The Dress Thief

by Natalie Meg Evans

  A light thud interrupted him. A short knife had been driven blade-down into the tabletop. Verrian was on his feet, a trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth. He said through painful breaths, ‘I like a fair fight. Take the knife.’

  Serge laughed. ‘What are you going to do, read me the rules of cricket? Or roast me with your cigarette lighter?’ He grinned at Alix and reached for the knife.

  As his fingers closed around it, Verrian’s elbow came down on Serge’s arm, clubbing his funny bone against the table. Serge crumpled in shock. Verrian smashed Serge’s forearm downwards, at the same time snapping the wrist backwards. Alix cried out at the brutal crack. Serge gave an animal howl and fell.

  Verrian slumped on to a chair. ‘Your taste in men stinks,’ he said. ‘Ask for the bill. My wallet’s in my top pocket. You can drive us.’

  ‘I can’t drive.’

  ‘And I thought you had all the talents.’

  *

  Alix returned to Rue Jacob feeling as if she’d run through fire crackers. Every muscle quaked. Verrian had driven them through Paris and she’d feared he might collapse against the wheel. She’d wanted to pull him into her arms and cry over him, but he wouldn’t let her touch him. When they reached Place Vendôme, the staff of the Polonaise had taken over. He hadn’t wanted her. Hadn’t wanted a doctor. If he needed a nurse, he’d told her harshly, he’d ask for Celestia.

  Instructing her receptionist, Violette, to make her double-strength coffee, Alix checked her diary. God help her, Una’s Manchester matrons were booked in again. Parade required. She didn’t think she could walk in a straight line, let alone turn and pose. There was a letter beside her telephone and she tore it open, shaking out a picture postcard of an English seafront. The Queen’s Hotel, Hastings. Hastings was on the south coast of England. Who the hell was on holiday there at this time of year … ? She sought the name at the bottom and groaned.

  Greetings from the front, kiddo. I’ve escaped to the bracing briny, where I am to be joined by Paul. Yes, that Paul. Be a sweetheart and look after his sisters, will you, so we can have some together time?

  ‘No!’ Alix howled, ‘you have to be joking –’

  I won’t demean myself by suggesting you owe me. A dig inside the envelope will reveal my practical gratitude –

  Ten five-thousand-franc notes.

  Keep the change. I shall keep Paul till Mr Kilpin turns up to spoil things. See you February for your collection. Make it stupendous. Last week some butt-blister from the War Office called on Mr K to discuss turning his ships into troop carriers. It’s coming, the big dark one. One more party, then we all put on our raincoats.

  Una

  Alix read the card again. No hint as to when childminding duties would begin.

  *

  The Manchester matrons – an industrialist’s wife, her married daughters and two country cousins – complained they’d given themselves bunions window-shopping on Rue de Rivoli and Faubourg St-Honoré. The prices had shocked them, so they’d come back to Modes Lutzman. ‘High style at sensitive prices, dear Mrs Kilpin assured us.’

  Dear Mrs Kilpin needed a good shake, Alix fumed as the women asked her to turn this way and that, throwing interminable questions about her ‘modes’. Who did her sewing? Were these really the latest styles? All of them calling her ‘Marm’zel’. They didn’t seem to like anything.

  Alix thought, I couldn’t sell a carrot to a rabbit today. She’d close early and take to her bed like a diva. But as she made an entrance in a little black dress set off with gold metal necklaces and slave bracelets, hopes of a lie-down dissolved. Cries of, ‘Alix, we’re here!’ told her that the rest of the day was spoken for. The rest of the month.

  Paul came in, preventing his sisters from running forward by holding the belts of their coats. The Manchester ladies tutted and Alix made frantic motions to Paul to go away. Either he didn’t notice or was still angry with her. Her ornaments clanking, she threw aside formality and hugged the girls. ‘Two other ladies to see the collection,’ she said brightly. ‘Find your own chairs.’

  Lala and Suzy had been well trained by their Aunt Gilberte. They gave little curtsies to the English guests and said, ‘Enchantée, Madame,’ to each one. Manchester jaws relaxed. Smiles appeared. ‘Couldn’t you just eat them?’ said one of the women. Paul took the window seat and lit a cigarette.

