Lace

by Shirley Conran

  Under her huge, green-brimmed straw hat, Aunt Hortense raised bushy eyebrows above her big bony nose and sniffed. Unlike Judy, Maxine was a bit frightened of her aunt, who now nodded without saying anything. Encouraged, Maxine continued. “Of course I love my family, but I don’t want to be part of that nursery life any longer. I want to get away from them. I want to have a life of my own. ‘You will have, if you marry the Boursal boy,’ says Mama.” She mimicked her mother’s exasperated voice. “Pierre has already spoken to Papa, you know, but when I visit his parents in that apartment on the Avenue George V, I can’t get out fast enough. It’s claustrophobic and I feel trapped again. Although it’s much grander than our home—white marble and a black maid—his mother leads exactly the same life as my mother, except that she does it in haute-couture clothes. I don’t want to marry Pierre because I don’t want that life.”

  Angrily Maxine bit her thumbnail although there was little left to bite. “And there’s another more important reason. Pierre is really only interested in skiing, you know. I realise that sounds ridiculous and you’re going to tell me that it will pass, but I think that with him, when it does pass, nothing else will take its place. He’s rich and he likes to ski; he doesn’t like to work and there’s no reason why he should.” She looked up at her aunt pleadingly. “But I couldn’t stand being married to a rich ski bum, especially an aging rich ski bum. So I’m going to refuse Pierre, and then I want to leave Paris for a bit. I know Paris. I’ve lived here all my life. I want to visit other places—London and Rome.”

  Again Aunt Hortense nodded slowly in order to give herself time to think. At that age, many girls felt like Maxine, but the child was unusually impatient in this attempt to get what she wanted. In time, Maxine would learn to move slowly and carefully in order to get her own way, not to crash aggressively into a prerehearsed argument like this one. She would learn that, whoever she married.

  “What exactly do you want?” Aunt Hortense asked.

  “I want to go to London and learn to be an interior decorator, then come back to Paris and open my own concern. You are the one who started to educate my eye—shopping for clothes with you, shopping for antiques with you, going around museums with you. You have your own style. Now I want to develop one of my own. French designers are still doing the same thing that they’ve been doing since before the war. Stuffy, overdecorated, overexpensive interiors. This is not what I want to do.” She looked up from under her lashes. “I’m going to ask Papa to let me study in London for two years. I want you to persuade him to let me go because I know I can’t, and I know you can.”

  Aunt Hortense nodded again as she tended to when she thought it prudent to say nothing.

  Encouraged, Maxine continued. “My friend Pagan says that the best London decorator is James Partridge, who’s just done her mother’s flat. She says he’s got a marvellous understanding of colour and antiques and Pagan’s already talked to him. She’s asked if he could find a job for me.”

  Aunt Hortense nodded again. It was not such a stupid idea. It was always useful if one married well. It would certainly improve the girl’s eye and if she were making money, then she could hardly be spending it.

  So she asked Maxine’s parents to one of her smaller, grander dinner parties. She seated Maxine’s father between a mildly famous, mildly flirtatious actress and a pretty little Countess who had been widowed the previous year and was rumoured not to be inconsolable. Maxine’s father enjoyed himself hugely. After the meal, when her guests were sitting over brandy and coffee in the library, his sister drew him to one side and said, “A little word with you, Louis, about my goddaughter. I feel that Maxine shouldn’t waste any more time socializing in Paris. It’s time that she continued her education.”

  “Well, we rather assume that she’s going to marry the Boursal boy. . . .”

  “Oh, surely not, surely that’s not what you want for your clever daughter? That blockhead? Why, the girl is hardly out of school and you want to marry her to a brainless idiot like that! No, I think that Maxine takes after you. She is clever, she shows a definite talent for the arts. It would be a good idea if she studied them seriously.”

  “Well, perhaps you’re right, Hortense,” said Maxine’s father, who really didn’t think it was important what Maxine did before she married provided it didn’t cost him too much. “I’ll ask her mother to see what courses are available at the Beaux Arts.”

