The Dressmaker's Gift

by Valpy, Fiona

  The brutality of the war seemed to grow day by day. There was no word of what had become of Monsieur and Madame Arnaud and, when she’d gone back to look one day, their house had been locked and deserted.

  Christiane’s body had been recovered from the rubble of the factory workers’ housing at Billancourt. Claire, Mireille and Vivi had been to visit her grave in a cemetery to the south of the city. Vivienne and Claire had wept as they placed the sprigs of lily of the valley, that they’d picked from the front garden of a boarded-up house, at the foot of the simple headstone that marked where Christiane lay. But Mireille had stood, dry-eyed, her heart frozen with too much sadness and too much pain and too much loss. The last time she’d stood beside a grave, it had been to bury Esther in a hastily dug, shallow plot alongside so many of the other refugees who’d been mown down on the road that day as they’d fled Paris.

  She tried to stem the flow of her thoughts and focus on her work, but even with the windows pushed open as wide as they would go, she had to pause frequently to wipe her hands and brow so that the drops of sweat didn’t stain her work. Silk was the worst for showing water marks, but the new artificial fabrics that they often worked with these days, now that silk was so scarce, were almost as bad.

  As the afternoon wore on, Mireille felt the heat wrap itself around her like a heavy cloak that she couldn’t shrug off. She glanced around. Many of the other girls seated at the table looked as if they were struggling to stay awake, exhausted by hunger and hard work and the ever-present fear of the enemy’s iron grip on the city in which they lived. A weariness had crept into Mireille’s bones, sapping her body and her mind of their characteristic energy. This was another reality of the war, she realised – the quietly toxic corrosion of the spirit. The garments that the girls worked on in the atelier seemed grotesque, suddenly, rather than the beautiful creations that she had taken such a pride in before. Circumstance had transformed them into tastelessly ostentatious declarations of wealth in this time of hardship and deprivation. The women who visited the salon these days were the frumpy ‘grey mice’ or the hard-faced wives and mistresses of Nazi officials, or the greedy, self-obsessed ‘queens of the black market’, as the models called them behind their backs. All of them sought to cover the ugliness of reality with a fine gown or an elegant coat. When had it happened, wondered Mireille as she let out the waistband of a satin evening skirt, the tipping point when French fashion had changed from being perceived as something the country could take pride in to something grotesque and vulgar, tainted with shame?

  At last, Mademoiselle Vannier told the seamstresses to begin clearing away, signalling the end of another working day. The thought of sitting upstairs in the cramped apartment, which would be even stuffier than the sewing room up there under the roof of dark slates which had been baked by the sun all day, did nothing to lift Mireille’s spirits. So instead, she headed out into the streets and made for the river. With no real sense of where she was going, she crossed the Pont Neuf on to the Île de la Cité in the middle of the stream, turning away from the busy hub around Notre-Dame and made her way towards the downstream end of the island. And then she realised what it was that had drawn her here. Unseen by the stream of homeward-bound workers and the truckloads of soldiers that sped past, intent on other prey, she slipped into the narrow stone stairway which led down to a small patch of trees and grass below. Apart from a boatman who was busy making fast his boat for the night, that end of the island was deserted. As if beckoned by the graceful arms of its branches, Mireille walked to the very end point where a willow tree trailed its green fingers in the waters of the Seine. She’d noticed it there, from afar, as part of the scenery along the river, but only now did she seek refuge beneath it. Some instinct drew her to it, an instinct which the weight of her despair couldn’t crush.

  Just as she would have done if she’d been at home with her family, Mireille settled herself under the canopy of willow leaves, leaning her back against the trunk. She kicked off her shoes and rested her weary head against the rough bark, letting the tree’s bulk take her sadness and cast it out on to the ever-flowing river. She wished her family were there with her: her parents would reassure her and lend her some of their quiet strength; her brother, Yves, would make her laugh and help her forget her cares for a while; and her sister, Eliane, would listen and nod and understand so that Mireille wouldn’t feel all alone in the world. Blanche – Esther’s baby – would gurgle and busy herself making mud-pies in the earth that sustained the tree, and she would chuckle as she was hugged and loved by the family that had taken her in. Mireille’s longing for them tugged at her heart, as powerful and as constant as the current of the river.

