She lost track of the passing of time. The afternoon seemed to be getting on. How long had she been in this condition? An hour? Six hours? She registered that Pearl was now in the room.
‘Pearl,’ she begged. ‘Tell them – to give me – back – the gas.’
‘They say they will in a minute, Copper Pot.’
‘I haven’t got – a minute. I need it – now!’
‘You’re nearly there. They say they can see the baby’s head.’
It was the moment of truth. All her work and suffering had led up to this. With a last huge effort, she pushed the baby into life. Then she heard the unmistakable cry. Her eyes flew open. She pushed herself up on her elbows to see. Henry was holding out a little creature wrapped in a shawl. Its face had a troubled, crumpled look, as though it had found the past hours as wearisome as Copper herself had done. But those weary hours were as nothing now. A huge surge of joy filled her. The weight of labour rolled away like a stone. She reached out for her baby, tears of happiness sliding down her cheeks.
‘It’s a boy,’ Henry said, sitting beside her and stroking her sweaty hair. ‘All fingers and toes accounted for. Perfect in every respect.’
Copper stared down at the furrowed little face. The bleary eyes blinked up at her. The small mouth opened as if to cry again, but ended up giving an outsize yawn, showing pink gums. ‘Henry, he’s so beautiful,’ she whispered to her husband, unable to take her eyes off her baby.
‘Yes, he is. Well done, my beloved.’ He was wiping his own eyes surreptitiously.
Pearl sat on the other side of her, inspecting the baby. ‘Nice going, kid. All over now. They say the first one is always the worst.’
The room was bustling with staff, wheeling away machines and clearing up. There was even a young nurse starting to change the wet sheets from beneath her. None of it mattered. None of it touched her. Nothing could come through the walls of the golden Fabergé egg into which she was locked with her baby and her husband.
Copper drifted out of sleep and into a great happiness and a great peace. She opened her eyes. Christian Dior was at her bedside.
‘Tian! Have you seen the baby?’
He stooped to kiss her brow. ‘Yes, ma petite. He’s exquisite.’
She passed him the tiny baby to hold. He was sleeping. Dior kissed the child tenderly. ‘He’s a masterpiece. They told me it was a difficult birth.’
‘I don’t remember much about it. Thank you for coming, Tian. I know how busy you are.’
‘I’ve brought you something.’ He handed her a parcel done up in gold paper with a satin bow. Inside was a delicate lace christening shawl. ‘I was baptised in that. It’s for your little boy.’
‘Oh, Tian. It’s so beautiful.’ She held it up to the light. The delicate Chantilly lace was embroidered with rosebuds. ‘I can’t take this – it’s a family heirloom.’
‘I will never have a child of my own to pass it on to. It makes me happy to think that it’s yours now.’
‘I’m so touched.’
‘My dear,’ he said, stroking her brow. ‘The nurses can hardly get down the corridor for the bouquets. Shall we distribute them to some of the other mothers?’
The next time she woke, it was late at night. The room was dark except for a pool of light where Pearl was sitting in a corner, reading a book.
‘Pearl?’
‘You’re awake at last.’ Pearl came to her bedside. ‘How do you feel?’
‘Tired but happy.’
Pearl took a silver hip flask out of her purse. ‘Have some cognac.’
‘No, thank you. I’m so happy you’re here. Where’s the baby?’
Pearl swigged from the flask. ‘They’ll bring him shortly. He’s been asleep, just like you. He’s gorgeous. What are you going to call him?’
‘We’re thinking of Pierre Henri.’
‘Couldn’t be better.’
The door opened and a young nurse in a starched white uniform appeared, wheeling in a cot. It contained a very wide-awake baby who was already starting to lose his crumpled look. There was nothing like this flooding, warm joy that filled Copper when she saw him. It was the purest emotion she had ever felt. The nurse put the baby in her arms. ‘I think he’s hungry.’
Copper opened her gown to reveal one of her swollen breasts, which had started to respond at the first sight of her baby. She put her large, brown nipple in his mouth. After a moment’s hesitation, he latched on eagerly and began to suck. She winced.
