At the museum, she greeted Annabel, her assistant, who exclaimed over Kat’s dress. Once it had been thoroughly inspected, Kat asked expectantly, ‘Are they here yet?’
Annabel nodded, her face shimmering with the kind of excitement Kat could feel emanating from her own fingers, which were itching to don gloves, dive into boxes and travel back in time.
‘I had them brought straight here,’ Annabel said, indicating five long boxes on the workbench in the middle of the room.
‘Five?’ Kat queried. ‘I thought there were only four.’
The objects she was about to unbox had been donated to the Powerhouse by one of their generous benefactors, a woman who’d bought them at the Paris Fashions For All parade at David Jones in Sydney in 1947. They were the first four Christian Dior designs to ever be shown in Australia and the museum was delighted to take possession of them. As was Kat. While she could make herself fall in love with almost anything in the Powerhouse’s costume collection, Dior had always been one of her favourite designers. Getting these pieces ready for display would be the best thing she’d done all year. And she couldn’t help but send the universe a wry smile for endowing her with so much Dior to marvel over right now.
She snapped on her gloves, removed the lid from the first box and parted the tissue paper to reveal a lustrous black ankle-length cocktail gown. She lifted it out and the skirt unfurled, silk blooming gracefully to swathe the hips, then billowing into elaborate folds at the back. Kat and Annabel sighed in unison.
‘Can we get them all out?’ Annabel asked. ‘See them together, rather than just one at a time?’ She was hopping from one foot to the other, reminding Kat of her daughters in an ice-cream shop.
‘Let’s,’ Kat said, feeling the frisson of an unrepeatable and extraordinary moment spangle the air.
She opened the next box. Inside was a silk afternoon dress in navy blue, which mimicked the lines of the renowned Bar Suit. Then a wool suit with a jacket drawn in by a cummerbund to exaggerate the inward curve of the waist. But it was the skirt that stole all of Kat’s breath: it cascaded down to reveal, beneath its black and white diagonal check, its padding and its boning, an astonishing sixteen gores, which created a perfectly parabolic shape.
‘How that must have swirled,’ Annabel said wistfully.
Kat stroked the skirt. ‘Imagine being there in July 1947 at the parade.’
‘It must have been like …’ Annabel cast around for a suitable comparison. ‘Like Paris Fashion Week being held here instead of in France.’
Kat laughed. ‘Maybe something like that. They transformed the entire fourth floor of David Jones into a French salon so the models could parade around the tables, rather than along a raised platform, wearing pieces from Paquin, Balenciaga and Maggy Rouff. And just these four from Christian Dior.’
Annabel closed her eyes and Kat knew she was visualising the spectacle. It might sound underwhelming to modern ears, but to Australians who’d never seen anything like it before, it had been breathtaking.
‘Go on,’ Annabel urged.
‘Well,’ Kat said, closing her own eyes as she recalled everything she knew about the parades, ‘the walls were decorated with oversized images of models wearing the gowns in Paris – you couldn’t escape the fact that this was all about fashion. Beautiful fashion, never before seen or imagined fashion – the skirts were all four or five inches longer than anything sold in Australia for years. David Jones held two shows a day over two weeks, each with eight hundred spectators; all sold out well beforehand. Australians suddenly and unbelievably had clothing directly from France and within the same season. There was nothing separating them from the Parisians.’
Annabel sighed feelingly, then opened her eyes, leaned in closer to the black cocktail dress and indicated the waistline. ‘It’s tiny.’
‘I remember reading that the models’ waists had to be eighteen to twenty inches,’ Kat said.
‘Twenty inches!’ Annabel gasped. ‘They must have starved themselves.’
‘The French had been starved for most of the 1940s. Paris was still on rations in 1947. I’m sure the mannequins would have much preferred food to their twenty-inch waists.’
Kat moved over to the last, unexpected box and opened it. It was like taking the lid off the sky and having it pour down upon you, showering you in a bright, mid-afternoon lapis hue.
‘Wow!’ Annabel said.
Kat didn’t exclaim. She dropped the lid on the floor with a crash that she didn’t hear. Her hands forgot how to work and remained fixed in place, clawing at the empty air where the lid had been.
