The Dress Thief

by Natalie Meg Evans

  ‘Happy coincidence. You had an affair?’

  ‘A brief one. She married someone else that same year and then she died. That’s all there is to say.’

  ‘All?’ Rhona got up so fast her chair skidded backwards. ‘You betrayed me and all you have to say is “that’s all?”’ She slammed both hands against his chest, her nails piercing through his clothes. For the second time he dropped Célie Haupmann’s beads.

  Rhona clawed at his neck. ‘How could such a woman eclipse me? A pauper … a foreigner! Was she so beautiful, or just a clever slattern?’

  ‘She was beautiful, and she was no slattern.’

  ‘No? Bedding you when you were already married?’

  ‘You’ll never understand, but I loved Mathilda from the first moment I saw her. She was in terrible need, and I was the only person in the world who could help. I had no idea how deeply I felt until years later when I opened my eyes in a hospital near Arras. I realised—’

  ‘What?’

  Realised I should have waited and married her. Backing away from the raking fingernails, he felt his legs collide with Célie Haupmann’s bed. He shoved Rhona away and the fight seemed to go out of her.

  He said, ‘Let’s remember where we are.’

  A moment later he was reeling from a vicious slap.

  ‘It all began here, didn’t it?’ Rhona forced herself past him and stood over Haupmann, whose eyelids fluttered. ‘I heard what you said to this old witch. You killed Lutzman and she knew it. It’s why you’ve kept her here all these years on full salary. Keeping her sweet. Keeping her quiet. Isn’t that right, Haupmann?’

  For a hideous moment Jean-Yves thought Rhona was going to strip the bed cover off the old woman. He grabbed her elbow. ‘Control yourself. Show some decency.’

  ‘She knew you were a killer. It’s why you’ve stayed away from here most of your life. Well, I could go to the police. I heard enough to have you arrested.’

  ‘You won’t,’ he said, pulling her away from the bed, steering her towards the door. ‘You’ve got more to lose than I have. Now get out. Send in the nurse and have the priest fetched.’

  She defied him. ‘Our marriage is over, Jean-Yves. Oh, we’ll stay together. Don’t think I’ll set you free. But understand, from now on, I shall have my freedom too. As for that girl, Mathilda’s brat—’

  ‘Leave Alix alone. She’s utterly blameless.’

  Rhona laughed. ‘No, she’s a grubby little seamstress who has already learned the cost of crossing my path and meddling with my family. She’ll pay hard. Someone has to, for what you’ve done to me.’

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Paris, 3rd July

  Alix opened her eyes, realising her bathwater was cold. Somebody was knocking on the door.

  ‘You all right in there, ducks? Not whooshed yourself down the plughole?’

  She proved that she was fine by climbing out, grabbing a towel and unlocking the door. ‘Went to sleep,’ she grinned at Rosa.

  ‘That’s a habit to get out of. As I see it, you can be an owl or a lark but not both. Tea on the table, five minutes.’

  Alix buffed herself dry, then rubbed paraffin cream into her nails. After that she massaged her skin with coconut oil, jasmine and glycerine. It was Saturday, and Saturday night at the Rose Noire always attracted a glamorous crowd. Alix felt better sitting at her solitary table if she was impeccably groomed. Rosa was right though; she was burning the candle at both ends and the middle. Couture, copying, being a mannequin, her duties as Serge’s girl … any one of those jobs would have kept a normal person busy. Smoothing the oil into her legs, she felt a tentative ripple of erotic response. Serge had been right – after that first horrible time on her birthday, the pain had lessened. Three weeks on, she felt no pain, but not much pleasure either. Apparently it was because she didn’t relax. She tried to, but certain parts of her body had a mind of their own. Certain parts locked up.

  Serge had sent roses after that first night, twenty-one red-black blooms. Rosa, who’d taken the delivery, had passed them over with one eyebrow raised and commented, ‘I shan’t ask, but in my experience roses usually have a lot to do with pricks. I hope he’s looking after you.’

  When Alix muttered, ‘Of course,’ Rosa elucidated –

  ‘I mean looking after you. Either he’s the marrying kind or he’ll play the gentleman. He’ll use French letters – condoms – or jump off at Fratton.’

  ‘Where? What? I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Pull out one stop from the terminal. Oh, look at that innocent face. Way you’re going, it’s married with babies by twenty-two or a backstreet abortion. Get some rubbers.’

