The Girl Who Dreamed of Paris

by Natalie Meg Evans

She said now to Granny, ‘Any other time I’d be thrilled to wield a flat iron in your company.’ Be polite. She might need more casual work the way things were going. ‘But I’m off to hobnob with the upper crust.’

  Granny gave a cackle. ‘You won’t have seen yourself in the mirror, then?’

  Cora muttered to Donal, ‘That green dress Sheila wore at the St Patrick’s Day party here, has she still got it?’

  Donal shrugged uneasily but Cora led the way to the main house, saying, ‘It’ll be back in her cupboard before she’s finished her shift. She’ll never know.’

  Donal closed the kitchen door behind them. ‘She’ll know. Sheila always knows who ate the last biscuit or who gave the gas money to a bookies’ runner. And, Cora, she’d say you ought to go back to work, like your dad ordered.’

  ‘Donal, if you ever want to do more than push a barrow down dirty streets, you need to stop taking orders. There’s a world out there and you’ve got a brain. You were the best at maths in school by a mile. You’re good-looking, too, when you’re not cocking your head and staring at your boots.’

  ‘Let’s see to that eye of yours.’ Donal ushered her down into a scullery. At weekends, the Flynn household was as noisy as a zoo, but today the younger children were at school and everyone else was working. Donal’s mother had died twelve years ago, in the same year Cora’s mother had left home. Molly Flynn, it was said, had dropped dead from exhaustion, ten babies plus her wash-house work. Whereas Cora’s mother, Florence Masson, had chucked her bloomers over a ship’s mast. Which was a fancy way of saying she’d scarpered with a sailor.

  Inaccurate, as it happened. Florence had left England with a man called Timothy Cartland. An actor, not a mariner. They’d gone to New York to make their fortune on Broadway.

  ‘I’ve just realised,’ Cora said, as Donal dipped a napkin into cold pump water and added a slosh of witch-hazel. ‘It’s twelve years to the day since my mum left. We went to the races, she stalked off after a row and we never saw her again.’

  ‘Put this to your eye and I’ll see if the range is hot. You could use a cup of tea.’

  The pad stung, and she shouted after Donal, ‘I reckon Mum had the right idea. Off to the Derby and vamoose. I’ll do the same one day, jump aboard a ship and go.’ She realised too late that Granny Flynn was standing halfway down the scullery steps.

  ‘Go to sea, is it, Cora? I’ve heard you like the company of sailors.’

  Donal’s face appeared behind the old woman’s shoulder. ‘Gran, don’t. That’s how rumours start.’

  ‘It’s how other things start, too, and I’ll say what I like in my own house.’ Granny came all the way down and pulled the pad from Cora’s eye, sucking a breath through her gums. ‘Swelling like a bantam’s egg. Give it an hour, you’ll be seeing the world soft-boiled. Am I to take it you’re off to the races?’ When Cora confirmed it, she sniffed. ‘Where does the money come from?’

  Cora put a hand under her skirt. She fiddled with her stocking top before bringing her hand out triumphantly and waving notes at Donal, who was blushing and staring at the floor. ‘Five quid, still warm. Count them, Donal.’

  He did. ‘Where’d you get it?’

  ‘I stuck my hand in my dad’s pocket.’

  Granny looked scandalised. ‘Stealing from your own father?’

  ‘He was using me as a punch-bag at the time.’

  Donal burst out, ‘Had he seen, he’d have kicked the head right off you. And me.’

  Cora grinned. ‘He didn’t, though, did he? We can have the day of our lives on a fiver. Give in, Donal.’

  Granny folded her arms, the physical embodiment of the word ‘no’. ‘You’ll hand it all back, Cora Masson. What’s yours is legally your father’s and you owe him your duty.’

  Cora regarded the old woman thoughtfully. Granny liked to take a moral stand, but her sermons were generally strongest on Mondays, the day after she’d made her confession at church to Father O’Brien. This far into the week, the religious starch had usually been steamed out of her. ‘Wrong on both counts. I’m over twenty-one. And if we’re talking about conscience, yours should tell you to give Donal the rest of the day off.’ She shoved a wispy curl behind her ear. She could go alone, but where was the fun in that? ‘Derby Day is St Patrick’s other holiday. There’ll be more Irishmen on the Downs than you’d find in the Emerald Isle.’

