The Designer(27)

Greedily, Dior unwrapped the rolls. They contained several yards of Chinese silk – a lime green, a pale mauve and a light rose. In this grim setting, and after the khaki years, the colours were strange, almost painful reminders of a world gone by. Dior’s eyes gleamed.

‘How much do you want for them?’

‘A thousand francs the metre.’

Dior laughed indulgently. ‘Who do you think I’m making dresses for? Marie Antoinette? A hundred the metre.’



An hour later, they were heading back to Paris, the car overflowing with silk. Dior was gleefully clutching the rustling folds to his bosom to keep them from being smudged. They had settled, after a prolonged negotiation with Claudette, on 250 francs per metre. ‘This is probably the only shantung left in France today,’ he chortled. ‘And you’re going to be wearing it.’ He buried his long nose in the silk, as though it were an armful of roses, and inhaled luxuriously. ‘My God, how good it smells.’

‘What does it smell like?’ she asked, interested.

‘You’ve never smelled silk?’

‘Not that I recall,’ she confessed. ‘Good old American cotton is what I wear.’

‘Here. Smell!’ He thrust the silk into her face, almost making her veer off the road. ‘What do you think of that?’

‘It smells animal,’ she said, wrinkling her nose. ‘Kind of like children’s sweaty hair.’

‘That’s the sericin. It’s the natural glue the silkworms produce. It’s miraculous stuff. Do you know that it stops bleeding? And heals wounds? And keeps skin young?’

‘You’re making this up.’

‘Not at all. I know my trade, young lady. Silk is the best fabric to have next to your skin. It’s antiseptic and it keeps away wrinkles.’

‘Well then, I’ll only wear silk from now on,’ she said solemnly.

‘Which colour do you like?’

‘Green or lilac, I think. I somehow never saw myself in pink.’

‘Ah, my dear Copper. How little you understand yourself.’ He beamed at her. ‘The time of leaves and buds is over. You are a rose. It’s your time to bloom.’

‘Redheads can’t wear pink.’

‘Absolute nonsense. As I intend to prove to you.’

‘You’re such a tyrant,’ she said irritably. ‘You keep asking my opinion and then deciding on the exact opposite.’

He laughed happily. ‘It’s the Socratic method, my dear. Think of it as an education.’

He didn’t stop chuckling even when one of the ancient tyres burst, bringing them to a shuddering halt.

‘Now what are we going to do?’ she exclaimed.

‘You know I’m not mechanical,’ he said blithely. ‘There must be some way of fixing it, if you just look.’

Copper got out, sighing. She prowled around the Simca, looking for the spare tyre and the tools with which to put it on. They were fixed under the wood burner. Dior peered out at her over his armful of shantung and waved encouragingly. She set to work, hoping her Paris frock was going to be worth it. She manhandled the spare wheel out of its cradle. Dior watched her with benevolent interest as she wrestled with the jack, which hardly seemed strong enough to lift the car with its heavy load of extra plumbing and firewood.

‘I’m going to have to find somewhere to stay,’ she panted, heaving on the rusty tools.

‘My dear, you’re most welcome to stay with me as long as you like.’

‘That’s so kind, but I can’t trespass on your hospitality forever.’

‘You’re proving yourself invaluable so far. I would have no idea how to do what you’re doing now.’

‘Well, I have to find somewhere. I can’t go back to rue de Rivoli.’

He nodded. ‘That is certain.’

‘And I need to get down to work. I have to earn my crust.’

‘Leave it to me,’ he said when she got back into the car half an hour later, very much the worse for wear after changing the wheel. ‘I’ll find you somewhere to stay. I have an idea.’



The next day, she took her story and photographs to the postal centre and had them airmailed to Harper’s Bazaar in New York. She filed the story under her maiden name, Oona Reilly. If she was to make a fresh start, that seemed to be appropriate.

Applying to Harper’s, Copper realised, might have seemed ambitious, even presumptuous, to some people. But she reasoned that if she was going into the journalism business, she would start at the top and work her way down. Besides, as she’d said to Amory, she knew it was a damn good story.

Harper’s was primarily a fashion magazine, but had also been allocating space to the subject of women in wartime. There was an outside chance they might be interested. She had made the point in her article that the punishment of ‘collaborators’ very often turned out to be an attack by a mob of men on a defenceless woman, involving stripping her naked and shaving her hair – or worse. There was a very ugly dimension to it that had nothing to do with justice.

Now she had to wait for a reaction. In the meantime, there was her accommodation to sort out.

As it turned out, Dior had found her a rather grand apartment in a rococo block on the place Victor Hugo. The trees outside were leafless and the weather was cold, but the flat had some minimal heating, and even lukewarm water for part of the day. It had belonged to a German sympathiser, one of Christian’s clients, who had fled Paris after the Liberation, leaving two months’ rent paid.