The Designer(26)



There was a discreet episode in the little hallway after the reading, with Madame Delahaye murmuring that she simply couldn’t accept the offering that Dior pressed on her, and Dior insisting that she must. It was evidently a well-practised ritual between them, and it ended with Madame Delahaye pocketing her fee with downcast eyes and a demure simper.

They continued their journey eastwards out of Paris towards Meaux. Dior was in good spirits.

‘I’ve never known her to be wrong,’ he said brightly. ‘Not even in the smallest detail. If she says Catherine will come back to me, then I believe it. And I won’t listen to all those cynics who tell me I’m a fool.’ There was a particularly loud explosion from the Simca’s exhaust that made Copper jump, and he giggled. ‘Isn’t this fun?’

‘It might be, if I didn’t have to drive.’ The roads were potholed by the convoys of heavy tanks that had passed over them, though there was hardly any traffic now. The skinny wheels of the Simca were barely able to cope with the broken surface. The old car lurched wildly to left and right. German signposts still stood in places at the roadside, efficient pointers in ugly black script. Dior wound down the window, inhaling deeply.

‘Smell that country air.’

A wave of cold air, redolent of cow dung, filled the car. She glanced at him. There was a smudge of soot on his nose. She couldn’t help smiling. His sense of fun was infectious. ‘It’s nice to see you happy.’

‘I want to be happy. And to make others happy. It’s one of my chief desires in life – to be a merchant of happiness. That’s not such a bad thing, is it?’

‘It’s a very good thing. Is that why you chose couture – to make people happy?’

‘Well, you know, I think couture chose me, rather than the other way around.’ He crossed his legs, visibly relaxing. ‘From my little corner, I see what pleases people. And I learn how to give it to them. New ideas are so important. The art of pleasing is to know what people want even before they want it. Lelong has been doing the same thing for decades: changing a line here, a shade there. Every collection is more or less the same as the last collection. If you show him something new, he sends it back to the drawing board to be changed, again and again, until it’s exactly like every other design he’s ever sold. That’s what drives Pierre Balmain crazy. The art of fashion is to make a collection look new each time; even though you have to rack your brains to do it.’

‘Why don’t you leave with Pierre? Set up a new fashion house together?’

‘I prefer the back rooms,’ Dior said firmly. ‘I’m not ambitious like Pierre. I saw my father go bankrupt and I lost everything in my turn. To go through that again – no, thank you. I prefer my pencils and my tranquillity.’

They reached a small, stone village buried in the countryside. Past the straggling street of houses was a nineteenth-century warehouse, now abandoned, its rows of windows broken or shuttered.

‘This must be the place,’ Dior said.

The grim old mill was surrounded by formidable nettles and almost unapproachable. ‘This is like a castle in a fairy tale,’ Copper commented.

‘And we need to find the dragon.’ He beat a path to the entrance with his umbrella and knocked on the door imperiously. Eventually, it opened a little, revealing part of a female face.

‘Who are you?’

‘Customers,’ Dior said brightly. ‘May we come in?’

‘The mill is closed. My father is sick in bed. What do you want?’

‘Shantung,’ Dior said succinctly.

‘We have nothing,’ the woman replied, starting to close the door.

With surprising determination, Dior pushed it open again. ‘Wait. Let me just take a look,’ he said persuasively, insinuating his long nose into the gap and peering inside. ‘Come along, Mademoiselle. There’s nothing to be afraid of – we’re friends.’

Reluctantly, the woman opened the door to let them in. She was in her twenties. Copper could see why she was so cautious. The scarf she wore couldn’t hide the fact that she’d had her head shaved recently – or the bruised eye and cut lip that had no doubt been administered at the same time.

‘Did the Resistance do this to you?’ Copper asked.

The woman nodded, looking grim. ‘And they beat my father.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Claudette.’

‘Very sorry indeed, Mademoiselle Claudette,’ Dior said. ‘We don’t want to hurt you. The silk, now. Is it true you have some?’

‘The Germans confiscated it all,’ the woman replied, looking even more sullen.

‘I’ll pay well,’ Dior said. ‘Cash. And not a word to anyone. You won’t get into any trouble.’ The cry of a baby could be heard somewhere in the building. Dior cocked his head to one side. ‘Boy or girl?’

‘Boy,’ she said.

‘What’s his name?’

‘Hans,’ she replied shortly.

‘I am sure you will change that to Jean by and by. And I’m sure you need things for him, don’t you?’ He crackled notes suggestively in his jacket pocket.

Claudette hesitated for a moment, looking from one to the other. Dior’s mild face seemed to reassure her. She led them through the dusty corridors to a storeroom. The rows of shelves were almost empty except for three rolls of fabric wrapped in brown paper. ‘This is all that’s left. There’s nothing more.’

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