A Gown of Thorns: A Gripping Novel of Romance, Intrigue and the Secrets of a Vintage Parisian Dress

by Natalie Meg Evans

  Henri tested the wire to ensure it could still take the painting’s weight. Then, leaning the frame against the wall, he poured out the last of the wine. Balancing two glasses, he eased himself down on the bed next to her. ‘We married when I was twenty-nine and she thirty-two. I know. A bit late. I didn’t want to marry her, but my family expected it.’ He handed her a glass. ‘I was born in 1902, making me a year too young to fight in the Great War. My elder brother was killed within weeks of it starting, and an uncle a few months later. I joined the army the year after the war ended, feeling I should do something for my country. Back then, I didn’t want to grow grapes, but when my father died, I had little choice. I had to return. My mother had been dead several years, but my grandmother was still alive and she arranged a marriage for me, with a friend’s daughter – Marie-Louise de Sainte-Vierge.’

  Yvonne hazarded a guess. ‘She’d lost her fiancé during the war.’

  He drained his wine. ‘Correct. So she made do with me. I had land and a title, she had family money. A sensible arrangement, as we like to do in France. People of my class rarely expect happiness, but we do expect the appearance of fidelity. What I did not know at the time of my engagement was that Marie-Louise had a career in Paris, as a writer and painter. She was, I later learned, in a relationship with a fellow artist. Our temperaments were unsuited, and we were too set in our ways to change. But, we muddled through and had children, which was the point of it all.’

  ‘Most people muddle through.’ Yvonne finished her wine and put her empty glass down on the floor. ‘Artistic temperament is grossly overrated, in my opinion, whereas “muddling” is the mature realisation of one’s own limitations. It is the great, unsung human virtue.’

  ‘She hated this place, and at every opportunity went to Paris. She liked clothes, so we pretended it was to view the collections. In May 1940, I wrote to her at the hotel where she was staying, warning her that I feared an invasion was imminent, and that Paris might be bombed. She must come home for the children’s sake. Marie-Louise wrote back saying that she had gowns being made, and one being altered, and would leave as soon as they were finished.’ He pulled Yvonne to him, blowing a strand of her hair off her cheek. ‘I should have fetched her. Whenever I hear my daughter crying for her maman— Who is that?’

  Henri went still. Somebody was calling from the courtyard below. A child’s voice. He waited until he heard the clear call of ‘Papa!’ before getting out of bed and wrapping a sheet around himself. ‘Don’t move,’ he told Yvonne.

  He went to the window and she saw him give a slight wave. He pushed the window wider and shouted, ‘Stay there with Audrey, ma fifille.’ My little girl. ‘I’ll be down in a moment. I said wait!’ He swore through his teeth, turning to Yvonne. ‘Quick, get dressed. My daughter Isabelle is coming up. I had hoped to keep the children from seeing you, but I suppose there’s no avoiding it now.’

  ‘I could hide in the wardrobe. I found the key in your pocket. Sorry.’ She felt awkward, because she hadn’t told Henri that she’d already met his children. He’d been so angry on his return, the moment had been lost. She didn’t want to say it now, either. Henri looked strained. Not ashamed or shifty, for which she was glad, but like a man who knew the next few minutes were going to be unpleasant.

  He was throwing on his clothes, though he took a moment to notice the key in the wardrobe door. ‘No, no point hiding. She’ll fling open the wardrobe door anyway, to see the Gown of Thorns.’

  ‘Gown of what?’ Yvonne was out of bed, hauling on her knickers, her blouse – no time to put on her brassiere, which she shoved under a pillow as Henri roughly remade the bed. Just time to button her waistband and smooth down her skirt before a black-haired whirlwind burst in.

  ‘Papa!’ The little girl threw herself at Henri, who absorbed the impact and picked her up.

  Truffle-dark eyes regarded Yvonne warily over her father’s shoulder.

  ‘Why is she still here?’

  Henri put his daughter down. ‘That is rude, Isabelle. We do not say “she”. This lady is Yvonne, and she is my guest. Come and shake her hand.’

  ‘Why is she up here?’

  ‘We’re tidying,’ Yvonne improvised, when Henri failed to come up with an answer. Oh dear. Daddy’s little girl looked distinctly put out. Charm and appeasement were called for. ‘He was telling me about the Gown of Thorns, is that its name? I’m intrigued. Will you persuade your papa to open the wardrobe and show it to me?’

