The Milliner's Secret

by Natalie Meg Evans

  ‘Raw material? You mean, the head she had to work with?’ Henriette Junot yanked off the silk mantle. ‘I find that very hurtful.’

  ‘Madame, I meant considering we gave the young lady poor materials and a pair of left-handed scissors.’

  Left-handed scissors existed? Now she looked, Coralie could see their cutting blade was on the left side. No wonder she’d nearly sliced the hat in half. She let nothing of this escape. ‘I hope you may find a vacancy for me, Madame Junot, now you’ve seen my skills.’

  Henriette pulled the hat off. Without looking at Coralie, she said, ‘All our starters take a two-week course to acclimatise to our house style. After that, they shadow a senior for a month, learning our customers’ likes and dislikes.’

  ‘I’d enjoy that,’ Coralie said.

  ‘We don’t pay our starters to attend the course.’

  ‘I see.’

  Henriette flared, ‘Why should you expect it? You’d be getting the benefit of our teaching and expertise. You should pay us.’

  ‘How much would I get after the first two weeks?’

  ‘For six months, we pay apprentice rate. Four hundred francs per month.’

  That wasn’t enough to live on. But if she didn’t find a job before her belly swelled, she’d have to beg in the street, or throw herself on the mercy of the British Embassy – who would send her back to London. ‘I will accept, Madame, for the chance to work at such a —’ she was poised to utter the word ‘prestigious’, not sure if she had it right, when the proprietress interrupted.

  ‘Come back in the first week of October and I’ll make up my mind. No promises.’

  ‘I can’t start now?’

  The expression that crossed Henriette Junot’s face was growing familiar to Coralie. She’d seen it on the face of the Duet’s desk clerk, on that of the chambermaid and on the visages of a dozen salesgirls. It was contempt.

  ‘Surely you know that all the best establishments close in August? Nobody worth knowing stays in Paris during August. Our customers have ordered their autumn millinery and everyone else can go hang. I’m off on a month’s holiday tonight.’

  ‘The workrooms stay open, though?’

  Henriette breezed over the interruption. ‘We throw a little drinks party on the last Friday of September when guests view the new season’s stock. After that, it’s business as usual. Yes, come back early in October. I may even remember your name.’

  August began with a bank holiday, and Paris gave herself up to tourists and those without second homes or the means to bolt to the seaside. Walking up the Champs-Élysées, her hatboxes bumping against her legs, Coralie fantasised about iced lemonade. The cafés and restaurants on this exclusive avenue were making the most of the holiday trade. Open doors with tongues of red carpet under moustache-shaped awnings made her think of insatiable mouths and mocked the hunger in her belly. Let one door open to her today, before despair set in. For the last four days, she’d eked out her money by eating nothing but bread and drinking from public fountains. Home was currently a hostel dormitory, whose rusted window gave a view of drainpipes. Her mattress smelt fishy and was so thin that she could still feel the imprint of wooden slats on her back. The other occupants had watched her progress to the last bed in the row, staring fixedly at the hatboxes she had brought in with her. Stared at her clothes, at her dusty shoes. She’d slept with those under her pillow.

  Today her aim was to get temporary work as a plongeuse, a pot-washer. Low-grade, but it would guarantee one good meal a day. She’d so far enquired at two places. At the first, the patron had taken in her pink, flounced dress and the Zéphirine rose she’d pinned to her hatband and laughed. The second had asked her to show him her hands. Inspecting Coralie’s long fingers and buffed nails, he’d shaken his head. ‘You wouldn’t last two hours, Mademoiselle.’

  Seeing a couple rise from a table outside Fouquet’s brasserie, Coralie lingered until they’d put down their money, then snatched up their abandoned water glasses, draining them one after the other. Paris heat seemed to increase with every day.

  ‘Pardon, Mademoiselle.’

  A man bumped into her, setting her hatboxes swinging. She hadn’t dared leave them at the hostel, though the value of their contents was greatly reduced as she’d already sold her Javier pieces. Mademoiselle Deveau had been right. A few hundred francs was all she’d got for those beautiful, unworn clothes. Emotions on a hair trigger, she burst out at the man who’d banged into her, ‘Look where you’re going. It’s not like I’m hard to see.’

