New Year’s Eve 1930–31, St Kilda, Melbourne
Belle Bartholomew paused outside the door of the downstairs salon. Inside, the party was well under way. The musicians she had hired for the evening had been a great success, and even Henry, her father’s usually staid solicitor and business partner, was dancing his own awkward version of the charleston.
Henry Collier was also Belle’s fiancé, a comfortable agreement of longstanding. Sometimes Belle thought that to Henry, nearly fifteen years her senior, the idea of a wife was a pleasant daydream rather than something he felt inclined to progress to the next stage. She was just as bad, always telling herself there was no hurry to walk down the aisle.
The canapés and champagne probably contributed to the good cheer—loud voices were drowning out ‘Puttin’ on the Ritz’—but there was a sort of desperation in the air tonight.
She’d seen the same thing when the war had ended, people wild to put the turmoil of the past behind them. This time it was the aftermath from the stock-market crash in New York and the world sliding inexorably into a financial depression. She’d recently seen the queues—the one outside the soup kitchen stretched for blocks—and heard whispered stories of businesses drowning in a tide of bad debts.
Not that they talked about such things in the circles the Bartholomews moved in, where most of them barely felt a ripple, but Belle couldn’t help noticing that St Kilda was getting seedier by the day. Those with the money to do so left for the new outer suburbs, and those without money moved in, seeking cheaper accommodation. Large houses like her own were being turned into lodgings, street by street, and the inevitable seemed to be creeping closer. But still her father refused to join the exodus. Why, he demanded, should he go to Glen Iris when he had a perfectly good house here?
Belle wondered if that was entirely the truth. Rory was a clever man, and recently he’d become adept at keeping his worst fears to himself. Belle, who’d never had to worry about anything money-wise, found herself lying awake at night, consumed by this new and faceless terror.
Her anxious gaze searched the room and found her father, as usual smiling and chatting as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
Rory Bartholomew was the sort of man others were drawn to. He had a glow about him, a charm, a charisma. Looking at him now you would think he was completely unaware of the state of the world, or at least if he was then his boundless optimism would be enough to overcome any obstacles in his path.
Belle knew that wasn’t true. The certainty she’d always felt about her father and her life had recently begun to shift and shake. It was as if she was having difficulty keeping her balance.
A few weeks ago she’d come upon him standing in the garden, staring at nothing, a cigarette turning to unsmoked ash in his fingers. He’d seemed pensive and sad. Belle had asked him what was wrong.
‘A blue day,’ he’d said with a shrug. ‘I seem to have the megrims, Belle. You know what I’m like when I’m in one of my moods. I need cheering up.’
She hated her father’s melancholy states. When she was a child she could remember her mother, Iris, whispering to her that they must not make any loud noises to upset him. Well Iris was gone and Belle was no longer a child.
‘I can’t cheer you up if you won’t tell me what’s worrying you, Father. I read the newspapers. Is it the business? Is Bart Homes in trouble?’
He’d looked at the cigarette in his hand as if he didn’t remember lighting it, and then he’d tossed it aside. ‘People aren’t buying new houses,’ he’d said. ‘In particular, they aren’t buying Bart Homes. That new development we put up? Most of the houses are still sitting there empty. People are scared. They think they might lose their jobs, or find they can’t pay for what they already have. It’s up to me to persuade them to think differently. I don’t want us caught up in this circus.’
He hadn’t sounded his loud, confident self—a persona he wore like a coat even when privately he was down in the dumps—and in that moment she’d understood why. He was worried about the business.
‘You don’t think —’ she’d begun tentatively, hardly knowing how to frame the next question. He wouldn’t let her finish.
‘It’ll turn around. I’ve seen this before. In the last depression everyone was full of doom and gloom, and we came through it. We’ll get through it this time. People will have to buy houses, they have to live somewhere, Belle. I don’t intend to go back to inhabiting a cave like my ancestors and I doubt anyone else will, either.’ He’d smiled as he’d said it but he’d avoided meeting her eyes.
