The Milliner's Secret (19 page)

‘Dietrich spoiled you for other men? Yes, I can understand.’ Clisson nodded. ‘There will be others, though, one way or another.’

‘I can’t because I’m pregnant.’

Clisson dismissed the waiter, who had approached with the bill. ‘Is it Dietrich’s?’

She hesitated. ‘Yes’ might elicit the result she needed. ‘No.’ She sighed. ‘And I don’t rightly know what I’m going to do.’

‘Life is sacred.’ Unclipping a pen from his top pocket, Clisson wrote on a card he pulled from a slim diary. To himself, he repeated, ‘Life is sacred.’

‘Until it’s born. Then it’s just one more bastard for the world to spit on.’

Clisson handed her the card. ‘The address of an institution that may take you in. The nuns will have you sewing and mending while they lecture you on the error of your ways, but when the time comes, they will place your infant with a good family and will only turn you out once you’ve secured respectable employment. Don’t thank me.’

She hadn’t been about to. ‘Place your infant’ felt like a claw reaching inside her. ‘I’m not going to any bloody convent.’

Laughter broke from Clisson. ‘That’s brothels and nunneries out of the window. I’m all ears. Tell me what you’re going to do.’

‘Well . . . I could stay at yours. Look after your flat while you’re away prowling the souks.’ His eyes were popping like a salmon’s. ‘Do your cleaning?’

‘I have a charwoman.’

‘Make sure nobody steals your valuables?’ Guessing him to be the sort of man who hated clutter, she added, ‘Organise your pictures for you. You know, dust them and stack them.’

He made a noise of horror.

The waiter set down the bill, and the moment’s interruption allowed in a wild idea. Coralie leaned forward. ‘I’d look after your cat.’

‘How do you know I have a cat?’

Because she’d glimpsed his cufflinks the other day. Today’s were plain gold ovals and Clisson looked suitably astonished by her insight. ‘I’d groom him while you’re away.’

‘Him? What makes you think Voltaire is a tom? People invariably say “she” when speaking of cats. They always say “he” of dogs. And, perversely, “it” when they mention babies.’

‘I just know things sometimes. I’m sensitive, like you.’ If Clisson hadn’t tucked his legs under the table, she’d have looked for tell-tale hairs, and stunned him by telling him that Voltaire was a handsome ginger, or a fine tortoiseshell. So she took a chance: ‘I’ve always liked black cats best.’

Pleasure burst like a struck match. ‘Voltaire is purest obsidian! How extraordinary!’ Enthusiasm died. ‘I haven’t said yes, and I’m back home in September.’

‘And then I’ll move out.’

‘How will you eat? You haven’t a franc.’

‘You’ll lend me money. After all, Voltaire and I can’t dine in state every night if I’m skint.’

Teddy Clisson leaned towards her. She smelt coffee on his breath and her stomach turned.

‘I never lend. But I’ll give you a month’s salary . . .’

‘Go on.’ So long as it had nothing to do with nuns or brothels.

‘A month’s salary if you swear on your enlightened mother’s soul that when Dietrich comes back to you – and the atoms in my body say he will – you will use every shred of charm to persuade him to sell me those Dürer engravings.’

She laughed, momentarily forgetting her misery. ‘I’ll make sure he sells them half-price. Deal?’ She thrust out her hand and Teddy Clisson shook it.

CHAPTER 9

Having spent the Monday of the August bank holiday failing to get kitchen work, Coralie rose the following morning ready to give millinery another stab. Though her interview with Henriette Junot had misfired, the image of a plain woman transformed by pink roses excited her. She
did
have something to offer. ‘The only other thing I’m any good at is love-making,’ she told the muscular tomcat winding himself around her ankles, mewing for a share of the milk she was boiling for cocoa. ‘But that’s no profession for a girl who still has dreams.’

Clean sheets and privacy had given her the sweetest night’s sleep she’d had in days. But, as she put the cocoa to her lips, a bilious wave broke over her. In the bathroom, heaving from an empty stomach, she flung out a proposition to any of the Fates who might be listening: ‘Give me a job and I’ll never be idle again. I’ll be the most loving mother in the world too. I promise, I promise.’

On boulevard de la Madeleine, the sun beat against the back of her neck. Why had she not thought of trying at La Passerinette before?

Because it hurt to come back as Dietrich’s discarded mistress.

But back she was, and glad to see hats on display rather than drawn blinds. Nearly every other milliner’s was shut – most of them for the rest of the summer. Really, she couldn’t have timed her unemployment worse.

Lorienne Royer’s hats had not moved on in style since Coralie’s visit in June, but instead of pink, this time it was a crescendo of peach tones. Recalling her morning there with Dietrich, Coralie suspected the display was a ruse to entice customers in. Once inside, you got whatever Lorienne had available. Coralie saw no sign of activity.

‘I’d stir things up, if the place were mine,’ she muttered. She hesitated at the door, remembering Lorienne’s sharp nails and the cringing assistant, Violaine. Could she risk taking a job here, in her condition? Touching her stomach, sore from retching, she reminded herself that her condition was precisely why she was about to do this. Lorienne Royer shouldn’t scare her, anyway. When it came to bullies, hadn’t she worked with the best? She pushed the door – and found it locked. Her eye fell on a card propped in the window:

La Passerinette is closed for August.

Work-in-progress will be honoured.

Please telephone to arrange collection.

Coralie poured out her exasperation in oaths straight from the mouth of Jac Masson – until the sound of a window being opened made her look up. A light voice called down, ‘We are closed. Have you come to pick up a hat?’’

Dazzled by the sun-baked walls of a building five storeys high, it was a moment before Coralie recognised Violaine. The girl was also blinking – like an animal coming out of hibernation. She wasn’t wearing her spectacles.

