The Designer(84)

This most recent accolade really put her in the public eye. The telephone began to ring with offers of work. A number of newspapers in the States and Britain were eager for short pieces about the renaissance of French fashion. These were short opinion pieces that she could knock out in a day or so, and that brought in decent money. She was also approached by Picture Post to cover Pierre Balmain’s opening with an article and photos. With the war still raging, no American staff were being sent to Europe. She was perfectly placed to do the work, and she accepted the offer with alacrity. Her career as a journalist had well and truly taken off.

The war news now was exhilarating and terrible. The German Eastern and Western Fronts had crumbled. A million and a half German prisoners of war had been taken by the Allies; tens of thousands were still being killed on both sides. Berlin had been reached, and a vast battle was raging, with Hitler beleaguered in his bunker. The Nazi state was in its terrifying death throes. In Italy, Mussolini had been shot by partisans, his body strung up like a butchered pig’s beside that of his lover, Clara Petacci. After six years of bloodshed such as the world had never seen, it seemed that the war was finally approaching an end.

And then, one morning, the bells of Paris began to chime, first in isolation, then in a universal clangour.

‘Something has happened,’ Copper said.

‘Something terrible, perhaps,’ Dior said in alarm.

They hurried out into the street. The bells were tolling across the city, louder and louder. People were cheering, laughing and hugging one another. They were confronted by a newspaper kiosk. A man was pasting up a placard with a headline in huge black letters. It said simply, HITLER EST MORT.

Copper and Dior clasped each other’s hands, hardly able to believe it. But there it was, in black and white. They bought a newspaper and read the front page together. Doenitz had announced Adolf Hitler’s death and proclaimed himself the Führer’s successor. The monster was dead. The end of the war was surely imminent. Throwing the paper into the air, they grabbed each other’s hands and began to dance in the street along with thousands of others.





Fourteen

The real party started a few days later with the announcement that the Nazis had surrendered unconditionally and war had ended – in Europe at least. The whole of Paris erupted in communal celebration even wilder than the Liberation. The Tuileries and every other public space filled with multitudes of Parisians in their gayest clothes. It was typical of the times that even in this joyous moment, the political divisions cut deep. While a huge crowd gathered in place de la Concorde to hear Charles de Gaulle make a victory proclamation, the communists held their own triumphs and speeches, waving the red flag. There were inevitable fights, clashes with the police, arrests.

For Copper, it was a strange moment. The war had brought her to France, and now it was over. Perhaps she should go home?

Getting riotously drunk in a bar with a motley collection of communists, American GIs and journalists, she wondered where home was. Had Paris become her home? Was her American life over? It was easy, borne along on the river of champagne, singing ‘La Marseillaise’ at the top of her voice, to feel a deep and abiding love for France. For France and for Henry Velikovsky. She danced in the street, kissed every man in uniform, climbed up monuments and on to café tables, gulped champagne straight from the bottle until the bubbles and the alcohol made her vomit in the gutter.

After twenty-four straight hours of celebration, she dragged herself away from the party, wrapped in a French flag like something out of a Delacroix painting, to sleep it off. On the way back, she found herself in front of Henry’s house in the 7th arrondissement.

She had heard nothing from Henry since that sombre visit after the wedding-that-wasn’t. She had deliberately pushed him to the back of her mind. But he wouldn’t stay there.

Knowing she was terribly drunk, she rang the bell. If he answered, she would throw her arms around him and beg him to forgive her. Tell him that she’d been a terrible fool at the cathedral, that if the past weeks had shown her one thing, if they’d shown her anything at all, it was that she loved him more than she’d known. That she’d grown to love him almost without realising it. That she didn’t want to keep living without him.

But there was no answer. The old house covered in vines was silent as the grave. There was no Henry to whom to blurt out her words of remorse.

She hoisted herself unsteadily up on the cast-iron railings to peer in. The place appeared deserted, the windows shuttered – even the window of the bedroom where they’d lain together. She’d remembered that afternoon in all its sweetness and joy, the aperitif to a feast that would never materialise.

Was it just the drink and the weariness that made her burst into tears in the street now? Sitting in the gutter, huddled in her flag, she’d never felt lonelier. Welling up in her was a deep yearning for stability. A life of adventure was all very well, but she wanted a home. She wanted a family. That was something she’d never considered with Amory. Married couples had children as a general rule; but she’d never felt the rule applied to her and Amory.

There was only one man she loved, and she didn’t even know whether he was dead or alive.



The day after the party, her head aching and her bleary eyes shielded with sunglasses, she called the Ritz, but he wasn’t currently occupying his room. He hadn’t been heard from in some time, and no, they were not expecting him at present. His room, of course, remained at his disposal.