Daughters of Fortune: A Novel (8 page)

Like all good businessmen, John was attuned to his target customers: the well-to-do members of Victorian high society who were prepared to pay through the nose for his high-quality, handmade leather shoes. Deciding that his own name didn’t sound sufficiently grand, he officially changed it to Melville in 1900. Melville became one of the first brand names to be registered in 1910. John also opened his first shop that year, in the illustrious location of Old Bond Street. Above the front door he hung a brass plate, inscribed with the words
Meliora Conor
; Latin for I Strive for the Best. It was to become the company’s motto.

A lifetime of smoking finally took its toll when John died of lung cancer in 1925. It was his son, Oliver, who took over from him. A serious, considered man, he was the right person to steer the company
through the tough years following the Crash of ’29, and Melville continued to prosper during the thirties.

Rosalind—or Rosie Flint, as she was known then—came to work at Melville in 1938, on the eve of the Second World War. Rosie was from a working-class family: her father was a dockworker, her mother a cleaner. At seventeen, she went for an interview to work as a sales assistant at Melville. The manager was reluctant to employ her at first—she seemed far too common for the illustrious store. But once she started talking he changed his mind.

“I’m used to hard work, and I’m never sick,” she told him, sensing his doubts. Then she looked him straight in the eye and said with total honesty, “Look, I need this job and I’m not going to let you down.”

He hired her on the spot. Anyone who could argue her cause like that would be a natural saleswoman. And the gentlemen customers would no doubt appreciate her looks.

But Rosie was smart and ambitious. She had no intention of remaining a shopgirl for the rest of her life. Working at Melville was her opportunity, and she intended to make the most of it. It didn’t take long for her to lose the Cockney accent. Nor did it take long for her to capture the attention of Edward Melville, the eldest son and heir apparent to the business.

Rosie had heard all about Edward. Handsome, charming, and good-natured, he was a notorious playboy, known for taking girls out, showing them a good time, and then dumping them quickly afterward. Rosie wanted more from him than that. When he asked her out, she politely declined his invitation.

“I’m engaged,” she lied.

Unused to rejection, Edward was intrigued. By the time Rosie finally dispensed with the imaginary fiancé and agreed to go out with him, he was already falling in love with her.

That was the summer of 1939. There were already murmurs of unrest throughout Europe. When Chamberlain finally declared war on Germany in September, Edward was one of the first to sign up for the RAF. All that time, Rosie had been carefully withholding her favors from him. That night, in the alley at the back of the dance hall, their kisses were hot and urgent. Rosie pulled away first.

Breathless, she said, “I wish I could be with you . . . properly.”

“There’s a guesthouse nearby,” Edward eagerly suggested.

She looked up at him with wide, innocent eyes. “But it’s a sin.”

Swept up in the romance and bravado of the times, Edward proposed on the spot. They married via special license that weekend, with two strangers for witnesses. By the time his family found out, there was nothing they could do about it.

“How could you be so stupid?” his father, Oliver, roared. “She’s nothing but a common tart!”

“She’s my wife, sir,” Edward replied calmly. “And you will have to accept her.”

When Edward went off to war the following week, Rosie took up residence in the Melvilles’ Belgravia house. It wasn’t as pleasant as she’d imagined. Oliver refused to acknowledge her. Mealtimes were silent. More than once she considered moving back to her parents’ little house in the East End. But she had worked too hard to give up that easily. Instead, she looked for a way to ingratiate herself with Oliver. The war gave her the opportunity she’d been looking for. With Oliver’s three sons and many of the staff signing up, she could sense her father-in-law was struggling to cope at Melville. Rosie knew the store well and reckoned she could help. So she turned up at the head office one day, found herself a desk, and set to work.

Gradually, she began to earn Oliver’s respect. When the Blitz began, his wife and other daughters-in-law retreated to Aldringham.

“I suppose you’ll be off down there, too, Rosie,” Oliver said dismissively.

“No. I’m staying put in London.” She paused. “And in future, please call me Rosalind.” After all, it felt more appropriate to her new status.

When Edward came home on leave for Christmas 1941, he was pleased to see his father and wife getting along. A month after he went back, Rosalind was delighted to find that she was pregnant.

