Mistral's Daughter (21 page)

"A last look?" he
asked.
 
"I didn't know you cared
that much about it."

Kate slipped out of her seat,
walked to the big wooden double doors set in the wall and took a key out of her
pocket.
 
She put it into the lock and
turned it with difficulty.
 
As Mistral
watched, astonished, she pushed one of the heavy doors open wide.
 
She beckoned at him. "Come on!"

"What are you
doing?
 
Where'd you get that key?"
he called, not moving from the driver's seat.
 
He had no intention of going in.
 
Kate
walked back to the car and held out the key to Mistral.
 
"Take it.
 
It's mine.
 
Or rather it's yours.
 
To be
precise, it's my dowry."

He snorted with
astonishment.
 
She certainly had the
capacity to surprise.
 
And how grand was
her scale!
 
She did nothing by half and
somehow, he realized as he looked at her grave and hopeful eyes, she was never
preposterous, even now.
 
Dignified,
serious, intent, she made her extraordinary proposition a possibility just by
her assumption that it could happen.

"Will you marry me,
Julien?" Kate asked.

He was silent.
 
He knew she had more to say and he found her
profoundly interesting.

"I love you and you need
a wife.
 
You need a home, I saw the
notary in Félice today and bought this farm.
 
The former owner died leaving only a granddaughter who was anxious to
sell. Next week a young farmer and his wife will move into the wing on the left
and start hiring men to get the land back in shape, the groves, the orchards,
the vineyards."
 
She paused but
still he said nothing so she continued, spreading out a delicious life before
him as clearly, as distinctly as if she had flung a bright cloth on the grass
and placed generous platters of fine food and bottles of wine upon it and invited
him to a feast.
 
"I'm looking for an
architect to design your studio. I've already hired a master mason in
Avignon.
 
He's meeting me here
tomorrow.
 
A plumber and an electrician
will come with him
—
there's a great deal of work to be done before the
house is
–
" "Could you live here
—
in the country
—
at
La Tourrello
?" he interrupted at last.

"It seems that I can't
imagine living happily anywhere you are not.
 
God help me.
 
I find myself
curiously unable to go back to Paris and leave you here for the winter and
drive down to visit in February pretending that I want to see the almond trees
in flower."

"But I've never thought
of marriage," Mistral said.

"Think of it then,"
Kate said with a flash of humor.
 
"It's time to get started on our lives.
 
It's time to do the real work.
 
You've begun well, so that part's over, but
now the harder part comes... to keep going forward, to enlarge, to reinforce,
to gain new territory a make it absolutely your own...
 
years and years of work that will take all
your strength.
 
Didn't Flaubert tell
artists to be regular and ordinary in their lives so they could be violent and
original in their work?"

"I've never read
Flaubert," Mistral said.
 
The
important thing, the only thing, he thought, is that I want to paint again and
I must not leave this place.

"Julien, imagine having
your studio built here, looking toward Félice."

She didn't gesture.
 
The immoderate bounty that lay before eyes
all spoke for her.
 
Her love needed no
other adornment to make
itself evident.
 
He looked about and saw a future of order and peace and plenty, saw that
it was possible.

"Think," she added
in a voice that danced with nerves, as he remained silent, "think of the
boules tournaments, the many
boules tournaments, year after year."

"You're trying to bribe
me, Kate."

"Of course."
 
She stood her ground resolutely, the key
still in her outstretched hand, the wind blowing her hair, the grave gray eyes
warmed by the emotion she no longer hid.
 
In her expression her blind faith in him mingled with vulnerability.
   

"I'm trying to think of
a single reason...
 
to say no,"
Mistral said slowly.

"And ...?"

He jumped out of the car and
took the key from her.
 
He grasped it
tightly, feeling the heavy, smooth iron press into his palm.
 
Recognition flooded him.
 
This piece of land, this woman... they were
his future.
 
They laughed together,
complicit laughter and not for the first time.
 
It had been so from the first day they had met.

"But how strange life
is!" he exclaimed in wonder.

"'Pray love me little,
so you love me long,' " she murmured in English.

"What does that mean, my
clever bossy American girl?" he asked as he pulled her into his arms.

"A poet long ago...
 
someday I'll tell you...
 
someday you'll understand."

10

No, decidedly no! Impossible,
totally impossible.
 
It's out of the
question," Paula proclaimed to Maggy, looking more scandalized than Maggy
would have thought possible for a woman who, self-admittedly, had seen
everything.

"But why?" Maggy
wailed.

"Two catastrophic
reasons.
 
Your lingerie and your
shoes.
 
They
simply will not
do!
 
Oh, Maggy, just look at this.
 
It's enough to make me cry."
 
Paula waved distractedly at the scant pile of
undergarments she had taken out of Maggy's armoire and spread over the bed, and
held up three petticoats as accusingly as if they were dustcloths.

"This one is patched,
this one is frayed at the hem, this one is missing half its ribbon as far as I
can tell.
 
