The Milliner's Secret

by Natalie Meg Evans

  They don’t change. It sighed through her mind, above the screeching wheels of a passing locomotive. The building shook and the roof panels made the noise of a saw cutting bones. He’s taken your life and he won’t change.

  The sound came not from within her head, but from the darkness in front of her feet. Obeying an impulse she didn’t fully understand, she flashed her torch beam over the floor bricks. Laid in herringbone pattern, fifteen years of Jac in his work-boots had pressed them into the soft earth. Something odd . . . an area in the middle had sunk in the shape of a church window, narrow at the top, wide at the bottom. ‘What’s under there, Dad?’

  ‘Salope!’ Jac spat the horrible word at her. ‘What right have you to question me? Sheila has told me everything about you, how you go with men – with sailors.’

  ‘I darn well don’t!’ One sailor only, and she’d really liked him. He’d been gentle.

  Jac hawked in her direction. ‘Stumbling on to the dock, looking for a tart to stick it in, they find you!’

  ‘That isn’t nice, Jac.’ Sheila crimped her lips, but her distaste was for Cora. ‘But now we’re speaking of it, you were seen on Coronation night, back in May, going with a boy off a ship—’

  ‘A filthy foreigner!’ Jac leaped in. ‘At least your mother whored with her own kind.’ Suddenly they were moving towards her. Had Jac seen something in her face to threaten him? Was he stoking his anger to justify an explosion of violence? Cora knew that her father meant to harm her and that Sheila wouldn’t stop him. If anything, Sheila’s coy smile was egging him on. Go on, Jac, she seemed to be saying. You’ve done it before.

  Cora saw the game’s end quite clearly. ‘Get out!’ a voice screamed in her head. She dropped her torch and ran. Outside, confused by the dark, she dithered, then let her feet do the thinking. She ran towards Bermondsey Street and Pettrew’s. If necessary, she could scale the factory wall and hide in one of the outbuildings. At Pettrew’s gates, she listened for the sounds of pursuit.

  All she could hear was her own heart. She said farewell to the chimneys and the forbidding, black windows, knowing she’d sewn her last hatband – never would she be assistant forelady under Miss McCullum.

  CHAPTER 3

  PARIS, 16 JUNE 1937

  Coralie de Lirac woke by degrees until the smell of laundered cotton reminded her that she was in her bedroom, in the Hôtel Duet. Banking her pillows behind her, she inhaled a waft of rose-attar. Thornless Zéphirine Drouhins in a vase on the dressing-table had transformed into organza crinolines as she slept.

  The moments before the day asserted itself gave her time to believe in her new existence. To those left behind in London, it must seem that Cora Masson had simply vanished. It was true. Cora Masson no longer existed.

  She mentally reassembled her surroundings, beginning with walls of watered silk, wedding-veil curtains and a Chinese carpet. A cream-painted armoire took up nearly a whole wall. There was a sitting room through an arch with deep-buttoned chairs and a sofa sprung like clouds. A pearly bathroom made her gasp each time she walked into it. When poor Cora Masson had wanted a good wash, she’d gone to the council swimming-baths.

  Outside, boulevard de Courcelles hummed with light traffic, which paused now and then to allow birdsong through. An elegant road to the north-west of Paris, it straddled the 8th and 17th arrondissements. Parc Monceau lay just across the street, where Coralie loved to walk early in the morning when the grass ¬sparkled. She was learning how to be alone for the first time in her life.

  By mid-morning, impatient residents competed with tourists for pavement space. The Exposition Internationale was open for business, and according to the hotel porter – a man never without his copy of the newspaper Le Petit Parisien – up to 150,000 visitors swarmed through its pavilions each day.

  Hearing a knock, she called, ‘Entrez, s’il vous plaît.’ Speaking French was becoming second nature. Dietrich had accepted her story of being Coralie de Lirac, orphaned daughter of Belgian-French émigrés to London. On the train journey, he’d been curious about her millinery career, but hadn’t pressed when she’d brushed him off with ‘I make hats when I feel like it.’ In his world, it seemed to be normal for young women to take jobs for fun and drop them when more exciting prospects offered themselves. As for her fluency in French, which had amazed everyone she’d ever met in London – he spoke three languages and seemed to think it perfectly reasonable that she should speak two.