  And she longed for someone else, too. The young man she’d known for just a few brief days, whom Claire and Vivi knew as ‘Fréd’, who had held her and kissed her, in the fleeting, precious moments she’d spent alone with him before he’d left on his dangerous journey back to England. And then he had whispered his real name in her ear so that she’d know who this man truly was: this man who loved her.

  She sat beneath the sheltering arms of the willow tree as dusk fell, bringing with it a faint breeze from the river. She lifted the weight of her hair away from her neck and allowed the evening air to cool it. The images of the faces she held most dear, coupled with the reassuring solidity of the tree’s trunk at her back, reminded her that there were some things that the war couldn’t ever destroy.

  What she had felt that afternoon in the atelier was what the occupying forces wanted her to feel: defeat. If she gave in to it then she would have lost and they would have won. But now she knew she could always come back here, to this place which was the nearest thing to her true home that she could find in the city, amongst the hard-paved streets and the tall buildings that shut out the sky. She could come here and be with those she loved, joined to them by the ribbons of water that met, at last, in the ocean beyond. And those vital lines of connection would give her back her sense of what really mattered. They would make her feel part of a larger whole. And she knew that they would keep her from being defeated.

  Claire had been delivering a message to a tobacconist’s shop just off the Place Chopin and was walking home, swinging her attaché case which felt a good deal lighter now that it merely contained the sheets of music for her ‘singing lesson’ which had camouflaged a sealed brown envelope. Not that the envelope had weighed anything at all, really, but she always felt a load slip from her shoulders once a delivery had been successfully completed, allowing her to return home buoyed up by a sense of relief.

  It was pleasant to be out, after the oppressive heat of the day. The evening was still warm and she couldn’t bear the thought of a hot, stuffy Métro ride, no doubt preceded by a long wait on a dirty platform, so she decided to cross the Pont d’Iéna, facing the imposing bulk of the Eiffel Tower, and walk back along the river. As dusk fell, it promised a faint hint of coolness and she looked forward to feeling the gentle river breeze on her hot cheeks.

  As she walked along, she was surprised by the stream of buses and police trucks that overtook her. One of the buses stopped at a junction before turning on to the bridge, and as it did so she caught a glimpse of frightened-looking faces behind the windows. A child turned to look at her from the rear window as the bus drove on and his eyes were large and dark in the paleness of his face.

  She came to a place where queuing vehicles formed a wall outside the winter velodrome. A road-block had been set up to prevent people from walking or cycling past. Soldiers stood at the barrier, checking the papers of passers-by and Claire felt a pang of fear grip her guts. But she knew that if she were to turn and walk away she would draw attention to herself. She had nothing to hide, she reminded herself; her papers were in order and she had a valid-sounding excuse for being out. So she resisted the impulse to run and stood in the short line at the barrier, waiting her turn. The wall of buses and trucks crept forwards in stops and starts, directed by French policemen. She couldn’
t see what was happening on the other side, but it seemed as if they were disgorging their passengers at the entrance of the cycling arena before driving off again.

  The soldiers who were checking papers waved the couple in front of her through, but as they attempted to make their way towards the velodrome, an officer, wearing the black uniform of the Gestapo, stepped out between the buses and shouted at them to go around the other way. As he strode over to berate the soldiers at the road block, Claire realised who he was. The uniform was new, but she recognised his blonde hair and broad shoulders. She glanced around, wondering if she could walk away unnoticed while he was giving the soldiers a dressing down, but it was too late – he’d recognised her too. She felt his eyes upon her and when she turned to face him, a look of amusement played about the thin line of his lips.

