The Milliner's Secret

by Natalie Meg Evans

  ‘I thought you were slumming it. People of your class usually swank around in the members’ enclosure.’

  ‘Neither Ottilia nor I relish being recognised. Now this you must observe . . . ’

  The shop assistant had placed a black felt disc on the marquise’s head. As Coralie watched, she pinched it into a cone while her other hand described a shape in the mirror for the marquise’s benefit. She then made a crown and a partial brim from the fabric, like a sculptress working with clay. She bent so close to her work that her glasses fell down her nose, and when she produced scissors, Coralie’s eyes widened. They stayed wide as blades trimmed inches off the brim.

  Coralie thought, If I tried that, there’d be blood and bits of ear all over the place. The girl pinned up the shallower side of the brim, then stood back, enabling Coralie to see the marquise’s reflection. The old noblewoman had been restored to dignity. Her wrinkled butter-bean face had been given width at the temple, her beaky nose softened. Even her wig seemed less absurd now it was framed in black. To think that a pair of hands and a few snips could work such a change. The girl was a magician.

  ‘I don’t like it.’ The marquise wrenched it off and threw it away.

  ‘Perhaps Madame la Marquise will do me the honour of saying what she does like?’ The girl’s voice was soft. Weary.

  ‘I’m sick of black!’

  ‘But Madame always wishes for black.’

  ‘Madame always wishes for black,’ the old woman echoed, reminding Coralie of a mynah bird in the window of the barber’s shop on the Old Kent Road. ‘That one!’ A twiggy finger pointed to the window. ‘The one that’s all feathers. The faded pink one.’

  Coralie gasped. ‘But that’s the one I want!’

  Dietrich tutted, amused. ‘No more feathers, surely? Ah, too late, Liebchen.’

  The assistant had lifted it from its stand like a sacrificial victim, sighing, ‘Madame la Marquise has never asked for such a colour before.’

  ‘How do you know? How old are you?’

  ‘Twenty-nine, Madame.’

  ‘Well, I’m eighty. My husband died before you were born. Who says widows have to live and die in black?’

  The assistant placed the pink feathers on the marquise’s head.

  ‘She looks like an old broiler hen,’ Coralie moaned quietly.

  Her misery mixed with Dietrich’s chuckles as the marquise pushed herself upright and commanded, ‘Have the bill sent to my country place and box the hat up. I shall wear it to travel in.’

  Opening the door carrying a La Passerinette hatbox proved difficult, and Dietrich got up to help. As the marquise stumped past, he said, ‘Madame, permit me to say that you will look quite ravishing in pink.’ To Coralie’s amazement, the old woman graciously extended her hand for him to kiss.

  As Dietrich sat down, Coralie hissed, ‘Anyone would think you were auditioning for Prince Charming at the Finsbury Park Empire.’ It was out before she could stop herself and the alteration in Dietrich’s expression chilled her. ‘I didn’t mean to say that. Don’t be angry.’

  ‘Then don’t mock me.’

  ‘No. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I do not understand why you say some of the things you do.’

  ‘I’m jealous.’

  ‘Of an old woman? You can be sure she will be ridiculed by everyone who sees her. Does she need your sneers as well?’

  Tears welled with nowhere to go but down her cheeks. ‘I was being rotten. Don’t hate me, Dietrich.’

  He handed over his handkerchief. Her bag was down by her feet somewhere. ‘Understand, Coralie, I will take a great deal of pain for those I care for but I have no tolerance for mockery.’

  ‘So you do care for me?’

  ‘Very much. Now, I shall go and find Lorienne. Perhaps she’s napping. It is a hot day and hot weather ruffles the mind.’

  She closed her eyes as he left. If anyone knew how men hated being teased, she should. How many times had she had a back-swipe at home for some flippant remark? Donal was the exception, taking her jibes in good humour. Or maybe he had minded – she’d never bothered to ask. Oh, Donal. Her last words to him had been so cruel and she’d probably never see him again. It was Dietrich she must concentrate on. He deserved her respect. He could have turned his back on her when she’d hurled herself at him at Victoria Station. She’d never forget the cocktail of disbelief, pity and . . . what? pleasure? with which he’d greeted her.

