Folly's Child

by Janet Tanner

  Now they sat eagerly on the rows of brittle gilt chairs with red velvet seats, their exquisitely made-up faces carefully devoid of expression as they made brief notes on their programmes, pretending not to notice that sometimes the clicking cameras were directed not at the catwalk models, all of whom had already done a photo-call session for the photographers the previous day, but at them – the society women of America and the international circuit, the bored charity conscious wives of big businessmen, the famed actresses of stage and screen, even the occasional European princess. The actresses, of course, were frequently loaned gowns by the house free of charge for the publicity that would be gained when they were pictured wearing them, and there were those among the society women who considered themselves above coming to the couture, ordering instead from the videos that nowadays replaced the weeks of shows of the old days – and staying away all the more determinedly as the great Paris houses vied with one another to tempt them to lend their presence to the occasion. But there were plenty of beautiful and recognisable faces to be seen amongst the anonymous, but none-the-less powerful, fashion editors, still enough buying power in this room alone to rock empires, even if no house made a profit from the couture but rather used it for a loss-leading advertisement and a mark of prestige.

  It was at none of these that Harriet’s camera was trained, however. Instead her zoom lens was pointed at the rear of the salon where the apprentices and publicity girls stood in small, highly-strung huddles, watching the gowns they had worked on and publicised pass by on the catwalk and leading the explosions of rapturous applause.

  There was one girl in particular who interested Harriet, a small girl with hair cut gamin short, whose face was so expressive that it seemed to reflect every one of the emotions that they were all feeling, these midinettes who had basted hemlines and stitched hooks and eyes into place, positioned trimmings and sewed them into place with such tiny stitches that they were all but invisible to the naked eye. Harriet hardly dared blink as she watched her through the viewfinder, terrified she might miss the moment she was waiting for. Then, as a daring but romantic gown of navy blue silk crepe made its appearance, the moment came. The girl’s face came alive, eyes sparkling, hands raised to her parted lips in an expression halfway between exultation and tears of joy, before she began to clap furiously. Swiftly Harriet depressed the button again and again. Perfect – perfect! That was what she had been waiting for, that unguarded, unforced, totally natural reaction of a lowly apprentice who sees her work unfold like a fairytale. In a world where so much was staged artificially it was like a breath of fresh air and Harriet experienced her very own glow of excitement and triumph.

  For a minute or two longer she panned the camera, too much the professional to allow her pleasure to make her risk missing another good shot. But instinctively she knew she had what she wanted – the frames that would lend just the breadth and depth she needed to complete her picture story of the couture shows, and she let her camera fall back on its strap around her neck, rubbing her aching eyes and running her fingers up under the thick fringe of dark blonde hair that barely skimmed them.

  Still the mannequins were appearing, their elongated clothes-horse frames moving with a grace which belied their tight-drawn nerves, still the bursts of applause rang out to drown the persistent clicking of the cameras, but Harriet leaned back against her pillar almost oblivious to them.

  The clothes, beautiful as they were, interested her not at all. She had grown up amongst beautiful clothes, been dressed from childhood in designer fashion, been made to stand still for fittings for her graduation dress and her first ball gown, and hated every moment of it. Clothes were all very well, they were her father’s life and she knew that all the privileges she enjoyed were hers because of clothes and the stupendous success they had brought him, but she couldn’t care about them. Except when they made wonderful pictures. Pictures were what mattered. And in her camera was a reel of beauties.

  Harriet glanced around, wondering if she could slip out unnoticed. It was heresy, of course, but the show was likely to last another hour at least – Saint Laurent was famous for the length of his shows – and afterwards there was bound to be the most fearful crush. Harriet hesitated, then her natural impatience won the day and she slipped quietly towards the exit. All eyes were on the catwalk and no one appeared to notice her, apart from a tall, grey-haired woman in the uniform of an atelier who moved towards her accusingly.

  Instantly Harriet pressed her hand across her mouth in a theatrical gesture.