  Granny planted her fists. ‘I need Donal here. We’re flat out.’

  ‘You’re always flat out. And he needs a few rays of sunshine – look at his cheeks. What’s one afternoon?’ Cora sensed Granny was weakening. ‘We might back a winner, bring home a fortune. Then you could retire to the primrose pastures of Penge or Catford and never have to look a pair of grubby combinations in the eye again.’

  Granny leaned forward. ‘Think you’ll escape these streets, girl?’

  ‘Why not? My mum did.’

  ‘So they say, but you’re like all the rest of us, stuck like a hob-nail in a crack of the pavement.’ She peered at Cora’s ruined stockings, then at her shoes, with the little bit of heel that had stopped Cora outrunning her father. ‘I’ll say this for Florence Masson, she was always bandbox neat. Dainty, kept her figure. The consequence of being a retired actress, I suppose.’ Granny pronounced ‘actress’ as if it were an indecent, foreign word.

  ‘She wasn’t retired, not in her mind. She was always saying, “when I return to the stage”. But you’re right. The day she left, she looked like a bunch of spring daffodils, for all the sky was raining its eyes out.’

  Granny’s reply got stuck behind her remaining good tooth. Stumping up the scullery steps, she jerked a thumb at Donal. ‘Have your day out and I suppose you’d better take him. He’ll be company for you on the walk home when you’ve lost every penny.’

  *

  As the eldest of the Flynn girls and a steady wage-earner, Sheila had her own bedroom. She was no beauty – people hinted that she’d joined the police force because the only way she could get a man was to arrest one. So it was with little expectation of finding anything worth wearing that Cora tried the wardrobe.

  Locked, but the key was easily found on top of the wardrobe. ‘Lack of imagination, WPC Flynn.’

  Then again, Sheila wouldn’t be expecting anyone as tall as herself to be searching. Prepared to find serge skirts and limp cardigans, Cora gasped at the rainbow hoard. There were lace stoles, real silk evening dresses, some embroidered with metal thread. A gown of magenta velvet took up a quarter of the space.

  The labels were from leading London department stores: Harrods, Debenham & Freebody, Liberty. The emerald-green dress, pushed to one end of the rail, was very much the poor cousin.

  When she slipped it over her head, Cora was instantly enveloped in exotic perfume. Well, well. If she’d been asked to guess Sheila’s favourite scent, she’d have said lily-of-the-valley or carbolic soap, not hot-house flowers and spice.

  The green dress had ruched sleeves wide at the shoulder, drawing attention to a belted waist and slim hips. Cora twirled in front of a dressing-table mirror. Not bad, bit dull. What about one of those bright artificial silks? But Donal was pacing the landing outside, terrified his sister might come home unexpectedly. So Cora helped herself to rayon stockings and a pair of cream crocheted gloves. Meeting her reflection, she searched for the guilt that should have been there. It wasn’t. Sheila Flynn had enough dresses to clothe a chorus line. On a constable’s wages? Cora thought of her own wardrobe: a couple of work outfits, a winter suit and the dress she’d just taken off. Could saintly Sheila be taking back-handers? Or maybe she stole from shops. ‘Cora, get a move on!’ Donal hissed through a crack in the door.

  Hat. She’d lost hers, a cheap straw with artificial cherries, running away from her dad. She worked surrounded by hats, hat-makers and hat-trimmers, yet had never had a decent one of her own. Fact was, she couldn’t afford Pe
ttrew’s prices and they wouldn’t let you buy the rejects. Those got taken off to be pulped.

  Another reason not to feel guilty, Cora told herself as she fetched a pink and grey hatbox off the top of the wardrobe. Ten to one it was Sheila Flynn who’d ratted on her. Sheila often called at Jac Masson’s workshop after nightshifts at Dunton Road Police Station. They’d share a pot of tea in Jac’s shed at the railway end of Shand Street, and Jac would pass on titbits of news. Who was stealing scrap iron around the place? Who’d just acquired a motor-van or a pair of shiny boots he couldn’t rightly afford? As a foreigner, Jac didn’t subscribe to the Londoner’s code that said you’d rather cut out your own tongue than nark to the police. People hinted that Jac and Sheila were sweet on each other, but that couldn’t be right . . . Jac must be thirty years older. No, it was a business deal. Tea and information.

