The Dress Thief (52 page)

Rosa was looking at her narrowly. ‘You need a holiday – a few days with no customers, no grandma,
no pins and needles.’ She left them after that, saying, ‘I need a strong cuppa and a lie-down. You two want to talk.’

‘Just the two of them’ felt like pillars either side of a cold doorway. Alix said, ‘Any moment, Verrian, you’ll look at your watch.’

He took her cigarette and stubbed it out along with his own. With a soft knuckle, he brushed her bottom lip, spreading
tingling heat that made
her open her mouth slightly. ‘Do you know how it grinds me up to think of you with Martel?’

‘Then don’t think of it.’

A flash of anger. ‘How – when I see him in your eyes all the time? Was it so damn good with him?’

‘Don’t.’

An accordionist outside began playing ‘Vous, qui passez sans me voir’. Verrian gave a painful smile. ‘“You walk by …” Give me the truth.’

All right
, she thought. ‘What
Rosa said about me living half-drugged in a harem …’ his gaze shot up to meet hers, ‘I did. I did things I didn’t want to do with someone I didn’t always like. But you had left, everything had fallen apart and living like that dulled reality.’

‘Weren’t there other ways … country walks or something?’

‘This is Paris, not a Hampshire girls’ school. Maybe you don’t want to go on seeing me – Verrian?
Don’t look away.’

But something had taken his attention. Waiters were scuttling. The doorway filled with a wide-shouldered silhouette. Alix’s heart tripped a beat. Oh God, not him.

Serge Martel sauntered up to them. Verrian stood. Alix felt the atmosphere electrify and guessed she wasn’t the only one calculating the odds of Serge producing a knife. That was a glint of metal in his hand, wasn’t
it?

Serge said in a grazing whisper, ‘Alix, I’ve come to ask
this bastard to give you back.’ There was a shiny scar under his lip.

‘Alix is free to leave,’ Verrian said.

She read the warning signs. Serge’s slowed-down voice, the flat gaze. But did Verrian see it? She breathed, ‘Take care.’

Verrian had the advantage of height. Serge had meat-market shoulders. And a knuckleduster on his punching
fist. Alix saw it the second before Serge drove it into Verrian’s ribs. So hard Verrian collapsed. She tried to get to him but was trapped by the table, which his fall had pushed towards the wall. All she could do was dash her coffee in Serge’s face. Serge grabbed her hair, twisting it until she thought her scalp would tear off.

‘You bring another man on to my patch?’

She screamed so piercingly
he let go. He yanked the table aside to get at her, his voice strangely gentle as he said, ‘He’s dead if you aren’t back with me –’ he lifted her hand and put her finger into his mouth in the most suggestive of moves – ‘by nightfall. You were getting so good at pleasing me, why waste it?’

‘Serge –’ she went very still because he was holding her finger between his teeth – ‘I won’t come back to
you.’

He let her pull her finger free. ‘Alix, Alix. Big baby eyes one moment, then cold as a fishmonger’s gloves. You’re punishing me for going with Dulcie. Hey – she can’t do any of the things you can do, and the Rose Noire misses you …’

A light thud interrupted him. A short knife had been driven
blade-down into the tabletop. Verrian was on his feet, a trickle of blood at the corner of his
mouth. He said through painful breaths, ‘I like a fair fight. Take the knife.’

Serge laughed. ‘What are you going to do, read me the rules of cricket? Or roast me with your cigarette lighter?’ He grinned at Alix and reached for the knife.

As his fingers closed around it, Verrian’s elbow came down on Serge’s arm, clubbing his funny bone against the table. Serge crumpled in shock. Verrian smashed
Serge’s forearm downwards, at the same time snapping the wrist backwards. Alix cried out at the brutal crack. Serge gave an animal howl and fell.

Verrian slumped on to a chair. ‘Your taste in men stinks,’ he said. ‘Ask for the bill. My wallet’s in my top pocket. You can drive us.’

‘I can’t drive.’

‘And I thought you had all the talents.’

*

Alix returned to Rue Jacob feeling as if she’d run
through fire crackers. Every muscle quaked. Verrian had driven them through Paris and she’d feared he might collapse against the wheel. She’d wanted to pull him into her arms and cry over him, but he wouldn’t let her touch him. When they reached Place Vendôme, the staff of the Polonaise had taken over. He hadn’t wanted her. Hadn’t wanted a doctor. If he needed a nurse, he’d told her harshly, he’d
ask for Celestia.

