The Dress Thief

by Natalie Meg Evans

  She paraded No. 1 to Mrs Hawkesley, then more day dresses, then suits and evening gowns.

  ‘It’s all tip-top,’ Mrs Hawkesley declared as Alix made her final turn in a floor-length coat of écru lace over an evening dress of watered silk. ‘Dear Mrs Kilpin – ever so generous, sending me here. I could wear that lovely dress at our next mayoral do. Did I mention that my husband’s Mayor of Salford? Only –’ with a glance at Alix’s whip-slim figure – ‘I shall never fit into it.’

  Rosa stepped forward and said in her best elocution, ‘Modes Lutzman will make a version to flatter Modom’s figure to perfection, and knock the mayor’s socks off, while we’re at it.’

  *

  Summer 1938 arrived with heavy heat. At the Rose Noire, ‘Tiptoe Through the Tulips’ had all the finesse of a stampede of bullocks. Frazer Hoskins had left after Serge sacked his Creole singer without consulting him. His Smooth Envoys had gone with him. Their replacement, Roistering Rex’s Regents of Rhythm, didn’t know which end to blow their instruments.

  The young Englishman beside Alix issued a cloud of cigarette smoke and said, ‘Save your agonies for the true low point, when Miss Dulcie L’Amour steps up to sing. The Rose Noire is sliding.’

  ‘Then find another club that gives you free champagne.’ A crushing glance accompanied her words. She knew why Jolyan Ferryman came here – and it wasn’t just because Serge supplied him with champagne and cigarettes. He came as Rhona de Charembourg’s escort and, she suspected, her spy. The Comtesse de Charembourg had been a regular visitor here for some months. Though Paris was thinning out as wealthy people left for their summer holidays, she continued to come. Always with the same group of friends, which included a Swiss businessman named Maurice Ralsberg. And she never passed Alix’s table without delivering a scorching glance.

  From the way Rhona and Ralsberg danced, bodies locked, Alix deduced that the friends were camouflage and that Jolyan’s role was that of smokescreen. As he was known to be the Comte de Charembourg’s secretary, his presence implied that Rhona was on the town with her husband’s consent.

  Tonight, under the pink-frosted lights, Rhona’s dress shimmered like a metallic rainbow. Ten thousand paillettes stitched on to tulle … fabulously expensive as every disk would have been sewn by hand. Alix gave a shudder. It was snakelike, that dress. Ralsberg couldn’t keep his hands still, so he must like stroking scales. ‘Must like paying her account too,’ she murmured. That was a dress to be worn for a lover, not a husband.

  In spite of Roistering Rex’s murdering of the jazz repertoire, the Rose Noire was still the ‘in’ venue. Still the place to dance in a sexually charged environment. But not really the sort of place you’d expect a dull dog like Jolyan Ferryman to wash up.

  He’d planted himself at her solitary table some weeks ago, ignoring her scowl and offering her a cigarette. ‘Black Russian. You won’t have tried one, I’m sure.’

  ‘Actually I have. My landlady smokes them.’

  He lit hers, then his. ‘I’m told you’re Miss Gower and that you’re English. Do let’s chat … in English. I’m starting to dream in French which, I assure you, is alarming for a boy from Tun-bridge Wells.’

  ‘I don’t speak English here,’ she’d said curtly, checking to see if Serge had noticed this stranger at her side. Serge had different tactics when it came to rivals, depending on his mood and the status of the interloper. He might sit down at the table, drawing the stranger into conversation, only to floor him with some humiliating comment. Or he might stand beside Alix, exuding threat. If he felt lazy, he’d send a henchman to do the business. Yes, Serge had seen them. Goosebumps rose on Alix’s arms as she saw him beckon a burly waiter. A minute later, champagne arrived at their table.

  Serge had explained later. ‘The kid may be the comtesse’s bag-carrier for now, but I’ve watched him, chiselling his way into Maurice Ralsberg’s favour. Give him time, he’ll be Ralsberg’s right-hand man. Grovellers like that are useful. Particularly when they have secrets.’

  Studying Ferryman covertly, Alix acknowledged that the Englishman had at least one secret – his source of income. His evening suit was new. Those gold-tipped Sobranies were smoked from an inlaid ebony holder. He smelled of cologne way out of the price range of a humble secretary. Clearly it paid to chaperone the Comtesse de Charembourg.