  On 3 June, just a few minutes short of eleven o’clock, she’d sprinted into Victoria, eyes everywhere, as she tried to locate the Pullman train. No time to go to the Ladies and tidy herself, though she’d spent much of the previous night walking the streets. From Bermondsey Street, she’d crossed the Thames and had slunk around the wharves until the attentions of lone men warned her that she might not survive the night unmolested. She’d gone back south of the river and found sanctuary in the familiar surroundings of Southwark’s Catholic cathedral. There, she’d slept surprisingly well on a hard pew, waking with just enough time to get to Victoria.

  Grabbing a station porter’s arm, she’d gasped, ‘Boat train?’

  The porter indicated the furthest end of the vast railway terminus. ‘Platform eight. The queue’s moving – you’re cutting it fine.’

  She’d hurtled towards the longest line. Was that tall figure at the barrier Dietrich? Belted summer coat, Homburg hat? It had better be. She forced a last effort from her legs. ‘It’s me, Coralie, wait!’ At least she’d remembered to call herself ‘Coralie’.

  She’d thrown herself into his arms, hardly noticing the male attendant staring down a distinctly put-out nose. Dietrich had held her, panting, at arm’s length.

  ‘Like Mid-day Sun, forty miles an hour. Brownlow, give me your ticket. You’re taking a later train.’

  Dietrich hadn’t rejected her, but he might after her performance just now. She’d seen it in his eyes.

  Expecting him to return with a milliner in the style of Miss McCullum, Coralie was astonished when an elegant woman of about twenty-five preceded him into the salon.

  ‘This is Mademoiselle Royer,’ he told her. ‘Privileged friends call her Lorienne.’

  The woman’s hands were alabaster-white against a black linen dress, nails long and polished. Not really milliner’s hands at all. She wore three strands of black pearls around her left wrist, and Coralie saw an echo of Ottilia, but in the negative. Her most extraordinary feature was her platinum-blonde hair – peroxide, buckets of it – though there was nothing of the tart about her as the hair was twisted into an effortless pleat. Deep brown eyes, high cheekbones and a voluptuous mouth completed a beautiful woman. Knows that pouting gets her further than smiling, Coralie judged. With men, anyway.

  Lorienne Royer placed her hip against Dietrich’s leg, but even as she welcomed Coralie to La Passerinette, her words were aimed at him. ‘We can do something with this. A lofty brow and Saxon colouring. Natural straws will suit Mademoiselle de Lirac perfectly.’

  Coralie butted in, ‘I’d rather have pink.’ The brief desire to appease Dietrich had faded. That was half her problem in life. Her resolutions were not colour-fast. They ran in the wash, but damned if she was going to be topped off with a boring bit of straw. If the marquise could rebel at eighty, she could do it at twenty-two.

  Lorienne shook her head. ‘Those are special-occasion hats. Will Mademoiselle please come to a mirror?’

  At the table previously occupied by the marquise, Coralie was confronted with her own face from three angles. She looked away, and saw the assistant with the thick glasses standing outside on the pavement, staring sadly towards her. Or perhaps just staring as she must be too shortsighted to make anything out. As the girl came back inside, a thought flashed through Coralie’s mind: She hates this place.

  ‘Would Mademoiselle de Lirac please look into the mirror?’ A buffed nail brushed Coralie’s chin. ‘So I can take a long look?’ Without breaking her study, Lorienne asked the assistant, ‘Was the marquise
in a tolerable mood?’

  ‘No. I’m afraid she was in one of her queer tempers.’

  ‘Did she decide upon her new hat?’

  ‘Yes, Mademoiselle Lorienne. The biretta. The coque in wild-rose pink? Only she called it “calamine”.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Calamine.’

  Coralie yelped as a fingernail dug into her jaw. After a hasty apology, Lorienne turned to the girl. ‘You sold the rose pink biretta to the Marquise de Sainte-Vierge? What a triumph. You’ve excelled yourself. No – don’t say anything, just fetch me straw shells for this customer.’

  Coralie flashed a look of sympathy, but the girl’s head stayed low as she edged past, flinching as Lorienne raised an arm – to shake down her bracelets, as it turned out, not to hit her. Coralie risked turning once more to see if Dietrich had witnessed the moment, but he was staring at the window, or through it, turning a silver key in his fingers. The key had a tag tied to it. She frowned. Why did he have a house key on him when he lived in a hotel?

