Sins

Janey was beginning to wish that Ella would stay behind if she was going to be so stuffy. Janey had arranged to meet Dan at the party and she didn’t want Ella cramping her style.

Dan. Just thinking about him gave her a delicious squiggly feeling in her tummy.

‘If this party is going to be one of those rowdy parties at some dreadful smoky dive and filled with scruffy musicians, then—’ Ella began, only to be interrupted by Janey, who had finished making up her eyes and was now applying what looked like white lipstick to her mouth.

‘Is that really what you’re going to wear?’ Janey challenged her sister, looking disapprovingly at Ella’s pleated tartan skirt and navy-blue jumper. ‘We’re going to a party, not school…’

‘In some cold damp cellar,’ Ella retorted. ‘Anyway, there’s nothing wrong with what I’m wearing.’

‘I bet they don’t think that at Vogue,’ Janey grimaced. ‘I’ll design something for you, if you like.’

Ella shuddered. ‘No thank you.’

‘Well, you could at least wear a dress, Ella. Look how pretty Rose is in hers.’

The sisters both looked at Rose as she walked into the room in her dark green mohair dress.

‘Don’t be silly,’ Ella objected. ‘I could never wear anything like that. I’m too big, and anyway, that colour wouldn’t suit me like it does Rose.’

Whilst Ella and Janey were both tall and fair-haired, with grey eyes and good English skin, Rose was an exotic mix of East and West, fine-boned and only five foot one. Her skin was olive-toned, her face heart-shaped with high cheekbones and soft full lips, whilst her dark brown eyes were European in shape. Her long hair was silky straight and inky black, and she always wore it in a chignon.

Janey looked impatiently at Ella. If she could have done so, Janey would far rather have been sharing a dingy bedsit with one of her arty friends than living in luxury in her parents’ elegant red-brick house on Cheyne Walk. Still, at least it was in Chelsea, which sort of made it all right. Janey loved her family dearly but she had always been something of a rebel, loving the unconventional, passionate about fashion and music, art and life itself.

It was a pity that Ella had insisted on dragging her back to Cheyne Walk when, if they’d have stayed in the coffee bar, there must have been a good chance of Mary Quant coming in and spotting her. Only her sister could be old-fashioned enough to think that the ritual of ‘afternoon tea’ actually mattered and not understand that just to mention it in the circles in which Janey moved at once rendered a person hideously unhip. A person would never have thought that Ella herself had graduated from St Martins, but then Ella had been happy to go and work in Vogue’s offices, whereas nothing other than creating her own fashion designs would do for Janey. She had wanted to be a dress designer for as long as she could remember. As a little girl she had always been begging scraps of silk from Amber to make clothes for her dolls.

‘Well, I just hope that this party is respectable,’ Ella warned, ‘because Mama has enough to worry about at the moment with Emerald, without having to worry about you as well.’

Ella wished that Janey was more like Amber. She worried dreadfully about her younger sister’s casual attitude to life and its dangers. Where Ella frowned anxiously, Janey laughed; where Ella retreated warily, Janey stepped forward and embraced; where Ella saw danger, Janey saw only excitement. But Janey could not remember what Ella could, and she did not know what Ella knew either. Their real mother had loved excitement. She had craved it. Ella had heard her saying so in that wild manner she had sometimes had as she paced the floor like a bird beating itself against the bars of its cage. Her mother had laughed wildly with their aunt Cassandra, the two of them disappearing upstairs into Ella’s parents’ bedroom.

Janey had been their mother’s favourite too, somehow always managing to win a smile from her, where Ella got only cross words.

Janey didn’t understand how afraid Ella was of either of them possessing the traits of their mother, and Ella couldn’t tell her why she feared that. Janey didn’t remember their mother as well as she did–she was lucky. Even now Ella sometimes woke up in the night worrying about what their lives would have been like if their real mother had lived. She remembered vividly her mother’s moods, the rages that could come out of nowhere and then the tears, the way she had screamed at them.

