The Designer(77)

‘I hope he doesn’t turn it into a circus, like poor George’s funeral. You won’t invite a huge crowd, will you, Tian? Promise me.’

‘I am always the soul of discretion,’ he swore piously, as though he were not the biggest gossip in Paris. ‘But you know, my dear, all your friends will be terribly offended if you cut them out.’

‘The key word is “friends”. I don’t want strangers riding unicycles or leading giraffes.’

‘Perhaps Suzy will turn up and sing “Chant des adieux”,’ he tittered.

Copper shuddered, still disturbed by Suzy’s reaction. ‘Don’t.’



Henry arrived at the end of a week, refusing to say where he had been or what he had been doing, but overjoyed to see her.

‘I could hardly believe my ears,’ he said, almost lifting her off her feet as she opened the door to him at place Victor Hugo. ‘I thought it was a bad telephone line. You’re going to be mine at last!’

She clung to him joyously. His face and frame had lost weight, but he looked magnificent. ‘When did you get back?’

‘This morning at six. But I had things to do.’

‘What things?’ she demanded jealously.

‘Important things.’ He grinned at her. ‘I’ve got us a priest – and a church.’

‘A church?’

‘I hope you don’t object to a Russian Orthodox ceremony?’

‘The Catholics wouldn’t let me back anyway. How on earth did you get a priest to marry us at such short notice?’

‘It took a lot of talking – and a lot of promises,’ he said ruefully. ‘But you’ll love the church. It’s the Cathedral of St Alexander Nevsky.’

‘Oh, Henry,’ she exclaimed in dismay. ‘We agreed on a quiet wedding.’

‘What have we got to be ashamed of?’ he demanded.

‘It’s not a question of being ashamed. I wanted a small ceremony. You promised!’

‘But my darling – it’s our wedding. And we can make it as short and quiet as you like.’

‘It won’t be short or quiet. It will be two days of chanting and incense and processions – and – and don’t the bride and groom wear crowns?’

‘Well,’ he admitted, ‘crowns used to be worn for a week, but now it’s just during part of the ceremony.’

‘Cancel it.’

‘I can’t. It took me all day to talk the priest into it.’

‘It’s not what I want.’ She knew St Alexander Nevsky – a monumental church in the 8th arrondissement, complete with towering spires capped with gold onion domes and plastered with ornate mosaics. All the White Russian exiles worshipped there. ‘I want something intimate. Half of Paris will turn up.’

‘I’d like to be married in my faith,’ he said gently. ‘A registry office would be so bare and shabby, my darling. I want to show you off.’

‘Oh no, Henry. I refuse.’

He kissed her tenderly. ‘Please don’t refuse. Do this for me. Just this one thing. After we’re married you can have everything you want.’

‘I very much doubt that.’

‘For me, my darling!’

‘I’ve just told Tian that he can’t make me a wedding dress. He was extremely upset. I don’t have anything suitable for a wedding in the cathedral, Henry.’

‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ he said airily. ‘Any old thing will do.’

She glared at him. The cathedral would be packed. It was the haunt of the ageing émigré counts, dukes and princes who’d fled their estates in 1917, plus their pale and haughty Paris-born offspring, not to mention the Moscow secret police in shabby raincoats, writing names down in greasy notebooks. ‘Any old thing?’

‘We can go shopping for an appropriate outfit,’ he said soothingly, realising he’d said the wrong thing.

‘Where? The war isn’t over yet. Wedding gowns with ten-foot trains are in rather short supply. I’ll have to go back to Tian and beg for mercy.’

‘I’ll pay, of course,’ he promised.

‘Oh, buster, you will,’ she said grimly. ‘Trust me on that.’





Thirteen

Copper and Dior decided on pale blue as appropriate for a second marriage in a new faith. Besides, as he happily pointed out, that would match his tie. She would wear a small veil attached to a simple hat. The dress itself would be made from ten metres of grey-blue chiffon that Dior had stored away in a closet. It would be elaborately gathered and ruffled, and out of deference to the setting, Copper’s arms would be covered in lace sleeves to the mid-forearm. She consented to a small bouquet of white lilies from Lachaume, though since Dior was organising this, she had to rely on his idea of ‘small’.

He, of course, was delighted that Copper had changed her mind. He threw himself into the project, trusting nobody to do the pattern or cutting except himself. They had a scant fortnight to get the dress ready. Much of that time was spent in fittings, shopping for accessories, arranging the reception (to be held at Henry’s house in the 7th arrondissement, which was being prepared for the occasion by an army of servants who had been marshalled by the master of the house) and getting acquainted with the elaborate Slavonic-rite marriage ceremony that Henry was so set on.