Life with Henry was going to be far more comfortable, perhaps, but far less emancipated – whatever promises he made about not cramping her style. Men always imagined they were undemanding and easy-going; but it soon turned out that the going was only easy if it went their way.
She’d done so much. She’d grown and developed as a person. Would that process continue as Henry’s wife? Or would she end up, somewhere down the line, wishing she’d stayed single? Perhaps regretting her decision to give up the independence she’d worked so hard to achieve?
She’d expected to feel a lot happier on the eve of her second wedding. Perhaps she would wake tomorrow full of joy?
In the event, she slept little. Dior arrived the next morning at nine to help her dress and then take her to the cathedral. He was wearing his white work coat for the important business of dressing her, his English suit in a carefully zipped bag. For some reason, that sent Copper into fits of nervous giggles.
He fussed over her with deadly seriousness. There were never any jokes or gossip when he was working. The slightest wriggle or sigh would provoke a stern rebuke. Even Pearl was not permitted to assist, but had to sit silently in a corner.
‘You look a dream,’ he sighed at last, stepping back to admire his handiwork. ‘I always said you had the perfect figure.’
‘You always said my bust was too small.’
‘Tastes change,’ he replied with equanimity. ‘You have big shadows under your eyes, my dear. But the effect is not displeasing.’
‘I’ll do something about that.’ She did her make-up and inspected herself in the mirror. Dior was right – she did look a dream. The dusty-blue silk set off her hair and complexion extremely well, and of course the design itself was irreproachable. He fitted the little hat on her head carefully and adjusted the scrap of lace veil over her eyes. The bouquet he’d picked out was, predictably, huge and baroque. She clutched it like a shield. ‘It’s going to be hard to give you away,’ he said, his hazel eyes moist. ‘But it’s time to go, my dear.’
He’d hired a Daimler-Benz, said to be formerly the property of General Dietrich von Choltitz, the last Nazi commandant of Paris, to take her to the cathedral. Pearl was to follow in a taxi. Copper felt numb as she got into the huge, gleaming black car that still had a German eagle screwed on to the dashboard. ‘This thing is like a hearse,’ she said.
‘I went to Venice before the war in the company of a young man I was very much in love with. We took a gondola ride down the Grand Canal. They told us that the same artisans who made coffins also made the gondolas. That was why they were so glossy and black.’
‘Was it an omen?’ she asked.
‘Unfortunately, yes. I adored him, but he swiftly got bored with me, and left me in my coffin to go and chase a Venetian faun.’
‘Poor Tian!’
‘How do you feel, petite?’
She fiddled with the heavy emerald necklace at her throat. ‘Very anxious.’
‘They’ll guide you through the ceremony.’
‘I’m not nervous about the ceremony. I’m nervous about what comes after.’
‘You mean – the nuit de noces?’ he enquired delicately.
‘No, silly. I mean the next fifty years.’
‘Ah.’ Wisely, he refrained from comment. Indeed, her heart was pounding in her chest and she was struggling to keep her breathing slow and steady. She stared out at the grey streets of Paris, passing her by irrevocably. It was a somewhat rainy morning and the cobbles were shining wet, the girls on their bicycles huddled under capes that billowed behind them as they sped. How free they looked, pedalling along with their trim, stockinged legs.
She recalled Hemingway’s valediction: Your roaming days are over, little gypsy.
The part of Paris around the cathedral was something of a Little Moscow, with many Russian restaurants and streets named after Russian subjects. They approached the cathedral up the rue Pierre-le-Grand. It came into sight at the end of the street, its domes like golden bubbles bobbing up against a grey sky. Dior instructed the chauffeur to drive to the front of the church. He proceeded with slow majesty.
‘It’s wet,’ Dior reminded her. ‘Gather up your hem, my dear, or it will trail in the mud.’
The Daimler stopped at the portico of the church. A crowd was waiting outside to see the bride. Among them she made out Bébé Bérard, released from the Pitié-Salpêtrière, but still weak, leaning on the shoulder of Cocteau. Bébé’s beard was wild and his face was a ghastly fish-belly white. When he saw her, he called out her name, pretending a gaiety he clearly did not feel. His shriek of welcome sounded, to Copper, too close to the screams of pain he’d uttered when they’d left him in the hospital.
