‘It’s such a pity that if you had to inherit your poor mother’s facial features you didn’t inherit her figure as well. Frankly, Ella, there is something decidedly bucolic and almost common about so much fleshy excess. Your poor mother would be horrified if she could see you now; she was so slender herself.’
Her aunt Cassandra’s unkind criticism, delivered when Ella had entered puberty, had left its mark, hurting her far more than her stepsister, Emerald’s, catty comments ever could. It was, in fact, burned into Ella’s heart.
The models were so slim and pretty, and she could see the admiration in the eyes of the male photographers who worked with them, whilst those same photographers dismissed her with one brief glance. Or rather, most of them did. There was one who had made his contempt of her far plainer. Oliver Charters.
Charters was an up-and-coming young photographer who had just struck out on his own. He was, according to Vogue’s Art and Fashion Departments, amazingly talented and bound ‘to go far’. He seduced models and editorial staff alike with just one look from his brilliant green eyes.
But when that green-eyed gaze had been turned in her direction, all the careless interest with which it rested on other girls had been banished, to be replaced with a look of disbelief. And if that hadn’t been bad enough, the exclamation that had accompanied it had underlined his feelings, causing the assistant art director to snigger, and then later repeat the incident to what now felt like the whole of Vogue’s office staff.
Oliver Charters was here now in the small cramped office, where Ella’s boss, the features editor, and the fashion editor were surveying the pretty model wearing the cream woollen dress that was far too big for her. More Ella’s size than the model’s.
Ella tried her best to disguise her unfashionable shape, wearing large baggy sweaters over pleated skirts and white shirts–rather as though she were still wearing their old school uniform, Janey had once told her disapprovingly.
At home at Denham she was the eldest, and there she felt confident enough to take her responsibility towards the younger ones, especially Janey, who was so prone to doing things without thinking and getting into trouble, sometimes very seriously indeed. All the more so when it came to her taking on lame ducks of every description–both animal and human. But here at Vogue, deprived of the protection of her father and her stepmother’s love, Ella felt awkward and vulnerable and stupid. Now her clumsiness had her face burning and her throat closing on the threat of tears.
‘I can’t write about that. It looks dreadful,’ Ella’s boss was complaining. ‘I’m supposed to be covering exciting new young fashion; that looks more like something a county farmer’s wife, or a girl like Ella would wear. Where’s that dress we got from Mary Quant? Go and find it, will you, Ella?’ she demanded.
Oliver, who was standing in the open doorway, propping himself up as he talked to the model, was blocking her exit. The leather jacket he was wearing, combined with a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt, gave him a raffish air that matched his overlong dark hair and the cigarette dangling from his mouth. Janey would have thoroughly approved of him but Ella most certainly did not.
‘Excuse me.’
He was so engrossed in the model that he hadn’t even heard her apology, never mind realised that she couldn’t get through the door.
Ella cleared her throat and tried again. ‘Excuse me, please.’
The model tugged on his leather-clad arm. ‘Ella wants to get past you, Oliver.’
‘Squeeze through then, love. I don’t mind if you rub up against me bum.’
He was being deliberately vulgar, Ella knew, hoping no doubt to embarrass her, so she gave his back a freezing look. The model giggled as Oliver arched his back to create a space large enough, perhaps, for her to wriggle through, but nowhere near wide enough for Ella.
‘Ella can’t get through there. Ollie, you’ll have to move,’ the model told him.
Now he was looking Ella up and down and then up again, his inspection coming to an end when his gaze rested on her now flushed face.
‘Going to make the tea, are you, love?’ he asked her, giving her a wicked grin. ‘Two lumps in mine,’ he added, before deliberately letting his gaze rest on her breasts.
As she left the office Ella could hear the model saying bitchily, ‘Poor Ella, being so huge. I’d hate to be like that. She’s the size of an elephant. I’m surprised she doesn’t try to lose some weight.’
This was followed by Oliver Charters’ laughter as he announced, ‘There’s no point in her trying. She’d never succeed.’
Her face on fire, Ella was rooted to the spot, forced to listen to them discussing her until she was finally able to make herself walk away. She hated them both but she hated him, Oliver Charters, the most, she thought bitterly. Horrible wicked man! She could hear their laughter following her down the corridor.
So, Oliver Charters thought that she didn’t have the willpower to lose weight, did he? Well, she’d show him. She’d show them all.
The Duchess.
Dougie Smith stared hard at the faded name on the prow of the ship berthed in the dry dock.
‘Laid her up because she ain’t wanted any more. Bin pushed out of her place by summat new,’ an old tar standing on the dockside, lighting up a Capstan Full Strength cigarette, told Dougie, before breaking into a fit of coughing.
Dougie wondered if the vessel’s silent, almost ominous presence in its enforced retirement was some kind of message for him. He nodded in acknowledgement of the sailor’s comment and then turned away, careful to avoid the busy activity on the dockside, with its smell of stagnant water, cargoes from the ships, and the familiar mingling of tar, oil, rope and myriad other aromas.
Ducking under hawsers and ropes, he huddled deeper into the reefer jacket he’d been warned to buy in the balmy warmth of Jamaica, where he’d changed ships.
The cargo ship he’d worked his passage on from there to London loomed up out of the cold January fog like a grey ghost. Dougie shivered. He’d been warned about London’s cold, foggy weather by the crew of merchant seamen he’d sailed with. Toughened old tars, most of them, they’d been suspicious of him at first, a young Australian wanting a cheap passage to the ‘old country’, but once he’d proved he could pull his weight they’d taken him under their wing.
He felt bad about the lies he’d told them and the truth he’d had to keep from them, but he doubted they would have believed him if he had told them. What would he have said? ‘Oh, by the way, lads, I just thought I’d better tell you that some solicitor in London reckons that I’m a duke.’ Dougie could just imagine how they would have reacted. After all, he remembered how he had reacted when he’d first heard the news.
He picked up his kitbag, turning his back on the grey hull of what had been his home for the last few months, and headed in what he hoped would be the right direction for the Seamen’s Mission he’d been told about, where he could get a clean bed for the night.
At least they drove on the same side of the road here, he acknowledged, as a truck came towards him out of the fog, its driver blasting his horn as a warning to get out of the way.
The docks were busy, no one paying Dougie any attention. Seamen didn’t ask questions of one another; like outback drovers they shared a common code that meant that they respected one another’s right not to talk about the past.
Dougie had been grateful for that on his long voyage to England. He still wasn’t sure how he felt about the fact that he might be a duke. His uncle, who had despised the British upper class for reasons he had never properly explained, would have told him in no uncertain terms to ignore the solicitor’s letters.
But