Between Sisters

by Cathy Kelly

  Some instinct made her shout out: ‘Hello there. You late too?’

  The boy had the most beautiful eyes, she noticed as he came close: a stunning grey like the sky on a misty night lit by moonlight. His hair was fair and straight, full of hair product to keep it tamed, she reckoned, and it was clearly a wonderful cut.

  ‘I’m Phoebe.’ She stuck out a hand. ‘Fashion?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, looking at her and rudely not taking her hand. He took in her unfashionable outfit. ‘You? Really?’

  Phoebe gave him the stare she’d long used on hardened drinkers in The Anvil who were giving her backchat.

  ‘You don’t shake hands?’ she asked icily.

  For an instant, she glimpsed anxiety in those stunning grey eyes and she knew the rudeness was a cover.

  ‘I’m being Howard Hughes this week,’ he said, recovering. ‘No touching for fear of germs.’

  Phoebe grinned and kept her hand out. ‘I’m being Jane Russell, whom you famously had a fling with, so pleased to meet you,’ she said.

  ‘I’m Ian. I thought you might be a fashion bitch,’ he said. ‘I know two on this course for sure. I met them on my portfolio course.’

  ‘I’m Phoebe and I didn’t even do a portfolio course,’ said Phoebe, ‘so I’m fashion bitch meat for sure.’

  ‘No you’re not, hon-ey,’ said Ian, making the last word two syllables.

  ‘I was joking,’ Phoebe said. ‘I’m strong enough to take on any bitches.’

  Ian squeezed her bicep. ‘That’s for sure.’

  ‘We’re the last two, I think. I had to get my coffee first,’ she lied, as if she had expensive coffee every day. ‘Can we walk in together?’ Phoebe asked, then fibbed again as she added: ‘I’m a bit nervous.’ She wasn’t sure why she said it because she was sure none of the other fashionistas would say such a thing. But this boy needed her: she sensed it. He was like one of her beloved animals feeling unloved and out of place. And Phoebe needed someone to take care of.

  ‘Yeah, I’d love that,’ he said, and smiled. It was as if an angel had smiled. When Ian smiled, those grey atmospheric eyes lit up his whole face and he looked like someone Michelangelo might have painted. His skin was a luminous olive, which was a glorious combination with that fair hair, and his mouth lifted in a broad smile.

  ‘Come on.’ She linked her arm though his. ‘Let’s face the team.’

  Registration was taking place in a large room to the right of the main entrance hall.

  As Phoebe had thought, many of the most fashionable types were there: twenty-three in all. There were twenty-five to a year and she and Ian were the last ones. A very tall woman, all dressed in modern black layers, with a shock of grey hair, dark red lipstick, and an armful of turquoise bracelets snaking up one arm, was talking.

  ‘… afterwards we’ll bring you on a tour and you can settle down into tutor groups. Today will be about schedules and telling you what this year will involve. Each of you is assigned someone from second year as a mentor – this is a new innovation to help you become grounded within the college. In first year, we believe in letting students try a range of design work to see where they feel most at home. We don’t pigeonhole here. You may come in with one idea of where your future is and then find yourself in love with an entirely different discipline …’

  Phoebe almost tuned out. She didn’t want to miss out on any new experiences but her heart was set on women’s fashion design. Nothing more, nothing less. She wasn’t interested in menswear, sportswear, or anything else.

  She and Ian were together in their first group, a pattern-cutting class where a man with a heavy accent sat at the end of a large room and gazed at the table in front of him. His voice was so quiet that Phoebe had to strain to hear, and she turned to Ian to see if it was the same for him.

  ‘… pattern is more important than illustration,’ the man was saying.

  Middle Eastern? Phoebe couldn’t make it out but she loved his words. Of course pattern cutting and understanding fabric were the most important thing. The drape of the fabric around the body was the way some people designed. They were true geniuses. But she lived by the pattern.

  ‘Drape or pattern?’ she whispered to Ian.

  He shot her a grin and reached back to stroke his coat, which hung on the back of his chair. ‘Draped, babes.’