  ‘No smoking in the salon,’ Alix told him.

  ‘We don’t mind,’ one of the country cousins tittered. ‘We like a man to be a man.’

  So Paul, wearing a ribbed black sweater that caressed his muscles, watched the parade in a haze of moody smoke. Alix soldiered on, thinking, I need a new name for what I’m doing. You can’t have a parade of one.

  She came back in an evening gown to find Verrian sitting on a sofa arm. Pale, but clearly in no need of tender nursing. The ladies were enjoying something he’d just said, and, Alix thought crossly, he was supposed to be dying.

  ‘So, dear,’ the industrialist’s wife blared as Alix came out in her final model, ‘that sweet dress is not a real Chanel, but quite alike and costs eight thousand francs.’ She counted on her fingers. ‘I make that about forty pounds. Will people think it’s Chanel? That’s the question.’

  ‘I’d prefer they thought it was a real Lutzman,’ Alix said through gritted teeth. She caught Verrian’s eye and read sardonic amusement, which, along with his presence, was a positive sign.

  *

  ‘Celestia is extraordinary.’ Verrian turned the Hispano into Boulevard St-Germain, accelerating to get into the stream of night-time traffic.

  ‘She’s a godsend,’ Alix agreed, giving him a cautious smile. ‘You were right, I admit it.’ She’d closed the office early today, in celebration. After yesterday’s parade, she’d taken eighteen orders from the Manchester ladies, fifty per cent paid up front. So relieved that her barren period was over, she was not only prepared to like Celestia, she was letting Verrian whisk her away for the night, just the two of them. ‘She might have refused to look after two extra children at such short notice, as well as caring for Mémé. But she seemed pleased. I hope they all behave.’

  ‘I’m not sure I care –’ Verrian braked to let a taxi cut in front of him – ‘having got you to myself at last. But it was inspired, taking the children into Bon—to the downstairs studio and getting them painting. Big sticky mess, perfect icebreaker. Oh, look, that’s where you first flirted with me.’ The smile he gave her was an open invitation. ‘Could we carry on where we left off, d’you think? Then move on from flirtation to seduction?’

  Alix glanced where Verrian pointed and saw the Deux Magots café, lit up like a dinner party. ‘Celestia yearns for family,’ she said to mask the flutter of panic his words provoked, ‘and it’s good for Pepe to have playmates. I’m paying her extra,’ she threw in. ‘Una sent money. Actually enough for me to plan a spring–summer collection.’

  Verrian’s reply was cool. ‘You should send the money back. While Una Kilpin pulls your strings, you aren’t free. Anyway, what’s the point of keeping your business going? You told me that every time you try to sketch something, your mind goes blank.’

  ‘A moment ago you were flirting and now you’re bullying. We’re meant to be having a holiday.’

  ‘That doesn’t start until we’ve crossed the river. My point is—’

  ‘I know what your point is, Verrian. Please, just drive.’

  *

  He had booked a table in the Polonaise’s restaurant for eight. ‘Which gives you an hour to change,’ he told Alix as he held open the door of the Lilac Suite for her. ‘Don’t go to sleep in the bath.’

  They would stay here tonight. A suite each, no forced togetherness, though there was a connecting door. The axe of ‘last chance’ still hung over her head. If, tonight, she took a new lover, it had to be without the mask of intoxicants or music. If she couldn’t … well, that was it. She never would.

  After her bath, she dried herself and rubbed jasmine into her
skin. She’d brought Javier’s Eirène with her, a perfume he’d created to go with Oro, inspired by the World Fair’s theme of peace, and he’d given her a flask of it days before dismissing her. The top unscrewed to provide a thin gold stick to apply the fragrance. Coco Chanel said that a girl should apply perfume where she wanted to be kissed. Alix brushed the insides of her wrists, behind her ears, the hollow of her throat.

  So far, so Sunday-school teacher. Consulting her wide eyes in the mirror, she ran the stick between her breasts and across her stomach. Then she thought, If I don’t get dressed, he’ll think I’ve fallen asleep.

  *

  Walking into his suite, she met Verrian in the connecting doorway.

  Both stopped still. Alix was wearing a cherry silk evening dress, slippery as mayonnaise, with an overskirt of shadow-worked chiffon. It left one shoulder bare and the chiffon caught every air current. The dress was intolerant of underwear, so that was pretty much it, apart from a stole of black gauze she trailed from her hand.

