The Girl Who Dreamed of Paris

by Natalie Meg Evans

  Disappointed? She swung the olive green handbag, whacking him until somebody shouted, ‘Lay off, love. Only a few shillings, eh? Your brother was only trying to help.’

  She took her rage out on the stranger instead. ‘It’s not a few shillings, it’s everything! Everything! And he’s not my brother. He’s a snotty-nosed git who pushes laundry because his own granny thinks he’s too useless for anything else.’

  *

  She strode blindly away and within minutes was in a country lane, her shoes streaked with the white chalk that surfaced the road. If wrecked shoes was the price of solitude, so be it. She’d honestly wanted to break Donal’s nose when he was on the ground – which frightened her. That was her father’s temper coming out.

  Up ahead, men were clustered around a pair of piebald horses. One horse was rearing while the other squealed and kicked. The men were Gypsies. On Sundays, back in the days when her parents had loved each other, they’d often taken a bus to the Sussex Downs. There’d be Gypsies there selling lucky heather and giving donkey rides. While her dad ran alongside Cora on a jogging donkey, her mother would step into a wagon for a crystal-ball reading. ‘Superstitious tosh,’ was how Jac Masson denounced it, but Florence had held firm.

  ‘They see things, Jac, and you don’t want a Romany curse on you. I don’t, any rate.’

  The last time they’d done that trip, Cora recalled her mother walking back to them, saying, ‘I’m to have another baby, Jac. The old woman said I had two daughters in my palm. What d’you say to that?’

  Her dad had groaned but he’d looked pleased. Maybe he should have popped into the wagon himself. Then he’d have discovered that his palm had just the one daughter in it and he could have worked out a thing or two. Cora wondered if the men up ahead were selling the piebalds, or preparing to race them. A few yards on, she realised she’d walked into one set of travellers buying the services of a stallion from another. The squealing horse was a mare. The rearing one was definitely a lad.

  Cora turned. She’d never got on with horses. In Barnham Street, one long-ago summer, a tinker’s stallion had tried to mount a rag-and-bone man’s mare. Sparks flying from iron shoes, the rag-and-bone man fighting the stallion off with his whip. Donal, no taller than the side of the cart, started trying to help. He’d been dragged twenty yards when the mare bolted.

  Donal would be searching for her. Maybe she’d go and find him. She had to sooner or later as he had their return tickets . . . but instead she walked through a gateway into a field ringed with wagons. Barefoot children scampered around the remains of campfires. Women sat on wagon steps, smoking pipes, knitting. One called, ‘Wait, lady!’ but Cora turned away, only to be brought up short by an extraordinary vision.

  It was an open-topped car parked between two wagons, its radiator grille, headlamps and wire wheels so highly polished that sunlight lanced off them. Paintwork as red as lipstick had lured a group of boys, who stared the way children do, wanting to touch, fearful that the man lounging against a scarlet wing would chase them off.

  She recognised him by the Ascot hat on the car’s bonnet, and the fair hair lifting like feathers in the breeze. Dietrich. First or last name? Did he have a taste for slumming it? And where was his stuck-up friend?

  Just then, her left hand was taken in a business-like grip. Cora spun round to find a pickled-walnut face staring at her from under a hat resembling a dented stovepipe.

  The woman turned Cora’s hand palm up. ‘Tell your future, lady.’

  ‘I’ve got no money.’

  The Romany woman chuckled. ‘I know that. All you had has been taken.’

  That took the wind out of Cora. If this woman had the gift, and was offering a palm-reading for free . . . Cora put her handbag on the grass and splayed her fingers. ‘All right, Mother. Will I get out of the hat factory? Will I ever get a spark of fun in life?’

  The woman stared down intently. ‘You’ve a long life path. You will spend your life making.’

  ‘Making what?’

  ‘With your hands. Stitching. Shaping. For others.’

  To Hell with that, Cora swore. Today had taught her something. She wanted to wear hats such as the one she had on, or like the German cow’s trifle topping. Wear, not make. She wanted to swan about with nice-looking men. Wanted money in her purse and some in the bank.

  The Romany said flatly, ‘You will pursue love.’