Instructing her receptionist, Violette, to make her double-strength coffee, Alix checked her diary. God help her, Una’s Manchester matrons were booked in again. Parade required. She didn’t think she could walk in a straight line, let alone turn and pose. There was a letter beside her telephone and she tore it open, shaking out a picture postcard of an English seafront. The Queen’s
Hotel, Hastings. Hastings was on the south coast of England. Who the hell was on holiday there at this time of year … ? She sought the name at the bottom and groaned.

‘No!’ Alix howled,
‘you have to be joking –’

Ten five-thousand-franc notes.

Alix read the card again. No hint as to when childminding duties would begin.

*

The Manchester matrons – an industrialist’s wife, her married daughters and two country cousins – complained they’d given themselves bunions window-shopping on Rue de Rivoli and Faubourg St-Honoré. The prices
had shocked them, so they’d come back to Modes Lutzman. ‘High style at sensitive prices, dear Mrs Kilpin assured us.’

Dear Mrs Kilpin needed a good shake, Alix fumed as the women asked her to turn this way and that, throwing interminable questions about her ‘modes’. Who did her sewing? Were these really the latest styles? All of them calling her ‘Marm’zel’. They didn’t seem to like anything.

Alix thought,
I couldn’t sell a carrot to a rabbit today
. She’d close early and take to her bed like a diva. But as she made an entrance in a little black dress set off with gold metal necklaces and slave bracelets, hopes of a lie-down dissolved. Cries of, ‘Alix, we’re here!’ told her that the rest of the day was spoken for. The rest of the month.

Paul came in, preventing his sisters from running
forward by holding the belts of their coats. The Manchester ladies tutted and
Alix made frantic motions to Paul to go away. Either he didn’t notice or was still angry with her. Her ornaments clanking, she threw aside formality and hugged the girls. ‘Two other ladies to see the collection,’ she said brightly. ‘Find your own chairs.’

Lala and Suzy had been well trained by their Aunt Gilberte. They
gave little curtsies to the English guests and said, ‘
Enchantée
, Madame,’ to each one. Manchester jaws relaxed. Smiles appeared. ‘Couldn’t you just eat them?’ said one of the women. Paul took the window seat and lit a cigarette.

‘No smoking in the salon,’ Alix told him.

‘We don’t mind,’ one of the country cousins tittered. ‘We like a man to be a man.’

So Paul, wearing a ribbed black sweater
that caressed his muscles, watched the parade in a haze of moody smoke. Alix soldiered on, thinking,
I need a new name for what I’m doing. You can’t have a parade of one
.

She came back in an evening gown to find Verrian sitting on a sofa arm. Pale, but clearly in no need of tender nursing. The ladies were enjoying something he’d just said, and, Alix thought crossly, he was supposed to be dying.

‘So, dear,’ the industrialist’s wife blared as Alix came out in her final model, ‘that sweet dress is not a real Chanel, but quite alike and costs eight thousand francs.’ She counted on her fingers. ‘I make that about forty pounds. Will people think it’s Chanel? That’s the question.’

‘I’d prefer they thought it was a real Lutzman,’ Alix said
through gritted teeth. She caught Verrian’s eye and
read sardonic amusement, which, along with his presence, was a positive sign.

*

‘Celestia is extraordinary.’ Verrian turned the Hispano into Boulevard St-Germain, accelerating to get into the stream of night-time traffic.

‘She’s a godsend,’ Alix agreed, giving him a cautious smile. ‘You were right, I admit it.’ She’d closed the office early today, in celebration. After yesterday’s parade, she’d
taken eighteen orders from the Manchester ladies, fifty per cent paid up front. So relieved that her barren period was over, she was not only prepared to like Celestia, she was letting Verrian whisk her away for the night, just the two of them. ‘She might have refused to look after two extra children at such short notice, as well as caring for Mémé. But she seemed pleased. I hope they all behave.’

‘I’m not sure I care –’ Verrian braked to let a taxi cut in front of him – ‘having got you to myself at last. But it was inspired, taking the children into Bon—to the downstairs studio and getting them painting. Big sticky mess, perfect icebreaker. Oh, look, that’s where you first flirted with me.’ The smile he gave her was an open invitation. ‘Could we carry on where we left off, d’you think?
Then move on from flirtation to seduction?’