  Blushing and stammering, she mentioned the matter to Serge, who showed anger for the first time. ‘I don’t wear those things, I don’t have the pox and I’m not a fruit.’

  ‘Serge, I’m not suggesting … just, I don’t want to get pregnant. You need to … I mean we … We need to be careful.’

  They’d been on their way to see Mémé. Alix kept checking the rigid profile, thinking, Any minute he’s going to remind me how much fuel he’s spending on me. Or he’ll smile and stroke my knee. Serge’s moods were like a billiard ball flicked with a bent cue. You couldn’t predict their direction. What he did was slam on the brakes. Alix shot forward, smacking her head against the car’s dashboard.

  Serge watched her struggle back onto her seat before saying, ‘Your problem is, you’re a bag of worries. It makes you tense. Tight is one thing, but I’m getting tired of knocking at the cathedral door.’

  A few kilometres on came a pat on the knee. ‘I can see I’m going to have to procure you some medicine. Sorry about the bang. A deer shot out in front of me – didn’t you see it?’

  *

  Saturday evening … Alix checked the time. Six hours before she was due at the Rose Noire. She’d do her hair, she decided, and slouch around in an old dress until it was time to change. Serge had been away the last few days, meeting business associates at Le Havre on the Normandy coast. The separation had softened her anger at his behaviour. He was right; she was a bag of worries, because half the time her mind was at Mémé’s bedside. Tonight, when he returned, she’d ease up, she decided. Smile and show Serge how much she liked being at his table, dancing with him. Drinking champagne. Three days without bubbles, she felt twitchy.

  Pouring out tea in the lounge, Rosa took in Alix’s pin curls, kept in place with kirby grips and a knotted scarf. ‘Time was, I used to make that sort of effort. I know the man you should have hung on to.’

  ‘He left me, Rosa.’

  ‘He was a gent, Mr Haviland. Didn’t have to pretend – in the blood. What d’you reckon, Toinette?’

  Rosa’s housemaid, watching the summer evening crowds through the open window, said, ‘Alix, isn’t that your nice friend coming across the square? The boy who helped you move your stuff here? The one with the little girls?’

  ‘Paul’s here?’ Alix joined Toinette at the window and her heart sank. It was Paul coming, Lala and Suzy skipping alongside him. She hadn’t seen much of him since starting her affair with Serge. In the beginning it had been fine because Paul hadn’t known about them. Then, somehow, he’d found out. Maybe through Bonnet, who’d bumped into her and Serge on Place Pigalle. It had been the early hours and they’d been on their way to sound out a new jazz club. Leaving Serge to park the car, Alix had gone ahead, night air soft on her shoulders. She’d seen a figure coming out of a subterranean cabaret she knew to be a gambling club. Bonnet. He’d spotted her and come over, arms outstretched, looking rougher than ever, and as if he’d lost all interest in washing. Knowing Serge would take him for a vagrant, she’d smiled and tried to walk on. Bonnet hadn’t taken the hint, grasping her arm and burbling something about ‘losing his next month’s rent, and if Alix was a true friend …’

  Serge had sped up to them, roaring threats, and Bonnet had stumbled away. Since then, everyone seemed to know she was Serge Martel’s latest. At their last
meeting Paul had been distant, and they’d quarrelled after he referred to Alix as ‘Serge’s moll’ …

  This time he was polite, just. Alix made a fuss of Lala and Suzy to cover her awkwardness, but when Toinette brought in cake and fresh tea she left the room, making the excuse of needing to finish her hair. Paul followed her upstairs.

  He said from the doorway of her room, ‘Una says you’re slowing down with the sketches. Too much on your plate. You can’t shoot five ducks with one gun, she says.’

  Alix, pulling the scarf off her head of curls, retorted, ‘You can, if they stay still. Look, I’m giving her a steady stream and I can’t do more. I don’t want to do more. How often do I have to explain?’

  ‘We won’t get paid again until the autumn–winter line is in production and, Alix, I’m in a fix. I got fined again for mooring illegally. And my propeller driveshaft is going – that’s funny?’

  She hadn’t meant to laugh. She was picking up bad habits from Serge. ‘It’s not funny, but listen, I’m not a machine.’ She loosened a pin curl to see if it was dry. ‘New York won’t go into production until the middle of August and it’s only just July.’

