothing ever happened to her that she could really say much about: just the odd calloused old hand of a seller around her waist, or resting lightly on her bottom. She’d look across at Jack when this happened, but he’d always be in the middle of a deal. Sometimes, Jack paid the baker across the road from Lace Antiques to look after Victoria while they both went to London. Evelyn came to dread those days, for those were the ones where she had to have strange hands around her shoulders as she stood in auctions and sat in dirty little cafés. Those were the days when she always felt as though a promise that Jack had given might materialise, for when she was without Victoria she was without a reason to disappear outside or sit in a quiet corner alone. She grew more and more fond of being in Silenshore, away from London. She knew now that London wasn’t the sparkling, bright place for a life of adventure to begin. London was a place of fear and dark alleyways that Jack made her take shortcuts through, and strange men with their leering eyes and wandering hands and their glazed expressions when Evelyn asked how she might go about finding a missing couple in France. When Jack wasn’t watching, and sometimes even when he was, men would sidle up to Evelyn and whisper in her ear their promises about better lives with them, about happiness and diamonds and anything her pretty heart desired. Once, Evelyn knew, she would have fallen for it. She would have believed them.
‘What was a woman like you doing marrying Jack Lace?’ asked one man with a white smile and shiny blond hair. ‘Did he give you a gift or a potion of some kind? Bewitch you, did he?’
Evelyn shook her head, watching Jack across the auction hall that they were in. ‘No. Nothing like that. I just loved him.’ But then she thought of the glinting, jewel- encrusted mirror that she had taken from her mother. The stones that Evelyn had thought were blue diamonds as a child were actually sapphires. The gems of new love. Never mind that she fell in love with a man who turned out to be all wrong for her: she’d still fallen in love. ‘I wasn’t bewitched. I fell in love,’ she said firmly.
‘Ah, but maybe those two are the same thing,’ the man with the blond hair smiled.
As they spent more and more time in London, it became clear that Jack knew no actors, no theatre people, as he’d once said he did. But now, Evelyn wasn’t sure she wanted to be an actress anyway. She wasn’t sure she could stand the thought of people staring at her, idolising her, wondering why on earth she had married Jack Lace. All she could stand, for now, was Silenshore. And the more she thought about it, the more certain she became that she shouldn’t go anywhere else. Because perhaps if she stayed in Silenshore, she would be closer to finding out where her parents were and if they were ever going to come back.
As the years lingered on, Victoria and Evelyn were inseparable. Evelyn was always by Victoria’s side, keeping her away from Jack and away from anything Evelyn thought might have the potential to be dangerous: a label which really could be applied to most things. When Victoria was a little girl, Evelyn would sometimes pluck her from her bed and carry her to her own. Then Evelyn would curl into her sleeping daughter, nuzzling her neck into Victoria’s milky skin that smelt of school: of wooden desks and ink and other people’s children.
But then Victoria had grown distant somehow. Evelyn had actually been out into Silenshore and bought Victoria a special present for her thirteenth birthday: a handbag with a comb and a silver bracelet with stones the colour of rubies inside. Evelyn had drawn stars on some of the paper from the shop and wrapped the present carefully. Victoria’s face on that birthday morning had been a perfect combination of beauty and happiness, and Evelyn had promised herself that even though Victoria was growing up, she would never let them grow apart. She would never leave Victoria, leave her to wonder where Evelyn was and if she even still loved her. At first, it was easy to adhere to her own promise. Even though Victoria was changing before Evelyn’s eyes: rounded breasts, widened hips and a slimmer, more knowing, face her character remained much the same. She was intelligent, interesting. Evelyn liked to talk to her, even if Victoria had to come into Evelyn’s bedroom and sit on the end of her bed if Evelyn was too tired to get up.
