Finding Monsieur Right

by Muriel Zagha

  ‘Oh, she’ll be here, darling,’ Chrissie said serenely.

  ‘But you said she only lives around the corner. Why is she so late?’

  ‘She doesn’t operate on the same timescale as us mere mortals.’

  Isabelle, who had been taught from an early age that l’exactitude est la politesse des rois – that punctuality was kinglike courtesy – was scandalised.

  ‘Chrissie, it is incredibly impolite to keep us waiting like this. Stay if you like, but I have had enough. If she wants to meet me, she’ll have to make another appointment.’

  Chrissie put his beer bottle down and looked at Isabelle with a mixture of admiration and amusement. ‘Temper, temper, my little French firecracker! Oh, all right. Come on, I’ll walk you to the Tube.’

  They set off together down the empty, darkening street. After a few moments, Isabelle discerned an approaching silhouette in the distance. It looked not unlike the Michelin Man.

  ‘Oh heavens,’ Chrissie whispered, gripping Isabelle’s arm and turning her around with military firmness. ‘It’s her! It’s her! Let’s go back. She’ll be furious if she sees that we were about to leave.’

  Isabelle allowed herself to be frogmarched back to the gallery, outside which they were standing, nonchalantly sipping from bottles of beer, when the distant apparition caught up with them a few minutes later. On closer inspection, the slender designer looked nothing like the Michelin Man. She was wearing a deliriously oversized white silk puffa jacket over slim white trousers and boots. Beneath her sleek silver bob, Isabelle saw, Savage’s large, wide dark eyes were rimmed all the way around with a generous amount of purple glitter. As Chrissie made the introductions, Savage’s glittery gaze fastened itself on Isabelle with unwavering intensity, taking in her face, her hair, her clothes, her shoes, and returning to her face.

  ‘Hello,’ Isabelle said politely. ‘It’s nice to meet you.’

  After a moment’s silence, Savage smiled widely. ‘Savage loves your lipstick,’ she said breathily.

  ‘Thank you,’ Isabelle said, a little taken aback. ‘Um, it’s Chanel.’

  ‘It’s a very chic colour, very elegant. You’re very chic, very elegant.’ She turned to Chrissie and said in a much lower, louder and slightly frenzied voice: ‘Savage likes!’

  ‘I knew you would, darling. Isabelle’s great, isn’t she? She’s French, you know.’

  ‘French? French! French.’ Savage smiled again, with childlike delight.

  ‘Yes indeedy. Well, what do you think? Should Isabelle come in with me tomorrow morning? And I’ll show her the ropes and what have you?’

  ‘That would be ... cool,’ Savage said, looking at Chrissie with intense earnestness.

  Smiling ethereally at nobody in particular, she turned on her heel, floated into the gallery and was soon being embraced and feted by the rest of the crowd as though she were the Queen on a state visit. Even the sullen young artist became animated at the sight of her and came over to present his compliments.

  ‘Am I hired?’ Isabelle asked, confused. ‘But does she know that I do not have a degree in fashion?’

  ‘Oh, honey. Savage is so not corporate in her approach. She likes the look of you. That’s enough.’

  Since that day, Isabelle had taken on Posy’s duties. These involved answering the phone in Savage’s studio, opening all mail and dealing with press enquiries. But in actual fact the better part of Isabelle’s time was taken up with other things, like Savage’s complicated brews of tea. Today, for example, the designer had requested a cup made of one-quarter peppermint tea, one-quarter nettle and one-half Lapsang Souchong, sweetened with one-eighth of a teaspoon of Japanese rice syrup; the water had to be Volvic. But the recipe kept changing. It was safer to stock every brand of mineral water, the more esoteric the better, just in case Savage wanted her lunchtime cracked bulgur wheat cooked in something Swedish or Sicilian. That was because Savage’s food and drink had to be the result of a spontaneous decision, or so her nutritionist said. This usually involved Isabelle taking a long walk (or several) to the health food shop to pick up a particular kind of seaweed.

  There had been an awkward scene the other day when she had returned with absolutely the wrong brand of miso: Savage had locked herself away in the bathroom and refused to come out until the right one was produced. This had lost the team half a day’s work on the collection. Savage was exhausting: swinging from elation to fury with alarming suddenness, only to break into the odd incoherent pseudo-poetic oracle.

