The Designer

by Marius Gabriel

  ‘That’s a relief.’

  ‘You have character, spirit and intelligence.’

  Their steaks arrived and were as succulent as he had promised. Copper’s diet had been frugal since splitting up with Amory, and she ate like a starving lioness. ‘You’re very understanding, Monsieur Velikovsky.’

  ‘Henry, please. And may I call you Oona?’

  ‘You’re welcome to, but I get “Copper” from most people.’

  ‘Copper? I like that. I made my first big trade in copper futures.’

  ‘Really? You must have had a crystal ball.’

  ‘It required only a little insight to see that the world was rearming for an even bigger and better war than the last one. Copper is used for making bullets.’

  ‘You’re a real Daddy Warbucks.’

  ‘Who, pray, is Daddy Warbucks?’

  ‘You haven’t read Little Orphan Annie? It’s an American comic. Daddy Warbucks is the rich old war profiteer who protects Annie.’

  ‘That sounds like me.’

  ‘And how have you spent this bigger and better war?’ she asked.

  ‘In some strange places, not so comfortable as the Ritz. It’s good to be back in Paris.’

  ‘You’re being mysterious.’

  ‘Not deliberately. The war isn’t over, and nor is my work.’

  ‘I don’t see your sabre.’

  He smiled. ‘Wars are won with brains as well as sabres. My job is to make sure the sabres arrive in the right place at the right time.’

  ‘And how do you arrange that?’

  ‘I climb up trees and watch who passes by.’

  ‘That sounds risky.’

  ‘It has its moments,’ he said lightly.

  ‘So you’re a secret agent?’

  ‘If I were, would I tell you?’

  ‘I’m just interested.’

  ‘If you’re thinking of including me in one of your articles, forget it. My work is off-limits.’

  ‘And what happens if you get caught?’

  ‘That depends on whether I’m caught by Herr Hitler or by Comrade Stalin. Things would be difficult either way.’

  ‘Can’t you retire now? The war is almost won.’

  ‘When it is won, I will retire,’ he agreed. ‘Though there may be no ending, merely a change of enemies.’

  ‘You mean the Russians?’

  ‘I mean the communists.’

  ‘That’s a depressing thought.’

  ‘Not for me. I don’t know quite what I would do to fill my time if I wasn’t at war. I’ve made enough money for my needs and I get bored easily. As, I imagine, you do, too.’ He refilled her glass. ‘May I ask why you described yourself as a Bolshevik?’

  She smiled. ‘Oh, I’m not really. But we got called that plenty of times.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘My father was what you plutocrats would call a union agitator. He led strikes against bad working conditions in the 1930s.’

  ‘I see it now, in my mind’s eye. Little Copper, shivering outside the grey walls of the prison.’

  ‘That’s pretty much how it was.’

  ‘So you have more background in baby-eating and church-burning than I do.’

  ‘I’ve developed my own ideas since then. But I’ll always hate injustice.’

  ‘Good for you. I only ask one thing, Copper. That you will keep in touch with me from now on. Agreed? I suggest we make this a regular meeting – for as long as I’m in Paris, dinner at the Ritz once a week.’

  ‘Every week? Here?’

  ‘Well, I have a dusty little bureau on the Champs-Élysées, but this is more congenial, don’t you think? And although I travel, I try to be back in Paris every weekend.’

  ‘I can eat an awful lot of steak,’ she warned.

  ‘That would be one of the reasons to develop our friendship – to make sure you don’t starve to death.’

  ‘And what would be the other reasons?’

  ‘I will be able to keep an eye on your progress. When you sell an article to Harper’s, I will arrange the payment. More than that, if you run out of money between assignments, I’ll see you through.’

  She looked at him warily over the crystal rim of her wineglass. ‘This sounds awfully like a spider coaxing a reluctant fly into the web. If I take your money whenever I’m broke, wouldn’t that automatically make me an employee?’

  ‘Not at all. It would merely make you sensible.’

  ‘And what will you ask in exchange for “seeing me through”?’

