NATASHA LESTER worked as a marketing executive before returning to university to study creative writing. She completed a Master of Creative Arts as well as her first novel, What Is Left Over, After, which won the T.A.G. Hungerford Award for Fiction. Her second novel, If I Should Lose You, was published in 2012, followed by A Kiss from Mr Fitzgerald in 2016, Her Mother’s Secret in 2017 and the Top 10 Australian and international best sellers The Paris Seamstress in 2018 and The French Photographer in 2019.
In her spare time Natasha loves to teach writing, is a sought after public speaker and can often be found playing dress-ups with her three children. She lives in Perth.
For all the latest news from Natasha visit:
natashalester.com.au
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Contents
About the Author
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Part One: Skye
One: Cornwall, August 1928
Two
Part Two: Kat
Three: Cornwall, June 2012
Part Three: Skye
Four: Paris, September 1939
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Part Four: Kat
Nine: Sydney, 2012
Ten
Eleven
Part Five: Skye
Twelve: England, November 1942
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Part Six: Kat
Eighteen: London, July 2012
Nineteen
Twenty
Part Seven: Skye
Twenty-One: England, June 1943
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Part Eight: Kat
Twenty-Four: Cornwall, 2012
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Part Nine: Margaux
Twenty-Seven: Granville, France, July 1945
Part Ten: Skye
Twenty-Eight: England, March 1944
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Part Eleven: Kat
Thirty-One: London, 2012
Part Twelve: Skye
Thirty-Two: England, April 1944
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Part Thirteen: Nicholas
Thirty-Five: France, May 1944
Part Fourteen: Kat
Thirty-Six: Cornwall, 2012
Part Fifteen: Margaux
Thirty-Seven: Granville, 1946
Part Sixteen: Kat
Thirty-Eight: Cornwall, 2012
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Author’s Note
Acknowledgements
An Extract of The French Photographer
Also by Natasha Lester
Copyright
To Audrey, the dark-haired heroine in my life.
You are boundless. I hope you always believe this.
Prologue
PARIS, 12 FEBRUARY 1947
In a grand townhouse at 30 Avenue Montaigne, Margaux Jourdan is helped into an ivory silk shantung jacket with a padded and flared peplum, and a pleated black wool skirt. The skirt falls, shockingly, all the way to mid-calf – such an excess of fabric for a post-ration world. A strand of pearls is placed around her neck, and she is finished off with a wide-brimmed hat and black gloves. Even after the desecration of war, a woman’s hands are still too startling to be left unclothed.
Madame Raymonde spins Margaux around as if she were a ballerina in a music box and allows her chin to fall just once into a satisfied nod. She indicates with her arm that Margaux should step through the doorway of the cabine and into the salon.
Thus, the legendary Dior Bar Suit is conveyed via Margaux’s body to an unsuspecting world.
In the grand salon, a crowd of elegant Parisians – Jean Cocteau, Michel de Brunhoff from Vogue and Marie-Louise Bousquet from Harper’s Bazaar – sit shoulder to shoulder with barely any room between them for breath. Some people are standing against the wall, and others line the staircase – such has been the demand for tickets to this show, which canny profiteers have sold to the clamorous for more than it costs to buy black-market butter.
The salon wears its muted palette of pearl grey and white as subtly as a concealed zipper. The Louis XVI medallion chairs, the gilt picture frames topped with fontanges bows and the Belle Epoque chandeliers all seem to declare that time has stopped and it would be best to pay attention. Unfurled fans rustle like premature applause, and the air is scented with perfume and Gauloises and anticipation. Everywhere, skins are atingle.
As Margaux glides along she hears gasps, sees heads lean forward and hands twitch as if they wish to skim the en huit curves of her suit. She completes her circuit and passes through the grey satin curtain, behind which stands Christian Dior – the man who stitches seams with magic, whose gowns transcend fashion. Eighty years hence, should one be asked to name a couturier, his will be the first name spoken. But that is all still to come.
Christian gifts Margaux a smile. The show continues. Nobody needs to declare that it is spectacular; it is a fact known without words.
The finale is, naturally, a wedding gown. Margaux stands perfectly still while she is dressed. Then she steps back into the salon and the collective intake of breath is so violent it almost depletes the room of oxygen. For Margaux appears to be wearing a full-blown white rose plucked at its moment of true perfection. Or at least that is the illusion she purveys in her voluminous skirt: a lavishness – no, a prodigality – of silk billowing like optimism around her before funnelling in at the waist to a span of just twenty inches – a requirement for any Christian Dior model.
Of course, none of the spectators know that Margaux only possesses such a waist because of years of deprivation; that it is a legacy of a time when such a gown would have been as shocking as the sun appearing in the midnight sky. But it does no one any good to recall what can never be undone, so Margaux concentrates on her feet, walking slowly enough for the crowd to apprehend that what they are seeing is extraordinary, but also fast enough that she is gone too soon, leaving yearning cast behind her like a shadow.
There is hardly enough space amongst all the people for the gown’s stupendous skirt and it brushes against one of the tall, white columned ashtrays. Nobody except Margaux notices the ash spill to the floor. Nobody notices either that it is minus fourteen degrees outside and that Paris has been shivering through a winter of postwar electricity rations and coal shortages. Christian’s dress has the power of erasure.