  He’d been unimpressed by her accent, however. ‘You sound like a kitchen maid. I shall send you to a teacher I know.’ So, twice a day now, Coralie crossed the Seine to converse with a Mademoiselle Deveau, whom Dietrich had met some years ago in Berlin. He’d been her pupil. ‘Anyone who can get Germans sounding their rs at the back of the throat and pronouncing -euille like a native will buff you up in no time.’

  Two two-hour lessons each day had brought Coralie’s French on fast, but such concentrated mental effort tired her. To relax, she always walked to Mademoiselle Deveau’s Left Bank flat, taking a different bridge each time so she could see Paris from new viewpoints. The hotel’s commissionaire would have called a taxi for her, and Dietrich provided her with cash for such essentials, but she loved exploring. Paris stone was the colour of unbleached flour, or of golden pastry. Roofs were all of uniform pitch, with dormer windows peering through the slates. First and second-floor balconies were black-metal lace. She even found herself admiring trees, lampposts, Métro canopies . . .

  ‘You are responding to the genius of Haussmann,’ Dietrich had told her. ‘He married stone with light to raise the eye from the pavement to the sky. For the trees lining the boulevards, thank Napoleon the Third. As for curly street furniture, you are admiring art nouveau.’

  Dietrich enjoyed educating her, when he had time. He was busy for much of the day, catching up with his many contacts. On their arrival, though, he’d devoted a whole day to her, taking her to the department store Printemps. Handing her over to a saleswoman, a vendeuse, he’d said, ‘Mademoiselle lost her luggage on the journey. Please ensure she has everything she needs.’

  For three hours the vendeuse had held her captive. The oversized armoire now held summer dresses, jackets and shoes. Her chest of drawers was full of gossamer lingerie so fine Coralie was reluctant to wear it.

  Soon, Dietrich promised, he would take her to his favourite couturier for clothes that would change her for ever. She’d objected. There was only so much change a person could take in one go, and he shouldn’t be spending money on her. Bringing her to Paris had been enough. But he seemed to take pleasure in it, and as for money, there didn’t seem to be any shortage.

  A maid set down a breakfast tray. ‘Bonjour, Madame. Vous avez bien dormée?’

  ‘Like a whippet that chased a bus all the way to Brighton.’ She answered in English because . . . well, good luck saying it in French. She answered the question differently each morning and the girl always laughed, though Coralie doubted she understood a word. After sweeping back the curtains, letting in a tidal wave of sunshine, the maid left. Coralie gave a long sniff.

  Good. No coffee. It had taken a week for the kitchen to cancel the coffee and send up tea. At first, they’d obliged with a pot of hot piddle. It had taken another week to get a brew that was the right shade of brown, with milk, not lemon. Lemon with pancakes, yes. A squeeze of lemon to rinse your hair or bring your windowpanes up sparkling . . . but in a cuppa? They had a lot to learn, the French. But they really knew how to make bread, and their croissants were beyond words. The hotel got those from a baker whose wares jumped from his oven on to your plate and were served with white butter and jam – called confiture – which bore no relation to the red paste she’d bought at the Barnham Street corner shop.

  Stop thinking about Barnham Street.

  She poured tea and piled her plate up, intending to slip back into bed before her nightgown grew cold. Only the telephone rang.

  ‘Battersea Dogs’ Home, Lady Basset speaking.’ She knew wh
o it was, since only one person in Paris ever rang her. Except he wasn’t in Paris; he was in Germany on business. He’d left four days ago, saying that he was going first to Switzerland, then tracking back to Berlin. He wasn’t due in Paris until the day after tomorrow.

  ‘Good morning, Coralie. Did you get my roses?’

  ‘They came with dinner. Know something? Nobody has ever sent me roses before.’ Or any flowers, unless you counted a bunch of violets Donal had shoved at her one Easter-time—

  Don’t think about Donal.

  ‘I am glad to hear it. I wish to be the first with you for everything.’

  She bit her lip, wondering how he’d react if she told him that you can’t unscramble an egg or put the stalk back on a cherry. If the merchant vessel Antigone hadn’t sailed into Rotherhithe docks five weeks ago, she’d still be virgin-intact. But it had and, well, that was a conversation best left for later. ‘I’m having breakfast in bed. How about you?’

