Sequins, Secrets, and Silver Linings (10 page)

“They’re lovely,” she retorts. “Honestly, Nonie, spending some of the money from this awful film is the only thing that’s made me halfway happy recently. Count yourself lucky it’s shoes, not booze! And actually, I’m very good in stilettos. They make my legs look longer.”

Edie and I shrug at each other. It’s Jenny’s money and if her mother lets her spend it, we can’t stop her.
Plus, it’s kind of cool to have a friend who owns a pair of Christian Louboutins. I’ve never seen the famous red soles up close before. They’re very covetable. If he ever makes a flat, cheap, boot version, with laces, I’ll be sorely tempted.

I get home dying to tell everyone about the shoes, and Crow’s stuff selling out at the stall, but the chance doesn’t come. I find Mum in the kitchen looking all dithery and trying to remember where she’s stored the bone china teacups. This can only mean one thing—and it’s more momentous than Louboutins.

Granny has arrived.

I head gingerly for the sitting room and poke my head around the door.

Granny is sitting in the largest armchair with her back to the window and the light streaming through her perfect coiffure. Her posture is straight as a ruler, her ankles crossed. Her expression, as usual, is severe.

“I’m staying,” she says, “at the Ritz. At least it has a view of the park. I notice my room here has been commandeered.”

“Hi, Granny. Good to see you.”

“What are you wearing, child? You look like a Brillo pad.”

I’m in a silver net mini that Jenny brought back from LA, worn over a gray T-shirt dress, with a silver flower in my hair. It could have been a lot worse. Granny wouldn’t have liked the hot pants at all.

“Come and give me a kiss.”

I kiss her powdered cheek, with its signature smell of Arpège. Granny, I have to say, is looking good, as usual. She has first-class cheekbones, the Chatham speedy metabolism—so no spare fat—an expensive hairdresser, and an innate knowledge of what suits her. Today she’s in a tailored purple cotton dress accessorized with a massive turquoise necklace and purple patent Bally heels.

“Like the outfit, Granny.”

“Of course you do, darling. You have taste. Or you will shortly, when you grow out of this metallic phase. I’ve come to meet your friend Crow. Your mother has told me all about her. By the way, Sally’s taking an age to make tea and I’ve been here for hours. Will
you
be so kind as to introduce me?”

I’m a bit surprised. Granny doesn’t usually ask to meet my friends. She wasn’t remotely interested when Jenny came back from her first trip away shooting with Hollywood’s Sexiest Couple Alive, and only talks to her because she met Sir Lionel at a few house parties in the seventies. She’s tried to make an effort with Edie, but
having established that they don’t have any friends or relatives in common, she quickly ran out of things to say. Edie thinks Granny is a certifiable loony and doesn’t like to be left in a room with her, which doesn’t exactly make for a great relationship. So what Granny’s going to make of a little black immigrant girl who lives with her aunt in a flat off Gloucester Road, I can’t imagine.

Nevertheless, I’m curious. I’m about to take Granny downstairs when I realize that Crow’s been standing behind me the whole time, observing Granny from the shadows with a sort of half smile. So I bring her into the room and Granny holds out her hands.

“Darling child! What a pleasure! Sally has been telling me all about you. I’ve been looking at those beautiful drawings you do. I sense the influence of Dior and Balenciaga. Are you a great fan of Dior?”

“Yes,” Crow whispers, sitting at Granny’s feet. She doesn’t know this, but it happens to be the perfect thing to do. Granny was brought up in an age when children sat at their elders’ feet and looked up at them adoringly. We, of course, tend to curl up on the sofa and eye people like Granny a bit suspiciously, which doesn’t go down so well.

“My mother bought one of the original New Look designs in nineteen forty-seven. Do you know,” Granny
goes on, “when I was a girl I wore Dior regularly to all the best places? Oh, those Paris fittings! What a joy!”

“Did you know Yvette Mansard?” Crow asks eagerly. “She worked for Dior.”

“Yvette?” Granny thinks for a minute. “In the
atelier flou
? She specialized in dresses, didn’t she? She was a legend. Is she still alive? She must be ninety.”

“She’s ninety-two. She’s been teaching me.”

Granny smiles a huge smile and practically kisses Crow, who’s succeeded where all my other friends have failed. She and Granny have a friend in common. And not only that, but a friend who reminds Granny of the happiest time in her life, before all her family money was spent on her mother’s boyfriends, death taxes, repairing the roof, and educating Mum and Poor Uncle Jack (who lives in a bungalow in East Anglia, mends MG sports cars, and is rumored to Take Drugs), as we are so regularly reminded.

At this point, Mum arrives with a tray laden with china cups and saucers, teapot, milk jug, and sugar bowl (Granny doesn’t take sugar, but is appalled if the bowl isn’t included). Granny waves her away.

“Your delightful guest and I are going to visit the workroom. We have lots to talk about. Please don’t disturb us.”

And off they sweep, Crow happily trailing in Granny’s wake. Mum and I look at each other in mild disbelief and I help her take the tray back to the kitchen.

