Liberty Silk (8 page)

On her first night in Paris, Jessie had been sitting on her own at a corner table in the bistro that took up most of the ground floor of the Trois Moineaux. She was dawdling over a modest supper of bread and cheese, determined to make it last, when a blowsy woman strolled up to her, introduced herself and asked if she might buy Mam’zelle a glass of absinthe. Jessie dithered a little before smiling and saying ‘
Merci, Madame. Comme vous êtes gentille
.’

Baring broken teeth, Adèle returned the smile, then slid herself onto the banquette next to Jessie, called for two glasses and a
pichet
, and poured. ‘
Santé!
’ she said, then knocked the green liquid back in one.

‘
Santé
.’ Jessie mirrored the gesture. It was the only way to drink absinthe; that way you didn’t notice quite how vile it was. The slow burn in your gut was well worth the wormwoody aftertaste, though, as was the lovely muzzy feeling.

Adèle poured again. ‘You’re British, yeah?’

Jessie nodded.

‘A city girl?’

‘London.’

Adèle sucked on her teeth, then leaned back against the pitted wood of the banquette and narrowed her eyes speculatively. ‘Look, kid,’ she announced in a pally way. ‘Mind if I offer you a little friendly advice? I’ve been watching you all evening. You want to know why? I’m intrigued. Here you are dining on hard bread and cheese when I’ve reason to suspect you’re used to better fare. Am I right?’

Reluctant to give too much away, Jessie shrugged.

‘It’s all right. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. But it’s clear that you’ve fallen on hard times. You’ve been used to the finer things in life, yes? You’re an English milady, through and through,
non
? I can tell by your bearing, and by your clothes. They were good once – quality stuff. But now you’ve learned to mend your own stockings and stuff newspaper into your shoes to keep the wet out, like the rest of us. I know how hard it is.
C’est dommage, mignonne
.’ Adèle sighed heavily, and shook her head. ‘I myself come from a properous farming family. We had over a hundred acres in Brittany, near Saint-Malo, and I wanted for nothing growing up. But I lost my entire family during the war.’

‘Oh. I am sorry.’

‘
C’est la vie.
You lost somebody, too?’ Adèle directed a meaningful look at Jessie’s ring finger, which still bore the pale indentation left by her wedding band. The sapphire had joined the charm on the ribbon around her neck, to keep it safe. ‘A husband?’

‘I – Yes.’

‘Tch tch tch.’ Adèle made that sucking noise again, and Jessie flinched. ‘Well, kid, I just want to let you know that I’m here for you. I’ve been living in the city for three years now, and I know the way of things. You need any help, you come to Adèle. We single gals gotta look out for each other,
hein
?’

‘Thank you.’

‘You OK for funds, kid?’

‘Yes. Yes, I’m fine,’ lied Jessie.

Adèle gave her an appraising look, and Jessie knew she’d been rumbled. ‘Well, that’s good to hear,’ said her new friend, with a small smile of collusion. ‘But any time you’re strapped, give me a shout. There are ways and means in this town, kid. Ways and means. And I don’t mean rag-picking.’

Adèle had been right to be sceptical about Jessie’s claim that she was flush. Money was scarce, and it was getting scarcer. Jessie had taken to frequenting the pawnbroker’s near the Gare Montparnasse so often that she felt like spitting at the motto carved into the stone above the entrance.
Liberté. Égalité. Fraternité
. What a joke!

Her watch had gone, and her Venetian glass beads, and her cashmere coat and – finally – her wedding ring. It had fetched fifty francs, which barely covered the rent on her room for a week. It had been a mistake, she realized now, to have pawned her coat. It had been a benign autumn so far, but winter was just around the corner. How would she manage without an overcoat?

Every week she pawned another item, and every week her self-esteem sank lower as she handed her pledge to the clerk and took a place on one of the long benches alongside the dozens of other desperate-eyed souls who sat just as she did, watching their hands twist in their laps as they waited for the announcement that would determine how well they’d eat that evening. ‘
Numéro
32. Will you take forty francs for this?’ ‘
Numéro
33. Ten francs?’ ‘
Numéro
34. One hundred francs.’ One hundred! The eyes of the hapless cases would follow the lucky dog as he scuttled out, carefully stowing the wad of notes where no slippery-fingers could get at it. Jessie had long since taken the precaution of sewing her money into her suspender belt when she got back to her room.