‘You will tell me if things get worse?’ she’d said, refusing this time to be comforted. ‘You mustn’t keep it to yourself.’
‘We might lose the cottage at Sorrento.’ He’d blurted out the words, as if he couldn’t hold them back.
She’d been so shocked that she’d almost been unable to hide it from him. Their little place by the sea! Iris had chosen the furnishings and decorated it with such love. Whenever she went there to stay Belle felt close to Iris, who’d died tragically five years ago. The week after the funeral, Belle had built a little memorial in the garden, silly really, but it had made her feel better.
‘I’m sorry, Belle,’ he’d said, ‘I know how much the cottage means to you.’
She’d shaken her head. ‘No. That is, yes, of course it means something to me, but the cottage isn’t as important as our home, is it? And I’ve read some people are losing everything. If the cottage has to go, then of course it must.’
He’d smiled—that wide Bartholomew smile her mother used to say made her fall instantly in love with him and want to marry him, despite her family’s objections. Her parents had still been alive then and they’d called him ‘the boy from the bush’, and said he wasn’t good enough for the only child of a Melbourne middle-class family with aspirations—there had been twin boys who had died at birth in London, before they emigrated. But Iris had been determined and they’d married and managed twenty-seven years of happiness before she died.
‘Should we cancel the New Year’s Eve party?’ Belle had asked hesitantly.
He’d cried out in mock dismay. ‘What? After you’ve worked so hard?’ And then his face had softened in a smile. ‘Not at all, my dear. We’ll go ahead and enjoy ourselves, and who knows, perhaps by then I’ll have some good news to share.’
‘Will you come inside?’ she’d asked, reaching out her hand. Although he’d taken her fingers in his and squeezed them, he’d said he would stay a while longer. She’d left him there by the roses.
Now here he was, their party in full swing, dancing a foxtrot as if he hadn’t a care in the world. He hadn’t said any more about the business and Belle hadn’t asked. Perhaps in her heart she was afraid to. All last week Henry was coming and going, and they’d been closeted together in the office, but he hadn’t told her what they were discussing. To be honest, she hadn’t wanted to know. After the party, she’d promised herself. I’ll deal with the bad news after the party.
‘Belle, come and dance!’ Her father had seen her in the doorway and was making his way through the crowd towards her.
‘I have two left feet,’ Belle retorted. ‘And someone has to make sure there’s enough food to feed everyone.’
She couldn’t help but think how smart he looked in his dark suit, his bow tie not quite as neatly tied as it had been, his dark hair rumpled. Bartholomew hair, he called it. The dark, almost black colour, that Belle hadn’t inherited.
He reached her and grabbed a champagne cocktail from a passing tray, handing it to her. ‘Enjoy yourself, Belle. Come on. I want you to.’
He was flushed, his dark eyes bright and glittering. She made herself smile back. ‘I am. I will.’ She was no party girl, and never had been. Belle was the practical one, the organised one, the one people came to when they needed sensible advice. People relied on Belle and if sometimes it was a burden mostly it gave her a reason to be.
Her father was talking. A rambling sort of conversation.
‘I don’t know if you know quite how much I appreciate you, Belle. After your mother died … well, I couldn’t have managed without you. The house … you took on everything like the trooper you are. Never complained.’
Belle had been the obvious choice to fill her mother’s shoes—she’d been running things for years, really, ever since she was eighteen. Her sweet, gentle mother was not the most effective housekeeper. Brought up in a wealthy mercantile family, she’d been prepared to be decorative rather than sensible. In their early marriage Rory hadn’t had the finances to pay for any help, nor would he take it from his in-laws, and although they had servants off and on in the later years, recently he’d taken to employing them only when they were throwing a party or entertaining guests. It didn’t matter to Belle; she managed perfectly well on her own.
If at any time Rory had shown an interest in marrying again, Belle might have been able to spread her wings—after all, she was twenty-five when her mother died—and since the war there were plenty of women to spare. Rory had always been the sort of man women were drawn to, and although Belle suspected he might have had a fling or two, he’d never shown any intention of replacing Iris.
