The Dress Thief (44 page)

But he wasn’t listening. Before he came, he rolled off her with a sigh and said, ‘You take over.’

Knotted with frustrated need, she knelt beside him and, closing her eyes, put her lips around his erect penis. He groaned, while she kept her hand braced
against his stomach, because once he’d gripped the back of her head so hard she’d nearly suffocated. With her free hand, she caressed him intimately until he was writhing under her. Then, raising her head, she brought him to climax with her hand. She’d learned some tricks with Serge … Was that what Ferryman meant about scarlet boudoirs?

While Serge recovered, Alix got pins and needles. Her mind
sticky, her heart heavy, she tested an idea: Alix Gower, doormat.

Doormat? When she had the table of honour by the dance floor, and all the champagne and hashish she wanted? Serge must feel something for her. All those car rides to Le Cloître when she’d needed him … he’d been kind that way. He’d bought her the gold cigarette holder and numerous bits of jewellery.

Alix Gower, mistress
.

Getting
out of bed, she studied herself for a long time in a vertical mirror. Rosa was right, she’d got too thin.
Alix Gower, last year’s fashion
. She walked to the bed, and stared down at Serge, who had already slid into thoughtless sleep. She could almost feel Jolyan Ferryman beside her, chuckling, ‘Shackled, dear, until he decides it’s over.’

Quickly she put on her dress and shoes, staggering as she
balanced on one heel. She fell heavily and swore, but Serge didn’t stir. Damn him, leaving her halfway up the flagpole, frustrated, unloved like … like Mme Rey’s mop. Yes. That’s what she was, a mop Serge took out of the cupboard when he needed it. He’d left her alone all evening, thrown himself into bed, smoked himself witless, then expected her to perform on him like a –

‘To hell with it.’
She strode to his bedside, seized the hookah with the notion of cracking it over his head, but then turned and flung it against the wall. Blue glass shattered.

Using her lipstick, she wrote, ‘It’s over, goodbye’, on the dressing-table mirror and left. Serge slept on.

*

July 1938 dragged itself to a close, sultry and airless. Alix, who had feared that Serge would come calling on her, demanding
explanations, was perplexed as one week, then two, passed without word. Maybe he was too self-absorbed to be vengeful? When August arrived with no communication, she decided this must be true.

The abrupt change to her nightly routine took some getting used to. All those spare hours … but she adjusted and filled them by working on her upcoming collection.

Alix spent the morning of the 10
^th
August
with her première, testing different lining fabrics to go with the cloth she’d selected for her tailor-mades. Having stitched a sample to prove that her choice of rayon silk would work best, she instructed Mme
LeVert to order a bale and get cutting, then went up to her flat and ate a lunch of lettuce leaves and cucumber. Her autumn-winter show was in eight days and she already felt sick with nerves.

That afternoon, she assumed her role as a mannequin, parading to some Englishwomen who spent the time fanning themselves and asking if windows could be opened wider. By the time they’d left, she was ready to drop and said to Rosa, ‘We should have siestas like the Spaniards do. Sleep in the afternoon and come back to work at night.’

Rosa told her to go and have a lie-down. ‘We won’t miss you for
an hour.’

Alix was listing all the reasons why she couldn’t take a rest when three long rings of the bell made her gasp. Rosa breathed, ‘Oh, my giddy aunt.’ Three rings was M. Hubert’s code for a police raid. They’d agreed on the signal in the early days of the business, when Alix was convinced the couture police would come after her because of who she was.

The fitter, Marguerite, came running
in and they all stared at each other.

‘Right,’ Alix said. ‘No point waiting for them to find me.’ She went downstairs, Rosa and Marguerite behind her. From the ground-floor office came a drizzling sound – M. Hubert asleep in his chair, toupée awry, head pressed against the bell.

They joked about it in the end, but Alix was still jittery at the close of the day. With a new collection almost complete,
she
felt vulnerable. There were people in the jealous world of couture who wanted to see her fail. She knew for a fact that Simon Norbert and Mlle Lilliane had played a part in blackening her name. Marcy Stein, whom she’d met one day buying buttons in Rue St-Denis, had told her so.

*

As Alix was slicing bread in her flat that evening, Hubert knocked, contrition on his face and his arms full of
roses. ‘These came as I was locking up.’

Sighing, Alix took them and put them in the sink. Twenty-four stems, boudoir red. Tomorrow she’d distribute them among her sewing girls. Bonnet, who ate with Alix and Mémé several times a week, put one to his nose and said, ‘He obviously wants you back, for all he was furious when you left.’

