by Leah Fleming
Maddy collapsed on the floor, hiding in the stall among the bedding straw until she heard his engine fade away and out of her life. How cold and cruel she’d become. How had she spoken such horrid things to him? But what had to be done was done.
It had to be done for everyone’s sake, but the pain in her stomach made her double up. She felt her head bursting with horror. She’d sent him packing, done the deed, salvaged the family honour, for what it was worth–and for what?
Maddy sat back, exhausted. Her energy was drained by pain and frustration, but retreat was always a good tactic. The look of disbelief on his face, the hurt in his eyes–this rejection would be with her for ever. He’d looked like a little lost boy for a moment. What had she done to him? How much she must have hurt his pride, but she daren’t risk the alternative.
‘Oh, Monty, we had to do the right thing,’ she whispered to her horse. Being cruel to be kind was no comfort at all.
Tears were falling, great gulps of anguish pouring out, shaking her body until she was too exhausted to move. She fell asleep in the stall and awoke hours later, red-eyed, puffy and itching all over.
It was almost time to face Plum and Gloria but not yet. Time enough to explain Greg’s sudden departure when she’d pulled herself together. Gloria would back her up. Thank God she still had a friend to lean on.
‘I wish you’d tell me what’s going on,’ said Plum as they waved away the last of their guests from the drive. ‘Why did Gregory rush off like that without a word? What was so important for him to return to during his holiday? Have you two quarrelled?’
Maddy carried on waving. ‘Nothing like that. He’s got a problem to see to. Papers to sign or something. We’re fine…I must dash back to Leeds too.’
Something was going on. Plum could almost smell it in the air. Maddy was smiling, her cheeks pinned in a rictus of a grin, convincing no one by this act, and flitting from one room to another, never still for a second. Gloria tiptoed around trying to be extra helpful in the kitchen. When she walked in a room, Maddy and Gloria were deep in conversation, jumping apart when she came close, treating her as if she was invisible. By the end of the weekend she was glad to see the back of all of them.
Greg wrote to thank her for the weekend and for his present. He said his move to Harrogate would mean no time for weekends away until he had licked his team into shape.
Then Maddy telephoned to say she was off to London on an assignment that might lead to something permanent and not to worry if she couldn’t make too many home visits this summer.
‘Darling, that’s fine, but what about Greg? Are you still seeing him?’ Plum asked.
‘Oh, no, it’s over between us. We’ve agreed it’s run its course, Plum. We’re not really compatible and there’s no point in flogging a dead horse, is there?’ There was a wobble in her voice and it wasn’t a crackle on the line. Maddy was getting in a dig about her uncle and aunt here, but this news was still a shock.
‘Do you know anything about this?’ she asked Gloria, who had the annoying habit of hovering in the doorway, listening in to conversations.
‘I told you there was no future there. Maddy’s got better fish to fry and now she’s off to London. Actually, I’m thinking of a change myself, if you don’t mind. Me and Ken aren’t hitting it off either. I expect you’re wondering why I never brought him here. He’s a bit old for me and doesn’t like the countryside much. He was pushing for us to tie the knot but I’m not ready so I’d like to make a clean break and move away too.
I hope you don’t mind but with all the valuable experience you’ve given me, I’ve applied for a domestic post in a boys’ school near Leeds–assistant domestic bursar, would you believe. I was hoping you’d give me a reference.’ Gloria smiled sweetly, her cheeks flushed with freckles.
‘But the season’s only just starting. I shall need you for a little while yet,’ Plum replied, shocked at this sudden desertion.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll not let you down. If I get the post, I don’t think they’ll want me until after the big holidays,’ she replied.
Gloria’s new posting was closer to Harrogate than Leeds, judging by the address, but Plum wrote a glowing reference and suddenly all the young ones were flying the coup. Soon Brooklyn would be silent and empty again on weekdays with no guests. Plum tried not to feel let down when Gloria broke her promise and promptly left at half term and one of Grace Battersby’s girls came to help out, but she wasn’t a patch on Gloria.
