by Jenny Colgan
“That is not possible.”
“I tried spaghetti hoops,” said Claire, lying back on the grass.
“I do not know what that is.”
“They’re all right.”
“All right. All right. Why would you put something in your mouth that is only all right?”
Claire giggled. They were having a picnic in the Jardin du Luxembourg. It felt almost magical to Claire that only weeks before she had been looking at the young lovers, so smug and contented with their wicker baskets, their casually discarded bicycles, and empty wine bottles. They made it look so simple; she had been so envious.
And now, here she was too, lying half on a rug, half on the grass under a blazing blue sky. M. and Mme. LeGuarde had taken the children to Provence for a week. Originally Claire had been supposed to go with them. When Mme. LeGuarde had said she wouldn’t be necessary, Claire had immediately panicked and worried she’d done something wrong. Being sent back to the Reverend in disgrace would be more than she could bear.
Mme. LeGuarde laughed at her worried face. In fact, she wanted Claire to give her love life more of a chance without them around, have a little adventure of her own. It hadn’t passed her notice that Claire had come more out of her shell; she was loving and carefree with the children, more willing to speak up. She had roses in her cheeks and a light golden tan from hours walking outside and playing with Arnaud and Claudette in parks; her appetite was good, her eyes were sparkling, her French coming on in leaps and bounds. She was already a long way from the worryingly pale, hopelessly introverted schoolgirl who had arrived on their doorstep two months before. Now, Mme. LeGuarde thought, Claire should have a holiday too.
First, she took her shopping.
“As a thank-you,” she murmured, brushing off Claire’s stammering that they had already done so, so much for her.
She took her to her own atelier, situated just off the Marais. It was a tiny shop front, with a sole sewing machine in the window and no signage. A woman in an immaculate black knit dress cut starkly to the knee with a starched white collar and perfect cheekbones appeared in front of them.
“Marie-France,” said Mme. LeGuarde. The ladies kissed, but with no noticeable warmth. Then she turned her pale blue eyes to Claire, who felt herself quailing under the weight of such scrutiny.
“Her legs are short,” she barked.
“I know,” said Mme. LeGuarde, uncharacteristically humble. “What can you do?”
“But the lower part of the leg should equal the length of the thigh.”
“I shall have them rebroken immediately.”
Marie-France harrumphed and indicated to Claire, without saying anything, that she should follow her up the perilously narrow twisted staircase.
The first floor, in complete contrast to the pokey shop front, was a large, airy room, lit by enormous windows on both sides. At one end, two seamstresses, both tiny bent ladies, hunched over sewing machines without looking up. Another tiny woman was pinning the most beautiful material—a huge, heavy swath of pale gray taffeta that shimmered and reflected the light like running water—onto a dressmaker’s dummy, ruching it at the bust, then pulling it in toward the waist, making tiny, invisible darts with a clutch of pins from her mouth so quickly it was almost impossible to make out what she was doing. Claire stared at her, utterly fascinated.
“Disrobe,” said Marie-France without emotion. If Mme. LeGuarde found this in the slightest odd, she didn’t let on to Claire with even a twitch of the lips, as Claire took off her cheap cotton summer dress and stripped down to her petticoat and bra. With a tcch, Marie-France made it clear that the petticoat also had to come off. Claire felt cross and a bit shaky. Did she really have to be so rude? She’d never taken her clothes off in front of a stranger before. Even thinking this made her think of Thierry and then blush.
Marie-France watched her impatiently, then whipped a long tape measure that had been hanging around her neck like a pale white snake and, at the speed of light, started measuring her up, shouting out measurements—in centimeters, of course, Claire realized, two seconds after she wondered if she’d put on lots of weight without noticing—to the woman who had been pinning taffeta and was now jotting down details in a large, heavy-bound navy blue book.
“Nice flat bosom,” she said to Mme. LeGuarde. Claire had certainly never heard it described like that before. “And the waist is small. Good.”
She glanced up at Claire and addressed her in perfect English, even though Claire had given every indication that she understood her in French.