  ‘Pursue it how far?’ Sheila Flynn must have a much bigger head than hers, Cora thought, because the feather hat was slipping backwards again. She couldn’t straighten it without breaking the gypsy’s grip. ‘Take a look at my love-line.’

  ‘It is unclear. It is severed.’

  Cora blew a stream of air upwards. Feathers were tickling her brow.

  ‘I see children.’

  They always said that, these women. I see a cradle, a blue one and a pink one. It was all tosh.

  ‘You will kill.’ Eyes sharp as vinegar met Cora’s.

  ‘That’s enough.’

  The woman dropped Cora’s hand and walked away. A second, even older, woman came forward, hand out. ‘Shilling.’

  ‘I said at the start, I’ve got no money.’

  The crone pointed to the grass. One of Sheila Flynn’s gloves lay beside the bag and Cora realised she was expected to hand it over. And its twin, obviously. ‘They’re not mine,’ she said.

  ‘A shilling for a palm reading,’ the woman insisted.

  This could go on all day. Cora gave up the gloves – they were the sort easily bought at a draper’s, after all, but the crone thrust them back, rasping, ‘Betrayal!’

  Cora inspected them. They looked pretty innocent to her.

  ‘Can I help?’

  She greeted Dietrich like an old friend. ‘I’m embarrassed, but you wouldn’t have a shilling on you?’

  He took a two-shilling piece from his pocket and the crone pocketed it, then stumped away. Obviously they didn’t give change round here.

  ‘She wouldn’t take my gloves so it would have been my shoes.’

  Dietrich considered her in silence. The sun burnished his hair and it burst on Cora that, yes, she had seen him before. In the Catholic cathedral of St George, Southwark, where her father had taken her as a child. There’d been a little side window she’d loved to stare at while the rituals of the mass went on over her head. A golden chalice had stood in the embrasure, bathed in light streaming through stained glass. The window depicted a knight entangled with a dragon. ‘You’re my St George,’ she said.

  ‘Riding to your rescue with a shilling? You were right about Mid-day Sun. I take it you did not back him in the end? Otherwise, you would not be short of cash.’

  She groaned. ‘It’s a long story. What about you?’

  ‘Each-way on Le Grand Duc. Only a few pounds, though.’ Only a few pounds. How the other half lives. ‘You believe that fortune-telling nonsense?’

  ‘Just a bit of fun.’ Cora shrugged.

  ‘It did not seem so much fun a moment ago. You looked sick, like a wounded raven.’ He lifted her feathers and she flinched.

  ‘“Raven” isn’t very complimentary. Ever seen one close up? Beady eyes and a bloody big beak.’

  He laughed. ‘They are majestic and intriguing birds. And highly portentous. Don’t they hold the survival of the Tower of London under their wings? But, all right, not a raven, a blackbird. Decidedly inferior. I’d rather be a raven.’

  ‘Where’s your lady-friend?’

  He nodded towards a yellow wagon. ‘Learning her fate. She is consumed by a burning question and the only person who can answer it is an illiterate stranger who spends her life moving pots and pans from field to field. You women always want to know the small detail of your future, when, really, it is all written clearly enough.’

  ‘In the stars?’

  ‘In the newspapers. Polit
ics forges destiny, not Fate or chance.’

  Cora frowned. Politics hadn’t drawn ticket number twenty-two out of the hat. It wasn’t politics that had stopped Donal putting her stake on Mid-day Sun, either.

  ‘Why must women be passive? Cannot they steer their own lives?’ he pressed.

  ‘Don’t know.’ ‘Passive’ was a new word, but she dug out its meaning. ‘I’ve never been behind a steering-wheel.’ She looked at his motor-car. ‘Does that go fast?’

  ‘It is a Mercedes Roadster and it goes very fast. You would like to try?’

  ‘I wouldn’t dare. But—’ Words were lining up on her tongue, words that might earn her a snub. ‘I’d like to sit next to you while you drive it, the wind blowing the curls out of my hair and the smog out of my lungs.’

  ‘Smog?’ He frowned at the word.

  Fair exchange, Cora thought. I’ll keep ‘passive’ and you can have ‘smog’. ‘Dirty London air,’ she explained.

  An idea seemed to root in his mind. ‘Where would you like to go?’