The truth was that their mother had been a little mad–more than a little. Her madness had been brought on by the births of Ella herself and then Janey, so Blanche, Amber’s grandmother, had once let slip. Ella hated to think of her mother’s illness. In fact, Ella hated to think of her mother at all. She envied Emerald having Amber as her real mother.

Whenever Ella found herself beginning to feel upset or angry about anything she deliberately reminded herself of her mother and then she shut her feelings away. She would never marry–or have children–she didn’t want to end up like her mother.

But what about Janey? Janey didn’t know why she had to be afraid of what they might have inherited from their mother and Ella couldn’t bring herself to tell her because, much as she worried about her young sister and her giddiness and recklessness, Ella also loved her dearly. She didn’t want to take away Janey’s happiness and replace it with the fear she had herself.

Chapter Four (#u5bb3405b-deb1-5343-9fd2-7ea4f47f6a12)

Paris

‘Well, your father might have been a duke, Emerald, but you certainly aren’t a duchess.’

Emerald only just managed to stop herself from glaring at Gwendolyn.

The three of them, Emerald herself, the Hon Lydia Munroe, and Lady Gwendolyn, her godmother’s niece, were all going to be coming out together.

Gwendolyn might be as plain as her dull-looking and boring mother, whose sharp gaze had already warned Emerald that she had not found favour with her, but Emerald knew how highly her godmother thought of her. Gwendolyn’s father was Lady Beth’s brother, the Earl of Levington, and she thought the world of him and his family. If Emerald gave in to her longing to put ‘Glum Gwennie’, as she had privately nicknamed her, in her place, she’d risk her going telling tales to her mother and her aunt, and that would mean that Emerald could lose a valuable ally. No, sadly Gwendolyn’s comeuppance would have to wait for a more propitious occasion. So instead Emerald smiled falsely at the other girl.

Obviously thinking that she got the better of the exchange Gwendolyn seized on her moment of triumph and, determined to prolong it, continued recklessly, ‘And it isn’t as though your mother has any family either. No one knows how she managed to marry your father.’

Since it was no secret that her parents’ first child had been born eight months after their hastily arranged marriage, Emerald had a pretty good idea herself. But at least her mother had been clever enough to hold out for marriage.

As much as she resented her mother, Emerald was thankful that she had held out for the status of marriage and not remained merely a mistress. She would have hated being illegitimate, people knowing, laughing at her behind her back, looking down on her.

Emerald, Lydia and Gwendolyn were seated on their beds, in the bedroom they shared in their finishing school, which was in fact a villa, close to the Bois de Boulogne, owned by the Comtesse de la Calle. The comtesse’s finishing school had the reputation for being the smartest of such schools. Being finished in Paris had a cachet to it that was not given to those girls who were finished at one of the two ‘acceptable’ London schools, so naturally Emerald had insisted on coming to the Bois de Boulogne villa.

Buoyed up by her triumph Gwendolyn continued happily, ‘Mummy and Auntie Beth both think that your mother was awfully lucky to marry as well as she did and neither of them thinks that you’ll be able to do the same.’

Emerald tensed. Gwendolyn’s words were like a match to the dry tinder of her pride. Springing up off her bed, she stood over the younger girl, her hands on her hips, the full skirts of her silk dress emphasising the narrowness of her waist,

‘Well, that’s all you know.’

‘What? Do you mean that you think that you’ll get to marry a duke like your mother did?’ Lydia demanded excitedly, joining the conversation. Lydia was two years younger than Emerald and inclined to hero-worship her, something that Emerald fostered.

Gwendolyn, though, wasn’t looking anything like as impressed.

‘A duke, yes, but like my mother, no. I shall do better than she did,’ Emerald confirmed fiercely.

There was a small sharp sound–the sucking in of air from Gwendolyn as though it tasted as sour as any lemon, followed by a thrilled gasp from Lydia.