  Yet Isabelle was not overly irritated by these antics, perhaps because only a superficial part of her consciousness was actually engaged with the daily drudgery of serving under Savage’s regime. Really her mind was on other things – namely the location of Meredith Quince’s manuscripts. She had come to the melancholy conclusion that they did not reside in Tom Quince’s house. That meant she had no reason for going there again. Or indeed for ever seeing Tom again. And this was melancholy because ...

  Well, because Isabelle now had to begin her search all over again after wasting valuable time – time she might have spent writing more of her thesis. Now that Clothaire was out of her life, she must think about real things, solid things, like her academic career in France, where she would be returning for good in a few months’ time. It was pointless to wonder about ... well, other possibilities, letting her imagination run away with her. Utterly, utterly pointless, Isabelle told herself several times a day and as she lay awake at night, staring at the ceiling.

  28 Daisy

  ‘It could be totally extreme,’ Raoul said once again, stroking Daisy’s naked back.

  ‘Yes, yes, of course it could,’ Daisy said, turning over on her side to lie facing him. ‘But ... tell me again what your idea is, exactly.’

  ‘It’s all about rock ’n’ roll! These cool 1950s fashions would look great on you.’

  ‘Ye-es, I like that bit,’ Daisy conceded. ‘But the thing is ...’

  ‘What, honey?’

  ‘Well, you’re not really a fashion illustrator, are you? Your speciality is, you know, er, nudity.’

  ‘But, baby, I have drawn you naked lots of times.’

  ‘Yes, but that was private. This would be ...’

  ‘I thought you liked my work,’ Raoul said, pouting a little.

  ‘I do, Raoul. Of course I do.’

  They kissed.

  Later, as they pushed a trolley down the aisles of the local Monoprix supermarket together, Daisy asked light-heartedly, ‘Can you give me an idea of my character’s storyline? Won’t it involve sex and stuff?’

  Raoul grinned at her wolfishly. ‘You think I am an obsédé sexuel or something? I am, a little bit, it’s true! OK. I’m thinking Cadillacs, drive-ins, bobby socks, cute ponytails. A lot of rock acrobatique,’ he said, twisting his wrist around to suggest complicated dance moves. ‘Elvis Presley. Hey, you know what, let’s get some of those nachos. The really spicy ones.’

  As Daisy reached for a couple of packets, she all but crumpled them in her hands, so forcefully was she struck by a terrible suspicion. ‘Hang on, did you say Elvis Presley?’

  ‘Yeah, baby.’

  ‘You mean ... Oh, God. Raoul?’

  Raoul had parked the trolley to look at the jars of Tex-Mex salsa. ‘What, sugar?’ he said absent-mindedly.

  ‘If you think I’m going to shag Elvis Presley, you’ve got another think coming!’

  ‘Just listen to this, honey. Your character, she could be this cute cheerleader – you know, with the pom-poms and the miniskirt – who runs an Elvis the Pelvis fan club at her high school and then ...’

  Daisy stared at him and raised her forefinger. ‘And then nothing! It’s completely out of the question!’

  But a few days later, Raoul tried again. ‘Just let me explain, OK? He picks her out of all the cheerleaders because she is the most beautiful. That’s cool, no?’

  Daisy paused in the careful application of her eyeliner and made a small face at him in the mirror.
<
br />   ‘Her first lover is the King! How extreme is that?’

  ‘Way too extreme, actually.’

  Raoul laughed, kissed the top of her head and said, ‘Ah, but don’t forget it will not be you – just a sexy character inspired by you. It will be done with taste.’

  It probably would, Daisy thought wearily. And yet the whole idea made her feel uneasy. Did that make her incredibly British and uptight?

  Raoul began to pace the room, insouciantly freestyling. ‘Later on I am thinking she will meet Marlon Brando and his friends in, you know, the movie where they have the big motorcycles and dress all in black leather?’

  Daisy plonked her make-up wand down and looked up at the ceiling.

  ‘OK, stop right there! This is getting completely out of hand. I will not be portrayed as someone who sleeps with a lot of famous people. Not even cool vintage ones. What do you take me for? A groupie?’

  ‘Why are you getting so upset, baby? I don’t get it.’

  ‘No, I can see that,’ Daisy said slowly, looking at his puzzled expression.

  ‘I thought you were cool with all this.’

