The Dress Thief

by Natalie Meg Evans

  Alix accepted that humble work was the price of learning this trade. Couture was as much a state of mind as a job. Work was done fast but never hurried, and nothing was skimped because women who had the money and leisure to buy made-to-measure from houses such as Chanel, Boulanger, Patou, Lanvin and Javier had eagle eyes for perfection. Or if they didn’t, their husbands, lovers or lady’s maids did. And, she would remind herself, the greatest couturiers had started at the bottom. The female ones, anyway.

  And what of that other trade – theft? When could she start pirating the spring–summer collection for Paul’s contact? Alix still dreamed of those promised riches. But, as she warned Paul later that week as they shared a glass of wine in a stupidly expensive café on the Champs-Elysées, she hardly ever saw a finished garment.

  ‘The directrice would rather see a weasel climbing the curtains than a seamstress in the salon.’

  Paul removed an olive stone from his mouth. Olives came free here, six in the bowl and they took three each. ‘You must see the clothes sometimes, or at least the patterns.’

  ‘It’s not a big dressing-up box.’ It was late, and she was tired. The shock of being attacked in Bonnet’s stairway had not yet worn off and she was shaken by the hostility of her colleagues who, she had come to realise, thought she was some kind of spy ‘placed’ by Javier. ‘This is how it works, Paul. Madame so-and-so orders model number twenty from the collection. Call it an azure-blue day dress. She chooses a slightly heavier fabric in peacock and, with the advice of a première and a fitter, has alterations made to flatter her shape. Her vendeuse persuades her to buy two more in different fabrics, with a little jacket maybe … voilà, she is dressed by Javier but is also unique. And private,’ Alix stressed, ‘until she wears that dress in public.’ Daintily she ejected an olive stone. ‘Javier never gives one seamstress a dress to work on from start to finish, for security reasons. One garment might be shared between three workrooms.’

  Paul still had that stubborn expression on his face and she sighed. ‘Imagine you’re a trainee chef, and you’ve never seen a raspberry millefeuille in your life. The head chef hands you a list of ingredients and tells you to make a perfect one, right now. That’s what you’re asking me to do.’

  ‘You want me to tell my contact the job’s off?’

  ‘Tell her to be patient.’

  *

  On the Friday afternoon of that first, shattering week, Alix was again ordered to put down her sewing in order to pick up pins. ‘And don’t miss any. I don’t know why you imagine a pin under the table should be a lost pin.’

  Because when I go underneath, Janice and Séverine bloody well kick me, Alix fumed as she reached under the bench. Pretty with their upswept hair and red lipstick, Janice and Séverine were best friends and ringleaders in the conspiracy to isolate Alix. She could hear them now, whispering. But whatever they were planning, they weren’t able to carry it out as the workroom door opened and somebody came in. Someone whose rank caused everyone to stand. Janice still managed to tread on Alix’s ankle.

  ‘Be seated, all.’

  It was Mme Frankel, the première of Maison Javier. ‘Première’ meant what it sounded like: after Javier, Pauline Frankel was first in consequence here. Her kingdom was these workrooms, where she oversaw the detailed making-up of garments, but she was just as often at Javier’s side as he designed, advising him on the capabilities of the cloth, turning his nebulous ideas into something wearable. Her world was less glamorous than Mlle Lilliane’s salon, the fitting rooms or the world of the mannequins, but without Mme Frankel, there would be no seasons, no collections … no Maison Javier. Her near-holy status showed itself in the way Mlle Lefoine scuttled forward to inspect the item she’d brought in to show them.

  ‘A skirt, Madame,’ Mlle Lefoine said breathlessly.

  ‘Indeed, and required for Monday afternoon … Yes, I know you’re busy, but M. Javier has given his word it will be finished.’

  Alix emerged from under the table, pins in her mouth.

  Seeing her, Mme Frankel gasped. ‘Mon Dieu, petite! Never, never put pins in your mouth. Imagine if you were to hit your head. We would be pulling pins out of your tongue.’ She turned to the supervisor. ‘Can you find no better work for Alix than this? M. Javier did not intend for her to be a floor sweeper. He won’t be pleased, I can tell you. Can she not take this skirt?’

  The supervisor dashed a resentful look at Alix. ‘I heard you say it was important, Madame.’

  ‘So it is,’ Mme Frankel answered in a polite voice of steel. ‘And if Alix is being underused, your problem is solved.’

