Dreamhouse cottage, Camelot estate

from The Essential Paradise, series sourcebook

Doc. 7.91.31.
Dreamhouse is a cottage on the Eden Island portion of Camelot estate, in the British Paradise Islands.

It appears frequently as a setting, in episodes within the novels East of The Sun and Eden’s Bliss, by author Jonnie Comet, as well as in both domains of the Two Paradises fantasy/fiction realm.

History
The concrete-block structure itself dates to the late 1960s and is uninhabited, but in good condition, at the time Paul Cavaliere and the crew of Starchase explore Eden Island and Treasurers’ Cay (1983). After Paul and Angel are married, they occupy the cottage by arrangement with the neighbours Walter and Mabel Schoederer who have been looking after the place for its absent owners. Angel Cavaliere refers to it as their ‘Dreamhouse of love’ after a line in the Brooks Bowman song ‘East Of The Sun (And West Of The Moon)', from which the title of Paul’s narrative (the Jonnie Comet novel) is taken; and the house becomes known as Dreamhouse thereafter.

In 1984-1987, as Jonathan Cavaliere acquires Treasurer’s Cay and the Eden Island properties that become his estate, the cottage and its surrounding section become included in the purchase. It is used by the Cavalieres as onsite accommodation for themselves and occasionally by guests till most of the newly-built structures of Camelot have been made nominally habitable. After most of the Treasurers’ Cay work is done, construction crews turn to Dreamhouse, constructing a walled garden and rebuilding an neglected swimming pool in a terrace off the dining room, overlooking the bay.

General arrangement
The cottage was never meant to be full-time accommodation for anyone, being designed as a romantic hideaway with no private rooms and provisions for only one couple. A squarish sitting room occupies the southwestern end, having four pairs of French windows to a 3-m-wide terrace wrapping round three sides. Up eleven risers, above the dining room and kitchen to the east, is the bedroom, sharing the same open ceiling under a long sloping roof. A wide brick fireplace stack forms a headboard for the bed and is the only fixed divider between the bedroom and the sitting room beside and below it. Wardrobes and a compartmented bathroom suite occupy the southeastern end of the upper level, sharing a plumbing core with the kitchen, washroom and toilet below. An outdoor shower is located in a porch beneath the whirlpool bath up stairs.

The entire northwestern side faces Pirates’ Bay, enabling views from sitting, room, dining room and bedroom. French windows in the dining room give onto a lower terrace and also the terrace round the swimming pool. The earlier rudimentary landscaping is replaced in the 1980s by a lovely walled garden, resplendent with crocus, lily, sunflower and plumeria. A 4-metre cylindrical tower was added in one corner of the garden, providing stairway access and a lift down to the estate’s subterranean shuttle.

Appearances in stories
The cottage is a frequent setting for episodes’ action, both romantic and logistic. Nicole Bonelle succeeds in seducing Lady Susie there in The Seduction of Susie and Lady Susie is interviewed there by reporters in A Night On The Town and in A Farewell To Paradise.

Lady Susie hosts Amelia Townsend at Dreamhouse in Girls Will Be Girls. The underground tram is frequently used in the Cavaliere siblings' games of Strategy; the stop beneath Dreamhouse desirable as a clandestine entrance point for the estate, being away from others’ eyes even as the estate security staff can properly monitor the comings and goings of admissible family and friends.

Concept by the author
Jonnie Comet designed the Dreamhouse building and garden in the 1980s, enhanching the concept after writing the Girls Will Be Girls segments. It appears on the Essential Paradise map of Somerset Township.

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Doc. 7.91.31 b. 2015.0905. ©Jonnie Comet Productions Ltd. All rights reserved