  Sheila doubtless dished out tales about Cora. How else had Jac known about the race-day ballot, and about her ironing money? Feeling quite justified in her theft, Cora lifted the lid off the hatbox and made a noise of disgust. The mound of black feathers inside looked more like a dead crow than a hat. Lifting it out, she found it had a label stitched into its sisal lining. La Passerinette, Paris.

  Her eyes widened. Paris was where she went in her dreams. Her favourite films of all time were set there and sometimes, when life scraped like a rusty wheel, she’d imagine herself as Jeanette MacDonald being fitted for new clothes by Maurice Chevalier and singing ‘Isn’t It Romantic?’ in harmony with him. Cora put on the hat in front of the mirror, tilting it forward until it obscured her injured eye. It had a fishnet veil that dropped down to her top lip. Suddenly, the hat made sense. Not a dead crow, but a fantasy of iridescent feathers. It wasn’t Cora Masson staring back at her, but a stranger whose face was composed of striking planes. She sucked in her cheeks and murmured huskily, ‘She boards a train, blind to other passengers who gasp at her beauty and shake their heads, recognising the sultry—’

  ‘Have you gone nuts?’ Donal demanded from the doorway.

  ‘I’m being Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express.’

  ‘You sound like my sister Doreen after she had her tonsils out. Please, let’s go.’

  Her last act was to grab a handbag off a hook on the door. Olive green, cheap leather, but she needed something to carry her winnings home in.

  *

  As the train pulled out of London Bridge station, she and Donal travelling third-class to save money, Cora studied her borrowed feathers in the window’s reflection. There’d be a price to pay for this. There always was.

  Ticket number 22 had been pulled from the hat in the company canteen last Friday, during the afternoon break. Pettrew & Lofthouse was progressive, allowing staff twenty minutes off during the long second shift. Giant teapots would pour out strong tea, resembling a line of silver swans dipping their beaks to feed. You could choose either a currant bun or a slice of bread-and-butter with your tea. When her winning ticket was pulled out, Cora had pushed back her chair, her bun half eaten, and struck up a Charleston in the middle of the floor. It was a dance her mother had taught her, and it lived inside her feet, ready to burst out at the smallest provocation. Scuffing and kicking, flashing her hands towards the iron-vaulted ceiling, she’d played to her audience. Even the cool regard of Old Pettrew and his fellow directors had failed to quell her.

  ‘Go on, Cora, give us a shimmy!’ her friends had roared, the moment she began to flag, and she would have done, had she not been brought out of her trance by a loud ‘Ahem, Miss Masson?’ It was her section forelady, Miss McCullum, indicating Cora should precede her out of the door.

  In her private office, Miss McCullum had said, ‘Cora, that display was most improper.’

  ‘I know, miss, but I’m celebrating.’

  ‘Quite so, but Pettrew & Lofthouse holds to the values of its founders. Singing quietly while we work is one thing. Impressions of Josephine Baker over the teacups is not what I expect from you.’

  Cora conceded, though she really wanted to say, Then you don’t know me very well, do you?

  There was a brief silence while Miss McCullum consulted some recess of her mind. ‘You have won a place on the Derby Day outing, but are you certain you wish to take an afternoon’s holiday?’

  Cora blinked. What a stupid question.

  ‘We’ve been keeping an eye on you, Miss Lofthouse and I.’

  Miss Lofthouse was sister to the joint-chairman and a director. ‘What sort of eye?’ Cora demanded warily.

  ‘We consider you a candidate for promotion, as demonstrated by the recent discretionary pay increase we awarded you.’

  ‘Oh.’ Cora didn’t understand ‘discretionary’, but last month, four shillings extra had appeared in her pay packet. Kindly meant, no doubt, but not as welcome as the forelady might imagine. News of pay rises always leaked out and favouritism was poison in a close-knit environment. As for promotion, that meant walking up and down the aisles, checking her friends’ work, carrying the can for their mistakes as well as her own. All for a bit of extra money she’d likely never see anyway.

