A Gown of Thorns: A Gripping Novel of Romance, Intrigue and the Secrets of a Vintage Parisian Dress (24 page)

‘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.

D
awn 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.

W
hile 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.

‘
P
assed 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?’

No answer. Miss Thorne was writhing under an onslaught of memories. Audrey and Raymond were the only people alive who knew that she had once, briefly, been Yvonne Rosel. They were the only French people she’d kept in touch with, and only because Audrey had sought her out and kept a correspondence going.
How had they traced her here?

They’d been so young when she met them in 1943. Shy sweethearts, hiding their devotion because Audrey came from respectable farming stock while the Chaumiers, Raymond’s folk, were labourers. The two of them had been children really, thrust by war and the realities of rural life into premature adulthood. Audrey Valle, her black curls flattened under a headscarf, playmate and surrogate mother to Henri’s children. Raymond, just thirteen, doing a man’s work in the vineyard and around the stables. Rounding up those bloody geese every night before settling down in his nook among the birds. A boy of varied talents, he’d cooked dinner for them all on that last night, rustling up rabbit in red wine.

How frustrated with life she’d been that day! Confined to her room again, fed up with reading. Unable even to get up and exercise unless she covered the windows. Envying Henri and his children riding in the sunshine.

The appearance of Albert at her door that afternoon hardly improved her spirits. She’d rather have had a visit from one of the ganders. He’d brought a note from Henri, formally inviting her to dine, though not until nine o’clock. By nine, the sun would be setting and it would be safe then for her and Jean-Claude to slip between the buildings. When she realised that Albert carried a wind-up gramophone, and watched him set it down on the floor, her spirits leapt. Finally, she could expel the deadly silence. ‘Modern or classical?’ she asked as he placed a pile of records on the wash stand. Without answering, he came further into the room. From inside a jacket made from some kind of rough sailcloth, he produced a posy of summer blooms. ‘For you.’

‘How kind.’ She put them to her nose. ‘Are these Bourbon roses? Aren’t they exquisite? An old-fashioned rose shows all nature’s imperfections, yet keeps its beauty.’ A pretentious comment that was lost on Albert. His face fell.

‘I knocked off all the bugs.’

‘Good for you. I’ll wear this one in my button-hole tonight.’ She selected a rose whose white petals were streaked with dark pink. ‘Thank your brother for the gramophone. Music in the afternoon, what a treat.’ She meant –
please go now
. Albert’s expression, poised somewhere between lustful intensity and hang-dog reproach, made her as queasy as ever. He didn’t scare her. She was trained to defend herself. ‘I’m sure you have a busy afternoon…’

He seemed to be staring at the bed. He pointed. ‘What’s that?’

Before she could react, he’d swooped on an object on the floor. A moment later, he was thrusting one of Henri’s cufflinks towards her. ‘What’s this doing here?’ he demanded.

‘Clearly, not its designated job of holding shirt cuffs together. Give it to your brother, won’t you? He’s likely missing it.’

‘You fornicate with my brother. I know what you are. I’ve
seen you
.’

She flushed. ‘Because you pry at windows and slide about in the shadows! Has nobody told you, nothing is as detestable as a voyeur?’

‘I know what you are.’ His voice took on its habitual, angry whine. ‘You fornicate.’

‘Say that again, and—’ She broke off as he lunged for her. ‘How dare you!’ No ambiguity about which part of her anatomy he was aiming for. A moment later, he was face down on the floorboards, one arm twisted behind his back, Yvonne’s knee on his lumbar.

‘Bitch!’ he shrieked.

‘Get up and get out. From now on, don’t even look at me.’

‘I could have you arrested!’

‘That would make you a traitor, a coward and a collaborator.’ She released him, standing back as he struggled upright.

At the door, bravado deserted him and he dipped his head sideways. ‘Will you tell Henri?’

She weighed up her choices. Albert was now a threat, and really she should break his neck. Had he not been Henri’s brother, she’d have done it. But her sense of fair play argued that he was just a boy, his mental age closer to fifteen than the eighteen that he apparently was. All that sneering was surely just self-loathing, a groping for love. A literal groping, in this case. Henri had told her that Albert had been rejected for war service and passed over for forced labour. Some would call that a stroke of luck, but it was hardly an endorsement to raise a boy’s confidence. ‘Be ruthless,’ Henri had urged her. But surely he hadn’t meant her to eliminate his brother? The last born, his parents’ final throw of the dice? Pity propelled her answer – ‘I won’t tell him this time.’

R
aymond’s rabbit
casserole was superb, thick with swede, garlic and herbs, with chunks of unbleached bread to soak up the sauce. As promised, Audrey brought the children to the table. They’d slept through the early part of the evening and were now wide awake, the little boy Pierre-Gaston chuckling and singing delightfully. Isabelle, who slithered onto the seat next to her father, greeted Yvonne politely, though she spent most of the meal gazing at her papa. Henri conversed with Jean-Claude.

Yvonne directed her attention towards Audrey Valle, ignoring Albert and tossing only a few polite comments in Henri’s direction. They’d be together later and it was rather fun, pretending to be stand-offish. In fact, the whole evening was jolly. Jean-Claude regaled them with stories about his work for a leading British newspaper in Paris. He’d been a news photographer for Calford Press, and his impressions of the choleric, violently unreasonable Lord Calford had them in stitches. It wasn’t until the meal’s end that Yvonne remembered that this would not be home much longer. Soon, she would be a stranger somewhere else. A stranger with a short life-expectancy.

At the end of the meal, Henri raised his wine glass to Raymond, saying, ‘Thank you to the excellent chef.’

Albert joined the toast, adding, ‘You’ll make someone a damn good wife one day, Raymond.’

‘Mockery is the last resort of the stupid,’ Henri snapped. ‘If you cannot be generous, at least fight clean.’

Oh, the venom in Albert’s eyes! It crystallised around them like spun sugar in ice-cold air. ‘I am not allowed to fight, as you well know,’ Albert snarled. ‘Medically unfit.’

‘There is another fight and you are free to be part of it.’

‘The Resistance?’ Albert turned up his lip. ‘A bunch of big-heads who can’t keep their gobs shut. Obviously, or
she
wouldn’t be here.’ Albert jabbed at Yvonne.

Raising his glass, swallowing wine without showing the emotion Yvonne knew was rippling through him, Henri replied, ‘I sometimes wonder, Albert, if you will ever grow into a man.’

‘Oh? You think you are the lord and master here, brother, but even you have your weaknesses. You will fail in the end.’

‘
A
lbert was a nasty little shit
,’ Miss Thorne said loudly, using up her strength so she had none with which to sit up for her tea. ‘A groping little shit.’

Joelle, stirring sugar into a mug, replied calmly, ‘I’ve met a few of those in my time.’

‘No doubt you have,’ Miss Thorne agreed. But she hadn’t been referring to your average bloke with wandering hands. ‘This one had something of Satan about him. I should have taken him down but I wasn’t sufficiently cold-blooded. My failure.’ Henri’s failure had been to assume that, beneath the craven exterior, Albert was just like him, loyal to family and country. But then, neither she nor Henri had possessed the modern insight into criminality. Darling Henri had never encountered the word ‘sociopath’ and neither had she. Not until many years too late. A psychologist would no doubt fit a label to Albert. To her, he was still the little shit who had betrayed his brother and got away with it for sixty years.