Tom Sykes - Blow by Blow - The Story of Isabella Blow

BLOW BY BLOW

THE STORY OF ISABELLA BLOW DETMAR BLOW WITH TOM SYKES

Blow by Blow is dedicated to Isabella’s memory

Chapter 1 The Call

Chapter 2 Johnny

Chapter 3 The Curse of the Delves Broughtons

Chapter 4 Evelyn

Chapter 5 Poor Relations

Chapter 6 Helen

Chapter 7 Heathfield

Chapter 8 Rona

Chapter 9 Evelyn’s Leg

Chapter 10 Eighteenth Birthday

Chapter 11 The Lovats

Chapter 12 Wolf

Chapter 13 Nicholas

Chapter 14 The Dispoasal of Doddington

Chapter 15 Texas

Chapter 16 Issie ♥ NY

Chapter 17 Anna

Chapter 18 André

Chapter 19 Divorce

Chapter 20Tatler

Chapter 21 Independence

Chapter 22 Andy

Chapter 23 Inspiration

Chapter 24 Meeting Issie

Chapter 25 Falling in Love

Chapter 26 Courtship

Chapter 27 Engagement

Chapter 28 The Blows

Chapter 29 A Church Wedding

Chapter 30 The Restoration of Hilles

Chapter 31 Philip

Chapter 32 Duggie

Chapter 33 The Wedding

Chapter 34 Morocco

Chapter 35 London Babes

Chapter 36 The Death of Evelyn

Chapter 37 The Great Betrayal

Chapter 38 Alexander

Chapter 39 Elizabeth Street

Chapter 40 Sydney Street

Chapter 41 Exotic Fruits

Chapter 42 Highland Tragedy

Chapter 43 Alexander’s Betrayal

Chapter 44 Sophie

Chapter 45 Freelancing

Chapter 46 Theed Street

Chapter 47 Money Worries

Chapter 48 The Sunday Times

Chapter 49 Hotel du Cap

Chapter 50 Jeremy

Chapter 51 Modern Art

Chapter 52 Swarovski

Chapter 53 Russia

Chapter 54‘ WOW’

Chapter 55 Dinner with Elton

Chapter 56 Economy, Issie-style

Chapter 57 Helen’s Last Visit

Chapter 58 New York, via Iceland

Chapter 59 Economy, Issie-style (II)

Chapter 60 Triumph, Disaster and Recovery

Chapter 61 The 3 Cs

Chapter 62 When Philip Met Isabella

Chapter 63 The Battle of Hilles

Chapter 64 Separation

Chapter 65 Reconcilliation

Chapter 66 Eaton Square

Chapter 67 Shock Treatment

Chapter 68 The First Attempt

Chapter 69 ‘I always hated Tesco’

Chapter 70 The Overpass

Chapter 71 Battles

Chapter 72 India

Chapter 73 Cancer

Chapter 74 St Joan

Chapter 75 Issie’s Farewell

Sources and Acknowledgements

Picture Credit

Index

Copyright

About the Publisher

I was at our flat in Eaton Square in London when I got the call. It was Issie’s devoted younger sister, Lavinia.

‘Detmar, I have just come home from shopping,’ Lavinia said frantically, ‘Issie has swallowed some poison. She says not to worry, as she has sicked most of it up. She seems ok. What shall I do?’

It was my wife Isabella’s seventh suicide attempt in fourteen months, and I felt a surge of anxious nausea as I tried to process Lavinia’s words.

Maybe this was it. Maybe this time she’ll succeed.

But poison? Where the hell had she found that? Was it weedkiller, like my father had used? And if it was, then how could she possibly still be alive? Issie was only 5′2½″ and weighed 7 stone. My father – 6′1″ and 18 stone – had drunk a bottle of paraquat in 1977 and it killed him in half an hour as the liquid burned out his insides. Amaury, my curly-haired 12-year-old brother, was there. He said Dadda never cried out, but that his fists were clenched in pain.

The only thing I knew was that if I was to be of any use to Issie at all, I had to remain calm and non-hysterical. ‘Take her to hospital,’ I told Lavinia. ‘I’ll be down as soon as possible.’

In a trance I called the milliner Philip Treacy, Issie’s best friend, who was meant to be picking me up later, because we had already planned to go down to Hilles, our house in the country, that weekend. I told him what had happened and he came round with his boyfriend Stefan and picked me up and we set off in his car for Gloucester Royal Hospital.

How could she still be alive? Maybe, I found myself hoping, as we crawled at an agonizingly slow pace through west London towards the M4, it wasn’t weedkiller. But I had a dreadful hunch that it was, because just a couple of months beforehand I had taken delivery of a bottle of paraquat at Hilles, ordered by Isabella.

I had been horrified, furious, and had asked Isabella, ‘What the hell is this? What are you doing?’ She had just remained silent.

I took it back to the farm shop in Gloucester where she had ordered it and told them, ‘The person who ordered this is trying to kill herself. Never send it again.’ The poor lady I spoke to was very upset.

I stared out of the car window in a daze as we hit the motorway and finally started picking up some speed. Surely the same farm shop wouldn’t have sold her paraquat? Could it be something she had found in the garage from my father’s stack of poison, left there since the seventies, which would be 30 years out of date?

When we finally arrived in Gloucester, we got lost. The Gloucester Royal Hospital is a big 1970s building with a huge chimney. I thought you couldn’t miss it, but because of the new housing developments around it the road was obscured.

After driving around the hospital for a while and getting nowhere I said, ‘Let’s get out and walk.’ Philip and I had to scramble over a wall to get into the hospital grounds.

We went to the hospital reception and asked for Isabella, but no one knew where she was. Eventually we found out she was in the Accident and Emergency ward, so we rushed there.