  ‘You are lucky,’ Lorienne said, after studying Coralie’s reflection for a good five minutes. ‘Most shapes will suit you, so long as we stay away from narrow crowns.’

  ‘No witch’s hats, then?’

  Had that stab at humour been a ball, it would have rolled into a corner.

  ‘The crown of a hat should be as wide as, or wider than, your cheekbones. Yours are the broadest part of your face, and you have a small chin. Too much hat overshadows gamine features. Too narrow will make your face seem lozenge-shaped. You understand?’

  ‘Perfectly. The sort of hat I like is—’

  ‘Your complexion is fair, but there is colour to your cheeks, which is why Violaine will bring straw in shades tending towards grey, not yellow. Yes?’

  No, actually. Coralie’s irritation swelled until she realised that the ‘Yes?’ had been fired towards the doorway, at the assistant, who was waiting with a selection of unblocked straw bodies, known as capelines.

  ‘Shells, I said!’ Lorienne then explained for Coralie’s benefit, ‘She presumes we’ll be blocking from scratch, but that’s not possible as you need your new hats quickly. When your clothes arrive from Javier, you will perhaps come back for hats to complement them, blocked to your precise measurements.’

  Coralie hid her surprise. At Pettrew’s, hats had come in three or four standard sizes, with in-betweens created by varying the thickness of the inner band. This shop must serve wealthy women if bespoke blocks were in use. Lorienne turned to address Dietrich. ‘Mademoiselle de Lirac has an air and style different from other ladies you have brought here, Herr von Elbing.’

  The reply came back instantly. ‘Mademoiselle de Lirac is entirely original. Comparing her to others is like comparing a graceful building to a fine painting. It would miss the point of both.’

  Coralie left with three hats: a Panama, a broad-brimmed sisal and a gypsy bonnet that made her look like a blonde Vivien Leigh, all eyes. She adored them all but she wasn’t going to say so. In La Passerinette, she’d felt like piggy-in-the-middle of a lovers’ tiff. Something existed between Lorienne and Dietrich; this idyllic Paris existence had a serpent in it, after all. The Good Book said you should leave serpents in peace, but she didn’t think she could.

  ‘How do you feel?’

  How did she feel? Enveloped, with Dietrich’s legs wound around her. She had a double heartbeat, or perhaps it was his adding to hers. Where had it come from, their ferocious passion? On leaving La Passerinette, they’d lunched in a restaurant close by, and he’d been preoccupied. She’d worried she’d let him down again by having the wrong-shaped head, or asking for pink hats too often. Or perhaps her ‘Prince Charming’ reference rankled still. So, to return to the hotel and be flung on the bed, her clothes almost torn off, had been briefly stupefying. And then the clocks had stopped as she turned into the woman Dietrich seemed to want her to be – a creature of claws, teeth and uninhibited appetite. Sometimes dominant, sometimes yielding, discovering the power of mastery when it came to love. It was nothing to do with strength. It was in the mind, and that made it intoxicating. Best of all, there would be a next time, and a next time.

  So, how did she feel? Nothing poetic offered itself, so she found images. She felt as light as beaten egg white, and weak as spinach dropped in boiling water. ‘I couldn’t walk from here to the window.’

  ‘I will take that as a compliment. You know that between five and seven in the evening half of Paris is in bed together? It is the time set aside for love.’

  ‘Is that why the chambermaids never come tapping at the door?’

  ‘They may well be in bed themselves.’

  ‘I hope the cook isn’t. I’m starving again. That’s why I keep imagining myself as food.’

  Dietrich sank his teeth gently into her shoulder. ‘You are ice-cream and honey, with a skim of salt.’

  ‘That’s nice . . . I was thinking of myself as some kind of omelette. Can we eat early?’

  ‘You may order room service for yourself as I have to go out tonight.’

  ‘Oh, Dietrich, why?’

  ‘Business.’

  ‘Can I come too?’

  A little silence. ‘Stay here and rest. Today you seemed tired.’

  ‘I’ve got things on my mind. Things I have to tell you. See, I’m not exactly what you think I am.’ There, she’d said it.

  Another silence. The same? Colder? Longer? ‘Go on.’

  ‘I’m not really a milliner. I pretended I was, but I’m—’

  ‘Playing at it.’ He placed her hand on his belly so she felt the rise and fall of his breathing. ‘Like Ottilia, who bought La Passerinette because she found herself in Paris, bored, and decided a hat shop would be the thing.’

