The It Girls

by Karen Harper

  If she’d been completely truthful with herself, Lucile thought as she strode through the lobby of her Washington, D.C., hotel a month later, she would have admitted she hoped to see how Bobbie was doing while she was here, where he was now stationed. Everyone else with the show was excited that President Wilson would be in the Fleurette audience this evening, but she had hoped Bobbie would attend.

  She and Franks were heading out to take Lucile’s dogs to a park for a walk. Lucile had her big chow, Mahmud, and two Pekingese, which she always traveled with, but she kept thinking of Bobbie.

  Raising money for the war effort, even though it profited her business, too, had made her forgive him for enlisting. She would track him down, tell him so, give him a ticket for tonight. After the war, she would gladly give him a position again. You might know, the army had realized his talents too and, though he’d been commissioned in the 5th Engineers regiment, he’d been given the job of directing the choir. Good, she’d thought. That would keep him safe.

  Despite the demands and triumph of taking Fleurette on the road, she planned to at least visit England soon. She missed Esme and her family—of course Cosmo, too, though he still tried to control her from afar. She needed his advice for business and financial affairs, but since he was sitting tight there, she had decided to find an American partner to shoulder some of that responsibility. If that freed her up to go home, how could Cosmo, Esme, or her attorney son-in-law, who all had a large financial interest in the company, argue with that?

  But she had already scheduled six months on the road in eighteen different towns with Fleurette, including here in the nation’s capital city. Surely that would shut Elinor up about her doing nothing to aid the cause.

  “Lady Duff-Gordon,” a busboy called as he caught up with them and gestured back toward the lobby desk. “A notice just arrived for you over the telephone from your office in New York.”

  Dear Franks went over to get that for her while Lucile held the three leashes. She opened the note while Franks took the two Pekes back.

  “Oh!” Lucile cried. “Oh my.”

  “Bad news from New York, milady?” Franks asked, coming closer.

  “From here, really. I mean, about here—Bobbie’s in a hospital, quite ill with pneumonia. So maybe this is a gift from God that I am here now. Billy Sunday says things like this are not fate, but from God, you know.”

  Billy Sunday and his wife were two of Lucile’s most unusual friends, for he was a hellfire-and-brimstone Christian evangelist, but she cared deeply for him. So many different Americans, and here—despite Bobbie’s plight—she was longing for a Scotsman.

  Pulling the big dog, she went straight to the desk. “I need to telephone this number at once,” she said. “I need to visit an ill soldier.”

  The man dialed the number for her and handed her the receiver. It felt so heavy in her hand. Dear Bobbie, so full of life and song. His voice—she imagined she could hear Bobbie’s beautiful voice, but she could hear Cosmo’s deep, lovely one too.

  She learned on the telephone from the commanding officer’s aide what hospital Bobbie was in, weak and very ill with pneumonia, which was the result of serious influenza that had swept the troops.

  She left the dogs with Franks. She wouldn’t take the time to call for her own motorcar, but rushed out to find a taxi.

  What terrified Lucile the moment they drove up to the side of the hospital, where she got out because of traffic in front, was a simple glimpse into a loading bay. Within were stacked rows of coffins! Surely not with bodies in them, soldiers’ bodies from disease if not war.

  She rushed inside to the main desk, claiming to be next of kin for Genia D’Agarioff. She had almost asked for Bobbie, but she was the one who had nicknamed him that. Did they think she was his mother, sister—even his older lover? She didn’t know or care.

  Others milled around in the corridors, some whispering, some crying. They sent her up one flight of stairs to a ward with lots of beds filled with young men. How she wished she could have known; she would have arranged a private room, but perhaps in these dreadful times, this was normal. The nurse led her to his bed. She perched carefully on the edge of it.

  “Bobbie. Bobbie,” she said louder, “it’s Lucile. I’ll get you out of here, special care.”

