by Nicole Kelby
Back home at Fogarty’s Pub, every Thursday was sessions night, which meant that everyone who could play the old tunes came together to do so. The place was always packed. In America, the tradition continued; there was barely enough room to stand. The pub was stifling.
Kate took off her coat, but there was no cloakroom to check it in, like there was at The Carlyle. There were no quiet waiters either. There was no quiet, at all. In the center of the pub was a man sitting on a chair with a bodhrán, a drum as round as a plate. Kate had never seen a grown man playing a drum like that before. It was the sort of thing young boys back home carried in parades. It sounded like distant thunder. Around him there was a fiddler, a flautist, and a somber man playing shinbones like ivory castanets. The man with the drum had a voice as deep as church bells. The floors and the windows shook. Even the beers on the bar seemed to hum.
Mr. Brown recognized Kate from the Friday before and poured her a half pint without asking. Some of the musicians were obviously from Cork. Their accents were unmistakable. She took a sip of beer and noticed that Patrick Harris was leaning on the bar farther down. He stood next to a woman that Kate hadn’t seen before. Her platinum-blond hair was swept into an updo. A chain of fake pearls clipped her black cashmere sweater around her neck. She was probably a telephone operator; she looked like a tarted-up alley cat.
Kate had not expected to see Patrick Harris with another woman. The cream. The apricot. The sherry. The cakes. Even that sip of beer. It had all been too much, and Kate felt it rise in her throat when Patrick leaned in to the woman and whispered something. Kate tossed a nickel on the bar for Mr. Brown and was turning to leave when Patrick saw her. He smiled, which confused Kate. He seemed pleased to see her in spite of the other woman and pushed his way through the crowd. The woman at the bar watched him go. She had on thick eyeliner and frosted white lipstick—What a sight, Kate thought.
When Patrick reached Kate, he pulled her close. Chanel’s package was wedged between them.
“This is a stunningly pleasant surprise,” he said, and leaned over the box and kissed Kate on both cheeks. It was as if the other night had never happened. Kate wasn’t sure what kind of welcome she expected, but now she felt foolish. Patrick was wearing cologne that smelled like something her father would wear to church: old-fashioned and lush with sandalwood. It wasn’t something a butcher would wear, Kate thought. The woman at the bar was watching them so intently, as if they were the finals at Croke Park. Down or Offaly?
“I should go,” she said, but Patrick couldn’t quite hear her. The music was too loud. Even the floor was shaking.
He shouted over the din.
“Did you get my peace offering? Am I forgiven, then?”
“What?”
“Slipped it under your door. Let’s go outside. I can’t hear.”
The musicians slid from a ballad into a reel. The crowd erupted into dance. They were boisterous and bumping against Kate and Patrick.
“I have to go,” Kate said, and clutched the Chanel box even tighter.
Patrick stepped back a moment and looked at her closely. “Have you eaten? You’re looking a tad nawful.”
“Not like that prostitute, I suppose?”
Kate didn’t mean to say that out loud, but the woman just wouldn’t stop staring at them.
“That was uncalled for.”
Kate suddenly felt ill. She pushed past Patrick and into the bathroom. He followed her in.
“A little privacy, please,” she said.
“Kate. This is the Gents’.”
Chanel’s package fell onto the floor. Kate tried to pick it up, but the room felt as if it banked hard to the right. Kate dropped her coat and leaned over the sink. Óinseach. What a fool. Patrick Harris rubbed her back gently. “Cough it up, girl. You’ll be fine.” He wetted a paper towel and placed in on the back of her neck. It felt good. “You know, you’re very pretty when you’re jealous.”
She gave him the surly look that he deserved, and he laughed, obviously quite pleased. The water on the back of her neck made her feel a little better. Or maybe it was just the sound of his laughter. “You don’t have to enjoy this so very much,” she said.
“Been a long time since a girl fancied me enough to heave. It’s quite a touching gesture.”
A man opened the door and saw the two of them leaning over the sink.
“Give us a minute?” Patrick said.
The man closed the door quickly. Kate felt even worse.
