The Dress Thief

by Natalie Meg Evans

  Alix wished she could share Rosa’s certainties.

  ‘More of a curve, Alix.’ Pauline Frankel stood a distance away, studying the line of the wedding dress. ‘Fan it out a little. The train must look as if it’s painted on to the steps.’

  Soon a photographer would arrive to take the traditional picture of the bride-to-be with her mother and father. The session had already been put back once because the comte had stayed longer than expected in Alsace. He was unwell, it was whispered. A heart complaint.

  Alix wished Christine de Charembourg would stand straighter. She seemed locked in a flinch. Worried about her father? Or was it because her mother oppressed her? The comtesse was prowling around the room like a plantation overseer, searching for reasons to poke and complain. She’d insisted on a dozen changes to the dress already. A square neckline had been designed to show off the family pearls, but a week ago the comtesse had demanded a redesign. ‘Christine will not be wearing the pearls after all.’

  This last dictum had pushed Javier towards an emotional earthquake. He was not a corner-dressmaker, he had shouted. The girl would look like a camel in a high neck, and he, Javier, had not yet sunk to dressing camels.

  Mme Frankel had soothed him. ‘It’s not the girl’s fault that the family pearls have been lost, or discovered to be paste or whatever. You will think your way round this new shape and it will be triumphant.’

  And so it was, Javier creating a bodice that slimmed Christine’s shape and drew the eye away from her square jaw. Alix had been drafted in to help fit and sew after a previous assistant fell foul of the comtesse’s temper. Her escape route from the workbench, and she’d seized it. Worried to the bone about Mémé, who was still unconscious in hospital, heartsick over Verrian and missing the flat at St-Sulpice that she was too scared to return to, she needed to be mindlessly busy. She could have done without the bride’s mother treading on her fingers though.

  Many highbred ladies were sharp, even downright rude. But it turned out that the mere sight of Alix goaded Rhona de Charembourg to fresh heights of malice. Only this morning she’d swung her hand so that her ruby ring caught Alix’s lip. At the sight of the blood, Rhona had shrieked, ‘Get away from my daughter’s train! Get away or my daughter will not wear this dress!’

  Pauline Frankel had sent Alix down to the sanatorium. As she left, Alix heard Christine de Charembourg say, ‘Maman, you hit the girl. I saw you.’

  *

  At eleven prompt, the photographer arrived, but the Comte de Charembourg did not. The session was rebooked for the following day. As she left, Rhona de Charembourg informed Mme Frankel that she did not want to see ‘the dark girl, Gower’ in the salon again. She would not have a Jewess working on her daughter’s bridal clothes.

  Mme Frankel answered, ‘As that also excludes me, I hope Madame la Comtesse can find another technician.’

  The comtesse was momentarily shaken. Then, all smiles, she explained that she had not meant to offend. Indeed, she trusted that her daughter’s trousseau would be finished by the date agreed, in time for the family to travel to Alsace.

  ‘The trousseau will be finished as long as you demand no more changes, Madame. And that includes changes to my workforce.’

  *

  ‘Javier says that woman’s face is branded in acid on his heart,’ Pauline Frankel remarked later in an undertone to Alix. ‘I don’t know about that, but she’s keeping me from the autumn–winter collection. I’m marking off the days until the end of July and there aren’t that many left. It was hard enough persuading Javier to put last month’s cancelled mid-season collection behind him and start designing again.’

  Alix nodded. The fashion press had savaged Javier’s caprice in cancelling a collection, having already launched the previous one late. Some suggested he was not quite enough of a genius to get away with offending the fashion world twice in one year. A right-wing magazine had gone further, with a caricature implying that Maison Javier was built on Jewish money, not talent. Alix knew what Mme Frankel was implying – the comtesse’s rants might be the thing to tip Javier back into melancholy, and none of them could afford that. She said, ‘At least Oro is finished.’

  The next day, as the photographer assembled his equipment and a minion gave the stage a final polish, Alix prayed they’d seen the last of Christine’s wedding dress, the comtesse and her tantrums. ‘Tears in the car,’ a fitter whispered to Alix as Rhona arrived, clad in a suit of lilac silk, her younger daughter and the bride-to-be trailing behind. ‘Poor girl – we should have made her dress out of blotting paper.’