‘How do you know Serge was furious?’

‘Because I still visit
my old Montmartre haunts, and the saga of Serge Martel’s feral rage was the talk of the cafés. Everyone wanted to know my opinion because they know I’m your special friend.’ Snapping the head off a rose and tucking it into a ragged button hole of his overalls, he described how Serge had hurled a shoe at the mirror where Alix had written her lipstick ‘goodbye’. The glass had shattered and Serge had
cut himself badly. The cleaning woman who’d witnessed the outburst had been sacked on the spot. ‘And later he flung a bottle of wine at a waiter who didn’t fetch him a glass quickly enough, though I’m told he often does that. A few days on –’
Bonnet shrugged – ‘the storm had passed. Things end and he knows it.’

It was Dulcie L’Amour who now sat at the special table, sipping Lanson champagne and
eating oysters arranged in a heart shape – when she wasn’t on stage wiggling and cooing.

Serge had cared enough about her to hurt himself and lash out, Alix told herself. But then he’d replaced her so quickly. So then why the roses? His way of telling her she could have him back, if she wanted?

*

A thunderstorm that night gave little respite. The next morning Alix went up to her atelier and
found her girls stripped down to their petticoats. Una had told her once that American department stores had a thing called ‘air conditioning’ that sucked out heat and moisture, leaving the atmosphere pleasantly cool even in the grip of summer. One day, she promised herself. One day.

‘Mlle Gower?’ Marguerite poked her head into the atelier. ‘A visitor. I’ve put her in the salon.’

Alix said she’d
be right down. She turned to her première, who was holding out a muslin toile. Inspecting it, Alix nodded. ‘Very well, Mme LeVert, cut the fabric. We’ve fitted this toile a thousand times and we can’t waste the time we have left.’ Always frightening, the moment the scissors bit into costly cloth. She always put it off far too long, but then, so had Javier.

Alix went down to meet her guest, feeling
guilty relief. You could sense the temperature decreasing with every step. The
salon’s walls were painted ice grey. Unable to afford carpet, she’d painted the floorboards white. She’d had the eighteenth-century mouldings and ceiling roses lime-washed and the effect was ghostly, like Javier’s salon through the voile drapes. Her only extravagances had been table lamps and elegant sofas. Her clients
might come upstairs wondering what sort of backstreet oddity they’d stumbled into, but the moment they sat down, they were at home.

A leggy girl got up as Alix came in. Alix immediately knew her to be a mannequin, from the way she moved. It took her a moment to recognise Javier’s Nelly under a pale straw hat. Last time she’d seen her had been at Javier’s ruined show last July. She stiffened,
but Nelly embraced her and, with a gesture for the salon, said, ‘Room to swing a cat?’

Alix fixed them iced lemon water and sat back to learn why Nelly had called. It took a while because Nelly wanted to tell about her engagement to a theatrical entrepreneur and her September wedding, for which Javier was making her a gown. But eventually she pouted and said, ‘I’ve been meaning to call for some
days. I saw Serge Martel a little while ago in a club. He came over and mentioned you.’

‘We aren’t together now,’ Alix said quickly.

‘Hmm. That’s not quite what he said. He thinks you’ll go back when you’ve had your sulk out.’

So Bonnet was wrong. Serge hadn’t accepted the end of the affair. ‘A long sulk, Nelly.’

‘I’m glad. You ought to know what happened to Solange. I don’t want the same
thing to happen to you.’ Nelly’s face lost its humour. ‘That time Solange was so impossible? Kept storming out? Only a couple of us knew … she was pregnant.’

Alix whispered, ‘I had no idea. Was it … ?

‘Serge’s. Solange thought he was going to marry her. He said he would, then –’ Nelly wrinkled her nose – ‘he met you.’

‘He left her for me?’

‘Worse than that. He got some tablets.’ Nelly glanced
around, though nobody could have entered the salon without them seeing. ‘They brought on a miscarriage. It went wrong and she nearly died. She had to go to her parents’.’

‘To Corsica?’

‘Corsica? No. Her family live in Le Havre. Anyway, when I saw her she looked awful. She was wearing a hat, the sort little schoolchildren wear. She said she was staying away, getting over what happened, only …
Alix, in the end she showed me. She’s … disfigured.’

Alix frowned. ‘From having a miscarriage?’

