Daughter Dalloway (eBook)

chapter 1

Elizabeth

london

“I’ll pick the flowers myself,” Elizabeth Dalloway said.

For every flower shop in London was closed. Even Mulberry’s was shuttered. At least Miss Pym wasn’t alive to see it, her shop locked for the past three days. What a storm! What a morning to prepare for a party—bleak as if under someone’s bootheel.

“I know this is disappointing,” Theodore said gently. He put a hand in his pocket, looked out the window at the dense fog. He was in his navy sweater. The one that made him look like a captain in an advert for the Royal Navy. He’d deny it. How dashing he’d always looked in that blue. “But I believe you need to send word to your guests. Your party—”

“No one will come?”

“No one will come.” He slipped an arm around her shoulders, pulled her close. “But cheer up, that was Rose who just rang. She’s bringing something over for you. Seemed very keen to bring it straightaway. Didn’t say what it was. Perhaps it will boost your spirits.”

Rose.

Rose Purvis.

Perfectly put-together Rose.

She was the same age as Elizabeth; she’d grown up next door. She’d married and become the dignified Mrs. Alfred Foster, but to Elizabeth, she would always be Rose Purvis. Now she lived with her perfect husband and perfect sons (three of them!), surely bound for Eton. She of all people knew what disasters Elizabeth’s parties typically were. There was that spring affair when Elizabeth had made the salmon herself, desiccated, each filet obstinate, impenetrable. Or that early-summer catastrophe. How was she to know Rose had just returned from an ocean voyage to Lisbon with her children? It was an offhand comment, that Elizabeth wouldn’t let a child near one of those dreadful ships. They’d fall overboard! Rose had been so insulted. She didn’t have an appointment to get to. Everyone knew that.

But that wasn’t the problem today—Elizabeth’s record of disastrous attempts at entertaining. Her inability to drum up polite party chatter. Her utter failure at filling her mother’s shoes. Mama—

Mrs. Dalloway.

A lioness in London society.

A woman who’d never arrived for a party in the summer of 1923. And hadn’t been heard from since.

A woman who had simply and abruptly—disappeared. It had been nearly thirty years since she went missing; to Elizabeth, it felt like one day. One very long, very dark day.

No, it wasn’t all that.

It was the fog.

It had paralyzed London for the past three days. Yellowish clouds had descended on the city, a jaundiced pall of smoke and sulfur. It burned lungs, scraped throats, forced medical masks onto faces. It killed the vulnerable; it killed some who had no health problems at all. The death toll was nearing four thousand. Elizabeth had heard bits of explanations. Coal smoke was pinned to the sky over London by odd movements of the atmosphere. And something about England burning the cheap coal and exporting the finer rocks, the cleaner ones, to pay off the debt. On account of the War. Always on account of the War. Elizabeth had lived through two now. Why on earth anyone thought wars ever ended was beyond her. This fog, this fog was the War itself, back from a grave it was never buried in.

How dark! Really, you must be more positive. You must.

“But Churchill isn’t even flummoxed.” Elizabeth stood in the doorway, waved an arm at the thick white clouds hovering over the lawn. “This is an overreaction. I won’t cancel! If every flower shop in London is closed, then I’ll—”

“Pick the flowers yourself.”

“Precisely. I’ll pick the flowers myself.” Elizabeth rolled up the sleeves of her blouse and put her hands in the pockets of her slacks. She started down the garden path, determined. Surely, she could throw one party. One successful party. Fog be damned.

Theodore followed. “Might I remind you that it’s December?”

“There’s the heather,” Elizabeth protested. She didn’t slow her pace. “The Helleborus aren’t brave enough to show yet, but there are the holly bushes we just put in. They’d survive a blitz. A few sprigs of those will suit. Especially if their berries are out.”

Theodore caught up to her. “If you insist on being out here in this fog, at least put this on.” He pulled something from his pocket, a square of fabric and gauze with thick elastic loops for the ears.

