Lace

by Shirley Conran

  “That V neck doesn’t plunge as low as the one in the show,” Maxine criticised.

  “No, Monsieur Dior kindly agreed to a high neck. Before six-thirty and after forty-five one should never show an inch of skin.”

  “It’s very chic,” offered Judy, and was immediately contradicted.

  “Very elegant, not very chic. Schiaparelli invented the word ‘chic’ to mean eccentric and original. One can’t be chic now and again. One either is or one isn’t. I am not chic.”

  But Aunt Hortense was a perfectionist. Energetic and tough enough to know what she wanted—and get it—she never spared anyone’s feelings in order to achieve perfection. Always polite, she would return a dress, coat or hat to the workroom again and again until she considered it satisfactory. Nothing was ever better than satisfactory. Aunt Hortense did not have many clothes, but they were all made of the finest chiffon, the softest silk, the most subtle tweeds and supple furs. Apart from her Dior clothes, her outfits were different variations of one ensemble that she considered suitable for her age and style of life; this was a suit, a collarless jacket worn with an A-line or pleated skirt made from silk or wool, with a chiffon blouse in the same colour, and each outfit always had two hats, a small head-hugging one and a big-brimmed felt or straw. These simple outfits blazed with exquisite jewels. Although Aunt Hortense liked discretion in clothes she did not care for it in jewelry; she liked hunks of gold, heavy chains of platinum, chunks of emerald quartz spiked with diamonds, and long ropes of knobbly baroque pearls.

  After the Dior show, Aunt Hortense took the girls for a cup of tea in the Plaza Athénée. The wide corridor was lined with clusters of little velvet arm chairs and smelled of expensive scent, rich cigars and well-laundered Americans.

  “What did you think of the show?” asked Aunt Hortense as the pastry trolley was wheeled up.

  “It was splendid,” Judy said, leaning back. She enjoyed being waited on more than could possibly be imagined by anyone who had never been a waitress. “Very beautiful and very splendid, but I think that clothes should be practical, and those weren’t. Even if I could afford them, I couldn’t afford to look after them, so I shouldn’t buy them however rich I was.” She put her fork into a meringue. “Maxine, you needn’t look as if I’m insulting the Virgin Mary. How do you handwash a dress with five yards of fabric in the skirt? How would you dry-clean that white crepe ball gown? And how do you keep a cream suede coat clean?”

  “Your American designers can’t produce anything nearly so good as our Paris collections,” said Maxine indignantly. “That’s why they all come over here to buy.”

  “Look, Maxine, I said the show was divine, but I also thought that for most women who haven’t a lady’s maid and endless credit at the cleaners, it was impractical. Your Aunt Hortense asked me what I thought and I’m telling her. I hope I’m going to be much too busy to spend half my life looking after my clothes.”

  Aunt Hortense, sitting bolt upright on her little velvet chair, like a Saint Cyr cadet, said, “Interesting and practical criticism. I would tell Monsieur Dior except, of course, he wouldn’t take the slightest notice. There are only about eighteen thousand women in the world who are rich enough to afford couture clothes from Paris and they all seem to be queueing at his door, so he doesn’t have to bother about the practical aspects of his collection. But Judy is quite right to say exactly what she thinks; I always do. When I was your age I was a timid little mouse—well, not little, but terrified of opening my mouth. Children were seen and not heard, you know, before the First World War.”

  “The reason I always say what I think,” said Judy, “is that I don’t know how to talk any other way. I know Europeans think I’m ill-mannered, but I don’t understand why.”

  “You’re tactless and you shout,” said Maxine, still annoyed by Judy’s criticism of Dior.

  “I shout sometimes when I get excited because I had to when I was little or none of the bigger kids would have paid any attention to me.”

  “Don’t change,” advised Aunt Hortense. “You think for yourself, you don’t repeat other people’s opinions. You are direct and expect other people to be. Perhaps your manner seems a little brusque to people who don’t know you, perhaps it may even irritate or alarm them, but you will soon pick up the social graces now that you are no longer a child. Personally, I find you refreshingly straightforward, somewhat similar to myself, in fact. This charming naivete, this ruthless innocence I find fresh and appealing.”