Pearl was watching with a curious expression on her painted face. ‘What does it feel like?’
‘Heavenly. I don’t know how to explain it.’
‘Well, I’ll never know, will I?’ she said dryly. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’
‘Don’t go,’ Copper said as Pearl rose to her feet.
‘I don’t belong here,’ she replied, straightening her dress with fingers that sparkled with diamonds.
‘Yes, you do.’
Pearl shook her head. ‘I’m not a fit person to be around babies. I spend most of my time getting rid of them.’ She gave Copper a bittersweet smile. ‘Speaking of which, I have to go and look after my girls. Ta-ra, Copper Pot.’
Henry arrived a few minutes later and sat on the bed to watch, his dark eyes gleaming. ‘The entire corridor is full of flowers. It looks like a jungle by Rousseau. Every couturier in Paris has sent a bouquet!’
The days after Pierre Henri’s birth passed in an ever-faster whirl. Far from reclining on pillows and reading an amusing book, Copper had never been so busy in her life. Dior’s call was followed by visits from Balenciaga and Pierre Balmain, and then by several others. Within two or three days, almost every couturier in Paris had called on her, or sent flowers or gifts. She was deeply touched. She hadn’t realised how connected she was to this strange world she had decided to enter.
An even more welcome visit came from her family – or part of it. Her brother Mike and her sister Rosie flew from America for the christening. They were her favourite siblings. She hadn’t seen either of them for three years, and it was a reunion that lasted over Christmas and New Year.
She was back at her typewriter early in 1947, much to the horror and dismay of many people who urged her to consider her baby and herself.
‘I don’t think it’s going to hurt my baby if I keep writing articles,’ she replied. ‘And it certainly won’t hurt me.’
What was harder, however, was going out and leaving baby Pierre in the care of a nurse. The first time she tried it, she rushed back home again after twenty minutes in a complete panic. But in the same way that she wanted a marriage and a profession, she was determined that motherhood would not be the end of her career. She did not see why she should not structure her working life around being a wife and mother. After all, she was not tied to locations or schedules; she did not work in an office or a factory. She disciplined herself to make trips out of the house and resumed her work as much as possible.
Her first port of call was avenue Montaigne.
Eighteen
She was admitted by a doorman and entered a world of organised chaos. Workmen were still everywhere, hammering and painting. Dior himself was not hard to find; he was sitting on a step halfway up the staircase, rivers of silk tumbling around him like a multicoloured waterfall, cursing volubly.
‘Tian,’ she called, ‘what on earth are you doing?’
‘This place is too damned small!’ he shouted back. ‘I’m going to have to build another wing. I need another three floors, at least.’
Copper climbed up to him, carefully avoiding the tumbling bolts of fabric. ‘Will Boussac’s six million stretch to that?’
‘Six million?’ He stared, hollow-eyed. ‘The six million was spent long ago. We are nearly at the end of the second six million.’
Copper was shocked. Money had flowed through Dior’s hands like water. This was a huge gamble, even for France’s richest man. She went up the stairs to the bel étage, which was still unfinished. A dozen workme
n were on their hands and knees, blue-serge bottoms upraised as they laid a pale-grey carpet. She carried on up.
The third floor was a war zone of rattling sewing machines and elbowing seamstresses. The heat up there was intense, the air heavy with the smell of twenty girls who were working (as one of the premières complained to Copper) eighteen hours a day, and didn’t even have time to eat, let alone wash.
This was something few followers of fashion ever saw – the long hours of hard, highly skilled labour that went into the production of each item of haute couture. Beauty came at the cost of tired eyes, aching shoulders and worn fingers.
‘Our manager has had a nervous breakdown,’ one of the girls told Copper. ‘The pressure drove her out of her wits.’
The others chimed in with a chorus of grievances.
‘Monsieur Dior used to be so gentle.’
‘Not anymore!’
‘Nobody can keep up with his demands. He flies into a rage at the slightest thing.’