But then Victoria had started to retreat from Evelyn’s slow-moving world. It was probably Evelyn’s fault somehow. She was always so very tired: tired with the disappointment of everything, the weight of lost hope bearing down upon her each day, exhausting her all the time. It was hard to try to do all the things she wanted to with Victoria with so little energy and hope. And she couldn’t pluck Victoria from her bed any more and breathe in her milky skin. She couldn’t put Victoria’s warm, sticky hand in hers and walk up and down Silenshore’s main streets with her. Victoria was her own person now: one who smelt of her own scent of fresh flowers and hairspray; who became frustrated when Evelyn was tired; who was quite obviously too intelligent and full of life to sit in Lace Antiques forever. And so before Evelyn could summon up the energy to understand how she might keep Victoria close to her, Victoria seemed further away than ever, tangled in a mess that Evelyn had no idea how to pull her from without breaking her.
In the end, it was Jack who decided on what was to be done about Victoria and the baby. Although Evelyn supposed it made sense, part of her wanted to pull his callous, brutish fingers away from the leather-covered steering wheel as they motored along the winding roads to Gaspings mother and baby home. She wanted to smash the windows that were trapping her in this horrible, horrible car, grab Victoria and take her somewhere else where they could look after the baby together. But, as always, these days, Evelyn’s limbs were heavy and leaden, her mind cobwebbed with fatigue. It was as though her soul was separate from her body, powerless to move it.
And so Evelyn did nothing.
When they’d left their darling Victoria behind, Evelyn twisted her head to watch the red-brick building disappear around the corner, willing for everything to turn out, for May to hurry along, for Victoria to somehow keep her sanity and sense and Harry at the end of all this.
Jack didn’t turn his head, didn’t move his eyes from the road, but still somehow sensed that Evelyn was leaving a part of herself behind at Gaspings.
‘We had no choice. You’d best try and forget the whole business.’
Evelyn rested her head on the hard leather of her seat and closed her eyes against the sharp glare of the sun. Memories floated around in her mind: when her belly had swelled as ripe as a purple plum as she carried Victoria inside her; when her mother had told her that their fortune had gone; when she married Jack and thought that he was the key to Evelyn transforming into who she was meant to be. Image after image, memory after memory, as they juddered along the road away from Gaspings House and back towards Silenshore.
When they reac
hed home, Evelyn’s hands wandered to her throat, to pull up her beads over her head, as she always did before she sank into bed. But there were no beads there, no pearls in the golden box on her dressing table, no crystals or diamonds or rubies. When Evelyn and Jack had married, and her parents had vanished, their lights from the castle burned out, Evelyn had been poor for the first time in her life. Her only luxuries had been the Chanel perfume and the lipstick that her mother had sent to her with her other belongings from the castle, and these she used every day, stared at, fingered and remembered. But as Jack’s modest wealth began to accumulate, Evelyn’s collection of perfumes and dresses and jewellery began to grow, making her feel like she was, underneath the dust of the Lace name, a du Rêve once again. She had started to seek out stones to try and make things right: garnets to bring success to the business, rubies to try and banish the bad dreams and sadness that had cursed Evelyn since the days she met Jack, pearls to fill her life with calm and beauty.
Victoria’s place at Gaspings had been paid for by a furious Jack. The money that Evelyn had added of her own accord: notes that were curled and warm from being hidden in Evelyn’s shoe, she hoped would make the nurses treat Victoria like the queen that she should be. So now, Evelyn’s neck was bare of pearls. The only glittering stones she had not sold were the sapphires that encrusted the mirror. She had slipped it from Victoria’s case when she wasn’t looking. That, Evelyn would keep here. As long as she kept it away from her, Victoria would surely be safe.
Chapter 17
Isobel: 2011
‘Pass those olives, will you please?’ Isobel asks Tom.
Tom rolls the closed tub of olives towards Isobel and she catches them. They are sitting on the beach, a tartan blanket spread over the pebble-strewn sand. It’s the fourth day of a heatwave and the sun is raw and burning. Isobel opens the tub, glancing down as she does so. The ruby-red vintage ring that she bought in London glitters in the sun. It’s the first time she’s worn it since Beatrice was born. She found it the other day in the side pocket of her hospital bag.