  “Very wise of you, Louis. And there’s one other small thing that should be attended to. Her English isn’t nearly good enough—not nearly as good as yours. She speaks English the way Winston Churchill speaks French—exécrable! What I should most like to see for her is two years in London, studying with a really good decorator. One learns so much faster in practice than in theory, don’t you think?”

  “London? Two years? You must be mad, Hortense, her mother would never let her go. She’s only nineteen, remember.”

  “You’ve just implied that she’s old enough to be married. Besides she has friends in London. Oh, Louis, think what a joyless adolescence we had. She has such talent, your Maxine! Surely you wish to allow the poor child to spread her wings a little before she has to knuckle down to the serious and often tedious business of being a wife.”

  There was a pause. “And if I allowed her to go to London, to whom would she go?”

  “The best decorator in London, of course,” said Aunt Hortense decisively, “and that is Monsieur Partridge. I have no idea whether there’s a free place in his office, and I don’t know if he charges for apprentices, but I can telephone him tomorrow and find out. No! No! It would be a pleasure for me to attend to your wishes in this matter, Louis.”

  She led him back to the library, quite pleased with herself. It was amazing how you could spoonfeed flattery to a grown man.

  So in due course, after kissing Judy good-bye, Maxine caught the Golden Arrow to London. Kate and Pagan were waiting at Victoria Station. Kate had already rented a basement apartment in Chelsea for herself and Maxine. There were only two small, dark rooms, but it was in Walton Street, a charming little road of tiny nineteenth-century houses in Chelsea.

  Every evening at six, Judy rushed from the depressing office back to her shabby, overblown-rose-patterned room at the Hotel de Londres. The room overlooked an inner courtyard that was as full of life as a soap opera. Nobody ever seemed to draw the curtains, and beyond the other windows you could hear the fights, see the lovemaking and smell the cooking from the apartments on the opposite side.

  As Guy’s collection progressed, his own bedroom grew less habitable, so when he finished work he would climb two further flights of stairs to Judy’s room for a glass of wine and sympathy. Sitting cross-legged on her pillow, she quickly learned about the world of French couture.

  “One whole day wasted on fittings,” groaned Guy one evening, throwing himself onto the bottom of the bed. “How I long to design for the boutique market!”

  “What difference will that make?”

  “Mass orders, ma chère. Mass manufacturing and no damned fittings. A haute-couture garment is made to order and has three sacred, time-wasting fittings, but boutique clothes are made in batches, in standard sizes, and are sold ready-to-wear. It’s up to the customer or the store to alter them, if necessary.”

  Judy leaned under her bed for the wine bottle and filled two small glasses. “I thought you liked couture customers?”

  “Only because I have to. Very few women can afford couture clothes. All of them are spoiled, and most of them are fickle. Hardly any women stick to one couture house, except the best dressed ones.” He sipped his wine very slowly, then continued. “Celebrity clients often borrow ball-gowns for a gala, then return them dirty, sometimes even torn, with never a word of thanks. Zut! I don’t want to spend my life at the mercy of a few rich bitches who spend their life dressing for cocktails.” Suddenly he sat up and pointed under the washbasin. “Nom d’un nom, what is that?” Standing on a strip of linoleum was a wastepaper baske
t, and propped up in it in a nest of aluminum foil lay an upended electric iron.

  “It’s my stove. I’ve bought a little saucepan and I cook on the flat side of the iron. It’s one of the new thermostatic ones—I set it at ‘linen’ for boiling eggs or making toast and at ‘wool’ for simmering stew.”

  Guy rolled his eyes. “A terrible fire hazard! You’re lucky to be alive! You know the hotel doesn’t allow cooking in the bedrooms. They’ll throw you out.”

  “I can’t afford to eat at restaurants all the time, so I keep food in a suitcase under the bed.”

  “You’ll have mice and cockroaches.”

  “No, it’s all in a tin box.” She dragged the suitcase out to show him. “Look, I’ll boil you an egg.”