‘I’ve been selfish.’ The sound of his voice tugged her back to the party. He took a gulp of his champagne. He’d had too much to drink and—Belle breathed a sigh of relief—he was having one of his highs. Of course, that was it. He was tiddly and the blue mood had given way to a giddy one.
‘How have you been selfish?’
He looked almost guilty. ‘I didn’t give you the chance to make a life of your own. I know there was Charlie, and afterwards, well … You’re such an oasis of calm, Belle. After Iris died, when everything seemed so impossibly insane and … broken, you were the only one able to fix it. Good old commonsense Belle. Honestly don’t know what I would’ve done without you.’
‘It was my choice,’ she reminded him. After Charlie went to war and didn’t come home, she’d been like an injured animal, and dedicating herself to running the home for her parents had been the perfect way to hide and lick her wounds. And they’d been so flatteringly grateful, which was very seductive. It gave her a reason not to step outdoors and face the world. Then Henry had asked her to marry him and it had seemed a perfect solution for both of them, and as they were in no hurry to book the church, she’d stayed on with her father.
‘Belle? Will you promise me that you’ll be happy?’
His words were spoken in a dreamy way that startled her. She frowned. ‘Daddy, I don’t understand what you’re asking me to do,’ she said, the childhood name slipping out without her realising it. ‘Of course I’ll be happy. Henry and I will marry and we’ll be happy.’
‘I know Henry is a good chap but … You don’t smile like you used to, Belle. Do you really love him? As much as I loved Iris? As you loved Charlie?’
Deliberately she laughed. To love someone as much as she’d loved Charlie was not something she’d been looking for when she’d agreed to marry Henry. ‘You’re a fine one to talk. I didn’t see you rushing down the aisle after Mother passed away. And Henry is exactly what I want at my time of life.’
‘Your time of life? Oh, Belle, you’re young!’
‘Thirty is not young. And women are different now. The war changed us. We don’t need to marry to feel as if we’re completing our lives. Henry and I will be a partnership.’
It sounded cold and organised, and she didn’t mean it to. Belle was genuinely fond of Henry, but for reasons she didn’t want to explore her father was making her feel frustrated and worried and even a little trapped.
‘I wish I’d taken you to visit Martha.’ He spoke again in that odd dreamy way. ‘I know she said it wasn’t safe but —’
‘Martha?’ She must have looked blank.
‘At The Grand. At Sweet Wattle Creek. Martha, my sister.’ His dark eyes were hard and intent.
‘I didn’t know you had a sister!’ She felt shocked and hurt that he’d never mentioned Martha. In fact, he never spoke of any of his family, or if he did it was in a general way, and she’d assumed they were all dead. Part of the reason for his reticence was Iris’s posh background—Rory was rather a snob, and he was uncomfortable with his own inferior circumstances. Had she been wrong? Was there something else at the heart of her father’s reserve?
‘I told you I was selfish,’ he murmured, and to her dismay she saw tears in his eyes, before he blinked and they vanished. She touched his arm, and, as if he understood then that he’d frightened her, his face slipped back into his customary smile and he said, ‘No need to worry about it now.’
‘But you just said …’
‘Too much champagne.’ He laughed. ‘Don’t mind me, Belle.’
And then he turned and was gone.
* * *
‘Belle!’
Belle was debating whether to go after her father. His words and his strangeness had stirred up doubts inside her, but although she was worried she wasn’t sure what she was going to say to him if she did manage to extract him from the wildly dancing crowd. Later, she told herself, as she turned to smile at Charlie’s mother. She would deal with Rory after everyone had gone home.
Mrs Nicholson was a striking woman. Not petite and feminine, but tall and angular and eye-catching. She made the most of her appearance, having her hair cut in a way that shortened her long face, her eyebrows impeccably plucked and her lips painted. Unless you stood close and looked hard, you’d never know she was nearly sixty.
