Lace

by Shirley Conran

  “Ow,” said Judy, “a little less depth to the pins please.” Guy finished his work and stood back.

  “See how that’s going to flow as she walks?” The pinned material had taken the shape of a coat, flared at the back like a bullfighter’s cloak. It was cut on the same lines as that mulberry coat he’d just finished for Maxine, hanging on the rail by the door, ready for them to take to her this evening. Judy was looking forward to a couple of peaceful days in the country, tramping the frozen, silent woods by day and lying in front of a crackling log fire in the evening.

  “How does Pierre Mouton feel about wool?” Empress suddenly asked, looking him straight in the eye.

  How did she know? Guy wondered. The Belgian manufacturer would never have told Empress of their plan, and the only other person who knew it was Judy. It had to be a factory leak. You couldn’t keep a damned thing quiet in this industry, everybody knew everything within five minutes.

  “The buzz is that you’re producing a new RTW collection and it’s being manufactured outside Brussels by Pierre Mouton. You’ll show the RTW at the same time as you show your summer couture collection, then start selling the next day so that RTW garments will be selling before any couture customer can get her clothes fitted, let alone finished.” Empress never took her eyes off Guy’s face. “Of course this might turn out to be professional suicide on your part, because all your couture customers will be furious, but I can see that it could be a daring new way of linking RTW to couture designs. Do you agree?”

  Guy stared at her. How did she know? No factory hand could possibly know that. They had calculated that the couture customers wouldn’t be irritated by the RTW collection if they were offered first choice of the RTW garments. And the RTW wasn’t a copy of the couture collection. He had designed two collections calculated to overlap, rather than have one a cheap copy of the other.

  “Pierre Mouton has always bought from me,” Guy said, affecting calm, “but you know that his factories aren’t geared up to produce boutique-quality clothes.”

  Empress looked at him sharply. “You haven’t answered my question.”

  “If what you say were true, you know I couldn’t answer it. Pierre Mouton is one of my best customers. That’s all I’m prepared to say.”

  “Well, that wraps it up,” Empress said gaily, snapped her notebook shut and turned to Judy. “Now I’d love another cup of coffee. It’s a joy to get a good cup of coffee in Paris. Sometimes I suspect that they’re still making it out of ground acorns as they did during the war.”

  “It’s because the French are so stingy that they won’t use enough coffee. The secret is simply to use twice as many beans as they do,” said Judy. She was happy to talk about anything to get the conversation away from Pierre Mouton. “But you can’t do anything about French milk,” she said. “I don’t think French cows have blood in their veins. I still sometimes long for a glass of real American milk. I still get homesick for silly little things like that, although I’ve now been away for six years.”

  She got homesick for bigger things than milk. However long she lived in Paris, however much she loved it, she suspected that her character was too basically American to allow her to settle in Europe forever. She sometimes wondered if that was the reason why she never seemed to fall in love like every other woman in Paris. She didn’t want to marry a European. She went out with the eligible Frenchmen that Aunt Hortense produced from time to time, but she never seemed to feel entirely at ease with them except for darling Guy. The rest were so damned suave. But that was another worry: she was certainly having a terrific time, but she didn’t want to play second string to Guy all her life. What had happened to her own career?

  After Empress left, Judy shook off the sudden wistful yearning that she always felt after a visit from an American journalist who knew that a cheerleader wasn’t a political position and who knew the difference between a milkshake and a soda.

  Judy shook her fist at Guy, “I didn’t say a word! You practically told her. She only had to put two and two together, and she must have heard something as well. You must have told someone, you must have hinted. I knew you wouldn’t be able to keep your lip buttoned. Pillow talk, I suppose.”

  “I swear I haven’t said a word, you’re the one who chatters to journalists the whole time.” He grabbed her wrist, they lost their balance and both fell noisily onto the purple canvas sofa, pummeling each other, shrieking and laughing, flinging cushions—a deliberately childish reaction to the strain, the carefully casual mood of the interview.

