The Designer(49)

‘Ah, I forget you were raised by wolves,’ he said merrily. ‘If you’d had an education, you’d know that Anactoria was the friend of Sappho of Lesbos. The very special friend.’ He rolled his protuberant eyes to make sure she didn’t miss the insinuation. ‘It’s my little Jacinthe’s birthday.’ He ruffled the dog’s curly fur. ‘I’m having a party at my studio on Saturday night. You’ll come, of course.’

‘Well – I already have a date for Saturday night.’

‘With your Russian? Ah, yes. I hear he is very jolly,’ he said with a droll expression. ‘I absolutely insist that you bring him along.’

The idea seemed a bad one to Copper. She didn’t want to mix Henry with the bohemian crowd. But she did not want to refuse, either; Bérard was Christian Dior’s closest friend. ‘I’ll ask him, I promise.’

‘And bring your pornographic little cockney friend, too. She is enchanting.’

‘All right.’

‘Bless you, my child.’ He made the sign of the cross over her with the brush, like a cardinal sprinkling holy water. She was not quick enough to avoid the shower of sky-blue paint.

‘Bébé, you’re impossible,’ she exclaimed angrily. His squeals of laughter followed her as she ran to wash it off.



Copper had warned Henry that Bérard’s parties started late, so they did not arrive until eleven on Saturday night. Henry was formally dressed, as always, in a tuxedo with a silk scarf. She was more than a little anxious about the imminent intersection of her two worlds. What Henry would think of Bérard’s crowd, and what they would think of him, were imponderables.

Pearl had come with them and was in the irritable, twitchy state that meant she hadn’t had her ‘fix’.

The studio was a cavernous place in an old block in Montparnasse and was already filled with people. Bérard had heated it to suffocation point with his stove. Most of his guests were wearing the extraordinary garments that were customary on such occasions, but Bérard himself was in his pyjamas and cigarette-ash-daubed dressing gown. Copper had seldom seen him in anything else. He bustled through the crowd to greet them, with Jacinthe, as ever, beneath one arm.

‘Welcome, welcome,’ he cried out. ‘And here is Pearl. Such a mouth. Such embonpoint. My dear, one could positively eat you. And this—’ His blue eyes popping, he dropped a mock curtsey to Henry. ‘This is surely the god Apollo descended from Olympus. Greetings, Phoebus Apollo! Here is Jacinthe, in whose honour you have come down to earth. It is her birthday. You may kiss her.’ He held the woolly little dog out to Henry.

Copper wondered how Henry was going to take to this fat, dirty artist with his extravagant manner and wild beard, who was obviously already completely drunk. She needn’t have worried. Henry appeared amused by him and kissed Jacinthe solemnly.

Bébé pulled them into the throng and began introducing them to his strange collection of friends. Most of the couturiers were in attendance, even Balenciaga – tall, darkly handsome and almost impossibly well-dressed – who seemed to be dazed by the noise and chaos around him.

The solemn Poulenc was there, as was a large, square man who turned out to be Darius Milhaud. Bérard introduced Henry to his brooding Russian lover, the ballet dancer Boris Kochno. Copper left them talking Russian together and wandered around.

A workbench was crowded with bottles of alcohol of all kinds and colours. Somebody poured her a glass of crème de menthe, which she liked, and she drifted among the crowd, half-listening to the hubbub of conversations surrounding her. Around the walls of the studio was piled an assortment of Bérard’s works, finished and in progress. There were dozens of fashion drawings, which he effortlessly produced for the couturiers and magazines. He was a favourite of Coco Chanel, as well as Elsa Schiaparelli and Nina Ricci, all of whom tolerated his notorious unreliability and frequent binges because his work had an indefinable glamour that no other artist could achieve.

Towering over the party were also some huge props for the Ballets des Champs-élysées, which he had helped to found together with Boris Kochno, and various pieces that he was doing for the Théatre de la Mode. Almost hidden among all this work were the oil paintings that he did for himself. Copper paused in front of a portrait of Boris, a brilliant work. Bérard was truly a prodigious artist who poured out his talent unstintingly. She wondered how long he would be able to survive this work pace with his addictions to opium and alcohol. She’d seen George Fritchley-Bound kill himself in the same way.

Well after midnight, when the party was at its loudest and most crowded, Suzy Solidor finally arrived. She was wearing a red-and-gold Chinese jacket with a high collar. She was breathtaking, Copper thought. She made her way through the crowd towards Suzy as though pulled by a magnet. Her head was swimming with the glasses of crème de menthe she had drunk.

‘Chérie!’ Suzy greeted her eagerly. They had not seen one another for some days. ‘I have missed you so much.’

‘Come, I want to introduce you to Henry.’

Suzy’s face changed. ‘I don’t want to meet that man. He’s a spy, you know that?’

‘He’s a good man.’

‘No men are good. Why have you brought him here?’

‘Bébé invited him. Don’t be jealous.’