But inside her whirled every conceivable emotion – shock, disbelief, a strange, bubbling hysteria – so fast she couldn’t respond to any of them. She could only stare into that magnificent, prismatic blue. It was the same blue she’d seen in her grandmother’s desolate cottage in Cornwall, a colour that made mouths gape and eyes round, a colour more hypnotic than any mythical Siren.
Sounds began to filter back into Kat’s ears: Annabel still rhapsodising, mistaking Kat’s confusion for dazzlement. Kat extended her arms forward, into the box, knowing exactly what she would withdraw from within.
A dress with no label. A fantastically wanton full skirt, a little like Dior’s Adelaide ballgown with its incredible seventy metres of tulle skirt, weighing in at a total of forty-five kilograms. A nippedin waist and seams stitched with haute couture precision.
‘Was there a note with the boxes?’ Kat asked, mind jumping from question to question and settling on one that was the most innocuous.
Annabel cast around, then retrieved an envelope. She tore it open and read aloud. ‘I remembered I had another dress. I’ve never worn it – a friend gave it to me. I thought you would like it. I’ve never known who the designer was. Madeline.’
‘She thought we’d like it?’ Annabel repeated. ‘That’s got to be the understatement of the year. We love it!’
Kat shivered. If she hadn’t ever seen the twin dress in Cornwall, she’d be in complete agreement with Annabel.
‘Is it Dior?’ Annabel asked, noticing the absent label. ‘I’ve never seen it before.’
And that was just one of the problems. A Dior gown so sensational would certainly be featured in any book on the fashion house, would have been displayed proudly by any museum, would be almost as well known as the Bar Suit. But, as far as Kat was aware, nobody knew anything of this beautiful blue dress. Why? Did it somehow mean that only two had ever been made? The one in Cornwall and the one in Kat’s gloved hands now? Impossible. How would her grandmother have ever come by such a unique piece?
‘Could you pass me a magnifying glass?’ she managed to say.
Annabel did so and Kat bent her head over a small tag she’d found sewn into the side seam. There appeared to be traces of ink on it, handwritten letters. She held the lens closer but the letters had faded with age and dry-cleaning. She could possibly make out the tail of a ‘g’ and the circularity of an ‘a’ near the middle of what had once been a word. Or perhaps a name.
Kat’s phone buzzed, making her and Annabel jump.
‘The debrief,’ Annabel said.
Kat remembered she was supposed to update everyone on her recent visit to the belly of the V&A Museum and what she’d learned about preventative conservation and new methods of object storage. She returned the blue dress to its box.
All she could be certain of was that Dior mysteries were following her like insistent children. And none gave the impression of being easily solved.
On Saturday late morning, Kat’s car drew up at the cottage that sat on one of the highest points of Pambula Beach, overlooking Haycock Point. Margaux Jourdan stood waiting on the veranda, lacking the straight-backed elegance of twenty years before, but still upright, although she held on to the railing. Her navy suit was immaculate, her face was powdered and her lips were coloured – a softer hue than the red she’d once worn; the always impeccable Margaux acknowledged that an ageing face and deepest red
lipstick were not the best of friends.
Kat wondered if her grandmother arranged herself like this every day or if she only did it for her visitors’ benefit. She knew it was a throwback to a time when women always wore make-up and stockings, and tracksuits were unheard of, but her heart throbbed a little at the thought of her grandmother waking up early, readying herself for this visit.
‘Hug your great-grandma gently,’ Kat said to the girls as they bounded out of the car like puppies who’d been cooped up too long.
They obliged Kat’s request by resting their heads on their great-grandmother’s legs, which was as high as they could reach. Margaux stroked their hair. ‘There’s a present for each of you on your beds,’ she said to them.
Both girls beamed and ran into the house. Their great-grandmother always gave them the most precious and thoughtful gifts: a scrapbook of photos and stories recounting what they’d done together the last time the girls had come to the beach; a quilt made of squares cut from clothes the girls had loved but sadly outgrown; a carved wooden box filled with ribbons and sequins and coloured feathers for them to play with. Discovering a new gift was one of their favourite parts of each visit.