  She took a thoughtful sip of her tea. “Losing your innocence has very little to do with virginity, you know. Loss of innocence comes when you have to deal with the real world by yourself, when you learn that the first rule of life is kill or be killed. So different from one’s nursery stories.”

  She picked out another crystalized violet. “I realised this quite quickly during the war. It was only then, at the age of forty-two, that I learned what real life was like. The war was dreadful, but sometimes it was also exciting. I still miss the action. As Maxine knows, I prefer action to discussion. You shouldn’t just sit and twiddle your thumbs and wait for something to happen in your life.”

  “No,” said Judy eagerly. “You have to make it happen!”

  “Quite so. Oh, what fun we used to have in the middle of such horror and pain! Maurice, our chauffeur, was my chef in the Resistance and we worked on the railways.” In answer to Judy’s unspoken query, she snapped her middle finger against her thumb. “Blowing them up. Then we became part of an escape route—not so much fun, but even more dangerous.” Daintily, Aunt Hortense stirred her porcelain cup with a silver spoon.

  “But where did you learn all that?”

  “Oh, I was never taught anything useful. But you pick things up very fast when you have to.”

  “What do you wish you’d been taught?”

  “I wish I’d been taught to expect change as a matter of course in everything including oneself. You will find that you’re one person when you’re seventeen, but by the time you’re twenty-five you’ve developed into quite a different person with different aims, interests, attitudes, friends.” She paused, then shrugged her shoulders. “Then ten years later you find you’ve changed again—and so it goes on. Finally, when you get to my age, people say you get set in your ways, but what they really mean is that you like having your own way. It is the beginning of the delightful selfishness of old age.”

  She paused and lifted the silver teapot. “You two girls seem so much more adulterous than I was at your age. No? That’s not the right word? Well, my English is rusting. Judy will be good practice for me.” Judy nodded, and Aunt Hortense continued. “To me you both seem very grown-up. At sixteen I thought I knew nothing and it caused me great anxiety; at eighteen I thought I knew everything, then at thirty, I realised that I knew nothing—and possibly never would, which depressed me until I noticed that no one else knew anything either. Adultery implies a certain objectivity, restraint and wisdom, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t think you mean adultery. That’s other people’s husbands committing intimacy.”

  “Thank you, dear child, I meant adult behaviour. My point was that you don’t necessarily grow more adult as you grow older.”

  At first Judy thought Aunt Hortense a snob, but she quickly realised that Hortense was merely French and rich and old, that she was experienced and worth listening to and didn’t give a damn for anyone’s opinion. Judy was fascinated by her. She was so different from her mom, Judy thought with disloyalty. The thought made her feel guilty. She was still frightened by the spectre of Rossville, terrified of letting her life slip away like her mother without anyone noticing—not even herself. Unlike her mother, Judy didn’t intend to spend her life being frightened of doing anything.

  Her mother was unable to forget her memories of the thirties, when for two bad years her husband had been out of work. She had managed to pass this fear of being penniless on to Judy, who consequently thought about financial security the way other girls
did about Prince Charming. Judy couldn’t help noticing that her father had not turned out to be Prince Charming. Marriage was no guarantee of money and security, she knew that. She’d have to work long and hard before she could pull a large bill out of her alligator purse and hand it to a waiter without looking at the check as Aunt Hortense had just done.

  Having cross-questioned Judy about her future plans, Aunt Hortense said thoughtfully, “If you have nobody to look after you, please remember that I have nobody to look after. I am not as fierce as I look, and I remember very well what it was like to be seventeen, so telephone me if you need help. In fact, please telephone me anyway.”

  Maurice drove the two girls back to Neuilly. Judy looked at his broad shoulders below the black peaked cap. “Do you think intimacy was ever committed?” she whispered.

  “With Aunt Hortense, who knows?” Maxine whispered back.

  As the old Mercedes sped through the centre of Paris, Judy felt as if she were in heaven. Like many an American before her, she was already in love with Paris.

