Chapter Three
Chapter Three
Tuesdays were always a nightmare, but this one really was the limit.
The telephone had rung at half past eight in the morning, and Izzie had only just managed to race down the stairs half-dressed in time to catch it. A chipper man on the other end had told her that not only would the cloth Mum had ordered the previous week be delayed that morning because of an issue with the lorry delivering it, it would be short ten yards of tweed and five of cotton lawn.
“I do have orders I’m meant to be fulfilling,” she’d snapped down the telephone in an uncharacteristic show of spirit.
“Don’t we all, miss?” asked the man with a laugh.
“Well, when can I expect the driver this morning?” she asked, fumbling with the buttons on her brown cardigan.
“He’ll show up when he shows up, won’t he?” the man replied.
The whole thing had thrown her morning off because instead of heading back upstairs to pull on her shoes and finish pinning up her hair, she’d gone straight to the appointment book and tried to figure out what fittings they might need to move around due to the missing materials.
Through all of it, she couldn’t help but feel the situation spiraling out of control. This was a far cry from what she wanted to be doing—sketching designs and making beautiful clothes for women who could appreciate a touch of modernity in their wardrobes—but, as Mum liked to remind her, it was a part of running a dress shop so Izzie bit her lip, put her head down, and carried on because to show reluctance or resentment might undo all of her good work to prove to Mum that she was capable of managing Mrs. Shelton’s Fashions.
When she’d finally wrestled her morning under control again, the fabric delivery showed up just before the ten o’clock opening—a blessing—but it was all wrong—a curse. There was no tweed at all, but boiled wool and all in the wrong colors. Instead of cotton lawn, there was yards of the kind of heavy canvas commonly used for kit bags. It had taken the driver half an hour and two calls to his depot on the shop’s telephone to work out that they’d assigned the wrong order to their address. When finally he realized that Mrs. Shelton’s order was mislabeled in the very back of the lorry, it was nearly eleven and Izzie was already exhausted.
She was just thinking how very much she would like to lie down and have a nap when a tap came on her shoulder. She turned to see Miss Reid, concern clear on her face.
“Have you seen your mother this morning?” Miss Reid asked.
Izzie looked around as though Mum would somehow materialize in front of them. “Not yet.” She paused. “That’s unlike her.”
“Why don’t you look in on her?” asked Miss Reid in an unusual display of consideration.
“That’s very kind of you, thank you,” said Izzie gratefully.
She left the delivery driver with Miss Reid, said a silent prayer that the man would survive his encounter with the scowling seamstress, and mounted the stairs to the flat.
As soon as she was through the front door, she paused to listen for the sounds of Mum moving around.
All was silent.
She really did have to speak to Mum about this. This was the fourth time in two weeks that Izzie had had to wake her mother to start the working day. If Mum really was so run down, perhaps it was time to ask Dr. Morton to call in on them. Maybe he could suggest something that would help bring Mum’s energy back again. Not that she looked forward to revisiting the old argument with Mum about whether it was worth paying the doctor’s fee for a house call only to be told that Mum needed rest and good meat for dinner at least once a week.
Izzie knocked on her mother’s door and waited for a response. She knocked again. Still nothing.
“Mum?” she called out. “It’s past opening time. It’s time to start the day.”
When there still was no response, she tried again. “I could use some help taming Miss Reid. She’s in a mood this morning.”
Still nothing.
Izzie twisted the knob and pushed open the bedroom door.
It was still and cool in the room, with the only light coming from the open door and a tiny crack in the blackout curtains that Mum drew every night. She could see dust particles dancing in the sunlight that lanced across the room and fell across Mum’s chest.
“Mummy?” A tiny flame of dread flickered to life in her stomach. “Mummy, it’s time to wake up.”
Forcing herself to creep into the room, she reached the side of her mother’s bed. Mum looked peaceful—young, even, without the lines of stress that too often etched her brow.
Slowly, she extended a hand until her fingers grazed the shoulder of Mum’s white flannel nightdress. Her mother didn’t move.
Izzie backed away a step, her eyes fixed on her mother’s face. She could see now the faint blue tinge of her mother’s lips, the waxy quality of her skin.