  It was Ferryman’s hair that most repelled her, she decided. So slickly oiled, move one strand, the whole lot would shift.

  He caught her staring and gave her a razor-sharp smile. ‘Want the name of my barber, Miss Gower?’

  ‘Stop calling me Miss Gower. Alix or Mademoiselle. “Miss” is pretentious.’

  ‘Why? But speaking of “pretentious” –’ he plucked their champagne from its ice and topped up their glasses – ‘what do we make of Serge and the family château at Epernay? He talks about it all the time, its unique terroire, its lovingly tended slopes and yet … and yet …’

  ‘He talks of it. Why not?’

  ‘“The champagne acres of Cuvée Martel …”’ He tipped the bottle to the light to read its label. ‘And yet he serves Lanson. Been to visit?’

  ‘Not yet, it’s too far. We’re always busy. Shut up and let me listen to the band.’

  ‘You want to listen? I’d say those poor tulips have been flattened to a pulp.’

  ‘Rex and his band are new. Give them a chance to settle in – or go and lower the tone in some other club.’ Alix was in no mood for banter. She and Serge had quarrelled that evening. She’d arrived with her dress sticking to her in the July heat, and one glance at the sweating press on the dance floor had made her long for a cool bath and a muslin sheet. Serge had gripped her arm and walked her unceremoniously to their table, fuming because he’d sent a car to Rue Jacob and she’d kept it waiting for two hours.

  She’d tried to explain that customers had arrived to see her collection just as she was closing, and she’d had to call her staff back. The visitors had made her show everything twice, then departed without buying. When Serge shrugged, she’d yelled that she didn’t run to a timetable like a Paris bus. He could be pleasant, or she’d go home. She’d walk; she didn’t need his precious car.

  He’d told her she was getting shrewish, like Solange.

  Bloody men. But she knew how to blot them out. Pot cut with tobacco, rolled and smoked from her own twenty-two-carat gold holder. Turning away from Ferryman, she sank into a creative trance, fixed on an attractive woman on the dance floor and mentally dressed her in a Lutzman original. She started with the finished dress, stripping back to the basics of construction, drawing on everything she’d learned from Javier and Mme Frankel.

  Tonight she saw fresh evidence of a trend – ‘Return to Romance’. The willow-wand anatomy was giving way to draped lines. Skirts were getting fuller. Waists more defined. Sleeves, puffed and fluted. Javier had seen it a good year ago in ’37. She, curse her caution, had failed to reflect it in her 1938 spring–summer collection because she’d argued that the world was not getting lovelier, or wealthier. Would people want romance when the newspapers were full of riots, shortages and military build-up? The answer, it seemed, was yes.

  She’d once asked Javier, ‘Why does fashion change so slowly, then change overnight?’ He’d laughed and said, ‘I quote the Sun King: “Fashion is the mirror of history.” We will look back at this era and say, “Aha, that is what killed the Puritan chimney pot and brought back the crinoline.” But don’t ask me what will trigger it, for by definition history needs distance.’

  You couldn’t predict fashion, Alix thought. It was an interaction of art, technology, dreams and caprice. To know what might come next year, you needed what Rosa called the ‘divvy’s nose’. The autumn–winter collection Alix was planning for this next month – August – was a risky departure. She’d dug deep into her loan from Gregory Kilpin, ordering hundreds of metres of Jacquard silk and silk velvet, stiffening fabric and – yes – horsehair lace. Too poor to commission her own textiles, she’d bought
everything in plain colours. She would add surface embroidery and trimmings, but the risk was in the shapes she was creating. Not a chimney pot to be seen.

  ‘Scent of drains?’ Ferryman murmured in her ear, jolting her from her reverie. He smirked. ‘You were frowning. We both know we’re slumming it here.’ His gesture encompassed the dance floor, the pink globe ceiling lights, black lacquer tables and chairs, the long bar with its art deco brass. ‘The Rose Noire is a harlot, silk and fur on the surface, all slut underneath.’

  ‘Jolyan, why do you come here? Is it just to use this table to impress your very few friends?’