  ‘The satisfaction of having fostered a rising talent,’ he replied smoothly.

  ‘That’s an interesting way of putting it,’ she replied briskly.

  ‘Do you suspect my motives?’

  ‘I’m inclined to, yes.’

  ‘You wound me deeply,’ he said, laying one tanned hand on the silk-faced lapel of his tuxedo. ‘I’m here to help.’

  ‘Oh, I can hear the milk of human kindness sloshing around inside you.’

  He broke into laughter for the second time that evening. ‘Very well, I admit it. I’m interested in you. I would like to see more of you.’

  ‘I’m interested in you, too,’ Copper replied. ‘You’re a very interesting man. But I’m not in the market.’

  ‘What market would that be?’

  ‘Any kind of market. I don’t want any more complications in my life. I don’t want any more contracts of any kind. So if you’re making a pass at me—’

  ‘I’m offering my friendship.’

  She paused for a moment, then reached her slim hand across the table and gave him a brisk, American handshake. ‘Your friendship is most acceptable. So long as it stays just friendship.’

  ‘Excellent. So we’ll see each other again next Saturday night, at the same time?’

  ‘I look forward to it greatly.’

  And in fact, by the time they parted, with her stomach full of good things, Copper felt that she had made a friend in Henry Velikovsky. He was just old enough to be regarded as protective, and just attractive enough to make her sit up with interest. There was, moreover, that aura of the dangerous and the exotic about him, which would infallibly intrigue any woman.

  Before they left the table, he passed her a plump white envelope. The flap was monogrammed with his initials, and it turned out to be filled with crisp dollar bills. Copper was delighted. ‘I can’t believe this is real.’

  ‘Absolutely real. I printed them myself.’

  ‘Don’t tease me. This is the first money I’ve earned from my writing.’

  ‘But not the last.’ He walked her to the street outside and called a cab for her. ‘You can always reach me at the Champs-Élysées number if there is any emergency. And if I’m not in Paris, my secretary will pass on any messages.’

  ‘Thank you so much, Henry. And thank you for listening to me all night. It’s been a long time since I’ve had someone intelligent to talk to.’

  ‘I hope you’ll regard me as a confidant, my dear Copper. I can be useful.’

  They shook hands and she got into her cab. She headed for place Victor Hugo, happier than she had been in weeks.

  Pearl was awake when she got back. However, when Copper, still starry-eyed, had told her tale, Pearl exclaimed in disgust.

  ‘You’ve turned down a job with Harper’s Bazaar and a handsome millionaire – all in the same night – and you’re pleased with yourself?’

  Copper laughed gaily. ‘I haven’t turned either one down. I’m just giving myself some room for manoeuvre.’

  ‘Room for manoeuvre? What are you, the Queen Mary?’

  ‘No. But I can sell my work and have steak at the Ritz every week on their tab. And I’m free.’ She threw her arms in the air and danced around Pearl. ‘I’m free!’

  But Pearl was morose. ‘You’re so lucky,’ she said. ‘I’ll never have a man like that interested in me. Not as long as I live.’

  Something in Pearl’s voice struck Copper. She stopped dancing to examine her flatmate more
carefully. Pearl’s skin was sallow, her eyes dull with pinpoint pupils. ‘Pearl!’ she exclaimed in dismay. ‘What have you done?’

  ‘I haven’t done anything,’ Pearl said defensively.

  Copper snatched up the book that had been lying at Pearl’s side. Out of the pages fell a glass syringe with a little cloudy liquid still in the barrel. Copper took a step back, appalled. ‘Oh, Pearl.’

  ‘It’s not so easy,’ Pearl said in a dull voice, picking up the syringe and replacing it carefully between the pages of her book.

  ‘You promised!’

  ‘Promises were made to be broken.’

  ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘Where do you think?’ Pearl retorted bitterly.

  Copper had to sit down. ‘You didn’t go back to him? You couldn’t have!’

  ‘Well, I did.’

  ‘What about the bookkeeping?’

  ‘Bugger the bookkeeping. I can’t add up.’