  She knew instantly that she’d made an unimaginable gaffe. Henri shook his head warningly, while Isabelle let out a shriek, flew to the wardrobe and spread-eagled herself against the doors, a human barricade.

  ‘Nobody must touch the dress. It killed Maman! It killed Maman!’

  Even when her father pulled her away and removed her from the room like a cumbersome parcel, Isabelle de Chemignac kept up the harrowed chant – ‘It killed Maman!’

  Yvonne sat down heavily on the bed. ‘Goodness. Poor little mite. The ‘killer dress’ was, presumably, one of those that had kept Madame de Chemignac in Paris, resulting in her being caught up in the chaos of invasion.

  And yet, Yvonne was curious. She had a strong notion she knew the identity of the Gown of Thorns. On all fours like a cat, she shuffled to the wardrobe and unlocked it by stretching up her arm. She opened the doors from their base and squinted up at the sumptuous colours. And because she felt ridiculous on her knees, she stood up and rifled through folds of satin and silk until her fingers stopped at a gown of violet, lavender and silver-grey pleats. So delicate, she was reminded of the gills under the cap of a mushroom. When she’d held it against herself before, the dress had turned her mood to blue-indigo. But of course, she’d been obsessed with Henri’s safety at the time. It hadn’t been the dress.

  Quite forgetting Henri’s injunction to keep below window level, she lifted the violet gown off its hanger and turned towards the mirror.

  ‘Put it back, Yvonne.’

  She jumped like a thief. ‘Only looking. Sorry. But it’s lovely. It’s my colour.’ Her voice rang hollow as she justified herself. ‘We auburns and Titians can’t wear red or pink or orange, so as you know, we go nuts for violet and green. Admit it, it’s my colour.’

  ‘It is your colour, but it is not your dress.’ Henri took it from her and returned it to the rail. He closed the cupboard, then the window shutters. He then drew her to sit next to him on the bed. ‘Although my wife treasured it, this dress was actually made for my mother, from silk dyed with berries picked on the estate.’

  ‘Which berries?’

  ‘Of the épine noir.’

  Blackthorn; whose berries were called sloes. Whose thorns were the devil’s fangs – if you harvested them without wearing stout gloves. Every winter, after the first frost, she and her mother used to raid the hedgerows in Derbyshire’s Hope Valley where she’d grown up and lived until moving north to Sheffield to train as a teacher. Sloe gin had been their kitchen-cupboard standby, the winter cordial to fend off throat infections and sniffles. ‘Aren’t we a pair of witches?’ her mother would say as they set off with their baskets. Happy companion-witches, until her mother’s death.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ Yvonne said brusquely.

  ‘What do you not believe?’

  ‘The colour. Mother dyed her own wool, you see. She kept a few sheep and spun their fleeces. She’d use ground-up barks, lichens and berries to create colours. Sloes look dark when you mash them, but the fibres come out a slubby grey. They’re never this bright. It’s a myth, your Gown of Thorns.’

  ‘The dye was intensified by adding copperas, a form of iron, and red grape skins from the last vines picked in 1914. That year’s harvest was brought in by the women, the children and the old men. I told you my brother died almost as soon as he entered the war? He was blown to pieces in the first battle of the Marne, the day we began to pick the Cabernet Franc. We hadn’t known the war was serious, and suddenly, Pierre was dead. When my uncle died a few
months after, this dress gained its reputation for being unlucky.’

  ‘I can see that. But that’s what people do, focus their anger and sorrow on something close to home. Easier than blaming the politicians and the generals.’

  She had to lean close to hear his answer. ‘My mother felt the same way and wore the dress exactly ten years later, at our 1924 fête de vendange. She was five months pregnant with my brother Albert. Only just showing – she was a slight woman. To wear the clinging Gown of Thorns was an act of defiance.’

  ‘Against superstition?’

  ‘And against the gossip that we were an unlucky family. She adored the Delphos gown. Do you know, the designer Fortuny and his wife kept their method of pleating secret? However they were created, the pleats always keep their shape. A Delphos gown can be rolled and put in a suitcase, or knotted over the shoulder.’

  ‘The perfect dress for an SOE agent, I’d say.’