As she exits the salon, the applause is so thunderous it could rouse the dead. But Margaux knows nothing will ever rouse her dead.
The mannequins return to the salon and stand in a line. Christian – or Tian as he is known to Margaux and a few select others – bows and accepts his congratulations.
He singles out Margaux, still wearing the wedding dress despite the fact that she will never be a bride, raises her hand to his lips and kisses it. ‘Magnifique,’ he says.
Christian’s sister, Catherine Dior, kisses Margaux’s cheeks. ‘You were magnifique, chérie.’
Carmel Snow from American Harper’s Bazaar steps forward. Her fingertips whisper rapturously against the silk of Margaux’s skirt. ‘Dear Christian,’ she says, ‘your dresses have such a new look.’
And Margaux knows, as if she were suddenly able to divine the future, that this is how Christian’s collection will be spoken of from now on. A New Look, for a new world. A world in which death and loss and heartbreak will hereafter become muted emotions rat
her than a rawness tearing always at one’s skin. They will not be a way of life, as they have been throughout these last years of war. The New Look will be the perfect amnesiac for a generation that has survived the war and does not wish to recall anything of it.
Margaux is the only one who remembers. Skye and Liberty and Nicholas and O’Farrell are all gone now, in different ways. She will never say their names again, not to anyone. Nobody wishes to hear the names of the victims. Just as nobody wishes to understand that Margaux’s waist is tiny because she is a victim too.
Catherine slips her arm into Margaux’s. ‘Here, chérie. Let us raise a glass of champagne to …’ She hesitates. ‘The future?’
That word will always have a question mark after it. So Margaux does not drink to the future. Instead she lifts her glass to all of them – herself, Catherine, Skye, Liberty, Nicholas and O’Farrell. As she does so, she feels the spirits crowding around her, pleading with her, as they do every night in her dreams. But just as there was nothing she could do the last time she saw each of them, there is nothing she can do for them now. Except drink champagne, smile and step forward with her New Look into this terrible new world that she cannot comprehend.
PART ONE
Skye
… in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.
–Madeline Miller, Circe
One
CORNWALL, AUGUST 1928
‘I can see your underwear.’
Skye Penrose knew that the ordinary response of a ten-year-old girl to such a statement would be to stop cartwheeling along Porthleven pier like a gambolling star and restore her skirt to its proper position. Instead she paused to change direction, then turned two perfect cartwheels towards the boy who’d spoken. In the rush of her upward trajectory, she lunged at him and gave his trousers a swift tug, dislodging them from his waist and popping at least one button in the process.
‘Now I can see yours,’ she said, giggling. She’d meant to run away immediately to escape his likely anger, but his face was so astonished – eyes wide, his mouth a well-rounded ‘O’, just the right size for throwing in a toffee if only she had one – that she grinned and said, ‘I’m Skye.’
He reinstated his trousers, stuttering, ‘I’m Nicholas Crawford. Pleased to meet you.’ He spoke oddly: his words sharp-angled rather than round, emphasis falling on different vowels so that the familiar became strange.
‘I thought it only fair, if we’re going to be friends, that neither of us should know more about the other,’ Skye said. ‘So I had to see your underwear too.’
Nicholas Crawford nodded as if that made perfect sense. He was taller than Skye, with near-black hair and striking blue-grey eyes, like the sea on an uncertain day. His clothes were clean and pressed, not grubby with play like Skye’s.
‘Friends,’ he repeated.
‘As long as you can keep my secrets.’
Curiosity shimmered aquamarine in his eyes. ‘What sort of secrets are they?’
‘The best ones. Come on, I’ll show you.’
She grabbed his hand and took off. He didn’t hesitate, didn’t protest that he ought to tell his mother where he was going, didn’t say he couldn’t be friends with someone who’d robbed his trousers of a button or two. He ran with her, keeping pace, even though, given his accent and demeanour, he must be from somewhere far from Cornwall – a place where, most likely, one didn’t often run free. Together, they turned right in front of the town hall and raced along the sand until an apparently impenetrable rock wall blocked the way.
‘Through here,’ Skye said, showing him a gap just big enough to crawl through.
On the other side of the wall, his mouth opened again, and she knew he was wonderstruck, just as she’d hoped he would be.
‘You’re the first person I’ve brought here,’ she said.
‘Why me?’
She considered how to say it: I’ve never met anyone so wide-eyed. It wouldn’t sound right. ‘I thought you’d like it,’ she said.
They both turned full circle to take in the white-laced sea hurling itself against the cliff face to the left of them, the curve of the bay where the waves simmered in the dropped wind, the cave behind them, which was craggy and dark and promised feats of great derring-do.
‘It’s all mine,’ Skye said proudly. ‘See that house up there.’ She pointed to the clifftop, where a weather-thrashed cottage sank its toes into the ground, holding on, just. ‘That’s where I live with my mother. And my sister. The only way you can get to this cove is through the gap in the rock wall or the path that leads down from the house. So it’s mine. And now yours too.’
