Liberty Silk (13 page)

And then she remembered the tender expression in Richard’s eyes as he had slid the diamond solitaire onto her finger in the Palm Court of the Ritz Hotel that September afternoon, and she was so covered in shame that she hid her face.

‘He’s on the other side of the world, sweetheart; there’s a war on, and engagements are ended easily. You could do it tomorrow. But to actually be married is something very different indeed.’ He slumped, putting his head in his hands. ‘And to be married to somebody you despise is about as bad as it gets.’

Lisa perked up a little. ‘Do you really despise her?’

‘Yes. She’s mad as the devil. I just wish I’d seen you coming first. You were a real bolt from the blue.’

‘Poor, poor Lochlan.’

She reached out a hand to stroke his hair and, catching hold of it, he pressed the palm hard against his lips.

A bolt from the blue – did he mean it? Oh yes – she could tell by the dazed look in his eyes that he’d been caught off guard just as she had by what had happened between them when the camera had started to roll. Anyone who had witnessed their screen kiss could testify to the electricity they’d generated. It had been so palpable that after the director had shouted ‘Cut!’ there’d been a round of spontaneous applause from the crew, and catcalls and wolf whistles galore.

‘You’ve got to get this part, Lisa.’

‘Oh, Lochlan! There must be hundreds of girls—’

‘I’ve tested dozens. You’re the one I want.’

‘But what if Mr Stein—’

‘Ziggy owes me a favour.’ He looked away, eyes narrowed suddenly, jaw set, his mouth a determined line. ‘Hell. As far as I’m concerned, the part’s yours. It’s my gift to you because . . .’ He faltered, as though lost for words.

‘Because?’

‘Because I think I might be falling in love with you.’ Lochlan looked deep into her eyes, the way he had earlier when the cameras had been rolling. Then he brushed a strand of hair tenderly away from her face and smiled. ‘We’re going to be doing a lot of rehearsal, angel. We might as well start now.’

‘
FIRE!
FIRE!
CLEAR
the building!’

Jessie had laid out her evening dress on the bed, and had just finished washing when the cry came up from the ground floor of the Hôtel des Trois Moineaux.

‘
Fire!
’

There was no word in the world more galvanizing. The entire building, which had been dozing through an uneventful
heure bleue
, came suddenly to life. Next door she heard the mad Serb fall out of his bed, lumber across his room and out onto the landing. From overhead came the inchoate sounds of an imminent stampede.
Fire!
The cries were multiplying now, echoing from floor to floor of the building, interspersed with panicky shrieks and shouted commands to remain calm.

Jessie threw aside her towel and lunged for her shabby peignoir. There was no time to worry about undergarments or shoes – she just wanted something to cover her nakedness. She found herself struggling with the sleeves, in her haste confusing left with right, and it seemed that the more frantically she tried to disentangle her arms, the more she found herself in a straitjacket of her own making. Calm, calm,
calm
– she told herself, taking a deep breath, forcing herself to slow down, slow down and
think
. As she fumbled with the sash, someone passing banged on the door of her room.

‘Hurry! Hurry! Fire! Fire! Fire!’ she heard.

Jessie threw a quick look at the case where she kept her precious things. Did she have time to drag it out from under her bed? No, no – getting out was her priority. The golden rule was that you never dithered in a burning building. Unhooking her raincoat from its peg, she swung through the door, pulling it to behind her.

Already the corridor was jammed with bodies jostling, swarming towards the rickety staircase that led to safety. Jessie braced herself, then propelled herself forward. An elbow hit her savagely in the chest, someone pushed her from behind, the consumptive youth from upstairs barged past her with astonishing force. The ‘ladies first’ ethos was clearly unheard of in the Hôtel des Trois Moineaux.

Outside on the street there was chaos. Neighbours and children had come running when they’d heard the alarm, dogs were barking in excitement, and a squadron of cavalry was clopping down the middle of the street, shouting to the crowd to let them through. The cavalry was not popular among the denizens of the rue du Coq d’Or, and already they were being subjected to a barrage of insults.