I’ve woken her up
, Coralie thought. At half past eleven on a summer morning! ‘I was hoping to speak with Lorienne. I want a job.’

Violaine’s reply was lost in the rumble of a passing bus. Boulevard de la Madeleine was one of the grand boulevards of Paris and always noisy – but not quite noisy enough to disguise the sound of a window being shut.

‘And the same to you,’ Coralie tossed upwards. Deflated, she looked towards the Madeleine. The church would be cool, and she could rest and put in a prayer, since Fate clearly wasn’t coming up with the goods. All she wanted was a chance. One little chink of luck. She was thirty strides away when she heard her name being called. Turning, she saw Violaine on the pavement, waving. Coralie hurried back. The girl had come out of a street door the same colour as the stone surrounding it. It must be the way into the flats above the salon.

‘Mademoiselle Royer isn’t here,’ Violaine explained, making a belated effort to smooth her rumpled clothes. ‘She’s gone to Deauville – you know, by the sea?’ A heavy sigh implied,
All right for some.

‘Can
you
employ me?’

Violaine stepped close to Coralie, almost too close. ‘Not unless you’re offering your services for free . . . could you? It would be excellent experience.’ She’d put on her glasses on the way out of her flat, but still seemed to be struggling to focus. It was like meeting somebody’s gaze under water.

Coralie shook her head. ‘I already have experience. I need a salary.’

‘Of course.’ Violaine’s face crumpled as if she’d just seen the last life belt whisked away. ‘Only, ‘I’ve worked the last two nights straight. I must have fallen asleep. I take work up to my flat because the telephone never stops ringing in the salon.’

There were red marks on Violaine’s knuckles, as if she’d scalded herself.
Blocking with hot kettles while exhausted
, Coralie thought.
Left on her own while everyone else goes on holiday.
She wished she could help. ‘I’m truly sorry.’

Violaine shrugged. ‘Why don’t you try Printemps on boulevard Haussmann? They might be hiring.’

It crossed Coralie’s mind to invite Violaine to have lunch somewhere, but thrift intervened. Oranges and cheese were waiting for her at Teddy’s flat on rue de Seine. Thanking Violaine, Coralie walked away, cutting across place de la Madeleine. She was halfway down rue Royale when her mental map of Paris reasserted itself. This was the wrong direction for boulevard Haussmann. Wiping perspiration from her forehead, she wondered if she had the energy to turn around. Printemps this afternoon, maybe? After she’d rested and changed.

As she dithered, she noticed two smartly dressed ladies on the opposite side of the road trying to enter Henriette Junot’s salon. They’d opened the door but were clearly too well-bred to push through the press of women already inside. Were the staff giving away free hats?

Henriette’s disdainful treatment of her still burned, but Coralie nevertheless went to the kerb and waited for a break in the traffic. Henriette would be away on holiday by now, and it would be good to nip in and thank Amélie Ginsler, the
vendeuse
, who had been so helpful to her. As she darted across the road, a splash of colour in Henriette’s window drew her eye. A single
marotte
stood in the window in a lake of pink rose petals. It wore an asymmetrical black beret, with four Zéphirine Drouhin roses falling forward over its brow.

Fury surged through Coralie.

Employing the elbow tactics she’d used at Epsom racecourse, Coralie drilled through the crowd until she saw Henriette herself, surrounded by women in summer suits, all talking at once. So, the vacation had been cancelled – or had that just been a ruse to fob Coralie off? The moment the noise died down, she’d take Madame Junot in a hard grip, march her to the window and demand an explanation for the rose beret. The woman had made her lick the floor in front of a fourteen-year-old workhand, turfed her out, then stolen her design.

Somebody pinched her shoulder. She swung round and there was Amélie Ginsler, looking stricken. Coralie mouthed, ‘What’s going on?’

Drawing her to the edge of the room, Amélie said, ‘The couturier Javier, for whom we provide millinery? His new collection was plagiarised the day you came here. His entire autumn–winter line was pre-sold to New York. The poor man scrapped the whole thing and locked himself away. It’s a disaster!’

Amélie didn’t have to explain. A similar thing had happened at Pettrew’s when a London department store had gone to the wall. A season’s orders, cancelled overnight. A stockroom full of materials that must be paid for. Girls on the payroll with nothing to do. Coralie looked at the mob encircling Henriette. ‘Angry customers?’

‘Gossip-mongers. They want the inside story, because nobody at Javier will say a thing.’ Henriette was on the brink of a nervous breakdown, Amélie added. She had been minutes from leaving for her holiday, her new lover waiting in the taxi, but now, instead of spending September at a lakeside château in Ariège, she had the prospect of saving her business from total disaster.

Coralie sized up the situation. Sized up Henriette, and saw a woman drowning. She felt no sympathy, only a surge of excitement.
You prayed for a chance
, she told herself,
and here it is
. Holding back until the salon had almost emptied, the flock gone elsewhere to feed, she marched up to Henriette. ‘You’re in a right mess but I’ve got what you haven’t – energy and an empty diary. Give me the reins for a month and I’ll sort your business out for you.’

Henriette curled her lip. ‘I need somebody with talent and business brains.’

Wordlessly, Coralie went to the window and scooped up the Zéphirine beret. ‘You clearly think I have talent. As for brains, I’m a direct descendant of the cleverest financier in history, the Duc de Lirac.’

‘Never heard of him.’

Coralie assumed a look of astonishment. ‘Never heard of the man who saved Napoleon the Third from bankruptcy? Not only did my ancestor rescue his finances, he made him plant trees on every boulevard in Paris as a thank-you. Next time you find yourself strolling in the shade, look up and thank the Duc de Lirac. So. Deal?’