Tess stepped closer, saw what was within the zippered sheaths and laughed in disbelief.
The three wardrobes against the wall forward of the mannequin and gown were freestanding deco pieces copied from Saarinen originals. Leon opened the two doors of each robe. Within, shelves from top to bottom supported women’s shoes, toes forward.
Tess stared, shaking her head. She went to the wardrobes, picked up one shoe after another, cooing softly.
Leon had retreated to the far side of the room. Tess stepped out the distance between herself and Leon with her hands clasped behind her back and her head on one side.
‘Dearest, you cross-dress! This is the surprise?’
‘The garments are not for me,’ said Leon.
Still with her hands behind her back, Tess leaned forward and pecked Leon on the lips.
‘Not for you?’
‘Not for me.’
‘I am shrouded in bafflement.’
‘Shall we drink some wine?’
Leon drew two chairs forward from the wall and positioned them to allow Tess to face him at what he judged to be a safe distance. Tess moved her chair closer to Leon’s, took up her glass, sat and sipped. Leon was finding it difficult to pick up the development of her mood. She seemed to have the devil in her.
‘To begin with,’ said Leon, ‘I must tell you that over this past year, meeting you for lunch, chatting the way we do, has been such a pleasure for me…’
‘And for me.’
‘Um, one way or another, I must confess, in the way that things like this can happen, willy nilly as it were, I have…I have fallen in love with you, Tess. Quite fallen in love with you. Drastically.’
‘Drastically fallen in love with me?’
‘Well, I say drastically because, for me at least, it is, ah…’
‘It is?’
‘Drastic. Somewhat. Can I pour you some more wine?’
‘No. Go on.’
‘And, well…I felt I must tell you. Confess, as it were.’
Tess smiled and sipped. ‘And you have all these beautiful clothes?’ she said.
‘Quite. Yes. Gathered over the years.’ Leon turned in his chair and waved a hand towards the open wardrobes. ‘Here and there about the world. Many were ordered especially.’
‘And shoes, too. Many gathered shoes. Gathering here, gathering there?’
‘Indeed.’
‘But not to wear?’
‘Not to wear, no. Not for me to wear.’
‘Then for whom?’
‘For you, as I hope.’
‘You bought all of these things for me?’
‘Well, no. I’ve been gathering for thirty years. Other women have…tried them on. Tried some of them on.’
‘Other women?’
‘Yes.’
‘How extraordinary! Have I met any of them?’
‘No. I hired them from agencies.’
‘From agencies, prostitutes? Is that what you mean?’
‘Not prostitutes. For heaven’s sake, Tess. Modelling agencies.’
Tess giggled, shook her head, sipped her wine. Something was working in her; perhaps something cruel, Leon feared. He tried to look a little away from her, without seeming to. Her ghastly outfit tormented him. He yearned to see her in the blue gown on the mannequin, or the Antony Price in the wardrobe, the Schiaparellis. And all she could think of was seduction. Most of the time he didn’t mind what people did about sex; it was of no more interest to him than the cars they might drive, the films they might rave about. But sometimes he loathed the whole sex business; loathed the way it seized people and thrust them about; loathed the time they devoted to it. Tess’s use of sex to intimidate men seemed hideous to him. All subtlety abandoned her. And she could be infinitely subtle when she chose! Listen to her talking about the late Beethoven string quartets, or even defending popular music, if it came to that. When all was said and done, sex might be no more interesting or nuanced than dogs mounting each other in the street. It was the music of banjos.
Finishing her wine, Tess leaned down and unzipped her right boot, eased it off, flexed her toes, lifted her black-stockinged foot and lowered it softly onto Leon’s groin. She winkled her sole down and pressed, curling her toes.
‘Tess, that embarrasses me.’
‘I imagine it does.’
‘Would you stop?’
‘No.’
Tess breathed out low sounds of pleasure, sounds of encouragement. Leon had once been compelled to watch a modern film at a client’s house in London—after-dinner entertainment; all the guests watched it. The film was said to be a work of art, but as far as Leon could see it was a work of pure pornography. A young woman in the film made the sounds that Tess was making, while she caressed the bare torso of a much older man. As poor a performer as that young woman had been, she was more convincing than Tess.