Jessie made her way with difficulty through the throng to the opposite side of the street and stood looking up at the building, expecting at any moment to see smoke billowing from the windows. As curious observers converged to witness the spectacle of the Trois Moineaux going up in flames, so the more panicky inmates of the hotel fled.

Jessie’s instinct was to run with them, to put as much distance as she could between herself and this imminent conflagration – the hotel was constructed from
matchwood
, after all! But she couldn’t rid herself of the notion that the alarm might have been a hoax. What if some sneak thief was systematically going from bedroom to bedroom, helping himself? It had been known to happen, and the last thing she needed was for her meagre savings to be sticky-fingered. She stood poised between fright and flight, hugging herself and performing small dance steps on the spot to keep warm.

‘Where did the fire start?’ one woman asked of a gaping scullery maid. ‘In the kitchen?’

The skivvy shrugged. ‘I seen nothing,’ she said. ‘Nor smelt nothing, neither.’

Some of the crowd oohed, some catcalled at the cavalry officer who, having reached the door of the hotel dismounted and, donning his most officious air, proceeded to grill Madame Perron who was standing there, gesticulating angrily. Jessie could tell that she was shouting, but couldn’t hear what was being said above the excited din and the clanging of approaching klaxons. Finally, a couple of
poilus
who had entered the building re-emerged, and consulted with their captain. It appeared that there had been no fire at all. The brouhaha had either been engineered as a diversionary tactic, or the alarm had been raised by mistake.

Within minutes the crowd had dispersed – the urchins to their street games, the shopkeepers to their trades, and the inmates of the hotel to the cells that Madame Perron had the nerve to call
chambres meublées
. Jessie joined them, anxious to return to her room. But when she reached the third floor it was to find her door hanging open. The room had been pillaged – ransacked. The covers had been pulled from her bed, her mattress had been overturned and the floorboard under which she kept her passport had been prised up. All the drawers in her chest had been pulled out and their contents scattered. And of course – of
course
– her case had been dragged into the middle of the room and forced open.

Jessie stepped across the threshold and looked down at the suitcase to which she had consigned her most precious possessions. It was empty. The silver cigarette case that dear Tuppenny had given her was gone. The kid evening pumps and bag and the stockings that Count Demetrios had bought her were gone, and as her eyes registered the despoliation, she saw that the secret pocket on her suspender belt into which she took such care to sew her handful of francs every evening had been slit open, and her money was gone too.

But all this counted for nothing when she saw the slashed drawstrings on the cambric bag lying by the door. It had contained the garment that would gain her entrée into society this evening: the Liberty silk evening dress.

For many moments Jessie stood there frozen, with her hands clamped over her mouth and her eyes fixed on the looted bag at her bare feet. Then she started to hyperventilate, gasping for air as though she were drowning. She lurched across the room and flung open the casement, trying desperately to drag air into her lungs. This was worse – far worse – than the night the Serb next door had burned sulphur.

Below her, the cobblestoned street glistened with damp. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again it occurred to her that the surface of the street looked like the flank of a great sea monster, rolling over in its sleep. How easy it would be to dive in there, how easy to topple from this height and fall to her death by drowning. Except, of course, she wouldn’t drown. If she dived, she would hit the ground with such force that her skull would shatter, and then all her thoughts, her worries and troubles would spill out along with her brains onto the stinking pavement of the rue du Coq d’Or, and that would be an end to yet one more wretched life on this wretched street, and she could sleep easy at last.

Pulling herself up, clinging to the window frame, she eased herself onto the sill. It was difficult to stand upright: the belt of her raincoat had caught on the handle of the casement. She had just managed to unhook it, when something made her stop. Her parents. How would they feel when they learned that their beautiful girl – their only child – had ended up a suicide in a wretched hotel? All those letters she had written home, all those letters full of lies about how happy they were, she and Scotch, and how they planned to maybe move into an even finer apartment. What would happen if they came to find her and stayed on in Paris indefinitely, and the trail led to the Hôtel des Trois Moineaux, and they discovered the truth about their daughter’s sordid secret life? Oh, God! She couldn’t do that to them. She couldn’t. But what
could
she do?

