The Dress Thief

by Natalie Meg Evans

  Mrs Fisk-Castelman cricked her jaw. ‘I am sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but I saw every item of this collection already, at a show put on by a friend of mine.’ Her finger sketched the outline of Alix’s dress in the air. ‘L’Arabie? Seen it. Tried it on. Go ask Yetta Flatmeyer, or better still, visit her boutique on East 49th Street, which specialises in high-end ready-to-wear. I know which wholesaler she got that dress from and I know she paid a shave under ninety dollars for it. You couldn’t get a candy wrapper between hers and the one this young lady is wearing.’

  ‘No. This is not possible.’ For the first time in Alix’s presence, Javier surrendered his famous composure. ‘It cannot be!’

  ‘How about an experiment, Monsieur? How about I draw you the climax of your show today? The big dress that’s going to knock the ball out of the park.’

  Javier looked like a man dragged across stones and left for dead. Alix could have wept for him as he beckoned Mlle Lilliane. ‘Oblige this lady, if you please.’

  With a dignity Alix couldn’t help but admire, Lilliane handed over her seating plan, complete with clipboard and pencil. Against a background of hostile whispers, Mrs Fisk-Castelman peeled off a page and began to sketch, Alix willing with every fibre of her being for that pencil to break.

  But, actually Alix was as mystified as everyone else by Mrs Fisk-Castelman’s claims, or nearly so. Javier had completed L’Arabie during the first weekend of July and Alix had drawn it for Mabel Godnosc around the seventh or eighth of the month. If the woman was sketching the show’s climax, a ball gown called Duquesa de la Noche, well, that hadn’t been finished until 9th July. She’d handed over the sketch of Duquesa the following week, on the 14th, quatorze juillet, a date fixed in her mind as she’d pushed her way along the Champs-Elysées through swarms of holiday revellers. Given that even the Normandie, the fastest boat plying between France and the United States, spent five days on the Atlantic, Mrs Fisk-Castelman couldn’t have seen that dress in New York on the sixteenth. Not unless Mabel Godnosc had made a pact with the Devil.

  The journalist presented her sketch to Javier, who regarded it as if it were his death warrant. ‘This is the very dress, the climax to my show. How can this be?’

  Alix couldn’t look any more. All she wanted was to pull Una Kilpin off her chair and make her somehow explain how this horrible thing had happened.

  *

  For two days afterwards, Alix avoided the muttering huddles that filled every room and corridor of Maison Javier. So jumpy was she, Mme Frankel sent her once more down to the sanatorium. The nurse assumed she was coming down with summer flu and sent her home. Alix closed her shutters and lay in bed, very frightened.

  Three days in to her supposed flu, Marcy called with a box of marzipan sweets and the news that Javier had called in the police. As soon as she left, Alix finally got up, going to the Abbesses post office, where she called Una Kilpin’s residential number, trying repeatedly when she couldn’t connect. But either the telephone rang out or the maid fobbed her off, claiming ‘Madame’ was unwell.

  At least Serge filled her nights. Champagne, music and his earthy preoccupation with her body occupied her sleepless hours. He found it hilarious that, a few nights before, she’d unknowingly smoked a hashish joint at the jazz club they went to on Pigalle. ‘Mezz is a Saint,’ he crowed, referring to the club’s maitre d’. ‘He doesn’t like to see a lady looking sorrowful and will always provide the medicine.’ After that he’d made sure that the dealers who padded around the Rose Noire’s tables kept her supplied. Alix stayed in a blessed half-haze for several days until she woke one afternoon fully dressed on Serge’s bed with a pounding head, a fly buzzing in a fold of window net. Heading to the bathroom, she muttered, ‘Damn this. If I’m for prison, so is Una.’

  An hour later she was on the Champs-Elysées, hammering at the street door of Maison Godnosc.

  *

  At a table strewn with samples stood Mabel and Una. They looked to be in the silent stage of an argument which had hit the buffer. Mabel was holding a dress up to the light, pretending to examine it. It was one Alix had designed, kept on hand for customers Mabel didn’t trust. Even the dress looked forlorn. Green was difficult. Green so often wanted to be poison. No gin cocktails tonight, Alix noted, before accusing Una of hiding from her.

  ‘No, I really was ill.’ She looked it. Mabel also looked positively gaunt. Even so, Alix launched an attack.

