Beatrice spat the words across the cold stone floor of the old monastery, and before Bobbie could say another word, or think of what to say next, her guardian went on, ‘That woman has been tolerated by me for fifteen years, and now she chooses to walk out just as I need her to write letters, just as I need her to make telephone calls, just as I am opening up the house for the summer. I shall probably sue her. That is what I shall do. I shall sue her.’
Bobbie dropped her eyes to the floor. She had never heard anyone quite so cross, not ever. She had actually never seen a proper rage before. She had never seen a woman snatching at a cigarette from her handbag and stuffing it with trembling fingers into the top of her long, black cigarette holder, and now that she was a witness to this behaviour she could not help wishing that Beatrice’s car had broken down on the way to Sussex. This perfectly frightful woman was not at all the kind of person that she, her ward, had always imagined Beatrice Harper to be, when she was growing up at the sanatorium in Hazel Hill and receiving parcels of dresses and coats and fine books with old bindings from her guardian.
‘But you have another secretary, haven’t you?’
Again Bobbie heard her own words rather as if they were being spoken by someone else. And she thought how strange this sensation was, this feeling that someone else was speaking through you, that it was your voice, but not your voice that you heard.
‘Mrs Calder is my secretary for London, Roberta. Miss Moncrieff is my secretary for Sussex. Was for Sussex.’ She stopped, and threw her whole cigarette, holder and all, on the floor and stamped on it, as if it was a stub. ‘Well,’ she went on, after a long pause, during which she breathed in and out in a way that reminded Bobbie of Aunt Sophie’s pony Tom Kitten after some strenuous uphill work. ‘Well, we will just have to make the best of it. We will just have to use you as my secretary, since you seem to have been in some way responsible for this. Encouraging the military to run off with secretaries is not a practice of which anyone should approve, Roberta. But there, it is done and cannot be undone, and you may now pay the penalty. You may now take up the very position which has just been vacated by Miss Moncrieff. You can be my country house secretary, my secretary for Sussex. You will need a role in life. Now I have found one for you. One door closes, you see, and another one opens.’
After this she stalked back into the sunshine, but as she reached the curved Gothic arch that made up the shallow entrance to the old monastery building she turned and with a cat-like smile, and, Bobbie could swear, a cat-like purr too, she called to her ward, ‘I am afraid that from now on, Roberta, there will be no time for tanning yourself. Oh no, dear me no, no time at all. You will be inside, in the Sheds, from now on, and your tan will turn a pallid fawn, I am afraid. But never mind. You’ll soon get used to it, I’m sure, and doubtless you too will, in your turn, become perfidious, like Miss Moncrieff and sundry others. But until you do decide to run off with some Major Saxby or another, congratulations – you have been found a new role.’
As she followed her guardian out into the sunshine Bobbie’s heart, like the sun disappearing behind the clouds above them, was cast suddenly into the first shadows of many months, as she realized with dawning horror what her guardian’s words really meant.
She was to be locked up once more, just as she had been at Hazel Hill, but this time it would be in the Sheds, and doubtless, as she must have done with Miss Moncrieff, Beatrice would throw away the key, and Bobbie would, again like Miss Moncrieff, turn to knitting stockings and wearing cardigans with two-ply – or was it three-ply? – moss-stitched cuffs and collars. And she too would become a prey to her nerves from not being able to run about. And her mornings would be full only of the doubtful delights of a warm cup of cocoa, or a bowl of Bovril at lunchtime with a piece of brown bread followed by an apple, because when you were sitting waiting for another to call you, sitting waiting to call or write to someone on behalf of someone else, sitting waiting for life to happen to someone else, those things were the only excitements to which your heart and soul could turn.
Suddenly, blind to the fact that she was not alone any more, Bobbie started to run and run, towards the sea, towards the stone-filled beach where the waves would be frilling and the seagulls dipping, towards what had been. But even as she began to run it was as if she was running towards a narrow tunnel, towards a pin of light which had already begun to shrink beyond any imagining, light that was already starting to pull away from her, so that she knew that in reality running was completely fruitless because there were hounds at her heels, and they were closing in on her, getting nearer and nearer, closer and closer, but they were not canine hounds but human hounds, and it seemed to her in her panic that she could feel their breath on her neck, just as it seemed her heart was going at a rate that was no longer sustainable, and that everything in her whole life was suddenly pointless, and black, and dark, until at last there was no longer any light at all.
Chapter Eight
It was the height of summer all over France. Despite the recent war families were holidaying at old châteaux in the Loire, or in farmhouses and villas in the south, or in small cottages by the sea in Brittany. Wherever they were, however, and whoever they might be with, they had, to a person, left Paris quite empty of anyone of any consequence, with the single exception of those who toiled behind sewing machines in the ateliers of the great designers, struggling to help produce the many and varied masterpieces of post-war fashion, masterpieces that would still be admired and talked about long after the fashion for them had passed and moved on, and would eventually stand behind glass cases to be admired by visitors to museums, and students studying fashion.