“That is what your waist should measure now for the rest of your life. It is in the book.”
Mme. LeGuarde smiled. Claire glanced at her.
“That’s good,” whispered Mme. LeGuarde. “If it goes in the book, that means she approves of it.”
Marie-France snorted again.
“I’ve yet to meet an English girl that could hold on to it.”
She looked up.
“The babies come, they think, aha, now I shall lie in a field like a large cow and wait to be fed.”
Claire thought of her own mother, with her lovely rounded bosom and strong capable arms. She had always thought of her mother as beautiful. But you couldn’t get away from the fact that it was difficult to believe that she and Mme. LeGuarde had been schoolgirls at the same time, were the same age. Mme. LeGuarde looked closer to her own age.
“Raise your arms.”
After rapidly jotting everything down, Marie-France made a nod to her assistant, who had led them up another flight of stairs. This room was dark and cramped, lined ceiling to floor and wall to wall with every kind of material possible. It was like an Aladdin’s cave; there was gold ribbon, and silks in the deepest of hues: turquoise, pink, scarlet. There were many different tones of black, in every possible material, from the finest, softest mohair wool, to the lightest, most delicate chiffon; navy too. Florals large and small, some so loud you couldn’t imagine who could wear them, to daisies etched on a heavy sunken cotton so tiny you could barely make them out. There was cut-out voile and large rolls of calico for pattern cutting; stripes in every conceivable colorway, and, over in the far corner, protected by a dust sheet, was the lace, the satin, in white and oyster and cream, for the brides. Claire couldn’t help it—she gasped. Marie-France almost let a twitch cross her lips.
“I see you’re thinking ahead,” she muttered. Claire colored again and turned back.
“Now,” said Mme. LeGuarde, all business. “Nothing too somber. She’s not a French girl; she’ll just look like a clumpy English girl on her way to a funeral.”
Claire was barely listening; she was still following the form and feel of the fabrics lining the extraordinary treasure cave of a room. The street noise and traffic of Paris outside had disappeared; she felt as if she were in another world.
Marie-France did a sniff. “She cannot be chic.”
“I don’t want her to be chic,” fired back Mme. LeGuarde. “Chic is for spoiled bobo girls who never work a day in their lives. I want her to be what she is; young and pretty and unspoiled.”
“For how long?” said Marie-France, and Claire wondered how such a rude woman could even get up in the morning without everyone she knew wanting to kill her, but she didn’t have much time to think about that as Mme. LeGuarde, with a practiced eye, picked out a light cream poplin lined with a navy stripe, and a soft, green fine cotton, with a border of gentle yellow wildflowers.
Seconds later, to her regret, she was back in the main atelier, where the tiny woman, who didn’t say a word through her mouthful of pins, started pinning her at the speed of light, as Marie-France and Mme. LeGuarde bickered and disputed and lengthened and shortened. There was no mirror ahead of her, so Claire let her thoughts wander…to what Thierry would say when he saw her in her new finery, and beyond, what she would do…what she could do…in a week where she would have the ent
ire house to herself. It made her heart beat terribly fast. Of course Thierry had asked her back to his apartment, and of course she had refused. It didn’t seem right.
It wouldn’t seem right under her host’s roof either, but Mme. LeGuarde had been so matter-of-fact, so open about what she thought was a healthy stage of development that…well, she didn’t think she would mind. Claire bit her lip nervously. But would it seem terribly forward? Terribly rude?
But then, the way Thierry made her feel every time he touched her hand, every time he maneuvered her by the elbow down the street…it made her feel hot and cold and completely overwhelmed, unable to concentrate on anything. And now it was mid-July, and in just a few short weeks, she would be headed back, back to Kidinsborough, and the Reverend, and sixth form college, and then on to secretarial, or the grim teacher-training college they had up the road, not the university her teachers had been so keen to encourage her to. Who would pay for it? Not Mme. LeGuarde.
But did she dare?
“Bon,” said Marie-France, finally, without smiling. “You can stop. You stood well.”
