Laurie Graham - The Unfortunates

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

This edition published by Harper Perennial 2006

First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate 2002

Copyright © Laurie Graham 2002

Laurie Graham asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Cover illustration © Rachel Ross

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007234066

Ebook Edition © NOVEMBER 2012 ISBN: 9780007390694

Version: 2017-03-30

From the reviews of The Unfortunates:

‘If you see people creasing up with laughter on public transport, this is probably what they’re reading’

The Times

‘Fresh, funny and smart, a novel that reels from the Titanic to jazz age New York’

Observer

‘Epic and very, very funny’

Daily Mail

‘A wildly funny novel, which is often on the brink of being a wildly tragic one’

Sunday Times

‘Set in New York, France and England, this witty book is brimming with irony while an understated sadness bubbles just under the surface. Laurie Graham’s last novel, The Future Homemakers of America , was a bestseller. With deft prose and a Nancy Mitford style, her seventh novel looks like repeating that success’

Irish Independent

‘Laurie Graham is a writer with a remarkably malleable comic voice … Poppy, like Nancy Mitford’s Linda Radlet and The Bolter, is a thrill-seeker with a penchant for romance, brightly coloured clothing, elaborate cocktails and effervescent company’

Guardian

‘A compelling read’

Hello!

‘A fantastic, engrossing read’

Glamour

To Joan Fitzgerald

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

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About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

It was just as well I had ripped off my Ear Correcting Bandages. Had I been bound up in my usual bedtime torture-wear, I would never have heard my mother’s screams.

The bandages were part of my preparation for the great husband hunt. I was only fifteen years old, but my mother recognized a difficult case when she saw one. She had taken up the challenge the day after my twelfth birthday and never spared herself since.

‘The early bird, Poppy,’ she always said, when I complained. ‘The early bird.’

And so, assisted by my aunt, she began an all-fronts campaign to catch me a worm.

I was forbidden candy and other waist-thickening substances. I was enrolled for classes in piano, singing and cotillion dancing, and spent an hour every day in a backboard, during which I practiced French pronunciation whilst a series of Irish maids tried to straighten my hair, or at least, defeat its natural wiriness into the kind of soft loose curls preferred by husbands.

On alternate days my neck was painted with Gomper’s Patent Skin Whitener, to coax out of it a certain oriental tinge. The label advised using the paste no oftener than once a week. But as my mother said, what did they know? They hadn’t seen my neck.

As to my nose, she knew the limits of home improvements. I was to go to a beauty doctor in Cincinnati, as soon as I was sixteen, and have a little cartilage shaved off.

Meanwhile she applied herself to the correction of my protruding ears. She designed an adjustable bandeau to hold them flat against my skull while I slept and had the Irish girl make them up for me in a selection of nightwear colours.

‘So you can choose, you see?’ Ma explained. ‘According to your frame of mind.’

And, gauging my frame of mind all too well, my aunt informed me that some day, when I had grown in wisdom, I would be grateful for their efforts.

The alternative to all this was that I would be left an old maid.

I knew what an old maid was. My cousin Addie was being one up in Duluth, Minnesota, riding around all day with her dogs and not wearing corsets. And I knew what marriage was too. My sister Honey had recently married Harry Glaser and as soon as the marrying was done she had to leave home and put up her hair. As far as I could see she wasn’t allowed to play with her dolls anymore, and she had hardly any time for cutting out pretty things for her scrapbook. She had had to go to tea parties all the time, but never appear too eager about cake, and whenever she came to call Ma would make mysterious inquiries.

‘Honey,’ she’d whisper, ‘how are Things? Are you still using the Lysol?’

To avoid the fate that had befallen Honey, I decided on stealthy sabotage rather than outright rebellion. As long as things appeared to be satisfactory my mother took them to be satisfactory. Surface was her preferred level. Hidden depths were unattractive to her, therefore she behaved as though they did not exist. So, every night, I took off my ear correctors, but only after the house had fallen dark and silent.

Then, that night, someone came to the front door and rang the bell with great persistence. I thought it had to be a stranger. Anyone who knew us knew the hours we kept. They knew our disapproval of night life and lobster suppers and men who rolled home incapable of putting a key neatly in a keyhole.

I heard the Irish slide back the bolt, eventually, and voices. And then, leaning up on my elbow, holding my breath so as not to miss anything, I heard my Ma scream. This signaled excitement. The late visitors were Aunt Fish and Uncle Israel Fish, come straight from the opera, still in their finery, because they had seen newsboys selling a late extra edition with reports of a tragedy at sea. ‘At sea’ was where my Pa was, sailing home from Europe.