  “What will the night cleaner think if she comes in?” giggled Judy, looking up at Guy’s tousled head.

  “She will be totally confused, decide that all the gossip she’s heard about me is a dirty lie, then she’ll buy a pair of black fishnet stockings and make a pass at me. You know it’s in the French blood, mixing the romantic with the practical. I’ll never have a moment’s peace.” They were giggling at the idea of their enormous sixty-year-old cleaner pouncing on slight Guy when the telephone rang. Judy scrambled to answer it. Strange, someone telephoning the office at nearly nine o’clock at night.

  But it was only three in the afternoon in Rossville. She heard her father’s voice and was immediately apprehensive. It could only mean a disaster; her father would only make a long-distance call in a cataclysmic emergency.

  “Is that you, Judy?” There was a lot of echo on the line. “I’ve got some real bad news. It’s your mother. Can you hear, Judy? You’d better come home.”

  At two in the morning they were still sitting in Aunt Hortense’s chilly library, Judy in a red wool dressing gown, Aunt Hortense in a fragile, green lace negligee under a mink coat. The central heating had shut down at midnight.

  “Your mother may well recover. A cerebral aneurysm is terrible, but not always fatal.”

  “It’s not only that. I feel so guilty. I’ve been away six years.”

  “But you told me that you wrote every week. And you were working hard. You were doing something that your mother was going to be proud of.”

  “Oh, she never said a word, she never complained or asked me to go home, but however good the excuses, I know I simply didn’t want to go home. Paris is more fun than Rossville. The weeks just dissolved into each other, it was all so exciting, and I felt that going anywhere near Rossville would be . . . an emotional trap. I was frightened that once I got back, she’d ask me to stay—and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to say no.”

  “Judy, your mother and you may not have much in common, but from what you’ve told me she realises that. I don’t think that she would have tried to stop you doing anything. I can’t see that she ever has. She obviously loves you, just as you love her in your own way. This emergency proves it—you can think of nothing but flying back to her.”

  “Prompted by guilt. Knowing that I haven’t flown back in six years.”

  “Unfortunately, I don’t know what it feels like to be a mother, but if you were my child I would give you a good shake. Guilt is boring and pointless. You are going home to see your mother who is sick. Kindly do not overdramatise the situation. You will have a happy time with her; then you will return to Paris with her blessing.”

  But Judy didn’t return to Paris. After an agonizing twelve weeks, during which her mother hung between life and death, she slowly opened her eyes and saw her only daughter at her bedside. She tried to smile and whispered with the urgency of the very ill, “That’s all I wanted. To see you once again.”

  “Oh, thank God, Ma, thank God.” She clutched her mother’s shoulder and knelt at the bedside, to bring her face close to her mother. “What can I do, Ma? What can I do to make you happy? What do you want? What can I give you?”

  There was a moment’s silence, then that weak whisper. “I’ve always thought how wonderful and brave it was of you, Judy, to go off and see new things. . . . I never could. . . . I was always afraid . . . you’re so different. I want to get to know you, I’m so proud of you . . . I want to know yo
u before I die. . . . I want to spend time with you. . . . Please. Stay nearby awhile. I know I mustn’t keep you in Rossville, but please . . . stay in America.”

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Judy promised.

  13

  THE OFFICES OF most working publicity agents do not look as if they are waiting for the House and Garden photographer to arrive, and this one was no exception, Judy thought—in fact, it was almost as dingy as the office where she’d first worked in Paris. Outside the grimy window on her left, girls in flowered dresses on the sidewalks of New York were getting the first wolf whistles of spring; inside, opposite the window, was a row of chipped, gray filing cabinets, on top of which magazines were stacked almost to the ceiling. The wall in front of her was covered with lavishly dedicated photographs of people who had been showbiz celebrities five or ten years ago. Hanging in one corner was last year’s calendar. Someone had stopped tearing off the leaves at April 5, 1954. In front of it was a gray metal desk stacked with old newspapers, more magazines and metal baskets full of old press releases. A tall, loose-limbed blond woman, wearing a scarlet suit and ludicrously high-heeled black patent shoes, perched on one corner of it. She looked as if she belonged in a detective story.