Dumbly, she backed out of the room and retreated down the stairs to the shop. A part of her mind registered the sound of the deliveryman moving about in the inventory closet and Miss Reid berating him for bumping into the wall, but it felt as though someone had thrown a length of gossamer chiffon over everything, dulling it. She reached for the telephone and asked to be connected to Dr. Morton’s surgery.
When he finally picked up the telephone, she said, “Dr. Morton, this is Isabelle Shelton.”
“Miss Shelton, what can I do for you today?” asked the avuncular man.
“It’s my mother.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that. Is she ill? Several of my patients have this flu that is going around,” he said.
“She’s dead, Dr. Morton,” she said numbly.
There was a moment’s silence on the line, and then the man cleared his throat. “I’m so very sorry, Miss Shelton. I’ll be there at once.”
It wasn’t until the tinny sound of the operator coming back and asking if she still wanted to keep the line open that Izzie remembered to hang up the telephone.
“Good evening, Mrs. Atkinson,” said Sylvia as she closed the flat door behind her.
“Good evening, madam. May I take those books for you?” asked the housekeeper.
Sylvia handed the two books to Mrs. Atkinson to allow herself the chance to unbutton her coat.
She’d spent the afternoon at the London Library, happy in one of the Reading Room’s deep armchairs. Hugo used to tease her that, despite the furs and jewels he’d given her, it was the subscription to the members’ library that she treasured the most, and he wasn’t wrong. She read voraciously—a habit she’d acquired after coming across an article in a magazine that said a woman could never be truly accomplished unless she was also well-read—and she loved nothing more than to wander the stacks, never knowing who she might run into. Once before the war she’d been carrying A Handful of Dust and had walked straight into the book’s author, Evelyn Waugh, as he browsed the books on religion. It had been a thrilling brush with literary notoriety, although when she’d told Hugo about it he’d laughed and told her she was adorable for caring, because everyone knew that Waugh was a sharp-tongued snob.
“Are there any messages?” she asked Mrs. Atkinson, trading her books for her coat.
“No, but the afternoon post came,” said the housekeeper. “I thought you might like to read it in the sitting room.”
“Thank you,” she said, mortified at how grateful she was because answering letters would give her something to do once Mrs. Atkinson left for the evening other than wander around the empty flat like the married alter ego of Miss Havisham, despairing of her husband’s affair.
“Supper will be ready in an hour. Would you care for a cocktail before?” asked Mrs. Atkinson.
“A gimlet, please.”
In the sitting room, she set the books down on the walnut coffee table and picked up the stack of post that Mrs. Atkinson had gathered on the ridiculous silver tray Hugo insisted they use. There were several invitations to tea—two personal and one to raise funds for evacuated orphans—as well as a letter from her friend Helen, who had decamped to America with her Bostonian husband when the war started. She immediately recognized a thick buff-colored envelope addressed to her as being from Hugo’s mother, no doubt wondering if Sylvia had any news of her son.
When she saw the last envelope at the bottom of the pile, her hand froze. It had been years since she’d seen it, but she would know Izzie’s handwriting anywhere.
Keeping her eyes fixed on the address, she set down the rest of the post on the sofa next to her and then reached for her gold letter opener. Her heart pounded as she slid the sharp point underneath the envelope’s flap and, in one precise move, slit open the top.
18 November 1941
Dear Sylvia,
Mum died suddenly early this morning. Dr. Morton says that it was likely a heart condition, and there was nothing that could have been done.
She will be buried on Friday, 21 November.
Sincerely,
Isabelle Shelton
“Oh, poor Izzie,” Sylvia murmured. “Poor, poor Izzie.”
She rose and went to the cream-and-gold telephone sitting on top of a small round table in the corner of the drawing room. She lifted the receiver and gave the operator the exchange for the shop.
She could practically feel the obligation oozing off of the page of Izzie’s note, almost as though her sister hadn’t wanted to tell her but some wisp of familial feeling had forced her to sit down and write. It was the same instinct that sent Sylvia’s heart skipping with hope and dread in equal measure as the telephone rang.
Finally, the line connected and she heard her sister say, “Mrs. Shelton’s Fashions. This is Miss Shelton speaking.”
Izzie sounded wrung out.
“Izzie, it’s Sylvia.”
“Sylvia.” Izzie’s voice was flat.
“What happened?”
“It’s all there.”
“Were you… were you the one to find her?” she asked.