  Paul usually accepted her reasoning, but this time, seeing his eyes burning holes in the mirror, she snapped, ‘What?’

  ‘It’s you. Since becoming a mannequin and going out with that hoodlum, your nose has got stuck in the air. You haven’t time for your friends.’

  ‘How dare you?’

  ‘It’s true! You’ve dumped Bonnet, and I suppose I’m next.’

  A twinge of truth … Bonnet that night had repelled her. She still cared for Paul, but his affair with Una and the unremitting pressure to copy had robbed their friendship of its casual innocence. What she was doing to Javier was breaking her heart, and Paul didn’t seem to understand. It made her want to be cruel to him. ‘Yes, you’re right, I’m more choosy now. I mean … Serge doesn’t leave chalky footprints on the floor.’ She threw a meaningful glance at the floorboards. ‘I ride in a car these days, drink champagne and sleep on satin sheets –’ She stopped, seeing the alteration in Paul’s expression.

  He said quietly, ‘Is that what you always wanted? Cars? Tables in flashy bars? Why didn’t you say? Then I wouldn’t have spent all this time waiting and hoping. When I knew you’d been with Martel …’ he swallowed, ‘I thought, Why him, not me? Why, with all the love I sent to Alix, the way I held her but never forced myself on her … why go with a hog like Serge Martel?’

  She grabbed her hairbrush and hurled it at him, purposely missing, because even in her spite she didn’t want to hurt him more. ‘He’s not a hog!’

  ‘No, hogs are honest.’ He strode up to her and grabbed the hand reaching for a powder compact. ‘Why not me?’ he said into her hair. ‘How about, because you only get rough wine at my table, which is only a cable drum. Because I give you lifts on a bicycle not in a Peugeot? Oh, Alix, I’d have loved you like a king. You would never have been ashamed of me in bed.’

  A dry cough stopped him. From the top of the stairs Rosa said, ‘Come down, if you want any of that cake. And kindly stop throwing things at my walls.’

  Paul went out, pausing to say to Alix, ‘It’s gypsum, not chalk – on my boots. I’m still doing shifts at the exhibition site. It won’t be finished till the day before it closes. I’m the muscle who mixes the plaster.’

  *

  ‘Right, what’s up?’ Rosa said, soon as the door closed on Paul and the girls. A few well-aimed questions had Alix crying into a napkin.

  ‘I don’t understand him,’ she sobbed. ‘He has Una, who probably knows more about sex than … than …’

  ‘What? A tomcat? A tart?’

  ‘No.’ It didn’t matter. ‘He has her, so why is he blaming me for having someone?’

  ‘Because he’s a man and not rational,’ Rosa told her. ‘Not when it comes down to trouser basics. When a man wants a woman so badly it hurts, you could swap his brain for a cabbage and not notice the difference.’

  ‘I was cruel.’

  ‘It was always going to happen, dear, sooner or later. The being-cruel bit, I mean.’

  29th July 1937

  The heat in the mannequins’ cabine was stupefying. Not just because twelve young women and their dressers were crammed in, but because the ironing women were at work. No electrical flexes allowed in here. The women kept their irons at the right heat by continually returning them to a special oven. Their faces glowed with perspiration.

  ‘Five minutes, girls,’ cried Mme Markova. As chef de cabine, she would marshal every girl in and out of the salon. ‘Stand by for Waverley, Falcon, Lomond and Wild Heather.’

  Sounds like the stations on a Scottish railway, Alix thought, dusting her underarms with talcum powder. In her nervousness, she tipped some on to her feet, adding the scent of gardenia to the florals and musks. Oh, for a cool breeze. Her mind sped to the banks of the Seine and those fountains and to the woods near Versailles where she and Serge had strolled one evening after sitting with her grandmother.

  She stepped into a skirt. Tweed lined with silk, while outside Paris sweated, thunder nestling in the clouds. Today was Javier’s autumn–winter launch, her first collection as a professional mannequin. She was no longer Alix, the girl Javier had plucked from the sewing room. She’d become ‘Aliki’, choosing Mémé’s pet name for her because she felt different now and wanted the world to know it. She was the silent, aspen-slim girl whose enigmatic air added something extra to the dresses she wore.