  He shook his head. ‘Don’t be tempted. Three months after wearing the dress at the fête, my mother died giving birth prematurely, after a labour that lasted the better part of three nights. After that, the old women in the village said the dress was cursed because it was made from the fruits of an ancient thorn tree and grapes tainted by war.’

  ‘But you don’t believe such hocus-pocus.’

  ‘Oh, I do.’ Henri spoke fervently. ‘Perhaps not then, but later. My wife coveted the Gown of Thorns, though she was too tall for it. I eventually allowed her to wear it for a Christmas dinner, and shortly after, we lost our first-born son to measles. As soon as the roads were free of snow, I took the damn garment to Bordeaux, to a used-clothes shop. I didn’t want money for it. Sell it privately, I said. Under no circumstances show it in the window.’

  ‘Why not just burn it?’

  He paused to think that over. ‘I never felt I had the right… Would you burn your mother’s favourite gown?’

  Of course she wouldn’t. Her mother’s things were still hanging up in the Derbyshire house, which was closed up pending the end of the war. When – if – it ever ended. One day, she must clear the house, and sell it. And then live in France, with Henri? ‘I take it the dress returned, like the proverbial bad penny?’

  ‘My wife’s maid was in Bordeaux buying linen and happened to pass the shop. The shopkeeper had disobeyed my instruction not to put the dress in the window.’ Henri’s mouth creased at the memory. ‘It wreaks havoc on every generation.’

  ‘Every family has its share of pain, Henri. Didn’t I tell you, my father left my mother after I was born? Started again with somebody else, the rotter. I have a half-brother, Paul. He likes me, poor, misguided little sod, and I can’t stand him because of what he represents.’ She sighed. ‘People behave badly.’

  Henri didn’t respond, his memory lodged in the past. ‘My wife was furious that I’d tried to get rid of the dress, and to spite me she took it with her to Paris that fateful summer. It needed to be re-pleated, she said, because the woman in the shop had tried to iron it… A few weeks after Marie-Louise was killed, the dress arrived back here. She’d taken it to the House of Fortuny, hoping they could lengthen it for her. How they’d do that, I can’t imagine! It was returned with a note explaining that, because Paris was now under German occupation, they no longer had the resources to remake the dress.’ Henri got up. ‘I have to go. I promised to saddle up a pair of horses and take my children for a ride through the vines. My Pierre-Gaston is mad about horses, though he has to ride with me because his little legs are not strong yet.’

  A ride through summer greenery, beyond the horizon, what heaven… Oh, this bloody war! ‘You won’t forget about your poor, incarcerated princess in the tower?’

  ‘Of course not. We could dine together tonight. Isabelle has met you, after all, and now Audrey knows about you.’

  ‘The children’s nanny? We already met, when you were away. I should have come clean about it, but I thought you’d shout again. Lord, we’re making a poor show of being secretive!’

  He returned a shrug. ‘In that case, you and Jean-Claude must dine with us all, as a family. I wish we could include Cyprien in the invitation, though explaining away a man with the pallor of a ghost and a bullet hole in his arm would tax my powers of invention.’ His humour died as fast as it flared. ‘May I have your promise that you’ll keep your hands off the wardrobe? Yvonne, heed what I say. Don’t give that jinxed dress a chance to destroy us. We have so much ahead, if only…’ He swallowed the rest of the sentence. ‘Your promise, please?’

  ‘You have it.’

  He kissed her and left.

  ‘Cursed, are you?’ she directed at the cupboard. She wouldn’t go back on a promise. Honour bright, and all that. But as she put her foot to the floor, a floorboard sank an inch or so. The wardrobe rocked and its doors slowly opened. Yvonne spied violet and silver among the other colours and said, ‘Well, hello again.’

  Her skin still felt peppery from Henri’s caresses and it came to her that nothing would salve and sooth it as well as a silken Delphos gown.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Dawn sky the colour of pink grapefruit filled the window. Shauna returned to consciousness and stared at the mottled strands of cloud, slowly recollecting where she was. Laurent’s head was butted against her breast. They must look like a pair of gingerbread men baked together, limbs conjoined. She tried to stretch. Her legs felt stiff as concrete. Her arm muscles ached as well. Heaven help her, yet another day of bending and picking ahead!

