‘Yes,’ she said. She let her smile emerge again. ‘But for others, not for me. I am most able to care for myself.’
‘I reckon you are.’ George was silent a moment, sipping his own coffee. A life in a cocoa family had, it seemed, left him with a preference for the darker brew too. They ate the croissants, that were indeed good, soft and buttery. ‘Don’t know that you’ve had many who have cared for you though.’
‘I am most well cared for. I have parents now.’ She suddenly realised she had let slip that for at least some time she had not had any. ‘And I have Aunt Lily and Aunt Sophie.’ These parents had to love her, as she was their daughter. And Aunt Lily and Aunt Sophie, though fond of her, did not care for her in the way they loved Danny and Rose. Some of this, perhaps, showed in her face.
‘Maybe you are a bit more alone than you think,’ he said softly. ‘Violette, it’s odd coming from a bloke like me I know, but if you ever need anything — anything at all, even just a shoulder to cry on or . . . or someone to vent your anger at, you can come to me. All right?’
How had he understood that for her, anger was the most necessary to share? Sometimes the anger overtook her so much she could not think as well as she should. But he had offered to listen to it, maybe take it from her . . .
‘When this is over, how about dinner? The Ritz? Champagne, lobster, the works?’
She did not tell him that for her the Ritz, lobster and champagne would not be a treat — because, actually, the treat would be being with him. Even more than before she did not regret the jam and marmalade aboard the ship, nor her time with the gendarme. For the Ritz had rooms, did it not, and now she knew how to make a man happy, and not just from studying the woodcuts.
She would like to make George Carryman happy. George Carryman, who challenged the sky, its vastness, its storms and turmoil, every time he rode in this flimsy plane.
‘I would like that very much indeed,’ she said, and leaned over to kiss his lips quickly, because she could hear a car, and gently, because unlike her previous encounters she did not want this dance to be swift, but a slow stepping towards something . . . something she did not quite understand.
But George did. George Carryman, who had grown up in a family of love, might just be able to teach her love too.
Chapter 42
Never forget that most of what others see of you is clothing. Clothing cannot make a sour face lovely, no matter how well cut or gorgeous, but it can make a plain one beautiful.
Miss Lily, 1912
Ethel Carryman drove the car herself: a plain dark green Ford. The wrinkled sack she wore as a dress was also dark green. She waited till Violette had seated herself next to her, waved to George, who had not left his plane, then swiftly and competently aimed the car at the narrow gate between the hedges.
‘Good flight?’
‘Yes. Thank you,’ said Violette. Normally she would have said more but the kiss and the new feelings had unsettled her a little.
‘He’s a grand lad, our George. Not that his dad or granddad appreciate it. But they’ll leave him a good share of the family business anyway.
‘Not to you?’
‘I have shares. Non-voting ones.’
‘Your nephew, he is not married?’ She did not think he was but it was good to be sure. Reliable men had been regrettably few in her life. She was still not sure she would recognise one.
‘No. Still waiting for the love of a good woman.’
‘I do not think I am a good woman,’ said Violette, surprising herself with the admission.
Ethel glanced at her, blinked, then grinned. ‘Reckon our George could cope with a woman who wasn’t all that good either. As long as she was good to him.’
‘I think he would be a man easy to be good to,’ said Violette, peering out the window as the plane wiggled its wings above them, then headed towards a large black cloud and what might be Manchester.
‘And any girl who wasn’t would have me to deal with,’ said Ethel cheerfully.
Violette did not think this woman carried a knife or even a small pistol in that vast item that she probably called a handbag. She did not even think her ruthless. But effective? It was a certainty . . .
‘Like a sandwich? Corned beef and pickle, cheese and pickle, egg and cress. Singin’ hinnies too. They’re on the back seat if you’re hungry.’
‘No, thank you.’
‘Well, I might have one or two, if you’d pass them over.’