‘I can’t talk in this situation, Tess.’
‘Then don’t.’
‘I must.’
‘Why don’t you take me to bed? That would be a cure for jealousy, surely?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because—’
‘Because why not?’
‘If you’d allow me to speak?’
‘I don’t want you to speak. I want you to take me to bed.’
‘Tess, it’s not possible.’
‘So it seems. But what you might concede, Leon dear, is that you were not at all jealous back in the restaurant. You were disgusted. That’s true, isn’t it? My morals disgust you. And that’s not something I can put up with, rank though my morals may be. I’m going. Your dresses are lovely.’
Tess had been pulling her boot back on as she spoke. She stood when she was done, kissed the tips of two fingers and touched them to Leon’s forehead.
‘I’m glad you love me,’ she said. ‘I do like to be loved. Are you going to drive me?’
=
Leon apologised by letter, without receiving any reply. But a week after the argument, Tess came into the shop unannounced at ten in the morning and asked Leon to take the day off. He left his assistant Susie in charge, drove Tess to Moore Street as she wished, and showed her the collection again.
Her temper was much improved. She said she would try on the Antony Price, a golden gown in silk jersey with a high, oriental collar. Leon opened the door to a small bathroom, revealing a white porcelain handbasin, adjustable cheval mirror, shelf after shelf of make-up, japanned hairbrushes, a silver tray of assorted hairpins and clasps; towels, face-washers, wipes, tissues. He demonstrated how she could use a split-cane zip-pull to draw up the zipper at the back of the gown, then insisted on waiting outside in the hall while she dressed.
He had told her, almost pleaded with her, to take her time, and so she did. He could hear her moving about, hear the hiss of the taps being run, the burr of the brush in her hair, the clink and tap and clatter of cosmetics being taken and returned to their shelves. He struggled to control his breathing. He was terrified that he would make himself ill before Tess called him in.
The call came. Tess was waiting by the windows. She had posed herself with hands clasped in front, chin raised, a bare hint of satire in her smile. Her choice of lipstick was close to perfect—a satin magenta, not too deep. Her hair was held back at each side with pins, narrowing her face. Her shoes were the Zanottis that Leon had ordered from Milan three months earlier; beaten leather of pale gold, a slightly abbreviated stiletto, open toe with two small beads of amber just below the point at which the foot rises from the gape. Her figure was fractionally too full for the gown and she was, by Leon’s estimate, ten or fifteen millimetres too tall for the cut, but her left calf held the split of the lower skirt at precisely the right measure of separation.
She was about to speak but Leon held a finger to his lips. Tess raised one eyebrow for a second, then submitted. Leon walked around her in an arc, taking in every feature of her form. He stepped back three paces and asked Tess to walk across the
room, past the Ungaro, returning to her position by the windows. He asked her to turn her back to him and gaze out the windows. He found a pale grey silk scarf in the wardrobe and suggested to Tess that she wear it across her back and loosely draped over each forearm. Then he asked her to walk across the room again, taking more care with posture.
‘In what way?’
‘More erect, but not stiff. Let your shoulders hunch just a fraction. As if the weight of your breasts burdens your shoulders, but only slightly, as if you’re resisting.’
When Tess had crossed the room, he asked her to do so once more, without smiling.
‘I wasn’t!’
‘I’m afraid you were.’
Tess crossed the room again.
‘Can I ask you to try the Bill Blass?’ said Leon, once Tess had resumed her pose by the window. ‘You’ll need earrings.’ He took a large, hinged ormolu box from one of the shoe cupboards and set it on the small table under the windows. It opened into three trays of earrings and brooches.
Once again, Leon waited outside while Tess dressed.
The Bill Blass, in yellow silk crepe with a cyclamen bodice, had been worn once before in Leon’s presence, but the model had been a little too narrow to do it justice. Tess, at forty, carried a few grams more than the dress required on the hips and around the waist, but her legs held the line of the gown as well (so Leon judged) as could possibly be hoped. She wore matt-yellow stilettos in painted kid—the ideal choice. Her earrings were bright jet clusters with dependent teardrops.