  ‘As I said, pardon.’ The man touched his greasy hat. Clearly, he committed the cardinal sin of picking it up by the pinch of the crown, rather than the brim. You could see where his fingers clawed repeatedly. No amount of re-blocking and cleaning would ever save it. It was what Pettrew’s repair department would call a ‘brush and boomerang’, meaning, give it a brush and send it back.

  Nauseous suddenly, Coralie pushed on as the outlines of tables and chairs merged with ornamental box bushes and white umbrellas. Feeling like an insect stranded on a gigantic billiard table, she sank down at the first empty table she saw. When a waiter brought water, she took the glass straight out of his hand, then ordered the cheapest thing on the menu. Tomato omelette, dressed lettuce and bread. Lots of bread. She’d intended to cross the river to the student quarter, rather than pay eighth arrondissement prices, but she wouldn’t get that far. When her food came, she tried not to wolf it down, but dining room manners were beyond her. It was only when the waiter came to clear and suggest, ‘Mademoiselle might like coffee,’ that she checked her handbag to ensure she had loose change for a tip. The bag gaped and her pulse sounded the alarm. Five minutes’ desperate digging produced no miracle. Her purse had been stolen.

  She cried. Not noisily, not theatrically but in hunched despair. What did you do when this happened? Offer to come back and pay later? How? She didn’t even have enough for another night in that rotten hostel.

  ‘Dietrich von Elbing,’ she muttered out loud, ‘if I ever see you again, I’ll either kill you or myself in front of you.’

  ‘The former, I hope. Murder has a delicious grandeur. Suicide is always vulgar.’

  She looked up, trying to join the dots of the figure looming in front of her. She made out a white suit, and a travel satchel over one shoulder.

  Thierry-Edgar Clisson placed his Panama on the table. ‘May I join you? I was dawdling on my way to the station. I’m booked on the night train to Nice, then onwards to Morocco. I believe I mentioned my holiday to you when we met the other day – a little sojourn among the souks. I delayed it to oblige Graf von Elbing, but he let me down.’

  He pulled out a chair, fluffed his cravat and removed a flying bug from his cuff. ‘You too, by the sound of it.’

  ‘You know he went without telling me?’

  Clisson regarded Coralie with interest, though a waiter was hovering. ‘I was intending to tiptoe around a gallery before going to the station, but your predicament promises far more diversion. Will you join me for coffee?’

  ‘Iced lemonade, please, and you’ll have to pay. A bastard in a hat stole my purse. What is it with this city?’ She craned her neck forward, ready to grab Clisson if he showed signs of leaving. ‘Why did Dietrich go? You were the last to see him. He must have said something.’

  ‘We-ell, I may have a piece of the jigsaw, though which jigsaw puzzle are we building? That of the romantic hero you are in love with or the angry, embittered man I met in Berlin ten years ago? Or the Dietrich neither of us knows?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  Clisson sighed. ‘At the German pavilion, when you were off powdering your nose, somebody brought a message.’

  ‘Who? What message?’

  ‘A deliciously handsome young German. Claus von Something. The message was delivered in a whisper, but I gathered that it was a summons home.’

  Their drinks arrived, Coralie’s cloudy lemonade clinking with ice cubes, Clisson’s coffee dripping t
hrough a metal filter into a cup. She asked, ‘Did you get to see those Russian icons?’

  ‘Not a sniff. I waited in vain for a telephone call, or, indeed, an apology.’

  Clisson said more but Coralie was back on the roof terrace, staring over a river full of reflections. ‘Monsieur Clisson, why didn’t he tell me he was going?’

  ‘Call me Teddy. One of my American customers gave me the name, and I rather like it. We waited for you – Graf von Elbing was concerned. You’d been unwell and he feared you might have collapsed or got lost. But then another of those glorious, chisel-featured gentlemen came up to emphasise the urgency. The Graf left then, asking me to wait for you.’

  ‘I was there all the time, by the balcony. You only had to look round!’

  Teddy sighed. ‘My dear, if you must play the tempestuous Juliet, forewarn your Romeo. The dear Graf was looking towards the door, not at the balcony.’

  ‘I came back through a different one.’

  ‘Schoolgirl error. I didn’t wait for you either because I was rather put out. I had been snubbed in the matter of dinner. Slighted over the Dürer engravings, left to drink champagne alone and treated as a message service. Who would not storm off?’