  ‘I’m not feeling well’, she whispered in somewhat imperfect French, and the woman moved hastily out of her way. Photographers – cochons! she was thinking in disgust. The girl had probably had too much wine to drink with her lunch.

  As she emerged into the Rue Castiglione the cold hit Harriet like a slap in the face and she lifted her camera, easing the zipper of her sky-blue ski jacket right up under her chin and turning the collar up around her ears. Some of her hair caught inside it and she flicked it out, a careless fall of dark blonde that framed her even-featured face. ‘You should go to a good stylist once in a while and have that mane tamed!’ Sally, her father’s wife, had advised her on more than one occasion, but Harriet had as little time for stylists as she had for clothes – and besides, she rather liked her hair just as it was. This way she could simply wash it each morning and let it dry naturally – start trying for styles and valuable minutes had to be wasted keeping them the way they were meant to be.

  I must find a telephone, Harriet thought, as she hurried, head bent against the biting wind, along the Paris street. I can’t wait to tell Nick I’ve got his job in the bag. Then I’ll decide whether to post him the last reels of film in a Jiffy bag or fly back to London with them myself.

  The thought gave her another fillip of excitement – her first job for Focus Now, the new picture magazine Nick was editing – and it was a corker, she knew it in her bones. Already she could visualise the lay-out – ‘The Other Side of Fashion’ she’d entitled it in her mind’s eye when she’d discussed it with Nick. And as he had said, no-one was in a better position to do a photo story like that than she was.

  ‘All the fashion magazines and the women’s pages of the newspapers do straight fashion stories,’ he’d said, tugging thoughtfully at the little gingery beard that sprouted from his angular chin. ‘I want something different. And let’s face it, Focus Now is going to be different.’

  She’d nodded. She’d known Nick for years, meeting him when she’d come to London to visit her cousin Mark Bristow, Sally’s son. She had just started out on her career as a free-lance photographer, with nothing but a little talent, a lot of determination and the best camera money could buy to help her make it. He had been a sub-editor in those days, working for a huge magazine corporation, and they had struck up an instant rapport, and when he was made first assistant editor and then editor, always moving from magazine to magazine, he had pushed work her way whenever he could. They had even had an on-off affair and Harriet suspected he was in love with her. But she couldn’t take him seriously. She couldn’t take any man seriously – or at least not one she’d yet met.

  ‘I think you use me, Harriet,’ he had said once, mock-serious.

  ‘Well of course I do!’ she had teased. ‘ Isn’t that what friends are for?’

  ‘Friends!’ he’d echoed, his soft Scottish burr making it sound almost mournful, and Harriet had experienced a moment’s sharp guilt.

  But whatever his shortcomings as a prospective lover, Nick was good at his job – very good – and his talent and hard work had been rewarded when Paul Leeman, the publishing tycoon, had decided to launch the new magazine, Focus Now. Nick had landed the job of editor and when he had told Harriet about it his enthusiasm had been infectious.

  ‘You remember Picture Post, Harriet? No, probably you don’t. You’re too young. You weren’t even born when it folded – and besides it was an English magazine.’

  ‘But I know ab
out it of course,’ she’d protested. ‘My mother was English, remember, and it was a classic, wasn’t it? What photographer hasn’t heard of Picture Post – though I suppose the American in me would argue that all those magazines were imitators of Life.’

  ‘Right. Well, Paul believes the time is right to launch a new mag on the same lines. Stories told in pictures – less copy than the Sunday supplements, more slanted to letting the photographs tell the story. And perhaps with a social angle, too. But whatever, it’s got to be different, a totally fresh way of looking at things. That’s where you come in.’

  ‘It sounds exciting. But more like photo journalism than just taking pictures. You think I could handle it?’ In spite of her apparent self-confidence, in spite of her twenty-five years, in spite of having had the best that money could buy since she was a little girl, there was an ingenuousness about Harriet which sprung from a yearning need to prove herself – to her father, to her contemporaries, to the whole wide world. Sometimes being born with every apparent advantage in life spawns the deepest need to create something just by oneself, to say: ‘This wasn’t handed to me on a plate, but I did it just the same!’