There was a sharp breath on the other end. “Yes.”
“Oh, Izzie. I’m so sorry.”
“She had been rising later and later. I thought it was just because she was exhausted—she was always staying up late to finish orders because it was only Miss Reid and myself helping her and, well, you know how particular she could be about finishing. When she didn’t come down yesterday morning, I went to wake her, and”—Izzie’s voice cracked—“she was gone.”
“Izzie, I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
“She had been so pale recently, but we all are with the weather being what it is. But then she was out of breath sometimes too. I just—”
“Didn’t Dr. Morton say that nothing could have been done?” she asked.
“But I lived with her. I worked with her. We were around each other practically every second of the day. I knew something wasn’t right. I wanted her to see the doctor, but she wouldn’t hear of it,” Izzie said, her voice rising.
“Our mother could have a stubborn streak,” she said gently.
“I should have insisted,” Izzie continued, as though she hadn’t heard Sylvia. “If I had, maybe she would still be alive.”
“You can’t blame yourself,” said Sylvia.
“What would you know about it?” Izzie snapped. “You haven’t seen Mum in years.”
Sylvia pursed her lips tightly, fighting the instinct to hurl back a barb. Her sister didn’t need that right now, and heaven knew it wouldn’t help matters.
“Why did you write to me rather than telephone?” she asked. “I would have come straightaway.”
“I thought it was best,” said Izzie. “Besides, I wasn’t certain of your exchange.”
“It’s the same as it has been since Hugo and I were married,” she said.
“I’d forgotten.” A lie, she was certain of it, but now was not the time to press her sister.
“Well, I telephoned you because I would like the details of the funeral arrangements,” she said, taking up the silver pencil that lay next to the book she used for messages.
“Why?” Izzie asked.
“Because, Isabelle”—her voice hardened—“although you might find it hard to believe, I would like to attend my mother’s funeral.”
There was a long pause on the line before finally Izzie said, “You made your choice, Sylvia. You aren’t regretting it now, are you?”
She closed her eyes. No, she didn’t regret her choice. It was just that… if she didn’t attend her mother’s funeral, she was certain she would one day come to hate herself for it.
“The details, please,” she said.
She could hear the reluctance in Izzie’s voice as she related the funeral arrangements. There would be a service at St. Anne’s, their old parish church, on Friday morning. The burial would take place just across Salisbury Road in the Paddington Old Cemetery.
“Thank you,” she said when her sister finished.
“You don’t have to do this, you know,” said Izzie.
“What do you mean?”
“You hadn’t even seen her in—what has it been?—three years?”
It was more likely four. In a moment of guilt, Sylvia had decided her annual Christmas card was not enough. Knowing that, in a rare turn of events, she and Hugo would not be spending the Christmas season in Tunbridge Wells at his parents’ home, she’d taken it upon herself to suggest her mother and Izzie come for Boxing Day lunch. She’d written the invitation and posted it before she could second-guess her actions, risking Hugo’s annoyance when she told him that, much to her surprise, her mother had accepted, making it clear her mother would be coming alone.
The day had been a disaster from the start. Her mother had sat on the very edge of the drawing room sofa, handbag held on her lap like a shield. Sylvia’s hopes for a pleasant afternoon dipped ever further as she watched her mother peer about at the flat with a mixture of judgment and resentment. At the lunch she’d taken pains to cook herself, no one spoke. When at last Sylvia had risen to clear the dishes of the final course away, Hugo had retreated to his study, leaving her mother alone. It had fallen to Sylvia to see her mother into a cab, and she’d breathed a sigh of relief as it drove away. That day, she’d resolved never to expose either of them to the discomfort of another holiday spent together again.
Now she stared at the details of the funeral arrangements, wondering what wretched daughter would ever think that about her own mother.
“I will be at the service and the burial,” she said, drawing back her shoulders.
“Not Hugo?” asked her sister, the sarcasm coming clearly across the crackling line.
“He’s a surgeon lieutenant-commander in the Royal Navy Medical Service,” she said shortly. “He has been serving on ships since leaving basic training, Izzie, so he is indisposed.”
Her sister sniffed, but apparently even Izzie couldn’t find fault with Hugo’s service. “Fine.”
The line went dead, Izzie’s unvarnished disapproval reverberating through Sylvia’s chest.