  ‘The stupidity of what you’ve done! Javier is talking to a police department that puts couture thieves in prison.’

  Una nodded. ‘I took Gladys Fisk-Castelman to lunch, one ex-patriot to another, and she says autumn–winter Javiers are flooding New York and the great man will sue if he’s got anything resembling balls.’ Those last words were aimed at Mabel, who buried her face in the green dress.

  Alix snatched the garment away and threw it on to the table, yelling, ‘Again! You gave a collection to New York before it was presented in Paris.’

  Mabel made a ‘whaddya expect?’ gesture. ‘I’m the middle woman. Can I go to a wholesaler like Samuels or Weinstock and say, “Start manufacturing, but keep schtum until this date or that date”?’

  ‘We agreed we’d wait till mid-August. You only had to hold off a couple of weeks, so instead of one suspect – me – there’d be five hundred.’

  ‘They use us because we give them designs fresh out the egg. It’s our selling proposition. Our risk.’

  ‘Well, we’re dead.’ Alix swung round to include Una. ‘You’re nothing but a pair of cardsharps.’ The advantage of keeping a lid on your anger was that, when you let it out, it had the power to turn pistons. ‘What’s more, I know you have somebody else working for you at Javier; you must do. You couldn’t have got my last sketches to New York in time to have them made up and beat Javier to his own show.’

  Una denied it. ‘You’re our one true love, honour bright.’

  That did it, that little stab at humour. Alix picked up a chair, walked with it to the window. ‘I’m going to hurl this on to the Champs-Elysées. Then I’ll hurl out every fake dress, and scream until the police arrive. You have until the count of three to tell me the truth.’ She lined the chair up with the middle of the window.

  ‘OK, kiddo. Put down the weapon. Sit on it and I’ll tell you.’

  So Alix sat and Una folded her hands and Mabel clacked her bangles.

  ‘Belinograph,’ said Una.

  ‘Bell-what?’ Alix demanded.

  ‘Mr Kilpin’s latest toy. It’s a radio wire that transmits pictures. Instead of days at sea on a boat they whoosh across the Atlantic in minutes. It’s a miracle of technology.’

  Alix narrowed her eyes. Was Una gulling her? ‘If there was a wire over the sea, ships would get caught in it.’

  ‘Bless you, it goes by cable laid on the seabed. Just like a telegraph message, only this time it’s your drawings reduced to a series of beeps … never mind, take it from me: nobody has to send pictures by boat so long as they have a Mr Kilpin. He bought the machine for sending weather charts and marine maps around the world. I use it some evenings; his secretary turns a blind eye.’

  ‘You sent my sketches on this Bell-thing? Mme Godnosc, you knew?’

  Mabel made a grinching face. ‘If technology’s there, you use it. We don’t wear twigs or cook dinner in a pit any more. That’s progress.’

  Alix swung back to Una. ‘All for one and one for all?’

  Una twitched. ‘I told Mabel to wait, but controlling Big Apple entrepreneurs, that’s hard.’ She reached out and patted Alix’s cheek. ‘Chin up, kiddo, we’ll pull through.’

  Alix yelled, ‘You can be calm because nothing will happen to you.’

  ‘Oh? When my husband finds out we wired from his office, he may divorce me. And did you get paid? Well, did you?’

  ‘A lick and a promise and it all went to my grandmother’s clinic.’

  ‘I’m sorry for your trouble, but like Mabel said—’ Una stopped. They heard men’s voic
es, a protest from the receptionist. After that, footsteps coming closer.

  Three men entered dressed in smart civilian suits. The eldest said courteously, ‘Mme Godnosc?’

  ‘No.’ Una gestured faintly to Mabel, who cleared her throat and bleated, ‘Oh, God.’

  ‘Madame, we are following up evidence presented by the couturier Javier to the effect that you are involved in the illegal copying and transmitting of fashion designs. He has proof that designs were stolen from his premises and sent abroad for copying. We are also investigating his claim that you pirate the work of other leading couturiers. We intend to conduct a search of this office and confiscate any items that implicate you.’ He spoke French, of course, and when Mabel returned mute incomprehension, he turned to Una. ‘We are also looking for a Mme Kilpin in connection with the offence.’