  She took a gulp of her drink, almost moaning at the feel of ice cubes and lemon pulp on her tongue. ‘What is this Dürer thing?’

  ‘He was a fifteenth-century German artist. The German artist. He is their da Vinci, in the same league as any of the Italian greats. The engravings are of religious scenes.’

  ‘Most of the stuff I saw at Ottilia’s I wouldn’t want on my wall. There were a few nice bits, flowers mostly, and some paintings of fruit—’

  Clisson cut in, ‘You’ve seen the von Silberstrom collection?’ He might have asked if she’d been present at the discovery of the True Cross.

  ‘I helped pack and catalogue it.’

  Clisson went very still, then spooled his hand, meaning, ‘Continue.’

  ‘Dietrich told me that Ottilia had inherited a fabulous collection from her grandfather, and he’s trying to keep it out of the hands of swindlers. He’s sending it into safe-keeping.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Um . . . Neuendorf?’

  ‘Hohen Neuendorf, in Germany?’ Clisson was almost biting the rim of his coffee cup.

  ‘Is that bad?’

  Clisson fanned himself with his Panama. ‘The von Silberstrom collection was removed from Germany to keep it out of Nazi hands. To move it back, one or two train stops from Berlin, suggests at the very least collusion. At worst – well, one hardly likes to say.’

  ‘Dietrich isn’t a Nazi, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Dear girl, how would you know? He certainly salutes like one. I was in the pavilion when you arrived the other day. I watched him greeting his brethren.’

  ‘He isn’t a Nazi. He hates men who like war, and those who burn books. You’d understand if you’d been as close to him as I have.’

  ‘Exactly how close, though? Pardon me, but the bedchamber is not necessarily the place where people reveal most of themselves. Psychologically, I mean.’

  ‘We didn’t spend all our time in bed. You say you’re his friend but you know nothing about him. For one thing, he’s not keen on champagne, but you kept buying it for him. You don’t know him.’ She flushed, because she, like Clisson, had heard Dietrich cry, ‘Heil Hitler!’ when there had been no reason to do so, except that he was with like-minded people. Finally she conceded, ‘Well, I don’t really know what he believes in.’

  ‘My dear, has it not occurred to you that Graf von Elbing might be just another swindler trying to separate the von Silberstrom collection from its owner?’

  She shook her head. ‘Dietrich cares for Ottilia. Far more than I like. He wouldn’t do anything to harm her.’

  ‘No? He pulled out two days before he was supposed to marry her. Prostrate, poor girl, or so I heard.’ Clisson watched Coralie drain the last drops from her glass. ‘Another one?’

  ‘Better not.’ Her bladder was uncomfortably full.

  ‘What are your plans now that he’s abandoned you in similar vein?’

  ‘A job. Any job.’ An idea pushed itself forward. ‘D’you want an assistant?’

  ‘To assist me in what?’ Clisson signalled for the bill.

  ‘Selling your art. I could be your shop-lady. I’d write lists. Tidy up. Do your accounts.’

  ‘Are you experienced?’

  ‘Not really, but I don’t think I’m going to find millinery work, and the way I feel about milliners right now, I don’t want it.’

  ‘No family to run back to?’ Getting no answer, he said, ‘There are agencies. You might get a chambermaid’s job . . . though lack of references will hamper you.’

  ‘I need a place to stay. I slept with bed-bugs last night and tonight I won’t have even that luxury.’

  Clisson shuddered. ‘What you need is a protector. I don’t see you mopping stairs and sluicing water-closets, but I can imagine you as the paid pet of some man of generous instincts.’

  She’d have slapped him then, except that she needed him in good humour until the bill was paid. ‘Offering to take me to Morocco, are you?’

  That drew a private smile. ‘Morocco is boys only. I’d much rather have taken the dear Graf.’

  ‘Taken Dietrich – oh.’

  ‘Is that provincial distaste on your face?’

  No. If her face had frozen, it was because being rejected, even by Teddy Clisson, hurt. ‘It’s your life and there are two sides to every pancake, so my mother used to say.’