Her happiness was shortlived. In late August, a telegram arrived. Edward’s plane had been shot down over France. The shock of the news, combined with the subsequent air raid, sent Rosalind into premature labor, in the very public surroundings of London Bridge Underground. When she finally gave birth to a healthy baby boy, she felt a rush of euphoria that overrode all thoughts of her missing husband. She named the boy William: a grand, respectable name, fit for kings. Firstborn of the firstborn; heir to the Melville fortune. Her position was secure.

Word eventually reached them that Edward wasn’t dead. He was a prisoner of war in Kreuzburg, an
Oflag
, or officers’ camp, in Poland. He finally returned home in early 1946. Rosalind and Oliver, along with young William, went to meet him off the boat. They had heard he wasn’t injured—but the Army only meant physically. When he stepped onto the dockside, Rosalind rushed forward to embrace him. He stood limply as she put her arms around him. It was the first time he’d met his three-year-old son, but he stared blankly at William and didn’t once ask to hold him.

It was a precarious time for Rosalind. Edward’s two brothers circled like sharks.

“He’s useless now,” they told their father. “You can’t leave the business to him.”

But Rosalind was determined that Melville
should
pass to William. So she left her son with the nanny and accompanied Edward into the office every day, where she acted as the puppetmaster behind him.

“See? Edward’s perfectly fine,” Oliver would say to his other two sons, as Rosalind presented yet another idea as her husband’s. “Quit grumbling and bring me innovations like this, and I might consider leaving you the business. But otherwise . . .”

Knowing when they had been outsmarted, the two brothers did what Rosalind had hoped they would and left, vowing not to speak to their father until he saw sense. Oliver’s wife tried hard to broker a reconciliation between her sons and her husband, but when she died in her sleep the following year, it seemed the rift would never be healed.

Meanwhile, Melville was thriving. The optimistic postwar years were a good time to be in the fashion business. In Paris, Christian Dior’s haute couture designs were ushering in a new era in fashion. Rosalind looked around for opportunities to benefit the company. The factory next door to Melville’s had been making parachutes during the war: Rosalind decided to buy it up and use it to produce silk scarves and coats to the same high standards as Melville shoes. She also started using the leather factory to make bags and suitcases.

In 1951, Rosalind became pregnant again. Rumors flew around. Everyone suspected Edward hadn’t visited her bedroom since his return—but there was no proof. She finally gave birth early the following year. This time, the labor was long and painful. While William had
come out fighting, her second son was a weak little thing, jaundiced and scrawny. She called him Piers. Ten days after the birth, she was back at work.

Five years later, poor, tragic Edward died. The obituary in
The Times
reported the Coroner’s verdict of death by misadventure. The Melvilles’ connections had ensured that no one got wind of the fact that Edward had used his service revolver to blow his brains out. Rosalind didn’t cry. It was hard to shed a tear for someone who had been effectively dead for over a decade.

The funeral was held on an ice-cold day in February. Against his doctor’s advice, an already frail Oliver insisted on attending the burial of his favorite son. Two days later he came down with pneumonia.

Oliver knew he was dying long before the end. Lying in his canopied bed at Aldringham, coughing and hawking through his final days, he thought about his two remaining sons. He hadn’t seen them for years. Now, sensing his time was coming to an end, he wanted to make amends. He asked Rosalind to contact them. She assured him that she would.

“Are they coming?” he asked hopefully every day.

“Tomorrow,” she told him, as she sponged his brow. “Tomorrow they’ll be here.”

He clung on for a week waiting for them, lonely and frightened, confused about why no one apart from Rosalind had visited him. On the eighth day, he passed away. Only then did Rosalind get in touch with his sons. After all, she couldn’t have risked him relenting and changing his will in their favor.

Now, finally, she had full control of Melville.

But that alone wasn’t enough for Rosalind. She had big plans for the company. She had no intention of simply preserving the business for William—she wanted to grow it.