“Wonderful. I’m sure this little event will be in the church bulletin now.”
“Probably right under the photos of the Knights of Columbus pancake breakfast.”
Kate wasn’t quite in the mood for jokes. She was sweating hard. She took a handful of cold water and drank it. “I’m sorry. Your girl must think I’m quite the sow—”
“She’s not my girl. She’s just a girl. Actually, I was hoping you’d come.”
Kate leaned up against the wall. Patrick picked up her coat from the floor, shook it out, and folded it gently over his arm. He picked up the Chanel box and blew on it just to make her laugh. He stood there smiling at her like Peg’s boy, a good boy, the kind of boy who doesn’t forget his mother’s birthday. He was an old-fashioned boy, always courtly, even in the Gents’.
“Patrick,” she said. The rest of the sentence was more difficult to say; there were so many choices for how it could end: “I don’t want to lose you” or “I don’t want to lose myself” or “I don’t know if I have time to love anyone properly” or “I’m not the sort of person people love.” But the way Kate said his name seemed to tell Patrick everything he needed to know. She could see it in his face—a trace of disappointment, and then that smile.
“We’re fine now, Kate?” he said. “Sorry I overstepped.”
Friends again, she thought. But wasn’t sure that was what she wanted at all.
“Well, then,” he said. “Nice suit. How have you been?”
He was trying to make her smile, but she couldn’t. He put his arm around her. “Let me walk you home. Where’s your hat and gloves?”
The last Kate remembered, they were on the rosewood table in front of the fireplace at The Carlyle, looking as if they belonged. But they didn’t belong, and neither did she. And now her very best hat and her beautiful, soft kidskin gloves were gone. She took the package from Patrick. “I’ll be fine. Go back and have fun.”
Kate gently pushed her way past him, into the crowd and then into the night, alone.
Chapter Eight
“You gotta have style. It helps you get up in the morning. It’s a way of life. Without it you’re nobody.”
—Diana Vreeland
A hot bath was what Kate needed, a good, long soak, but it was little comfort. Steam filled the small, white room: a poor heaven. Windows kept the stars at bay. She couldn’t imagine what Mrs. Brown thought of her going into the Gents’. Patrick’s peace offering made her feel even worse. It had been slid under her door. Inside the large manila envelope there was a poem by Yeats that Patrick had copied out carefully, calligraphy style, on cream parchment paper with deep, black ink. No one had ever done such a lovely thing for Kate before.
Had I had the Heaven’s embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light
Kate hadn’t thought of Yeats since her days at National School, when she’d had to memorize one of his poems. She’d chosen this very one because it was short, although at the time she’d thought it was overly grand. Enwrought was just a fancy word for embroidered, after all. As soon as she’d passed her exams, she’d forgotten it.
I would spred the clothes under your feet.
But I, being poor, have only my dreams:
Now she couldn’t get it out of her head. Outside Kate’s window, the pub crowd was stumbling home. William Butler Yeats as a way of apology. Only Patrick Harris would do such a thing.
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Kate’s heaven was p
oor indeed. There was no fabric embroidered with golden or silver light. Water pipes ran from floor to ceiling, exposed and rusting. The painted cast-iron bathtub was peeling. And yet, there was Yeats and his exquisite vision of the world; there was some comfort in that.
Kate meant to close her eyes for just a moment but slipped into sleep. Then slipped further, nearly under the water. It was a laugh that woke her—slurred and squealing outside her window. Maggie, very late and quite drunk, was coming home with Big Mike in tow. Kate jumped out of the cold tub. She couldn’t stop shaking. Her thin terry-cloth robe smelled of bluing and was stiff. It felt harsh against her skin. She put it on, tied it tightly, and sat on the chipped bathroom floor.
The bare lightbulb, the stained walls, and the rusting pipes that moaned nearly continuously—This is my life, she thought. Life under the clouds. It suddenly did not feel beautiful and broken, but merely broken. That was when Kate decided that she would copy Chanel’s toile even before the suit was made. It wasn’t done, but she didn’t care. If the Ladies found out, she could be fired. If she ruined the toile accidentally, she could be fired. But to make the pink suit for Maggie was an irresistible challenge. This pink suit was real art, after all. Not a copy of a copy. My brush with greatness, she thought.