  ‘Um, yes, so did I,’ Daisy said pensively, buttoning her dress.

  Raoul fell silent, and dropped the idea, for a little while. But later, as they made their way to Marie-Laure’s house on the leafy western fringes of Paris, Daisy was painfully aware that he was puzzling out a way to bring it all up again. She sat fidgeting in the taxi, keeping up a stream of constant chatter in order to silence him. She was beginning to realise how like a child Raoul was in many ways: self-centred, endlessly playful and very, very stubborn.

  On arrival, she leaped out of the car and was already ringing the doorbell when Raoul caught up with her. The door was opened, somewhat to Daisy’s surprise, by Octave.

  ‘Bonsoir, Daisy,’ Octave said charmingly, without a trace of embarrassment. ‘It’s nice to see you again. Bonsoir,’ he said again, shaking hands with Raoul.

  They followed Octave into the drawing room, where Marie-Laure lay on the sofa wearing glamorous black silk pyjamas and with one leg in plaster. A stunned Daisy dropped her bag on the floor and rushed to her friend’s side.

  ‘Marie! What happened to you?’

  ‘I fell down the stairs. But it is not serious – please do not worry.’

  ‘You should have called me! Are you OK?’

  ‘I am fine,’ Marie-Laure said, smiling and squeezing Daisy’s hand. ‘You are so kind. And,’ she added quickly, ‘Octave has been very helpful. Because, in fact, he was with me when I fell, you know, so he took me to the hospital and then brought me home.’

  Daisy glanced at Octave, who grinned at her and said, ‘I’d better go to the kitchen to check on things. I’m cooking dinner tonight. C’est moi le chef!’

  ‘He means we are having blinis and tarama from the traiteur and salad out of a bag,’ Marie-Laure said, smiling. ‘That is what Octave calls cooking.’

  ‘Maybe I can help him,’ Raoul said, following in Octave’s wake.

  Momentarily distracted – what on earth were those two going to talk about in the kitchen? – Daisy turned back to look at her friend.

  ‘Actually, you’re looking really well, Marie,’ she said. ‘You look ... like something incredibly nice has happened to you.’

  Marie-Laure bit her lip, glancing in the direction of the kitchen, before breaking into an irrepressible grin. Daisy smiled back.

  ‘What happened exactly?’

  ‘Oh, I just tripped and fell down the stairs here. I was not looking where I was going.’

  ‘It’s lucky that Octave was there.’

  ‘Yes, it was very lucky.’

  Daisy reached over to touch one of her friend’s earrings. ‘Oh, these are lovely! What are they? Coral?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are they new?’

  ‘No, they are not new. In fact ... you know what they are?’ Marie-Laure shifted a little on the sofa and looked away from Daisy for a moment. ‘They are my old earrings, the ones that I ... lost. Do you remember?’

  ‘The ones that you lost,’ Daisy repeated slowly. ‘Oh. But you don’t mean ... the ones that Octave ...’

  ‘Yes. He gave them back to me.’

  Daisy was silent for a moment, then smiled and said, ‘Was this before or after you fell down the stairs?’

  ‘Before. It was before Christmas. He just turned up here, with a ridiculous amount of flowers,’ Marie-Laure said, demonstrating with both arms outstretched. ‘And he was so sweet, Daisy. And I think he is really sorry for the way he behaved.’

  ‘So, the surprise I would have got at your New Year’s Eve party ...’

  ‘Was Octave and me.’ Marie-Laure became a little agitated and tried to sit up. ‘I didn’t know how to just ... tell you, because I was worried that maybe you would feel ...’

  ‘Oh, no, no! Don’t worry about that. That was, like, in another life.’

  ‘And then when you said you were so happy with Raoul ...’

  ‘Oh, I am. Yes. Absolutely. Perfectly happy,’ Daisy said with many an emphatic nod.

  ‘He seems really nice.’

  ‘He is,’ Daisy said, sighing very slightly. Now was not the time to consult Marie-Laure about her pornography dilemma.

  ‘So now we can all go to the ball together in April!’ Marie-Laure exclaimed happily. ‘You will really enjoy it, Daisy. The Opera House is very beautiful.’

  Daisy smiled back, her mind on other things. Octave had been nothing more than a crush, she knew that now. But she had a niggling sense that the same was true of Raoul. Perhaps the problem lay with her. Perhaps she just didn’t feel things very deeply.