Her room was worse – far worse – than the lowest of the low-down places she’d stayed in with Scotch. She had tried hard to make it as homely as she could, but it was disheartening to see how depleted her possessions were. When she’d first moved in she had arranged her books and knick-knacks on the shelf above her bed: the pretty china flasks they’d bought in Certosa, and the silver Apostle spoons Scotch had haggled over in Siena – she’d even festooned the shelf with the handmade lace she’d collected on their travels. But everything was gone now.

Most evenings she’d haul the washstand across the floorboards of the room to barricade the door for the night, before sitting cross-legged on the thin, lumpy mattress and devising works of fiction to send home to her parents. The bed, along with a washstand (for which basic bathing facility she paid the
patronne
extra), a small chest of drawers and a rickety bentwood chair, comprised the sole furnishings of this so-called
chambre meublée
. She’d discovered that the seat of the chair was easy to prise out, and when propped on her knees it doubled nicely as a writing desk.

Her letters home were full of lies about how well she and Scotch were set up – although she always added: ‘
send letters still to Thos. Cook’s in case we should change our address
’. She was teaching herself to cook, she told her mother, and getting better at it all the time.

Fantasizing about food was one of Jessie’s favourite ways of passing the time these evenings. She concocted lavish imaginary dinners: soups of carrots and potatoes and leeks enriched with butter and cream, followed by roast chicken or an escalope of veal with
pommes rissolées
and
petits pois
. Or perhaps a
cassoulet
– garlicky pork sausage layered with smoked bacon under creamy, golden-crusted haricot beans and fragrant herbs, served with red wine and a green salad, with cheese or fruit to finish, or perhaps a lemon soufflé. A lemon soufflé! The mere idea of it made her mouth water.

It was ironic to think that just months ago she’d received letters from friends in England concerned about whether she was finding the living too hard on the Continent in the aftermath of the Great War. Was the living too
hard
?! Six months ago they’d stayed in the Pensione Balestri in Florence, where Signora Balestri had prepared the most glorious three-course luncheons from fresh produce. Jessie remembered, too, the afternoon that she and Scotch had feasted on biscuits and chocolate and cherries that they’d carted in their picnic basket all the way up the steep pathway to the monastery on the hill near Galluzzo. And afterwards they’d treated themselves to an aromatic liquor distilled from herbs grown by the Cistercian monks who lived and worked there. That liquor was nectar compared to the nasty absinthe that she drank occasionally now, to help blur the edges.

There’d be no absinthe this evening: she couldn’t afford it. The rent was due tomorrow, and she’d have to find something else to pawn. Jessie signed
Love to you both
, then set aside her letter, dragged her suitcase out from under the bed and surveyed the contents. She knew it was useless to try to pawn the silver cigarette case that had been a wedding present from Tuppenny, her best friend back in England, because it had her initials engraved on it. Oh, how she wished that she had her twenty-first-birthday pearls! But they were at home in Mayfair, in a jewellery box in her bedroom – that pretty, airy room with its sprigged wallpaper and chintz curtains and feather bed with the counterpane that smelt of lavender, and, curled up on the pillow, her little cat, Purdy . . .

Her evening dress? Could she pawn that?

The mass of silk from Liberty lay in a drawstring bag at the bottom of the case. It might be worth as much as fifty francs. Why had she not considered pawning it before? She knew why. As she hooked her fingers around the shoulder straps and rose to her feet, the full length of the dress unfurled, the scent of Chypre emerged from its folds, and she remembered how Scotch had brushed aside the tendrils of hair at the nape of her neck so that she could put the finishing touches to her toilette – a ribbon for her neck, from which hung the Egyptian charm. He’d bought for her in the flea market in Rouen because the stall-holder had insisted it would bring them luck, and had presented it to her that Christmas along with her engagement ring. And after she’d adjusted the length of the ribbon to ensure that it accentuated the tantalizing dip between her breasts, Scotch had re-pinned a curl that had come loose and kissed the hollow behind her ear.