The outré outfits of the bohemians mingled oddly with the austere fustiness of the Russian émigrés. The great church doors were thrown open and she could see into the sombre, crowded interior, right through to the altar where their wedding rings were lying, and where sacramental objects gleamed dully in the light of candles. She could hear the droning of the male choir. A commotion of panic rose in her breast.
She gathered her gown and her bouquet as Dior got out and went round the car to open her door. A blast of cold, damp air rushed into the warm, leather interior. It carried with it a whiff of frankincense and myrrh from the incense burners. It was the scent of the myrrh that did it. Something clicked inside her. She felt it, like a broken bone setting itself.
‘I can’t do this,’ she said, looking Dior in the eyes.
Dior blinked at her, his kid-gloved hand extended. ‘What?’
‘I can’t. I’ve changed my mind.’
‘Copper! What do you mean?’
‘You’ll have to go and explain to Henry.’
His eyes were so wide that she could see the whites all around the irises. ‘Explain? Explain what, if you please?’
‘That I’m not getting married today.’
‘You’re joking?’ But what he saw in her face left him in no doubt that she wasn’t joking. He clapped his hands over his cheeks. ‘Oh, mon Dieu.’
Pearl, who had got out of the taxi behind, peered over Dior’s shoulder. ‘What’s going on?’
Copper felt strangely calm now, almost disconnected from herself. She was no longer panicky. All that had passed. Her heart was aching, but she was utterly certain of what she was doing. ‘Henry will come out and try to talk to me,’ she said. ‘So I’m going to go back to your place in the Daimler now. You’ll get Pearl’s taxi when you’ve told them.’ She held out her hand. ‘Give me your key.’
Dumbly, Dior fished in his pocket and produced his apartment key. ‘What am I supposed to say to Henry?’ he asked miserably.
‘Say I’ve changed my mind,’ she replied.
‘He’ll want to know why.’
‘Yes, I suppose he will.’
‘And I will tell him—?’
‘Tell him they burned myrrh at my father’s funeral.’
‘My dear,’ Dior said faintly. ‘That is hardly going to soothe a bridegroom who has been jilted at the altar.’
‘I suppose you’re right. Tell him I’m sorry. And that if he ever decides to speak to me again, I’ll try to explain.’
‘Don’t do this, Copper,’ Pearl said quietly.
Copper just shook her head. Pulling her magnificent dusk-blue dress out of the way, she shut the door of the Daimler. ‘Rue Royale, please.’ Expressionlessly, the man put the car in gear and it glided forward. Copper had an afterthought. ‘Wait.’
She took the weighty emerald necklace off and leaned out of the window to hand it to Dior, who took it, open-mouthed. ‘Please give him this, with my love.’
Dior turned without a word and made his way into the cathedral, his balding head bowed. And Copper drove away through the rain.
She was alone in Dior’s apartment for the best part of two hours. After she had taken off the wedding dress Dior had made her, she spent the time sitting at the window and looking out at the street, thinking.
>
Why hadn’t Henry listened to her about the wedding? If they had arranged a nice, drab registry office, she would probably have walked in without qualms, and walked out again as the Countess Velikovsky half an hour later. But it hadn’t been only the cathedral. It had been everything that the cathedral symbolised – the vast edifice of expectation and commitment that a marriage would pile on her.
She’d gone into her first marriage gaily, almost without a second thought. This time, her feelings were different. The burned child had learned to dread the fire. She was still calm, because she knew she had done the right thing for herself. But that didn’t stop her feeling terrible about Henry. She had humiliated him in the most public way possible. The waspish White Russian community would be gossiping about it for years. He would be furious with her. Worse, he would be deeply, bitterly hurt. His disappointment would probably keep him away from her forever.
She had not the slightest vestige of an excuse, except that she’d changed her mind – that feeble prerogative of women that went with being frivolous and capricious and all the qualities she most despised.
