The Designer(2)

‘No more than usual,’ Amory replied. ‘But you’re missing an opportunity. Giroux’s taking us to see the Resistance dish out frontier justice.’

‘Bugger. The rag would love that.’ He tried to sit up, then clutched at his chest. His face, a crimson leather mask, turned white. They had to grab him to stop him from sliding to the floor. He looked up pleadingly at Copper. ‘Copper, old thing.’

‘No, George. I don’t want to see anybody killed.’

‘Please. Do it for me.’

‘I won’t.’

‘Could be the making of old George. Double spread. Happy editor. Save career.’ He clutched at her arm. ‘Camera in the wardrobe over there. Should be few shots left on roll.’

‘Damn it, George,’ she said angrily. ‘You can’t keep doing this.’

He waved a large, limp hand – either to concede that she was right, or to brush away her protest, she couldn’t tell which – and slumped back, his face corpse-like.

Amory raised an eyebrow at her. ‘The dying man’s last wish. Are you going to refuse?’

‘For two cents, I would.’ Copper stamped to the wardrobe. ‘I’m not reloading the camera. If the film’s all used up, that’s it.’ She examined the back of the battered Rolleiflex (ironically, Fritchley-Bound insisted on sticking to his pre-war German camera). There were half a dozen frames left. ‘Damn!’

‘You can stay home if you want,’ Amory said.

Fritchley-Bound snorted into wakefulness. ‘No, don’t. Brave girl. Salvation of old Frightful Bounder. Eternally grateful.’

‘How many times does this make?’ she demanded, shouldering the camera. ‘You all make a convenience of me. I’m sick of it. Come on. Let’s go.’



She couldn’t count the times she’d stood in for Fritchley-Bound because he’d been too drunk to work. She’d taken his pictures, and even written his articles for him. All he’d done was make a few corrections with a trembling pencil and sent off her work as his own. She’d got nothing out of it except Fritchley-Bound’s gratitude and the knowledge that she was literally saving his career. Fritchley-Bound was a catastrophe waiting to happen. One of these days his newspaper was going to find out what he really was, and that would be that.

Bouncing on the hard seat of the jeep, she watched Paris sweep past her. The air smelled richly of horses and their dung. Deprived of gasoline, the city had returned to the nineteenth century, with horse traps and carriages clattering down the boulevards. The only automobiles were a few taxis, or jeeps like their own, full of soldiers, journalists and war-tourists.

Buildings were pockmarked here and there from the uprising, and they passed some burned-out trucks and a shattered German tank in the Tuileries Garden; but by and large Paris looked magnificent. Certainly compared to London, where they’d been earlier in the year, Paris was gay, tipped with gold and lined with green, the proud sweep of the Eiffel Tower rising above trees and rooftops against a cerulean sky. The Tricolour flew everywhere, and the streets were full of girls on bicycles.

‘You wouldn’t think there had been a war,’ Copper said.

‘There wasn’t,’ Amory replied ironically. ‘Giving up is a lot easier than fighting back.’

Giroux gave him a dirty look. ‘And you, Monsieur,’ he enquired pointedly. ‘May one ask why you are not fighting?’

Amory laughed, unfazed by the challenge, as always – he wasn’t fazed by many things – but Copper rose to his defence. ‘My husband is exempt from military service. He has a weak heart.’

‘A weak heart?’ Giroux commented, staring at Amory’s lanky, six-foot frame.

‘He had rheumatic fever as a boy.’

Giroux smiled. Copper had seen that disbelieving smile many times.

Having a father in banking had done more to keep Amory out of the army than the boyhood rheumatic fever, if the truth were known. Amory was the scion of a well-off New England family, and a Cornell graduate. He took his own superiority for granted. Copper, whose background was different, and who’d only been to typing college, was more sensitive to slights.

She’d allowed him to seduce her one summer afternoon on Long Island, her first lover, and somewhat to her surprise, he had married her six months later.

Neither family had been happy with the match. On the Heathcote side, there had been dismay that Amory hadn’t chosen one of the eligible young butterflies who made their début each year. Copper’s father, a widowed Irish millhand, had felt that Amory was the wastrel offspring of the very people who had their boot on the neck of the workers. And as one of her brothers had brutally put it, Amory was also probably a bastard with women.

However, Amory had professed to admire her family’s struggles against the evils of capitalism. Like many upper-class intellectuals, he liked the idea of being rather on the left. Perhaps it had simply been the attraction of opposites. And possibly the fact that she had been open to sex in a way that girls from the gentry weren’t.

She had been drawn to his film-star good looks. He had thick blonde hair and eyes of an electric, almost violet blue; a colour she’d never seen in anyone else. He also had a born-to-it sophistication and an easy familiarity with a world she didn’t know but secretly aspired to.