  ‘What an enlightened lady, though, actually, there are many more than two.’ Clisson cocked his head. ‘I could write a note to a charming man with a penchant for Junoesque blondes who would look after you very nicely . . . or I could send you to a house I know.’

  ‘A lodging house?’

  ‘La Nichée, behind Gare Saint-Lazare. Very swish, champagne in the afternoon and never more than ten clients per shift.’

  ‘A brothel?’

  ‘You would earn a thousand francs a night.’

  She didn’t explode, didn’t even rattle her tail feathers. She’d seen the girls clustering outside her hostel, faces stamped with a look she recognised. Tooley Street or Goutte d’Or, city prostitutes always had over-vivid lipstick bleeding into face powder. They all walked with an ambling roll that could be speeded up or slowed down to suit the circumstances. She’d seen pimps in the hostel lobby, sharing out the night’s dividends with the manageress. Who knew, but one of those men would catch her in the end? Only – ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Dietrich spoiled you for other men? Yes, I can understand.’ Clisson nodded. ‘There will be others, though, one way or another.’

  ‘I can’t because I’m pregnant.’

  Clisson dismissed the waiter, who had approached with the bill. ‘Is it Dietrich’s?’

  She hesitated. ‘Yes’ might elicit the result she needed. ‘No.’ She sighed. ‘And I don’t rightly know what I’m going to do.’

  ‘Life is sacred.’ Unclipping a pen from his top pocket, Clisson wrote on a card he pulled from a slim diary. To himself, he repeated, ‘Life is sacred.’

  ‘Until it’s born. Then it’s just one more bastard for the world to spit on.’

  Clisson handed her the card. ‘The address of an institution that may take you in. The nuns will have you sewing and mending while they lecture you on the error of your ways, but when the time comes, they will place your infant with a good family and will only turn you out once you’ve secured respectable employment. Don’t thank me.’

  She hadn’t been about to. ‘Place your infant’ felt like a claw reaching inside her. ‘I’m not going to any bloody convent.’

  Laughter broke from Clisson. ‘That’s brothels and nunneries out of the window. I’m all ears. Tell me what you’re going to do.’

  ‘Well . . . I could stay at yours. Look after your flat while you’re away prowling the souks.’ His eyes were poppin
g like a salmon’s. ‘Do your cleaning?’

  ‘I have a charwoman.’

  ‘Make sure nobody steals your valuables?’ Guessing him to be the sort of man who hated clutter, she added, ‘Organise your pictures for you. You know, dust them and stack them.’

  He made a noise of horror.

  The waiter set down the bill, and the moment’s interruption allowed in a wild idea. Coralie leaned forward. ‘I’d look after your cat.’

  ‘How do you know I have a cat?’

  Because she’d glimpsed his cufflinks the other day. Today’s were plain gold ovals and Clisson looked suitably astonished by her insight. ‘I’d groom him while you’re away.’

  ‘Him? What makes you think Voltaire is a tom? People invariably say “she” when speaking of cats. They always say “he” of dogs. And, perversely, “it” when they mention babies.’

  ‘I just know things sometimes. I’m sensitive, like you.’ If Clisson hadn’t tucked his legs under the table, she’d have looked for tell-tale hairs, and stunned him by telling him that Voltaire was a handsome ginger, or a fine tortoiseshell. So she took a chance: ‘I’ve always liked black cats best.’

  Pleasure burst like a struck match. ‘Voltaire is purest obsidian! How extraordinary!’ Enthusiasm died. ‘I haven’t said yes, and I’m back home in September.’

  ‘And then I’ll move out.’

  ‘How will you eat? You haven’t a franc.’

  ‘You’ll lend me money. After all, Voltaire and I can’t dine in state every night if I’m skint.’

  Teddy Clisson leaned towards her. She smelt coffee on his breath and her stomach turned.

  ‘I never lend. But I’ll give you a month’s salary . . .’

  ‘Go on.’ So long as it had nothing to do with nuns or brothels.

  ‘A month’s salary if you swear on your enlightened mother’s soul that when Dietrich comes back to you – and the atoms in my body say he will – you will use every shred of charm to persuade him to sell me those Dürer engravings.’

  She laughed, momentarily forgetting her misery. ‘I’ll make sure he sells them half-price. Deal?’ She thrust out her hand and Teddy Clisson shook it.