“She liked you,” said Mme. LeGuarde, as they stepped out on the hot pavement. They shared a look, then, an instant later, both of them dissolved in giggles, for one instant, more like friends than employee and friend of the parents. Claire didn’t think she’d ever seen Mme. LeGuarde laugh like that before. It made her look even younger.
- - -
A mere week later, the dresses were ready. Claire went nervously into the shop, where the wordless seamstress was making final adjustments. Marie-France raised an eyebrow and barked a quick Bonjour in greeting, then marched her upstairs. This time Claire was grudgingly accepting of the fact that she would be stripping down in public and had worn her whitest set of underwear. The first dress shimmied over her head like a light silken waterfall. As the silent seamstress zipped up the side zip, Claire could already feel it fitted her absolutely perfectly. For a tiny second, Marie-France and Mme. LeGuarde regarded her, totally silently, until Claire worried if there was something terribly wrong with it or it didn’t suit her. Until Marie-France sighed, just a touch, and said, very quietly, “Oh, to be young again,” and with a move of her hand, indicated to the seamstress to roll out a long mirror that had been hidden behind the wall. The sun streaming through the back windows, Claire suddenly caught a glimpse of herself—not, as she was used to in the bathroom mirror, the pinched, pale-faced English girl with the scrubbed-looking nose and slightly doleful expression, the hair colorless, the shoulders thin.
The summer Parisian sun had added a very light, golden tan to her skin and brought out tiny, cute freckles all over her nose. The green of the silk dress pulled out the color of her eyes and gave them an intensity they’d never had before. Her hair had light streaks in it and had grown down past her shoulders, and suddenly her thinness, which had always caused her to be described as peaky-looking, was flattered and emphasized by the dress; her tiny waist was cinched in, then curves had been added to her hips by the full skirt—not at all in fashion, but what did it matter when it suited her so well. The line of yellow flowers along the bottom emphasized the pretty leanness of her calves, without drawing attention to the fact that she was still shorter than average.
It was beautiful. And even though Claire Forest, little, scrawny, shy only child of the fearsome Reverend Forest, had never been praised for her looks in her life—her father thought it vain and rather wicked to be proud of the way you looked—Claire too felt beautiful.
- - -
The next few weeks, I started to settle in. The work was extremely hard and unrelenting, but I liked it and was even starting to get the hang of the husking and the conch. Frédéric was funny and flirtatious. (A different girl every week would turn up for him at the shop, all of them pouty and disdainful, which was exactly how he liked them—he liked, he explained, to prostrate himself fully in front of a strong woman who would control everything. It was no surprise our flirtation hadn’t exactly progressed.) He was voluble and fiercely purist about every stage of the chocolate-making process. Benoît continued to treat his job like a monastic calling. Alice never quite got over the look of distaste she put on every day to see me turn up, but Thierry was taken with me and liked to chat—and I liked to listen, thankfully—as he pontificated on life, and chocolate, with chocolate being by far the most important, obviously. He would often take me for lunch while Alice toiled away, showing me the best croque-madame or how to eat shellfish properly. I would set my alarm for naps, then often go out with Sami too, after work, who turned out to be the most fun omnisexual Algerian flatmate I’d ever had, when he wasn’t complaining about opera singers who got too fat and budgets that got too small. I didn’t see Laurent about much after he’d dropped me off. Sami said he was quite the boulevardier, always with a different model on his arm. I imagined Thierry had been similar when he’d been younger. Poor Claire.