  “Please don’t.” Intrigued, in spite of his disapproval, Guy said, “You Americans are undoubtedly ingenious. I see it in your fashion industry—you’re ten years ahead of us in your manufacturing and marketing and in the way you specialise. In the States, a single firm doesn’t offer its customers every sort of garment from skirts to ballgowns, as we do in France. A firm that makes skirts to retail between ten and twenty dollars won’t know much about skirts that retail between forty and fifty dollars. One is more likely to make money in fashion if one specialises.”

  Thinking of her own odious job, Judy sighed. “There must be a lot of satisfaction in being a designer.”

  There was a pause. “Not really,” Guy said gloomily. He moved back and sat on the edge of the bed. “I’m sorry, I am in a dark mood. It’s le cafard. It is only because I’m tired and worried, and instead of getting on with the important work, I’ve been fiddling about all day, letting out a quarter of an inch here, taking in a quarter of an inch there.”

  “You only feel depressed because you’re exhausted and under pressure. You’ll be in love with couture again tomorrow.”

  “Yes, but I repeat, I don’t want to spend my life working for a few rich women. I want to produce clothes that will make thousands of women feel marvellous.” He gave an exasperated sigh. “Today, women want to look like themselves and I want to help them.” He snorted. “Haute-couture is a dwindling market—every year there are fewer and fewer rich private customers.”

  “Let me massage your back,” Judy said, turning from the window. “It’ll help you to unwind.”

  He stood up wearily and started to unbutton his blue cotton shirt, still thinking aloud. “Another disadvantage is that one’s designs are always stolen by mass manufacturers from all over the world so one’s virtually working for them, unpaid.”

  Judy took the pillows off the bed, straightened the cover, spread a clean towel on it and rolled up her sleeves. Guy sat on the edge of the bed, kicked his shoes off and lay down.

  “. . . But one doesn’t make one’s name in mass production, one makes it in haute-couture.” He lay face down on the bed and Judy started to work on his spine, pressing firmly with her thumbs, starting in the small of his back, as Guy continued to think aloud. As she worked on his shoulder muscles he could feel himself unwinding, breathing more deeply. “Shall I tell you my plan?” he mumbled. “I want to do something new, to specialise in high-quality mass production. My clothes won’t be as expensive as haute-couture, but they won’t be as cheap as most manufactured garments. My long-term ambition is to have a business that’s halfway between the two, producing my own designs with my own label.”

  Now her thumbs were on the back of his neck, firmly pressing the tension out of it. “Mmmm, that feels better already . . . I want to make exquisite, ready-to-wear clothes that have the design, cut and fabric quality of an haute-couture garment, although the customer won’t get personal fittings. The clothes will have to be carefully designed so that they’re easy to alter to fit. I’m starting with a collection of separates, a lot in wool jersey . . . aaah, that’s wonderful.”

  “Now, turn around and face the window,” Judy said, “otherwise I can’t get at your left side properly because the bed’s against the wall. Listen, world tycoon, when will your suits be ready, and what will you do with them?”

  “My sample stock will be ready in July. I’ll hire a hotel suite and show the designs to stores and boutiques. The stores will order—with any luck—and the clothes will be made up by a little factory in Fauchon.”

  Judy gave him a gentle slap on the back and said, “You are now a new man.”

  Guy stood up and put on his shirt. “Thanks.” He leaned forward and ruffled the ragged fringe of her new street-urchin coiffure. “Look, Judy, I’m truly sorry I’ve been in such a rotten mood, but the entire day has been unproductive. José, the seamstress, has been off for the whole week because she strained her wrist so we’re behind schedule. I have to do so many jobs, even the damned deliveries.”

  “I’m going to take you out to dinner,” Judy said.

  “Judy, you’re an angel, but it’s not possible. I must do the bookkeeping before paying the wages tomorrow. It is the bookkeeping that drives me the most crazy—it’s only about an hour a week but somehow there never is an hour.”

  “If you like, and if it’s really only an hour a week, I’ll do it for you,” Judy offered. “You can pay me when you can afford it. I process orders and invoices at the office and I’ll get Denise, our office bookkeeper, to show me whatever else is necessary. I could do it on Thursdays.”

  “Angel! Shall I pay you in advance with a suit? The blue silk with the low V neck to the breasts? You can wear it in the evening with nothing underneath, just pearls.”