  “I guess very few people actually decide to be a press agent and study it in college,” said the blonde. “You just suddenly find you’re in it. I was a reporter until the paper folded. I was on unemployment when a friend told me that the Ice Follies was looking for an advance man. I said, ‘What’s an advance man?’ and the next week I was in Philadelphia, being one.” She dragged on her cigarette. “Just why do you want to be in PR?”

  “I’ve done some publicity work in France. I worked fairly closely in Paris with Wool International and they suggested I apply here for a job.”

  Suggested, did they? Didn’t this child realise that the head of WI in Paris had telephoned Lee & Sheldon to see if she could be fitted into the agency’s New York office? And when the agency had hesitated, it had been pleasantly suggested to them that WI would like this unknown Miss Jordan to work on their account. Simultaneously, the agency president had received a phone call from Empress Miller herself, saying that she had worked closely with Miss Jordan, whose understanding of haute-couture was far greater than her years might suggest. Empress always underplayed things, but quite obviously this kid had friends. And although she was very young, her experience was certainly impressive. So why did she want an assistant’s job? Why all this exasperating internal reshuffling just to fit in Miss Jordan?

  But Judy knew she needed on-the-job experience before she could handle an account in a New York office. She didn’t want to be an executive secretary; she wanted to bide her time while she sorted out her Seventh Avenue contacts and saw whether there was any chance of getting a job like the one she’d held with Guy. PR seemed a good way to mark time while looking around.

  She had stayed in Rossville for seventeen weeks, until her mother recovered—as much as she was likely to; she would never regain the complete use of her left arm and her mouth still drooped a little.

  Although Judy still felt guilty about having left home, she had now made peace with her mother and as much peace as she was ever likely to make with her father, who bragged in a rather touching manner about how Judy had “flown all the way from Paris, France, the very next day”. A child’s presence in time of crisis was a form of local prestige, based on the distance that the child had to travel and how fast the child covered it.

  To Judy, the town felt as claustrophobic as ever. She knew everyone, their faces, their family, their outlook and their future. The men were uninteresting, the women walked around in shapeless winter coats or shapeless pastel prints. They could only talk about recipes, the weather, their children, their last pregnancy and the last pregnancies of all their friends. The people of whom they spoke rarely had a name. Instead, they were identified by the name of their parents and where they came from, as in, “I hear Tom—Steven’s boy—is going to marry Joan MacDaniel’s girl”, or “She’s the MacDaniel girl who’s marrying that fellow from Quantico”.

  Again, Judy felt that she had to get out—and now it wasn’t only for her own self-protection. She had to earn enough to pay for the therapist and her mother’s enormous medical expenses, which her father’s insurance had only partly covered. She wrote to Guy and her other French friends to tell them why she couldn’t return to Paris, and she also sent a note to Empress Miller asking if she could suggest a suitable job in New York.

  Guy replied with an immediate, extravagant telegram: DESOLATED LOSE MY RIGHT HAND STOP UNDERSTAND YOUR MOTIVES STOP REFUSE END RELATIONSHIP STOP HOPE YOUR NEW CONTACTS HELP ESTABLISH ME AMERICA STOP HURRY HURRY STOP ONE BILLION KISSES STOP GUY

  Once in New York Judy rented a studio on East 11th Street, sent out three hundred resumes, and had telephone interviews with seventeen people, only three of whom wanted to see her when they heard she had had no previous experience in America. At times, thinking of her exciting job and the friends she had left in Paris, Judy’s shoulders sagged; she felt alone and that she had thrown away a promising future for a sentimental promise.

  Then she received a note from Empress Miller suggesting that she contact Lee & Sheldon, and a day later a letter suggesting the same thing arrived from Wool International in Paris.