Kat smiled at her grandmother and studied her face. With every day that passed, age gouged markings more deeply into Margaux’s skin. But there was nothing to unduly alarm Kat so she wrapped her arms around her grandmother and kissed both of her cheeks. Margaux shook her head and pretended the show of affection was too much, although Kat saw the curve of her smile beneath the protestations.
‘Anyone would think you hadn’t seen me for two years instead of two weeks,’ Margaux said.
‘Sometimes when I’m away it feels more like two years,’ Kat admitted. ‘I miss the girls so much. I feel as if they grow and change entirely, and that one day they’ll turn around and berate me for the things I didn’t notice because I wasn’t there.’
‘Mothers worry too much these days. You love your children, and they know you love them. Simply being present doesn’t make them feel more loved.’
Kat nodded and let her grandmother go on ahead into the house, knowing that to offer assistance would be the equivalent of implying she was incapacitated. Margaux shuffled along, not moving too badly for someone aged ninety-four.
Inside, the house was austere, almost as if nobody lived there. It was a holiday cottage, meant for a family to summer in, and Kat had never understood why Margaux had insisted upon buying it soon before Kat married Paul, moving so far away from her granddaughter and civilisation. But Margaux had always been detached from everyone except Kat, and the house added another bulwark of distance.
Once her grandmother was settled in a chair, Kat ferried the girls’ belongings from the car into the house. Then she took Lisbet and Daisy to the beach, where she revelled in the simple joy of swimming – ignoring her chattering teeth.
Lisbet climbed onto Kat’s back and took innumerable rides out into the deeper water. Daisy fossicked through the sand. Kat watched them, wanting to stretch out this span of time when there were no conflicts except those easily solved by making sure both girls found an equal number of shells.
Towards late afternoon, Kat took the girls back to the house, showered them off, made pasta and then Margaux volunteered, as she always did, to tell Lisbet and Daisy a story. It was another thing they genuinely loved about their great-grandmother – her ability to weave a story like no other. She usually recounted the tales from Jules Verne’s Extraordinary Voyages, narrating mostly in English but with a smattering of French, and quite possibly an overlay of fabrication as she took the story where she preferred it to go.
Tonight the girls sat on the rug before the fireplace and stared expectantly at the old woman. Margaux’s eyes looked suddenly far away as if she were searching out the right story to tell at that particular moment.
She settled on A Floating City. Lisbet and Daisy listened with not just their ears, but with rounded eyes and open mouths, as Margaux recreated a ship so big that it had streets and buildings upon its decks. As the story flowed on, Kat sat in a chair and let the words and the contentment swaddle her.
After the girls were in bed, Kat prepared to wash her grandmother’s hair, a task that Margaux’s ancient arms and uncertain balance made difficult. Kat readied the jug, the shampoo and conditioner that her grandmother liked, made sure the water was warm, then waited while Margaux draped a towel around her shoulders, leaned back and closed her eyes.
Kat unbound her grandmother’s thick, white hair and poured the first jug of water over it. Neither spoke for a time, Kat content to massage her grandmother’s head, wishing she had time to drive here each weekend and give her grandmother this half-hour of complete repose.
The years fell away from Margaux’s face and Kat could imagine her as a young and beautiful woman whose life was perhaps more extraordinary than Kat had ever credited. Moving to Australia from France, an unmarried woman with a young child, must surely have been, back in 1948, a stupendous thing.
‘Do you miss France?’ Kat heard herself ask, surprising both herself and her grandmother and she knew her subconscious was trying to find a way to begin a conversation about the mystery of the astonishing wardrobes in Cornwall.
Her grandmother’s answer was quick and emphatic. ‘No. The war ruined it for me.’
Kat towelled off Margaux’s hair, which, as it dried, felt like the softest cashmere scarf. She combed the strands gently, knowing her grandmother enjoyed the sensation of the brush on her scalp. They had both lapsed into French; they often did when it was just the two of them. The language suited Margaux’s voice, which had never acquired an Australian pitch but had instead blurred into an unidentifiably cosmopolitan accent.