  He moaned and slitted both eyes open. A good sign, she thought, though he looked so pale, so—almost invisible. She took his hand. His face was flushed so she expected his skin to be hot, but it was cold. His hand was cold and thin.

  “Mama,” he whispered so quietly that she had to read his lips. “Mama.”

  “It’s Lucile, dear. You must rest and get better, so you can sing again. Bobbie, listen to me. The war surely will be over soon, and now you won’t be sent over there. You must save your strength and get better.”

  “Sing. I will sing.” He closed his eyes.

  “Sleep, dearest. Sleep and get strong and you will sing again where everyone adored you and applauded and—”

  His hand relaxed in hers, and he seemed to slump deeper into the white sheets of the narrow bed. He breathed out in a long, deep sigh. Though she could swear she still heard his voice, she knew he would never sing again. Well, maybe with an angel choir in heaven.

  CHAPTER Thirty-Two

  Quite strange to see a woman here,” the London Times reporter Nigel Paige told Elinor as they entered the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles with the rest of the press members for the signing of the peace treaty. The room was abuzz with muted, male voices.

  “How strange for you to say such when half the population of the world is women,” Elinor replied. “I believe many of them have brains and are able to read. Of course, though, women did not fight on the front battle lines—which I have seen quite close—they too fought the Huns in their own way and suffered. This is peace for women today also.”

  “Oh, well, didn’t mean to imply differently,” he told her and went as red as a ripe pippin.

  Reporters from the Times always thought they could lord it over everyone else, she thought. While they had waited in line, he had made several snide comments to imply that articles on the peace treaty being signed today would be better covered from “a male point of view.” She simply could not let the remarks pass, though she knew the press permit in her gloved hand could be revoked at any minute. God bless Lord Riddell for getting it for her and for paying well for her observations of the war for his paper, the News of the World.

  She turned her back on and moved away from the old curmudgeon Paige. Despite his disdain, she almost had to pinch herself that she was here. Not only in her beloved Versailles but here to report on the formal end of the war.

  She stood on tiptoe to survey the room near the signing table. The German representatives looked as if they’d like to sink through their seats. She could see British prime minister Lloyd George and the American president, Woodrow Wilson, both seated far to the front, as she took her seat in the back row.

  If she had an opportunity to say a word to Wilson, she’d tell him that she was the one who had rescued the real Fleurette, the inspiration for the presentation he’d seen in Washington. She’d make clear that she was the one who had insisted that her sister produce the charity show. Lucile’s letter about the president’s attendance had been the only happy note in the sad news she had sent about the demise of her employee Bobbie, whom Cosmo had distrusted. Elinor would tell the president that Fleurette had located her mother and sister and that they were all being supported by profits from the show, as were other French refugees. Lucile had even promised the girl a job when business picked up at the Paris shop again.

  Elinor heaved a sigh as she perched on a small, gilt chair. If only Lucile would return to Europe, perhaps they could make peace with each other, especially since Elinor had picked up hints in her letters that—for once—Lucile’s American endeavors were suffering from a shortage of funds, something Elinor had lived with for years. Cosmo said Lucile didn’t listen and that she had overreache
d her previous extravagance, but when did her older sister really listen to anyone? Full steam ahead, that was Lucile, though Elinor had to admit she had a bit of that in her, too.

  She took off her right-hand glove and began to take notes, but when she glanced up, it was the glorious, massive room that still stunned her anew, however packed it was with black-suited men and one other woman she saw come in. The ceiling soared high overhead, seeming to float as if it were held up by the over three hundred floor-to-ceiling mirrors on one side and tall glass doors that overlooked the gardens on the other. The parade of mirrors doubled the people. She turned to glance at herself in the one behind her.

  Dear heavens, at least she didn’t look fifty-four, despite her hard work and her own money worries. Yet she planned to take another trip to Egypt and Spain—had to travel while she still could. Money was well spent if it kept her young and provided fodder for her fiction. She had no desire to be a grandmother who stayed home and only tended her grandchildren, however much she adored them.