  ‘Look no further, honey.’ Una attempted an invincible smile. ‘Mademoiselle?’ One of the other men looked at Alix, who stared back, mouth opening and closing without sound.

  ‘Her?’ Una snatched a sheet of brown pattern paper from the table. She created a travesty of a parcel around the green dress and flung it at Alix, who caught it. ‘English, not a word of French, but the poor idiot strives to be chic so we do our best with what she’s got.’ She hustled Alix to the door. ‘Au revoir, Mademoiselle… er … Garland.’ Shoving Alix into the corridor, she hissed, ‘Bring me grapes in jail.’

  *

  Entering Maison Javier next morning, Alix knew by the texture of the air that something had changed. She’d just put down the valise-style bag that contained her mannequin’s accessories and make-up when Mme Markova came to her and said, ‘Monsieur wishes to see you in his studio.’

  Simon Norbert and Mlle Lilliane stood either side of Javier. Like a bodyguard, blank-faced. In a further office, telephones were ringing. Somebody was answering them, but clearly could not cope. Javier invited Alix to sit. His sketchbooks were piled at either elbow, walling him in. One was open, a paperweight keeping the page.

  For some time he said nothing, so that when he did speak her overstrained pulse leaped. ‘I believe this is the blackest time of my life, Alix. The damage done to my reputation …’ He shook his head. ‘A second collection ruined. Journalists’ sneers proved right. Twenty years’ work thrown in my face. You know Mme Kilpin has been arrested for pirating?’

  Alix cleared her throat. ‘I – er – heard.’

  ‘Whether they will charge her …’ He shrugged. ‘Her husband is so rich and influential. I mention this because she is in a way your patroness. You are here because of her recommendation.’

  Hope surged. Maybe Una’s quick thinking had saved her. Alix knew she didn’t deserve to get off, but keeping Javier’s affection suddenly felt all-consuming. That, and keeping her job. She knew precisely on which day this month the money to pay Mémé’s bills would run out.

  ‘Tell me your opinion of this.’ Javier turned a sketchbook towards her, removing the paperweight. It was a sketch of a woman in medieval dress and Alix recognised its inspiration. One of the ‘Lady with the Unicorn’ tapestries which hung in the Cluny museum. Its sleeves were similar to those of Christine de Charembourg’s wedding dress. The neckline too, the one originally designed to show off the family pearls. Why was Javier showing her this?

  The dress was in the middle of the page, with small details reproduced in each corner. Each subsidiary sketch had another detail, or fabric idea, drawn at its corner, giving the page the symmetry of a Moorish tile. Javier always presented his ideas this way. Alix considered his sketchbooks miniature works of art.

  ‘I don’t recall your ever making this, Monsieur.’

  ‘No,’ he acknowledged. ‘The medieval motif is too “Arts and Crafts”, too recently out of fashion to risk in these more stringent times.’ He picked up a sheet of art paper and placed it on the scrapbook.

  Alix stuttered, ‘Oh, I – oh.’

  It was her sketch of Rose Noire, the dress she’d thrown out for Mabel Godnosc on a night when her head ached and she’d been longing to meet Verrian.

  ‘It interests me, Alix, how you absorbed my way of laying out ideas. You are a good pupil. Now let me explain what I know of this dress. It was created for Mme Kilpin who wanted to sell it to an American wholesaler as part of a summer line. That is nothing to me – she is entitled to be a dress dealer if she wishes. But also she wished for some samples to be made here in Paris, for herself and friends. She approached –’ Simon Norbert came forward – ‘a friend of my good lieutenant here to procure the fabric. You were a little suspicious, mon ami, when your friend showed you this drawing?’

  Simon Norbert’s mouth puckered, but for the first time he looked happy in Alix’s presence.

  ‘Most suspicious. First I thought it was one of your drawings, Monsieur, but on closer inspection I realised it was a rake-together of lots of your ideas. The collar with the contrast revere, well, that was spring–summer 1934, and that lozenge insert defining the waist, we discussed that last winter before she –’ he aimed a toxic glance at Alix – ‘arrived here. But we produced a fair few drawings trying it out. She must have leafed through your sketchbooks and seen it.’

  ‘No!’ Alix cried. ‘I did no such thing!’

