Lies and Weddings(51)
“Is there a particular work you’re looking for? A Turner, perhaps?” the docent asked.
“Not really. I just like the overall effect,” Arabella said as she took a step back to get the full view of the paintings.
“It’s all about the effect, isn’t it?” the docent remarked, studying his visitor with renewed interest. When this lady had first entered, he assumed she was going to be no different from most of the tourists who visited. People trampled through the museum house all day long taking selfies and seeing nothing unless it was through the screen of their phones. This lady, though, was different. She’d headed purposefully into the Picture Room, knew about the hidden picture planes, and stood scrutinizing every painting. Who was she? She looked much too posh to be an academic, in her Garboesque tweed car coat, chocolate-brown slacks, and suede ankle boots.
“Thank you,” Arabella murmured quietly before heading down the corridor toward the mezzanine. She had been in London for three days now, having left Greshamsbury Hall shortly after Francis had delivered his shocking confession. She had gone someplace where she knew no one would ever look for her—the Shangri-La at the Shard, checking into a suite under the name “Han Suyin” and requesting not to be disturbed under any circumstances.
This morning, she’d emerged for the first time and headed straight to Sir John Soane’s house, one of London’s—if not the world’s—most remarkable architectural treasures.[*1] Behind the neoclassical fa?ade of a small, unassuming town house was a space so brilliantly designed, so full of confounding construction feats and trompe l’oeil trickery, it stood as a testament to Soane’s astounding talent. Walking through these rooms as they revealed themselves like a giant cabinet of wonders always inspired her and transported her to another place. Or at least it used to.
Arabella stood on the mezzanine and stared down into the lower level, where the immense sarcophagus of Seti I lay in the center of a room crowded with Egyptian antiquities. She peered into the pearlescent abyss of the alabaster tomb, trying to imagine the royal personage who once lay within. Arabella thought of her own life and how the curious twists of fate had led her to this moment. Less than two weeks ago, as the sun set over the beach and her daughter walked down an aisle littered with thousands of rose petals on the way to marry her prince, Arabella had felt like Nefertiti—like a true queen surveying her vast empire. But now she was the laughingstock of society, having orchestrated the royal wedding disaster of the decade. Once the news got out that she was also bankrupt, the laughter would turn to outright pity, and there was nothing on earth Arabella abhorred more than pity.
By the time she was twelve years old, Arabella was already a gangly five feet five. She towered above all the other girls at Maryknoll Convent School in Hong Kong, and to make matters worse her unconventional features—eyes set too far apart and dramatically high cheekbones—earned her the moniker yeung neui: Goat Girl. While all the pretty girls began attracting the kind of boys who grew up on the Peak, Goat Girl was never asked out on a date, and Goat Girl was pitied by all her classmates as she kept growing taller and taller.
But Arabella pretended to pay no attention. She knew if she studied hard enough, she would gain entry to a good university in Australia or Canada, and she could leave the mediocrity of upper-middle-class Hong Kong behind. No more boring Methodist Youth Fellowship meetings that her mother would force her to attend every Saturday, no more interminable family lunches at the Jockey Club or the Chinese Recreation Club. Arabella surprised even herself, graduating with three A-level distinctions and a scholarship to King’s College in London. She leapt at the opportunity to leave Hong Kong, and in her second year of uni, while standing at a CD listening booth at the HMV on Oxford Street, a woman with a French accent tapped her on the shoulder and asked her if she had ever heard of Anh Duong.
“Anne who?” Arabella asked.
“Anh Duong, the supermodel. I can make you the next Anh Duong,” the woman replied.
One test shoot later, Arabella found herself being flown to Milan and walking the runway at the Byblos show. She dropped out of King’s, moved to Paris, and three years sped by like a blur as she not only found success as a model but, more importantly, found a new life as the girl who wasn’t pitied, but, rather, worshipped. The Goat Girl had morphed into a mesmerizing beauty. While she never truly attained supermodel status, it did lead her to Francis, not at the Azzedine Ala?a fashion show in Paris, as had been widely reported, but actually at a late-night curry house on Brick Lane.[*2]
It was a fortuitous meeting, not only because sparks flew and they ended up falling in love, but because they found themselves anointed the “It Couple” at the precise moment when London was just becoming the mecca for a whole new generation of international rich who were arriving in droves, snapping up properties and making the city their preferred playground. And Arabella knew full well that while the Gresham fortune lacked the necessary number of zeros to compare to the astounding billions that all these people seemed to have, she possessed something that was of greater value to them: an old British title, an old manor house, and her own je ne sais quoi—that inimitable combination of style, taste, and chutzpah that all the billions in the world couldn’t buy.
Arabella understood early on that no matter how wealthy these new people were, most of them suffered from imposter syndrome. They were status obsessed, and even though they pretended not to give a damn, they craved relevance and being seen as originals, even though all they actually did was ape the true originals who came before them. All the women longed to be latter-day C. Z.s or Bunnys or Marellas, a new flock of Capote-esque swans who would be celebrated for their iconic style, while the men all fancied themselves as Aris or Giannis or Rubirosas—swinging-dicked lotharios who wore Pateks over their shirt cuffs. Arabella understood how to create a mystique around herself and quickly became the supreme arbiter of taste. She knew how to parlay her style into creating the chicest house in the country and a mini-empire of ultra-insidery resorts these people would be clamoring to stay at.