  The class took an hour, during which Phoebe took notes frantically in her big notepad, watching other people typing on to cool, metallic laptops she’d never be able to afford in a million years. She had a laptop, an ancient thing that was almost an archaeological artefact. She’d need a proper laptop, she knew.

  She definitely needed a job. She had to get walking around the area close to her place to see what she could get. She’d spent too much of yesterday frantically readying herself for today, going over designers online in a coffee shop with free Wi-Fi, then sketching and endlessly rearranging her possessions to make the bedsit look vaguely more welcoming.

  ‘Er … the class is over.’

  Ian was prodding her reluctantly with a finger, as if she might bite his hand off. ‘We have to go: another lot are coming in now.’

  Phoebe glanced up. ‘Gosh, sorry, got thinking …’ Hastily she grabbed her stuff and her rucksack and followed Ian out into the hallway. ‘Where next?’ she said, entirely thrown.

  They ate lunch together in the small canteen, Phoebe ravenous for the sandwich she’d made that morning: salami, salad, cucumber and mustard in a big roll.

  Ian, who’d ordered a lot of green things and had bought a banana too, looked enviously at her lunch.

  ‘Can’t afford to eat here,’ Phoebe said, using a canteen knife to slice one of her sandwiches in half. ‘Do you want some? What you’ve got is all a bit rabbity. Unless you have an actual rabbit stashed in your bag?’

  Ian didn’t laugh at the joke.

  ‘Is it some health kick?’ said Phoebe as artlessly as she could.

  ’No,’ said Ian, glaring at her, but Phoebe could see anxiety and fear in his voice.

  Phoebe knew this was very, very important. She stopped eating, eyed him up and down, and then had some of her bottled tap water.

  ‘Thank God for that,’ she said, sounding relieved. ‘I thought everyone would be a stick insect.’

  Ian looked at her warily.

  ‘I want to make clothes for women like me,’ she went on. ‘I’m a girl who’s nearly six foot, I wear a size sixteen and I want to be in fashion: there aren’t many of us around, now, are there?’ Phoebe countered. ‘I’m different from what seems to be the norm here. But I want to design for “different”. You have to show your clothes on ordinary models for the portfolio, but when I make it –’ she beamed at Ian as if this last was in no doubt – ‘I’ll be making clothes for normal people, not supermodel-sized ones. World domination for the normals!’

  ‘You don’t think I’m fat?’ asked Ian, who appeared to have heard none of her previous statement. The fear and need for reassurance in his eyes reminded Phoebe of her little brother Ethan. The big sister kicked in even more.

  ‘Who says you’re fat?’ she asked, as if shocked.

  ‘Well, nobody,’ he said, ‘but my sister’s so skinny. Everyone else here is skinny.’

  ‘Does your sister have incredible eyes and enough talent to get in here?’ Phoebe asked, putting the half a sandwich she’d offered on to Ian’s plate.

  For the first time, Ian really smiled at her. ‘No, but she’s a good hairdresser, though,’ he said.

  ‘Did she cut your hair?’

  ‘Nah. A pal did it. Luigi.’

  ‘I rest my case,’ said Phoebe. ‘Next, can you set me up with Luigi?’ She put a hand to her hair, which had been ministered to by her hairdresser friend in return for an exquisite jacket, but which was too thick to ever hang in anything other than a crazed way.

&nbs
p; ‘I might,’ said Ian archly. ‘What’s it worth?’

  ‘The promise that if we go out to dinner anytime – assuming I get a job to afford dinner – I pick somewhere that doesn’t serve rabbit food.’

  Eleven

  Phoebe looked at the double-fronted shop, The Twentieth Century Boutique, and wondered if they’d hire her. Inside, a willowy blonde was leaning over the counter, tapping her nails on it and talking on her mobile phone. Probably had a wardrobe of vintage Missoni and boyfriends coming out her ears. But faint heart never won fair job, Phoebe reminded herself, much in the same way as she made herself clean out the duck shed when she wasn’t in the mood for ducky poo.