  Miss McCullum continued crisply, ‘I tell you in confidence, Cora, that my position in ladies’ soft felt may soon fall vacant.’ A raised eyebrow invited response, but Cora couldn’t think of one. Everyone knew that foremen and ladies had to have been millinery apprentices, schooled in the arts of blocking and fine finishing. Pettrew & Lofthouse hats adorned the heads of politicians, lords and ladies, even royalty. The directors were gentlemen, arriving for work in chauffeur-driven cars – except for Miss Lucilla Lofthouse, who came on a bicycle. But that, apparently, was because she’d been a suffragette and was still making a point. Supervisors spoke with rounded vowels and correctly applied aitches. And they dressed the part. Take Miss McCullum’s cigar-brown costume and lace collar, the spectacles suspended from a thin gold chain. Whenever she walked into the make-room, where Cora worked, everyone stopped talking.

  ‘I’ve only ever worked on ladies’ felt and woven straw,’ Cora blurted out. ‘And I never could block a hat, not one anybody would want on their head, because I’m cack-handed.’ She waved her left hand. ‘They forced me to be right-handed at school, so now I can’t do anything properly, not even peel a spud. A potato, I mean. And I’ve never touched buckram nor sisal, nor plush. I’m just a trimmer. I couldn’t be forelady.’ I’m not a lady.

  ‘Indeed, you are many years from such a position. I was about to say that Miss Lofthouse and I have considered creating a subordinate post, that of assistant forelady, and we consider you suitable for such a role. You would learn on the job.’

  What had that got to do with her going to the Derby, Cora wondered? The question must have shown because Miss McCullum said, ‘Absenting yourself in pursuit of rowdy pleasure ill befits a future supervisor. You will wish to withdraw from the party, I dare say.’

  Seriously? In talking of future promotion, the forelady was dangling a very thin jam sandwich on the end of a very long fishing rod, whereas the Derby was six days off, and the best fun Cora was likely to have all year. She wouldn’t say it to Miss McCullum, but the work here was stupefyingly boring. Always the same grosgrain ribbon to work with, always in navy, gravy or bottle green. Once in a while, a new line might demand a rosette or even a tiny feather, but Pettrew’s hats were essentially dull. Oh, yes, smart and hard-wearing, but dull. That was the point of them.

  ‘There’s a world out there, Miss McCullum, with wonderful colours in it. I want a bit of time off, so I get to see them.’

  The eyes beneath the level brows turned cool. All Cora knew of the very private Jean McCullum was that she’d followed the Lofthouse family from Scotland when they bought out the old firm of Pettrew’s. Miss McCullum shared the family’s unadorned Methodism, so would never raise her voice or resort to intemperate language, but she could convey a sermon just by looking at you. And the brown dress made Cora feel that
her own red polka-dot and yellow cardigan was shouting something undignified.

  ‘By “time off”, Cora. I presume you mean “freedom”?’

  ‘Nothing wrong with that.’

  ‘No.’ Miss McCullum clicked her tongue. ‘Under firm regulation, freedom is a good thing. And this is my point. Name another respectable trade where a girl such as yourself can rise to a level where she may eventually draw a salary of two hundred pounds a year. As much as a well-paid man. Don’t settle for a life of low-paid manual labour, Cora. Seize your chances.’

  ‘I do seize them.’

  ‘The right chances. I began at the milliner’s bench too. And Miss Lofthouse is one of only a handful of female board directors in the whole of London, and she’s a trained milliner. You could be a forelady by the age of thirty. You’d not run from that?’

  Cora didn’t know. Her thirties felt centuries off. But Derby Day was here now. Her gaze strayed to the window, to a vista of scudding clouds even factory smoke couldn’t dim. Who liked rules, except the people who made them? Everyone had ideas about what she should do with her life and they all led her through the factory gate. She knew Miss McCullum was being kind and didn’t want to seem ungrateful. So why not tell the truth? ‘I fancy my chances in Paris, Miss McCullum.’

  ‘Paris? Goodness, why?’

  ‘Love me Tonight.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘It’s a film. And you have to see Roberta with Irene Dunne. So glamorous. The dresses, the hats . . . I’d be in Heaven in Paris.’

  ‘Films are not real life, Cora.’

  ‘Oh, they are, Miss McCullum. They’re other people’s lives, that’s all.’

  ‘You really want to live somebody else’s life?’

  ‘Every minute of every day.’

  Miss McCullum blinked. ‘I don’t think you can have thought it through, dear. Assuming you arrived in Paris, what would you do?’

  ‘I can sing a bit, and you’ve seen me dance. I could go on the stage, like my mum.’