  ‘This will kill you,’ Copper said, trying to hold back the lump that was rising in her throat.

  ‘It was just the one shot. Just to get me right again.’

  ‘I’m going to smash that needle.’

  Pearl snatched up the book and clutched it to her breasts protectively. ‘Don’t you hear me? It’s just the one shot.’

  ‘And when that wears off, you’ll want another, and then another.’

  ‘You don’t know what it’s like.’

  ‘We can take you to a doctor—’

  ‘I don’t want a doctor. I don’t want anybody sticking their nose into my life.’

  ‘Pearl—’

  ‘Leave me be, Copper.’ She went to her room and locked the door.

  Seven

  Copper slipped away from the table while everyone was talking and drinking champagne, and made her way through the noisy crowd that filled La Vie Parisienne every night. She’d got into the habit of coming to the club two or three times a week. It was a way of keeping up with the gossip in the fashion world, since Suzy’s club was the meeting place for the designers and couturiers. But there was more to it than that.

  The weeks had passed swiftly. Nineteen forty-five had arrived, and the Allies were already on German soil. Since Amory had left, it was as though the sullen laws of gravity had been suspended, letting her float free among bright clouds. Gaining the friendship of Christian Dior and his set had been the start. It had given her an entrée into the fashion world. She knew all the gossip, heard all the scandals. She was starting to understand what constituted haute couture, what was new and what was now hopelessly démodé. A future as a journalist who could write authoritatively about women’s affairs and fashion had opened up.

  Having her work accepted by Harper’s on her first attempt had been a huge step up. Seeing herself in print – and her name in the byline for the first time – had been thrilling. Her spare, grim prose had been powerful among the articles about dresses and shoes.

  Her dinners at the Ritz with Henry Velikovsky had turned into the highlight of her week. She loved the ritual of meeting him there, and hearing the stories of his adventures, his childhood in Russia, and the romantic world of sleigh rides and winter palaces he had once inhabited. For his part, he made her feel glamorous and special – feelings she hadn’t had for a long time. Their friendship was slowly and almost imperceptibly turning into something deeper, though she didn’t want to admit that yet. After all, she’d specifically told him that she was off-limits. But life had a way of shifting the pieces around the board.

  Through him, she had sold two more short pieces to Harper’s Bazaar. Carmel Snow was still interested in stories about Paris, especially those with a fashion angle. And they were eagerly awaiting her Théâtre de la Mode story, which she would file when the exhibition took place.

  And then there was her third great friend, Suzy Solidor. She found Suzy sitting at her little dressing table, studying her own face in the mirror.

  ‘I’m worried about you,’ she said, sitting beside Suzy.

  ‘Pourquoi?’

  ‘The épuration. Everyone in the club is talking about it.’

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ Suzy replied. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong. Those dogs can’t do anything to me.’

  ‘But they can. They can put you in jail or in an internment camp.’

  ‘Chérie, the worst they can do is fine me a few francs.’

  ‘I hope you’re right.’

  ‘I am right. Don’t worry.’ Their eyes met in the mirror. ‘I am not an angel. But you are, ma chérie. You are a perfect angel.’ She patted Copper’s cheek, her eyes searching Copper’s face. ‘Do you find me disgusting?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  At first, to tell the truth, Suzy’s intensity had intimidated her. The older woman’s company was like absinthe, intoxicating yet dangerous. Suzy didn’t conform to anyone’s rules, which was partly why Copper found her so interesting. Suzy had swiftly become an integral part of her life. She had taken charge of Copper’s education, improving her French, her dress sense, her taste in food and much else. She’d introduced Copper to her favourite writers – Baudelaire, Villon, Rimbaud – and a world of new possibilities.

  As with Henry – but in a different way – she had felt herself awakening. Sensuality had crept into her life like a warm breeze stealing into the windows of a room that had been shut up for a long time. Amory had been everything to her, especially at the beginning of their marriage, but his infidelities had wounded her so often and so deeply that she’d stopped having any faith in him. And when faith had died, so had desire. She’d found that she needed closeness and trust more than sex. Desire grew out of trust, not the other way round. So something in her had closed up, like the petals of a delicate flower. And had remained closed until new people had entered her life – Henry and Suzy.