  ‘Aim high,’ Dad had always said. He’d whispered it in the hospital when he was dying after the accident. So much of his body had been crushed by the tractor, it was a miracle he’d survived for three days. His cervical and thoracic spine had been crushed, and his organs were failing; only brute strength was keeping him going.

  Sobbing, holding hands, everyone was trying to say everything rather frantically before they ran out of time. And yet the drugs keeping the pain away meant Dad drifted in and out of consciousness.

  ‘Hard not to aim high when you’re my height,’ Phoebe often joked, and she said it again that last time.

  Her father so often had put his hand on hers, but now he couldn’t move, so Phoebe placed hers gently on his – a hand that was no longer strong but had grown papery and weak over the past months. The weakness of that hand made it easier for her to let him go. He was in pain, despite the drugs. She wanted him to live so much but he couldn’t. Nobody should have to suffer that way.

  ‘That’s my girl,’ he’d said, his voice croaky.

  Dad, you’d like this place, she told him in her head now. Vintage but not silly vintage – more like out of another time with that old wireless in the window and those posters for the Second World War.

  The Make Do and Mend sign in one of the windows had a little red-checked cloth under it, with wooden needles threaded with a delicate half-knitted scarf, and a pin cushion with a selection of old-fashioned cotton reels arranged beside it. Like something from a film of the forties, Phoebe thought, despite the fifties handbags and what looked like a 1990s Betsey Johnson marabou-collared embroidered coat alongside them.

  She pushed the door open and a bell tinkled. The beauty leaning against the counter didn’t move or even make eye contact. The part of Phoebe’s brain that understood customer service, courtesy of her long-time working in the pub, registered this lack of interest. Obviously not the owner, Phoebe decided.

  The shop was clearly beloved of someone, even if not the woman behind the counter, because it was treated like a precious treasure. The place sparkled and the round-bellied glass cabinets where the jewellery lay were all glittering mirror and polished glass. Old movie posters and travel posters from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s were set on the walls, showing Riviera scenes, Alpine holidays with slender, bobbed-hair and beautifully illustrated heroines standing beside wooden skis, while in other pictures, fur-coated girls in jewels and tiny-waisted frocks danced with men with gleaming dark hair. A large mirror had what looked like a stencilled picture of the Gibson Girl to one side. Betty Grable’s famous legs were on the other, with Betty looking back over her shoulder with that come-hither yet wholesome smile. The whole place was like a divine little boutique from another era and only the music – something top forty – didn’t fit.

  If I owned this place, Phoebe thought, I’d play music from the eras of the clothes I sold.

  She decided to loiter a bit and drifted over to a selection of jackets to see what she could find. The forties and fifties were hard on a woman her size because of the waist-cinching required, but sometimes she found lovely fabrics in 1980s stuff – looser and shoulder-padded – where she could tweak a bit and make a jacket fit. Whoever bought these clothes knew her vintage, Phoebe decided by the time she’d run through the dresses, jackets, skirts and a selection of blouses.

  There were clothes for every age group, every size, from every era.

  What looked like a woman’s riding jacket, in a tweed the colour of autumn heather, caught her eye. The fabric was soft and yet hardwearing, the cut severe. And it was a decent size: not a slinky size ten or twelve, but made for a woman like herself who could be fourteen or sixteen, depending on the brand.

  She glanced up at the beauty, who was still ignoring her.

  Manners made her ask: ‘May I try this on?’

  The girl trailed elegant fingers in the air.

  Phoebe thought she’d get the same response if she’d said: ‘May I steal this?’

  She looked around for a changing room and found two in a corner: dusky pink velvet curtains held back with ribbon and a charming French bistro chair painted an eggshell cream in each cubicle.

  The jacket was a miracle. A little big on the shoulders, and shoulders were tricky, but Phoebe hadn’t spent an entire summer learning the basics with the village seamstress for nothing. Shoulders were her speciality. In her portfolio collection, she’d made a jacket with tiny shoulders, each sleeve topped with pin tucks measured centimetre by centimetre. Lizzy from the hairdressers had wanted to buy it but Phoebe had had to say no. She’d made up another one quickly for Lizzy, as payment for the modelling.