Violette watched as Ethel disposed of an egg and cress sandwich in three bites, then held out her hand for a corned beef and pickle one. A singin’ hinny, it seemed, was close to what was called a pikelet in Australia. Evidently Violette was not going to be told more until they reached their destination.
Violette could sit there in silence, while Ethel munched. Instead, she came to a decision. ‘Your dress is ugly.’
‘No uglier than its wearer,’ said Ethel, as cheerfully as before or, just possibly, slightly too cheerfully.
Violette looked at her in surprise. ‘You are not ugly. It is just the clothes that make you look . . .’ she shrugged ‘. . . a shape like a rubbish can, but clean, or a sack.’
‘I don’t know if that is the best compliment I’ve had or the worst insult. Cheese and pickle this time.’
Violette handed the sandwich over. ‘You are big, but big does not mean ugly.’
‘It does if you’re a woman and over six feet tall, with a backside like a battleship.’
Violette shook her head. ‘If you were put in a room with other women who are as tall as you, you would be quite pretty.’
‘Yes? Well, sadly that isn’t likely to happen.’
‘No. But I can make you pretty. I am going to be a designer and a vendeuse,’ she added. ‘The most excellent in the world.’
‘You’d be excellent indeed if you could do anything with me, lass.’ The false cheeriness was gone.
‘Of course I can.’ Violette studied her. ‘Your hair, to begin with. You wear it like a schoolgirl.’
‘True enough. This was how I wore it at school, and in the war too. Easy to look after, quick to wash and dry.’
‘It makes your face look fat.’
‘I’ve got a face like a horse,’ said Ethel. ‘Long as well as wide.’
‘No. Your chin, it is good, and your neck is long and I can make it seem even longer. You must grow your hair to just above your shoulders, but even now, I can show you how to pin it up so people notice your neck is beautiful. A few curls about your forehead will show your eyes. You have pretty eyes. A touch of kohl and they can be beautiful too.’
‘Can’t be doing with that stuff.’
Violette hid a smile. Ethel was weakening. This would be a transformation almost as dramatic as that of Miss Morrison. But this one should please George Carryman too. Besides, she liked Ethel Carryman. Violette did not like many people, but those she did like deserved to be beautiful.
‘A little powder — shiny cheeks make them look plump. Your face, it is red in the wrong places, but that is easily fixed. And lipstick . . .’
‘Lipstick? I’d chew it off in five minutes.’
‘Not for every day, but for special times, when you would want to look your best.’
Ethel was silent for a moment. ‘Yes, well, there might be times like that. You said my dress was like a sack. Sacks are comfortable.’
‘A good dress must be comfortable,’ agreed Violette. ‘If it is uncomfortable a woman does not move comfortably, and so does not look her best. But a dress does not need to be a sack to be comfortable.’
‘The work I do, down in the East End — I run a women’s clinic there — any dress I wear needs to be something that won’t tear, won’t stain, and can be washed out every time a kiddie’s sick on it.’
‘Then you should not wear linen. Linen wrinkles and it stains. You need a fabric that drapes about you so you do not seem larger than you are, but cut so it also shows your shape, which I think is actually most good. Ve
lvet, I think, and with a waist, for you have a good waist.’
‘A big one.’
‘But much smaller than your poitrine or your hips, and it is that difference that makes a woman beautiful.’
‘Violette, you are very kind. But I can’t see me wearing velvet down in the East End.’
‘No, only for the special events. I understand that you need another fabric also which does not look expensive and can be washed. Cotton, I think, or flannel. But it is the quality and cut that counts. I know of a supplier of good thick fabric — material that will not stretch or fade or wrinkle.’
Madame’s supplier, but surely open to supply someone else if the price was higher. ‘And I will cut your dresses so they do not look like sacks. Perfectly plain, but with the right weights in the hem and wrists so they hang in the most flattering way. And you will wear high heels when you go out.’
‘Me? I’ll look like a giraffe crossed with a hippopotamus.’
‘Your legs are excellent.’
Ethel automatically tugged down her skirt with one hand. ‘My legs are long.’
