The Designer(35)

‘You need to find somewhere else to live – and as soon as you’re on your feet again, I want you out. No hard feelings. Just the way it is.’

Pearl nodded. ‘I’ll look for somewhere else, then. Ta-ra, Copper Pot.’

Copper heard Pearl being sick in the bathroom and tried to shake off the shamefaced feeling that she’d been unnecessarily harsh. She went off to her typewriter and her article, trying to put Pearl and her troubles out of her mind.



She worked until late in the evening and then went out to La Vie Parisienne as she had promised Suzy she would.

The nightclub was buzzing. As she pushed her way through the noisy crowd at the door, a very handsome blonde man holding a cigar and wearing an impeccable evening suit came up to her. It wasn’t until she was suddenly kissed full on the lips that she realised the ‘man’ was Suzy Solidor.

‘You came! Welcome to my little establishment. Michel, take care of Miss Copper.’ Suzy handed her over to the head waiter, who smilingly led Copper to a table near the stage and put a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket on her table. This was five-star service, indeed.

Dior was there in the company of a melting young man named Maurice, and there was the usual crowd of artists and writers, including a sombre-looking couple who Dior told her were Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. And she realised with a start that the simian man with the dark, staring eyes who was sitting beside a strikingly handsome woman at the next table was undoubtedly Pablo Picasso. As if wanting to confirm his identity, he was scrawling idly on a napkin with a stub of crayon, listening to the chattering people around him. He had no sooner finished the scribble than a waiter adroitly snatched up the napkin and made off with it triumphantly, no doubt to sell it for a fistful of dollars to some collector.

As though she had been waiting only for Copper’s arrival, Suzy now stepped into the spotlight, graciously acknowledging the applause.

She kicked off with ‘Lili Marlène’, sung defiantly in her throbbing tenor. Copper watched the chanteuse intently throughout the performance, her chin cupped in her hand, oblivious to anything else. Even in this sunless winter, she appeared to have stepped straight off a beach on the C?te d’Azur.

‘She’s rather spectacular, isn’t she?’ Copper asked Dior. She was literally starry-eyed; she’d had a few glasses of champagne, and her green eyes reflected the lights brilliantly.

‘Oh, she’s colossal,’ Dior said.

‘It’s awful what they’re doing to her,’ Dior’s companion, Maurice, put in. Dior’s fingers were clasped fondly in Maurice’s. Copper noticed that Maurice’s fingernails were varnished pink. ‘So cruel.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Copper asked curiously.

‘The épuration légale are going to charge her with collaborating and giving support to the enemy.’

‘Just because she sang “Lili Marlène”?’

‘Well, perhaps it was rather more than that,’ Dior said diplomatically. ‘She said some unwise things.’

‘At least she can’t be accused of having slept with any German officers,’ Maurice said with a titter.

Copper frowned. ‘Now that the Germans have gone, I think everybody should forgive and forget whatever happened.’

‘No chance of that,’ Dior replied. ‘Nowadays, everyone wants to point the finger at his neighbour and say, “He collaborated, but I was a hero.”’

‘Human nature, I suppose.’ Copper sighed.

‘Exactement,’ Dior said. ‘We all rewrite our own histories.’ He leaned over to her confidentially. ‘Your gown is almost ready,’ he murmured.

‘Oh, how exciting!’

‘Come for the fitting whenever you’re free.’

‘I will,’ she promised.

The rest of Suzy Solidor’s act was hardly less provocative. She did several more numbers dressed as a man, another in a sailor suit with a chorus of matelots, and another almost in the nude, her glorious body covered only by scraps of gold in what Pearl would have called the strategic areas. Her voice descended to guttural notes and erotic growls. It was sometimes hard to tell whether she was a man or a woman; and it seemed to Copper that some of the songs were directed at her. As she took in her surroundings, Copper felt that few of the people around her were definable as men or women; most were somewhere on a spectrum between the two sexes.

After her performance, the singer draped an ermine stole around her magnificent shoulders and toured the room, moving from table to table like a queen.

The burly figure of Ernest Hemingway loomed over their table. He was wearing his usual stained and faded khaki shirt.

‘They tell me you’re hanging out your shingle as a journalist?’ he boomed at Copper.

‘Yes.’

‘It’s a whore’s trade.’ He hauled out the chair next to her, almost knocking poor Maurice on to the floor, and sat down heavily beside Copper. ‘Honey, I can teach you how to whore.’ He leaned forward, blasting her with absinthe-laden breath. ‘No better teacher.’

‘You’re drunk, Mr Hemingway.’

‘I hope so. I’m drunk and I’m available. Room 117 at the Ritz. Come up and see me later tonight.’

‘No, thank you.’