Dior returned at last, looking rather flushed and smelling of alcohol. She helped him off with his overcoat.
‘How was Henry?’ she asked apprehensively.
‘He was magnificent,’ Dior replied. ‘He made a short speech at the altar, and thanked everyone for coming. Then he invited everybody to the reception. Nearly everybody came. The house is still full of countesses in nineteenth-century clothes, eating and drinking and looking down their noses. And my dear’ – he patted her shoulder – ‘Henry uttered not a word of reproach about you. Not one word.’
That made her burst into tears. ‘I’ve broken his heart.’
‘Yes, I think you have,’ Dior said. ‘You have to know him well to see it, but it’s there. In his eyes.’
‘Oh, God.’
‘He sent you this.’ He presented her with a little beribboned box. In gilt writing on it were her name and Henry’s in Cyrillic script, and inside was a slice of wedding cake, all marzipan and pink sugar roses. ‘He said you’d be hungry.’
‘He cut the cake?’ she exclaimed through her tears.
‘Well, yes. It wouldn’t keep for the next countess, you know. And it’s wartime. One can’t throw away a three-tier wedding cake from Ladurée.’
‘Will he ever speak to me again?’
‘As to that, I can’t say,’ Dior replied. ‘But it’s very doubtful. You’ve made rather a fool of him, you know.’
‘To put it mildly.’
‘A proud man like Henry doesn’t take these things lightly.’
‘He must hate me now.’
‘He will quite possibly arrange to have you garrotted,’ Dior replied. ‘I believe that’s how they handle these affairs in Moscow. The good thing is that I get to keep you for a while longer. You’ll have to stay here with me. I’ll get your room ready.’
The era of place Victor Hugo was at an end. Pearl had moved into digs in Montmartre. She didn’t say where, but Copper knew she must be back with Petrus. All Copper’s superfluous things – she hadn’t bought much in the way of furniture – were put in storage. She moved back into Dior’s apartment with just a suitcase of clothes, her typewriter and her camera equipment, the way she had first arrived. There was no word from Henry.
Le Théâtre de la Mode opened with a fanfare of publicity, providing an immediate distraction. Tens of thousands of visitors trooped through the exhibition in the first days, thronging the hall until it closed each night at nine. Somehow, all the scenes had been completed on time, the last stitches put into the last outfit, the final touches applied to the last piece of gilding, before the doors had opened to an expectant public.
Moving through the crowded halls, Copper could sense that all of Paris was agog. The ingenuity of the idea; the titanic effort put into such Lilliputian resources; the sheer beauty of what had been achieved; all this was dazzling. More than that, the promise of a resurgent Paris, and a resurgent France, brought people out in wide-eyed throngs to gawp and to celebrate. Copper saw people weeping with emotion in the crowds. Since the departure of the Nazis, it was the greatest single statement of joy the country had made.
The exhibition was a personal triumph for Christian Bérard, who had superintended the overall décor – or it would have been a triumph had he not presented such a pathetic spectacle. He leaned on a stick, or on Dior’s shoulder, looking exhausted. It was typical of the kindness of Dior that he cared for his friend with the gentleness of a mother nursing a sickly child, shepherding him through public appearances, steering him away from anywhere he might be exposed to alcohol or opium, making him rest when his system seemed in danger of a relapse.
It added poignancy that Paris was entering her luminous spring. The cherries were in blossom, the skies were blue. Life was burgeoning everywhere; while Bébé Bérard had the appearance of a dying man.
For Copper herself, the opening of the exhibition provided a welcome distraction from the debacle of her wedding-that-wasn’t, and the thought of the pain and humiliation she must have caused Henry. It also marked the end of her most ambitious journalistic project to date. She was able to take her final photographs of the masses of visitors passing through the hall, and write her final paragraphs.
By far the most spectacular of the scenes was an extraordinary tableau of a burning tenement with silk-clad figures flying through the air. This was the brainchild of Jean Cocteau.
‘My set is a tribute to the film I Married a Witch with Veronica Lake,’ he told her. ‘You’ve seen it, of course?’
‘Of course,’ Copper said animatedly. ‘What a charming idea.’
