The Designer(24)

‘This is cockeyed.’

‘I guess so.’

‘I don’t want anyone to blame me if things go wrong for you,’ he said. ‘I promised your family that I’d take care of you. I don’t like leaving you.’

‘Don’t worry. I won’t blame you for anything that happens, Amory.’

He rubbed his face roughly, almost as though he were about to cry. ‘I love you. I don’t know what I’m going to do without you.’

‘I would have thought you’d be glad to get rid of me. Now you won’t need to feel guilty about all your affairs.’

‘I never did feel guilty. Perhaps that was the problem.’

‘I guess so. You’ve never once said that you were sorry.’

‘Would it have made any difference if I had?’

‘No.’

‘Very well, then. I suppose this is goodbye.’

He kissed her on the cheek. His lips felt cold. ‘Good luck, Copper.’

‘You, too. Don’t take any wooden nickels.’

And that was that. She watched him walk down the avenue between the vaults, his duffel bag hoisted on one shoulder, Hemingway at his side. There was no longer even any anger against him left. Only the loss of him – and with him, a large part of herself. How was she going to manage without him? Her bravado had long since evaporated. She felt desolate.

A comforting hand touched her shoulder. ‘You should come home and rest now,’ Dior said gently. She nodded her assent. He took her arm and they left the strange funeral party in full swing, almost unnoticed by the others.



Dior’s apartment was permeated by an ancient, very Parisian cold and damp. The little enamelled stove had to be cleaned out and relit every morning. Facing this task, Copper found herself short of paper to light the kindling. All she had was the sheaf of women’s magazines that she had been carrying around in her case, with their advice on ‘How to keep a husband’.

She opened one now and read a few lines: ‘Flattery is the food of men. The women who can show appreciation of their company, judgment and tastes, and be serenely oblivious of their peccadilloes, will succeed in managing their husbands.’

Yes, that had worked well. She ripped out the page in disgust, crumpled it and thrust it into the stove.

She tried another: ‘Don’t sit up till he comes home; better to be in bed and pretend to be asleep. If you must be awake, seem to be glad he came home early. He’ll probably think you an idiot; but that’s inevitable anyway.’

An idiot? She had certainly been that. This page, too, went into the stove.

A third presented itself to her eye: ‘Don’t mope and cry because you are ill – women should never be ill. It will only disgust your husband.’

Was this really the wisdom she had tried to follow? No wonder Amory had walked all over her. She crumpled the pages furiously and stuffed them under the wood. The rest of the magazines went into the log basket to be usefully burned. She wouldn’t read them again. From now on she would write her own damned stories.

The bright flames licked up and heat began to radiate from the stove. Dior was awake now. He had the rare knack of being comforting without being obvious about it. He said nothing about Amory’s departure, or her obvious misery. Instead, he made a pot of tea and sat with her, looking at her thoughtfully with his head to one side.

She cupped her hands around the warm teacup. ‘Why are you looking at me like that, Monsieur Dior?’

‘I am thinking that your dressing gown will never do.’

Copper had bundled herself into her woollen dressing gown. ‘I know it’s rather old,’ she admitted.

‘A dressing gown is one of the most important garments in your wardrobe.’

‘Really?’

‘It’s the first thing you put on every day, and how your husband sees you every morning.’

‘I don’t have a husband, in case you haven’t noticed,’ she pointed out.

‘You certainly won’t encourage any new applicants,’ he said tartly, ‘if you start every day looking dowdy.’

‘I don’t want another husband,’ she said. ‘And I’ve just decided that I don’t care about pleasing any more men, thank you.’

‘Being independent doesn’t mean being a frump, Copper. In my experience, the unmarried women are the smartest. Now, if you will permit me, I’m going to take your dressing gown to my seamstresses tomorrow and ask them to put on a little frilling. And perhaps some pretty velvet trim.’

They were interrupted by the telephone. After a brief conversation, he came back, rubbing his hands together.

‘Excellent news. There is someone who has the silk we need for your outfit,’ he told her. ‘We shall go tomorrow to pick it up.’

‘Monsieur Dior, you don’t have to do this for me. It was just a whim, you know. I don’t know what I was thinking of, in the middle of a war. I feel ashamed of myself.’

‘But it was not a whim,’ he said seriously. ‘Everything has a meaning. And why should you be ashamed? Those who want to destroy beauty should feel shame – not those of us who want only to create it. But I haven’t finished telling you – we even have a motorcar to use tomorrow. And it’s the weekend. Can you imagine? We shall pay a visit to Madame Delahaye on the way.’