Lucile’s entire family came up to Scotland on the train for a Saturday-to-Monday holiday: Mother, Esme, Anthony, and their little brood; Elinor with Margot and Juliet with their husbands and children. It was early September, and the gorse and heather lingered on in the mild weather. The first full day, they took a huge picnic, four baskets full of food, up to the lookout over the glens and braes and the river. All three young mothers had brought their nannies to help watch the children, so the adults sat on a tartan blanket after their repast and chatted.
“So beautiful and wild here,” Elinor said, inhaling the crisp, fresh air and looking out into the distance. “I shall set a novel here someday.”
“That would be nice,” Lucile said, taking Cosmo’s hand and beating down the urge to mount a comeback. For once she didn’t scold Elinor for always talking about her writing.
“Scotland is most invigorating and unique,” Elinor went on, “as I hope my stories always are, on the page or on the screen.”
“Scotland would be a fresher location than the books you’ve set in Continental Europe or even England,” Lucile said before she realized, as hard as she was trying, she and Elinor might argue again—and she didn’t want that. She was finally so happy, and she wanted poor Elinor to be too after her difficult days in California working away at her so-called dream career.
“Although Sir Walter Scott has set many a novel here,” Elinor said, evidently refusing to drop the subject. “But I don’t mean to lecture. I think I shall stretch my legs and see the view out the other way.”
“I’ll go with you, and leave Cosmo and you younger folk to talk,” Lucile said.
Mother put in, “And I shall go help the nannies with my lovely great-grandchildren. I may be up in my eighties now, but I can still get round and intend to.”
Cosmo helped her up, and Elinor and Lucile went over to steady her. Cosmo winked at Lucile as Mother headed briskly down the path toward the barking of the hunt hounds and high-pitched laughter of the children. No hunting grouse or partridge today, Lucile thought, though the men planned on that tomorrow. Today was for just family time—finally, a family.
Lucile led Elinor to the brow of the hill with the best view. They stood there unspeaking for a moment, skirts blowing, hair flying in the brisk breeze, watching an eagle riding the currents.
Elinor said, “You’re back with Cosmo, really back. I can tell and I am happy for you.”
“Yes. You and I have had our ups and downs with men, haven’t we, and often not at the same time, so we could advise and help each other.”
“Don’t take this wrong, like I’m chattering too much about writing—I know I overdo that once in a while—but I’ve been thinking of ideas for a novel, maybe a movie script, called Knowing Men. Do you think I’d be a brazen idiot to write something with that title? God knows, I’ve made some terrible choices, loved and lost men, hardly seen the way they really were, including Clayton and Curzon.”
“I, too, made an early mess of things—before Cosmo and then I nearly lost him since I was so self-centered.”
“At least you escaped that now—and here I am, headed back to fantasy financial land in Hollywood soon.”
“But you’ll handle that and rise above. The thing is, at times I’ve had to protect my designs, my staff, my visions, but still . . . as to your question, I think it’s right for you to do that novel and script if you are ready to. A man would. And both of us have done well in a world no longer completely run by men.”
Elinor smiled, and her eyes lit. “Thank you for your trust and love, Lucile. You know something my friend Charlie Chaplin said once? He’s quite the sage, you know, despite his silliness on screen. He said, the only way to predict the future is to create it. But you and I—sometimes we’ve been clinging to the past.”
“Just like Mother, I have no intention of acting old,” Lucile insisted. “We women need to forge ahead. If I cannot abide the new boyish fashions, I shall just not design them. But I meant to tell you I’ve had an offer to write fashion advice for a newspaper. I shall call my column Letters to Dorothy, a pseudonym, but everyone will still know the author is Lucile, Lady Duff-Gordon. So now two writers in the family.”
“You’ll do splendidly. But the thing is,” she said, turning toward Lucile and seizing her hands, “my idea for Knowing Men—don’t you think that’s a lovely double entendre, if you know what that means in the Bible?—could be adapted for the stage in London, too, and you could do the costumes for it. I’d set it all in the past, and you could create the most delicious flowing frocks, all chiffon, satin, and lace again.”
Lucile sighed. “I’ve had to try to let go of that past, but yes—yes, perhaps. It would be good to work together, wouldn’t it?”
Elinor bit her lower lip and nodded. Their eyes met and held. They dropped hands and leaned against a granite boulder with their shoulders touching.
“If only we could have done that more,” Elinor said with a sigh that matched Lucile’s. “One of our mutual mistakes. But we’re together now in purpose and outlook—in sisterhood and friendship, too. And even when I head back to slapdash Hollywood, we shall stay in touch, really in touch.”
They held hands again. “We will go on, my dear Nellie,” Lucile vowed. “Onward and upward, as we used to say before things pulled us apart.”
Elinor laughed and elbowed her lightly. “Lovely Lucy, we’ll show the world how things should be done.”
“We ‘It Girls’ always have!”