The Dress

10.

Scarf by Chanel. 1965. Cream silk with black motif.



The bus pulled onto the gravel drive and Fabbia saw the large white sign propped against an oak tree: Private Auction This Way.

She felt a flicker of that old excitement. Sale day. That meant the prospect of a bargain or perhaps a real find. There was nothing she loved more than the opportunity for a good rummage through other people’s wardrobes.

Often it was only jumble-sale stuff. Nylon eiderdowns and faded curtains, napkins and crocheted tablerunners, dented packing cases full of yellowed linen sheets, perhaps the odd 60s cocktail dress in rayon or chiffon. But just occasionally there was something that was truly precious.

And today might be one of those days. Fabbia had leafed through the auction catalogue with interest: a list of the personal effects of Lady Eustacia Beddowes, last surviving heir of the Beddowes family, owners of Doddington Hall, a large country house set in acres of parkland at the edge of the Dales.

‘A beautiful old place,’ David had said. ‘And Eustacia was a nice woman. I looked after her a couple of times when I lived up that way. She never married, never had children. She was fiercely intelligent, loved a good debate. She was interested in travel and gardening and women’s rights and anthropology. She once told me that she’d wanted to be a botanist, got a place at Oxford, but her father wouldn’t let her go. So she stayed at home, did lots of voluntary work in the community and, after her parents passed away, she went all over the world – Africa, India, Vietnam – taking photographs, collecting rare plants, volunteering in orphanages, that kind of thing. She opened the gardens to the public a few years ago. There’s a picnic area and open-air concerts with fireworks in summer. There’s even a regular bus service. Now I suppose they’ll sell it all off to some fat-cat property developer, turn it into luxury apartments. ‘

‘And was she elegant, this Eustacia?’ Fabbia had asked. ‘What did she look like? Did she have beautiful clothes?’

David had smiled.

‘Well, not that I know about these things,’ he said, ‘but I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.’

And so, as the Dales bus wheezed its way up the hill and squeezed itself through the stone archway that marked the main entrance to the park, Fabbia imagined the young Eustacia, striding out along the driveway with her sketchbook under her arm.

As the bus braked sharply and the house came into view, she pictured how Eustacia might have looked as a young woman just before the War, draped over the stone balustrade of the terrace. She saw her in her mind’s eye as a haughty beauty with one of those English Rose complexions, her slim figure swathed in an evening gown of green silk.

She assessed the graceful proportions of the Hall, its large windows onto the park, the discreet details of the porticos, and felt sure that Eustacia would have been a person of great taste with at least a couple of lovely pieces stashed away from her earlier years. There would be jewellery, most definitely jewellery, one or two dresses, handbags and perhaps some favourite shoes.

She stepped down eagerly from the bus and followed the cardboard signs that had been taped up on pillars and tree trunks to direct the auction-goers. She passed through a gate into what she guessed were the kitchen gardens. They were, she noted, neat and well-stocked, laid out in that very English way. A hedge of lavender brushed her legs, releasing a pungent scent, and bees busied themselves along a wall of roses and honeysuckle.

An austerely suited woman – Fabbia wondered why the women from the auction houses always dressed in that rather unflattering way – flashed her a professional smile.

‘Sign and then print your name here, please.’

She held out her clipboard and a pen and then presented Fabbia with a number printed on a large piece of white card.

Fabbia followed the line of people through a series of sparse rooms and stone corridors, emerging in an impressive marble-columned hall. She shivered, drawing her jacket around her.

The room echoed with the sounds of subdued voices. Rows of stacking chairs had been arranged between the columns. People were craning their necks to admire the fine plasterwork of the ceiling. The sun cast stripes of light across the polished stone floor through tall, perfectly symmetrical windows.

Fabbia settled herself towards the front of the rows where she’d be able to see the lots more clearly. She glanced down at her catalogue where she’d marked in pencil the items that sounded most interesting to her.