Alix glanced where Verrian pointed and saw the Deux Magots café, lit up like a dinner party. ‘Celestia yearns for family,’ she said to mask the flutter of panic his words provoked, ‘and it’s good for Pepe to have playmates. I’m paying her extra,’ she
threw in. ‘Una sent money. Actually enough for me to plan a spring–summer collection.’

Verrian’s reply
was cool. ‘You should send the money back. While Una Kilpin pulls your strings, you aren’t free. Anyway, what’s the point of keeping your business going? You told me that every time you try to sketch something, your mind goes blank.’

‘A moment ago you were flirting and now you’re bullying. We’re meant to be having a holiday.’

‘That doesn’t start until we’ve crossed the river. My point is—’

‘I know what your point is, Verrian. Please, just drive.’

*

He had booked a table in the Polonaise’s restaurant for eight. ‘Which gives you an hour to change,’ he told Alix as he held open the door of the Lilac Suite for her. ‘Don’t go to sleep in the bath.’

They would stay here tonight. A suite each, no forced togetherness, though there was a connecting door. The axe of ‘last chance’ still hung
over her head. If, tonight, she took a new lover, it had to be without the mask of intoxicants or music. If she couldn’t … well, that was it. She never would.

After her bath, she dried herself and rubbed jasmine into her skin. She’d brought Javier’s Eirène with her, a perfume he’d created to go with Oro, inspired by the World Fair’s theme of peace, and he’d given her a flask of it days before
dismissing her.
The top unscrewed to provide a thin gold stick to apply the fragrance. Coco Chanel said that a girl should apply perfume where she wanted to be kissed. Alix brushed the insides of her wrists, behind her ears, the hollow of her throat.

So far, so Sunday-school teacher. Consulting her wide eyes in the mirror, she ran the stick between her breasts and across her stomach. Then she
thought,
If I don’t get dressed, he’ll think I’ve fallen asleep
.

*

Walking into his suite, she met Verrian in the connecting doorway.

Both stopped still. Alix was wearing a cherry silk evening dress, slippery as mayonnaise, with an overskirt of shadow-worked chiffon. It left one shoulder bare and the chiffon caught every air current. The dress was intolerant of underwear, so that was pretty
much it, apart from a stole of black gauze she trailed from her hand.

He wore the uniform of his class. Black tie, tuxedo, the only colour topaz cufflinks in gold settings. He recovered first. ‘I have Bollinger on ice.’

A fire crackled in a marble fireplace in the lounge of his suite. They stood before it and he poured. She accepted a glass and they touched rims. Those bubbles always gave her
courage. She’d decided in the bath that she was not going to play the penitent. He had some explaining to do as well. Tonight she’d ask him once again about the wedding ring that had disappeared.

He laid a hand on her bare shoulder, giving her the chance to shy away. When she didn’t, he put his lips to hers. Just a touch. Alix swayed towards him.

A knock at the door, a waiter, informing ‘Monsieur’
that his table was ready downstairs. Verrian put their glasses on the mantelpiece, fetched her stole and laid it across her shoulders. ‘This is the best restaurant in Paris, give or take. Not many places would drag me away just now.’

*

It was a wonderful restaurant, the best food, service, surroundings she’d ever encountered. And so old-fashioned, her youth and dress drew eyes. Her escort was
definitely worth a second glance too.

Perhaps it was the pearlescent lighting, but Verrian seemed to have shed the fatigue he’d brought back from war. He’d recovered from his winding by Serge. Paris magic, she thought, reaching for her glass. She’d already drunk white wine with her hors d’oeuvre and with her filet of sole. Now she was drinking red with roast grouse and potatoes à la Hollandaise.

Verrian said, ‘Get drunk if you want to, but not because you have to. There’s no ordeal awaiting you.’

‘It is an ordeal. After what the comtesse said, I mean, I can understand –’ A waiter topped up their glasses. By the time he went, Alix had lost her thread.

Verrian laid his hand over hers. ‘No man is very imaginative when it comes to his woman being with another man, but I
know what hardship
does. I realise the need to snatch at comfort.’