Leon asked her to walk and turn along two sides of the room. More informal than her walk in the Antony Price, more a sashay. He encouraged a little humour, suggesting she look over her shoulder as if she were dismissing with her glance a man staring fixedly at her behind.
‘Do you feel comfortable enough to sit?’ he asked.
‘I think so.’
Leon placed one of the Saarinen chairs by the window. Tess seated herself and crossed her legs.
‘Lean back and gaze out the window. Imagine that you are far from bored, but wish to appear so. Throw your shoulders back so that your bosom holds the bodice line more firmly. Hold the tips of the fingers of one hand in the tips of the other behind the chair. Just the tips of the fingers!’
‘This is making you very bossy, I have to say.’
‘Sorry, I don’t mean to be. Expose your throat more. Lean your head back. Make it appear that something is coiled in you that almost defeats your attempt to appear bored.
‘Now, would you stand again? Come forward from the windows about a metre. Good.’
Leon moved the small lacquered table out from the windows and placed it beside Tess.
‘Would you rest the tips of your fingers of your left hand on the table? Look down at your hand. Raise your right arm and appear to be adjusting your right earring.’
Leon studied the result. He shook his head.
‘The gown is wrong for you,’ he said.
‘I adore it!’
‘It brings out the wrong things.’
‘Rubbish!’
‘I have a Ralph Lauren, a black cashmere halterneck. Do you have time?’
He stepped outside while she dressed and heard her sorting through the shoes in the cupboards.
‘No shoes!’ he called out. He couldn’t keep the alarm out of his voice.
‘No shoes?’
‘Absolutely not!’
She was waiting in the centre of the room when Leon entered. She’d moved the Ungaro to one side. She had her hands on her hips, left leg forward, right hip raised. Her lips were bare. By luck, or because everything else was perfect, the light from the windows gave her hair and the bare flesh of her shoulders a faint, tawny glow.
She looked more naked than if she were wearing no clothes at all.
Leon closed his eyes for two or three seconds. When he opened them and saw Tess again, the world was gone. He smelled Sarah’s breath; the lingering peppermint of her toothpaste mingling with the sweet smell of her lipstick. Then came a wave of refreshment, as if a silent fall of rain had bathed his body. The dress Tess wore—and it was obvious that she understood this—was one of the two or three that she would wear flawlessly in her lifetime. Leon sat on the chair by the shoe cupboards and let the tears fall down his cheeks. Tess knew not to move, but she smiled.
chapter 3
Marrying
TESS HAD forgiven Leon, she had worn his clothes, but still she held back. She didn’t phone for a week after the black cashmere, and when she did she was wary. She needed to understand more, she explained.
Leon said, ‘Shall I write to you?’
Tess said, ‘Yes. Each hour. Not letters. Emails. You’re a very weird person.’
Dearest Tess, such an awkward and I suppose off-putting confession though it is, I must tell you that I do not experience sexual arousal or sexual desire. I have been this way all my life. If you were to see me naked, everything you’d expect to see, you would. But I do not experience the type of arousal you are used to, not at any time.
I saw a doctor about it, a psychiatrist. This was many years ago. She showed me a picture of a naked man and told me that I was conducting ‘a pre-emptive struggle against the evidence’. She meant that I was homosexual and dreamed up strategies in advance of arousal to persuade myself that I was not. I only saw her because my father begged me to. He thought himself a failure as a father to me (he wasn’t!) and felt I needed to be jolted alive sexually by someone more competent. I told him not to worry, but nothing else. I was miserable for some years after puberty (I was eighteen or nineteen when I saw the doctor) but I am not suffering now. The idea of being thought ‘ill’ seems absurd and vulgar to me. As well, any ‘cure’ would certainly ruin my life.
Tess responded: ‘Do you dress men, too? You’re peculiar, you darling.’
Your question: No, I don’t enjoy what you witnessed the other day when I see a beautiful man well attired. In the case of men, it is like looking at wonderful paintings from a period for which one does not have a great deal of sympathy. I recognise the achievement, but it doesn’t make me happy.