She didn’t have much time. Kate cleared off her worktable by the fistful, heaping things upon other things. She put on her white cotton gloves, the ones she always used when handling fine fabrics, and rolled up the sleeves of her old bathrobe.
Chanel always worked in a suit, with hat and pearls—the Ladies had told her that, but Kate didn’t have time to care. Chanel’s box had been opened by the Ladies and resealed with just a single strip of cellophane tape. Kate pulled the tape up carefully. The muslin toile was still wrapped in white tissue paper embossed with Chanel’s name and the double-C logo. There was a wax seal. If Kate was very careful, no one would know that she’d opened the box. She gently slid the toile out of its wrapping. The seal remained unbroken.
Good. Fine. Perfect.
It was difficult to believe it was really Chanel’s toile in her hands. At Chez Ninon, they’d never received a line-by-line replica of Chanel’s work before; there was something about it that was profound. It had gravity to it. Kate now knew that her copy of the toile wasn’t even close, was a cheap imitation. Eegit, she thought. She’d felt so unbelievably proud of what a wonderful job she thought she’d done. But now Kate could see that the Wife would have known immediately that Kate’s effort was only an imitation. She was, after all, a very good client of Chanel.
The toile held a faint, musky scent of roses and cigarettes. The muslin was a very particular weight and was the color of old ivory. Chanel probably had her own muslin made especially for the bouclé. It was basted together with golden thread. Enwrought, Kate thought. Holding the Chanel in her hands, she suddenly realized that she was no better than a trained monkey. If a designer always used a particular stitch, then Kate used it. If a designer rolled the collar in a certain way, Kate did that too. At Chez Ninon, you did whatever it took to make a garment seem “real.” But in the end, even if the copy you made looked exactly the same as the original—with the same material and the same perfect stitch—a suit, like this pink suit, was only nearly right. Knockoffs, as they were called. Off, like meat left lying in the sun.
What made a Chanel was Chanel. It was, quite simply, the woman herself. This pink suit was not just a suit: it was Chanel’s vision. It was complicated and yet seemingly simple. It was art: beautiful, and overwhelming.
Kate held the toile to her face for a moment, weighing it and committing the weight to memory. In order to create a proper pattern, she would have to adjust the cut of her own toile accordingly and make allowances for her own fabric, which was rough and cheap. The world is filled with so many things that back-room girls can’t even imagine, she thought. Things like a toile that is soft as cashmere.
Kate dismantled Chanel’s toile, the test garment, so very carefully. Every stitch—and there were hundreds—she snipped with her sharp scissors. When finally done, she ironed the pieces flat. Each part was like a piece of a puzzle. She placed them over a few yards of yellow calico that she’d been saving for a summer dress. It was not the right weight at all, but it was all she had. Kate pinned the pieces down and sharpened her scissors again. She had to be careful. One snag. One stain. One slip. The muslin could be ruined so easily. But Kate cut. And cut.
The heaven’s embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light.
While she worked, Kate could hear everything in the apartments above and below her. The restless, creaking floorboards, the soft vibrato of sleep, the words of lovers scattered like dice—there were no secrets at that hour. Kate could hear the rasp of her own breath and the newspaper boy’s swing and thud. The milkman’s truck was a rattle of glass bottles. Then doors clicked. Dogs barked. Brakes squealed. It was morning.
You tread on my dreams.
Kate basted Chanel’s toile back together as quickly as she could, but she made sure that each stitch removed was replaced exactly. There could be no mistakes. It was bad enough that the gold thread Kate had was not exactly the same; it wasn’t silk, but it was the best she could do. The Ladies would not be pleased if they thought Kate had copied the toile. It wasn’t done, especially with a toile as important as this one. But Kate couldn’t help herself. It was such a beautiful suit, and a Chanel. Kate had to understand it stitch by stitch.