The premières were all agreed. Christian Dior, turned from shy little man into Napoleonic tyrant, was giving his troops orders they sometimes barely understood because he was resurrecting long-forgotten techniques of dressmaking not seen since the eighteenth century, and demanding levels of perfection that exceeded anything known in this modern era.
Copper made her way back down, jostled by workmen, premières and models. Dior’s office had been planned originally as a commodious space where he could work on a large Empire desk. This room had long since been invaded by the cutters, who had pushed the desk into a corner to make room for the long table where they pieced out the patterns with battle-scarred scissors. Dior himself had taken up his quarters in a tiny, windowless closet known as ‘the cubbyhole’. There was barely room for the piles of sketches he was feverishly producing, drawing and redrawing designs dozens of times, sometimes only to discard the entire project. She found him here in the darkness, wrestling to replace the bulb that had gone out in his desk lamp. ‘Merde. There’s something wrong with this lamp.’
‘Let me try.’ She took over the job, and he collapsed back in his chair, panting.
‘Too many hopes are being pinned on me, ma petite. How can I possibly live up to their expectations?’
‘You’ll exceed them,’ she assured him. ‘Believe in yourself.’
He clasped his forehead. ‘If I’d known what this would turn into, I would never have begun it.’
‘The girls say you’ve become a tyrant,’ she said. The new bulb clicked into life, and light flooded his desk. ‘They say you’re driving them to despair.’
Not deigning to answer, he grabbed a sheaf of drawings and began shuffling through them. ‘Where is “Bourbon”? Someone has been confusing all my designs!’
She helped him locate the drawings he was looking for and then followed him into the next room. In here stood a patient group of tailor’s dummies, armless wooden figures known as Stockman mannequins, upon which the garments were tacked before they were finally sewn up. Dior shooed one of the premières away and examined the dress with a critical eye. It was in the toile stage, made of a white linen for testing the pattern. ‘This is “Bourbon”, but it’s all wrong,’ he groaned. ‘It should be much fuller in the hips. You’ve ruined it!’
‘They cut it exactly as you designed it, Monsieur Dior.’
‘Don’t contradict me! It’s an abomination. I want volume.’
‘But Monsieur Dior,’ the seamstress ventured timidly, ‘the mannequin’s proportions will not allow—’
‘Allow? Allow?’ Dior’s normally pink complexion had grown dangerously red. ‘Who tells me what I am allowed to do?’
‘Nobody, Monsieur,’ the girl whispered.
‘Get it off,’ Dior commanded in a terrible voice.
‘Y-yes, Monsieur.’
With shaking hands, the première unpinned the toile, revealing the naked wooden torso of the dummy. Dior glared at it for a moment. ‘Here is the error. The proportions are completely wrong.’ The Stockmans were all adjustable. Dior set to work, wrestling with the system of screws and levers that altered the vital statistics. But this particular dummy was old and stiff, and was not responding to the master’s ministrations. Dior’s colour grew even darker. He reached into the tool box and pulled out a large wooden mallet. All work ceased and a shocked silence fell over the crowded room as Dior pounded the dummy furiously, knocking the plates in here, knocking them out there. Unnoticed, Copper photographed the extraordinary performance.
Finally, panting, Dior threw the hammer down and studied the dummy with a critical eye. ‘There,’ he said triumphantly. ‘That is the perfect woman.’ He turned to the première, who was still clutching the toile to her breast, wide-eyed. ‘Now you may proceed.’
He bustled off, leaving everyone staring at the altered Stockman, with its wasp-waist, expansive hips and deep bust.
‘Mon Dieu,’ someone muttered. ‘He’s gone mad.’
‘No woman ever looked like that.’
‘We’re going to have to put the girls back in corsets.’
‘That won’t be enough,’ someone else pointed out. ‘They’ll need padding top and bottom as well.’
Copper watched these experts at their trade, the finest in Paris, as they struggled to solve the conundrum their master had posed them. Dior had taken a hammer and literally knocked womanhood into the hourglass shape that pleased him.
