After a further hour of struggling, I began to despair. My feet were blistered from slithering around inside the boots. Rain and sweat ran down the back of my neck. I was spattered with smelly bog muck. My early enthusiasm had faded, leaving just the naked will to go on. Questions nagged away: What if he doesn’t want me? The promise of meeting him had kept me moving upward, but could I ever make it back if he rejected me? Was there a handy cliff from which I could dramatically hurl myself? Or should I lie down in the mist and let the bog close over me? Just how terrible was my hair looking?
I sat down on a rock. I’d bought a packet of crisps and some chocolate for emergencies, and this felt like an emergency. The snack did all the right kinds of things to my blood sugar and serotonin levels, and I plowed on. Another ridge and I passed through the layer of mist. I could see the village below and the gray sea beyond. I turned slowly around. Other islands rose from the sea, some low and green, some high and jagged. Were they also root vegetables chucked by easily duped devils?
I was almost at the top of the mountain. I kept forcing my exhausted legs to keep moving and dragging air into my aching lungs, although I was now sure that Ludo wasn’t here at all, that I’d come up the wrong mountain or landed on the wrong island altogether. Perhaps it was the parsnip or the celeriac I wanted and not the turnip.
Then, just as my will to go on was collapsing, I saw him, standing stark against the skyline, not thirty feet away. He looked thinner than I remembered. Cheekbones had appeared. His hair was wild and curly, which always used to annoy me back in London but here seemed the only way for hair to be. I approached, panting and giddy with emotion. I stood by his side. He did not turn to me at first, but I knew that he knew I was here. Had he seen me labor up the mountain? The view from here was superb, with dark cliffs falling away to the crashing sea.
“Do you see?” he whispered, pointing to the sky. His words were whipped away by the wind, but I knew him well enough to lip-read. “It’s the courtship flight. The male brings the female a tidbit of food, some scrap of carrion, and they pass it back and forth in the air. It builds trust.”
All I could see were two uninteresting black smudges against the solid folds of gray.
“How touching,” I said, carefully moderating the irony. I had decided only at the last second to go for low-key. I had to fight the overpowering urge to throw my arms around him, to beg for forgiveness and love.
Ludo half turned and quarter smiled. “You’ve come a long way.”
“Miles.”
“What made you come?”
“Nothing much else on this weekend.”
Again he smiled.
“I got a letter from Veronica,” he said.
“She’s nuttier than ever.”
“She was nice about you.”
“See what I mean?”
“There was something about a baby in the park, and drinking beer with tramps. She was worried about you.”
“I’ll tell you the story sometime, it’ll make you laugh. But it’s very long.”
“Is there a short version?”
“Mmm. It wasn’t my baby; it wasn’t my beer; they weren’t my tramps.”
For the first time Ludo turned fully toward me. “What about the van driver chap?”
“It was nothing. He was nothing. But I’m sorry I fucked up.”
“Everyone’s allowed to fuck up. You suit wellies.”
“You suit the wilderness. You must love it here.”
“I always thought I would. The dream of escape, leaving civilization behind, all the deceit, the pretense.”
I looked at him closely. “I’d never want to take you away from this, you know.”
“Can I tell you something, Katie?”
“Mmm.”
“Something so secret you must never tell it to anyone, ever.”
“Go on.”
“You swear?”
“I swear.”
“I’m bored. Bored out of my skull.”
“What?”
“Bored, bored, bored. I mean, eagles, and deer, and arctic skuas, and shearwaters, and seals, and dolphins. All very nice. For the first couple of months. But I haven’t had a decent conversation since London. Tom’s been e-mailing me about the bright lights. I miss it, all of it. I even miss the traffic. I can’t sleep here, it’s so quiet. ”
“Why don’t you come home?”
He looked at me again, his brow wrinkled with some complex mixture of amusement and vexation and tenderness.
“I can’t leave the eagles . . . yet. Not until the eggs are hatched. They need me.”
“I can wait, if you want me to.”
“I have to tell you about Veronica.”
“You don’t have to tell me anything.”
“No, I want to. We spent the night together.”
“Yes, I know.”
“You know?”
“She told me.”
“What did she say?”
“That you’d taken her out, got drunk, went to bed.”
“But nothing really happened.”
“Nothing?”
“No, not really. Just a cuddle. I got a bit emotional. Very shamefaced in the morning.”
“So you didn’t have a two-week affair?”
“A two-week affair? God, no.”
“So why did you want to tell me about it?”
“Oh, just for the sake of completeness. I didn’t want anything hidden. I hate secrets.”
“I wouldn’t have minded, too much, you know, if you had had an affair with Veronica. I think I probably owed you both that much.”
