The Milliner's Secret (20 page)

Coralie had no illusions as to why Henriette accepted her offer. The woman had been ready to close her doors, throw the keys into the Seine. A half-convincing story was all she’d needed. And, as Coralie quickly discovered, the salon ran very well without Henriette. Amélie Ginsler held the front-of-house together. Madame Zénon, the Greek-born
première
, ran the production side, with the help of talented deputies.

For the first few days, Coralie did little more than wander around, fearful she’d bitten off too much. But ambition rescued her. Why not use what Henriette had turned her back on to secure her own future and that of her unborn child? Fate had handed her a salon: she would make her name.

Some fifty models had been made for Javier’s collection and Coralie sold them first. Not in the shop, because there was the question of who exactly owned the designs: at the Expo, still in full flow on the banks of the Seine. On her instruction, Amélie and Madame Zénon selected ten of the most attractive, confident salon assistants and workroom
midinettes
and
Coralie sent them out to mingle with the tourists, making eye-contact, selling hats directly off their heads. Those model-hats ran out within hours and the workrooms went into full production to make more. Cash flowed in and the amiable accountant, Monsieur Moulin, rubbed his hands in pleasure.

‘I was deeply involved in retail in London,’ Coralie explained to him, neglecting to add that she’d picked up her technique in Bermondsey’s fruit and vegetable market. You didn’t need to be a genius to see that the barrow-boys who cried their wares the loudest always sold out first.

September arrived and a tanned Teddy Clisson came home. Finding Voltaire healthy and Coralie busy and radiant, he invited her to stay a week or two more. ‘I have so many traveller’s tales, I need an audience.’ Studying her waistline, he asked, ‘Are you really expecting, or was it a hoax to invoke my pity? I see no signs of a baby.’

‘Believe me, there’s a baby.’ She’d been disguising her swelling shape under loose blouses belted at the hip. Teddy apart, only Madame Zénon and Amélie so far knew of her condition. Give it a few weeks, nothing would hide her bump. ‘I shall find a place of my own,’ she promised him. ‘I can’t stay here – people will start gossiping about us.’

‘What fun.’ He handed her a box containing a watch of filigree silver with a black enamel bracelet. ‘For being a friend to Voltaire. No, I don’t need to be hugged.’ He became businesslike. ‘My landlord always has property to rent along rue de Seine, if you aren’t fussy about airy views or reliable lifts. He’s quite reasonable.’

Within days, they had found her a place a few strides away towards the river end of the street. It was on the top floor of a very old house, and had no lift, but Coralie took it. The building was only three storeys high, and she reckoned that going up and down with a baby in a basket would keep her trim.

Henriette Junot’s 1937 autumn–winter line launched on 9 September. Henriette travelled up from her rented château to preside, bringing her lover – the two of them posing in the new models, giggling like schoolgirls. She then spent a week upsetting Coralie’s work regime, sacking juniors and getting on everybody’s nerves. The day she left, Coralie felt a silent cheer run through the building.

‘When she’s in love,’ Madame Zénon confided, ‘she doesn’t give a fig for her business. But when the break-up comes, she is like a mother bear robbed of her cub.’ The
première
dropped her gaze to Coralie’s midriff, hidden under a pleated tunic. ‘I hope you’re putting a little money aside. Madame may have female lovers, but it does not follow that she likes women. You understand?’

‘I’m saving like mad.’ Coralie was also racing to build up a portfolio of designs and to amass the experience that would allow her to open a salon of her own. All she needed was for Henriette to stay seven hundred kilometres away for the next few months – oh, and not discover that Coralie was pregnant. The vile sickness had stopped, thank goodness, and the baby must be small, because Coralie could still get into her skirts with elastic loops attached to the buttons. But all secrets come out in the end.

One mid-October afternoon Coralie was watching Madame Zénon sketch the profile of a hat they were designing together when she realised that one of the
petites-mains
– a millinery assistant – was staring at her side-on, a shocked look in her eye. Coralie quickly pulled her stomach in but later she was aware of staff members whispering behind their hands.

Right
, she thought.
Time to face the guns
. She called an evening meeting, at which she informed a crowded salon that she was due to give birth in February. Ignoring the gasps and whispers, she injected a bit of humour: ‘From now on, I won’t be running about the place and I’ll be taking the stairs two at a time, not three.’

‘Does Madame know?’ asked one of the older
secondes.
She was one of the few people Coralie disliked there, as she was known to spy for Henriette.

‘Of course,’ Coralie lied cheerfully. ‘She’s going to be godmother. Meeting dismissed.’
Give me Christmas and one more season
, she prayed that night in her poky bedroom. If her dates were right, she could squeeze out a spring–summer collection in early February before she went into labour.

November answered her prayers, though in the form of disturbing news. Henriette was ill. A cold caught while bathing in the lake beside her château had gone to her lungs. Pneumonia, pleurisy, blood on her pillow. It was unlikely, she informed Madame Zénon and Coralie in a shaky letter, that she’d be back for Christmas. She trusted them to shepherd her business through this vital season.

Of course, with Henriette, ‘trust’ went only so far.