  ‘Good evening, Ernst,’ she said calmly, as she held out her papers for the sentries to check, trying to stop her hand from shaking as she did so.

  ‘Claire!’ he exclaimed. ‘What an unexpected pleasure seeing you here.’ He turned to the pair of soldiers and barked some commands at them in German, then drew Claire to one side. He reached out his hand, attempting to take hers, but she merely gave him her identity card, pretending not to have understood the gesture.

  He glanced at the piece of paper in his hand which bore her photograph, then back at her. ‘It’s been a while,’ he said. The smile slowly faded from his face as she refused to smile back at him. ‘You didn’t reply to my invitations to meet for dinner, after we’d bumped into each other so unexpectedly at the museum that day.’

  ‘No,’ she replied evenly. ‘After seeing you with your wife and your son, they weren’t invitations I felt like accepting.’

  He frowned, irritated now. ‘But Claire, surely you knew what your position was? What did you expect? We had fun, you and I. You certainly didn’t object to the nice things I gave you – the stockings and the perfume. And you didn’t seem to mind drinking champagne and having fine dinners bought for you at the best restaurants in Paris.’ His eyes were cold and hard, and glinted like steel.

  She met his gaze steadily. ‘If I’d known you were married, I never would have accepted those things from you.’

  She held out her hand for her identity document, attempting to bring the encounter to an end and be on her way, but he held it just out of her reach and smiled again, relishing his power.

  ‘Not so fast, mademoiselle, I think I need to ask you a few questions. What brings you to this part of the city tonight?’

  She held up her attaché case. ‘A music lesson. I have singing classes sometimes.’

  ‘Permit me,’ he said, with exaggerated politeness, taking the leather case from her and opening it. ‘Ah, you have hidden talents I see,’ he observed, fanning out the sheet music. ‘Hidden from me, anyway. You never mentioned that you sang, on all those evenings we spent together.’

  She continued to meet his gaze levelly. ‘No, it’s something I’ve only recently taken up. I have more time to spare in the evenings these days.’

  He shoved the sheets of paper back into the case and handed it back to her. Then he held out her identity card but, just as she reached to take it, he whisked it away again, amusing himself as a cat does with a mouse, she thought.

  ‘So who are you keeping company with now then? Apart from your singing teacher who lives all the way across town from the Rue Cardinale?’

  She was silent, but continued to hold out her hand for her ID document.

  ‘Those two other seamstresses, I suppose.’ He grinned. ‘The ones who were with you in the museum that day? I never did think they were a very good influence on you, you know, Claire. Perhaps you should be a little more discerning in the company you keep.’ His piercing blue eyes swept over her, and seemed to linger on the scuffed attaché case.

  She tried to force herself to stay calm, keeping her voice level. ‘I could say the same to you, Ernst.’ She gave him a cool, appraising look that took in his black uniform from the silver braid on his cap to the polished toecaps of his boots. ‘I suppose all this is something to do with your new role, is it?’ She gestured towards the buses.

  He laughed. ‘No, not at all. We leave such everyday duties as rubbish disposal to the French. I have far more important people to track down.’

  Her gorge rose as she realised what he was saying, and she fought to swallow her nausea. As her anger surged, overflowing, she blurted out, ‘You are despicable.’ She was shaking all over with rage and fear, but stood her ground, waiting for him to give her back her papers.

  Just then a commotion broke out at the road block as the soldiers tried to detain a man. Ernst glanced over his shoulder towards the source of the shouting. A flicker of annoyance passed across his features as his work got in the way of the game he’d been enjoying playing with Claire. ‘Go on then, take it.’ He thrust her identity card at her. ‘I have more important things to do than waste any more of my time on you. But you can’t come through here. You’ll have to go the long way round. I’m afraid the privileges you once enjoyed are no longer available to you these days, Mademoiselle Claire.’ And he dismissed her with a flick of his hand before drawing the revolver from the leather holster slung from his belt and turning his back on her.

