Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris & Mrs. Harris Goes to New York (6 page)

That picture in a flower-painted frame now adorned the table of her little flat. It showed Mrs Harris of thirty years ago, a tiny, thin-looking girl whose plain features were enhanced by the freshness of youth. Her hair was bobbed, the fashion of the day, and she wore a white muslin wedding dress tiered somewhat in the manner of a Chinese pagoda. In her posture there was already some hint of the courage and independence she was to display later when she became widowed. The expression on her face was one of pride in the man she had captured and who stood beside her, a nice-looking boy somewhat on the short side, wearing a dark suit, and with his hair carefully plastered down. As was becoming to his new status
he looked terrified. And thereafter nobody had ever again troubled to reproduce Mrs Harris nor had she so much as thought about it.

‘Won’t it cost a packet?’ was Mrs Butterfield’s reaction to the dark side of things.

‘Ten bob for ’arf a dozen,’ Mrs Harris reported. ‘I saw an ad in the paper. I’ll give you one of the extra ones if you like.’

‘That’s good of you, dearie,’ said Mrs Butterfield and meant it.

‘Ow Lor’.’ The exclamation was torn from Mrs Harris as she was suddenly riven by a new thought. ‘Ow Lor’,’ she repeated, ‘if I’m going to ’ave me photograph tyken, I’ll ’ave to ’ave a new ’at.’

Two of Mrs Butterfield’s chins quivered at the impact of this revelation. ‘Of course you will, dearie, and that
will
cost a packet.’

Mrs Harris accepted the fact philosophically and even with some pleasure. It had been years since she had invested in a new hat. ‘It can’t be ’elped. Just as well I’ve got some of the stuff.’

The pair selected the following Saturday afternoon, invading the King’s Road to accomplish both errands beginning, of course, with the choice of the hat. There was no doubt, but that Mrs Harris fell in love with it immediately she saw it in the window, but at first turned resolutely away for it was priced at a guinea, while all about it were others on sale, specials at ten and six, and even some at seven and six.

But Mrs Harris would not have been a true London char had she not favoured the one at one guinea, for it had been thought of, designed, and made for members of her profession. The hat was a kind of flat sailor affair of green
straw, but what made it distinguished was the pink rose on a short but flexible stem that was affixed to the front. It was, of course, her fondness for flowers and the rose that got Mrs Harris. They went into the shop and Mrs Harris dutifully tried on shapes and materials considered to be within her price range, but her thoughts and her eyes kept roving to the window where the hat was displayed. Finally she could contain herself no longer and asked for it.

Mrs Butterfield examined the price tag with horror. ‘Coo,’ she said, ‘a guinea! It is a waste of money, you that’s been syving for so long.’

Mrs Harris set it upon her head and was lost. ‘I don’t care,’ she said fiercely, ‘I can go a week later.’

If a camera was to fix her features and person for all time, to be carried in her passport, to be shown to her friends, to be preserved in a little frame on Mrs Butterfield’s dressing table, that was how she wanted it, with that hat and no other. ‘I’ll ’ave it,’ she said to the sales girl and produced the twenty-one shillings. She left the shop wearing it contentedly. After all, what was one guinea to someone who was about to invest four hundred and fifty pounds in a dress.

The passport photographer was not busy when they arrived and soon had Mrs Harris posed before the cold eye of his camera while hump-backed he inspected her from beneath the concealment of his black cloth. He then turned on a hot battery of floodlights which illuminated Mrs Harris’s every fold, line, and wrinkle etched into her shrewd and merry little face by the years of toil.

‘And now, madam,’ he said, ‘if you would kindly remove that hat—’

‘Not b——likely,’ said Mrs Harris succinctly, ‘what the ’ell do you think I’ve bought this ’at for if not to wear it in me photograph.’

The photographer said: ‘Sorry, madam, against regulations. The Passport Office won’t accept any photographs with hats on. I can make some specials at two guineas a dozen for you later, with the hat on, if you like.’