Up until then, Rosalind had stayed away from clothing, knowing Melville had no hope of rivaling the Parisian fashion houses. But the sixties brought radicalism and sexual liberation—and, with them, a fashion revolution. Expensive, staid haute couture fell out of favor. Cheaper, cutting-edge ready-to-wear became all the rage, reflecting the fun and excitement of the streets. Mary Quant and Ossie Clark; the King’s Road and Carnaby Street . . . subversive, Swinging Sixties London had ousted Paris as the fashion capital.

For Rosalind, it was the perfect time to launch Melville Apparel. Although she never managed to attract the hip young talent to make it truly cool, the buzz around the rest of Melville goods—particularly its exquisite handbags and shoes—meant demand was still there. Shirts, dresses, and trousers emblazoned with the Melville logo were splashed across
Vogue
and
Vanity Fair
. The world had an insatiable appetite for Melville.

In a bid to capitalize on this popularity, Rosalind opened stores across Europe and North America. To finance these expansion plans, it was suggested that she sell part of the company on the London Stock Exchange. At first she resisted, not wanting Melville to pass out of the family’s control. But her advisers reassured her that she could sell just part of the company and retain the majority voting rights.

On January 25, 1964, 40 percent of Melville was floated on the London Stock Exchange, with the remaining 60 percent split between the family: 45 percent for William, a nominal 10 percent for Rosalind and the remaining 5 percent to Piers. The money funded her dream of taking the company international. When the New York store opened on Fifth Avenue in 1965, Melville became a truly global brand.

By 1970 Melville was at the peak of its popularity. The name had become synonymous with glamour and status, a luxury English brand sought after by movie stars and jetsetters. Rosalind could be proud. She had grown Melville into a much greater business than Oliver had left, and it was a legacy she felt proud to hand on to her eldest son, William.

Of course, the rise of Melville hadn’t been without its sacrifices for Rosalind. With her efforts concentrated on the business, raising her two sons had been left mainly to nannies and boarding schools. But she felt it was worth it to secure such a wonderful legacy for them both. And it hadn’t seemed to do them any harm. They were still a close family; no sons thought more of their mother; and they had grown into bright, handsome boys. Perhaps Piers was a little shy and quiet, more a follower than a leader. But while he’d grown up in the shadow of his successful older brother, he never seemed to resent his lesser role. Rosalind had seen to that. “William might be the figurehead of Melville, but you are the heart,” she’d told him time and again as he grew up. “You must watch over your brother. It’s up to you to help preserve the family name.”

So, as had always been Rosalind’s wish, her sons had both come to work at Melville. When she’d decided to reduce her duties, William had taken over from her as Chief Executive, although she had continued to advise him, along with Piers. The business remained prosperous and successful.

In fact, everything had been perfect until a few months ago, when this O’Dwyer business had come to light.

Rosalind had made it clear from the beginning that she didn’t like the idea of William bringing his illegitimate child to live with the family. “It isn’t fair to your wife—nor the girls,’ she’d said at the time. “If this woman Nuala is prepared to look after her, then why not let her? Provide for Caitlin, by all means, but don’t disrupt her life. And don’t disrupt your family.”

William had looked her straight in the eye and said, “Caitlin
is
my family, Mother.”

It was all he’d said on the subject, but it had told Rosalind everything she needed to know. William intended to treat the girl as part of his family, whereas to Rosalind, she would always be an outsider, nothing to do with her. And the old lady didn’t like the idea of an outsider getting her hands on any of the Melville business. Originally, she had planned to leave her entire 10 percent holding to William, but Caitlin’s arrival had changed that.

Now, she picked up the document in front of her. It wouldn’t hurt to read it one last time. Just to be sure.

Sitting in her father’s study after dinner that night, Elizabeth tried not to show her irritation as he quizzed her about how much time she’d spent with Caitlin since she’d arrived.

Too much, Elizabeth thought to herself. “As much as I can,” she said out loud. Well, what did he expect? It wasn’t as if they had anything in common. Caitlin couldn’t ride or play tennis—all she was interested in was reading and drawing. Dull. She didn’t
belong
here at Aldringham. She didn’t even
look
like a Melville. With her raw Gaelic looks, she bore no resemblance to Elizabeth and Amber, who had inherited the fair hair and patrician features of their grandmother.