  After a flicker of antipathy he couldn’t hide, he said, ‘I’m drawn here by the thrilling Dulcie L’Amour.’ He pointed his cigarette holder towards the stage. ‘What she lacks in tunefulness, she makes up for in stamina. I admire a girl who can gyrate all night after an athletic afternoon stint with Serge and the boys.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Rehearsing her set, dear. What did you think I meant?’

  Alix drew on her hashish cigarette, inviting stupor into her system. She’d seen the looks Serge gave Dulcie, an American blonde who wiggled and shimmied so you didn’t notice she couldn’t sing. Didn’t notice if you were a man, anyway. Alix didn’t need Ferryman to point out that Serge’s interest was straying. He was drawing people around him that he could control, who flattered him. Getting rid of those who stood up to him. How much longer would he want her? She was no longer a glamorous mannequin. Nor was she an inexperienced girl unseated by his masculine confidence. These days, she was a career woman who worried about cash flow and fell asleep in the bath. For all that, the thought of losing Serge rocked her. Like hashish, he took the sharp edge off daily living. She didn’t always love him … in fact, she didn’t always like him. Sometimes he frightened her, and it was a rare day that she wasn’t exasperated by him. He was vain and manipulative, but the fact that he wanted her was immeasurably important. To feel needed was everything. It eased the pain of Verrian’s rejection, Javier’s disgust, Jean-Yves’s dishonesty. When a plate of oysters arranged in a heart shape arrived at their table, the waiters setting down dipping-bowls of Mignonette sauce and lemon, Alix didn’t know whether to laugh or grind her teeth.

  This was Serge saying sorry for his temper. But why couldn’t he come and sit by her instead? Take her hand? Dance with her?

  Jolyan misunderstood the shake of her head. ‘Can pride come before an oyster, Miss Gower? Freshly torn from the Ile de Ré, voluptuously raw. I dare you to resist. Are you going to share?’

  ‘Have them all.’

  ‘You don’t like oysters?’

  ‘I don’t like to be bribed, with seafood or francs. I leave that to you.’

  ‘Nasty.’

  A short while later, a bouquet of dark-crimson roses added to the clutter on their table. No note attached. Their brooding colour was their calling card.

  ‘Why are red roses the universal apology?’ Jolyan downed an oyster in one, his throat convulsing. ‘Or indeed the universal thank-you?’ He peered around the display. ‘Is it the association with scarlet boudoirs … or a nod to deflowering? They say Serge has corrupted you beautifully. Oh dear, you’re scowling again. Has love grown stale? Have your petals started to curl?’

  Alix turned her head away but Jolyan was set on having the last word.

  ‘You’ve shackled yourself to a man with cheap taste in flowers, who hasn’t the courage to care for you. Men like Serge Martel never understand the value of what they have. They acquire what other people seek and they cradle it as a miser cradles gold. Then they grow tired of it, destroy it and pursue the fantasy of the next possession. What I admire in you, Miss Gower, is your peasant mulishness. You’re a sticker. Unfortunately for you, you’re stuck with Martel.’

  ‘You think I should leave him?’

  ‘Lord no.’ Jolyan pretended to choke on his oyster. ‘No saying what our friend would do to you if he thought you were casting him off. You’re in for the long run, his favourite doormat until he tires of you.’

  Alix closed her eyes as Roistering Rex swung his men into a wince-inducing rendition of ‘Take the “A” Train’.

  *

  In the early hours, she undressed slowly, Serge in bed watching and waiting. The room smelled of shisha tobacco and, from the strength of the vapour, she guessed Serge had added nubs of resin to ‘liven the mix’ as he put it, though it usually had the opposite effect. He would smoke it from the hookah next to his bed. That blue glass bottle with its snakeskin hose she’d once mistaken for a vaginal douche. God, that had made him howl the first time he’d invited her to join him in using it.

  ‘Here?’ she’d asked, blushing to the roots. ‘With you watching? Shouldn’t I go to the bathroom?’ When he’d unravelled her confusion, he’d fallen out of bed laughing and she knew he’d passed the story around because next time they went to the Pigalle jazz club, his friend Mezz had rolled a joint for her and said, ‘You want lessons on just where to put this, sugar?’

  She undressed to her underwear, the way Serge liked. A satin corselet, lightly boned, silk stockings. As she got in beside him, he reached for her and pulled her on top of him. He had that lost look which meant he’d be slow and languorous, but not really there. He offered her the hookah hose but she refused.