  *

  The sewing tables were covered with baize cloth, which stopped silky fabrics slipping to the floor – its olive colour kind to the eyes. Replaced every single day, expensive cloth could be laid on it without fear of grease. Mme Frankel opened out the sections of skirt in front of Alix. She’d asked the girls either side to move, oblivious to the mutinous muttering this produced. ‘This skirt is a commission from a highly valued client, Alix. Show me your needles, please.’

  Alix fumbled at her needle pouch. She’d given up on being liked, but please, please let her not fail this test. Her fingers felt like sausages and in the end, Mme Frankel untied the pouch for her. Alix noticed that she had smooth, short nails and no wedding ring.

  ‘Good, plenty of choice,’ the première murmured as she revealed the miniature armoury Alix had collected during her time at Arding & Hobbs. ‘Which will you use to tack the seams? Yes, you may touch the cloth. Tell me your thoughts.’

  The skirt fabric was woven silk, and as Alix ran her fingers over the grain the visits she’d made with Mémé to the warehouses of London’s East End came to her aid. ‘Is it a Lyon silk?’

  ‘Correct.’

  The colour was ripe wheat with a trellis pattern in a deeper shade. The skirt was cut narrow, but not on the bias. ‘Bias cut’, the defining technique of the decade, meant cutting fabric diagonally across the grain, which gave fluidity to the finished garment. Bias-cutting ate up metres of cloth and was a challenge to sew. This skirt, by contrast, would be straightforward. ‘I don’t fear these seams stretching,’ Alix said, ‘so I’ll tack using a long sharp, and a between for the stitching itself.’

  ‘Show me that one.’

  Alix took out a needle with a narrow point and a short shank.

  Mme Frankel nodded. ‘Short enough for fine work, able to carry the weight of the cloth. You’ll use silk thread? Good.’ She gave Alix a sample of the trellis silk. ‘That must not leave the premises. When you’ve tacked, go to the thread room and Mme Albert will supply you. Be sure to stand in natural light. What kind of seam will you sew?’

  ‘A … a flat seam, pressed open, raw edges turned and over-stitched. The silk is thick enough not to need couture anglaise, but there’s a small chance of fraying.’

  Mme Frankel smiled. ‘Many girls can sew but have no instinct for fabric. Mlle Lefoine has found no actual fault with your work?’ This last comment was directed at the supervisor, whose grunt made Alix’s colour rise. A word of praise, surely, after she’d hemmed enough curtain to cover the street outside?

  As Mme Frankel’s steps echoed away, somebody mimicked her deep voice; ‘Many girls can sew, but Alix has an instinct for fabric.’

  ‘Well, we know that. Remember the lovely coat she wore on her first day? Achoo! Oh dear, I’ve got powder in my nose.’

  Mlle Lefoine shushed them. ‘Get on with your work, all of you. Alix, why are you staring at Janice like that? You look like a fish.’

  ‘A trout,’ somebody added, and the room convulsed in giggles.

  *

  In the thread room, Alix shifted from foot to foot as a woman in a white pinafore inspected a length of Petersham ribbon and gave forth on the iniquities of dyers who couldn’t tell one green from another. A girl in brown culottes stood by, nodding impatiently. She was a ‘matcher’, to judge from her lithe shape. On any working day, the Sentier – the 2nd arron
dissement district of Paris – swarmed with matchers dashing between the ribbon, button, tape and buckle makers’ shops and the fashion houses. A day’s production often depended on a matcher’s speed and judgement. Get it wrong and – by the sound of it – you endured a sermon, at the very least. Though at Maison Javier, it seemed, not a harsh one –

  ‘A cabbage is not the same colour as an apple, Suzanne, and never has been.’

  ‘No, Mme Albert.’

  ‘Insult my eye a second time, I will probably have to get annoyed.’

  ‘I tremble in fear, Mme Albert. It won’t happen again.’

  ‘Madame?’ Alix called as the girl hurried off with the offending ribbon. ‘A client expects a garment by close of Monday. I need thread.’

  ‘Give.’ The woman held out her hand for the sample and waddled to a chest twenty drawers deep. She pulled one open and Alix saw compartments full of silk bobbins, beginning with off-white, ripening to corn, maize, saffron, then sable. Yellows and in-between hues. There would be a red drawer, a blue drawer … what a lovely job to have.