  Meanwhile, Marie-Laure started to laugh. ‘You know, it was funny when I fell down. Octave was chasing me all over the house and tickling me. I am very ticklish – he remembers that from when we were little. I was laughing so hard when I fell that I didn’t feel any pain. And then he was so good at taking care of me.’

  ‘That’s great. Tell me, what do the other Pique-Assiettes think?’

  ‘Octave has renounced the Confrèrie. For me. They are still his friends of course, but ...’

  ‘No more competition? No more little book? No more trophies?’

  ‘No. Because,’ Marie-Laure ended simply, her face radiant, ‘we want to be with each other all the time.’

  Later, in the taxi home, as Raoul fell into a snooze with his head on her shoulder, Daisy stared out of the window, smiling wistfully. It had been lovely to see Marie-Laure looking so happy. Of course she and Octave were a great match, one that had been a long time coming but that would probably last. You only had to see them together for five minutes to know that. And now the über-cynical Jules, who had always snorted derisively at the very idea of romance, was in a fantastic relationship with Karloff. Jules had even started talking of the pagan wedding they were hoping to have in the Yorkshire moors at midsummer. It seemed that, one by one, all her friends were being blessed with romantic love. As for the bond between herself and Raoul, perhaps it had only ever been lust? There was nothing wrong with lust, of course. Lust was fun. But it would be nice, for a change, to feel the other thing and be sure ... Oh well, it didn’t matter all that much, really, did it? And what was love, anyway? Nobody appeared to know for certain. The important thing was to have a good time. And she and Raoul were having a great time together! He was fast asleep now, bless him. Daisy felt in her coat pocket and removed from it the small object Octave had pressed wordlessly into her hand as they said goodbye. The car stopped at a traffic light and she opened her hand in the red glow. She was glad to have her heart brooch back. She had actually missed it quite a lot.

  29 Isabelle

  ‘Don’t you think it is a little bit too tight?’ Isabelle asked, looking down worriedly at her outfit.

  ‘Nonsense, darling!’ Chrissie said, smoothing his own black all-in-ones complacently over slim hips. ‘It’s got to be as tight as sausage skin, don’t you see? Else it wouldn’t be a pro
per cat burglar’s outfit, would it, hmm?’

  ‘OK, if you are sure,’ Isabelle said, pulling ineffectually at slinky Lycra.

  ‘Karloff, baby!’ Chrissie exclaimed, as Karloff emerged diffidently from behind a screen, also clad in a black catsuit. ‘Look at you! See, that is the beauty of Savage’s “all together now” concept. One size fits all – give or take an inch or two ...’

  ‘Right,’ Jules said, staring coldly at her housemate. ‘Are we all ready?’

  Chrissie stalked across the room towards Ivy, whose small serious face peeped out of her black balaclava.

  ‘Gosh, darling, you are so petite that the thing is actually creasing on you! Let me just, ah, straighten it a little here, and there, like so. That’s much better. As for you, Bella, well, you look edible, my lovely. Simply curvylicious.’

  ‘Can we go now and get on with it? I’ve had enough of standing around!’

  Chrissie narrowed his eyes.‘In a minute, Legend, darling. Listen, are you positive that you want to wear your leather jerkin over your outfit? You are? Well, OK, though the only thing I’d say is that you are kind of going against the grain of the whole thing, you know, with this sort of rampant gothic individualism.’

  ‘Look, mate, I’m not one of your fashion victims, all right?’

  ‘Well, I was just saying, you know,’ Chrissie went on as they all walked out of the room in a single black-clad file. ‘I mean, these samples may not be my own design but they are my responsibility as a fashion person. And besides,’ he said as Isabelle and The Coven trickled down the stairs and out of Savage’s East End warehouse, ‘I still think that it was a mistake on your part, Ju-Ju, to get me to separate the outfits. We should have kept to the original design – it’s so much more organic. Then it really would have been all for one and one for all, darlings!’

  ‘Chrissie,’ Jules said tonelessly, ‘you’re delusional. How exactly would you expect us to get over a garden wall all attached to one another? To say nothing about fitting into the van.’

  ‘And anyway, you can, like, stitch the whole thing back after, can’t you, mate? They’ll never know, right?’