  ‘No more. I drank too much. I wanted to blot out Ferryman.’

  ‘I told you to be nice to him, get in his good books.’

  ‘He hasn’t any good books – no, I don’t want to smoke.’ Serge was trying to angle the hose between her lips.

  ‘Yes, you do. You’re all elbows tonight. Loosen the screws, Alix.’ He covered the hookah’s bowl with the base of a champagne glass to let the smoke build. ‘Come on, nice and slow. Don’t waste it.’

  Soon she too had that slumberous feeling, as if the ceiling were an inch above her head and made of rubbery atoms. Then Serge was pinning her down – though not like a wrestler as he sometimes did – just smothering her, the way that excited him. He entered her and thrust fast and furiously, to the point where she pushed him away, saying, ‘Serge, let me catch up.’

  But he wasn’t listening. Before he came, he rolled off her with a sigh and said, ‘You take over.’

  Knotted with frustrated need, she knelt beside him and, closing her eyes, put her lips around his erect penis. He groaned, while she kept her hand braced against his stomach, because once he’d gripped the back of her head so hard she’d nearly suffocated. With her free hand, she caressed him intimately until he was writhing under her. Then, raising her head, she brought him to climax with her hand. She’d learned some tricks with Serge … Was that what Ferryman meant about scarlet boudoirs?

  While Serge recovered, Alix got pins and needles. Her mind sticky, her heart heavy, she tested an idea: Alix Gower, doormat.

  Doormat? When she had the table of honour by the dance floor, and all the champagne and hashish she wanted? Serge must feel something for her. All those car rides to Le Cloître when she’d needed him … he’d been kind that way. He’d bought her the gold cigarette holder and numerous bits of jewellery.

  Alix Gower, mistress.

  Getting out of bed, she studied herself for a long time in a vertical mirror. Rosa was right, she’d got too thin. Alix Gower, last year’s fashion. She walked to the bed, and stared down at Serge, who had already slid into thoughtless sleep. She could almost feel Jolyan Ferryman beside her, chuckling, ‘Shackled, dear, until he decides it’s over.’

  Quickly she put on her dress and shoes, staggering as she balanced on one heel. She fell heavily and swore, but Serge didn’t stir. Damn him, leaving her halfway up the flagpole, frustrated, unloved like … like Mme Rey’s mop. Yes. That’s what she was, a mop Serge took out of the cupboard when he needed it. He’d left her alone all evening, thrown himself into bed, smoked himself witless, then expected her to perform on him like a –

  ‘To hell with it.’ She strode to his bedside, seized the hookah with the notion
of cracking it over his head, but then turned and flung it against the wall. Blue glass shattered.

  Using her lipstick, she wrote, ‘It’s over, goodbye’, on the dressing-table mirror and left. Serge slept on.

  *

  July 1938 dragged itself to a close, sultry and airless. Alix, who had feared that Serge would come calling on her, demanding explanations, was perplexed as one week, then two, passed without word. Maybe he was too self-absorbed to be vengeful? When August arrived with no communication, she decided this must be true.

  The abrupt change to her nightly routine took some getting used to. All those spare hours … but she adjusted and filled them by working on her upcoming collection.

  Alix spent the morning of the 10th August with her première, testing different lining fabrics to go with the cloth she’d selected for her tailor-mades. Having stitched a sample to prove that her choice of rayon silk would work best, she instructed Mme LeVert to order a bale and get cutting, then went up to her flat and ate a lunch of lettuce leaves and cucumber. Her autumn-winter show was in eight days and she already felt sick with nerves.

  That afternoon, she assumed her role as a mannequin, parading to some Englishwomen who spent the time fanning themselves and asking if windows could be opened wider. By the time they’d left, she was ready to drop and said to Rosa, ‘We should have siestas like the Spaniards do. Sleep in the afternoon and come back to work at night.’

  Rosa told her to go and have a lie-down. ‘We won’t miss you for an hour.’

  Alix was listing all the reasons why she couldn’t take a rest when three long rings of the bell made her gasp. Rosa breathed, ‘Oh, my giddy aunt.’ Three rings was M. Hubert’s code for a police raid. They’d agreed on the signal in the early days of the business, when Alix was convinced the couture police would come after her because of who she was.