‘The dress fits perfectly,’ she told Belle, her gaze sweeping over the cream tulle cocktail gown. ‘I like the rose,’ she added.
Belle reached up to touch the red silk rose in her fair hair. ‘You don’t think it’s a bit much?’
‘Not at all. A little flair is always a good thing, Belle. I like your hair cut short like that. The colour is so pale … it’s almost silver.’
‘Father said the cocktail dress was from your latest collection.’ Rory had also said it was a well-deserved gift for all the work she’d put into the party. Belle expected it had been horridly expensive because most of Mrs Nicholson’s exclusive creations were. Suddenly, she was worried about spending too much money, something that would never have occurred to her before.
Mrs Nicholson pulled a face. ‘It may be my last collection. Times are tough, Belle. The Collins Street shop doesn’t get nearly as many customers as it used to. Even my rich and feckless clients are cutting back on their spending. Very inconsiderate of them.’
Seeing Belle’s serious expression, Mrs Nicholson rallied a smile. ‘Nothing I can do but wait and see, I suppose.’
Someone bumped into them and the champagne cocktail Belle was holding sloshed over the side of the glass, almost onto her new frock. The woman, one of Iris’s old friends and decidedly tipsy, settled her fur wrap more securely around her shoulders, sending up a gust of Arpege, and ventured back into the fray.
‘We have quite a crowd,’ Belle said, raising her voice above the noise.
Mrs Nicholson sipped her cocktail and idly perused the room. ‘I feel a tad guilty enjoying myself. The line at the soup kitchen gets longer every day. Rather confronting to see so many desperates.’
‘Yes.’ Belle knew Mrs Nicholson to be a compassionate woman.
‘I do wonder how Rory’s business is holding up, but he won’t talk to me about it.’
‘He won’t talk to me either,’ Belle admitted reluctantly. It wasn’t a subject she could discuss without feeling disloyal, not before she’d spoken with her father. ‘Will you stay and watch the fireworks? There’ll be dancing on the lawn afterwards.’
‘Will you and Henry dance?’ Charlie’s mother asked with a keen look.
Belle shook her head. ‘Henry doesn’t dance. Well, not usually,’ she added, with a doubtful glance at the crowd in the smoky salon. Did Mrs Nicholson want the same thing as Rory? For her to be wildly in love? Because that was the sort of love they both believed in. Except to fall in love like that one needed a heart that was intact and now, at thirty, Belle’s wasn’t. She didn’t look at things in the same way she had when she was seventeen and anything seemed possible. She wasn’t even sure she believed in love anymore, not that sort of love anyway.
‘Perhaps I’ll dance when the clock strikes midnight.’ Belle quickly shrugged away the doubt in Mrs Nicholson’s eyes, and then excused herself, saying she had things to do.
And she did have things to do, but irritatingly her thoughts began to turn back. Mrs Nicholson had struck a chord and now it reverberated down the years. She remembered dancing with Charlie in 1917, shortly before she’d seen him off on the boat that was to take him away from her. It had been a waltz called ‘Destiny’, the hit of the day. She remembered the feel of him in her arms, young and strong and full of life. They’d come home that night flushed and happy and certain that everything would be all right. For how could it not be? Belle was only seventeen and Charlie not much older. He’d promised her he would come back and marry her. He’d sworn to her that nothing and no one would keep them apart.
Her steps slowed as the noise from the party waxed and waned. She had intended to go to the kitchen, to see how the champagne was holding out, but now she wanted to be alone. With a guilty backward look, Belle made a right turn up the stairs, her steps quickening as if she was running away from something.
George Lambert’s portrait of her mother hung in the recess at the top of the landing. In typical Edwardian fashion, Iris Bartholomew was seated on a chaise lounge with her glossy brown hair coiled at her nape, a fingertip beneath her chin and an enigmatic smile on her lips. Forever elegantly beautiful.
It was a silly way to die, really. Iris, in a daydream as usual, crossing the road and being knocked down by a man in a brand-new Ford motor car.