As usual when Granny visits, she takes over all our lives. Luckily for him, Harry’s traveling in India, so he’s spared the normal inquisition about his studies and his love life. Mum, however, is investigated at length about
her
love life (lack of) and pronounced SO disappointing. I’m allowed not to have one, for the time being. Instead, I become the family fetcher and carrier and have half my wardrobe vetoed as too weird or too tarty. Crow is treated like the family star.

Granny takes us all to the Ritz and gets Crow to invite Florence and Yvette Mansard, too. For someone who spends a large proportion of her life complaining about the absolute lack of family funds after they were “frittered away” by her parents and children, she always seems to have a surprising amount of cash stashed away for five-star meals, the latest shoes, and glamorous jewelry (or, as she would say, “the basic essentials”).

Yvette, it turns out, has been living quietly for years in London after moving here to live with a
girlfriend
when she retired. Yvette is totally cool. If anything, she is more amazing than Crow suggested. She and Granny
reminisce for hours about the clients, the fittings, the suits, the dresses, and little places in Paris they used to know. Crow laps up every word and hardly eats. Then Yvette says that Crow is one of the most talented seamstresses she’s ever encountered, as well as being able to produce original designs, and Granny couldn’t be nicer to her if she were a visiting maharaja.

There’s a pause during the meal when the older members of the group take to sighing and looking nostalgic.

“What happened to all those clothes?” Yvette murmurs sadly.

“Oh, I’ve still got them,” Granny says. “Mine and my mother’s. They’re heirlooms. I wasn’t giving those away.”

Mum and I look startled. Mum’s probably thinking of the millions of occasions she could have done with borrowing something couture-ish before her modeling career enabled her to buy some of her own. I’m thinking of all those wasted childhood holidays when I could have been checking out the clothes for ideas. Crow and Yvette look reverent, as if she’s mentioned a bunch of sacred relics.

“Can I see them?” Crow whispers so quietly the words hardly make it out.

“Come and stay,” Granny says imperiously. “Bring Nonie for company. I haven’t looked at those things for
years, although goodness knows my banker tells me to sell them often enough. I’ve got a couple of evening gowns you might find interesting. Some jackets. Some Ungaro and a bit of Chanel. Saint Laurent, of course. Unlike Mother, I wasn’t always faithful to Dior. You like studying techniques, don’t you, darling child? I’m sure you’ll have some fun.”

Crow says nothing else for the rest of the meal. I can tell she’s busy trying to imagine Granny’s cache of couture. I don’t think Florence says a word throughout. Mum and I are quiet, too, because spending time with Granny is always a bit exhausting for us. But Granny and Yvette quickly bond like old school friends and get busy making plans to see each other again and go to a bistro Yvette knows where they make a proper
café crème
.

“What about Rebecca?” I whisper to Crow in the taxi on the way back from the Ritz. “Aren’t you due to deliver another batch of dresses? You know she just sold out of the last lot.”

Crow shrugs nonchalantly and looks out the window. I’m shocked. She can be quite ruthless when she knows what she wants. Rebecca’s clients will have to wait.

If I were Crow, I’d be worried sick about letting people down, but everything seems to be remarkably simple in her world. It occurs to me that she probably won’t
even bother to mention that she’s going away. Dogsbody over here had better do it.

I spend the rest of the journey working out the best way of breaking the bad news. Crow puts her head against the taxi window and within two minutes is asleep, clearly dreaming of Dior and smiling quietly to herself in anticipation.

Chapter 15

B
efore we go to Granny’s, Crow and Jenny come up with a design for a dress to wear at the National Movie Awards that, for once, won’t make her look like some sort of hunchback mutant. Yvette comes over and, with Granny in attendance, shows Crow how to pad out her tailor’s dummy to Jenny’s precise measurements and start fitting the pieces of calico that will form the pattern of the dress.

It’s not going to be quite as loose and dreamy as the things Crow’s been designing so far. It’s going to have a very fitted bodice and a skirt with lots of petticoats. (“Very New Look,” in Granny’s happy opinion. As in 1940s Dior.) Skye and Crow go on an extended shopping trip to find the perfect silk to make it with and Jenny writes an ENORMOUS check for the fabric.

By the time we come back, Crow will only have two weeks to make the dress. But she seems, as ever, relaxed about managing it. I still can’t quite believe we’re relying
on a twelve-year-old to rescue Jenny from her fashion nightmares. But the worst that can happen is that she’ll look incredibly stupid on the red carpet and the boy she fancies won’t talk to her and thousands of people will write nasty things about her in magazines and on the Internet.

And all that’s already happened.

I had all sorts of plans for the rest of the summer—loads of friends to see, an outdoor music festival to go to, and a couple of very promising parties. But this was before Crow took over my life. Granny’s house is in the depths of the country and there isn’t a café or a cinema for miles. The nearest villagers probably wouldn’t know a smoothie if it was piped through the tap. I predict being so thoroughly bored that I’m reduced to packing next fall’s Eng Lit syllabus so I can start on my reading.

Crow’s satchel is even heavier than my bag, and once I’ve carried it in from the car to her new room, I simply have to peek inside. It turns out she’s brought her Singer sewing machine. I think it’s her version of a teddy bear. And there’s the history of the House of Dior. She’s on chapter two.