  Then the comte arrived, giving them all a lesson in gracious sincerity. ‘I have tested your patience, Mesdames. I was taken unwell in Alsace. The doctors there kept me under observation longer than I needed or wanted.’

  Alix was determined not to meet his eye, but as they waited for Christine to be dressed he approached, asking in a low murmur, ‘How is your grandmother?’

  ‘They call it a coma.’ She spoke brusquely. ‘She blinks but I don’t think she hears anything.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. Thank you for informing me and for sending the letter to my business offices.’

  ‘I thought you’d want to know.’

  ‘I visited your flat the moment I got your letter, but you’d left St-Sulpice and nobody seemed to know where you’d gone.’

  ‘I couldn’t stay there. Not after what happened.’

  ‘Of course. Let me know where you’re living now, and if there’s any help I—’ he broke off.

  Alix followed his glance. It led to Rhona de Charembourg who was staring hard at them. ‘I don’t want your help,’ Alix hissed. ‘I don’t want anything from a family that hates Jews.’

  He recoiled. ‘My wife’s opinions are not mine. I’m not even sure they’re hers – she mixes with people who think it fashionable to admire Hitler. It’s a fashion that a dose of reality will soon change.’

  She saw the lines about his mouth, the threads of white in the grey hair, and felt a wrenching sense of loss. She kept hoping they could restore their old trust and intimacy, but perhaps there was no going back. ‘Ever since I can remember, Monsieur, you’ve been in and out of my life and I’ve been wracking my brain to understand why. I keep coming back to my grandfather and a picture I keep in my head of him in his attic, in a muffler and fingerless gloves, striving for that one defining work of genius. Never achieving it—’

  ‘Alix, may we speak of this another time?’

  The old Alix might have stopped there, but she was so exhausted, so raw, the boundaries of propriety had dissolved. Rosa, who had looked after her like a mother since Mémé’s accident, said she was still in shock from seeing her grandmother in a pool of blood. While shock had you in its grip, you felt as if you were seeing the world through a pane of glass, but what Rosa hadn’t known was that shock could also make some things clearer.

  ‘After my grandmother and mother went to live with the Fressendens in London, you followed and became a part of their circle. Eventually, Mémé moved further into London and you took a house in a nearby borough. You kept an eye on her.’

  ‘In as much as your grandmother would let me.’

  ‘But was it for Mémé’s sake? I asked you once what you see when you look at me. You said, “a clean page”. Do you draw a face on the page, Monsieur? Do you see Mathilda?’

  ‘I see you, Alix.’

  ‘Not the child that killed Mathilda? You know, I was born two weeks overdue? If I’d arrived on time, my mother might have survived and you wouldn’t have been obliged to avoid her funeral.’

  ‘My precious girl, enough.’ He gripped her arm. ‘Don’t acquire the habit of cruelty.’ Another glance for his wife.

  An aggrieved voice interrupted them. ‘Why is everything to do with marriage so slow? I’ll definitely elope when it’s my turn.’ Jean-Yves jumped as his younger daughter tucked her hand under his arm. ‘Papa, why are you talking to this girl?’

  ‘Go back to your mother, Ni
nette.’

  Rhona de Charembourg made that unnecessary by striding towards them, confrontation in every muscle. Alix was saved by Mme Frankel, who called after Rhona that the bride was about to emerge from the fitting room.

  Alix was again spreading Christine’s silken train over the steps to the exact pattern they’d rehearsed, when a shrill command made her rock back on her heels.

  ‘Don’t you dare touch my daughter’s hem. Do so and Christine will not wear this dress and I will ensure the whole of Paris understands why. Mme Frankel –’ the comtesse’s voice travelled the length of the salon – ‘send that girl out!’

  ‘Go to Javier,’ the première said, taking Alix’s arm. ‘A press photographer has come to take pictures of Oro before it goes off to the Expo, and Solange hasn’t come in. Do something with your hair and put those words out of your head. Oh damn, the bride is crying again.’

  *

  Javier lifted an eyebrow as Alix halted in the doorway. ‘You will not make a mannequin if you cannot walk forward with confidence.’

  I don’t want to be a mannequin, Alix thought. I want to see Mémé sitting up in bed. I want to know why Verrian left. I want Rhona de Charembourg to fall down a drain.