She had lived long enough for them to reach the hospital. Belle had held her hand. ‘Poppy?’ she’d said, peering up, waxy-faced. ‘Is that you, my dearest child? But you’re dead, you’ve been dead for years and years, and Belle is here now.’
‘She’s delirious.’ Rory had looked so distraught that although Belle had wanted to ask who Poppy was she hadn’t felt able to.
When she was a child Belle had believed her father capable of all things wonderful. He was exuberant, always ready for a laugh and a game, and she loved him. If he had his other side, the melancholy side, then it was just accepted as part of the whole. Since Iris had died, though, he seemed more inclined to the blues. When was the last time she had seen him happy, truly happy, rather than playing a part?
Upstairs, Belle could still hear the music and the loud voices of their guests. Soon she must give the order for the fireworks, to bring in 1931 with a bang, and then the party would go on outside, and the guests would dance and drink until they’d had enough and decided to go home. Not that she was holding her breath. Parties at the Bartholomews’ tended to go on until dawn.
Her room was like a sanctuary. She stood a moment, leaning back against the closed door, and breathed out a huge sigh of relief. Her head was spinning from her one glass of champagne and she knew she should have eaten something, but she’d wanted the new dress to fit her properly. The shoes she was wearing were new as well, cream to match the dress, with a nice heel, and for colour there was the red silk rose in her hair.
She touched it now. Rory was so dark and Iris had had soft brown locks and tea-brown eyes. Mrs Nicholson had said Belle’s hair was silver, and she was often told it was the colour women aimed for when they peroxided their locks. Except that Belle’s shade was natural and strikingly different from her parents’.
Perhaps her father’s sister, Martha, was fair-haired and blue-eyed and practical like Belle? Why on earth hadn’t she known about her aunt? Was it really because her father was ashamed of his background? Or was there more to it—a mystery that wanted solving? Belle supposed that if anyone could solve it then she could.
There was plenty of time. She would talk to him tomorrow and insist on hearing the whole story, not just the bits he wanted to tell her.
Charlie’s photograph no longer sat on the table by her bed. She’d put it away in the drawer when she and Henry had got engaged. Now something—perhaps the conversation with Mrs Nicholson—prompted her to fetch it. She looked at his young—too young—serious face that seemed on the verge of a smile. The flop of brown hair across his brow and his long fingers clasping his new gloves. Charlie as she’d known him. But that Charlie, the Charlie she had kissed goodbye as he went off to war, was gone forever.
Mrs Nicholson had said she’d felt as if something inside her had stopped when Charlie didn’t come home. Belle had felt the same thing herself, like a clock unwinding and slowing down, and then only empty silence. Charlie’s death had taken away all her joy in life and she had never really regained it.
Or was that overly dramatic? With her father’s pendulum-like moods and her mother with her head in the clouds most of the time, someone had had to be the capable one. Belle had no time for dramatics.
She walked to the wardrobe and opened the doors and took out the box. Inside, carefully stored amongst tissue paper and lavender bags for the moths, was a dress. A wedding dress. Her wedding dress.
‘You don’t want to rush things,’ she remembered Mrs Nicholson saying. ‘You can have a proper wedding if you wait, and I’ll make you a dress that’ll be the envy of every other bride.’
Belle didn’t need to take out the dress to remember what it looked like. Other wartime brides had worn day suits or hand-me-downs, but Belle’s dress had been the height of fashion, just as Mrs Nicholson had promised. Satin with exquisitely patterned machine-made lace over the top. The train was velvet, a blush pink, to match the waistband, and the dress itself was ivory. Diamantes sparkled and pearls glowed, and Belle knew she would have worn it like a princess with Charlie, her prince, at her side.
But it was not to be.
When she became engaged to Henry she had made up her mind that she would not wear this dress. Not because it was dated, she didn’t care about that, but it would not have felt right. No, she’d wear something else when she married Henry.