  ‘Lazy girl, I had mine hours ago. I get up with the sun. A habit from when I lived in the countryside and it amused me to walk to the nearest farm and shout in the cockerel’s ear to wake the wretch up.’

  She laughed. She liked the way Dietrich told her stories, even when he was talking about ordinary things. One of the nicest things he’d said in their first days together was that she made him think in pictures, not in straight lines.

  She’d puzzled over it. ‘Pictures – because I’m a dunce?’

  ‘You express yourself through imagery, which tells me your mind is that of an artist. I find that stimulating.’

  Shaken at being called an artist, she’d almost betrayed herself. ‘I only ever painted one picture, when I was five. It was for our school victory – I mean peace – parade to celebrate the end of the war. We had to daub something to do with the armistice. I painted my dad in his armchair because that’s what I thought armistice meant. Nobody was impressed.’

  Dietrich had replied fiercely that schoolteachers had no business embroiling children in war or politics. The hazel eyes had iced over. ‘Politics, like wine and strong cheese, is an adult taste that should not be forced on the young.’

  She took a croissant and sat cross-legged on the bed. ‘Where are you? Still in Berlin?’ He had a flat there and a house in a town a little distance outside. His wife lived there, he’d told her, with their children, a boy and girl. She’d known Dietrich fifteen days now, if she counted Derby Day, and that was pretty much all she’d learned about him.

  ‘I’m in a café, on Leningrad, with a taxi waiting outside.’

  Leningrad? ‘I thought you were in Berlin.’

  ‘Rue de Leningrad. Less than ten minutes away. May I take breakfast with you?’

  Her heart pattered. She’d thought the line sounded clear! ‘I wasn’t expecting you back yet.’

  ‘I hoped you would be pleased. I wanted to see you. So?’

  ‘You said you’d already had breakfast.’

  ‘Hours ago, on the train. So?’

  ‘Of course.’ She could hardly keep him away. Didn’t want to keep him away. She’d been alone for four days, unless you counted Mademoiselle Deveau and the maid, and the woman who’d come in and styled her hair. Four days without a chat was a long time for a factory girl.

  Flicking crumbs off the bedspread, she wondered what to put on. One of her new dresses, or stay in her nightie? Pink slipper satin, it felt more like evening dress than nightwear. Only . . . she was completely naked underneath, which would scream invitation. On the other hand, she’d told him she was still in bed so it would look odd if she greeted him in a button-front dress and a cardigan.

  Sort yourself out, girl. Dietrich had settled her here because he wanted her company at night as well as during the day. He had taken a suite one flight up and an unexpected business trip had not altered the undeclared contract.

  Truth was, she was frightened of disappointing him and it all ending. Dietrich wanted to be ‘first’ with her, but he was going to find out sooner or later that he’d been pipped to the post. How to tell him? In her world, girls didn’t talk about such things. Not to men, at any rate. Either they kept themselves virginal for their wedding day, or they got their fellas drunk first time so they didn’t notice. She couldn’t see herself getting Dietrich drunk, not if he didn’t want to be.

  Did it even matter? She wasn’t so stupid as to think there was a future for the two of them. Even without a wife back in Germany, marriage was unimaginable. He wasn’t just wealthy and part of the international set, he was titled. Dietrich August Graf von Elbing. ‘Graf’ meant ‘Count’, he had told her. It was why the waiters and doormen at the Duet called him ‘Monsieur le Comte’. They were never going to call her ‘Madame la Comtesse’. In France, they called girls like her ‘irrégulières’.

  ‘“Can’t get away to marry you today, my wife won’t let me!”’ she trilled, to cover her nerves, as she turned on the taps at the bathroom basin. He’d said he was ten minutes away but she reckoned about fifteen, Paris traffic and all that. In front of the mirror, she combed her curls into the sleek shape the stylist had designed for her.

  She was brushing her teeth when a finger-tap came at the door. Surely not? Rushing out of the bathroom, she found herself face to face with Dietrich. Through peppermint froth, she accused him, ‘That was never fifteen minutes.’