Miranda was now part of this great exciting climax that was slowly approaching the capital. She had been brought to Paris by Sam Macaskie as early as late July, to be walked through salons and drawing rooms, to be paraded in and out of back street ateliers, until he was well satisfied that everyone knew what a great beauty his new protégée was, how tall she was, how elegant, how beautifully she walked.
Of course, since Sam had taken charge of her life, he had changed her name. He had taken her original surname, her true surname, once he had discovered it, and found it most amusing to put it together with her nickname to make the entirely delightful Randy Darling. It was a name that, once he had thought of it, made Miranda wrinkle her nose and at the same time laugh helplessly, because she had to admit that Macaskie was right – it was not a name that anyone would be likely to forget. The French found it easy too, so that was good.
She, in her turn, not to be outdone, no longer called Sam ‘Mr Macaskie’, or even ‘Sam’, but just Macaskie, because after that first day when she had been foolish enough to be deceived by his intentions she had no intention of thinking of him in anything but a professional way. Sam was too informal, and Mr Macaskie too formal, and Macaskie seemed to satisfy him too, although he never referred to such things, seeming, really, only to be concerned that Randy Darling should make a name for herself, progressing to the point of international fame, after which, as he said, affectionately, ‘You can take care of your good self, and I shall be off to seek another young woman. Although I doubt if I shall find her attempting to drink gin and it in the Dorchester. That is certainly not normal.’
‘I told you, I was taken to the Dorchester during the war, by a friend of my guardian – a friend of Allegra Sulgrave. Bombs dropped all night, but we slept like tops. Anyway, I never forgot it, or Pamela, the lady who took me there.’
‘I hear Chanel used to stay there, and that whenever she went down to the air raid shelter in the basement she was always preceded by her maid carrying her gas mask on a cushion. Now that is style with a capital B as in beautiful style.’
They were seated in one of those small cafés that have so few tables outside, and such a small bar inside, that anyone drinking there must have been forgiven for wondering at some time or another whether it could ever be worth the proprietor’s while to try to make a living in such a
small place.
Miranda looked across the street. An accordionist was playing on the pavement opposite. Two men, both carrying long sticks of bread under their arms, passed by wearing black berets and mackintoshes despite the heat. She watched them progressing slowly up the street, and as she did so it came to her that they would most likely have many stairs to mount before they reached their apartments, and that when they did reach them those same apartments would probably be damp, which might be the reason for their wearing mackintoshes on such a summery evening. Or it might be that they had no other decent clothes, that underneath those belted coats their other garments were so darned and patched, their everyday clothes were so impoverished, that their only shred of lasting dignity lay in their mackintoshes and berets.
She turned and looked at Macaskie, and was about to ask him whether he agreed when it came to her that a man like Macaskie would never think thoughts of that kind. He was just not that sort of person.
Miranda sighed, looking at his dark good looks as he smoked his usual untipped Gauloise in leisurely fashion, and read through the evening paper. She had done her very best not to fall in love with Macaskie, but since coming to Paris she had begun to find it more and more difficult, perhaps because she was lonely and spoke almost no French.
Or perhaps it was because it felt as if it was the right time to fall in love, that not to fall in love would be to miss out on the right time and the right place, and where could be more right, after all, than Paris?
It was not that Macaskie was more handsome than any of the other men she passed sometimes in the street, or saw arriving or departing from their hotels. It was not that he was the wittiest companion – he certainly was not that. It was, she had decided, when awake in the night and watching the occasional car light making shadows on her bedroom ceiling, his quality of aloofness, his ability to stand back and appreciate everything and everyone in his own particular way.
Yet it was not in a way that he would ever dream of sharing with others, least of all, Miranda sometimes thought, with her. No – Macaskie was his own best kept secret, which somehow made him fascinating to Miranda, and to women in general, for she saw that, all too obviously, wherever she went, women were in love with Macaskie. Or at least, the women who knew him, married, unmarried, single, or unattached, all liked to imagine that they were in love with him. A certain soft, tender look came into their eyes the moment he turned the corner and they saw him, and that same kind of greeting that she had first noticed when they lunched at the Dorchester would be forthcoming – Ah, Sam, Sam – how are you? – and there would be much patting of his cheek with gloved hands, or kissing of that same smooth cheek with reddened lips that left a small imprint which had to be quickly removed with a lace-edged handkerchief.
The truth was that Miranda knew that she had about as much chance with Macaskie as any of the other women who knew him and loved him – in other words, she had no chance at all. Which was why she called him by his surname. It helped to distance him from her heart, to remove him from her feelings. He was not ‘Sam’ to her. To the others he might be, but not to her.
And she was not so stupid that she did not know that, despite all her youthful slender shape, ‘Miranda’ as a person meant little or nothing to him; to him her body was just something from which to make money. Of course the money that he would make from her was not just for him, it was for her too, but nevertheless over the last days, for some reason, as he took her from one photographic studio to another, it had started to feel more and more as if it was all for him – much less for Randy Darling, and much more for Sam Macaskie.