What did she expect? Sowerthwaite was never going to hold youngsters for long, especially if they were bright sparks, full of ambition. Plum sighed and got on with the jobs herself.
One afternoon in high summer, a large saloon car drew up, and a plump youngish man in a striped de mob suit jumped out of his seat, demanding to speak to Gloria.
He didn’t seem to know she’d moved away and then tried to wheedle her address from Plum. He said he had some catalogues to show her but he didn’t look Plum straight in the eye when she asked who he was. So this was the famous Ken Silverstone. Plum sensed he was a shifty piece of work. She had the feeling that she’d seen him somewhere before. She never forgot a face. No wonder Gloria hadn’t introduced him earlier. Then she recalled their first guests.
It was the man, who, way back, was one of her very first customers. But when she smiled and recognised him, he didn’t seem too pleased, especially when she fumbled and refused to give him Gloria’s new address, saying she’d mislaid it somewhere.
He was not who she imagined at all from Gloria’s description of her boyfriend: a florid little man who looked like a private eye in a gangster film, all teeth and moustache.
She was glad Gloria had given him the elbow. There was something of Gerald in his arrogant manner that irritated her.
They must do something about the divorce papers and end their shillyshallying once and for all. Who was there now to embarrass if the Belfield name appeared in the decree nisi columns? There must be thousands of couples all over the country getting unhitched from hasty wartime marriages, judging by the lines of names in the Yorkshire Post.
Perhaps Maddy had been right to call things off with Greg before it all got complicated, but they had seemed so right for each other. Where had it gone wrong?
She hoped Maddy was not turning into a snob, thinking Gregory was beneath her?
She no longer understood young people these days–safer to stick to dogs and horses. They never let you down, she smiled, but it was all so unsettling.
Should she give up the catering business and rent the house to a proper family? It seemed such an indulgence to live in such a barn of a place on her own, but it wasn’t hers to sell or rent. By rights it would be Madeleine’s one day, after Plum died.
Perhaps it was time to let out rooms to lodgers, who could help to heat the place and give her some company. She could still run the guest rooms as a side line when it suited her.
Mr Hill was still struggling to contain the jungle in the kitchen garden.
At this rate, what with the WI and the church and guests, plus the garden, she’d be too tired for company in the evenings. The dogs needed her too, and the horses, she sighed, feeling sad and very alone.
How beautiful the garden looked in the setting sun, she smiled. Shadows across the lawn and the tall poplars lining the avenue on sentry duty, the swifts wheeling and swooping in the ink-blue sky and the bats darting around, the scent of the old Yorkshire rose dripping from the high wall in cascades of blooms, the old stones shimmering pink in the dusk.
How could she ever think of leaving here? Yet if Brooklyn didn’t earn its keep it’d have to go, Maddy or not. There wasn’t much left in the kitty for repairs. Sunshine and shadows together, pleasure and pain, black and white and all shades of grey in between: that was how her life felt now.
18
Maddy sat in her dressing gown, staring at her face in the mirror. She looked like a panda with huge made-up eyes–like a ballerina on stage. This look was all th
e rage in the cabines of the London mannequins. Other model girls in full make-up were sitting around waiting for something to happen, chewing gum, smoking with elegant holders, sizing each other up like race horses in stalls ready for the off. She’d been lucky enough to be taken on trial to see if she suited and now she was part of Mr Raoul Henry’s stable of fillies.
It seemed months, not weeks, since her first nervous arrival from Leeds clutching her portfolio of photographs, bedding down with Bella’s dizzy cousin Fay in a pad off Marylebone High Street.
She’d spent days traipsing from warehouse to warehouse, up rickety stairs and over bomb sites around Great Portland Street, in the heart of the fashion industry, hoping to find a job showing off the latest designs to buyers.
Now that clothing coupons were finally abolished there was a dash to feed the frenzy of women looking for a new wardrobe after years of making do with drab and dreary sludge. Rouge Dior was the big colour in Paris and London, and being dark, Maddy suited the striking deep scarlet and always wore a scarf in that shade around her neck to highlight her pale skin.