  ‘Brighton for a pint of cockles on the beach.’ Then she remembered she was supposed to be a fashionable London milliner. ‘I mean, for champagne and crab, um, sandwiches. Then over to France, not stopping till we hit Paris.’

  ‘You want to go to Paris?’

  ‘Not half. See, I’ve decided to run away.’

  ‘How extraordinarily apposite. Tomorrow I am going to Paris.’

  ‘No! On holiday?’

  ‘Holiday and business. I have work, but I also have tickets for the Expo.’ He explained: ‘Exposition Internationale, where the world comes to Paris to discover architecture, technology and exotic food. You’ve heard of the Expo, surely?’

  ‘Of course.’ Never.

  ‘I have a reservation on the Pullman. The boat train? Two seats. You may have one, if you like.’

  Cora stared. He must realise she couldn’t pay her way. And what about Miss Snowdrop? ‘Isn’t your friend going with you?’

  ‘Ottilia? No, no. She was in Paris all of April. She’s making her home in London now. Her husband insists.’

  Her husband? ‘Who was the other seat for?’

  ‘The other seat,’ his gaze raked over her face, her wide cheekbones and pointed chin, ‘is for my man. But he can get another train.’

  ‘Your man?’ Oh, Lord. There were chaps who went in for funny business with their own sex. Not in Bermondsey. God help them, they wouldn’t survive half an hour there, but in the theatrical districts of London. Her mother, when she was still getting work, had brought one or two fruity-voiced types home until Jac had put a stop to it.

  ‘My man, yes. My servant.’

  ‘Servant. That’s what I thought.’

  ‘So, you wish to come?’

  To Paris, with a total stranger? Tomorrow was . . . well, it was tomorrow. Which left no thinking time, no packing time. No time for goodbyes. Though who to . . . apart from Donal? A practical obstruction hit her. ‘I don’t have a passport.’

  ‘I do, and mine allows my wife to accompany me.’

  ‘You have a wife?’ Had these people never heard of marriage vows?

  ‘Certainly, and you could easily be her, as you match her colouring and build very closely. Though, I hasten to add, you are much younger. All you need do is give your name as—’ He broke off as a figure in white stumbled out of the bow-top caravan. Cora braced herself for unpleasantness. Ottilia – was that her name? – would likely object to Cora being in the same field as her lovely self.

  But Ottilia didn’t see her. Or Dietrich. She stopped to pull on her gloves and her pearl bracelets were hampering her. Dropping a glove, she stared down as if she hadn’t the resolve to pick it up. Suddenly, the invitation for the Pullman struck Cora as outrageous. Cruel, even. ‘How can I come to Paris with you? I have moral standards, even if you don’t.’

  He smiled, as if her about-face amused him. ‘Ottilia is a friend. As for my wife, she and I live separate lives. She remains at home in Germany.’

  So he was definitely German. And that was another thing. Throw in her lot with him, and she’d never be able to set foot on home territory again. The war to end all wars had finished almost twenty years ago, but there wasn’t a house on her street that hadn’t lost a son, brother or father. Her dad, who had come to England as a refugee and joined an infantry regiment, still had nightmares about the trenches and the invasion of Belgium. He couldn’t say the word ‘German’ without spitting.

  Yet, German or not, this man was offering to grant a wish expressed not two hours earlier. ‘I’d have to go home, leave a note. I can’t just hot-foot it.’

  ‘Sounds like good sense.’

  Good sense that was to alter the course of her life more profoundly than any Gypsy seer could have imagined.

  Chapter Two

  Cora headed to the railway station. She’d given up trying to find Donal among the grandstand crowds. He’d find her as soon as he wanted to go home.

  But when five thirty came, and Donal still hadn’t arrived, she went in search of him. No sign of him among the home-going crowds, or in the grandstand. He wouldn’t have left already? Not with her ticket in his pocket. Would he? Had she finally goaded him too far? Three hours later, she was sure of it.

  Faced with the prospect of an eight-mile walk, Cora leaped on to the rear platform of a double-decker bus as it slowed to let a group of spectators pass in front of it. She shouted to those who craned round to look, ‘Got a seat for a London gal who’s lost everything except her faith in human nature?’ The bus was going back to the city, a works’ outing on board, and she squeezed between two girls of her own age and joined in the singing, though, actually, she felt like crying. They dropped her on the Walworth Road, giving her a two-mile hike home.