She noticed that almost everyone else seemed to be dressed in tweed or those ugly, green quilted jackets. She felt almost like a teenager again among these women with their hair sprayed into stiff helmets, their sensible brogue shoes.

The auction moved very quickly. An assistant carried each item carefully from a small anteroom and laid it on a table draped with a red cloth. Fabbia raised her card and made bids on a number of things – a pearl choker with a crystal clasp, a lady’s set of luggage by Louis Vuitton, a 1930s toilet case in pink leather with silk lining, a camel coat with a fake fur collar by Jaeger.

Each time, the bidding went higher than she’d anticipated. She knew her limits. What she was waiting for came right at the end. Lot 108: Various accessories including fans, rings, gloves, belts and scarves. Fabbia knew that the real treasures were to be found among the ‘various.’ Things got bundled together and sometimes, just sometimes, a real gem could get overlooked.

She waved her card.

‘Fifteen pounds. Any advances on fifteen pounds?’ said the auctioneer.

People were beginning to get up from their seats, drifting away.

‘Fifteen pounds to the beautiful lady in red.’ The auctioneer flashed a smile at her, visibly relaxing as he came to the end of the long list of items.

A few heads turned in her direction. A woman several rows in front swivelled round in her chair and appraised Fabbia over the tops of her glasses.

Afterwards, tea was served from two enormous stainless steel urns in one of the drawing rooms. Fabbia busied herself with examining the detail of the wallpaper, which was a yellow Chinese silk. She fiddled with her mobile phone, pretending to listen to messages, so that no one would try to talk to her.

Finally, when the queue for tea had dwindled, she took her cup and perched carefully on the edge of a window seat upholstered in blue brocade, looking out over the hazy English vista of the park. A few more minutes and she’d be able to leave without drawing further attention to herself, make arrangements to pay for and collect her box of treasures. She couldn’t wait to hold them in her hands, to look at them more closely.

She began to imagine again what the young Eustacia must have felt as she sat here, perhaps at first with her sister – David had said there was a sister who’d died a few years ago. And would there have been suitors, local young men, standing fidgeting in the middle of this room? Had anyone asked for her hand? And then later still, Fabbia thought, Eustacia would have sat here with her aging father, the one who’d denied her an education and confined her to this very luxurious cage. What would they have said to one another? She imagined them sitting in those striped armchairs, either side of the fireplace. And, of course, finally Eustacia would have sat here alone, looking back on her life, wondering as we all do in the end, what she might have done differently.

A young woman approached and wedged herself at the opposite end of the window seat, tucking her feet up under her, balancing her teacup precariously in her lap. She smiled at Fabbia.

‘I couldn’t help but notice your beautiful outfit,‘ she said, extending a hand. ‘Hello, I’m Sylvia. A cousin of Eustacia’s. Officially, great-cousin, twice removed. We’re dying out, you see. Practically none of us left.’

And she smiled again, a dazzling smile that made her face dimple. She wore jeans and a floaty top, a pink cashmere cardigan – a good one, Fabbia thought, but rubbed at the cuffs - and strings of mala beads, rose quartz and turquoise and aquamarine, with a pendant which Fabbia recognised as the hand of Fatima, a sign of good luck back in the Old Country.

The young woman’s hair was cut very short, giving her the look of a mischievous elf.

Fabbia took her outstretched hand, decorated in large silver rings.

‘Fabbia Moreno,’ she said. ‘Very pleased to meet you.’

‘Ah,’ said Sylvia, ‘Fabbia. I knew it. I knew you were someone interesting. You have the lovely new shop in York, don’t you? The one in Grape Lane. My sister’s been telling me all about it. How exciting.‘

She set the teacup, which Fabbia was relieved to see was already empty, on the floor and sprang to her feet.

‘Would you like to come and see something? There’s something I’d like to show you.’

She was already on the move, weaving through the roomful of people, looking back over her shoulder at Fabbia, gesturing for her to follow.

Fabbia followed. They walked very quickly through a warren of corridors, past walls covered in oil paintings and portraits and mahogany tables arranged with Chinese vases and silver trinket boxes.