  He wore the uniform of his class. Black tie, tuxedo, the only colour topaz cufflinks in gold settings. He recovered first. ‘I have Bollinger on ice.’

  A fire crackled in a marble fireplace in the lounge of his suite. They stood before it and he poured. She accepted a glass and they touched rims. Those bubbles always gave her courage. She’d decided in the bath that she was not going to play the penitent. He had some explaining to do as well. Tonight she’d ask him once again about the wedding ring that had disappeared.

  He laid a hand on her bare shoulder, giving her the chance to shy away. When she didn’t, he put his lips to hers. Just a touch. Alix swayed towards him.

  A knock at the door, a waiter, informing ‘Monsieur’ that his table was ready downstairs. Verrian put their glasses on the mantelpiece, fetched her stole and laid it across her shoulders. ‘This is the best restaurant in Paris, give or take. Not many places would drag me away just now.’

  *

  It was a wonderful restaurant, the best food, service, surroundings she’d ever encountered. And so old-fashioned, her youth and dress drew eyes. Her escort was definitely worth a second glance too.

  Perhaps it was the pearlescent lighting, but Verrian seemed to have shed the fatigue he’d brought back from war. He’d recovered from his winding by Serge. Paris magic, she thought, reaching for her glass. She’d already drunk white wine with her hors d’oeuvre and with her filet of sole. Now she was drinking red with roast grouse and potatoes à la Hollandaise.

  Verrian said, ‘Get drunk if you want to, but not because you have to. There’s no ordeal awaiting you.’

  ‘It is an ordeal. After what the comtesse said, I mean, I can understand –’ A waiter topped up their glasses. By the time he went, Alix had lost her thread.

  Verrian laid his hand over hers. ‘No man is very imaginative when it comes to his woman being with another man, but I know what hardship does. I realise the need to snatch at comfort.’

  ‘I did not snatch and there was no comfort, only a form of madness. If you don’t care for me any more, I’d rather know.’ Actually, she thought, I wouldn’t.

  He didn’t answer at once, and when he did he sounded distant. ‘Nothing hurts more than the death of love.’

  She looked down at her plate. ‘I see.’

  ‘I don’t think you do. When I left England in ’thirty-five, I was engaged to be married to a neighbour’s daughter. I loved Moira, but when I told her my intention to go to North Africa to cover what looked like a short-lived conflict, she showed a side I hadn’t seen before. Her attitude was “to hell with dying foreigners”. She wanted to spend that season toting me around house parties and hunt balls, showing off her engagement ring. I went anyway, and she began seeing my brother. The death of love.’

  ‘She can’t have loved you.’

  ‘The point is, my love for her died.’

  Alix raked a piece of potato through the sauce and put it into her mouth because whatever emotional carnage was on its way, you should always eat. Mémé’s philosophy.

  ‘In Spain I met a girl, Maria-Pilar, and understood what love was. It’s not just physical attraction, or “doing the right thing”. It’s not even working out how much you’ve got to live on and where you might set up house. Nor about stealing kisses in taxis, though I’m fond of that.’ He smiled, pulling her back into his net. ‘It’s finding someone who fits around you and inside you, who you would die for because you want them to exist more than you want your own life to go on. There’s independence in that kind of love. It makes you both strong, so long as it’s mutual.’

  A topaz cufflink kicked out a spark as Verrian drank, his hand moving close to the candle flame. The phantom wedding ring had vanished, his skin uniform brown. ‘You stopped loving Maria-Pilar?’ Alix asked, dreading the answer. If that could die, any love could. Some men could not sustain it. They left tears behind them all their lives.

  ‘It was she who stopped loving me.’

  She stared. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because –’ he leaned forward, his eyes digging into hers – ‘though I was too rash to see it, her belief in God underpinned her very breathing. She thought she could convert me, and when she couldn’t, she looked upon me with despair. Then with judgement, and finally with disgust.’

  ‘How long were you were married?’

  ‘For about two months.’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘She’s dead, Alix. She died on the battlefield.’

  ‘A nurse?’