‘This is the scene where the hotel burns down. Very dramatic, don’t you think?’
‘Oh yes. And what extraordinary gowns.’
‘Oh, the gowns? The gowns are nothing to me,’ he said loftily. ‘To me, fashion is of no interest whatsoever. I am merely supporting my friends.’ He waved a long cigarette holder to take in the whole enterprise. ‘The idea is absurd, and it is the absurdity that calls to me.’
‘Well, perhaps we won’t tell the readers that,’ Copper said, scribbling in her notebook.
Everywhere she looked, little miracles had been wrought. Tiny handmade buttons had been sewn on to jackets; miniature leather shoes, made by some cobbler goblin, had been fitted on to miniature feet; and the hats! Hats as extravagant as the imagination could make them, with flowers and veils and ribbons.
Elaborate coiffures had been made for the poupées, cascades of curls or towering bouffants. Their china faces had been carefully painted to look alive. Tiny tassels swung from exquisite capes; shimmering silks of every imaginable colour swathed miniature bosoms. The smell of sericin was intoxicating. Bows, feathers, frills and swags described lavish curls. Sumptuous flounces disguised the bare wire frames beneath. The wire hands wore diminutive gloves, miraculously stitched, and the wire wrists dripped bracelets made by Cartier or Van Cleef & Arpels, and carried fairy bags by Hermès and Louis Vuitton. Skilled fingers had sewn tiny beads, pearls and sequins on to the fabrics, and experienced eyes had seen to it that every design carried the sense of something much larger; something important.
From the debris of a world devastated by war and plundered by the conqueror, a vision was being created – the vision of a new world where beauty and style once again reigned supreme. It was as though a company of elves had crept out after the horror and had begun to stitch the torn pieces together. It was a fairy-tale story, Copper thought, and it touched her heart and filled her with admiration.
With Henry still silent, Copper had re-entered the world of Dior and Bérard. When Dior himself was too wearied to nursemaid Bérard, Copper nursemaided Dior. Copper, as the only one who could drive, was in charge of transport, and took the two men around during the exhibition. Much of her own magazine article had centred on the genius of Bérard, without whose presiding artistic authority the Théâtre de la Mode would have bee
n unthinkable. As Dior put it: ‘Marshalling dozens of Paris fashion houses was not a job for a mere mortal.’
A week after the opening, however, while she was working at her typewriter in her room, the doorbell chimed and, shortly afterwards, Dior poked his head round her door.
‘It’s Henry,’ he said, his eyebrows perched on the top of his head. ‘He’s asking to speak to you. Shall I send him away?’
‘No,’ Copper said. It was time for her to face the music. ‘I’ll see him.’ Girding her metaphorical loins, Copper rose from the little bedside table that served her as a desk, and went out to confront Henry.
He was standing at the window looking out over the rue Royale, immaculately dressed as always. He turned to her, his face grave.
‘I’m going out for a walk,’ Dior said nervously, snatching up his overcoat and hat and making a diplomatic exit.
When Dior had gone, Copper opened her mouth to start on the speech she’d rehearsed so many times.
‘Henry, my marriage to Amory ended so painfully—’
But he held up his hand to stop her. ‘I’ve come to apologise.’
She was taken aback. She stammered awkwardly. ‘What for?’
‘For everything. For insisting on the cathedral when it was the last thing you wanted. For those unlucky emeralds. But not just for that. For pushing you to marry me when you weren’t ready. For trying to override your doubts and make you ignore your misgivings. For forgetting that you’ve already had one awful experience and haven’t yet healed from that. For being so desperate to make you my wife that I accepted an offer you made when you were afraid and alone. I should have known better, and I’m ashamed of myself. For all that, I apologise. I just hope that you will be able to forgive me. And that this won’t be the end of us.’
‘Oh, Henry!’
She could now see in his face the hurt she’d caused him. He looked like a man who hadn’t eaten or slept in days. ‘You don’t have to say anything now. I’m leaving Paris for a while on business. But I’ll be back, and if I’m far luckier than I deserve, perhaps we can be friends again.’
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