“Owed us an affair?”
“Owed you forgiveness.”
“You have changed, haven’t you, Katie?” I wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement.
“Living means changing. Can’t stop it. If you mean am I nicer, kinder, wiser, I don’t know. Maybe, a bit. If you mean have I stopped being vain and self-centered, and driven, and bitchy, and in love with fashion, then no, not really.”
“I’m not sure I’d have you any other way.”
“I’m not sure you’d have a choice.”
“But there’s something else. Can’t quite put my finger on it. . . .”
I laid my head on his shoulder and put my arm carefully around his waist. Together we watched the eagles, brought closer now and clear against the gray. Tossed about on the high wind, they seemed at the same time the playthings of great forces beyond their control and yet shrewd masters of their destiny, charming the wind with subtle feathers and cunning flesh.
And as we watched, some words came into my head, words from another time. Words about innocence and forgetfulness, about a new beginning . . . and a yes, a sacred Yes.
I must have murmured “Yes” out loud, because Ludo touched my cheek gently with his fingers and looked closely into my eyes and said (and this time I knew it was a question):
“Yes?”
And of course, what else could I say but another, and a final, “Yes.”
CHAPTER 22
The Eternal Recurrence
“Latifa.”
“Yeah?”
“What have we done?”
“Twelve here, nine at Beeching Place.”
I wasn’t really listening. I had other things on my mind.
“Oh, good. Twenty-two.”
Latifa rolled her eyes.
We were sitting round the new conference table. Me, Latifa, Frankie (who was taking notes earnestly, trying to look like a real PA), Penny (who’d come in specially, as this was a corporate policy and not a design meeting, and she did, after all, still own the company), and Mandy and Vimla, who were there in a startlingly innovative move to represent the shop floor. Kamil would have been there, but he was in hospital having some gallstones removed, a shared complaint that had brought him closer to Uncle Shirkuh. Ludo paced around, looking restless. Of course, he had a hefty financial stake in things, but he was there mainly to make tea and give me a lift home afterw
ard. We’d spent ten minutes talking about trivia, dwelling longest, after a ten-minute digression on the frayed cord for the steam iron, on the need for a new air-conditioning unit or at least a window that opened in the studio. It was Penny who, with an ironic smile, complete with the carefully arched eyebrows I’d seen her practice so many times in the mirror of her compact, brought us to order.
“Isn’t it time we discussed the offer?”
Somehow I found Penny’s newfangled sweet reasonableness more irritating than her old battle-ax mode.
The offer.
It had come more or less out of the blue. It must have been the Stephanie Phylum-Crater Oscar dress that did it. A side-draped Grecian column in jade satin georgette. Shockingly classical, was the general verdict; outrageous in its conservatism. And yeah, it was pretty cool.
And boy, did the Germans need some cool. Their clothes had become stuffy and dull and invisible. They still did catwalk shows, but no one ever reported them, not even the Draper’s Record. They offered ten million, which would make Penny a very wealthy pensioner. I was tied in for three years, with Latifa as my assistant. I could wave good-bye to all the production bullshit and simply design. Just what I’d always wanted, wasn’t it?
Well, yes. But I also wanted to run my own company, to make the decisions that mattered. In the past few months, as Penny had faded into the background, I had really felt as though it were all falling into place. I’d done most of the designing, with Latifa’s increasingly shrewd judgment to back me up. Penny was allowed to nod things through to give her the illusion that she still mattered, but the truth is that she didn’t. I’d also begun to revamp the business from the bottom up. The shops were being restyled by Galatea Gisbourne in a sheventiesh dishco pashtiche with revolving glitter balls and flashing underfoot lighting. I’d started to reshape our wholesale side, cutting out the deadwood and targeting young new retailers.
If we sold out to the Germans, then everything would change. I’d never inherit the company; I’d always be a wage slave, however pampered and stroked. Ludo’s advice was useless. “You have to follow your heart,” he’d said, meaning, I suppose, that I should say no to the offer, but my heart was torn.
“I talked to Veronica,” I said, playing for time. “She thinks it’ll be hard to sell it to the editors, not to mention the buyers. We’ve always made such a play about being homegrown. All that classic English rose stuff. There’s bound to be a backlash when it comes out that the Germans are behind us.”
Yes, Veronica was doing our PR. The full story would take too long to tell now, but let’s just say that her simpleminded lack of guile was universally mistaken for high cunning, and she’d become about the most sought-after PR in London. Just having her on the team got you the coverage. I had to send Ludo round to beg, and I soon lost count of the precise number of layers of irony it all involved.
“But that will be their problem, won’t it, Katie.”
