Sister stardust, p.1
Sister Stardust, page 1
Praise for Jane Green
“A magic novel and a sumptuous feast for the senses. Sister Stardust is a thrilling trip.”
—Elin Hilderbrand
“Wonderful and big-hearted. A joy to read.”
—Laura Dave, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Last Thing He Told Me
“Smart, sexy, and compulsively page-turning. Love, love, love.”
—Lauren Weisberger, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“Exuberantly hopeful and thrillingly alive, Sister Stardust is Jane Green’s best novel yet!”
—Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“We are in the hands of the master craftsman Jane Green, who paints the world with a vivid brush, dripping in style and emotion. An unforgettable, spectacular read.”
—Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of The Good Left Undone
“Addictive, dazzling, transporting—the most luscious book you’ll read this year.”
—Jenna Blum, New York Times bestselling author of Woodrow on the Bench and The Lost Family
“An absolute must read.”
—Liv Constantine, internationally bestselling author of The Last Mrs. Parrish
SISTER STARDUST
Jane Green
harpercollins.com.au/hq
The author of eighteen New York Times bestsellers and nineteen USA TODAY bestsellers, JANE GREEN is a former journalist in the UK and a graduate of the International Culinary Center in New York. Her many novels include Jemima J, The Beach House, Falling, The Sunshine Sisters and, most recently, The Friends We Keep, and she has published one cookbook, Good Taste.
Contents
Talitha Getty
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Mahjoun Recipe
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Southern Cheese Soufflé
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Hashish Fudge
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
TALITHA GETTY
October 18, 1940–July 11, 1971
“I knew the generation of the 60s: Talitha and Paul Getty lying under a roof of stars in Marrakesh, beautiful and damned, and a whole generation assembled as if for eternity where the curtain of the past seemed to rise on an extraordinary future.”
—Yves Saint Laurent
PROLOGUE
Claire, October 2020
It wasn’t until my husband was in hospital that I finally allowed myself to cast my mind back. I knew he wasn’t coming home, my protector, my best friend, my rescuer. The phone would ring every day, a doctor keeping me updated, and I am thankful for that, for the compassion he showed, the unendurable shock of not being able to visit my husband, to sit with him and stroke his hands, hands that used to be so strong, hands that could fix anything, including me.
I woke up at 2:13 a.m., my dream still vibrant and alive in my head. In it my husband was kissing my forehead, as he was always wont to do, looking into my eyes with tremendous love. It wasn’t my husband as he is now, at eighty, but my husband as he was when he was young, his hair that bright ginger, his nose covered with freckles, his grin lighting up his face like sunshine. “You will be fine,” he said. “I will always look after you.” I woke up, and knew he was gone.
Six months later, and I am fine, if still adjusting. I am not sentimental. I sent all his clothes off to the charity shop. What on earth would be the point in keeping those closets filled? I gathered his shirts, his ties, his beautiful suits, and took them myself. I couldn’t ask Tally; my daughter would have been horrified.
Since he died, I have started working again. Coiled pots and vases, some sculpture, but small, simple, not like the large ones I did twenty years ago, the ones with which I made my name. I have arthritis now and my hands don’t have the dexterity they used to, so I keep the sculptures manageable. I take daily walks through Hampstead village and photograph scenes that might inspire me; the windows of the little shops that line Flask Walk, the people sitting outside the Spaniards Inn, the ducks on Whitestone Pond. I come back and sketch ideas for sculptures and pots at the kitchen table.
I have not been able to go into the attic, to sort through the detritus of a shared life. I have not been willing to revisit the past, but my husband has been dead for six months, and as I sit, this morning, I know that it is time. I need to move forward, I think, looking out the window, admiring the garden.
The shrubs are bursting into color as spring becomes summer, the profusion of cherry blossoms now dropping as the leaves burst into green, and the alliums and tulips start to droop, their time now over.
The kitchen soothes me, with its pale gray cabinets and open shelving, white plates and bowls stacked on the shelves. There is little color anywhere, save for cookbooks, and of course paintings that we collected over the course of our marriage, paintings that tell the story of our lives, that cover all the walls.
The television is on low as I decide to try to map out some new ideas today. I have an idea for an abstract duck sculpture, but first, I will paint it and see if I can make sense of it on the page. I dip my brush into water and swirl it around the cadmium yellow on a white china plate, diluting it until it is sufficiently watery, as I start to paint the outline of my duck. In the background, the murmurs from the television help me relax. I’m not really listening, until the music starts, when I catch my breath and drop the paintbrush.
It is Madama Butterfly. Un bel dì, vedremo. Maria Callas at her height. That voice. I would know that voice anywhere.
Un bel dì, vedremo
levarsi un fil di fumo sull’estremo
confin del mare.
E poi la nave appare.