  28 June 1919, she wrote at the top of the page. Use mirrors as a symbol to make readers think about their own observations of the war and the need we all have for peace. Between countries, family members, husband and wife, loved ones . . . In a way, haven’t we all been at war over something, with someone, from time to time?

  For one moment she let herself remember when she’d brought George Curzon, her Milor, here to Versailles, that monster who had betrayed and hurt her so badly. She had not forgiven him yet and perhaps never would. She looked up from her notepad again, frowned into the mirror, and turned around just as the room quieted and the German representatives stood to sign the treaty first.

  “Sign right here, then down here,” John Shuloff’s lawyer told Lucile, pointing to the blank spaces on the long document. She nodded and began to sign Lucile, Lady Duff-Gordon and affix the date. So much tightly spaced, small print here. She adjusted her glasses. Her own lawyer, a friend of Elsie de Wolfe’s, had already gone over the agreement thoroughly. She was seated on a hard wooden chair, so why didn’t this man have some leather padded seats in his office? Worse, the lawyer seemed to hover over her.

  Yet she felt a great weight was about to be lifted from her shoulders. Now she would have an American partner to oversee finances and business affairs, to free her up just to design and find a way to enjoy life again. This agreement would buy herself, Cosmo, and Esme out of their interests in the New York, Paris, and Chicago stores and leave them the London shop. Surely everything would stay the same, except she would receive a monthly executive director’s salary. Her income would no longer fluctuate, especially since she disdained the postwar, dreadful boyish styles of chemise dresses and those tight cloche hats to cover that dreadful shingled, lopped-off hair. She was not completely cutting ties here. Though she was thinking of going back to Europe, when she visited New York, she expected to keep an eye on her new design studio in the Flatiron Building.

  She looked up from all her signing with a sigh. Shuloff was here, watching her, sitting at the end of the table, since he’d already signed. His scrutiny was fine with her, because it meant he had an eye for detail, that he was the sort to take charge and observe people, just as she had always been. She knew the imported lace and brocades were a thing of the past and that the prices of frocks would have to come down and cut profits, but she still meant to have a hand in holding on to some of the signature details of Lucile designs that had made her famous.

  “You’re free to return to Europe now,” Shuloff said the moment the ink was dry.

  “Oh yes, but I want to keep an eye on things here in the transition.”

  He ground out his cigar in one of the glass ashtrays with JS etched in their depths. Spittoons crowded each corner of the room, which added to the masculine but common feel of the place. She could have had it redecorated to be more welcoming and sophisticated in a trice.

  “I don’t think the hand-sewn promise will last for long, though,” he told her, leaning forward with his elbows on the table. “The future is mass production to keep prices down. Your outreach to the Sears and Roebuck buyers that didn’t fly might be a possibility now.”

  She felt so tired, so relieved, that his words hardly registered. Guilt over being away from her family and Cosmo, her tense, tenuous relationship with Elinor, her grief over Bobbie’s death all weighed on her. She’d given every penny from the Fleurette tour to the war effort, but those six months on the road had taken a further toll on her work here and in Chicago. Numerous new designers she used to call her acolytes had taken over much of the day-to-day work.

  Shuloff stood and offered her his hand, so masculine, so American. She rose and shook with him, wondering how she’d had the courage to part with any of this that she controlled—and wondering, if she did go home, if she would lose control there with her first Lucile’s shop and with her loved ones.

  Elinor was recently home from Spain when she received the telegram at her mother’s house. At first, she just stared at it. It was from her agent, who had received the message from her publisher, dear Gerald Duckworth. He was forwarding an offer from a Mr. Jesse Lasky in America, and the main message read: The Famous Players-Lasky Studio wishes you to come to Hollywood, California, and write for the moving pictures. Stop. Salary would be $10,000 per picture, plus traveling expenses and better terms if the “movies” do well. Stop.