  8

  THE DUSTY FOYER of the Hôtel de Londres had an air of minding its own business. Faded wallpaper peeled from the top of the walls and the baseboards were well kicked.

  “Where is the elevator?” Maxine asked the receptionist.

  “At the Ritz.” He jerked a thumb toward the staircase at the back of the hall. The girls walked past an exhausted palm tree that sagged in a copper pot, then climbed the creaking stairs to the fifth floor where at the end of a dim passage they found Guy’s workroom. Small and low-ceilinged, far cleaner than the rest of the hotel, it overlooked a small courtyard. Silhouetted in front of the window, a woman crouched over a whirring sewing machine; shirt-sleeves rolled up, a man in a white apron was cutting into a length of mauve wool on a table that occupied most of the room. Bolts of fabric were stacked in a rack to the left of the door and on the right were two dressrails on wheels from which hung garments shrouded in white tissue paper.

  “So now I show you,” said Guy, after introducing the girls to his cutter and seamstress, who were just about to leave at the end of their day. One by one, Guy took the clothes off the rail and carefully slid off the tissue. His designs were mainly suits or separates; sensuous silk jackets and skirts in misty rose and lavender were matched to pants in darker jersey; jewel-coloured velvet suits in garnet, topaz and sapphire could be worn with matching wool coats. The designs were simple, without boning or padding.

  “These clothes should be worn with a lot of bold, gilt jewelry,” Guy explained, as the girls tried on the clothes and then admired themselves in the big mirror. “I’m only doing one raincoat but in three different lengths; it’s reversible. It can be worn over anything in the collection with or without a belt.” He produced a cinnamon gabardine raincoat with a purple wool lining. “I would also like to do it in pewter gray lined with pale pink, but I can’t afford to produce my designs in too many colours in my first collection.”

  “I love nearly everything,” Judy said enthusiastically after she and Maxine in their petticoats—clothes-mad like all girls of their age—had spent half an hour trying on the garments. “They’re so easy to move in—easy to live in, as well, I should think. They feel as if you’re wearing no clothes at all. You’re not conscious of them.”

  “What I’m trying to do is to produce clothes that make a woman look smart without making her feel uncomfortable. Did you notice that all my skirt bands are elasticized? And I insist that my model visit the bathroom in every single garment to make sure it’s totally practical.”

  Guy’s comfortable clothes were very different from the exquisite but constricting ensembles that Judy had seen at Dior. Although Guy’s look was casual, it was nevertheless elegant because of the clever cut and the beautiful fabrics he used.

  He pulled a bolt of mauve silk from the rack, draped a length over Judy’s bare shoulders and started to pin it. “This isn’t the way most designers work,” he mumbled through a mouthful of pins. “Only Madame Gres cuts straight from the fabric and pins onto a live model.”

  “Do your cutter and seamstress fit people?” asked Judy.

  “Never! The fit is the most important part of a garment and I do it. I don’t much like doing it, but I have nobody else who can. Good fitters are born, not made, and in Paris we have the best fitters in the world. Keep still or I’ll jab you. I can also make patterns and samples, cut, sew, fit and supervise a small workshop, but I’m primarily a designer and when I’m big enough I’ll never do anything else, thank you.”

  “What about selling?” asked Judy. “Who sells your stuff?”

  Guy looked worried. “To date there has been no need for a vendeuse because my clients know me and they bring their friends. They think it’s intriguing to come to this shabby place—they feel they’re getting something cheap, which of course they are. Also they feel they are in on a new discovery, which I hope is true. Now, how do you like that, ma chère?” He stepped back and Judy moved carefully to the mirror. She was wearing the classically draped dress of a Grecian goddess.

  “Oh, how I long for this!”

  “When I’m richer, then we shall see. At the moment every sou I spend is vital.” He rapidly unpinned her and deftly caught the length of silk as it fell from her shoulders. “Now can I offer you an aperitif?”