Poi la nave bianca
entra nel porto, romba il suo saluto.
I have heard this over the years, of course. It is the most popular aria in the opera, filled with longing and a hint of the tragedy that follows. I remember exactly where I was when I first heard it. Morocco. I was perched on the edge of a divan, the colorful kilim cushions piled up behind me, as Paul carefully moved the needle on the record player. He explained the story of Madama Butterfly to me, and what this aria was saying. He would pause to sing parts of it, softly, as if in a reverie. Of course he spoke beautiful Italian, understood every word as he translated it to my willing ears. I knew nothing about opera. I knew nothing about anything. I had never heard anything so beautiful in my life.
“She sings bel canto,” Paul said, when I opened my eyes. I had to close them, to shut everything out so I could lose myself in the music, and when I opened them there were tears trickling down my face. Paul was delighted, moving an ottoman close to me and sitting down. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it. Callas. There is no one like her. She had such rigorous training in the kind of singing that hasn’t been fashionable for decades. Can you hear how light her voice is? Most of the bel canto singers in the last century were taught by castrati, even though there were few of them left.”
I had never heard the word castrati. He saw my confusion, and explained that castrati were male singers who were castrated before puberty in order to keep their beautiful voices intact. Women were not allowed to sing in churches, so in the eighteenth century, castrati were often all you heard, many of whom had been sold to singing schools by impoverished parents, hoping their child would become rich and famous. He explained that the castration stopped the production of testosterone; the lack of it kept their bones soft, so they were often very tall, with large rib cages. Their breathing capacity was huge. They could hold notes for an inordinately long period of time, with a higher pitch than was thought humanly possible. “They were the voice of angels,” he said, once he had recovered from a fit of laughter at the horrified expression on my face.
This was act 2, Paul explained, putting the aria on again. “It’s the perfect opera for the beginner. You love it, don’t you.” The smile spread across his face as I nodded, and he explained that Cio-Cio San is Butterfly, awaiting the return of her husband, an American naval officer, three years after their marriage. Butterfly imagines a glorious reunion, unaware that her husband has married another woman. The opera culminates with a distraught Butterfly taking her own life.
Paul taught me about opera, starting with the light ones, Donizetti, Rossini, Bellini, moving on to Verdi and Wagner. He would escape the hordes of people sprawled out on the daybeds beneath fur blankets and reti re to his room, playing music, drinking whiskey, smoking opium. I would join him there, some of the time, as his willing pupil. It was his sanctuary. And it became my sanctuary, too.
I am so lost in memories, the paintbrush having skittered across the floor once I had dropped it, I don’t hear the doorbell ring, and suddenly Tally is there in the kitchen, her eyes wide with fear.
“Oh, thank God!” She claps her hand onto her chest, presumably to quell the heart attack that may or may not have been coming. “I thought I’d find you on the floor.”
I am lucky, so very lucky, to have a daughter who lives a few streets away, who cares. Since her father died, she has worried about me unnecessarily, insisting I give her a key, insisting I check in with her on a daily basis.
“Darling, I know you’re worried about me, but I’m fine. I was focused on painting.” I follow her eyes to the red sable paintbrush on the floor next to me and lean down to pick it up.
“Are you sure you’re feeling okay?” She looks at me suspiciously, her red hair so like her father’s, streaks of gray running through the temples now.
I catch sight of myself in the metal around the wall oven. My hair is now completely white. I had always hoped it would go silver, a steel gray, something imposing and dramatic, but it went white, and I have accepted it, knowing that we always want what we cannot have.
And sometimes, when we get what we want, we discover it is not the thing that we wanted after all.
“Mum?” I look up, about to dive into the rabbit hole of memories again. “Can I go into the attic? I think there’s a chair up there that would be perfect for Lizzy’s room. She’s tossed out everything from her childhood and wants mosquito nets around her bed and twinkly lights.” She rolls her eyes at my granddaughter’s antics. “Remember the gray chair that used to be in Dad’s office in the old house? Is it okay if I take it?”
“Of course.”
Tally’s phone buzzes. She looks down at the screen and sighs.
“Everything okay?” I worry about my daughter. I have always worried about my daughter. She is a good girl, a kind girl, a girl who has spent her life thinking of others. I wasn’t quite so keen on her husband. He was rather...dull. Or so we thought. None of us had any idea he was fooling around with his office assistant.
Tally only found out when she stumbled upon a pile of receipts in his desk drawer at home. Not just any old receipts, but receipts for regular dinners at The Ivy, Hakkasan, Ottolenghi. All restaurants Tally had never visited.
Alan could have got away with it had there just been receipts for smart restaurants, but there was so much more. There were countless expensive hotels. When he was supposed to have been on a work trip in Birmingham, he was, in fact, at Whatley Manor in the Cotswolds.