  She read it again. The postscript said they had read her books. They liked her books! She blinked back tears and read it all for a third time. Below the momentous first five lines were details that other “admired” writers had promised to come also to elevate the storylines and characters of Hollywood moving pictures. Somerset Maugham, whom she had read but had not met, was one such writer.

  She collapsed on the bench by the umbrella stand and began to cry. Approval. Admiration. Adventure. A financial windfall. Amazing, new people. Something and someplace new, though she’d glimpsed old Hollywood when she’d been out west years ago. Perhaps they would do Three Weeks or Beyond the Rocks, her favorites. She was completely ignorant of screenwriting, but she’d learn. She would learn fast.

  Jumping up, she ran for the telephone.

  After the formal signing of the contract, Lucile stayed away from her design studio for two weeks while she kept busy socially and wrote home to test the waters about returning to oversee her flagship London store—hers and Cosmo’s. Esme had written back, It’s about time. Your grandchildren won’t even know you. Cosmo had scribbled hastily, I’ll believe it when I see it. And I want to see it—and you.

  So today, she steeled herself and took her limousine into the city from Long Island to visit her studio at the Flatiron Building. Although she would probably return to England for a time, it would do her staff and the new management good to see her, to be encouraged.

  Granted, it would be hard to see someone else in charge, as she realized a few new staff would have been hired. She hoped none of her employees had been let go. She should have insisted on that in the contract, but it wasn’t her contract. She felt a bit lonely, for she’d sent dear, loyal Franks home to England to her ailing, elderly parents, whom she hadn’t seen in years. Except for her canine menagerie, and, of course, her social friends, she felt greatly on her own in her apartment and her lovely Long Island home.

  Wanting to make a grand entrance as always, Lucile had dressed to the nines this October afternoon in a teal wool suit and fox stole, of course with a signature plumed hat. In case she had time to leave the staff with a few new designs after she’d looked everything over, she’d brought her favorite sketchbook with a few drawings to share. How she wished she’d walk in to hear Bobbie singing to the staff or to see her mannequins chatting as they prepared for one of her lovely fashion parades.

  But oh—the front office looked different as she stepped inside. Spartan. No flowers in vases, and the large window was bare with no satin draperies, none at all, though that offered a spiffy view of Broadway far below. A young man she did
not know looked up from his typewriter and asked, “Are you here for a fitting?”

  She stared at him so hard he flinched. “I am here to see my staff. I am Lucile, Lady Duff-Gordon.”

  He bounced up. “Oh, of course. We were not told you were coming. Please have a seat while I inform—” He got out before she rounded the desk—where was that Aubusson carpet that lay here?—and opened the door to the hall. She walked as quickly as she could, not leaning on her signature walking stick but carrying it like a weapon.

  Her eyes skimmed the first room for familiar faces. She saw two of her junior designers, but strangers, too, hunched over drawings, sitting at long tables. There were no swatches of fabric samples in sight. At least these workers looked industrious, for only a few glanced up, and only one—by his shocked expression—seemed to recognize her. Had she been gone for decades? Was this a nightmare?

  “Lady Duff-Gordon,” the receptionist said, scurrying behind, “please wait until I call Mr. Shuloff, or tell the manager. Mr. Shuloff isn’t here, but not far away, and the manager, Leon Green, is on the telephone to suppliers, so—”

  Leon Green. Whoever was that? Rather than set this man straight, she ignored him. In the next room, she saw none of her dear mannequins, women she’d so carefully chosen for size, shape, and face. Instead, on slightly raised platforms, stood dreadful, faceless, stuffed, cloth dummies with strangers pinning fabrics or constructed clothing on their lifeless forms, clothing that was plain, close cut, and so cold and dreadful. Other dummies were stacked against a wall like pale, naked corpses.

  The receptionist had left her now, running toward the back office that had been her studio with its lovely views of Fifth Avenue and the park. She could not bear to see it now. Had they sold her antique furniture there, its carpets and draperies? If so, it was her own, stupid fault.