Maddy had scoured her Vogue magazines eagerly, looking for ways to groom herself to the highest standards. She wore gloves, hat, perfect stockings, knowing she must provide her own accessories, with shoes–pretty pumps and smart court shoes–all lugged around in her holdall. Coming south was a huge gamble, but she couldn’t stay north after what had happened. It was too painful to stay in the town where she’d been so happy only a few months before.
Her hair was getting longer and she practised sweeping it into an elegant chignon anchoring it down with precious kirby-grips and combs. She mustn’t look like someone up from the country when she went for interviews, lugging her heavy portmanteau containing all her batterie de beauté.
Along the busy streets she trundled, around the heart of the rag trade, Great Portland Street, Margaret Street, up and down, until her legs ached in her scuffed shoes and she despaired of ever getting work.
The ballet look was everywhere. The film The Red Shoes had seen to that, but she was no Moira Shearer even if she scraped her hair into a bun and pulled in her waistband, trying to look as if she’d just stepped out of the stage door.
‘You’re more a ballroom girl,’ said one owner, looking her up and down. ‘Débutantes and society weddings, that’s your look. Why don’t you try Hardy Amies in Savile Row? They do glamorous evening wear for the rich and famous.’
She found no joy there, but one of the vendeuses took pity on her and gave her another address. ‘Try round the corner. Go and see Mr Henry’s salon, but don’t say I sent you. I know one of his models has just got married to a lord; she’s now on her honeymoon in the South of France. Try there and good luck!’
With aching feet and heart, Maddy followed her instructions, climbed to the elegant steps to ring the bell. The brass plate by the side of the door said: ‘The House of Raoul Henry’. Eventually the door opened to her.
‘I’ve come to see if there’s a vacancy for a house model,’ she said smiling, hoping they wouldn’t noticed the dust on her shoes, the grubbiness of her white gloves or her tired face. It had been a long day.
A woman in severe black ushered her in, ‘Are you from the agency?’ she snapped in a heavy French accent, ushering Maddy up the stairs quickly. ‘This way. Mr Henry is going out shortly.’
They left the glamour of the marble hall behind and climbed up indeterminable steps towards the attic hubbub of the workrooms with a rainbow of cloth bolts lining the stairs, and the smell of fabric and sweat and perfume all mixed together.
‘Your name?’ said the woman.
‘Madeleine Belfield. I’ve brought my portfolio,’ she said, holding it up, but the woman didn’t even give it a glance.
‘Wait here,’ she ordered, and Maddy waited for what seemed hours, wondering what fate lay in store, praying that the girl from the agency wouldn’t turn up and queer her pitch.
A small man in the doorway stared and eyed her up. ‘Let me see you…stand…walk this way. Your height?’
‘Five foot ten,’ she offered, adding half an inch for good measure, trying to look sophisticated and used to inspection. She smiled.
‘I don’t want smiles, I want haughty,’ he commanded. ‘You’d better strip behind the screen and let me see your shape.’
Maddy did as she was told and strode out in her underslip as she had been taught.
‘Good,’ said the man. ‘Long limbs and a straight back for once, but can you move? Hortense, put her in the gold brocade and call me back when she is respectable.’
He disappeared while the woman in black fussed over her and brought up a ballgown that barely fastened up the back.
‘You’ll have to get rid of some of this,’ she said pinching her hard in the back. ‘There’s too much muscle. Mr Henry likes straight-up-and-down gals. At least you have no bust; he likes to create that within his gown.’
Maddy stood as they fixed her straggling chignon into the nape of her neck and someone produced a pair of enormous earrings for her to clip on.
‘A swan’s neck is desirable in our girls. Yours will do, just about. Take the stairs slowly and make an entrance.’
Maddy lifted the front of the gown. There were yards of brocade to lift. She was trying to look elegant as she drifted into the drawing room with the beautiful chandeliers and Louis XIV chairs, gold paint and elegantly swagged curtains. There was a mirror facing her and she remembered to straighten up like a swan, lift her neck and glide slowly, extending her back until she felt she was seven feet tall.
Remembering all those training sessions in Leeds at Marshfields, she stared ahead as if down a long corridor, trying to feel like a princess…Cinderella at the ball.