Nicholas furrowed his brow. His hand moved to his pocket and he pulled out a watch. ‘If you’re going to share your cove with me, then I’ll share this with you.’ He handed it to her. ‘It was my father’s. And his father’s too.’
Skye ran a finger over the engraved gold of the case before opening the cover. Inside, she found dignified Roman numerals and a strangely misshapen half-moon.
‘Where’s your father?’ she asked.
‘Up there.’ Nicholas pointed to the sky.
‘You don’t need to share this.’ She passed the pocket watch back to him, understanding it was the most important thing he possessed.
‘I want to. You can have it one day every week.’
His tone was firm. This well-dressed boy who didn’t seem to have ever set foot on a Cornish beach had strength of will. And he could run. And he liked her cove.
‘That means you’ll have to come back tomorrow to get it,’ she said.
He nodded.
‘Do you want to see inside the cave?’
He nodded again.
Skye stood on the clifftop, Nicholas’s pocket watch tucked safely inside a handkerchief, and watched her new friend squeeze through the gap in the rocks and trudge along the sand below. Just before he turned towards town, he looked back and waved. Skye performed a rapid series of cartwheels that she thought might make him smile. Then she went in to dinner.
Her sister, Liberty, who was younger than Skye by one year, pounced on her the moment she entered the cottage.
‘Where were you?’ Liberty whined.
‘At the beach,’ Skye said.
Liberty screwed up her face. ‘You’re always at the beach.’
‘Then you could easily have found me.’
‘I’m hungry.’
Before she could remind her sister that the kitchen, not Skye, was the source of food, she saw, over Liberty’s shoulder, the Snakes and Ladders board set out on the table. Gold and green snakes wriggled towards illustrations of naughty children and Skye realised, her stomach twisting like the snakes, that she should be the subject of one of those drawings. She’d promised Liberty a game of Snakes and Ladders that afternoon. But she’d forgotten about it in the thrill of finding someone who loved the cove as much as she did – unlike her sister.
Liberty followed Skye’s eyes to the game. She flounced over and thrust it off the table. The dice clattered to the floor, momentarily obscuring the gentle hum of voices from the room next door where their mother was busy with one of her clients.
‘I’ll make you a cup of tea,’ Skye said. ‘And then we can play.’
Liberty didn’t reply and Skye thought she might march upstairs and sulk in her room as she was wont to do. But then she nodded and peace was momentarily restored. They sipped their tea as they played and Skye said nothing when Liberty, in order to ascend a ladder, miscounted the number of squares she was supposed to move. She said nothing either when Liberty protested that Skye had miscounted and needed to slide down a snake. Liberty won.
The following morning, Skye was up at dawn and in her swimsuit, waiting impatiently for Nicholas, his pocket watch held tight and safe in her hand. She sat in the window seat in the parlour, staring at her beloved ocean, willing him to ignore propriety and come now, although it
was too early even for breakfast. When Liberty appeared downstairs an hour later, she scowled at Skye’s swimsuit and let fly with a spiteful foot, which Skye – who’d had plenty of practice – dodged. Then there was a knock at the door and Skye beamed. He too must prefer her cove to breakfast.
‘See who it is, darling,’ her mother called from the kitchen where she was standing at the chipped blue Royal Windsor stove, stirring a pot of porridge. ‘I’m not expecting anyone until ten.’
Skye was already sprinting down the hallway and throwing open the door. Nicholas stood there, alongside a woman with a possessive hand clamped on his shoulder. Skye’s smile faltered.
‘Is this the girl?’ the woman asked.
‘This is Skye,’ Nicholas replied.
‘I would like to see your mother,’ the woman told Skye.
‘Come in,’ Skye said politely. As she held the door wide, the cottage’s coloured glass oil lamps – they were too far out of town for electricity – flickered with the ill wind the woman had brought with her.
In the kitchen, which smelled as always of woodsmoke, French cigarettes and coffee, Vanessa Penrose turned to greet the visitors. She was resplendent in her long and gloriously ruffled black silk embroidered nightgown, which had draped sleeves and a low neckline. The woman beside Nicholas stared as if Skye’s mother were cartwheeling through the house with her knickers showing.
‘Have you come for breakfast?’ Vanessa said, which made the woman wrench her eyes away from the nightgown. ‘You must be Nicholas,’ Vanessa continued. ‘Skye told me all about you. I’m Vanessa, or Mrs Penrose, whichever you prefer. Do you like porridge?’
Nicholas smiled at last. ‘I do.’
‘He does not,’ said the woman.
‘I do and I’m hungry,’ Nicholas said with the same quiet determination Skye had heard in his voice when he’d said at the door, This is Skye.
‘Skye has hollow legs,’ Vanessa said to Nicholas, ‘which means she’s unable to stand up until she’s eaten. You’ll simply have to join us.’
Skye giggled and Nicholas sat down.
‘I am Finella Crawford and your daughter owes my nephew an apology.’ Nicholas’s aunt had a voice like a fish hook: sharp and designed to hurt. It was accented like Nicholas’s, but from her mouth it sounded abrasive rather than interesting.
The Paris Secret : A Novel (2020) Page 1