Sylvia came to a stop at the foot of a staircase, resting her hand on the polished banister.

‘Servants’ stairs,’ she laughed in her high, lilting voice. ‘As children we used to sneak down here and into the pantry. Midnight feasts. We were terrible. We ate everything in sight.’

‘You used to stay here?’ said Fabbia, surprised. She hadn’t thought of the Hall as a family house with children clattering down the corridors. It seemed so quiet, so elegant, so restrained in that English way. Not at all child-friendly.

‘Oh, yes, we were here, off and on, all the time. Mummy and Daddy were away such a lot you see. Shipped us off here for the summers. But we loved it. A children’s paradise. Trees to climb and a house full of servants to indulge our every whim. And, of course, Eustacia. She was such fun. We were always just a little bit scared of her – which was probably a very good thing – but she had such a sense of adventure, always inventing things for us to do, expeditions, indoors and out, projects, challenges…’

Sylvia laughed again but Fabbia saw her eyes well with sudden tears.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ she said, ‘I didn’t mean to…’

‘Oh, goodness, you didn’t. She had such a good innings. She was ready to go. She told me only last month that she didn’t want to linger.’

Sylvia sniffed and fished a tissue from the sleeve of her cardigan and began to take the stairs, two at a time.

‘It’s just that I already miss her so much. It can’t ever be the same!’

They reached the stop of the stairs and she took a key from the back pocket of her jeans and inserted it into a door, pushing it open.

‘Come in, come in. That’s right. Here’s what I wanted you to see.’

Fabbia allowed herself to be ushered into a large bright room. It was painted a soft shade of green and one wall consisted almost entirely of window, a huge window through which the light poured, settling in a kind of haze over the polished floorboards and the furniture.

There was a large bed with a simple white coverlet and above it was a mural painted in delicate strokes, almost Japanese in style - hummingbirds and butterflies hovering between pointed green leaves.

‘Eustacia’s room,’ said Sylvia, ‘and she painted this wall herself. I wish I could keep it somehow. It breaks my heart to think of it fading or someone papering over it when the house gets sold.’

‘So lovely,’ Fabbia breathed, moving in closer, noticing the orange beaks of the hummingbirds and the care with which each wingtip had been picked out in gold. She thought for a moment of Madaar-Bozorg, standing in the kitchen in her housecoat embroidered with red and green wings.

Sylvia had already crossed the room and was wrestling with the lock on another door.

‘This is her dressing room,’ she said. ‘I think you’ll like it.’

Fabbia stepped through into a sudden spill of colour. From floor to ceiling, the room was lined with cupboards, which Sylvia was now throwing open with a series of theatrical flourishes, revealing rails of garments and shelves of belts and scarves and shoes.

‘My goodness,’ Fabbia gasped. Instinctively, she moved closer, running her hands over one of the rails, lifting out a dress of creamy lace.

‘One of her favourites,’ said Sylvia, approvingly.

Fabbia checked herself, sliding the dress back into its place.

‘I’m sorry. How rude of me.’

‘Oh, she’d love you to look,’ said Sylvia. ‘Do. Please do. Everything is here. From the ‘30s onwards. She kept everything.’

She slid open a drawer in a little rosewood cabinet in the centre of the room and took out a large leather-bound notebook.

‘You see,’ she said, leafing through the pages, ‘She catalogued it all. Every detail. What she bought, where it was made and then each time she wore it. She was like that. A great collector of things. Plants, paintings, clothes.’

‘Is this her?’ Fabbia peered at a black and white photograph in a silver frame – a young woman, with a face and demeanour not very different at all from the one that she’d imagined, posed in a conservatory next to a large potted palm. She was small and slim and her dark hair was bobbed in the fashionable style of the era, finishing at her jawline and carefully waved. She looked directly at the camera with a steady open gaze and her chin was ever so slightly raised in what Fabbia imagined as carefully-concealed defiance. She wore a pair of beautifully cut trousers and a crisp white shirt, a tie and a silver tie-pin. She leaned on a silver-topped cane.