  It was close on eleven when she reached Barnham Street and peeled off her shoes. While her blistered feet soaked up the cold of the kitchen floor, she listened for sounds of occupation. The house felt empty. So where was her dad? The pubs were long shut, so maybe he’d gone back to work. He worked for himself, and his hours were chaotic. Cora often thought that if he hadn’t needed to eat, he’d spend his life shuttling between his workshop and the pub.

  Cup of tea was what she needed. Reaching for the kettle, she found a note poking from its spout.

  ‘C. Masson: report to your father’s premises soon as you read this – WPC Flynn.’ A police serial number was written alongside the name. God help me, Cora thought, she’s turned official. She knows I took her clothes. How? Donal wouldn’t have told, surely?

  She sat over her tea, picturing Sheila writing her note, her clumpy lace-ups grinding dust into the quarry tiles. Nobody locked their doors round there, but she hoped Sheila hadn’t been wearing uniform when she called because that really would get tongues wagging. She read the note again. No mention of Jac having been told anything. If she acted fast, she might be able to save the situation. What if she offered to pay Sheila for the loan of her clothes and maybe used her black eye as a bargaining chip?

  ‘Thing is, Sheila, my dad always seems good-natured. Gentleman Jac when you meet him on the street. But when it comes to my mistakes – any excuse to give me a pasting. He can’t punish Mum any more, see, so he takes it out on me. You wouldn’t drop me in it, would you?’

  But Sheila might. Then I’d have to run away, she told herself. Take up the German fellow’s offer. But she knew she wouldn’t. Imagine Dietrich What’s-his-name’s face if she actually turned up at Victoria Station with a suitcase.

  Anyway, she didn’t have a suitcase. What she had was a job and a life and she’d better make the best of it. She took off the Paris hat and replaced it with a headscarf. Headscarves always looked penitent, somehow. If you said ‘sorry’ in a headscarf, you were more likely to be believed.

  What to do with the hat? If she walked up to Sheila holding it, it might
just trigger the Flynn temper. Best hide the hat for now. From the kitchen cupboard, she took an old toffee tin and prised off the lid. Inside was a collection of buttons and belt buckles, and the heel torn off a lady’s petite dress shoe.

  Daffodil yellow, a fashionable colour twelve years ago, though a muddy tidemark wrote a sad ending to the story. On Derby Day 1925, they’d set out for Epsom Downs, Cora’s mother in a new yellow and green outfit. Only it had rained without pause and The Hill had turned into a bog. Cora remembered her mum falling on her bottom in the filth and howling, ‘I look like I’ve sloshed through a farmyard! Some bloody day out this is.’

  ‘More fool you.’ Jac had laughed. ‘Boots next time. I can’t carry you and the kid on my shoulders.’

  Words had flown and Cora’s last memory of Florence Masson was of her disappearing into the crowd, her coat darkened to the colour of mustard, her green hat dripping dye on to her shoulders. The heel of a shoe sucked off as she ploughed through the mud.

  ‘How angry do you have to be to leave your heel behind?’ Cora asked, as she pressed the toffee-tin lid gently down on Sheila’s hat. And how desperate do you have to be to leave your child?

  No answers offered themselves. Finding a torch and absent-mindedly slipping the olive green handbag over her arm, she set off to answer WPC Flynn’s summons.

  *

  Jac Masson’s premises crouched in the shadow of railway arches. The one-storey shack had been mended with so much corrugated iron, it rattled like a set of rusty keys whenever a freight train passed. Cora aimed her torch at the double doors. A smudge of light behind a windowpane warned her that somebody was waiting.

  Inside, she gagged as solvent fumes hit the back of her throat. She never went there without wondering if her dad’s lungs were pickled, like those ancient leather shoes they sometimes pulled from the Thames foreshore. For all that, it always astonished her how Jac, with his meat-handler’s hands, could turn plain wood and reeking materials into beautiful objects. Into replica Coromandel screens, glimmering with gold leaf and coloured enamels. She loved that word: ‘Coromandel’. Exotic, sensuous. The only thing about Jac Masson that was.