Copper followed Dior back to his cubbyhole. ‘How many outfits are you going to present?’ she asked him.
‘A hundred.’
She was appalled. No wonder there was such a tumult in Maison Dior. ‘That’s a huge amount for a first collection,’ she ventured. Jacques Fath had launched his collection the year before with twenty garments.
‘A hundred,’ he repeated firmly. ‘I cannot achieve my vision with less. I have to make an impact.’ She was alarmed to see that he looked slightly wild. ‘With a dozen dresses, two dozen dresses, nobody will get the point. They’ll say, “It’s just Christian and his manias.” But with a hundred outfits, people’s eyes will open wide. Nobody will be able to ignore a hundred outfits.’
‘But the expense—’
‘Boussac will have to give me more money,’ he said flatly. ‘And I will need the fabrics, the accessories, the shoes.’
Her heart sank. ‘But – how will you get buyers for so many models?’
He stared at her as though she were mad. ‘They’ll be queuing all the way down avenue Montaigne. They’ll be on their knees, begging for my outfits.’ He spread his arms wide. ‘This will be the age of Dior, ma petite.’
Ten minutes ago, he had been wondering how he could possibly live up to everyone’s expectations, and regretting that he had ever begun this. Now he was declaring the age of Dior. He seemed to veer from crippling self-doubt to megalomania, and back again.
Copper had now to prepare for the imminent arrival of Carmel Snow. The editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar, and the woman who had published many of her stories over the past two years, was coming to France for her first tour since the start of the war in 1939. In fashion terms, it was as important as any state visit. Her report on the new collections of 1947 would be eagerly read from coast to coast. Her approval or disapproval could make or break a designer.
She had made it clear that she expected to do and see as much as possible in the ten days that were all she could spare from running Harper’s.
On the eve of Mrs Snow’s arrival, Copper received a telephone call from Sister Gibson at the Marie-Thérèse Sanatorium. It was about Amory.
‘I thought you would want to know that Mr Heathcote made a good recovery. I think your visit was really the turning point.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. Is he still in Paris?’
‘He sailed back to New York on the SS America. He will be joining the family banking firm on his arrival.’
‘That sounds like a good decision.’
‘He said he was following your advice.’
> ‘Yes, I suppose I did advise him to do that.’
‘There was one thing I wanted to bring up. The injury he sustained. The surgeons fitted a steel plate over the hole in the skull, but of course the hair does not grow there any longer. There will always be a visible scar. And despite your suggestion,’ Sister Gibson added dryly, ‘he will not be able to wear a hat indoors.’
So Amory had relayed that little comment, too. ‘What are you getting at, Sister?’
‘We all agreed that it would be wise for Mr Heathcote to gloss over the cause of the injury.’
‘Gloss over?’
‘There are so many young men returning from Europe with wounds sustained in the war. In the light of his future dealings with clients of the firm, and to ease the progress of his career, we believe it’s best if Mr Heathcote lets out that the wound was caused by shrapnel, rather than self-inflicted.’
‘A war wound?’
‘Exactly. As Mr Heathcote’s ex-wife, we wanted to be sure that you would—’
‘Back up the lie?’ Copper asked, as Sister Gibson hesitated.
‘Support him in his new career.’
‘He could have asked me this himself.’
‘He thought it might be better coming from a neutral party. He should not have to bear the burden of a moment’s folly for the rest of his life.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Copper said dryly. ‘I won’t spill the beans. If he wants to play the war hero, I have no intention of spoiling the illusion.’
‘Thank you. I will write to the family to confirm what you’ve told me. I’m sure they will be happy to hear it. I bid you a very good day, Mrs Velikovsky.’
‘What was that all about?’ Henry asked, as Copper replaced the receiver, laughing a little.
‘Vanity and make-believe, my darling. Amory wants it given out that he was wounded in combat.’
‘I suppose,’ Henry said, rocking their baby in his arms, ‘that in the larger sense of life’s struggle, most of us are wounded in combat.’
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