  9

  KEEP STILL, AND breathe in,” urged Judy, heaving on the zipper. “Now for heaven’s sake don’t breathe out.”

  One of the four models had let them down, so Guy was showing his first collection on only three girls. Voile curtains stirred in the slight breeze, but the July heat was still almost unendurable, even here in the Plaza Athénée. Guy was checking the accessories list and laying things out on the three trestle tables that had been set up by the hotel in place of the usual twin beds, which had been taken away for the day. Three hundred invitations had been sent out, but only thirty people were expected.

  Having worked almost nonstop for the past four months, Guy was gray with fatigue and understandably tense. He was going to supervise the models. Judy, who had taken a week’s vacation from her job, would usher guests to their seats and announce the models. Most of the important couture houses of Paris had already shown their collections; clothes were still pretty but uncomfortable, with voluminous skirts, boned waists and breasts squashed flat under jackets that were stiff with padded interlining; Guy’s simple, comfortable clothes would certainly look different. Every evening, Judy had rushed to buy newspapers in order to read the reports of the collections that had been shown that day, and Guy anxiously telephoned around for backstage information.

  First through the gilded double doors was Guy’s mother with a group of friends, then, one by one, his private customers appeared. Aunt Hortense gave Judy a conspiratorial wink and whispered, “You can get your order book out, I’m going to buy two outfits even if he’s showing shrouds.” A couple of Guy’s friends from the Jacques Fath studio also showed up, but none of the press appeared and only three of the buyers who had been invited from the smarter shops and stores of Paris.

  The first model appeared from the hallway, wearing a garnet suit with a short, straight jacket and box-pleated skirt. She wore a black sailor hat on the back of her head and dragged the cinnamon raincoat. As if to an audience of thousands, she gave a radiant smile, advanced into the room with the gait of a nervous racehorse, then pirouetted very slowly. Because of the missing model, appearances were to be dragged out as long as possible in order to give the other girls time to change.

  Once in the bedroom the model moved on the double. The seamstress held her second change ready to step into, the cutter snatched up the discarded clothes and Guy, standing by the door with his stopwatch to time each model’s departure, held her accessories ready for her to grab.


  At the end of the collection there was a round of polite applause, then champagne was handed around by a waiter who had strict instructions to keep the glasses full. Behind the scenes, Guy paid the models in cash, as was the custom, while his two helpers packed up the clothes. All the private customers gallantly placed orders. Guy’s mother waited to see what nobody had ordered—a cream wool battledress-top suit that did not flatter a middle-aged figure—and then ordered it. Aunt Hortense bought the cinnamon raincoat, a saffron velvet jacket with a short skirt, a long skirt and matching chiffon blouse, but she declined the drain-pipe pants. The private clients all left together, still trilling encouragement.

  As soon as the last one had gone, Guy slumped into a pale blue brocade armchair and buried his head in his hands. “Not one, not one order, except from friends!”

  Back in Judy’s room at the Hôtel de Londres he slumped on the edge of the bed, staring in despair at the blowsy roses on the opposite wall. “Lie down and I’ll make you a cup of tea,” Judy said, gently pushing him back on the bed, but by the time the iron had boiled the water, Guy was already asleep. Judy took his shoes off and arranged him tidily on the bed as if he were dead or drunk, then lay down beside him. She, too, was exhausted. Alas, she thought, there wasn’t going to be much invoice work . . .

  The following day the telephone woke them in midmorning. It was José phoning from the downstairs workshop. The Galeries Lafayett boutique buyer wanted to know when Guy could show to them.

  Five weeks later Guy bounced into Judy’s room, jumped on the bed and leaped up and down on it, giving Indian war whoops. “First my problem is failure, now it’s success,” he shouted. “We’re completely sold out of the winter collection and I’ve had to turn down two million francs’ worth of orders—that’s eight thousand dollars, isn’t it? The orders are flooding in! It’s frightening because I haven’t got enough money to finance a bigger turnover and I don’t want to find myself in a liquidity crisis. My father says that’s what generally happens if you expand too fast.”