Friday, 5 November, was stormy. In the salon, arranging ivy and Christmas roses on the display plinth, Coralie contemplated an unpleasant journey home. She shivered as hail pelted the window. Her flat had a fireplace, but she had nobody to make a blaze for her. At the counter, Amélie was writing up the day’s sales, also in no rush to face the weather. The door crashed open.

Assuming the wind had forced it and anxious for the glass, Coralie ran to lock it, ivy trailing from her hand. Colliding with the man who stepped in from the darkness, she managed to drape it over his shoulder. He plucked it off, laughing. Deep, black eyes, swarthy colouring and a thick moustache lent him the air of a brigand. Coralie reversed back to the display table, and picked up her scissors.

Amélie, however, was all smiles. ‘Monsieur Cazaubon, how nice to see you! Have you brought news of Madame Junot?’

‘I’m just back from seeing her.’ The stranger kissed Amélie on both cheeks, then looked sideways at Coralie. ‘I left Henriette slightly improved but, I’m afraid, very unhappy. Her friend has left her.’

‘That’s a shame,’ said Amélie, though her voice held little surprise.

‘I wanted to take her to our parents at Céret, which is only ten kilometres from the Château de Jarrat, where she’s staying, but she wouldn’t agree. So I appointed a pair of nurses to look after her and I hope to God they don’t strangle her.’ The man laughed at Amélie’s pursed lips. ‘Come on. My sister is difficult enough when she is in health, we all know it. When she is ill –
I
would strangle her!’

He spoke fast, almost too fast for Coralie to keep up, and with the accent and rolling
r
s of a southerner.
Cazaubon
. . . Was this really Henriette’s brother? He looked more Spanish than French, but perhaps there was an explanation for that. Henriette, she knew, had taken the name ‘Junot’ to distance herself from her roots, which lay in French Catalonia. Whoever he was, he must have come on foot from the Métro because his hair glittered and he’d left wet prints on the carpet. He caught her disapproval. ‘You are Mademoiselle de Lirac.’

Coralie folded her arms. ‘I think I know who you are.’

He bowed. ‘The apple of Henriette’s eye.’

Yes, and I’ll stake my new watch you’ve been sent to check me over
. Her heart bumped, and it wasn’t just anxiety. For the past four months, the only males in her life had been Teddy Clisson, the accountant, Monsieur Moulin, and Voltaire. Cazaubon’s stocky masculinity, the teasing gleam in his eye, promised a taste of something richer.
There will be others, one way or another.
She blushed.

‘So, is it true, Mademoiselle?’

‘Is what true?’

He made an apologetic gesture. ‘One of the old cats upstairs wrote to my sister that you are in the family way and –’ he whispered theatrically ‘– unmarried.’

Coralie held his gaze, knowing instinctively that he was searching for weakness. Moving her Christmas greenery to one side, she allowed Cazaubon an eyeful of her shape. ‘One baby and no ring.’ She presented her left hand. ‘Have a proper look.’

He did. When he met her eye again, the gleam had sharpened. ‘Tell me, are you eating for two?’

‘What are you, a doctor?’

‘A civil engineer. Because if you are, I’d like to take both of you out to dinner.’

Laughter jumped from Coralie’s throat. Astonishment colliding with relief. Whatever this man wanted of her, it wasn’t her immediate downfall.

Ramon Cazaubon
had
been sent by his sister, he told her later. Henriette had asked him to poke about the stockroom, to go through the accounts. ‘She is afraid of you, Coralie, and I understand why. Unlike her, you do not wait for life to unfold. You ride after it, like a gaucho roping a steer.’ It was crystal clear, he said, that Coralie could out-business Henriette blindfolded, with her hands tied. ‘Anyway, I will write and say all is well.’ As for looking over the books, for his sins he spent his days staring at lines on paper. Evenings, he said, were for friendship. And nights were for pleasure.

Against her better judgement, Coralie allowed him to take her out that first time, then a second and a third. Soon, she was looking forward to the bump of the door, the energetic wiping of feet that announced his arrival in the salon. She’d told him off for spoiling the carpet.

Ramon shared his sister’s brusque impulsivity, but his nature was warmer. Fiery, even. He never flagged. By midnight, when she was begging to go home and sleep, he was suggesting they go on to Pigalle or boulevard de Clichy, to this or that nightclub. He seemed to know every dance band in Paris. Working by day in one of the drawing-offices of the national railway company, he descended by night into vaults and basements, and soused himself in modern music. He lived several lives in parallel, he told her.

‘I adore Paris, but I am also at home in the foothills of the Pyrénées. I am an intellectual, a wage-slave, a hunter and also a Bohemian. I am a politician who hates politics, an anarchist who believes in God. I am a warrior who loves peace. Life is short, Coralie. My parents are like oak trees, growing one slow ring at a time. Henriette, with all her talent, is like a field of standing corn waiting to be cut. To me, life is a rampaging bull. I throw myself over the horns, daring it to gouge and trample me.’

‘It might, one day,’ she warned him.

‘Then I hope I have you to bind my wounds. I am not comfortable to live with, but I know my mind.’