  ‘Wait, La Passerinette belongs to Ottilia?’

  ‘Entirely. And listen to this: once she decided she would be a concert pianist so the most expensive piano in Berlin was delivered to her house. Three lessons later, she gave up. Why be a milliner, Coralie, when very ordinary girls can do it better?’

  She let out an exasperated breath. Ottilia was like a bad dose of measles, all over her and up her nose. And if she never got a clear run at a confession, she’d never do it. She couldn’t go on letting Dietrich think that she was a rich London girl, playing at a career, free of family ties, when the reality was so different. Sordid, even. ‘Dietrich . . .’ his breathing was growing shallower ‘. . . I want to tell you about . . . ’

  ‘Mm?’

  She’d been going to say, ‘Cora Masson,’ but her courage ran out. She asked instead, ‘What do you know of Lorienne Royer?’

  ‘Too much, certainly, for her good.’

  ‘That girl of hers – Violaine, was that her name? I’m damn sure she gets knocked about.’

  ‘That’s quite an allegation. What makes you say it?’

  ‘I know the signs. There’s a kind of posture you – people adopt after they’ve been clumped a few times. They know where the fist or boot comes from, but not when, so they’re always in fear. I’d love to give the poor girl tips on how to fight back. Grabbing hold of somebody’s eyelids stops a whole bunch of trouble, in my experience.’ She was astonished to hear laughter.

  ‘Take the fight to the enemy? But, Coralie, if Violaine is twenty-nine, she isn’t a girl. She can fight her own battles.’

  ‘I’m not so sure. I don’t like Lorienne. D’you mind me saying?’

  ‘Do I sound as if I do?’

  ‘La Passerinette’s your favourite hat shop, so I supposed you and she must be friends.’

  ‘My love, I go to one tailor in Berlin, to another in Zürich, and always to Henry Poole in London. I don’t necessarily like the gentlemen who measure me up.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t want me to punch them.’

  ‘No – or to hang on to their eyelids.’

  ‘I’d punch Lorienne if I caught her swiping at that poor girl. I hate bullies.’

  Dietrich wound his fingers through hers. ‘L
et me stop being obtuse. I thoroughly dislike Lorienne Royer, though I hardly know her. She turns out lovely hats, and as it is Ottilia’s shop, I take friends there when I can. Happy?’

  ‘I suppose “obtuse” means being a clever-clogs,’ she said crossly. How many ‘friends’ did he take hat-shopping? ‘How can you dislike somebody without knowing them?’

  ‘Do you like Sir Oswald Mosley?’

  The question bewildered her. What had that got to do with Lorienne? ‘Mosley the Fascist? I hate Fascists. They’re ignorant. Once, we ran out of silk ribbon at Pettrew’s because those daft sods burned down the warehouse supplying it because it was owned by Jews. Three weeks we were laid off—’ she ended, on an intake of breath. God help her, she’d just accidentally spat out that she was a factory girl.

  ‘So you don’t like Oswald Mosley, even though you don’t know him, which proves that disliking a stranger is sometimes more than unexamined prejudice.’

  She waited for Dietrich to catch up with her error but he went on, ‘Lorienne Royer was Ottilia’s lady’s maid before the present one. Lorienne wanted to go on to better things and Ottilia handed La Passerinette to her to run. They are supposed to share the profits fifty-fifty. Mademoiselle Royer is efficient, but I don’t consider her particularly talented.’

  ‘No,’ Coralie rushed in. ‘Violaine’s got all the skill. The way she twisted a simple piece of felt into something beautiful . . . What makes her stay?’

  ‘I have no idea. However, I am certain that Ottilia gets nowhere near fifty per cent of the profits. So, I go in occasionally to remind Lorienne that I am around and have a sharp eye. She knows I’m in constant touch with Ottilia.’

  Coralie laid her head on Dietrich’s chest. Every conversation led to another woman. She remembered the key in Dietrich’s hand. Whose door did it open? ‘Who are you meeting tonight?’

  ‘Business connections from Berlin. They’re here to see the Exposition—’

  ‘You promised to take me!’

  ‘And I shall, but tonight it’s just men. We will be speaking German and you would feel left out as we outbid each other in vulgar arrogance, as men invariably do at a business dinner.’