When a taxi stopped outside the building and gave two honks, Kate finally finished. She carefully folded Chanel’s toile and slipped it back into the tissue paper and into the package. And then she fell fast asleep.
Miss Sophie was not angry—she said that repeatedly—but she was surprised.
Kate was late for the first time. Ever. And Mrs. Astor’s girl was furious about the dress. She actually wagged her finger at Miss Sophie when she came round and found that it was unfinished. “It was like a little fat sausage in my face.”
Miss Sophie had missed her breakfast, so the temptation to lunge was apparently quite keen.
Then there was The Carlyle. There had been a delivery that morning—on a Saturday morning, no less. It was addressed to Kate. It was a box marked PERSONAL.
“Kate. What has gotten into you?”
That seemed to be a very popular question.
The Ladies sat in their office at the faux Louis XIV desk, with the box from The Carlyle between them. Mr. Charles sat next to Kate on the silk settee, his perfectly manicured hands folded as if in prayer. He was Kate’s boss, after all. Miss Sophie had made everyone tea, but it had grown cold.
“Man trouble, is it?”
“No.”
“The butcher? Peg Harris’s son?”
“Patrick?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Are you ill?”
Another very good question. Seeing the box from The Carlyle had made her breathless.
“No.”
“This is addressed to you.”
“Yes.”
“Kate, you can tell me if something’s wrong. You really can. Mr. Charles, Miss Nona, and I will always help you.”
Kate believed her. Since the beginning, everyone at Chez Ninon had been so kind. Still, she picked up the box and stood. “The tea was lovely, thank you.”
“You didn’t drink it.”
“Mrs. Astor’s gown won’t sew itself.”
Kate turned to walk back to her desk.
“Kitty?” Mr. Charles said.
She wanted to stop.
“Kitty?”
Kate knew that if she didn’t turn around, Mr. Charles would be cross with her. Maybe even send her home. Kate. Just Kate. Not Kitty.
Box in hand, Kate walked down the long, narrow hallway that separated the Ladies from the back-room girls, past the rows of empty dressing rooms, richly appointed with an eye to serene elegance, and through the staging room, filled with racks of clothes waiting
for delivery or a final fitting, past the sample room, where the green tweed suit she’d borrowed for The Carlyle was back on its hanger for a good airing out, and into the back room, with the rest of the girls. The closer Kate got to the workroom, the louder the hum was. When the carpeting ended and the floor turned to concrete, she felt she was where she belonged. The clattering of dozens of sewing machines, the gossip and laughter, the din of work—it was such a comfort. In the back room, Kate wasn’t a second-class citizen. No one had the touch like she did. If the Ladies and Mr. Charles were angry, they’d get over it soon enough. She might not be Chanel, but they needed her.
Kate placed the box from The Carlyle underneath her workbench; it could wait. Maison Blanche could not. She turned the iron on. Mr. Charles had asked her to press the toile. Maeve was busy with another fitting. The first fitting for the pink suit was in ten minutes. At least, it was scheduled to begin in ten minutes. So much would depend on traffic, and the Holy Dead of St. Patrick’s, of course.
Our Chanel, Kate thought as she ironed the toile into place, seam by seam. The loosely fitted box jacket with matching blouse and A-line skirt were more complicated than she had even imagined. When finished, the front of the jacket would appear to be made from a single piece of fabric—but it was actually a series of rectangles pieced together. Since the bouclé was handmade and easily unraveled, given to shedding with the least provocation, construction would be a daunting task. With Chanel, nothing was ever easy.
Chanelisms, Chaneleries—the fashion magazines all had their name for them; her construction techniques were legendary. The jacket would take more than seventy hours to make. The lining must first be quilted to the fabric before it was cut. Then there were the buttonholes. To be Chanel, they had to be sewn twice. Each one must be embroidered on the bouclé side and then bound on the lining side. Then the two must be basted together. It was insanely difficult to do properly because each side must be sewn with a very fine silk thread. The thread was so fine, and so fragile, that you couldn’t pull it through the eye of a needle unless you dipped it in beeswax for strength.