There were receipts from Gucci, and Chloé, and Chanel. Which was perhaps the worst thing of all. My beloved Tally is not interested in clothes. If she splurges, she’ll buy one of those utterly shapeless but wonderfully comfortable dresses from TOAST, and pair them with her gardening clogs. She doesn’t care. She is an incredibly talented artist (I like to think she got a little of that talent from her mother), who never fulfilled her potential because she found that her most favorite thing in the whole world, far better even than painting her days away, was being a wife and mother.
She did everything for Alan. Created a beautiful home filled with books and paintings, and cozy sofas piled with squashy cushions that beckoned you to kick off your shoes and curl up the minute you walked into the house. She cooked delicious dinners every night, and toward the end, when he was always working late, she would leave them in the fridge, tired of waiting up for him, watching the clock tick past midnight.
The receipts told a story of a man who was obsessed with a woman half his age. How tiresome, my husband and I thought, to become such a cliché. Of course we were horrified; everyone was horrified, but I was also, if I am completely honest, the tiniest bit impressed. Who would have thought Alan had it in him? Alan, who was so quiet, so disengaged from Tally, her art, her passions; Alan, who only seemed to be interested in working at the bank and very occasionally going to the opera, mostly when work had provided a box and his boss was going to be there.
My lovely Tally deserved better. Six months after he left to live with Mandy, Mandy found someone younger and more exciting. Alan attempted to come back with his tail between his legs, but—thank God—Tally said no. It was the only time I was happy to hear her saying no. Usually, she says no because she has lost her joie de vivre, is content, she says, being home, pottering in the conservatory that is now an art studio, listening to Radio 4.
Tally taps on her phone. “Sorry, Mum. A girl from my art class is trying to get me to join them in Ibiza. I keep saying I can’t go, but she won’t take no for an answer.”
“Darling, why on earth wouldn’t you go? Ibiza? Sunshine? Friends? You must.”
“Mum. You know I can’t stand travel. Look at my skin. If I so much as look at Mediterranean sun I turn into one giant freckle. Plus, Ibiza? Do I look like a twentysomething? I’m not the slightest bit interested in dancing all night and taking drugs.”
Oh my, I think. If only she knew how much fun that can be.
“It’s a big no thank you from me,” she says finally, and I stop pushing. She is old enough to make up her own mind. So much of her life was devoted to others—to her husband, her children—I simply want her to seize life and squeeze out every last drop. She has no idea what she has no idea about. Ibiza is exactly where she should be. And if it includes dancing all night and taking drugs, so much the better. But I have pushed her far enough and know to keep quiet.
“Right. Shall we go into the attic?”
We head into the hallway and Tally pulls down the cord and ladder. She insists I go up first so she can catch me if I fall. I find my footing on each rung before I put any weight on it. I am quite proud of myself, of my newfound agility, as I stand up in the attic and flick on the light.
“My God,” says Tally, coming up behind me, surveying the floor-to-ceiling piles, the furniture, the things I had forgotten about. “There’s a whole other house stashed up here. How in the hell did you get everything up here?”
“The movers did it.” I push a chair out of the way, hiding my own surprise, for I too hadn’t realized quite how much there is up here.
The space is stuffed to the rafters with furniture and knickknacks we had collected over the years, much of which has no place in this pretty but small Georgian cottage, the house we bought in the midnineties, once Tally was firmly settled and moved out, with a place of her own. I have loved it here, this flat-roofed gracious white stucco dwelling in the heart of Hampstead village. I love the floor-to-ceiling windows and the way the light pours into the living room. I love the pale tiled floors in the kitchen, and the grays and browns that are soothing to my soul.
Most of all I love the simplicity. And yet, when my husband was in hospital, for the first time in years I found my mind drifting elsewhere. To brass lanterns and markets filled with colorful spices. To soft-soled babouche shoes that slipped on like silk, shoes that kept my feet warm on mosaic stone floors that held on to the cold, no matter the temperature outside.
Tally is oohing and aahing over everything in the attic—Victorian stationery boxes she remembers from her childhood, sofas that would be perfect in her office. She finds an empty box and starts packing it with knickknacks, calling over to ask if it’s okay, but I hardly hear her.
I had no idea quite how many things we had accumulated up here. Tray tables, chairs, paintings from the very first flat we bought when we returned from honeymoon, rails filled with clothing not worn in years.
I spot a box filled with old paperbacks. My God. Why are these even up here? A sense of dread washes over me as I think of all the useless things that are contained in the boxes up here, things that should have been given away or thrown out years ago.
I flick through some of the books, seeing how I had made occasional notes in the margins. The pages are now brittle and yellow, the covers in both English and French. I had forgotten that I used to read in French, that once upon a time French came almost as naturally to me as English.