Deliberately, Belle shook off her sad thoughts. She slid Charlie’s photograph back into the drawer and returned the dress to its shelf in the wardrobe and closed the doors with a snap.
There! She’d allowed herself her little journey into the past. Now it was time to return to the party and be level-headed, sensible Belle again. She was sure no one had thought to refill the glasses or set out more food or even offer the musicians something to keep them going.
There was a loud noise downstairs. Fireworks? They weren’t due to start yet. Irritably, still feeling out of sorts, Belle wondered if anyone could get anything right without her. A brief glimpse at the mirror, checking to see her face was still presentable and her hair in its style, reminded her again of the family mysteries.
She touched the small scar on her forehead, barely visible but she could always feel the faintly raised line of it. Rory couldn’t remember how it happened, he’d told her. Her nose was too big. Why couldn’t she have inherited her mother’s neat little nose? It was a Bartholomew nose, her father informed her whenever she complained, just like his. Was it Martha’s nose? She really must find out tomorrow.
Belle closed her door and started back along the corridor. She realised she could no longer hear the music, and the voices from the guests were much louder. That was strange. Then, just as she reached the stairs, somebody screamed, before the sound was quickly muffled.
Belle began to run, following the sounds as they grew louder and more erratic. Afterwards she didn’t remember pushing through the well-dressed crowd in the doorway to her father’s study. All the familiar faces, now strangers to her. Someone tried to catch her arm, their fingers tearing a flounce on her new dress as she pulled away. She was inside the room now and her gaze slid over the same old English hunting prints on the wall—they’d hung there ever since she could remember, brought to Melbourne from London by Iris’s parents—and the smell of the leather armchairs and cigar smoke, mingled with the woody scent of Rory’s cologne.
There was another smell, metallic and nasty.
Henry was standing in front of her. He was blocking her view of the desk, and she stepped to the side and around him, so that she could see what everyone was looking at.
It was Rory. He was slumped over his desk, the pistol he’d had since the war lying loosely in his hand, and bright-red blood pooling around his dark hair. Her first thought was that the blood was all over his papers and how would he ever get it out? Her second … that no one could survive such an injury. Because now she could see there was so much blood, so much.
Belle didn’t hear herself cry out, only knew that Henry was clutching at her, pressing her face against his chest so that all she could smell now was musty wool, and then she was stumbling blind as he bundled her outside the room.
She pulled away from him, gasping, dizzy. ‘Henry?’
‘He’s killed himself,’ someone said, one of those business associates, and the voice was familiar although Belle seemed unable to put a name to it. Her mind was fragmenting, everything coming at her in quick bright flashes, like scenes from a silent movie.
She wanted someone to reassure her that everything was all right. That her father wasn’t really dead from his own hand and life would go on as usual. But it wouldn’t. It couldn’t.
Through the cotton wool in her head she heard whispers of ‘Bankrupt’, ‘Things in a bad way’ and ‘Bank foreclosing’. A warm arm slid about her waist.
‘Belle, my dear.’ Mrs Nicholson’s face was pale beneath her makeup, her hazel eyes—they were Charlie’s eyes—reflecting Belle’s pain. ‘I can hardly believe it. I’m so sorry.’ Her voice trembled but her arm remained steady, and she led Belle into the salon where moments before their party had been in full swing. Where were the musicians? And the staff she’d hired for the occasion. And all the food yet to be eaten, and the fireworks she’d wanted to be perfect …
Belle choked on a sob.
‘Oh my poor dear,’ murmured Charlie’s mother, and held her close.
Belle hung on tightly, but a large part of her felt as if she was somewhere else, as if life had stopped, just as the tram at the end of Annat Street did every half hour. Sitting there, waiting, before it lurched forward again. In a moment of clarity Belle knew that although her life would move forward again, it would never be the same.
The unexpected explosion of fireworks and the chiming of bells filled the air. Bewildered, she asked what it meant.
‘The new year is in,’ Mrs Nicholson said, her voice husky with tears. ‘Oh, Belle, it’s 1931.’