  She walked away quickly, her whole body still shaking, and she replayed his words in her head as she hurried homewards. What had he meant by the things he’d said about Mireille and Vivi? Was he just testing to see how she’d react? She shouldn’t have let him goad her until her anger got the better of her. And what did he mean about having more important people to track down? She told herself it was simply malice – his love of the powerful position he now held, coupled with his annoyance at being rejected by her, but something in the way he’d said those words made her skin prickle with fear. And what were those buses full of frightened-looking people doing there? There were so many of them, being herded into the sports centre. Where would they sleep? How long would they be held there? And for what purpose?

  Back in the apartment, she lay awake long into the hot night, gazing unseeing into the blackness, haunted by Ernst’s words and by the dark, scared eyes of the child who had looked out at her through the windows of that bus at it drove onwards towards its darkly sinister destination.

  Harriet

  When the pressure of work at Agence Guillemet builds to a level where tempers fray and exhaustion kicks in, I take refuge once again in the Palais Galliera. Sitting among the exhibits grounds me and always gives me that sense of reconnection with the roots of fashion, reminding me that these are more than just clothes: they are tangible relics of our history.

  I wander through the main gallery, where an exhibition of 1970s fashions brighten the space with their vivid colours and flowing, hippy-ish lines.

  I allow my thoughts to settle as I sort through the latest strands of family history that Simone has shared with me – both hers and mine. I’ve been reading up, too, about what was happening in Paris at the time. I realise that Claire witnessed the horrific Vélodrome d’Hiver roundup, when more than thirteen thousand Jews were arrested by the French police, as part of a Nazi-directed programme. They were held in unbearable conditions in the very heart of the city before being sent to the death camps. Of those thirteen thousand people, four thousand were children. And one of them was the little boy whose eyes, looking out of the bus window, haunted Claire’s dreams. How terrifying it is to think that, little by little, day by day, this vast city could have become so paralysed by fear and oppression that its people could have allowed that to happen.

  My train of thought is interrupted by a woman in an elegantly cut black jacket who has walked into the gallery. Her silver-grey hair is cut into a bob and she looks vaguely familiar. Then I realise she’s the woman I saw here before, at the Lanvin exhibition. She stops to read the description of a psychedelic jumpsuit with widely flared sleeves, taking out a small notebook to jot down a few notes. Then she gives me a nod of recognition and a smile and
continues on her way.

  I check my watch. It’s time to get back to the office. We’re planning a product launch for the agency’s eco-cosmetic client and it’s going to be held on the Côte d’Azur in the summer. There are logistics to plan, models’ contracts to arrange as well as their hotels and transport, press releases to write and a particularly demanding photographer’s emails to reply to. Stress levels among the account managers are at an all-time high. Even Florence, who gives the impression of always being cool, calm and collected, has been seen to hurry through the office. The South of France launch is scheduled for the second week of July, immediately following the Haute Couture Autumn/Winter Shows which are always held in Paris then. Simone has told me that, with staff stretched so thin, there might be a bigger role for the two of us in one or other of these events.

  And while the Haute Couture shows would be nice, we’re keeping our fingers crossed for Nice!

  1943

  It was another bitterly cold winter. On the increasingly infrequent days when there was coal for the boiler, the seamstresses huddled over the cast-iron radiators during their breaks, attempting to warm cracked, frost-nipped fingers that were reddened and stung with angry chilblains. Mireille wore a pair of fingerless gloves that her mother had sent, knitted from an old jersey of her brother’s. She’d sent pairs for Claire and Vivi too at Christmas time. Once again, the girls wore as many layers of clothing as they could fit under their white coats, padding their gaunt, bony bodies just as the snow padded the angular rooflines and gables of the buildings in the streets around the Rue Cardinale.