‘And so they deserve to be seen.’
‘But I’d tower over . . . over my companion. I tower over him already,’ Ethel admitted. ‘Violette, truly, I don’t go in for all this sex stuff. Never have and almost certainly never will.’
Violette shrugged. ‘That is not the only reason to look beautiful.’
‘You really think I could look beautiful?’
‘I am very sure that I could make you beautiful,’ said Violette, not adding that if Ethel’s well-connected friends saw that miracle Violette’s reputation would be assured.
Miss Carryman came, efficiently, to a decision. ‘You’re on. When this is over I’ll give you a day to do your best.’
‘You will give me a day to take your measurements, order the fabric, arrange for a dresser to do your hair. I myself will do your make-up. You will then have your clothes in perhaps two weeks.’ The supplier would need to be paid very well indeed.
‘Midge’s and Sophie’s jaws will hang down to their chins if you can manage all that,’ said Ethel, then she became sombre. ‘We’ve a lot to do beforehand, lass. And we need to keep our minds on it, not this make-up stuff.’
‘I will find Aunt Sophie,’ said Violette, hoping she sounded as confident as when she had been promising a Cinderella transformation of Ethel Carryman.
The car had been entering the drifting smog of London while they were talking. Now Violette was conscious of another smell: dead fish and human excrement turned to mud, hundreds of years of it gathered in a river, mixing with the sulphur stench of coal, damp and poverty.
‘We’re here,’ said Ethel, applying the brakes deftly.
Violette stared out. It was a two-storey house like the other slum houses but this, almost certainly, did not house a family to each room, though it, like them, had not been painted in the past fifty years, or possibly ever at all.
At first sight it looked dilapidated. At second glance — and Violette was good at second glances — the house did not share its neighbours’ air of imminent collapse. The front door, as it opened, swung with an ease that showed it was hung straight, and the hinges were oiled, and the doorjambs had not swollen with the damp.
Ethel picked up her suitcase and ushered Violette inside. A woman stood back to let her pass — fifty, no, perhaps no more than twenty, but with the look that said nose, cheekbones and undoubtedly other bones in her body had been broken and more than once. ‘Mr James is in the sitting room, Miss Ethel.’
‘Thanks, Myrtle lass. Would you mind bringing us a pot of tea and maybe some of that stew? I’m fair clemmed.’
Despite the sandwiches, not one of which was left? But the bulk of Ethel Carryman must need much fuel, thought Violette generously. And the stew did smell good — of ham bones and leeks. It would probably be served with the white bread of England, substantial as a snow bank after the bread made of clouds and crust of France, but excellent of its own kind of way.
For now she was hungry too.
She found Ethel looking at her with concern, but with the beginning of friendship. Violette realised that despite recently obtaining a family, she had never yet had a friend.
‘Better get some grub into you while you can. Mrs Oakley makes a right good stew.’ Ethel moved surprisingly lightly along the hall — an old runner, faded but once good, and paintings that had been done by amateurs, but also quite good ones, gifts perhaps from those she helped, for Violette had no doubt that this woman did good for many.
Ethel opened a door. ‘James? She’s here.’
Chapter 43
I have never met a woman who was capable of love, who was not also capable of great beauty.
Miss Lily, 1912
LONDON
An hour later a girl in a faded, too-long dress and a droopy cardigan sang ‘Ave Maria’ as well as ‘Jerusalem’, the favourite hymn of the Bald Hill CWA, outside Worthy’s Teahouse, opposite the German Embassy, the hat before her filling with pennies and threepences and once a five-pound note. Her voice was high and clear and pure in the smog-soaked air.
Two amiable gentlemen offered to buy her cocoa. The girl smiled at both and refused most nicely. The fog swirled, almost cheese coloured and thickening. A perfect afternoon, thought Violette, although she was possibly the only person in London to think so.