His preliminary plan had been all along, she knew now, for her to burst upon the fashion season well before it actually opened. He wanted his protégée to conquer the fashion press, even the dailies; to build Miranda’s image as Randy Darling in such a way that by the end of September, by the time all the ballyhoo and the excitement of the winter fashion shows, in the magazines, even the newsreels, had calmed down, Randy would be the name of that season. That was the power, well known and apparently envied by his rivals, that Macaskie’s interest in a model could arouse.
‘Your whole life is about to change,’ he announced after their first few days in Paris, and he stared out of the window and smiled at the rooftops opposite the atelier in which they were waiting for Miranda to be fitted with some new and exciting toile. Soon some new and exciting master would enter the room, and having turned and turned Miranda would – if the toile was right – smile and stand back, and call to his assistants to admire and gasp with him at his creation; or – and this had already happened many times – he would throw his arms in the air, a torrent of frustrated fury would escape him, and his assistants would all rush forward and start to unpin, or repin, or just take the offending garment tearfully away, before beginning on yet another potential masterpiece.
Again and again Miranda was witness to such scenes, and again and again, as the toiles were hurled back or greeted with ecstasy and sent on their way, as she saw them either fitted on her or repinned on a dummy, the awful realization would strike her that the clothes she was to model were, in every way, works of art, and it was up to her not to let them down in any way. They were the picture, she was the frame.
‘Modelling clothes beautifully is as difficult as dancing beautifully,’ her teacher, Mrs Kelso in Farthing Street, had told her. ‘It requires a lightness of movement, an inner sense of beauty, an awareness of the moment, that has, to my mind, been sadly underrated. A bad model can destroy the artistry of clothes in seconds, as much as a good model can raise it to the point when the audience at that show will never, if they live to be a hundred, ever, forget the dress.’
It was fun, and yet it was not fun either, for standing for hours on end, not really knowing to what end some designer was working, required great patience. It required great patience, too, to wait for Macaskie to return to the hotel at dusk and take her off to the Ritz bar for a drink, and then perhaps on to some small café where he would let her drink red wine and nibble small portions of delicious food while he ate rather more heartily.
The difference in the ways of life enjoyed in France and in England was too strange not to be talked about, and the subject came up again and again, with Miranda protesting that it was unfair that the French, who had been invaded, had fewer problems after the war, or seemingly fewer problems, than the English who had actually repulsed the invader. The French had food, and wine, and gaiety, while at home the English could not even buy a piece of fish without queuing.
This particular evening Macaskie was in high good humour. Seated at their café table he insisted that he loved the English despite their way of life and because of themselves. He loved the French for their way of life and rather despite themselves, but whichever – he quite saw what Miranda meant.
In between taking small sips of anise he insisted, ‘The British way of life is dour because they like it that way, believe me – nothing to do with the war. They like not to enjoy themselves. They like to sit out on hard-backed chairs while other nations dance. They like to keep Sunday particularly – a nice dark grey, no singing, no dancing, no markets, nothing but church, church and more church, and all before the weather turns nasty and they over-cook the vegetables. You know that Voltaire was once exiled to England?’
Miranda shook her head. She knew so little about Voltaire that quite frankly he might as well be a fashion designer, not a great writer.
‘Yes, Voltaire exiled himself from France, in disgust at the censorship, but after only a few months he came right back to France again – apparently he simply could not take all that gentility, poor fellow. And that was before he raised his fork to his lips and found out what the British did to food! Which reminds me that it must now be time for us to go to table, because I personally am starving.’
Miranda had spent four long weeks with Mrs Kelso in Farthing Street, and now, simply by standing up and walking ahead of him, she was able to make everyone stop talk
ing and turn their heads as they passed. Despite the fact that she was simply dressed in only a dark coat, white gloves, seamed nylon stockings and high-heeled shoes, she registered with everyone that she passed. Not because the dark coat was anything special, nor because she was wearing nylons, and her blond hair was brushed up and back under her hat; it was because of the way she was wearing them. She sashayed ahead of Macaskie knowing that he was noting every one of those people turning their heads as she walked by their tables, that he saw how many of them stopped talking, even for a few seconds, and stared at her.
Miranda knew that, by the time they sat down opposite each other in the darker end of the restaurant, Macaskie would be yet again congratulating himself on his choice of model to promote that year. She knew without looking that he would follow her slowly into the restaurant, through the door which she was now pushing with her gloved hand, telling himself all the time that he had the golden touch, that Sam Macaskie had the eye that was needed to spot a fashion star, that no-one else had his flair, that photographers from all over would be queuing to use Randy Darling.
Once they were seated and had ordered, Macaskie, obviously bored by the discomforts of England, of life at its worst on the other side of the Channel, changed the subject. ‘So, Randy darling, what, in your opinion, has been the best dress to date? Which one did you like best, would you like best to model?’
Miranda looked at Macaskie, surprised. ‘Oh, you know what I’m like – I always think the dress I have just been fitted with is the one I love best. I have very little taste.’
The Blue Note Page 20