  Mme Albert selected four corn colours and went to the window.

  ‘I think the lightest one, Madame?’ Alix had seen at a glance which would be best, but still the woman turned each bobbin over slowly. Aware that her patience was wearing thin, Alix followed her to the window and discovered it was raining. Damn, she’d only worn a thin jacket. She’d be soaked by the time she got home. It took her some moments to realise that this side of the building looked out on Rue Boccador, and that the grey building diagonally opposite was the News Monitor office. She’d walked past it on her way to lunch, pausing to read the brass plaque, which said ‘Calford Press’. The man from the Place du Tertre worked there, the one who’d taken her home the other day.

  She tried to bring him to mind. Tall, with arresting eyes. Well-bred but rough-looking. What had they talked about? She remembered he’d used the word ‘trauma’ to describe her state. A new word, but a good one. She shuddered … Her attacker had sent her hair to the Comte de Charembourg. It was like something out of a penny dreadful. The comte’s note to her, by contrast, had been so warm.

  A car was drawing up at the kerb. A common-or-garden Peugeot, though this one was the shade of Rhône wine. Her gaze sharpened … hadn’t that car drawn up just as she was plucking up the courage to enter Maison Javier for the first time? No surprise, then, to see the same young man in the wide-lapelled suit climb out. His hat was lodged under his arm and Alix was struck by the gleam of his hair as it caught the rain. Its colour would have belonged on the lightest side of Mme Albert’s bobbin drawer. He put on the hat and, as if he sensed her staring down, glanced up and touched his brim in salute. Had he recognised her? Not at this distance. Not after one encounter. Habitual good manners? Or just a flirt …

  ‘The lightest colour will not do.’

  Alix jumped. Mme Albert was holding out a bobbin. ‘One must always use a darker thread than the fabric itself. Right?’ She prodded Alix to secure her attention. ‘Silk thread catches the light, raising it by two, even three shades. You will think I’m wrong until you sew the garment, but next time you’ll say, “Oh, Mme Albert, thank you for saving me the trouble of having to unpick!” Bien?’ The woman smiled, displaying buck teeth. It was the kindest expression Alix had seen all week.

  Mme Albert looked down at the man lounging against the Peugeot’s wing. ‘There he is, hanging around until the parade is over. Wouldn’t you like to be so beautiful a man like that waits for you in the rain?’

  ‘Who is he, Madame?’

  ‘He’s called Martel, I believe. Unless I have my facts tangled, he runs some kind of dive.’

  ‘Dive?’

  ‘Nightclub. Squeeze … Speakeasy. Don’t you watch American films? It’s in Pigalle, which is the sort of place your mother wouldn’t let you go to.’

  Alix nodded, not bothering to mention that she had no mother. Dive. Speakeasy. Squeeze. More new words. They stood in silence, arrested by the muscular Adonis whose suit was growing darker with rain by the minute.

  ‘He’s Solange Antonin’s latest,’ Mme Albert added. ‘You know, the dark-haired mannequin with the long neck, the one Javier always puts in white or black? I don’t go for light-haired men myself, except Leslie Howard. Did you see The Scarlet Pimpernel? My favourite film ever.’ Mme Albert sighed, then glanced at the clock. ‘You’d better trot along or your supervisor will be on your tail.’

  *

  Mlle Lefoine was out of the room so Alix managed to avoid a scolding. She settled on to her bench and picked up her work. At just after six, the supervisor returned and Alix asked if she might take the skirt to the pressing room.

  ‘You’ve finished?’ She replied with a sceptical frown.

  ‘As far as I can without having it pressed.’

  ‘Let me see.’ Mlle Lefoine held the skirt up to the light. She gave Alix a strange look, then pulled in a breath. ‘You stupid girl, you completely stupid girl! I cannot believe what I’m seeing.’

  Alix stammered, ‘Surely there’s nothing wrong? I took so much care.’

  ‘You’ve sewn it inside out,’ Mlle Lefoine hurled. ‘It will have to be unpicked and if you’ve damaged the material, you’ll pay for it.’

  Alix began a denial, even as she realised her supervisor was correct. The ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ sides of the silk were almost identical, but not completely. How had it happened? She’d double-checked before she went for her thread. Then she noticed Janice and Séverine snickering behind their hands. So – while she’d been in the thread room, sly fingers had undone her tacking and re-sewn the pieces the wrong way.