  ‘I know you can do it’, Nick had said. ‘You’re a bloody good photographer and the work you’ve been doing for the last five years proves it. All you need is the opportunity to really express yourself – and Focus Now can give you that. I’m sure you’ll come up with all kinds of ideas of your own, but for starters why don’t you do something you know really well – the world of fashion.’

  ‘Fashion!’ Her tone had been scathing. ‘Rich women with closets full of clothes they’ll never get around to wearing. Fashion – one silly brainless bitch trying to outdo the others because she’s bored out of her tiny mind and isn’t interested in anything other than the way she looks.’

  ‘Don’t knock it,’ Nick said seriously. ‘You know as well as I do it’s a damned great industry – and there are plenty of facets to it that never see the light of day. Find some of them, Harriet, mix them in with the glamour – and see what you get. More than enough for just one feature, I’ll be bound. Enough for a whole series, probably. But start with Paris. After all, to most people Paris is still the centre, the sun around which all the other satellites revolve.’

  ‘Well I sure as hell would hate to do Seventh Avenue,’ she said with feeling.

  ‘So – don’t – or at least, not at first. What about the sweatshops of Korea, or the rich Kuwaiti women who buy merely for their own pleasure and hide their couture gowns under their abayas because they are not allowed to display themselves … it’s a far cry from the fashion world as it is usually depicted, it could make fascinating copy. Get out there and find it for me!’

  And so she had. She’d done the photo session of couture gowns as well, of course, clicking away dutifully with those other photographers who were being dictated to by their fashion editors. But it was the unexpected shots that would provide the spice to the story – like the ones she had just made of the little midinette enthusing as she saw the dress she’d sweated blood for, if not created, come down the catwalk to the roar of applause.

  Harriet pushed back the cuff of her ski jacket and glanced at her watch – the clear faced leather-strapped Patek Philippe man’s watch that she always wore in preference to the elegant Cartier her father had given her, unless of course circumstances forced her into an evening gown. Perhaps, she decided, she would go back to her hotel and phone Nick from there. Then she’d call the airport, enquire about flights and take the pictures to London herself. She’d like to be on hand the moment they came out of the dark room. And it would be nice to see Nick again too. She raised her hand to hail a cab but the Paris traffic was zooming by at its usual break-neck pace. Then she spotted a public telephone and decided she could not wait another minute to call Nick and tell him the job was completed. She dived towards it, anxious some other would-be caller should not beat her to it and begin on one of those endless conversations the French seemed to have, searching through her pockets for change and trying to recall the International dialing code and the number of the line which connected direct with Nick’s office, bypassing the busy switchboard, all at the same time.

  ‘You have never got out of the childish habit of trying to do several things at once,’ Sally had said to her once; Sally, so cool, so contained, so efficient she sometimes made Harriet feel as if she were still a child, though of course she would never admit it.

  At the second attempt she made the connection and heard the telephone begin to ring at the other end. Then Nick’s voice, that soft unmistakable Scottish burr.

  ‘Hello? Nick Holmes.’

  ‘Nick – it’s me, Harriet. I’ve finished the job and I’ve got the most stupendous pictures. I’m just on my way back to the hotel and with luck I’ll be able to get a flight tonight. I can be with you first thing in the morning – maybe even this evening, if you like.’

  There was a slight awkward pause and in the tiny fraction of time that it lasted Harriet experienced a stab of pique. Nick was usually so keen to see her she had to fend him off. Now, just when she was bursting to talk to him about the job, he was going to be less than forthcoming.

  ‘Unless you’ve already got something lined up, of course,’ she said hastily.

  ‘No. And I’m very glad you’ve finished the job.’ What was that odd note in Nick’s voice? It didn’t sound in the least like him.