  ‘Wish you could make all my clothes,’ Lizzy had said. ‘Nobody in work has anything like this, made for me and all.’

  ‘One day, Lizzy, one day, I shall have clothes in shops and you can buy them all, at a discount!’ Phoebe laughed and held up crossed fingers.

  ‘No luck required for you, Phoebs,’ Lizzy said. ‘You’re a genius with clothes. Just make something for yourself, will you, girl? Not trying to be a tough cow but nobody would believe you were a genius with fashion. I know you’ve no time what with the job and the farm, but come on … My granny’s better dressed and she thinks a new apron is the last word in style.’

  This jacket would be perfect for herself. Phoebe did a bit of primping in the Betty Grable mirror, with still not a word from the shop assistant.

  Another customer, older and carrying the sort of expensive handbag that Phoebe recognised from Vogue and knew was worth the price of a small car, came in and, after a listless rustle around, moved to the old handbags.

  Definitely a handbag addict: new, old, whatever. If Phoebe was waiting on this woman, she’d produce one of the crocodile handbags on the top shelf. None of them dusty, some a gleaming black, one elegantly tortoiseshell. This woman could afford the modern equivalent but Phoebe understood the fashion mind: vintage held a powerful sway.

  Instead Phoebe said nothing, and rifled some more herself. It wasn’t her fault if the beauty was missing sales by not paying attention.

  Phoebe paused by a rack of tea dresses stitched with exquisite details like pin tucks and many inserts in the skirts.

  A dress, she thought. Something old and trailing, perhaps. She’d never been much for dresses back home, but then who wore long dresses on a farm when you were in and out of your wellington boots all day? Looking through the vintage tea dresses, she wondered would the modern jacket in muted grey she was currently designing look good with a bias-cut tea dress underneath? She made such modern clothes but perhaps this was what she needed to boost herself on to the next level – old and new. She’d spent so long studying art, finding new influences for colour and design, but her fashion inspiration so often came from the modern. She loved the fit and cut of old clothes, but she used that to create modern designs. The notion of mixing the old hadn’t really hit her properly until now …

  The other customer left and the tinkling of the shop bell coincided with the end of the very important phone call.

  ‘You buying that?’ asked the beauty, and Phoebe looked up to find the blonde didn’t look so beautiful anymore. She looked as if she’d been interrupted from something very serious and
this work lark was a bore.

  Politeness is a virtue, Phoebe’s mother’s voice echoed in her head.

  Instead of glaring, she smiled. ‘I’d love to,’ she said. ‘Tell me, are you the owner?’

  She knew the answer but she couldn’t help herself.

  ‘No,’ said the blonde, her nose in the air. ‘I’m the manageress.’

  In your mind, honey, Phoebe thought.

  She put her choices on the counter, having added them up and worked out that if she brought sandwiches to college forever, she could do this. A woman in a fashion college needed clothes.

  As the blonde badly folded both garments up, Phoebe’s fingers itched to do it differently. There was tissue paper on the counter: Phoebe could see it but the girl wasn’t using it.

  ‘Do you need staff?’ Phoebe asked bluntly.

  The girl stopped with her inexpert folding. ‘No,’ she said sharply. ‘It’s me and Coco. She’s going through a family emergency right now, but I can cope with it all.’

  Phoebe could remember Gillian, the owner of The Anvil back home, stuck with the pub financially and no longer able to afford to hire a manager to take the hardest parts out of the job.

  ‘You’re too young,’ she’d told Phoebe when she’d asked for a job.

  ‘Give me two weekends,’ Phoebe had said. ‘Pay me half what you normally pay. If you think I can do it, then we’ll renegotiate.’

  As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she wondered where this clever, sassy Phoebe had come from. But she knew, really: she’d been born out of necessity. The family would find it hard to survive on the farm money and the widow’s pension her mother was now getting. Phoebe, as the eldest, had to think clever.