Tess wrote: ‘You sell a book a day. You’re not that busy. Open up! Am I never to make love to you? Just dress up? I’m offended. You’re odd.’
Leon set two hours aside and rolled up his sleeves:
Tess, the ecstatic experience doesn’t come along at all often; in fact, only fully with one woman before you. It has never quite happened with the models from the agency. I first knew about it at age eight when I was recovering from pneumonia and my half-sister Sarah came to see me. My parents, Dorothy and Roger, and I were living in Elwood, a beautiful house in Tennyson Street, two persimmon trees in the back garden. Sarah and Janet and Melanie were aunts more than sisters—much older than me. All of the women in my family have been striking, going back to my great-grandmother Lucia, whose ancestry was Swedish and Russian, quite unusual. The men, even those who married into the family, have all been plain and portly and a little dim, so far as I can make out, with the exception of my great-grandfather Charles, Lucia’s husband, who was Armenian but raised in London, once again, quite odd. A meticulous program of divine compensation seems to have shaped my family in favour of the women. Sarah was the loveliest of all, although slightly mad. She was the middle child of my father Roger’s first marriage to a Danish violinist. (Karen Petermann—you may have heard of her?—she was a child prodigy, well known in Europe before the war; Roger met her when he was working in some legal capacity for the League of Nations and married her—somehow!—when she was only fifteen). The Danish genes ruled Sarah’s construction. Very tall with massy golden hair that fell down her back almost to her waist. She married fairly early (like her mother) at eighteen, to a sort of business buccaneer, somebody Goodyear, but they were divorced a year later. She is said to have been sapphic, but if so, she was the kind of lesbian who likes to be squired about by exotic men with broad shoulders. On the day she visited me, she was wearing a y
ellow dress with an off-white trim along the collar and patterned all over with tiny red strawberries. There was a fabric belt at the waist with a pale green plastic buckle; the skirt of the dress was beautifully cut to hang in soft folds to the knee. I remember her brooch especially—a lovely thing in dark green bakelite in the shape of a swan, with a hollow circle of what may have been reddish jasper for an eye. She was on her way to a recital—she sang lieder and was said to have recorded an album of Schubert, although I have never been able to find it. She sat on my bed in the very large room (actually a second living room) that I had moved to from my bedroom at the back of the house. This second living room had the most wonderful windows I’ve ever seen in a house, coloured glass scenes of Australian birds including a bravura kookaburra, which explains why I have so admired kookas ever since. The panels were smallish, perhaps eighteen inches by eighteen inches, forty centimetres by forty under the new rules. What was so remarkable about the scenes was the fluidity of line, not easy to accomplish with standard lead, and the great variety of colours. The light in the room from these windows was inexhaustibly fascinating to me, so changeable throughout the day. Sarah had brought me a mass of scarlet fuchsia from her own garden tied up with blue ribbon and also an enormous tray of chocolates from a place in the city that made confectionery to order. I never saw Sarah cry, but she had a trick of expression that made her seem always on the brink of tears—tears of tenderness rather than sorrow, as if scenes in the world around her were more than she could bear. Perhaps that look was a carry-over from performance. She once sang ‘I Know Where I’m Going’ for Dorothy and Roger’s anniversary with that joy-and-tears expression on her face for the whole of the song. Sarah was pure enchantment to me, and she knew it; she knew when she was turning someone’s legs to jelly. But more than that, she loved me. I was the only baby in the family. Sarah’s sister Janet never had children; Sarah herself never had children; Melanie had twin boys who were well into their teens when I was very small. I doubt that Sarah wanted children, but she probably believed (like many childless beauties, I would hazard) that if she’d had children, she’d have been one of the finest mothers the world had ever seen. She sang me songs that day sitting on the bed, unbuttoning my pyjama jacket to tickle my tummy and playing with her fingers on my chest as if I were a keyboard. The songs were Italian and German; I can’t recall the titles. The scent she wore was nothing like Dorothy’s gardenia; far more subtle and utterly intoxicating. When I mentioned it she lifted my head to her neck so that I could enjoy it better. Dorothy was sitting on the opposite side of my bed, also charmed but, I think, watchful.
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