  Laurent muttered, ‘I need to know what happened next to Henri and Yvonne. That dinner he planned was their last together.’

  He sat up, looking hung-over, though that couldn’t be as they hadn’t drunk last night.

  ‘A meal to remember,’ she said, ‘but not in a good way. Jealousy was top of the menu. Albert had seen them kissing.’ Hadn’t Madame Guilhem told her, ‘It was not only Henri who admired Yvonne’? Had Albert’s lurking and spying been his bumbling way of expressing feelings for Yvonne? Calf love? From a malevolent breed of calf, in that case. ‘Oh God!’ she cried, as a separate thought struck her. Rachel and Adão were still locked in the stable-yard flat. She reminded Laurent, who only laughed.

  ‘I should let them out before one of them tries to jump out the window,’ said Shauna.

  ‘They’re tall and fit. Let them,’ was Laurent’s opinion, but Shauna pushed back the bed covers. ‘Adão won’t be much use to you with a broken ankle. Which parcelles are we doing today?’

  ‘The Semillon, those I’m harvesting for dry white. I leave half the Semillon rows and all the Muscadelle in the hope of a noble rot pick later in the month. For sweet wine… If we get the correct conditions.’

  ‘If, if and if. Come on.’ She held out her hand. ‘Let’s get a shower running. Will you make coffee while I rescue the lovers?’

  ‘You make coffee. I want to check the horses anyway. I don’t like Rachel bringing them in when she’s in a bad mood.’

  ‘OK, if you’re sure.’ How would he react to finding Rachel with another man? She believed he cared for her, and not for Rachel, but insecurity had deep roots.

  As they put on last night’s clothes, Shauna kept her back to the wardrobe. Entering Henri and Yvonne’s minds last night had arguably been a sustained joint hallucination. And although she was grateful to whatever force haunted Chemignac for bringing her and Laurent to such closeness, she couldn’t face another trance just yet. They should keep out of this room, she suggested, until after the harvest. ‘I can’t wrestle with vines all day and embrace quantum reality at night.’

  He smiled. ‘So that’s what it is. Yes, I agree.’ He locked the tower room door and, in the kitchen, poked the keys deep into their hiding place.

  While the kettle boiled, they showered together. Over the hiss of the water, Laurent asked her, ‘Did you smell smoke in Rachel’s flat?’

  ‘From a stove?’

  ‘Tobacco. Adão smokes roll-ups when he’s not working, and Rachel smokes weed. It�
�s forbidden anywhere near the barns. I don’t care what the two of them do together – so long as it doesn’t involve matches and glowing cigarette ends.’

  She didn’t remember smelling anything, and said so. But she did remember Rachel’s heartless observations about Louette’s crash, and as she towelled herself dry she pondered the ill fortunes of the sons and daughters of Chemignac. Death in war, death in childbirth. Even Isabelle – two falls in the space of three months, following a car accident that broke her femur. But these things happened in every family, didn’t they? Look at hers. Her father, gone in early middle age. Dig back and no doubt she’d find plenty of stillbirths and war deaths among her own tribe.

  Dakenfield. The nurses were busy around the bed next to Miss Thorne’s. Curtains were drawn. A poor old thing with dementia had been brought in the previous afternoon. She’d spent the following hours crying out to invisible family members, and faded into silence at around six that morning.

  ‘Passed away,’ a nurse told Miss Thorne, who replied, ‘Damn. She took my slot.’

  The nurse was too busy to unpick the meaning of this, saying only, ‘Try not to mind too much.’

  As Miss Thorne slowly ate her breakfast, a trainee nurse brought a large bunch of white roses to her bed. ‘You’ve got an admirer, Antonia.’

  ‘Miss Thorne, please. And take it from me, nobody with any sense could admire me.’

  ‘They’re definitely for you. Shall I read the card out?’ The nurse extracted the card tucked in with the flowers, and opened her mouth to read the greeting. ‘Oh. It’s in French. I can’t make it out.’

  Miss Thorne couldn’t either. Her eyes were too weak. She had to wait until Joelle, the friendly tea-lady, came by on her afternoon rounds. Joelle spoke French; she’d been born in Cameroon.

  ‘We think of you often, and wish you well. “Never Forget”. From Raymond and Audrey at Chemignac. Shall I pour your tea, honey?’