The Designer(80)

He’d hired a Daimler-Benz, said to be formerly the property of General Dietrich von Choltitz, the last Nazi commandant of Paris, to take her to the cathedral. Pearl was to follow in a taxi. Copper felt numb as she got into the huge, gleaming black car that still had a German eagle screwed on to the dashboard. ‘This thing is like a hearse,’ she said.

‘I went to Venice before the war in the company of a young man I was very much in love with. We took a gondola ride down the Grand Canal. They told us that the same artisans who made coffins also made the gondolas. That was why they were so glossy and black.’

‘Was it an omen?’ she asked.

‘Unfortunately, yes. I adored him, but he swiftly got bored with me, and left me in my coffin to go and chase a Venetian faun.’

‘Poor Tian!’

‘How do you feel, petite?’

She fiddled with the heavy emerald necklace at her throat. ‘Very anxious.’

‘They’ll guide you through the ceremony.’

‘I’m not nervous about the ceremony. I’m nervous about what comes after.’

‘You mean – the nuit de noces?’ he enquired delicately.

‘No, silly. I mean the next fifty years.’

‘Ah.’ Wisely, he refrained from comment. Indeed, her heart was pounding in her chest and she was struggling to keep her breathing slow and steady. She stared out at the grey streets of Paris, passing her by irrevocably. It was a somewhat rainy morning and the cobbles were shining wet, the girls on their bicycles huddled under capes that billowed behind them as they sped. How free they looked, pedalling along with their trim, stockinged legs.

She recalled Hemingway’s valediction: Your roaming days are over, little gypsy.

The part of Paris around the cathedral was something of a Little Moscow, with many Russian restaurants and streets named after Russian subjects. They approached the cathedral up the rue Pierre-le-Grand. It came into sight at the end of the street, its domes like golden bubbles bobbing up against a grey sky. Dior instructed the chauffeur to drive to the front of the church. He proceeded with slow majesty.

‘It’s wet,’ Dior reminded her. ‘Gather up your hem, my dear, or it will trail in the mud.’

The Daimler stopped at the portico of the church. A crowd was waiting outside to see the bride. Among them she made out Bébé Bérard, released from the Pitié-Salpêtrière, but still weak, leaning on the shoulder of Cocteau. Bébé’s beard was wild and his face was a ghastly fish-belly white. When he saw her, he called out her name, pretending a gaiety he clearly did not feel. His shriek of welcome sounded, to Copper, too close to the screams of pain he’d uttered when they’d left him in the hospital.

The outré outfits of the bohemians mingled oddly with the austere fustiness of the Russian émigrés. The great church doors were thrown open and she could see into the sombre, crowded interior, right through to the altar where their wedding rings were lying, and where sacramental objects gleamed dully in the light of candles. She could hear the droning of the male choir. A commotion of panic rose in her breast.

She gathered her gown and her bouquet as Dior got out and went round the car to open her door. A blast of cold, damp air rushed into the warm, leather interior. It carried with it a whiff of frankincense and myrrh from the incense burners. It was the scent of the myrrh that did it. Something clicked inside her. She felt it, like a broken bone setting itself.

‘I can’t do this,’ she said, looking Dior in the eyes.

Dior blinked at her, his kid-gloved hand extended. ‘What?’

‘I can’t. I’ve changed my mind.’

‘Copper! What do you mean?’

‘You’ll have to go and explain to Henry.’

His eyes were so wide that she could see the whites all around the irises. ‘Explain? Explain what, if you please?’

‘That I’m not getting married today.’

‘You’re joking?’ But what he saw in her face left him in no doubt that she wasn’t joking. He clapped his hands over his cheeks. ‘Oh, mon Dieu.’

Pearl, who had got out of the taxi behind, peered over Dior’s shoulder. ‘What’s going on?’

Copper felt strangely calm now, almost disconnected from herself. She was no longer panicky. All that had passed. Her heart was aching, but she was utterly certain of what she was doing. ‘Henry will come out and try to talk to me,’ she said. ‘So I’m going to go back to your place in the Daimler now. You’ll get Pearl’s taxi when you’ve told them.’ She held out her hand. ‘Give me your key.’

Dumbly, Dior fished in his pocket and produced his apartment key. ‘What am I supposed to say to Henry?’ he asked miserably.

‘Say I’ve changed my mind,’ she replied.

‘He’ll want to know why.’

‘Yes, I suppose he will.’

‘And I will tell him—?’

‘Tell him they burned myrrh at my father’s funeral.’

‘My dear,’ Dior said faintly. ‘That is hardly going to soothe a bridegroom who has been jilted at the altar.’

‘I suppose you’re right. Tell him I’m sorry. And that if he ever decides to speak to me again, I’ll try to explain.’