‘Oh, Emerald, you mean the Duke of Kent, don’t you?’

‘He has to marry someone, doesn’t he, and since he can have his pick of the débutantes, he’s bound to want one of the prettiest…’ was all Emerald permitted herself to say.

She didn’t finish her sentence, but then she didn’t need to. Its meaning was plain to both of the girls sitting looking at her. Emerald was a beauty, and quite clearly destined to be the beauty of the season. Whilst Lydia had a certain fresh healthy country-girl charm about her, Gwendolyn was very close to the ugly edge of plain.

That was Gwendolyn dealt with, Emerald decided with satisfaction. Emerald wasn’t in any way fond of her own sex. She had had friends at school, of course–one had to if one wished to be the most popular girl in school–but those friends had been impressionable naïve girls rather like Lydia, easy to manipulate. There was no way that a plain, overweight girl like Gwendolyn could be admitted to that circle; she was the kind of girl that Emerald despised and treated with contempt. By rights Gwendolyn ought to have tried to seek her approval, but instead, to Emerald’s irritation, she was forever making unwanted, even critical comments in that toneless voice of hers. What a joke Glum Gwennie was, daring to think that she could criticise her, looking at her with those small sharp eyes of hers as she asked her equally sharp questions. But she would get her revenge once she was married to the Duke of Kent.

Emerald threw down the copy of the Queen magazine she had been reading and got up, pacing the room impatiently. She was bored with Paris now. She’d expected being here to be far more exciting than it was. Thank heavens they and school would soon be ‘finished’ and the fun could start in earnest.

The magazine she had discarded caught her eye. Although the season hadn’t officially started yet, already the Queen was carrying studio portraits of some of the débutantes due to come out. Her own photograph had been taken by Cecil Beaton and she had been pleased with it, but now that she had seen the photograph of another deb, taken by Lewis Coulter, an ex-Etonian with no title but excellent connections, and who had recently become the society photographer, Emerald had decided that she had to have a fresh photograph done. Never backward in coming forward when she wanted something, she had already written to him to this effect, giving him the date of her return to London and announcing that she would call on him then. It might say in the magazine that he was in such demand that he was turning away commissions but he was a photographer taking people’s photographs for money. And money was a commodity that Emerald’s mother possessed in great abundance. As did Emerald herself. Or rather as she would have when she reached the age of twenty-five, and she didn’t have to bother coaxing Mr Melrose into agreeing to pay for things she wanted from her trust fund.

Of course, her mother hated it that she was going to be so very rich…

And as for Rose…Emerald’s mouth hardened. How could her mother even acknowledge her, never mind make such a fuss over her? Didn’t her mother realise how badly having a cousin like Rose could reflect on Emerald? Emerald’s great-grandmother had been right: Rose should have been sent back to Hong Kong to live in the slums where Uncle Greg had found her mother.

It was just as well that she had had the forethought to persuade her godmother to offer to present her, and have her to stay in London with her, ‘so that Mummy can get on with her work, Auntie Beth,’ as she’d put it to her sponsor. She’d have far more licence to arrange things how she wanted under the aegis of her godmother than she would with her own mother.

Emerald was well aware that her godmother had high hopes of a match between her and her own second son. After all, Rupert had no money to speak of, and one day Emerald would have rather a lot. But she certainly did not intend to waste either herself or her fortune on such a nonentity. Equally, Emerald was also aware of exactly what was meant by the damp forceful squeeze Gwendolyn’s father had given her hand when he had called at the villa ‘to see how my little girl is’. Of course he would find her attractive, because she was.

Emerald was saving the pleasure of telling Gwendolyn exactly how revolting her father was–making up to girls his daughter’s age when he was married–as something to savour when the time was right. For now, she had more important things to think about, like what she wanted to be wearing the first time the Duke of Kent saw her…

Chapter Five (#u5bb3405b-deb1-5343-9fd2-7ea4f47f6a12)

London, February 1957