You don't have a single
complete
set of lingerie in suitable condition," she continued, warming to her
grievances, "and where, may I ask, are your corselettes and
soutien-gorges
?
 
All I see here are ill-assorted
garters, mended stockings, knickers that you must have brought with you when
you left home and these disgraceful petticoats.
 
I will admit that they're clean but beyond that!" She threw up her
hands.

Maggy blew hair out of her
eyes. "Oh, why are you acting like
a duchess?
 
You don't seriously think I bothered with all
that, do you?
 
I don't need them in my
work surely.
 
Or to go dancing.
 
On the contrary!
 
And as for my petticoats, they're perfectly
good with just a stitch here and there...
 
Madame Poulard can fix them up in no time."

Paula sat down on the bed
with finality.

"Maggy, you must be
mad.
 
How do you expect to be treated
with respect, when you go to Patou or Molyneux, if they see you in these
rags?
  
What would Mademoiselle Chanel say to such a
beggar woman?
 
I don't care how much
money you have to spend, no coutourier, no
vendeuse
and no fitter is
ever going to take you seriously unless
you have proper lingerie, proper
shoes and a proper hat as well."

"Well, so much for my
glorious career as a kept woman.
 
Over
before it began.
 
I don't have the right
clothes to wear in order to go and buy the right clothes, so how can I possibly
move into a suite at the Lotti?
 
Maybe I
could tell Monsieur Patou that I've been in a shipwreck and lost
everything?
 
Or convince Mademoiselle Chanel
that I was stolen by the gypsies who kept all my clothes and returned me
unharmed?
 
How
do
people ever
manage to buy made-to-order clothes if they have never bought them
before?
 
It's worse than a Chinese
puzzle."

Maggy flopped down on the
floor of her room, crossed her bare legs and leaned rebelliously forward, her
chin on her hands.

"It all seemed so simple
this morning and now you've made it so complicated that I don't even want to
think about it.
 
A year ago you were
instructing me in how to hop out of my knickers, now you want to put me in
corsets!
 
I'll just tell Perry we have to
stay here and to hell with his valet and his business.
 
If he doesn't like me the way I am, it's just
too bad.
 
Corsets be damned."

"Now, now," said
Paula, hastily, "it's not that insoluble.
 
Calm yourself, little one.
 
It
merely demands thought and planning, like all important events in life.
 
For the lingerie we start from the beginning.
 
Everything must be new.
 
There is a shop, just off the rue St. Honoré
—
it's run by three Russian emigrées, all titled ladies, of great discretion and
understanding and
—
what is more important
—
promptitude.
 
They specialize in cases like yours..."

"What!
 
Now I'm a 'case,' am I?" Maggy said
indignantly.

"In this particular
matter, yes." Paula went on imperturbably.

"If they get the order
this afternoon, and I explain to them the nature of the emergency, you should
have exquisite lingerie made within a week.
 
And as for the shoes, there is a splendid little Italian
bottier
I
know who is not far from them.
 
Rue St.
Florentin, up two flights, a very reliable address.
 
For him there is no need to worry about the
lingerie so we can go there today."

"I could Just pop off to
Raoul..."

"Raoul?
 
That dreadful little place in the arcade with
the shoes for eighty francs that have ruined your feet?" Paula was
mortified.

"That's what I've been
wearing all along and you never objected before."

"Forget what you endured
before
—
don't you want Perry to be proud of you?"

"He is
already."
 
Maggy brooded, pulling
her tender orang plumage around her face, all but hiding it.
 
Her romantic fantasy of the life of a kept
woman was rapidly falling apart in the face of Paula's practicality.
 
It sounded like work, and work of the most
boring kind; endless fittings; days wasted running around from one special
workroom to another;
corsets
, all so that she could impress a saleswoman
who would probably see through her anyway.
 
She hated that saleswoman already, she thought in dejection.

Suddenly the memory of Kate Browning
as she had looked the first time she came to Mistral's studio came into her
mind, Kate
Browning so sure of herself in cool, white silk, every stitch
of which had to have been made by hand, Kate Browning with her spotless white
gloves who always looked so stylish, so self-confident and self-possessed that
it was impossible to doubt that she had tiptoed daintily out of her mother's
womb in a pair of tiny perfect shoes
and a marvelous hat from Rose
Descat.

Galvanized, Maggy jumped up
with a suddenness that start Paula:
 
"What about gloves?" she demanded, taking Paula by the
shoulders and shaking her.
 
"Foolish
female, have you been in that kitchen of yours for so long that you don't know
that without gloves no lady is dressed for the street?
 
While you drivel on about corsets you have
forgotten gloves.
 
How can I start my new
life without at least six
dozen
pairs of gloves since I intend to never
wear a pair more than once;
once
, do you hear?"

She released Paula and danced
around her room, picking up stocking here and another there, inspecting them
for darns and finally taking two that were intact.
 
All the others she swept into the
wastebasket.
 
"Twelve dozen pairs of
silk stockings, before lunch!
 