Mrs Harris told the photographer a naughty thing to do with his two-guinea specials, but Mrs Butterfield consoled her. ‘Never mind, dearie,’ she said, ‘you’ll have it to wear when you go to Paris. You’ll be right in with the fashion.’

It was on a hazy May morning, four months later, or to be exact two years, seven months, three weeks, and one day following her resolve to own a Dior dress, that Mrs Harris, firm and fully equipped beneath the green hat with the pink rose, was seen off on the bus to the Air Station by a tremulous and nervous Mrs Butterfield. Besides the long and arduously hoarded fortune, the price of the dress, she was equipped with passport, return ticket to Paris, and sufficient funds to get there and back.

The intended schedule of her day included the selection and purchase of her dress, lunch in Paris, a bit of sightseeing, and return by the evening plane.

The clients had all been warned of the unusual event of Mrs Harris’s taking a day off, with Mrs Butterfield substituting, and had reacted in accordance with their characters and natures. Major Wallace was, of course, dubious, since he could not so much as find a clean towel or a pair of socks without the assistance of Mrs Harris, but it was the actress, Miss Pamela Penrose, who kicked up the ugliest fuss, storming at the little char. ‘But that’s horrid of you. You can’t. I won’t hear of it. I pay you, don’t I! I’ve a most important producer coming for drinks here tomorrow. You charwomen are all alike. Never think of anybody but yourselves. I do think, after all I’ve done for you, you might show me a little consideration.’

For a moment, in extenuation, Mrs Harris was tempted to reveal where she was off to and why - and resisted. The love affair between herself and the Dior dress was private. Instead she said soothingly: ‘Now, now, ducks, no need for you to get shirty. Me friend, Mrs Butterfield, will look in on you on her way home tomorrow and give the place a good tidying up. Your producer friend won’t know the difference. Well, dearie, ’ere’s ’oping ’e gives you a good job,’ she concluded cheerily and left Miss Penrose glowering and sulking.

A
LL
thoughts of the actress, and for that matter all of her meandering back into the past, were driven out of Mrs Harris’s head when with a jerk and a squeal of brakes the cab came to a halt at what must be her destination.

The great grey building that is the House of Christian Dior occupies an entire corner of the spacious Avenue Montaigne leading off the Rond-Point of the Champs-Élysées. It has two entrances, one off the Avenue proper which leads through the Boutique where knick-knacks and accessories are sold at prices ranging from five to a hundred pounds, and another more demure and exclusive one.

The cab driver chose to deposit Mrs Harris at the latter, reserved for the genuinely rich clientele, figuring his passenger to be at the very least an English countess or milady. He charged her no more than the amount registered on the clock and forbore to tip himself more than fifty francs, mindful of the warning of the Airways man. Then crying to her gaily the only English he knew, which was - ‘ ’Ow do you do,’ he drove off leaving her standing on the sidewalk before the place that had occupied her
yearnings and dreams and ambitions for the past three years.

And a strange misgiving stirred in the thin breast beneath the brown twill coat. It was no store at all, like Selfridges in Oxford Street, or Marks and Spencer’s where she did her shopping, not a proper store at all, with windows for display and wax figures with pearly smiles and pink cheeks, arms outstretched in elegant attitudes to show off the clothes that were for sale. There was nothing, nothing at all, but some windows shaded by ruffled grey curtains, and a door with an iron grille behind the glass. True, in the keystone above the arch of the entrance were chiselled the words
CHRISTIAN DIOR
, but no other identification.

When you have desired something as deeply as Mrs Harris had longed for her Paris dress, and for such a time, and when at last that deep-rooted feminine yearning is about to taste the sweetness of fulfilment, every moment attending its achievement becomes acute and indelibly memorable.

Standing alone now in a foreign city, assailed by the foreign roar of foreign traffic and the foreign bustle of foreign passers-by, outside the great, grey mansion that was like a private house and not a shop at all, Mrs Harris suddenly felt lonely, frightened, and forlorn, and in spite of the great roll of silver-green American dollars in her handbag she wished for a moment that she had not come, or that she had asked the young man from the Airlines to accompany her, or that the taxi driver had not driven away leaving her standing there.