“Well, their problem and my problem. I will still be here.”
“But we won’t, will we?” Mandy cut in. She was chewing gum, or possibly tobacco, as well as dragging intermittently on a foul cigarette. Her anger seemed to be directed at me, although I was the only person standing between her and the big drop. Penny hadn’t wanted Mandy and Vimla there at all. It wasn’t the way she used to run things.
“I did try to get guarantees for the machinists,” continued Penny, staring vaguely into space. “But you know they wanted the brand and the design team, not the production and manufacturing side. Mandy, Vimla, you’re professionals, experts. Good machinists are rare. You’ll all find something else.”
“Back to the sweatshop,” said Latifa, speaking for Vimla, who nodded vigorously at the interjection. It was going to be hard for the girls at Kamil’s. Not to mention Kamil himself. They were never going to be part of the deal. They needed me. And in some curious way, I felt that I needed them, too.
And I could stop it all. The Germans wanted me as well as the brand. They might pay something just for the name Penny Moss, but not ten million. Not enough to make it all worthwhile. But why should I stop it? It would mean joining the fashion elite. I’d get so much personal coverage. The cameras would flash. The parties; if not fame, then something only just short of fame. Should I, could I say no, just for the sake of being in control? Just for the sake of the Willesden team? For Vimla, and Roshni with her erratic fallopians, and the still feuding Pratima and Bina, and all the other girls who’d saved my life; for Kamil, now proud and modest rather than ashamed and boastful?
Word had, of course, leaked out. I’d already noticed the change: the good table that materialized out of nowhere at Nobu; the look merely of condescension rather than cold hatred from the assistant at Voyage; the unexpected phone call from the the Daily Beast’s fashion editor. “So nice to chat, Katie dear,” she’d said, and I could hear the leathery skin scrape and creak as she’d pulled it into a smile. “Why don’t we do a feature together? And, you know, there’s always room for a column, if you ever decide to immortalize your fashion wisdom.”
It was a long way from East Grinstead, but still I couldn’t decide.
Ludo caught my eye for a second and did his little frowny smile. I looked away and found myself lost for a moment, a long, long moment, in the memory of two nights ago. He was urgent and eager, with a hungry, vulpine light in those soft eyes. This was the biggest change. I suppose it was loss, and the fear of loss; pain and redemption; the abyss turned inside out to become a mountain. Anyway, it was nice. Very, very nice.
And then I saw that they were all looking at me. I must have missed something. My eyes were watering from Mandy’s cigarette, and I had to blink four times quickly. As I looked back at them they began to fade and with them faded the memories of Willesden and Kilburn and I saw the lights of a thousand cameras flashing in constellations and galaxies and I was walking past the crowd and I half turned and bent back my head in the way I know looks so pretty and gave them my special smile and now I was saying to Penny, who was the only one I could still see clearly, and I didn’t know exactly what I was saying yes to, but she knew, I said Yes, I will, yes.
“I’m sorry, Katie,” said Penny with something of the old hauteur, “did you say something? You’re mumbling, girl.”
“Say? What did I say?” I had no very clear idea of what I’d said or what I was going to say next. What came out was: “I said, fuck the Germans.”
“Fuck the Germans?”
“Fuck the Germans.”
Ludo was smiling at me. “Fuck the Germans,” he said softly.
And we did.
About the Author
REBECCA CAMPBELL was educated at the London School of Economics and the London College of Fashion. She and her mother, Paddy Campbell, run a clothing design firm that sells in Ireland and throughout the United Kingdom. She lives in North London with her husband, a writer, and their son, Gabriel.
Slave to Fashion is a work of fiction, and all of the events,
situations, incidents, and dialogues contained in it are products
of the author’s imagination. Other than those well-known persons
to whom references are made that are incidental to the plot, the
characters in the work are creations of the author, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Where the names
of actual persons are mentioned, the situations, occurrences, and descriptions relating to them, and any statements and dialogues that may be attributed to them, are completely fictional and are not to be construed as real.
Copyright © 2002 by Rebecca Campbell
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. Published in the United States by Villard Books,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Villard Books is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.
Colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Published in
the United Kingdom by HarperCollins Ltd., London,
as The Favours and Fortunes of Katie Castle
library of congress cataloging-in-publication data
Campbell, Rebecca
Slave to fashion: a novel / Rebecca Campbell.
p. cm.
1. Young women—Fiction. 2. London (England)—Fiction.
3. Fashion—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6103.A56 S58 2001
823´.92—dc21 2001045339
Cover design: Edward O’Dowd
Cover illustration: Barbara McGregor
Villard Books website address: www.villard.com
eISBN: 978-1-58836-221-6
v3.0
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