The Dress Thief (8 page)

‘We will go to my room and untangle the knots,’ he said, turning. When Alix made to follow him, he wagged a finger towards the
floor by her feet. ‘I think this fellow should come too.’

Her basket. Blushing, she grabbed the handle and followed the tailor through doors into a stairwell, cringing as Mlle Lilliane’s voice rang out –

‘On top of everything else, Monsieur, she smells.’

*

‘Will you permit me to ask who you are, Monsieur? Are you really just a tailor?’

‘Just a tailor?’ He indicated she should take a seat at
a cutting table – bare but for a bowl of lush pink roses the size of cabbages. ‘To be a tailor is to be the
generalissimo
of couture. Take a minute, get your breath.’

They’d come briskly through a warren of corridors, then ridden a hydraulic lift to the top of the building. What he’d
described as ‘his room’ turned out to be the whole top floor. From her seat, Alix could stare up into a lantern
skylight and see clouds forming and massing. One side of the room overlooked Rue de la Trémoille, and on the courtyard side stood an army of figurines wearing ‘toiles’ of filmy muslin. Toiles were the early stages of couture clothes. Alix marvelled at bouffant sleeves, plunging necks and hems scrunched like rings of meringue. Evening gowns in the making.

Mlle Lilliane stormed in after them, planting
herself between Alix and the figurines. ‘Does it occur to you, Monsieur, that she might be a spy from another house?’

Shrugging, ‘Monsieur’ invited the directrice to stay if she wished – ‘But no more crossness. Angry people give me pains here.’ The tailor patted his stomach. ‘Well,
petite
,’ he invited, ‘you wish to be an employee of Javier? What is your skill?’

‘Um …’ Alix had rehearsed a speech
on the
Métro
, but suddenly couldn’t remember it. ‘I – I learned to sew at school and from Mémé – I mean, my grandmother. After I left school, I worked in the ladies’ made-to-measure department of a London store, sometimes making alterations, sometimes as a fitter.’

‘A fitter? What did that teach you, Mademoiselle?’

‘That ladies whose waist measurement is thirty-six inches always think the fitter’s
tape measure is wrong.’

The man smacked his table in delight. ‘Excellent. What else has life taught you?’

‘Erm … I do fine stitching, every sort of seam and
buttonhole and every embroidery stitch. I’ve learned shadow work, open threadwork, smocking, quilting … um … I can make lace –’ adding for truth’s sake – ‘but not very well. I can stitch broderie anglaise and blackwork.’

‘Ah, blackwork
is a good thing to say to me. Blackwork is a thing of joy for a Spaniard. Have you brought me samples?’

‘No, I’m sorry.’ She’d brought fish instead.

Mlle Lilliane crowed, ‘How do we know she isn’t lying?’

‘Because Mme Shone sent her.
Petite
, show me your hands.’

Alix held them out. Mlle Lilliane shrieked, ‘Look at her nails! Imagine those hands touching one of your gowns.’

Your gowns … ?
A pulse began working behind Alix’s ear.

The man opened a drawer and took out a marquetry box. ‘This was my mother’s sewing box. Take what you need.’ He pulled a pristine silk handkerchief from his pocket. ‘Create me something.’

Alix thought,
Paul, I’ll kill you
.

Shaking, she threaded a needle with silk, stretched the handkerchief on to a hoop, then sewed grimly until she found her rhythm.
At that point, the tailor retired to a side office, leaving the door ajar and Alix heard him talking first to himself in Spanish, then on the telephone in French. All this time, Mlle Lilliane remained at the table, eyes open like a snake’s. It felt like an hour before the tailor came back into the room – though it was probably nearer twenty minutes. At last, Alix was able to hand over an image worked
in satin stitch and French knots. The
tailor took it from her, nodded, then commented, ‘She smells, you say, Mlle Lilliane?’ To Alix’s horror, he raised her hand to his nose. ‘Trout,’ he said in a satisfied voice.

Alix’s eyes flared. ‘How did you know?’

‘This nose –’ he tapped it – ‘blended Ersa from fifty different ingredients and achieved a miracle of balance.’

‘Ersa?’

‘My signature perfume.
Can you not smell it … orange flower, sweet almond … ?’