Jessie let the silk gown drop back into the case. She would take it to the pawnbroker tomorrow. That, and the ring with the cabochon sapphire – and maybe the charm, too. It had scarcity value, if nothing else – she’d never seen another like it. Perhaps she should cross the river and ask someone in the Musée du Louvre to have a look at it? It was quite possibly worth a great deal more than Scotch had paid for it, and she should be glad to get rid of it, for it did not seem to bring her luck. In fact, she thought mirthlessly, it had not brought her any luck at all.

THE TEAM THAT
was to put the finishing touches to
The Thief of Bagdad
in Hollywood was transported across the Atlantic in the SS
Duchess of Bedford
. Crossing the ocean was a tortuous business because of the risk of being targeted by German submarines, and the
Duchess
zigzagged her way drunkenly around the coast of Greenland, dodging icebergs and careering up and down in the swells like some colossal fairground ride.

Virtually everyone on board was laid low by seasickness, and for those passengers who were still standing the only topics of conversation were the blasted war, or the likelihood of the ship being torpedoed.

Sabu and Baba took to patrolling the decks together, parading their sea legs past the rows of the afflicted who were marooned on their deckchairs swathed in blankets, and who were obliged to make the occasional undignified dash to the rails to throw up. During their promenades the two friends amused each other by painting word pictures of their childhoods. Sabu conjured India for Baba by describing smells and tastes and colours, and he sang the praises of the elephants he’d cared for, telling her how much wiser and kinder they were than many of the humans he’d known. When she asked him what the defining moment of his boyhood had been, he was unequivocal. ‘It was when Robert O’Flaherty cast me in
Elephant Boy
,’ he told her. ‘I loved that man. He was like a father to me after my own had died. And he was one of the greatest storytellers I have ever met.’

They had reached the end of the companionway. Baba automatically turned to retrace their steps, but Sabu laid a hand on her arm. ‘Why not take a breather? It’s your turn now, Baba. Tell me how you ended up living with your grandparents.’

‘It’s a long story.’

‘Since we are on a seemingly endless voyage,’ he replied, nodding towards the charcoal line of the horizon, ‘you have all the time in the world.’

She shrugged. ‘I guess.’

‘So – “Once upon a time . . .”’ prompted Sabu.

‘Once upon a time,’ she began, ‘when I was very little, I lived in France with a couple I called Maman and Papa. They were very kind. They were . . . normal. But they weren’t my real parents – I just lived on their farm. I only ever spent a couple of months a year with my real mother, in a villa there.’ Baba found herself smiling. ‘They were golden – those summers. Really golden. It was a kind of Garden of Eden, everything shimmering in a haze of heat, and the villa seemed like the centre of the world.’ She could see it now, as if through the lens of a child’s kaleidoscope. ‘It was on a hillside, and the garden was always bright with great splotches of colour – mimosa and peonies and lavender – and there were tangerines to eat straight off the trees, and at night it was lit up with lanterns, and if you went down to the sea wall you could hear the wash of the waves below, and there seemed always to be the smell of burning eucalyptus because there were wildfires in summer. And up on the top terrace you’d see where my mother and her friends would congregate around a big table with wicker chairs and an enormous beach parasol – a vivid blue parasol against the pink façade of the house. There seemed always to be people sitting round that table, as if life was one continuous mealtime – a bit like the Mad Hatter’s tea party. And sometimes I was allowed wine, and it tasted of sweet meadows so I guess it must have been a Muscat. And everyone smelt of coconut oil, which I shall always associate with sand and sun and sea. It was a sea that was a kind of aching empty blue – nothing like this wretched dull grey ocean.’ Baba looked down over the taffrail at the beaten pewter of the Atlantic, and then said, ‘I remember one day in particular. Mama was wearing a white tuberose in her hair, and her skin was nearly as brown as yours, Sabu, from all the sunbathing, and she seemed so brimming over with life. They were drinking champagne to celebrate someone’s birthday and I remember – I remember going to the bathroom and finding two girls there half naked and giggling, and they told me that they’d spilled wine on their clothes but I know now that they must have been making love. Oh, Sabu – I haven’t shocked you, have I?’

He shook his head and gave a wry smile. ‘Nothing can shock me after seeing the antics that some of the crew got up to at the wrap party in Denham.’