  Javier sent her to the changing room. ‘Freshen up, get rid of that not-so-charming smock, then put on Oro.’ He sent Marcy to the stores for stockings and told Alix to borrow shoes and a girdle from the mannequins’ supplies.

  ‘Your waist measurement?’ he asked Alix when she returned, washed and clad in a silk robe.

  ‘Twenty-one inches.’

  ‘You have lost weight. So has Solange. What is it with you girls? Boyfriends?’

  ‘I don’t have a boyfriend, Monsieur.’

  He tutted. ‘No boyfriend, just misery. Well, misery is good for the figure. And only misery can teach you what happiness is. As you’re to model my Expo dress, you will receive a brassière and other underwear, including a girdle which will take two inches off your waist. Be very careful from now on about eating cake and bread, because once I alter a garment to your shape, I do not want to find you’ve expanded. Besides which, it is very uncomfortable to have a tight middle when you’ve eaten cake.’ He patted his stomach and laughed.

  ‘Monsieur, are you asking me to show your clothes? I mean, not just for tonight?’

  ‘I think I am. I like having you around, Alix, and you are an easy shape to fit. I punished you by sending you back to the benches, now I pluck you away again. You understand couture and you have no boyfriend, which is an excellent thing in a mannequin, as poor Solange’s fate will demonstrate.’

  ‘Her fate?’

  ‘She has lost her job, petite. Tonight she would have been photographed wearing a dress that in a week’s time will be seen by thousands at the World’s Fair. Instead, she is … pouff.’ He launched an invisible butterfly into the air. ‘Mme Kilpin told me that you had the making of a mannequin.’

  ‘She did?’

  ‘She is a remarkably good judge, both of what suits her and what suits my clothes. She is not the most loyal client, but she is a valued one. Ah –’ he raised a finger – ‘one last thing: I have heard a whisper that you have a second job.’

  ‘I … I do?’ At last her copying was to be thrown at her feet.

  ‘I have been told you go to Montmartre, to a studio on Place du Tertre?’

  Alix felt a prickle of relief. ‘Yes. I sometimes sit for an artist. More of a favour than a job, though he’s very talented. His name is Raphael Bonnet.’

  ‘I know of him – a brave painter, and quite famous for his nudes. If he is painting you so …’ Javier raised a hand to stop her interrupting, ‘I do not need to know. But once you show my clothes, such a thing is impermissible. A Javier mannequin is recognised for her style and beauty – her lovely physique, her air of mystery, her cool untouchability. This promotes the Javier legend, whereas a painter’s portrait reveals the human truth. The two are not in sympathy. You understand? You will not sit for Bonnet again.’

  ‘Yes, M. Javier. I mean, no.’

  ‘Good. Now, off you go and make friends with Oro.’

  *

  Twenty minutes later, Alix looked at herself in a long mirror and her eyes widened. Another woman had taken her place. She felt two inches taller. Oro showed the curve of her shoulder, and her dresser, by pinning up her hair, had made her neck seem almost as swanlike as Solange’s. Nelly, one of the other mannequins, painted her face, giving her theatrical eyebrows and a crimson mouth. ‘Let’s do eyes like Bette Davis,’ she said, holding a saucer over a candle flame. Smoky carbon appeared, which she mixed with baby oil and shadowed into the creases of Alix’s eyes. ‘There. Smouldering.’

  ‘Oro pleases you?’ Javier asked when Alix appeared in the salon. Carried away by the success of the horsehair lace, he had decorated the dupion flounces with gold vermicelli, which gave the dress a light-reflecting magnificence.

  ‘I feel like the Empress Eugénie.’

  ‘Move then, twirl. Let’s see that skirt dance.’ Javier snapped his fingers for black evening gloves. Alix had to wear gloves because her fingernails were too short.

  ‘Let them grow and don’t bite them, petite.’

  She posed in profile on the stage that Christine de Charembourg had recently vacated, and Rhona’s perfume still hung in the air. Javier made her sit on the top step, her elbows bent, her hands raised in an attitude. An assistant arranged the golden skirts. The lights were lowered, and the photographer asked her to stay absolutely still.

  Two hours later, Javier was satisfied and she was allowed to go away and change.