There was a prince of sorts waiting, watching her every move. He was not the handsome prince of her dreams but a middle-aged man with a moustache and dyed black hair. ‘Turn, walk this way…name?’ He’d forgotten her already.
‘Madeleine,’ she said, not deigning to break her pose. Haughty she must be.
‘Well, Miss Madeleine, I think I can use you but I want to see no smiles, no attitude. I create the shape, the look. You are nothing. You will either inspire me or not. Where are you from?’
‘Yorkshire, sir.’
‘Where’s that?’ He turned to Hortense who shrugged her shoulders. ‘No matter. You have something, but hair and make-up alone will not do. I want no tanning; keep out of the sun–smoke if you must–and punctuality. You’ve a lot to learn but you are fresh and young. I can mould you…Now I am busy, off you go and wear some decent shoes next time. I want high heels. I like my girls as tall as guardsmen, proud and stiff in the back.’
‘Yes, Mr Henry,’ Maddy croaked, hardly able to believe this stroke of luck. The head of the couturier house had deigned to speak to her himself!
She didn’t even dare to ask about money. Was she paid by the hour? How could she manage on piecework? To have a place here, however humble, a place in a couture house in London, was a wonderful break. If only she could feel some joy in her success.
At night she’d lain awake on her makeshift sofa bed, worrying if she’d done the right thing. Greg had not come back and tried to change her mind. Even Gloria hadn’t bothered to write to her. Could it really be possible that the loss of that baby was her own fault? That made her feel so sick and scared, all she could do was smoke cigarette after cigarette until she lay back and fell into a fitful sleep. Better to leave. Out of sight was out of mind, so they said.
Then she thought of all the shining moments she and Greg had shared, the cuddles, the kisses, the promises of a future together, all the things she’d given up in coming to London. She just had to succeed and make a future here, salvage something from the mess that was her life.
The Henry collection was top secret and only his most trusted workers knew the final style. It was down to fewer than a hundred garments from hundreds of sketches, designed over his dummy or favourite model. Pieces were worked on
separately to keep the secrets safe from prying eyes. Details of buttons, trimmings, lace had to pass his eagle eye. After weeks of thunder and lightning in the fitting rooms, tantrums as gowns were flung across the atelier floor in rage at a dropped stitch, Mr Henry was almost satisfied.
Now the deb season was back in full swing, there was a demand for couture presentation gowns and wedding dresses, cocktail gowns and theatre outfits.
‘No one is born to a ball gown like my English girls,’ he smiled, satisfied when the night of the fashion show at last arrived.
The moment of truth was upon the House of Raoul Henry. Would his designs be snapped up by eager buyers, wanting to reproduce them quickly for their customers, or would the orders be slow to arrive?
The gilt chairs were lined up in the salon, waiting for the invited guests to grace the House with their glittering presence. The season would soon be under way and a row of débutantes and their mothers would be eyeing the ball gowns for their coming-out parties and balls. Who would be there? The duchess…the marchioness and the American film star who thought Mr Henry was a genius, able to disguise her heavy bust and thick waist with the cut of his design?
Then there were the ladies of the press, eyeing up any new collections for their magazines and, of course, the buyers from department stores, who would purchase a sample to be unpicked, or a cotton toile, a mere sketch and pattern outline for a large fee. Nothing must be left to chance: not fittings, rehearsals nor last-minute alterations. No wonder nerves were frayed.
Each model must work like fury, slithering in and out of her gowns at speed to sparkle before the audience, whether she be Barbara Goalen, Jean Dawnay or the lovely Bettina: la crème de la crème. One of Mr Henry’s troupe, Alannah, thought she was above the rest, notorious for getting to the rack of dresses hung high, grabbing the pole, and snatching the most glamorous gown for herself. She would make snide remarks from behind the screen about the others as if they couldn’t hear. ‘Why has the old man picked her for the finale? She’s hardly been here five minutes!’ she sneered, waving her talons in Maddy’s direction. Her mushroom-black hat was already in place while she was sitting in a waspie-waist corselette and stockings.