Tears started to flow down Jessie’s face, and she must have given a cry of despair, because there came the sound of footsteps in the corridor, and suddenly someone was in the room with her and strong arms were around her waist, restraining her, pulling her back . . .

And then she was on the floor of her room, weeping and weeping and someone was smoothing her hair and saying in a rough but reassuring voice: ‘There, there, Mam’zelle. It’s all right. You’re safe now, and everything is going to be fine. You come with me, and I’ll buy you a drink and before you can say Jack Robinson you’ll be feeling chipper again and wondering what had you in such a state. There’s no better girl than the Green Fairy to cure a case of the horrors. You come with me, Milady. You come with Adèle.’

‘My friend!’ said Adèle, pouring a second shot of absinthe into Jessie’s glass. ‘What were you thinking? What is the loss of a few francs to the loss of a life? And the life of one so beautiful, so young, with so much to live for?’

‘I’ve nothing to live for.’

‘Shame on you!’

They were sitting at Adèle’s favourite table in the bistro on the ground floor of the Hôtel des Trois Moineaux – the one opposite the framed photograph of a funeral that hung behind the bar, bearing the legend ‘
Crédit est mort
.’ Jessie’s unlikely Good Samaritan had been right – the liquor had eased her pain a little, as had the non-stop litany of platitudes that Adèle had been murmuring since she’d helped Jessie pick her way downstairs in her unshod feet. It was funny, Jessie thought, how very soothing platitudes could be: from the moment Adèle had stroked her hair and told her that everything was going to be fine, she’d half believed her. She supposed nothing could ever be as bad again as the few insane moments she’d spent clinging to the window ledge upstairs, preparing herself to jump.

‘To friendship, Milady!’ said Adèle, raising her tumbler.

Jessie mirrored the toast and found herself mumbling ‘To friendship!’ before downing the second shot in one. Oh, how good the liquor was! It burned a line all the way down to her stomach. Setting the glass on the table, she leaned back against the banquette, and closed her eyes. How sweet it would be to stay here in the muggy atmosphere of the bistro and drink absinthe until she fell asleep and could forget all her troubles! How much sweeter still if she were to open her eyes and find herself back in Finistère with Scotch, in the Hôtel Simonet . . . She would stretch like a cat, and then she would pinch him awake so that she could tell him about the vile nightmare she’d just had – and how they’d laugh that anything could mar their happiness!

The clink of carafe against glass made her blink and refocus. Adèle was regarding her with concern. This woman had turned out to be a true friend after all. In spite of her rough edge and her vulgarity there was something oddly maternal about Adèle . . . Oh, God – how Jessie wanted her parents now! She needed them more than she’d ever done – even that time in Chambéry when Scotch had nearly died and she’d written home – what had she written?

I am feeling so young and incapable-like, and oh Lord! I wish I were in England . . .

‘I wish I were in England,’ she told Adèle.

Adèle nodded. ‘We must find some way of getting you back there, safe and sound. And a way for you to earn some money fast, kid. You need clothes, shoes. Was every stitch you own taken?’

‘Yes. But I don’t care. The only thing I care about is the dress.’

‘What dress?’

‘An evening dress. I was going to wear it tonight.’

‘Where were you off to?’

‘A soirée. On the Boulevard Péreire.’

‘Swanky.’

‘Yes.’

‘You can’t go now. The state of you! What was this dress like?’

‘Beautiful. Silk.’

‘A silk dress, eh? I’ve a friend could lend you one. Shoes, too. Have you a gentleman waiting for you?’

‘Yes. We were to meet at eight o’clock.’

‘Ach. It’s nearly nine now. No gallivanting for you tonight. A silk dress . . .’ Adèle gave Jessie a long look of appraisal. ‘D’you know something? I’ve just thought of a way that might earn you good money, Milady – with your clothes on.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Jessie.

‘You’ve been posing in your pelt, haven’t you?’ said Adèle, with a wink. ‘Word gets around fast in these parts.’

‘It’s artistic!’ Jessie protested. ‘There’s nothing sordid about it – nothing shameful.’

‘Be that as it may,’ said Adèle. ‘Where I come from, a woman of your breeding does not permit a man to see her naked until her wedding night.’