  *

  Tears slipped down Alix’s cheeks as she stepped out on to Rue de la Trémoille. It was eight o’clock, the sun low above the rooftops and she could still feel the imprint of those steps on her buttocks. Marcy walked beside her, wearing the same bloodless mask, but Marcy was going back to a happy home in Batignolles. Alix was off to visit her grandmother. Then back to her room. A glass of sherry with Rosa before bed and, with luck, a few hours’ oblivion.

  She’d not told the comte that, a week ago, Mémé had been transferred from the Lariboisière hospital to ‘Le Cloître’, a clinic an hour’s train ride from Paris. Doctors had explained that the full extent of Mme Lutzman’s brain injury was difficult to assess. Recovery was possible, but Alix must be realistic, they said. In the meantime, the patient would do best in a facility that specialised in head injury. Le Cloître was giving its care for free, but Alix had to cover the cost of bed linen and feeding. By the time she’d paid those bills and her train fares, she was searching the lining of her coat for odd coins to buy food. She knew the comte would have offered her money, and she also knew that at this moment he was the last person in the world from whom she’d take it.

  These days she seemed to bounce between grief, worry and humiliation. The humiliation was Verrian’s fault. On the night of Mémé’s attack, Alix had waited in the hospital all night. And all the following day, expecting Verrian to join her.

  When he didn’t come, and fearing his injured hand had turned nasty, she’d telephoned the News Monitor and learned that Mr Haviland was not there. She got the same answer from the Hôtel Polonaise, so that evening she’d left her grandmother’s bedside and gone to their café on the Champs-Elysées, hoping he would come. She’d sat at their table till midnight, and for three evenings afterwards, enduring the pity of the waiters as she checked every man who passed. She’d waited for a letter, inventing reasons when none came. Perhaps Verrian had gone off to Germany again, or been called back to London. There was a family crisis. He’d fallen ill, had an accident. When she called at the Monitor building in person, the smart girl at reception told her that Mr Haviland was ‘away for the time being’.

  ‘When will he be back?’

  ‘We don’t know.’ The receptionist gave her a sugary smile. ‘And by the way, dear, you do know who he is?’

  ‘Of course,’ Alix shot back defensively. She’d come in her w
orkbench clothes. In a suit she’d have garnered more respect. ‘He’s a reporter.’

  ‘What I mean, dear, is that he’s the boss’s son.’

  ‘The boss?’

  ‘Lord Calford –’ the girl raised her voice – ‘is chairman and owner of this newspaper, and Mr Haviland is his son. You do know he’s the Honourable Mr Haviland?’

  Alix had stared, baffled more by the girl’s need to relate this information than by the information itself. ‘So what?’ she countered. ‘I am the Honourable Alix Gower. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.’

  Rosa had suggested that Verrian might have gone back to his old lodgings near the Gare du Nord, to Laurentin’s place. Alix travelled there one evening, finding a garishly lit hotel.

  ‘M. Haviland?’ Laurentin had shrugged. ‘Sorry, puce, not seen him. Paid his tab ages ago, left for the sunny slopes of Montmartre.’ Laurentin looked her up and down and something between pity and embarrassment crossed his face. ‘Lives a complicated life, does our friend. Used to make international calls. Ah, don’t cry, puce, plenty more fish in the sea. Stop and have a drink. Pretty little thing like you, I could put some work your way.’

  She’d looked around his bar, saw the girls at the tables and slapped his face.

  Why was it that everyone she loved went from her life? Changed, died or abandoned her? Or, in the case of Sylvie le Gal, did all at the same time. Marcy, seeing her tears and mis-interpreting them, slung an arm round her shoulder and said, ‘This business is tough, but hey, Alix, you’re a mannequin now. You will be known as the girl who made Oro beautiful.’

  ‘The other girls will hate me.’

  Marcy laughed. ‘Not all of them – they’re too lazy. Nelly certainly—’ She broke off as a taxi pulled up ahead of them and a large woman clambered out. It was Mme Markova, who was in charge of Javier’s cabine, the room where the mannequins dressed for parades and shows.

  Recognising them, she waddled towards them, calling, ‘Girls, is Monsieur still at work, do you know?’ She was carrying a rolled newspaper.