She sniffed the air. ‘And rose oil?’

‘Perhaps. Ersa is complex. Only I know her secrets.’

‘You are M. Javier, aren’t you? Oh dear.’

‘Oh dear,’ he imitated, but he was smiling.

He passed Alix’s embroidery to Mlle Lilliane, who snorted, ‘Very poor taste.’

‘
Au contraire
, Mademoiselle. It is the most beautifully worked fish I have seen
in months. This young lady knows that to work in our business takes courage and a sense of humour.’

*

When Alix told her news that evening, Mémé slapped her face.

‘A couturier’s
midinette
 – a skivvy – after everything I said? They’ll pay you a pittance and want blood for it.’

Alix put her hand to her cheek. ‘Javier pays his girls well and some of the richest women in Paris buy only from him.
You should be proud he offered me work.’

‘Alix, Alix, have you any idea what it took to get you that job
at the telephone company? I went cap in hand to the Comte de Charembourg, begged him to ring the director of the company to make space for you.’

‘You saw the comte here, in Paris?’ Alix was confused. ‘Where did you see him? When?’

‘At his house in the 16
^th
. When I went to beg his help in
getting you a job, Mme la Comtesse keeping me on the step like a vagrant. Bitter medicine, drunk for your good.’

‘You should have told me he was here,’ Alix said stubbornly. ‘And I thought I got the job at the exchange on my own merits.’ The bubble on which she’d floated home burst. ‘You’re always so harsh, so buttoned-up. Why punish me for making the best of a life I didn’t ask for?’

When Mémé
gave no answer, Alix’s emotions rose. ‘My father would have been proud of me even if you aren’t. He always said I was an “original”.’

Mémé sat down, throwing her hands wide. ‘You were barely five years old when your father died. The longest talk you had with him was about which spoon to eat your porridge with.’ She gestured at the portrait of Mathilda. ‘They’re all dead. You have only me.’

Something snapped in Alix. She flung out of the room, shouting, ‘I bet my mother ran off to be a nurse to escape you.’

‘Aliki!’

Ignoring the pain in that cry, Alix ran out of the flat. She’d spend the rest of the day with Bonnet. But, after puffing up
the stairs of Abbesses, the
Métro
station of Butte Montmartre, she discovered her friend was otherwise engaged. He was in the square, part of a
male group rolling knuckle jacks across a mat on the ground. A fold-out table was crammed with bottles and glasses.

‘Boys’ club,’ she muttered. ‘I’ll go and see Paul.’

But at the Quai d’Anjou, she found the
Katrijn
away from her mooring. She stared at the empty patch of water, a formless sorrow coming over her. Paul was always here when she needed him.

The old barge-woman Francine grinned down
from her deck. ‘He’ll be back. He’s taken his sisters up the canal to visit his last living relation.’

‘He doesn’t have any relations, Francine.’

‘Oh, he does. A great-aunt at Bobigny who washed her hands of Sylvie le Gal years ago. Didn’t approve of naughty dancing.’ Francine waggled her flanks. ‘Paul’s hoping his girls will melt her tough, old heart so he can hide them there when the authorities
come to get them. I just hope the fuel’s worth it; he had to borrow a can off me.’ Laughing at Alix’s glum expression, Francine beckoned. ‘Step up, take a glass of pastis with me.’

Alix didn’t really want to, but Francine’s toothless smile urged her aboard. Once there, one pastis turned into several. Alix finally wobbled off Francine’s boat as the light faded. Her cheek still smarted from Mémé’s
palm, but the intervening hours had refashioned her anger. Mémé was getting old in a world
that handed out no fresh starts to a seamstress with bent fingers. Mémé was scared of the future, of Germans, of everything.

But by the time she was crossing the square in front of St-Sulpice, feeling the vibration of its famous organ in the slabs beneath her feet, Alix had reached a decision. She wouldn’t
take the job with Javier. Not even for Paul’s sake, not even for Suzy’s. It was too loaded with risk, with expectation.

She’d help Paul in other ways, she vowed. She’d slave at the telephone exchange, take every night shift going. Turn into Mlle Boussac and become a supervisor. That man in the dependable suit could sweep her off to a neat suburb – though he’d have to take Mémé too.