  Alix wanted to cry, but she drew on her ability to ride out the humiliation and said in a voice pitched between meek and defiant, ‘I’ll start again and stay until I’ve done the work correctly.’

  ‘Indeed you will,’ the supervisor snapped. ‘In fact, everyone will work an extra hour because, thanks to you, this has been one of the least productive days I can remember. And, Alix, when you have finished sewing, you will sweep the floors.’

  *

  She sewed as the building emptied, as dusk fell and the floors creaked with the outflow of feet. She sewed until the skirt was ready for its first pressing. Keening with exhaustion, she draped it in tissue paper and hung it in the storeroom. Then she swept the floor. Her knuckles were swollen, her neck muscles burning. Mémé’s right, she confessed to herself, it’s hard. When she was finished, she headed to the door. And found it locked.

  *

  In the building opposite, Verrian Haviland sat on the corner of his desk, telephone receiver in hand. An hour ago he’d received a wire from his brother with further news of Miguel and now he was about to say words he’d never imagined would pass his lips. ‘Thank you from my heart, Jack.’

  ‘Good God. Well, thanks accepted.’

  ‘Which South American country is he on his way to?’

  ‘Venezuela to begin with. After that, it’s up to him. Reports say he and his family are F&D.’

  ‘F&D’ was Jack’s shorthand for ‘fine and dandy.’ Verrian doubted Miguel could be either, considering his maiming and subsequent handling, but the important thing was that he was out of Spain. Jack had actually delivered.

  Jack said, ‘On your chum’s behalf I took a stratospherically dull Foreign Office fellow out to dinner and stood him a round of golf. You are truly in my debt and it’s time to start showing it. Paris desk says you pop in and out at whim. When I ask your hotel to pass on a message, I get some halfwit who laughs at me.’

  ‘That’ll be Laurentin. He finds the English side-splitting. Actually I’ve moved. To Montmartre, a house without a telephone.’

  His brother swore. ‘I told you to check into a proper hotel. I wasn’t suggesting the Ritz, but you’re not too bloody proletarian for the Polonaise?’

  Verrian released a slow breath. Jack might be the elder by two years, but he often pushed the privilege. ‘I can’t face duck down and si
lk wallpaper. I’m sorry, Jack, I know I’m going back on my word, I’ll never be able to explain what Spain means to me …’ What it had cost. ‘I’m going back.’

  ‘Not on our ticket!’ Jack exploded. ‘The Foreign Office says the Spanish police will arrest you if you put so much as a foot over the border. Damn it, you pushed one of their officers down some steps.’

  ‘He was trying to put handcuffs on me.’

  ‘I daresay he thought it was his job. We’re sending another chap to Madrid, somebody a little less emotionally embroiled.’

  ‘I’ll go as a freelancer then, with the Agence Espagne.’

  ‘No passport, remember? No accreditation. Thanks to that mix-up with the censors, you’re on every blacklist going. Now listen –’ Jack’s tone warmed – ‘guess who’s coming to Paris? Mother and Lucy. Father wants you to squire them about.’

  ‘I’m not in good shape for family. Why are they coming?’

  ‘Why does any woman go to Paris? To shop, dear boy. It’ll be your sister’s first visit to the City of Light, so of course you’ll want to show her the sights. I’ll wire you their time of arrival.’

  *

  Alix rattled the door. Banged, shouted until her voice cracked. Had the caretaker locked her in by accident? Or was it deliberate? Surely her colleagues wouldn’t imprison her all night? She stood on the sewing table and bumped the broom handle against the ceiling. Flakes of paint sprinkled her but nobody thumped a reply. It was after nine on a Friday night. Everyone had somewhere else to be – family suppers, dinner with friends, parties. Mme Frankel would be at home in the upmarket suburb of Bois de Boulogne. Javier was probably changing into evening dress in his suite overlooking Parc Monceau.

  Mémé would panic as the night progressed, would set out to look for her. Alix opened a window and leaned out into the dark. It was still raining, the street below as glossy as a sea lion. She needed one sympathetic person. A policeman, if necessary.

  Only the police hardly ever patrolled this smart district and it was hard to make eye contact with anybody, staring down over the tops of umbrellas and rain hats. Everyone was hurrying. ‘Excuse me!’ she called at a man and woman crossing the road directly in front of her. ‘Will you help?’ They looked side to side in confusion. ‘I’m up here!’