The Designer(4)

The shouting rose to a sudden roar. Someone had produced an old kitchen chair and a noose.

‘Oh no,’ Copper gasped. She jerked her arm out of Amory’s grasp and ran forward.

‘Copper, come back!’ Amory yelled.

Somehow Copper crossed the few tumultuous yards to the screaming woman, fighting through the mob like a halfback. Copper put her arms around her and tried to shield her. But dozens of hands stopped her. She was manhandled away from the victim and thrown roughly on to the ground.

‘Are you crazy?’ Amory demanded, catching hold of his wife and pulling her to her feet. ‘You could have been killed.’

‘They’re going to lynch her. Do something!’

‘There’s nothing to be done.’

Bruised and breathless, Copper turned to Giroux. ‘Stop them!’

Giroux sucked on the stub of his cigarette. ‘You are brave but stupid, Madame.’

The mob hauled the weeping woman over to a lamp post. She held her arms out to her baby in a last, despairing gesture. Copper was unable to close her eyes to shut it out.

They pushed the victim on to the kitchen chair, where she cowered with tears streaming down her cheeks, the noose around her neck. A little old man was now brought through the crowd. He wore a white apron and held a pair of kitchen scissors. His wizened face was expressionless.

‘That is le Blanc, the pastry chef,’ Giroux said. ‘He lost two sons to the Gestapo.’

The old man grasped a handful of the woman’s fair hair and began to hack at it methodically with the scissors. The crowd were chanting, ‘Collaboratrice! Putain!’ The woman cried out at the scything strokes at first, then fell silent, as though accepting her fate. Her head jerked to and fro as the old man chopped.

He worked briskly. A cheer went up as the last golden snake slithered to the pavement. Not content, the old man chopped at the remaining tufts until the doll-like skull was almost completely nude. Then he spat deliberately in her face and made his way back through the throng to his shop. Hands reached out to pat his back as he passed. Copper was praying it would end there and nothing worse would be done. ‘Give her back her baby,’ she shouted to the knot of men.

Amid laughter, the baby was passed back to the victim, who clutched it to her throat. The infant seemed to be unharmed, but it was screaming in terror, its face crumpled and scarlet. The mother put it to her breast and it sucked urgently, its little body convulsing with intermittent sobs. Giroux pushed Copper towards the woman. ‘Go on, Joan of Arc. Take your photograph.’

Copper went forward. She held the camera at her waist and focused on the woman, who seemed to be stupefied with shock. All her prettiness was gone.

‘I’m sorry,’ Copper said. The woman stared at her with bloodshot eyes, her expression unreadable. Copper took two photographs.

The crowd began to drift away now that the spectacle was over. A few hung around to watch the half-naked woman suckle her infant, like a degraded Madonna. The door of her house remained closed, and Copper saw that the curtains were drawn at all the windows. The woman would sit there, an object of loathing, until her family finally plucked up the courage to let her back in. Her clothes had been strewn around the street, and the smart pram had been smashed.

‘The end of the promenade,’ Giroux said laconically.

Copper picked up the woman’s torn blouse and draped it over her as best she could, to cover her nakedness. Amory pulled her away angrily. ‘You were a goddamned fool,’ he said. ‘What the hell were you thinking?’

‘How could you stand there and do nothing?’

‘I wasn’t doing nothing. I was reporting. And you were here to get Fritchley-Bound his shots – not run defence on a lynch mob.’

‘I got the shots,’ she said sullenly. ‘And if he’s too hungover to write the article, I’ll do that as well, I guess.’

‘You’re too damned impulsive. You always act without thinking. You were just supposed to tag along. How many times must I tell you not to get involved?’

‘That was a disgusting scene.’

‘She’s lucky they didn’t butcher the little bastard,’ Giroux said calmly. ‘Do you know what the Gestapo did to their prisoners?’

‘All she did was fall in love and have a baby.’

He sneered. ‘Woman’s logic, eh?’

‘I was brought up to hate fascism,’ she shot back. ‘My father and my brothers were beaten up and thrown into jail by thugs like that. Your so-called partisans are no better than Hitler’s bully boys.’

Giroux stared at her speculatively. Then he tossed his cigarette stub away. ‘Okay. We go get your Paris frock.’

‘I don’t want a Paris frock anymore,’ Copper said as Giroux led them back to the jeep.

‘Why not? Because a whore had her head shaved? She deserved worse.’

‘I don’t believe that man has anything to do with the Resistance at all,’ Copper muttered to Amory. ‘I hate him.’

‘It’s perfectly possible to love Paris while detesting the French,’ Amory replied equably.



They set off towards the city centre. Copper used Fritchley-Bound’s remaining shots on odd details that caught her eye: bouquets left where people had died in the street, coffee drinkers enjoying the sunshine in front of restaurants where windows were starred with bullet holes, men on a ladder taking down a German sign for a soldiers’ cinema. She was starting to recover her calm.