‘Yes,’ said Sylvia. ‘That’s Eustacia on her twentieth birthday. Isn’t she something?’

‘She certainly is,’ Fabbia breathed. ‘I think she and my grandmother would definitely have got on.’

Sylvia was holding the notebook open at the last completed page.

‘Her last entry was just a few weeks ago. Look…’

Fabbia leaned forward to decipher the small, precise handwriting.

‘Silk scarf. Vintage Chanel. Cream with black motif.’

Fabbia’s heart skipped a beat. She traced her finger across the careful columns and read: ‘From Fabbia Moreno, York. 14/3/11. Just like the one I once lost in Delhi.’

Fabbia looked at Sylvia, puzzled.

‘You mean that Eustacia came to my shop?’ she said, making a mental scan of every one of her recent customers over the age of 60. ‘I don’t remember…’

‘No,’ said Sylvia. ‘It was my sister. Cammy. Sorry, Camilla... Cammy’s just what we call her in the family, you know. And the scarf. Well, in fact, we buried Eustacia in it. She loved it. It reminded her of a time when she was very happy.’

At the edge of Fabbia’s memory something stirred. Of course. Now she remembered. The scarf with its outsized Chanel motif, the bold interlocking ‘C’s. She remembered folding it carefully in pink tissue for that lovely young woman, the one with the baby in the pram. She’d admired the woman’s knitted pea coat – sky-blue with gilt buttons - and her fat, contented baby in her stripy knitted cap who’d gurgled and babbled.

‘It’s a birthday present,‘ the woman had said. ‘For my elderly cousin. I wish I could bring her here. She’d love your shop. But she’s just too frail these days…’

‘Of course.’ said Fabbia. ‘I do remember Camilla. I do… Well, imagine!’

Sylvia was watching her with her bright eyes, her head tilted to one side.

‘I’ve made a decision,’ she said. ‘I want you to go through and choose.’

She gestured to the walls of clothes.

‘It’s what Eustacia would have wanted,’ she said. ‘Someone who’ll truly appreciate them. She’d have loved to visit your shop. When we gave her the scarf and told her about you, she made Cammy describe the shop and everything in it in great detail. And when we were thinking about what to do with all this stuff, Cammy did suggest you as a possible solution, but I just didn’t know what I thought about it. You see, I’d never met you. But now that I have…’

‘Oh,’ said Fabbia, swallowing. ‘It’s so kind. But I couldn’t. Really. You don’t know what you’re saying. I just couldn’t…’

‘Couldn’t you?’ laughed Sylvia. ‘And I do know what I’m saying, I can assure you. We’ve debated it, Cammy and I. It’s a mammoth task, going through it all. There are some things, obviously, that we’d like to keep for ourselves but the rest…’

She lowered her voice conspiratorially.

‘No one really knows about all these things, either,’ she said. ‘We kept this room locked. The thought of that horrible man from Christie’s going though her lovely things.’

She shuddered.

‘No, better that they go to someone like you.’

‘But I couldn’t possibly buy them from you,’ said Fabbia, embarrassed. ‘ I just couldn’t pay you what they’re worth.’

‘Oh, no! I’m so sorry. How perfectly awful of me.’

Sylvia clapped her small suntanned hand to her mouth. The tiny bells on her bracelets jingled.

‘I should have been clearer. It’s a gift, you see. A gift from Eustacia to you. You can keep some and sell some. Because wouldn’t it be wonderful if someone else were able to really enjoy them? Eustacia would have loved that. In fact, I know she’d have loved to meet you. Cammy and I, we don’t really have much use for this kind of thing. Most of them wouldn’t fit us, anyway. Eustacia was so petite. Just like you. And as you can see, I’m a bit of an old hippie, to be honest.’

She gestured towards her beaded flip-flops, the frayed edges of her skinny jeans.

‘But you, Fabbia, you’ll be able to find the perfect owners for these things. You’ll just know, won’t you?’