  ‘Thank you.’ Javier’s gaze was pure sorrow. ‘Did you think, Alix, you had come up with something strikingly original?’ He shook his head. ‘Little in this world is truly original, but I commend you. The idea is fresh, it has verve and I had the pleasure of seeing the dress itself in the Spanish pavilion at the World’s Fair. I remember thinking, Even when evil stalks the world, the simple pleasure of a beautiful girl never wanes. Please come forward, Mlle Lilliane.’

  Alix thought she was going to faint. Anything to escape the humiliation that was coming.

  ‘You warned me not to employ this young woman,’ Javier said.

  ‘I did, Monsieur.’

  ‘I rejected your advice and now formally beg your pardon. It is a lesson to me, that the instincts I have learned to rely upon may lead me wrong.’

  ‘Your intentions were good,’ Mlle Lilliane said. ‘I’m just sorry they were wasted. Just as I’m sorry that we ever thought Solange was a thief.’

  ‘Poor Solange indeed. Go now, if you please. Both.’ The two assistants left the studio, but Alix knew they hadn’t gone far. She could hear them in the corridor outside.

  ‘So …’ Javier raised his hands. ‘I know now that you were Mme Kilpin’s beetle, gnawing inside this great tree of mine, digesting the goodness and turning it over to her. You do not deny it?’

  ‘No.’

  His silence was agony. At last he said, ‘It is because your grandmother is so ill that you did this?’

  Alix could hardly see through her tears. In a moment she’d be weeping in that unstoppable way, like whooping cough. A handkerchief was held out and she snatched it. She tried to tell him something of her shame; how copying had started out as a sideline, almost a game, that allowed her to buy clothes and make up the shortfall in hers and her grandmother’s income. How she was then pressured into stealing collections. His collections. How it had sickened her from the start, how she’d tried to stop. ‘But then my grandmother was attacked, and I’m all she has because my mother died when I was born, and I had to pay hospital bills and I couldn’t see my way out.’

  Javier spoke gently. ‘Specialist care is so expensive and you have no father or family to help. You take it all on yourself, Alix. You steal because others –’ his voice grew hard – ‘see they can use you. They offer you money. You cannot turn it down. In a way, you steal for love.’

  ‘For love?’ She met his eyes and, through tears, saw a match for her own misery. Javier needed to believe in her innate goodness and she wished she could say something to restore his faith. What could she say when the consequences of her behaviour were clear in his face? In the destruction of his life’s work? ‘Don’t be kind to me,’ she sobbed. ‘Don’t try to see the best in me. But please believe that I respe
ct you and care about you and am so ashamed I would work for you for the rest of my life for nothing.’

  ‘Ah.’ He spread his hands in helpless regret. ‘I think that would be illegal and quite rightly so. Come, I will take you downstairs.’

  M. Javier conducted her to the pavement as if she were a valued customer. He sent a subordinate for her bag, handing it to her as she climbed into the rear of a taxi. The taxi had appeared from nowhere. Someone must have ordered it. So everyone knew. Marcy, Pauline Frankel, Mme Albert with her bobbin drawers, kind Mme Markova …

  As the taxi inched through clogged streets, bumper grazing until they reached the artery of Boulevard de Magenta, Alix felt a lifetime’s misery swelling inside her. All she could think was, Now I know how Sylvie le Gal felt. I hate my life and I want to die.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  One month earlier – July 1937. Villanueva del Pardillo, west of Madrid

  He lay stretched out on a hillside. Raised his head and a bullet sang over his scalp. An instant later a shell exploded above the shallow dip where he was sheltering. Missiles spattered his back and, thinking he’d been hit, he pressed his knuckles against his jacket, testing for blood. Only stones and dry soil, he realised. He was still being lucky. Further down in the dip where he’d crawled for shelter, two comrades lay dead.

  They’d been at this assault over six hours, and he was still unsure what his commanders were trying to achieve. Not that he was sure of much. The incessant slam of shells and remorseless rifle fire from nearby Villanueva had liquefied his brains. Flies wouldn’t stay off him, crawling into his collar, over the backs of his hands. A hundred degrees of heat, no water to drink. Every now and then a whistle would blow and his unit would move forward, crawling in the dust on their bellies, firing as they went. They’d get a little nearer the enemy and the street fighting they’d been promised – then they’d be pushed back by the shelling. Those streets were never less than five hundred yards away.