  ‘Me too. You were right – knowing the background to the industry was a tremendous help. Anyway …’

  ‘Harriet – have you seen a newspaper today?’ he interrupted her.

  She laughed shortly. ‘ You must be joking! I’ve been up to my eyes in mannequins and haute couture.’

  ‘Well – I think you should.’

  She frowned, feeling his discomfort with her pores as well as hearing it in his voice.

  ‘Why? Someone else hasn’t done my story have they? Or, oh no! Paul hasn’t decided to fold Focus Now before it’s even off the ground, has he?’

  ‘No – no – nothing like that.’

  ‘Then what? Nick – my money is running out …’ She fumbled in her pocket for more change but before she could get in it into the coin slot she heard the click. ‘ Nick?’ she said urgently but it was too late. The line was dead. She swore, banged down the receiver and stood staring at it. What the hell had he meant? Should she try and get him back again or buy a newspaper first and try to find out what in the world he had been talking about? A cloud of Gaulois smoke wafted past her ear and she became aware of a man standing behind her, stamping his feet as he waited with barely concealed impatience for the telephone. His presence made up her mind for her and she turned, brushing past him and heading towards a newspaper vendor who sat shivering behind his stall at the nearby entrance to a Metro station.

  All the newspapers on the front of the stall were French and Harriet cursed herself for not being a better linguist. She had had every opportunity to be, for heaven’s sake, but she’d never worked hard enough at it and now she did not feel like struggling with a foreign language to search for an item when she did not even know what she was looking for. But tucked away at the back of the stall were some English and American newspapers. Yesterday’s? No, praise be, today’s – the English ones, anyway. She pointed to one and pulled out her remaining change to pay for it. Then she retreated into the entrance to the Metro out of the biting wind and opened it.

  She saw the story at once. The photograph seemed to leap off the page to hit her. Daddy. Mom. And … that man … Unexpectedly Harriet began to tremble.

  ‘RETURNED FROM THE DEAD! FINANCIER FAKED HIS OWN DEATH, WOMAN ALLEGES.’

  She inched back against the wall, part of her wanting to find some private place, yet knowing she would not – could not – move from this spot until she had read what the paper had to say.

  As she finished her breathing was ragged, her eyes darting from the newsprint to stare unseeingly at the people pushing past her into the
Metro and back to the newsprint again. In the street the traffic still roared past, a ceaseless thunder interspersed with the honking of horns, but she was no longer aware of it. Even the precious spools of film in the camera slung around her neck and tucked into the pockets of her jacket were forgotten. They might have belonged, all of them, to another world, another life.

  Greg Martin, her father’s former partner, was alive.

  She hardly remembered him, of course. He was a shadowy figure from the past whose name was scarcely ever mentioned except on those rare occasions when they spoke of the accident, that terrible accident that had claimed the lives of him and her mother when Harriet was only four years old. As for the financial crisis they had gone through, of which she suspected Greg was the root cause, that was never spoken of at all. The whole episode had been so horrendous, so traumatic, that her father had chosen to wipe the board clean of it – on a superficial level, at least.

  Harriet pressed a hand to her mouth and closed her eyes. The street seemed to be full of perfume now, wafting around her in the biting wind – the perfume that was the most evocative memory she had of her mother, a haunting perfume, light and teasing and sweet, a perfume that smelled a little like a summer garden at dusk, a perfume, the memory of which had possessed the power to bring tears to her eyes long, long after she had forgotten how to conjure up the image of her mother’s face.

  Mom – oh, Mom – why did you go away? She had cried it into her pillow at night, sobbing with the vain child’s hope that tears would somehow magically make it all come right, that in the morning her mother would be there.

  But of course she never was. Her mother had died in an explosion on a luxury yacht, they had explained to her. Gradually she had come to terms with it, accepted it as a fact of life, though the grief had been longer in going and the sadness was still sometimes there, an echo in the night.