Читать книгу Blow by Blow: The Story of Isabella Blow - Tom Sykes - Страница 10

Isabella, I can say with complete confidence, loathed her mother. When Helen finally left Evelyn, she lined up her children on the gravel outside the gardener’s cottage, and shook their hands goodbye.

This disgusting act of abandonment was the culmination of a truly dreadful mother-daughter relationship.

Issie actually looked down on her mother socially. Helen’s grandfather had owned a successful greengrocery business in Manchester with several stores, so he had been able to afford to educate Helen at Roedean and King’s College London, but she had no money of her own and never completely escaped her roots.

This would not have mattered, of course, had she not so obviously sought to. Helen’s father died young and the business passed to Helen’s brother, ‘Uncle Mike’, an alcoholic who had a bar in his lounge. Helen’s mother – Isabella’s maternal grandmother, Nancy – spoke with a broad Cheshire accent and lived in Wilmslow, an expensive, sought-after suburb beloved of Mancunian business families. Issie mockingly described Nancy’s house as, ‘A marble bungalow with electric blinds, fake Louis XV furniture and a Mercedes sports car in the driveway.’

This was all marvellous material for Isabella, for it was a long way from Helen’s perception of herself as ‘Lady Broughton’. She did not care to discuss her background, although once, after a few drinks, she let her guard down and told us her grandmother was Irish, from Dublin, and one of a large family. She hinted that she was connected to an Irish peerage. When I asked her whether she was in contact with any of her grandmother’s relations, though, she drew up the drawbridge, and stared at me blankly. In the 11 years that I knew Helen, she always spoke in a clear, confident upper-class accent, but once or twice, she slipped. She caused Issie to howl with delight when she asked, ‘Are you coming on then?’ – Cheshire vernacular for ‘Are you pregnant?’

Conclusive evidence of what Isabella would see as her mother’s vulgarity were the family cars, which had personalised number plates: ‘EDB1’ for Evelyn’s Jaguar and ‘HDB1’ for Helen’s Volvo. To obtain these, Helen bought two cheap cars in the nearby county of Denbigh in north Wales and transferred the newly issued Denbigh number plates.

Isabella, did, however, believe that her interest in clothes and hats sprang from Helen. When she was around 6 years old, a photograph was taken of her standing on a chair in front of her mother’s dressing-room table, trying on a large pink hat and looking, as she said, ‘as happy as can be’. Helen would take Isabella with her to Chester to choose fur coats – and during her marriage to Evelyn she built up a large collection of mink and sable coats, which Isabella adored.

In the early 1970s Helen started to spend more and more time in London at the family flat at Cadogan Square. After 15 years with Evelyn she was becoming less and less satisfied with country life as Lady of the Manor in Cheshire: opening fêtes and sitting as a magistrate in Nantwich. Helen yearned for a more culturally and intellectually fulfilling life. Evelyn, a self-confessed philistine, was interested in little other than making money and horse racing. Apart from a shared enjoyment of parties, they had increasingly little in common. And Evelyn, neglected as a child by his socialite parents, feared loneliness.

In 1973, Helen had to go into hospital for a serious operation. Evelyn had already booked an expensive trip to the Far East, and decided that although his wife could not go, he would. After all, he had paid for it – and Helen could just get on with her operation. He was 58 years old.

Travelling on a bus in Hong Kong he met Rona Crammond, 34, a very attractive, intelligent and determined woman. Rona was born on 22 November 1939 in West Cardiff. Her father, Ernest Clifford Johns, was a bank manager – but Rona would have known who Sir Evelyn Delves Broughton was. By a curious coincidence, she had been educated at Goudhurst Ladies College at Doddington Hall when the big house was leased to the school by Evelyn.

Six years old, trying on a large pink hat. ‘As happy as can be.’

After leaving Goudhurst, Rona had trained as a nurse to work as a missionary in Africa. A beautiful young woman, she was pursued by several eligible young men, including a young Michael Heseltine, later the Deputy Prime Minister.

Rona subsequently married the flamboyant Old Harrovian property developer Donald Crammond and gave up her missionary ambitions in Africa. Like Evelyn, Rona had three young daughters, but, despite this complication, a romance between Evelyn and Rona blossomed, and developed further on their return to England. Before long, they decided to divorce their spouses and marry each other.