And then, as luck would have it, a car from the British Embassy drove by and the sight of the tiny Union Jack fluttering from the mudguard stiffened her spine and brought determination to her mouth and eyes. She reminded herself who and what she was, drew in a deep breath of the balmy
Paris air laced with petrol fumes, and resolutely pushed open the door and entered.

She was almost driven back by the powerful smell of elegance that assailed her once she was inside. It was the same that she smelled when Lady Dant opened the doors to her wardrobe, the same that clung to the fur coat and clothes of the Countess Wyszcinska, for whom she cleaned from four to six in the afternoons, the one she sometimes sniffed in the streets when, as she passed, someone opened the door of a luxurious motor car. It was compounded of perfume and fur and satins, silks and leather, jewellery and face powder. It seemed to arise from the thick grey carpets and hangings, and fill the air of the grand staircase before her.

It was the odour of the rich, and it made her tremble once more and wonder what she, Ada ’Arris, was doing there instead of washing up the luncheon dishes for Mrs Fford Foulks at home, or furthering the career of a real theatrical star like Pamela Penrose by seeing that her flat was neat and tidy when her producer friends came to call.

She hesitated, her feet seemingly sinking into the pile of the carpet up to her ankles. Then her fingers crept into her handbag and tested the smooth feel of the roll of American bills. ‘That’s why you’re ’ere, Ada ’Arris. That says you’re ruddy well as rich as any of ’em. Get on with it then, my girl.’

She mounted the imposing and deserted staircase, it then being half-past eleven in the morning. On the first half-landing there was but a single silver slipper in a glass showcase let into the wall, on the second turn there was a similar showcase housing an outsize bottle of Dior perfume. But otherwise there were no goods of any kind on display, nor were there crowds of people rushing up and down the stairs as in Marks and Spencer’s or Selfridges.
Nowhere was there any sign of anything that so much as resembled the shops to which she was accustomed.

On the contrary, the elegance and atmosphere of the deserted staircase gave her the feeling of a private house, and one on a most grand scale at that. Was she really in the right place? Her courage threatened to ooze again, but she told herself that sooner or later she must come upon some human being who would be able to direct her to the dresses, or at least put her right if she were in the wrong building. She pressed on and indeed on the first floor landing came upon a dark handsome woman in her early forties who was writing at a desk. She wore a simple black dress relieved by three rows of pearls at the neck, her coiffure was neat and glossy; her features were refined, her skin exquisite, but closer inspection would have revealed that she looked tired and care-worn and that there were dark hollows beneath her eyes.

Behind her, Mrs Harris noted a fair-sized room opening into a second one, grey-carpeted like the stairs, with fine silk hangings at the windows, and furnished only with several rows of grey and golden chairs around the perimeter. A few floor-to-ceiling pier mirrors completed the décor, but of anything to sell or even so much as to look at, there was not a sign.

Mme Colbert, the manageress, had had a bad morning. A usually kind and gracious lady, she had let herself quarrel with M. Fauvel, the young and handsome head of the accounts department, of whom otherwise she was rather fond, and had sent him upstairs again to his domain with his ears reddening.

It was merely a matter of his inquiring about a client whose bills seemed to run too long without payment. On any other day Mme Colbert might have favoured the accountant
with a penetrating and not unhumorous summing-up of the client’s characteristics, idiosyncrasies, and trustworthiness, since sooner or later they all bared themselves to her. Instead of which she railed angrily at him that it was her business to sell dresses and his to collect the money and she had not the time to inspect the bank accounts of clients. That was his affair.

Besides giving short answers all morning, she had ticked off several of the sales girls and even permitted herself to scold Natasha, the star model of the House, for being late for a fitting, when, as she knew well, the Métro and the buses were engaging in a go-slow strike. What made it worse was that the exquisite Natasha had responded to the sharp words in a most un-prima donna-like manner, she did not argue or snap back, only two large tears formed at her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.