The Designer(3)

He had come to Europe as a war correspondent. She’d refused to be left behind, so he’d brought her with him, using his family’s connections to get accreditation for them both. It was to be their great adventure. He said that everyone had the right to get something back out of the war. In his case, a Pulitzer Prize. He was writing a novel that was going to be the biggest thing since Hemingway (whom he’d sought out as soon as they’d arrived in Paris). His brilliance was unquestioned, in Copper’s mind, whatever his faults.

His brilliance was the main reason she was still holding on, eighteen months into the marriage, when most of her illusions about Amory had worn thin; in particular her expectation that he would be faithful. He was a bastard where women were concerned. Her brothers had been right about that.

One night, very drunk, he’d revealed that his father had been unfaithful to his mother all through their marriage, and that his mother had ‘learned to accept it’. The implication was that she should do the same.

Copper put her head back and let the wind take her hair. Long, abundant and golden-red, it was the source of her nickname, and at twenty-six, she was now more used to Copper than Oona. Her hair went with her pale skin and grey-green eyes, proclaiming her Celtic bloodline. She relished the breeze tugging at her hair.

The women she saw on the street were so well-dressed compared to Americans. They strutted on wedge heels, had square, mannish shoulders and extravagant hats, and they mounted their bicycles with immense aplomb. Their skirts were short, showing off their calves. How did they manage? Rationing at home and in Britain had meant plain, drab clothes for the past four years. How did these Frenchwomen, under much stricter privations, look so chic? There was some Gallic secret and she was suddenly determined to discover it. To hell with ‘not asking for new dresses’.

Copper leaned forward, shouting against the wind. ‘I want a Paris frock.’

Amory half-turned his head, showing his Grecian profile to advantage. ‘What?’

‘A Paris dress. I want a Paris dress.’

He was scornful. ‘I never thought of you as a clothes horse.’

‘Well, I want some new clothes,’ Copper insisted. ‘I’m sick of khaki.’ And indeed, she was weary of the olive-green dungarees and ugly uniforms that made up her entire wardrobe. She felt she was an affront to this beautiful city; a laughing stock to these haughty Parisiennes.

‘What do you say, Giroux?’ Amory asked.

Giroux glanced at Copper over his shoulder with a particularly sour expression. ‘Women. Always the same. I have someone for you. But business first, Madame. Then pleasure.’



‘Pull up here,’ Giroux ordered. Amory parked the jeep where the Frenchman directed, next to a knot of young men who were loitering on a street corner in Montmartre. They were wearing shabby clothes too light for the weather.

‘Are they Resistance?’ Copper asked Amory.

‘They look like it.’

Copper focused through the viewfinder of the camera. The men posed happily for the photo, puffing out thin chests and waving their caps and whistling.

There was a call from down the street. With a shout, the men set off round the corner, their espadrilles slapping on the cobbles. Giroux jerked his head at Copper and Amory to follow. ‘Now you will see what happens to collaborators,’ he said.

They ran after the little gang into the next street – a row of ordinary houses. The group of men had cornered their quarry, a young mother who had emerged from one of the houses pushing a pram. She was trying desperately to open the door and get back inside, but the men dragged her and her perambulator down the stairs.

‘It’s a woman,’ Copper exclaimed. The scuffling intensified. She was horrified for the baby, whose wails could now be heard over the shouts and screams. Amory held her arm to stop her from going forward.

‘Don’t interfere.’

The woman had been wearing a coat and a beret. These were torn off her and thrown into the gutter. Her curly blonde hair broke free around her face, which was stark with terror. She was, Copper saw, no more than nineteen or twenty years old. Someone yanked the baby out of the perambulator. The mother tried to plead with the men, holding out her arms to the child, but someone struck her across the mouth and she crumpled. They pulled her back to her feet and started to rip her clothing off.

Copper’s heart was in her throat. ‘What has she done?’ she asked.

‘She was the lover of a Gestapo man,’ Giroux said. He didn’t take part in the attack, but watched shrewdly, a cigarette in his mouth again, eyes squinting against the smoke. ‘The child is his.’

‘What are they going to do to her?’

‘Look how fat she is. The sow,’ Giroux said bitterly. ‘She fed on butter while we starved.’ The woman was almost naked now, clutching her breasts and trying to hide her face. Her body was pale and soft, already marked with red handprints.

The street, which had been almost deserted at the start of the incident, was suddenly crowded. People were coming out of the houses to join the mob, or yelling from their windows. The wave of hatred was like a hot wind. A man was holding the screaming infant aloft, as though about to dash it on to the cobbles. The mother desperately tried to reach her child, but she was pushed from person to person, each assailant striking her or pulling her hair as they chose. There were streaks of blood at her nose and mouth.