It was just after four o’clock when the gentleman came out of the embassy. The fog was too thick for her to see his features clearly at first, but she recognised the way he walked, the straight back of the German military aristocrat. This was the count, the man in the photographs Mr Lorrimer had shown her, the man he hoped would know where Aunt Sophie was.
The count sat in the back seat of the most admirable car parked in the street, admirable not just because it was expensive, but because of the convenient luggage rack on the back, currently unencumbered by suitcases.
Violette grinned.
The car moved slowly in the fog; quite slowly enough for Violette to grab her hat, tip the money into the hat of the legless and armless man propped on the wall a little further along the street, then cling onto the luggage rack behind the car, a game that so many street urchins played.
Few noticed her, collars up, hurrying home or faltering, trying to find a way grown unfamiliar in the thick fog. Those who did see her mostly did not even bother to smile, for who had the energy to smile at an urchin’s frolic when the air was too poor quality to breathe?
A second car followed them, as far away as possible to just keep the first car in sight, which was not far at all in this fog.
The first car stopped. Violette slipped off the luggage rack, stayed low and stretched briefly, then slid unnoticed under the car and peered out. She was cold, but a blanket or sack would be an encumbrance, and besides, under her ragged clothes she wore two pairs of fine wool combinations.
The count emerged, his coat most admirably well cut, his shoes not of the latest fashion, but so well made they would last for generations.
She peered out as he crossed the footpath to a dance hall, a slightly superior example of its type, where girls in rayon finery would charge two shillings a dance, perhaps, instead of sixpence, and at least two guineas if a client wished to hire them for a whole evening. Other, later arrangements might also be made, and just as long as the establishment received its twenty per cent the price would be each girl’s to negotiate.
The second car pulled up just around the corner. Violette waited, wishing she had a Thermos of coffee, but that would not be in keeping with her cover. But in the time taken for perhaps two foxtrots the count had emerged again. She reattached herself as the car nosed back into the fog.
The second car followed.
They went back the way they had come, and then suddenly a turn to the East End, then back to Soho, taking corners at a speed quite unsafe in the growing darkness. Headlights were of little use in fog. Violette heard the car behind them for perhaps half an hour, t
hen either it lost them at one of their sharp turns or the driver had finally worked out how to follow discreetly.
Violette doubted it.
The fog thinned as they drove through the suburbs. By the time they reached the first fields it had vanished along with the chimneys belching the smoke that created it. Her fingers and feet were almost numb with cold, despite her ragged gloves and two pairs of much darned woollen stockings.
Finally she had to move, simply to keep her circulation sufficient so that she could maintain her grip and not fall off. The car rocked slightly as she changed from one position to another. It slowed, so that for a moment she thought the driver had noticed a change in the vehicle’s balance. But then it sped up again, even faster than before.
At last the car turned off the main road and onto a gravelled lane. It was almost dark and the trees were vast leafless umbrellas above them. There was just enough light to see two gatehouses, the tall gates between them already open on the blank façade of an unlit mansion.
The car stopped. Violette stayed in place. Often — usually — people only noticed those they did not expect to see when they moved. A motionless person could remain unseen even in a chair in a drawing room. But this time the chauffeur strode quickly from the front seat and snatched her arm. So he had noticed her movements!
She stumbled stiff-limbed and would have fallen if he hadn’t grabbed her other arm, then twisted both of them behind her, holding her in place.
‘Who are you?’ He spoke in English, but the accent was German. The accent of the occupiers of her country as a child, the accent she would not forget.
‘I . . . I am so sorry, mister.’ Violette carefully modelled her accent on Myrtle’s. It would not fool a Londoner, but these Boche would not be experts in the accents of England.
‘I . . . I just wanted to get home in this ruddy fog. I must have missed me place to jump off.’ She let the tears flow, gazing up at him, pleading. ‘I really am sorry, mister. If I could sleep in a barn tonight or in the car, I can walk to a train station in the mornin’. I’ve got enough I think for me fare. Or maybe youse are goin’ back to London?’
Lilies, Lies and Love Page 22