After two months of this, I found I loved getting up at the crack of dawn, patting Nelson Eddy the dog, who fetched the newspaper for his mistress who lived on our street every morning, pit-patting past our door as we opened up; seeing the freshly cleaned cobbles come to life, water dribbling down the drains; the tiny funny-looking vans delivering drinks and fresh food; the smells of bread baking everywhere; the running hither and thither of kitchen staff. The sheer number of restaurants in Paris was dizzying, and Thierry seemed intent on visiting all of them; then the glancing up through the roofs and pigeons to the tiny floating clouds miles above to see if it was going to be another glorious day. That summer, it seemed, every day was a good day. I liked most of all getting dressed and going out on my little terrace first thing. The whole of Paris, laid out in front of me like a huge tray of macaroons, glowed rose pink, and I would think of the boarded-up high street of Kidinsborough with the pound shop and Kash4Gold, and how when it rained, the canal would spit old bikes out on the tow path, and feel as far away from home as if I’d landed on the moon. I did no food shopping (during my lunch hour, everything else was shut too, which drove me absolutely crazy), and mixed and scrubbed with all my might. I thought—I thought—one morning that I might even have actually had a dream in French. Sami and I often crossed paths at 4:00 a.m., he coming in, me arising for work, and we would often stop and take a coffee (with brandy for him, nothing for me, as every time I ran out of milk, I had to go down seven dark flights to find some, and it never seemed worth it, so I just learned to drink it black). Sometimes he was with chaps, sometimes with girls, sometimes alone, sometimes with an entire party. It was very fortunate I didn’t work normal hours; it could have been a disaster. The eyrie remained absolutely tiny, with no working kitchen beyond coffee, no shower, and a bath you had to sit in with your knees pulled up to your chin.
I loved it.
I tried to keep in contact with home, but it seemed so far away sometimes.
I knew I was getting into it when Cath and I swapped email. I think I was just a bit overexcited and needed to tell someone. In retrospect, Cath probably wasn’t the right person.
Hi C! I just got back from the most amazing party on a boat in the middle of the Seine. There were fire jugglers (my flatmate took me, everyone he knows does something stupid like that) and they kept setting drinks on fire and people kept trying to leap over them. Then these two chefs came on. One of them is my boss’s son, but they’ve fallen out with each other. Anyway, they were trying to hurl crepes over the flames in little pans, but they kept falling out and it was hysterical and brilliant. Hope you’re good, Anna.
Dear Anna,
On Tuesday I put four hours’ worth of extensions in “Ermine” (she used to be called Sal, do you remember? daft bint) McGuire’s head for her X-Factor audition. She smoked through the entire thing. I think I’ve gone blind. She wanted red, white, and blue and kept on talking about how she was going to pull Simon Cowell. It took all afternoon and I had to have the door blowing open on account of her
wanting to smoke. I think I’ve got bronchitis. And I lost one of my new snakeskin nails in it. I said what was she doing, being the new Michelle McManus? And she told me to shut it, but I’d been standing all bloody day. Then she came in yesterday, her eyes red with crying, and said nobody had even seen her and she’d waited nine hours in the hosing rain and the colors had all run and it was my fault and she wanted her money back. I said she could go whistle and she said she could go punch me in the head. I got out the big scissors.
The police have said they won’t press charges, but I have to give her the hair back in a box. I said I wouldn’t be touching it, it probably had crabs already. PC Johnson smiled and said he got off at 9. So I’m off.
Come back soon,
Cath.
I hadn’t meant to gush to Cath, but it was really a proper fun night. Well, it had started in the morning. Thierry had marched in huffing something about refrigeration. He was furious about it; even if we were running horribly late, you could never, ever put his work in the fridge, because it took away the highly polished shine. Anyway, we’d had an electricity bill and Alice was spitting feathers about it and basically implying why couldn’t we work in the dark or something, and Frédéric had mentioned the fridges and Thierry had started huffing and puffing and getting red in the face, until eventually he’d signaled something to Benoît, who had immediately run up the street and returned with two dozen eggs.
“Anna! Come with me!” Thierry hollered. He had kind of taken me under his wing a bit. I was happy about this, obviously, in that I wasn’t going to get sent home to annoy Claire, but I could always feel Alice’s gimlet eyes boring into me.
“Chocolate pots,” said Thierry. “Seeing as we are paying for all this electricity…” He glared balefully at the large fridges, which were full of milk and butter actually. He grabbed the eggs and started separating them into a bowl, so quickly and deftly it was fascinating to watch. Then he took the whites, passed me over a bowl, and started to whisk them up at the speed of light.