‘No. Because of Serge. Solange’s parents were threatening to go to the police about the pills. Serge agreed to pay compensation to Solange, only they had an argument and he bit her.’

‘Bit? How?’

‘Sank his teeth into the side of her face and tore her ear.’ Nelly gathered up her things. ‘Look, I have
to rush. I’m meeting my fiancé at the Crillon. Alix, you had to know.’

‘Wait. Serge isn’t violent, not to women.’ Alix followed Nelly to the door. ‘He’s selfish, but he never hurt me.’

‘Don’t give him the chance. Don’t end up like Solange.’

Alix couldn’t let her go without asking after Javier. Nelly was quiet for a moment. ‘You obviously don’t hear much these days. He’s closed his doors. After
last summer’s fiasco he tried to keep going. He brought out a fabulous collection in February.’

‘I know. I saw pictures—’

Nelly gave her such a look she fell silent. ‘Then all the fabric companies demanded payment at once. There’s a foreign businessman called Maurice Ralsberg who has bought out all the smaller companies. He foreclosed. Javier tried to get financiers to help, but the debts were
too big. One afternoon when he and Mme Frankel were sitting down to discuss ideas for July, he threw down his pen and said it was over. Go down Rue de la Trémoille, you’ll see boarding on the windows.’

*

After Nelly left, Alix sat, numb, until Rosa came to find her.

‘Look at you. Hubert hasn’t been ringing his bells again?’

‘Oh, Rosa, I’ve just heard the two most dreadful things.’

‘Two, eh?
Means number three’s on its way. May we shut? Everyone’s wilting and it’s gone seven.’

Number three came an hour later.

*

Alix always took a couple of hours off for dinner. Mémé no longer cooked. Her injury had affected her balance, and though
she was lucid some of the time, the powders she took to ease a persistent headache inhibited her memory and concentration. Much of her life in London
and Paris before the attack was a blur, yet she still recalled her youth with absolute clarity.

Putting together a potato salad with cold salt beef, Alix laid the table and filled water jugs. It was this time of night she got the champagne twitch, a gnawing need to see the bubbles rise, the bloom appear on the glass. Drinking water helped, so did keeping busy. Going down the steps to Bonnet’s
studio, she smelled the inevitable strong coffee and something else. That putrid tang that announced her friend was priming a canvas.

‘Rabbit size,’ she said. ‘You’re still buying the cheap stuff.’

‘No,’ Bonnet said without breaking stroke. ‘I buy expensive stuff and the bastard who makes it swaps it for the cheap stuff.’

‘Take it back.’

‘The factory’s out in La Villette, too far. Your grandmother’s
in the garden. Pick your way around the clutter.’

Mémé came in before Alix reached the door. Taking her granddaughter’s arm and leaning against her, she watched Bonnet’s paintbrush moving up and down, apparently fascinated.

‘Horrible smell, Raphael Bonnet, and I smelled it before. I smelled it when I was bashed on the head.’

Bonnet stopped. Turned slowly.

Mémé went on, ‘I had no idea until
now why my head hurt and why I had to leave my flat in St-Sulpice. Now I remember.’

‘Grandmère, are you telling us you know who hit you?’

‘The man who smells like Bonnet’s paintbrush.’

Alix stared at Bonnet, who made a flummoxed face back.

‘I got home from playing cards. It was dark. The front door was open and I thought you were home. I called “Aliki?” No answer, so I supposed you were in
bed. I went to the kitchen to make my hot milk. I heard a door open and I shouted, “You call this a time to come home?” I turned, but instead of you, there he was.’

‘Who, Mémé?’

‘The man who smelled like Bonnet’s paintbrush,’ Danielle Lutzman repeated with great patience. ‘I couldn’t see his face. When he said, “You’re back too early,” I picked up the iron skillet but I couldn’t hold its weight.’
Mémé held up her hands, displaying frail wrists. ‘He took it and hit me very hard.’ She patted the place. ‘I fell and I remember his stink as he knelt beside me.’

Alix remembered being sent flying in the dark. She remembered a foul rag in her mouth, a man’s face covered by a mesh of oily wool. She picked up Bonnet’s tin of rabbit size and sniffed. ‘It’s the same odour, you’re right.’

Her grandmother
gazed back at her with childlike eyes. ‘Shall we tell the police that I remember how the bad man stank?’

Alix thought – a smell as evidence? They’d be laughed out of the police station. Besides, she didn’t want to go anywhere near the police.