The Designer(54)

‘You should save your pity. If he makes himself a beast, he must suffer as the beasts suffer.’

‘You’re cruel,’ she exclaimed.

‘No, I’m disciplined. I don’t admire the lack of discipline in anybody, no matter how clever they are.’

‘While we were searching for him, we had a brush with some strikers. I stopped to take photographs, but they threw bottles and stones at us. They actually broke a window in the car.’

His face was serious. ‘These people are dangerous, Copper. Don’t go near them.’

‘I’m a journalist,’ she reminded him. ‘I’m supposed to photograph this stuff.’

‘They don’t know that. They see a camera and they think you’re from the secret police.’

‘Do I look like I’m from the secret police?’ she demanded, raising one eyebrow.

He shook his head gravely. ‘Not exactly. You’ve heard nothing from your husband?’

‘I had one letter, but that was weeks ago. All he said was that he’d reached a Nazi concentration camp and that it was shocking. I have no idea where he is now, or what he’s doing. I wrote back to him, but he didn’t reply.’

‘Do you miss him?’

She couldn’t lie to Henry. They had always told each other the truth about everything. ‘Sometimes I convince myself that the pain has gone. At other times, I feel absolutely wretched. We had happy times together.’

‘Of course.’

‘Why didn’t he respect that happiness more?’ she asked. ‘Couldn’t he have learned to be faithful? Wasn’t I enough for him?’

‘I don’t think he knew what he had, or how lucky he was.’

‘Do you miss your wife?’

‘Of course. Sometimes I think it is better to be taken swiftly, unexpectedly, than to have to waste away. I wish I could remember her as she was – glowing and vibrant – and not as the suffering invalid she became.’

‘You went through a lot together. Do you think that anyone could ever really take her place?’

‘Nobody can take another’s place. Love doesn’t work like that. One can love more than once, but each love is glorious in its own way.’

‘I agree.’

‘What would you do if your husband wanted to come back to you?’

‘It’s over,’ she said firmly. ‘There’s no going back.’ She looked up into Henry’s dim face. ‘If I don’t say yes to your offer right away, it’s not because of Amory.’

‘You don’t have to say anything yet, my dear. I am a patient man.’





Nine

The next day, Paris woke up to find its streets plastered with posters calling for a general strike.

The posters, blotchily printed on cheap paper, bore the hammer and sickle of the Communist Party. Copper’s interest quickened. They reminded her of the handbills she’d seen distributed in New York during the Depression.

And a few days later, an even more lurid poster appeared. This one read TOUS AUX BARRICADES – ‘Everyone to the barricades!’

This slogan hadn’t been heard since the Nazis had left. No barricades appeared in the stately streets where Copper lived, but she heard that on the Left Bank of the city, traditionally the most revolutionary part of Paris, citizens were obeying the age-old call to arms. This was certainly something she had to cover. Taking her camera, her oldest coat and a stout pair of walking shoes (the taxis and buses were obeying the strike call), she set off for the Quartier latin.

Near the place Saint-Michel she did indeed come across a barricade. It was made from a pissoir. Copper had never got used to the presence of these cast-iron urinals that were placed even in the smartest streets of Paris and were designed so that one saw the legs of the (male-only) users. This one had been wrenched off the pavement and dragged into the middle of the road where it made a very substantial, one-ton obstacle to traffic, and was manned by some twenty or thirty men and women. Copper took a couple of photographs, but she doubted whether any editor would print a photo of a public toilet being used as a political statement.

‘You can’t go through,’ one of the women manning the barricade told Copper, throwing back her press card. ‘We’re here to block all fascist bastards.’

‘But I’m not a fascist bastard,’ she protested.

A man wearing a Resistance-style white armband and an army helmet sauntered up to Copper. He had a Gauloise dangling from his unshaven lower lip.

‘Salut, comrade. Remember me?’

She recognised the seamed face and insouciant manner of Francois Giroux, the self-proclaimed Maquis leader who had taken her to meet Christian Dior. ‘Monsieur Giroux! How are you?’

He shrugged. ‘Comme ci, comme ?a. Working for the Revolution, as always.’ He pulled his jacket aside to show her the black-and-red ribbon pinned to his blouson. ‘They gave me the médaille de la Résistance.’

Copper noted the revolver stuck in his belt. ‘Congratulations.’

‘It should have been the Légion d’honneur,’ he said sourly. ‘But they know I’m a communist. Where are you trotting off to?’

‘I heard there was going to be a big demonstration today.’

‘And you think it’s a spectator sport?’