“Is that a mask?” She knew it was. What a dear, she thought. So concerned about her well-being. She wondered how often he regretted marrying her. He never said so, but really, she was so complicated. She was certain other women were easier. More rational. More even-keeled. More—what to call it?

Pieced together.

“Go on,” he said. “They say these help you breathe. And your lungs—”

“You’re such a love.” She took it from him, put it on. The elastic pushed her ears down, awkwardly pinned her hair back. She could feel it; she looked like a goblin. The last time she’d worn one of these dreadful things had been in 1918. During the influenza. She had been twelve. A child of twelve had been told to wear a mask to survive; her mother had almost died. She’d never gotten over it. “Will we wear these things every thirty years or so? Cyclical calamities of the lungs?”

Theodore smiled and put on his own mask. “Let’s hope this is the last. And may I accompany you to the garden, Mrs. Elizabeth Dalloway?” He gave a little bow, playing the part of a footman.

Elizabeth took his arm and smiled. Of course her surname wasn’t Dalloway; it had changed when she married him. And of course they didn’t have staff. They’d let them go after the second war; they were worried about their finances. Or rather, she was worried. Her inheritance was dwindling, disappearing by the day, she felt. It was Theodore’s that kept them afloat. It was his support that made her life as nice as it was. She had a little job as a history tutor, but it was pathetic, really. It paid next to nothing. No, it was Theodore who had the real inheritance and a respectable position with Export Finance to boot. Elizabeth was . . . beholden. Women didn’t have to be that now. Beholden. But there it was. She had failed to grow her own wings. That was how she saw it. She had failed to grow her own wings.

Smart women make good choices when they’re young. Take smarter paths than I have. Paths that lead to careers, great passions. Perhaps that’s it. Smart women know how to set their feet on the right path.

“Ahem,” Theodore said. He was still in his little footman bow. Offering his arm. She must have slipped into one of her ruminating spells. She had them often. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been standing there. Thinking.

“You may,” Elizabeth said, taking his arm. Theodore did have the power to make her smile. Always, he’d been a bit golden. His way. Seeded with that delicious lightness of irreverence. “But only because I can’t see the damned path.” It was true; this pea soup was obscuring even her feet. “How are my party guests going to see their way up to the house?” She was being facetious now; she’d relented. If guests looked for ways to turn down her invitations under clear skies, they certainly wouldn’t show under dark ones. But still. There were the empty vases, the little glass bowls running the length of the dining table. The ones Mama had always loved. Elizabeth had to fill them. It was a matter of dignity.

There it was.

Elizabeth could just make it out, her little Westminster garden on the other side of the lawn, four feet by six. One of many she’d watched season after season as a child, glorious, perfect, tended by their gardener, Mr. Garrick, fastidious. Ever full of phlox, tiny roses, wolfsbane. All sorts. Elizabeth had inherited it now, the house and the gardens, and—

“They’re all dead,” Elizabeth sighed. She surveyed the floral carnage in her little plot.

“Again,” Theodore said. He was smiling underneath that mask; she could see it in his eyes. It was a kind smile, empathetic. “They’re all dead again, I’m afraid.”

She gently touched the corpse of a heather stalk with the toe of her shoe. She thought heather impervious! Even the new holly bushes had perished. Had she forgotten to water them? They’re so vulnerable for the first week or so.

“Don’t blame yourself,” Theodore said, peering over her shoulder at the flower graveyard. “It’s been deathly cold this week. And there’s sulfur in the air. They probably burned to death, poor things.”

She loved him for blaming the air and not her deficits as a gardener. Elizabeth cast a glance at the house next door, the looming home of the Purvis family, Rose’s childhood home.

Old Lady Purvis will love this. More failure in Elizabeth Dalloway’s garden!

Lady Purvis and her husband (Scrope!) had lived next door since before Elizabeth was born. Raised Rose to perfection in their grand old house. Lady Purvis had far too many opinions about Elizabeth. She knew too much. Much too much.

“I can practically hear what the old lady is saying,” Elizabeth said. “About everything, really.”

“I think your attempt at a winter garden is...