  She had the double distinction of wearing clothes she’d helped put together. One day, maybe a year or two from now, she could be showing dresses she’d helped design.

  She reached out to her dressing table. Touch wood. Checked her accessories and made sure her schedule was pinned to her mirror frame. Noise was building on the other side of the curtains as buyers, clients, trendsetters and journalists found their seats.

  Two things missing – Serge and Mémé. If she could have seen either of them craning their necks out there it would have soothed her. Serge was at the Rose Noire auditioning a new jazz band. Mémé still lay deep in a coma.

  Alix buttoned up her blouse, then put her arms into the jacket of specially commissioned tartan her dresser held out for her. Finally she pinned a tam-o’-shanter at a rakish angle. Suede gloves and a sprig of white heather at her cuff completed ‘Lomond’. She had a few minutes to feel sick before Mme Markova put motherly hands on her shoulders and told her, ‘Enjoy yourself, and don’t fall over.’

  Alix followed Zinaida, Nelly and Claudette into an amphitheatre of faces.

  She was supposed to promenade along a raised platform, pose at the far end, turn and amble back as if smelling the roses. But it seemed to take about three breaths. All she took in was the rustle of programmes, the odd cough. Una Kilpin’s wink. Then it was over – she was being disrobed by lightning hands and thinking, Thank God I didn’t fall.

  Marcy mouthed, ‘Well done,’ as Alix stepped into an afternoon dress, one of Javier’s ‘Duenna’ line. Javier joked that his autumn–winter collection was inspired by the Moors, Spanish ones and Scottish ones. This dress took the swirling flamenco theme of the mid-season collection and tamed it for winter wear. It was velvet. I’m going to suffocate, Alix thought. Change of shoes, wriggle into tight elbow-length gloves. Hair in a chignon. Earrings and a marcasite hair comb, a pat of face powder.

  By the time she was parading a satin evening dress called L’Arabie, she was enjoying herself. Really, people were looking at the clothes, not at her. So long as she counted steps and didn’t bump any of the other girls, it was easy. She was striking her pose at the end of the catwalk when, above the whispering and rustling, came a strident voice …

  ‘I’ve had enough. Not one of the models you’ve shown today, M. Javier, is your own original work. I declare this collection is nothing more than a heist!’

  A silence, then a single gasp left a hundred mouths. A rabid bustle as people tried to identify the s
peaker. Alix could see her from her vantage point, but the woman was unknown to her. Middle-aged, in a black hat and white cotton suit.

  Mlle Lilliane manifested onstage, those belligerent eyebrows promising violence.

  The speaker faced the directrice calmly. ‘I am happy to repeat what I just said, if you wish me to.’ The accent was North American.

  Alix sought out Una Kilpin, but Una was whispering to her neighbour. Then Javier was among them. In the mildest of tones he addressed the heckler. ‘Madame? You will perhaps oblige me by explaining your words and, I trust, withdrawing them. I, Javier, have received many slights in my life, but the charge of plagiarism has never before been pointed at me.’

  ‘I’m sincerely sorry to be the first. I’m Gladys Fisk-Castelman and I’m a fashion journalist.’ The woman named a leading New York paper. ‘I saw this collection in New York on July 16th, the day before I sailed.’

  Alix and Una made eye contact, reading each other’s disquiet.

  ‘Madame,’ Javier gave his infinitely respectful bow, ‘this work has been created in my ateliers and cannot also be in New York.’

  ‘Uh-huh?’ Mrs Fisk-Castelman, unabashed at being the sole focus of attention, squeezed along her row, issuing ‘pardon me’s’ and ‘mind your knees’ as she went. She stepped on to the platform inches from Alix. There she unbuttoned her jacket, let it fall.

  She wore a fitted blouse in camel-coloured silk, with mother-of-pearl buttons, a neat collar and a tie neck. It was, Alix conceded, twin to the one she herself had worn with ‘Lomond’. Then again, the blouse was as simple as a blouse could be. Javier clearly thought the same.

  ‘I agree, Madame, your blouse could be the one I designed for my Scottish tailleurs. Or indeed, one I made for my spring collection in 1935. You might find similar blouses this season in three or four other houses. Sometimes a blouse is intended simply to lie quietly beneath a jacket.’

  Someone in the audience began to clap. Someone else shouted, ‘Get on with the show. We don’t want to see an old prune undressing.’