  He opened the adjoining door that led to his bedroom, a strange contrast to the immaculate, severely practical room in which they stood. Guy’s personal possessions—books, underwear, shoes—were piled on the end of the bed, which was the only semiempty space in a room crammed with half-draped tailor’s dummies, metal clothes racks, bales of muslin and paper patterns. Guy pushed the heap of books and shoes farther down the bed and the three of them sat cross-legged on it, sipping white vermouth from one toothmug and two paper cups, as the girls listened to Guy’s plans. He outlined his career and spread his life plan before them—almost as clear as the aerial view from the Arc de Triomphe had been yesterday, Judy thought wistfully as she said, “You sound so confident.”

  “Myself? I live in constant self-doubt, indecision and secret panic about my capability,” Guy said. He added gloomily, “You have no idea what agony it is to decide whether a jacket should be double or single-breasted—and such a decision is vital because I cannot afford to produce many garments, so it has to be the one or the other. And until I can afford an assistant, there is no one with whom to discuss anything. I tell you, it’s lonely at the bottom.”

  “I know what you mean,” said Judy. “I’m going to miss Maxine dreadfully. I’ll have no one to chat with, not even a room to live in as yet.”

  “Why not move in here?” Guy suggested. “It’s the cheapest decent place I could find, only five hundred francs a night—that’s about two dollars isn’t it? The Left Bank is full of cheap rooming hotels for students, but this one is clean, and they bring you breakfast in bed, if you can afford it. When I had influenza I had three breakfasts a day sent up. And there’s a telephone; they take messages if you tip that surly bastard in the hall once a month.”

  “A wonderful idea,” Maxine said. “Guy can keep an eye on you, and you can advise him on double or single breasts.”

  On their way to dinner, they stopped at the hall desk where Maxine negotiated with the surly porter over monthly rates and got a fifteen percent discount. Then they walked along the rue Bonaparte to the noisy Beaux Arts restaurant on the corner. Lifting her glass of wine, Judy felt much more settled. Now all she needed was a job.

  Judy didn’t feel so cheerful two days later when she went job hunting.

  Armed with her Swiss diplomas, she was interviewed in a shabby employment office where she sat in line until her name was called. She was interrogated by a woman of uncertain age, with a typically French face—that combination of sallow skin, weary brown eyes and expensively gilded hair pulled back in a chignon. She spoke very fast and Judy stuttered when making her replies. At the end of the interview, the woman gave a long sniff to imply d
oubt, shrugged her shoulders to imply resignation, then pulled a large kitchen timer out of her drawer and gave Judy a typing test. In spite of the intimidating atmosphere, Judy passed. The woman gave another long sniff to imply surprise, shrugged her shoulders to imply that one never knows, made four telephone calls, handed Judy four address cards and sent her off to her first interview.

  Having finally located the building, Judy took the cagelike elevator to an airless office where she was interviewed by a finicky little fat man who kept looking down and brushing his left sleeve as he asked his questions. After he turned her down, she went on to the next interview, and, in all, spent a week and a half visiting similar dingy offices. They were all painted gray or beige, smelled of dust and old biscuits and the desks were piled with overstuffed, crumpled, cream cardboard files. Finally, after being beaten down from the salary that the agency had quoted, Judy was accepted as a temporary secretary by a large, middle-aged fabric importer, with a face like a gray egg upon which had been painted a drooping black mustache. He dictated in French, but when necessary, Judy translated his letters into English or German before typing them, and struggled with the innumerable custom forms that were necessary to get tweed from Scotland and linen from Dublin to Paris, or to send silk from Lyons and lace from Valenciennes to New York. Her employer obviously regarded her as nothing more than a walking, talking, typing machine and made no effort to speak to her apart from a brief “B’jour, mademoiselle.”

  “I wore your beautiful silk dress to a ball last night, and I danced every dance with a different young man—and I was bored limp,” Maxine said gloomily to her Aunt Hortense as they sat in the small, maple-wood panelled library of Aunt Hortense’s Paris apartment. Maxine, who had sought the meeting, was tense but determined.

  “I can’t seem to talk about this to my parents without a fight. Anybody would think we were living in 1850, not 1950. Mama can’t understand that I don’t want to go to all the right parties and dance with all the right men, then marry one of them. I don’t want to marry Pierre, the god of the ski-slopes, and then have a complete duplicate of the dull, comfortable life that my mother has led.”