‘I went to the house in Porthleven,’ Kat said.
Her grandmother nodded.
‘I didn’t realise there would be so much furniture there,’ Kat said, delicately advancing on the subject. ‘Household items. Jewellery even. Whose is it? Don’t you worry about thieves?’
‘It came with the house,’ was her grandmother’s uninformative answer. ‘And thieves want flatscreen televisions, not ancient vanity sets.’
‘When did you buy it? And why do you keep it?’
Margaux’s eyes opened and she studied her granddaughter’s face. ‘A whim. Surely I’m allowed one at my age.’
A whim. Were the dresses a whim too?
‘I also found some wardrobes full of Christian Dior gowns. Haute couture, not off the rack. I don’t suppose you know anything about that?’ Kat asked softly.
Her grandmother’s eyes took on that same lost or far-reaching look they’d worn when she’d thought about what story to tell her great-granddaughters. ‘I wanted you to have them,’ she said, voice very thin. ‘Dior’s gowns once helped me when I was starting over. I thought they might help you.’ Her tone changed, becoming sharper and more purposeful. ‘They deserve to be worn – which means you need to go out more. On dates. Life isn’t over for you, Katarina. I hope you brought some of them back with you.’
Kat felt her mouth drop open. Margaux seemed to be saying that the dresses had been hers, and were now Kat’s. ‘Did I bring any of the dresses back with me?’ she repeated, rubbing her finger over the two fine lines she knew were creasing the space between her brows. ‘Where did you get them?’
Margaux’s eyes closed and her face turned the colour of bone.
Kat dropped to her knees before her. ‘Put your head down. No, breathe. I’ll call the doctor.’
‘Don’t,’ Margaux rasped, opening her eyes. But no blood recoloured her cheeks; they remained that ghastly, ghostly white.
‘Are you all right?’ Kat asked urgently. ‘Come and lie down.’
Margaux shook her head.
The bathroom wheezed with the sound of Kat’s grandmother’s shallow breathing.
Then Margaux spoke. ‘I thought I could tell you. But I … I can’t. I’m sorry.’
Kat was horrified to see that her grandmo
ther was weeping: silent, aching tears. ‘Don’t be sorry,’ she cried, wrapping her arms around Margaux, panic of a kind she’d never felt before making her hold on tight – like a child herself – to the only mother she’d ever known.
What she’d seen on Margaux’s face after the bloodlessness passed was a terror so stark Kat never wanted to see it again. It was as if her grandmother had witnessed death itself, as if the dark angel had reached for Margaux with outstretched arms.
Kat didn’t ever want to unravel herself from her grandmother. But that was, of course, impossible. Instead she would wear Margaux’s dresses and not ask another thing about them.
At last Margaux extracted herself and kissed Kat’s cheek. ‘I’m being a fool,’ she said. ‘The dresses are from my modelling days. A perk of the job, I suppose you could say.’ Then she dragged herself up from her chair and shuffled along the hallway.
Kat stayed where she was, kneeling on the floor. She didn’t know what was worse: her grandmother’s initial distress or the lie that had followed.
Besides perhaps the first ten dresses, the vast majority of the sixty-five gowns were not from the period when Margaux had modelled. And local department stores in Australia would never have had such dresses to give away to their models. All Margaux had proven was that Kat’s initial conjecture – that the dresses couldn’t have come from the second-hand couture business – was right. That would have been the easier story to massage into believability, yet Margaux hadn’t done so. And nor had Margaux given any satisfactory answer about the cottage.
It was Kat’s turn to shut her eyes. Why would Margaux lie like that? Kat recollected the look on her grandmother’s face and knew she would never ask.
Ten
The following week at work, Kat had just pulled the mystery blue gown out of its box so she could stare at it some more when her phone rang.
‘Katarina Jourdan speaking.’
‘Hello.’ A voice with an English accent rolled charmingly through the phone. ‘I’m Elliott Beaufort. You’re probably busy so I’ll keep it brief. I’m a historian and author, and I’m currently researching a book about a family of women who did some remarkable things during both world wars.’
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