  ‘And that Russian brute,’ Suzy went on. Copper shivered as Suzy caressed her neck, her fingertips light as butterfly wings. ‘If you don’t sleep with me, do you sleep with him?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Of course not,’ Suzy echoed mockingly. ‘You are a monument to chastity and your marble thighs never part. Really, chérie, you enjoy driving the world crazy.’

  ‘I don’t at all.’

  ‘Liar.’ Suzy pressed her lips to Copper’s, clinging and moist. Refined as she was in her dress, Suzy never used perfume or deodorant. The milky smell of her skin and the darker tang of her armpits rose into Copper’s nostrils, intoxicating and erotic. She pulled back quickly.

  ‘Why will you never kiss me properly?’ Suzy demanded, touching the bright waves of Copper’s hair.

  ‘I don’t want to kiss you in that way.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s not—’ Copper couldn’t find the right word.

  ‘Not decent? Not proper? Not genteel?’

  ‘Not me.’

  ‘But you want me, just as I want you. I can feel it.’

  ‘You mean you think you can.’

  Suzy took a fistful of Copper’s hair threateningly. ‘Sometimes I would like to hurt you.’

  ‘Sometimes I wish you would,’ Copper replied in a low voice.

  Pearl was in the sitting room when Copper returned from La Vie Parisienne in the early hours of the morning. She was crouched on the sofa, spreading the toes of one bare foot, the needle poised.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Copper exclaimed in disgust. ‘Can’t you do that in the bathroom?’

  ‘It’s freezing in there.’ Pearl injected herself carefully and then lay back on the cushions with a sigh. Copper watched the effect of the drug iron all the lines out of Pearl’s young face, leaving it smooth and dull as dough. Pearl’s relapse into drug-taking had been a bitter disappointment, but she was forced to accept that if Pearl ever escaped from her addiction, it would be on her own terms, not on anyone else’s.

  ‘You’ve been back to Petrus.’

  Pearl’s mouth twitched in the faintest of smiles. ‘Yes, I’ve been back to my big, black de
vil.’

  ‘And what do you have to do in return for the cocaine?’

  ‘The same as you do.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Copper replied indignantly.

  ‘I’m talking about the lipstick on your face. It isn’t your shade, kiddo.’

  Copper wiped her mouth irritably. ‘Could be anybody’s.’

  ‘Not that particular virgin’s-blood red. It’s definitely hers.’

  ‘She’s a friend.’

  ‘I’m older than you, sweetheart. And a bit wiser in the ways of the world.’

  ‘Not so I’ve noticed,’ Copper said dryly.

  Pearl stretched out, her eyes already glassy. ‘Are you having an affair with Suzy?’

  ‘Not that it’s any of your business,’ Copper said evenly, ‘but no, I am not having an affair with Suzy.’

  ‘Well, if you’re not having an affair with her now, you soon will be, because that’s what she’s aiming at. She’s grooming you. You’re her next conquest.’

  Copper snorted. ‘Pearl, really. I draw the line at being lectured by someone who’s just stuck a needle between her toes.’

  ‘She’s abnormal.’

  ‘If by “abnormal” you mean she’s not as dull as a drugstore novel, then I agree.’

  ‘La Vie Parisienne is fun for a while. You go to look at the freaks, have a few drinks—’

  ‘Pick up other women’s husbands,’ Copper put in.

  ‘But you’re going there every night of the week. You’re infatuated with her.’

  ‘And you’re an addict.’

  ‘So are you. You look at her the way a rabbit looks at a boa constrictor.’

  ‘I’ve never seen a rabbit look at a boa constrictor so I can’t comment. I’ll check next time I’m in Brooklyn Zoo. In the meantime, I like Suzy a lot. She’s been kind to me, and I guess I look at her accordingly.’