  ‘A driver. My official driver. Our car was hit by a shell when she took me out to the front one day. I’d seen an Italian tank in a ditch. The crew had been thrown out and I wanted pictures. At the time, the British press was refusing to acknowledge the presence of Italian and German troops on the ground in Spain. I told Maria to drive on a few yards then turn around. I didn’t want her to see those dead boys … ridiculous. She’d seen more death than I had. I took the pictures; next second I was blasted into the ditch. I crawled out and saw a bonfire where the car ought to have been. I couldn’t get close, but I’ve never forgiven myself for not being in that car with her. I might have got her out.’

  Or died with her, more likely. She lifted his hand to her cheek. ‘I’m sorry, Verrian, making you tell me this. Where is she buried?’

  ‘In a mass grave, with other soldiers.’

  Waiters cleared their plates. Verrian ordered ice-cream parfaits for them which neither of them finished. When they were ready to leave he said, ‘I don’t think we should invite the brandy bottle upstairs, but shall I order coffee?’

  They didn’t speak in the lift. In his suite she drank her coffee fast, because whatever he might think, the next minutes were going to be an ordeal. Dutch courage wasn’t working. ‘The Death of Love’ was a terrifying vision. What if he was disappointed with her body, or if he turned out to be like Serge, rough and selfish? When Verrian tugged off his tie and said, ‘Alix, may I make love to you at last?’ she blurted out her fears in the words, ‘No – I’m exhausted. Goodnight,’ and fled.

  *

  In her bathroom she undressed, washed, brushed her teeth. Facing herself in the mirror above the sink, she muttered, ‘Did I just kill love?’ Death was generally something you didn’t recover from. Unless – she bit her lip – you made an extra special effort. She reapplied a few dots of perfume. In her bedroom, she pulled something in powder blue silk from the back of a chair. The garment smelled of rose oil from the soap flakes she’d washed it in. She inhaled once, then slipped it on.

  *

  The bathroom door leading to Verrian’s bedroom stood ajar, light making a spearhead across a satin bedspread. Alix stood between rooms, poised to run. She heard water draining, then the bathroom light switched off. Stay or scuttle? He wouldn’t know she’d been here, since he’d killed the only light. Then a man’s shape appeared and fragrant steam billowed into the room.

  She was astonished he didn’t hear her heart beating. Oblivious, he lean
ed one knee on the bed and switched on the lamp above it. He came to life in the gleam; bronze flesh, damp hair curling against his ears. He was wearing one of the white seersucker robes the hotel provided. It was loosely belted and a hair-sprinkled chest and bands of muscle pulled her gaze. She responded to the unwitting power of his body, putting her hand against her stomach where the feeling was sharpest, touching sensual silk, asking herself why she’d denied them both so long. Her movement must have hit the corner of his eye because he barked – ‘Jesus!’ He backed off the bed, stood with his feet planted, arms crossed. She waited for the melting smile, the open arms.

  ‘If this is you having fun, showing me how insanely I want you, then you can get out.’

  ‘I – I just wanted to say goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  She heard the contained rage and knew she should go while she had a thread of self-respect. But seeing him robed like an Olympian held her transfixed.

  He covered the space between them and caught her round the waist, bunching the camiknickers she’d put on.

  ‘And I suppose these are just something you threw on?’ His hand travelled, exploring her shape, finding a breast, spanning her waist, caressing hip and buttocks, the curve of a thigh and finally invading the lace trim, finding the furrow between thigh and mound. And all the time he kissed her with a confrontational passion that pushed the breath back inside her. She felt him hardening against her and she knew she’d misjudged him. He was a man of many tones but he was a man, and she’d teased and rejected him and beckoned him back too many times. Schooled in Serge’s self-absorption, she’d used her body to punish Verrian. Punished the wrong man …

  She collapsed against him and he swept her up and then she was lying on a lake of satin. ‘Don’t hurt me,’ she pleaded. Yesterday she’d watched him snap a man’s wrist like a piece of firewood. ‘I can do this … I love you. I will. Just don’t hurt me.’

  He rolled over, pulling her with him so she lay above him. Words broke against her throat, ‘You can have anything from me you want, everything I have, except the last shreds of pride. Hurt you? Why would I hurt the thing I love most, the most precious and beautiful thing I have? Don’t run, that’s all.’