Then on to
the Russian aristocrats
—
I
crave
lingerie:
 
all silk chiffon and stupendous appliqués of
lace; peach-colored crêpe de chine; garter belts, teddies,
soutien-gorges
to
flatten my tits, flared tap pants in pale green and lavender and mocha, red
chiffon nightgowns...
 
what else?
 
Chinese pajamas!
 
But no corsets!"
 
Maggy halted her capering progress around her
tiny room in front of the mirror she had hung
above the sink.
 
She studied herself intently, shaking her
hair around her head.
 
She pulled it all
back behind her ears, then she lifted it in both hands and piled it on top of
her head. Slowly she shook
her head from side to side in disapproval.

"I need a haircut."

"Of course you do.
 
You can't wear hats properly with all that
hair and without the right hats..."

"Don't tell me
—
I know.
 
Without the right hats no
self-respecting
vendeuse
will even let me in the salon.
 
Now just tell me one thing, Paula.
 
Do I have to go and get my hair cut off
before
I go for a haircut by Antoine, or will Antoine deign to cut my hair in
its present lamentably unfashionable condition?"

Paula's eyes widened.
 
Antoine was the most famous hairdresser in
the world.
 
Twenty years before he had
invented bobbed hair when the great actress, Eve Lavallière, let him sacrifice
her hair to his scissors, an experiment that so unnerved him that he didn't try
it again for another six years.
 
Now he
ruled supreme in his salon on the rue Didier that he had inaugurated by a ball
for fourteen hundred guests with each woman dressed in white.
 
Every female creature in France dreamed of
presenting her head before the master.

"Antoine," Paula
breathed, respectfully.

"But of course,"
Maggy said. "He will know, just by looking at me, that I am worthy of his
scissors, poor though I have been and temporarily between one pair of knickers
and another."

"How will you get an
appointment?"

"I'll just go and see
him.
 
Will he be able to resist the
chance to cut off this hair?"

"I don't see how he
could," Paula said truthfully.
 
Antoine was so impulsive that he had recently bid five thousand francs
at a charity auction for a single glove that had been donated by his client,
the poetess Vicomtesse Marie-Laure de Noailles.

"Then on your feet, my
coco
.
 
You don't think I'm going without you?"

"I wouldn't let you
—
what if you changed your mind halfway through?"

"My thought
exactly."
 
With a caressing hand
Maggy touched her hair.
 
It had to go,
that much was clear, but she was not nearly as brave about the prospect as she
sounded.
 
In fact her heart was
fluttering in a way that made her want to give little yelps of anguish but she
flung on her best daytime clothes and bundled Paula into a
taxi before
she had a chance to change her mind.

It was never more difficult
for a woman to be beautiful than during the 1920s.
 
Fashion flattered no one, femininity in all
its manifestations was truncated, hidden, distorted.
 
Hats hid the forehead and the eyes; eyebrows
were unnaturally tweezed, bodies forced ruthlessly into unflattering boyish
forms; cosmetics used badly.
 
Only three
colors of lipsticks existed and hairstyles were so ugly that only the most
authentic beauty could overcome them.

In this period a haircut
could make or break a woman.
 
Women who
only ten years before had been considered lovely in their Edwardian draperies
and the floating clouds of their elaborately dressed hair, were denuded and
exposed to the cruel light of day without any grace or charm left to them
—
all in the name of fashion.
 
Women who
would once have been reigning beauties were revealed as scarecrows, with
scalped heads perched like knobs on top of unfashionably plump shoulders.
 
A poorly shaped skull could ruin a young
woman's future.

Maggy sat in the chair before
Antoine's mirror while the hairdresser hovered behind her, surrounded by a
small crown of apprentices and assistants.
 
Paula sat grimly off to one side.

"My God...
 
your hairline," he said in excitement in
his Polish-accented French.

"What's wrong with
it?" Maggy asked, ready to explode.
 
Any excuse would do if she could only leave with dignity.
 
Leave
now
before he started.
 
She looked around in a dizzy panic.
 
The walls of the salon were made of great
sheets of plate glass, the staircases themselves were constructed of glass, the
chairs and tables of the salon and the decorations and lights were all made of
glass to please this tall, pale Pole who lived in a crystal abode above the
salon and slept in a glass coffin which, he claimed, protected him from
dangerous electric radiation in the night air.

"How
could
you
have kept it hidden for so long?" he asked
reproachfully.
 
"Elegance starts with the hairline,
Madame, and yours is
—
a
poem.
 
This," he said, tracing a long thin
finger high, across her forehead, "is the essential shape without which no
other elegance matters, without which no true elegance can begin.
 
It must, be
exposed.
"

"Whatever you say,"
Maggy muttered, closing her eyes as she saw him pick up
his scissors.
They made a horrible, softly shrieking sound
as they flashed through her
wings of hair, each lock of which was carefully caught before it fell to the
floor by an assistant whose job it was to preserve long hair and make it into
switches and chignons
and braids that the shorn client could pin on in
the evening.
 
Maggy opened one eye and
saw her head hunched into her shoulders as she cringed in the chair.