That was
a good plan.
So why are you crying?
she demanded of herself.
Hope isn’t dead. It just feels that way
.

She stuck to her vow all the following week. Here she was, finishing another Saturday night on Rue du Louvre, another night shift. As Sunday’s dawn edged through the blinds of the exchange building, Alix pulled off her headphones and thought longingly of coffee. Sweet, strong coffee. She checked her watch. Less than an hour to go. At least she’d
been kept busy. Usually the night shift was quiet, but today the din of switches selecting and clicking drowned the murmurings of her colleagues as they processed calls.

‘Bad weather over the channel. Sailings cancelled from all ports,’ the night shift supervisor had reported. Caller after caller was being told they must wait over an hour to alert family and friends in Britain that they were
stuck in France. Alix swivelled her seat from side to side. Ooh, her back! She must not think of strong, sweet coffee …

A light flashed in front of her and she plugged an answering cord into the jack and crammed on her headphones. ‘Which destination, please?’ When the answer came ‘London’ she prepared
to inform another traveller that he would have to be patient. But there was no chance as the
caller snapped, ‘Get me Abbey 2310. I need a line right now!’

He spoke English, which annoyed her as it implied that her French was not perfect. In the starchiest English she could command, she said, ‘I’m sorry, sir, lines to England are full. Waiting time is eight hours.’

The girl sitting beside her shot Alix a startled look and whispered, ‘Eighty minutes, Mlle Dujardin said. Not eight hours,
Alix.’

Alix pretended not to hear.

Her caller was less than impressed too. ‘It’d be faster to swim.’

‘Do you like fog?’

‘Is that what I’m up against?’

‘It’s like mutton fat. Everything that moves is cancelled. The world needs to call London because Londoners love to discuss fog the way other people talk about vintage wine. There are infinite varieties.’ Aware she was drifting towards insolence,
she re-starched her voice. ‘I will tell you when we can set up your call.’

‘Are you English?’

‘No.’ He had a nice voice now he wasn’t ordering her about. Sexy, even. But that didn’t get him off the charge of rudeness. ‘I’m half English.’

‘May I say, the half that is speaks it very well.’

‘That’s why I am employed here.’

‘Of course. Look, I’m a journalist, and it’s vital I speak to my London
editor before he wakes and leaves for the day.’

‘Your name, please?’ she asked.

‘Verrian Haviland.’ He spelled both names for her.

‘And your party, sir?’

‘Jack Haviland, Abbey 2310.’

‘I thought you said “your editor”.’

‘Who happens to be my brother.’

‘I see. Your present location?’

‘Laurentin’s hotel by Gare du Nord, in the passage behind the kitchen, unpleasantly close to the lavatory,
shouting over clattering pans into a phone that smells of garlic and stale tobacco. Will you put me through?’

Alix choked back a giggle as much from shock as amusement. She shot a look behind her. The supervisor, Mlle Dujardin, sat a few feet away, writing up a report. Familiarity, especially giggling, was strictly forbidden. ‘I have to send every request to another section or issue a “request
and schedule” card. I can’t influence the connecting switchboard.’

‘But you could prioritise?’ He had a graze in his voice as if he smoked too heavily, but he sounded cultured. Alix wondered what he was doing in that kitchen corridor. She knew the places near Gare du Nord station. They opened before dawn to feed railway porters, road sweepers and tired prostitutes.

She said, ‘Not without appropriate
authorisation.’

‘And that would be too much to ask of a stiff-necked telephone operator?’

Her fingers hovered over the plug. One pull would terminate. But she surprised herself by answering sweetly, ‘It would be. Fortunately for you, I’m not stiff-necked … Well, I am, but only because I’ve been working all night.’

A pause. Then, ‘I’m truly sorry. I’ve had a hellish week and I really have to
speak with my brother. He’s in a position to save a man’s life.’

She’d heard it all in her months on this switchboard, all the life-or-death reasons why one person’s call should jump the queue. So why did she instinctively believe this man? Mlle Dujardin had closed her report book and was heading out the door. Alix whispered into her mouthpiece, ‘Is this true – a man could die?’