  ‘Nine, I think.’ Dietrich threw his jacket on to a chair, then took off his tie and threw that too. Looking shockingly wide-awake in shirtsleeves and a buttoned waistcoat, he indicated her toothbrush. ‘You look like the Statue of Liberty, if with a somewhat reduced torch. Good morning. Shall we go to bed?’

  Unseated by the direct question, she seized the first excuse that came to mind – Dietrich must have spent hours on a train so didn’t he want a proper, hot bath first? Not waiting for an answer, Coralie rushed back into the bathroom and turned on the taps. Then she rinsed her mouth and checked herself in the mirror, which was so steamy, she looked like a ripe peach. Returning to the bedroom, she asked, ‘Cup of tea?’

  ‘Tea? Good God. Coffee, if you must. I shall drink it in the bath.’

  She called room service, then busied herself rearranging the china on her breakfast tray, because Dietrich looked as if he meant to take her in his arms. He looked edgier than usual, though that was probably because he’d travelled through the night. She wished she could act like women in films, slink and say ‘dahling’, but she’d had no practice. Nobody had ever tried to seduce her. Actually, she’d never made love inside a building. Southwark Park for her. ‘You can’t drink coffee in that bath. It’s a monster tub. It sucks you down.’

  ‘Then you must sit with me, keep me from danger.’

  ‘Don’t suppose you’d fit down the plughole.’

  ‘Coralie?’ His eyes were tolerant, his smile too, but she sensed his frustration. ‘You’re pelting me with nonsense.’

  She dashed away to turn off the bath water and he followed her. She felt him absorbing her shape. Her first two days in Paris, she’d been unable to eat or sleep. Every time she’d closed her eyes, she’d seen her father advancing on her, Sheila smiling in collusion. Dietrich had acquired sleeping grains, which he’d given her with strict instructions not to overdo it.

  ‘Something happened to you, to do with this.’ He’d gently touched her black eye, which was going through its rainbow stage. ‘As I know you have run away, can I presume that it was more like an escape?’

  She’d nodded, chasing down the veronal with gulps of water.

  ‘Whatever is in your mind, throw it behind you. Before you know it, you will have the habit of happiness again.’

  She’d tried that, and since then at least the desire to eat had returned. As her choppy reflection in the bath water proved, three good meals a day had already erased traces of childhood hunger. Dietrich’s shadow suddenly overlapped hers.

  ‘They’re a long time with that coffee. I’ll phone again,’ she rambled nervously.

  Dietrich began to
unbutton his shirt. ‘Tell them strong and no milk. A quarter-teaspoon of sugar.’

  She used the time to put a robe on over her nightdress. When the coffee arrived and she took his cup in to him, he was basking with his arms draped over the rim, his hair like a halo. The bath really was a monster – he could lie full-length. How muscular he was. The thought was out before she censored her gaze. She’d never properly seen an adult male body before. In Southwark Park, she’d made love under the stars. In films, only women took baths and they stepped into the water swathed in towels before disappearing under a snowdrift of bubbles. She’d never seen how water made a man’s chest hair darken and straighten, or turned fair skin bronze. Damn, she was blushing. ‘I’ll leave you to your, um, washings.’ Washings? Oh, God.

  ‘But you haven’t given me my coffee. Sit down and talk.’

  She chose the bath’s edge and fixed her eyes on the expanse of muscle between Dietrich’s chin and navel.

  He sat up, palming water from his face before taking his coffee. ‘Why have you put on an outdoor coat?’

  ‘It’s my dressing-gown.’

  ‘But the intention is the same. Did you think it would rain in here?’ He flicked water. ‘Or were you afraid you would get cold? It is easily eighty degrees Fahrenheit.’

  ‘Only eighty?’ And look how steam was moulding slipper-satin to her curves.

  He was looking. ‘Take it off. I want to see your arms. And your throat and shoulders. You have a heroic shape, Coralie, which I saw even before I noticed your poor eye the first time we met. Don’t hide from me.’

  ‘I’m not hiding.’ She removed the dressing-gown.

  ‘Closer.’ Dietrich reached with the hand not holding his cup, and curled it around her waist, drawing her towards him. She could feel his sodden handprint as his eyes closed. When he cupped a breast through the satin, she gave a soft cry. Eyes opened lazily and she felt he was smiling, though his mouth didn’t move. So grave, so perfect, she wanted to lean forward and trace his lips with hers.