  “You realise you would have to do a lot of travelling?” asked the blonde in the scarlet suit. “Basically you would assist me on the WI account. We forecast fashion trends to the press, send out news releases, prepare press kits with photographs and sketches and twice a year, after the Paris collections, we coordinate the wool models that WI has commissioned from French couturiers. We promote any wool copies that are being produced by American manufacturers and generally plug the message that wool is wonderful and they’d better buy more.” She swung an elegant nylon leg and lifted one eyebrow in query.

  “I’ve handled all that,” said Judy. “On a small scale, of course.”

  “We also appear on TV and give talks on wool, illustrated by photographs and sketches. None of it is nearly as glamorous as it sounds, by the way, not even taking fashion editors to lunch.”

  “I’m used to that,” Judy said with growing confidence.

  The blonde shifted position, started to swing the other shapely leg and said, “Press agents spend their careers explaining why their client is not an asshole. And mostly they are, of course.” She lit another cigarette. “If you join us, we would want you to handle the truck shows. The models we buy from the Paris collections immediately tour the best stores in every important town in America. We would expect you to arrange the shows, book the models and then travel with them, looking after the girls and the clothes, carrying publicity materials, photographs, display cards, samples of the fabrics being used and inexpensive giveaways. You would be booked into a different town every day of the week for four weeks twice a year. D’you think you could stand it?”

  “Try me.”

  “Let’s both try a martini.”

  Judy had never worked so hard in her life. Her boss, Pat Rogers, was merciless. An ex-journalist, she was demanding; she expected everyone else to work as fast as she did and she was a superb trainer. Judy quickly realised that if a thing wasn’t absolutely right it was wrong—nearly right was not good enough.

  “The easy way to be a good press agent,” Pat told her, “is to realise that you can’t buy good coverage with a free lunch. You have to have a good story. This isn’t Paris, kid. You have to fight for every inch of coverage because the competition is fierce.”

  She leaned back, crossed her feet on the desk and tilted her chair. “You’re trading services. What a journalist wants is the facts and fast, and maybe in return he’ll publicise your product; that’s the basic deal. There are very few really good press agents and they’re mostly exjournalists, which is why they understand what’s needed. An exjournalist knows what news is. News is what nobody knew yesterday, and if a story isn’t news, then it won’t rate
good news coverage, however interesting.”

  One day Pat said, “About time you learned to write, kid. Don’t mess around with correspondence courses. Go sleep with a journalist for a couple of months. No? Well, clear the decks for Saturday, get the Kleenex out, come around to my apartment and I’ll teach you. I am the Saturday School of Compressed Journalism, smallest of its kind in the world.”

  After two Saturdays of crumpled paper and insults, Pat stretched and said, “You’ve got the rough idea, kid. People either pick it up fast or not at all, mostly not at all. You’re impatient, which helps; you’re easily bored, which also helps; you’ll never be Ernest Hemingway, but for straight factual reporting all you need is practice. Now let’s have a martini.”

  That September, Judy set off on her first tour, travelling two days ahead of the show to check arrangements and spread the news, just like the carnival advance men of years ago. She lugged suitcases full of advance material, straightened out the inevitable snarls in arrangements, flattered, soothed and sweet-talked her way around the country and from the moment that she staggered out of bed in the morning to the moment that she fell into the next one in the next town that night, she thought only of wool.

  It was a tough and lonely life, but during the day she was too busy to care and at night she was too tired. Her life was spent rushing from airport to cheap hotel room to offices and TV studios, then back to the airport and on to the next airport. Her tiny budget didn’t enable her to stay in good hotels. Try as she might, she couldn’t stretch her personal travel allowance to cover her expenses as well as her food, and she couldn’t get the accounts department even to discuss the matter, so she started cheating on her expenses, until Pat said that the executive vice-president had pointed out that her telephone bill was bigger than his, at which Judy exploded. She liked to eat; the accounts department never allowed for the speed with which she had to cover a town in one day, or for any deviation from her theoretical routine. She suggested that the next trip be handled not by her but by one of the junior accountants and they could see how he made out.