The Designer(81)

‘Don’t do this, Copper,’ Pearl said quietly.

Copper just shook her head. Pulling her magnificent dusk-blue dress out of the way, she shut the door of the Daimler. ‘Rue Royale, please.’ Expressionlessly, the man put the car in gear and it glided forward. Copper had an afterthought. ‘Wait.’

She took the weighty emerald necklace off and leaned out of the window to hand it to Dior, who took it, open-mouthed. ‘Please give him this, with my love.’

Dior turned without a word and made his way into the cathedral, his balding head bowed. And Copper drove away through the rain.



She was alone in Dior’s apartment for the best part of two hours. After she had taken off the wedding dress Dior had made her, she spent the time sitting at the window and looking out at the street, thinking.

Why hadn’t Henry listened to her about the wedding? If they had arranged a nice, drab registry office, she would probably have walked in without qualms, and walked out again as the Countess Velikovsky half an hour later. But it hadn’t been only the cathedral. It had been everything that the cathedral symbolised – the vast edifice of expectation and commitment that a marriage would pile on her.

She’d gone into her first marriage gaily, almost without a second thought. This time, her feelings were different. The burned child had learned to dread the fire. She was still calm, because she knew she had done the right thing for herself. But that didn’t stop her feeling terrible about Henry. She had humiliated him in the most public way possible. The waspish White Russian community would be gossiping about it for years. He would be furious with her. Worse, he would be deeply, bitterly hurt. His disappointment would probably keep him away from her forever.

She had not the slightest vestige of an excuse, except that she’d changed her mind – that feeble prerogative of women that went with being frivolous and capricious and all the qualities she most despised.

Dior returned at last, looking rather flushed and smelling of alcohol. She helped him off with his overcoat.

‘How was Henry?’ she asked apprehensively.

‘He was magnificent,’ Dior replied. ‘He made a short speech at the altar, and thanked everyone for coming. Then he invited everybody to the reception. Nearly everybody came. The house is still full of countesses in nineteenth-century clothes, eating and drinking and looking down their noses. And my dear’ – he patted her shoulder – ‘Henry uttered not a word of reproach about you. Not one word.’

That made her burst into tears. ‘I’ve broken his heart.’

‘Yes, I think you have,’ Dior said. ‘You have to know him well to see it, but it’s there. In his eyes.’

‘Oh, God.’

‘He sent you this.’ He presented her with a little beribboned box. In gilt writing on it were her name and Henry’s in Cyrillic script, and inside was a slice of wedding cake, all marzipan and pink sugar roses. ‘He said you’d be hungry.’

‘He cut the cake?’ she exclaimed through her tears.

‘Well, yes. It wouldn’t keep for the next countess, you know. And it’s wartime. One can’t throw away a three-tier wedding cake from Ladurée.’

‘Will he ever speak to me again?’

‘As to that, I can’t say,’ Dior replied. ‘But it’s very doubtful. You’ve made rather a fool of him, you know.’

‘To put it mildly.’

‘A proud man like Henry doesn’t take these things lightly.’

‘He must hate me now.’

‘He will quite possibly arrange to have you garrotted,’ Dior replied. ‘I believe that’s how they handle these affairs in Moscow. The good thing is that I get to keep you for a while longer. You’ll have to stay here with me. I’ll get your room ready.’



The era of place Victor Hugo was at an end. Pearl had moved into digs in Montmartre. She didn’t say where, but Copper knew she must be back with Petrus. All Copper’s superfluous things – she hadn’t bought much in the way of furniture – were put in storage. She moved back into Dior’s apartment with just a suitcase of clothes, her typewriter and her camera equipment, the way she had first arrived. There was no word from Henry.

Le Théatre de la Mode opened with a fanfare of publicity, providing an immediate distraction. Tens of thousands of visitors trooped through the exhibition in the first days, thronging the hall until it closed each night at nine. Somehow, all the scenes had been completed on time, the last stitches put into the last outfit, the final touches applied to the last piece of gilding, before the doors had opened to an expectant public.

Moving through the crowded halls, Copper could sense that all of Paris was agog. The ingenuity of the idea; the titanic effort put into such Lilliputian resources; the sheer beauty of what had been achieved; all this was dazzling. More than that, the promise of a resurgent Paris, and a resurgent France, brought people out in wide-eyed throngs to gawp and to celebrate. Copper saw people weeping with emotion in the crowds. Since the departure of the Nazis, it was the greatest single statement of joy the country had made.

The exhibition was a personal triumph for Christian Bérard, who had superintended the overall décor – or it would have been a triumph had he not presented such a pathetic spectacle. He leaned on a stick, or on Dior’s shoulder, looking exhausted. It was typical of the kindness of Dior that he cared for his friend with the gentleness of a mother nursing a sickly child, shepherding him through public appearances, steering him away from anywhere he might be exposed to alcohol or opium, making him rest when his system seemed in danger of a relapse.