The Dress Thief

by Natalie Meg Evans

  ‘Liar. You went to her and hurt her. I know it.’

  ‘What is it with you women, always peering into your souls? What was Jolyan Ferryman telling you?’

  ‘That you’d hurt me badly in time, but I don’t think you have the guts. Once you tried – braking so hard I slammed into the dashboard? There wasn’t a stray deer on the road that night. I’d asked you to behave like a man, so you behaved like a brat.’

  Serge’s pupils flickered a warning, which she ignored. She’d come back to him because she’d been in despair, imagining the world was riddled with enemies hunting her to death. Serge, alcohol and hashish had offered a refuge and she’d stumbled back into the trap. Now that she was clear-headed again, she’d just have to climb out.

  As if he heard her thoughts, Serge pulled her against him and dug his thumb into the curve of her neck. She shifted but the pressure moved with her.

  ‘Serge, that hurts!’

  He didn’t reply, nor did he ease off. The band segued into a new tune. Their leader held his trumpet against his leg and began to croon, ‘Vous, qui passez sans me voir’ – a song about a man seeing the love of his life walk by without a glance.

  Serge’s spittle hit her cheek. ‘Think I can’t behave like a man? Come upstairs and I’ll show you.’

  ‘Serge, I’m tired of your games, your lies.’

  ‘What lies?’

  ‘You buying this club off your cousin? There was no cousin. You bought it off an Italian who went bankrupt. One of your staff told me.’ Because the pressure of his thumb was growing unbearable, she owned up to another long-held doubt. ‘You don’t come from champagne people. The Epernay estate? Jolyan thinks it’s all make-believe and I agree. Your accent slips. You come from Paris, not from the banks of the Marne. You’ve lied from the first hour we met.’

  ‘Why would you say that, Alix?’

  ‘You let me believe that you and Solange separated by consent, but the truth is you abandoned her. She was pregnant with your child—’

  ‘So she says.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t help her. All you did was injure her so badly she can’t work. You bit her, like a dog—’

  At the word ‘dog’, his thumb dug deeper into her neck, pressing so hard on her collarbone her vision started to swim. ‘You’re staying tonight, Alix. We’re back together, yes?’

  ‘I’m walking out, after this dance.’

  The singer ended his sad song, ‘Adieu, bonsoir,’ but Serge shouted, ‘Play something loud. Get Dulcie on.’

  A minute later, ‘I’ve Found a New Baby’ blasted out. A fast tune, but Serge stood immobile, keeping Alix in an excruciating embrace while other couples twirled around them. ‘You’ll black out when your collarbone snaps,’ he said. ‘I’ll carry you upstairs and show you what I did to Solange.’ With a quiver that might have been laughter, he kissed her face and took her ear into his mouth. ‘Yes, I bite.’ His tongue stippled the groove where her ear joined her head. ‘Then I bite harder—’

  She gasped as he nipped her, but nobody heard over the applause as Dulcie L’Amour walked up to the mike and began singing, ‘Everybody look at me …’

  ‘I bite harder … harder … one jerk and, rip, off it comes. That’s when you start screaming.’ Serge’s lips were moving, as if searching for the place to sink his teeth in.

  In desperation, Alix looked to where Jolyan was sitting. She raised her eyebrows in a silent appeal, but Jolyan misunderstood, lifting his champagne glass in response. She went rigid as Serge’s teeth encircled her ear. She’d been told about this side of him, hadn’t she? Even Paul had warned her.

  Dulcie sang about her new baby’s way of loving. Happy shrieks drowned her out as a net of balloons was released. Red and black, they floated down. Alix stepped on one and it burst. Serge’s teeth were breaking her skin. She’d black out in a minute … he’d carry her away and everyone would say what a perfect gentleman he was, how she didn’t deserve him. She could hear balloons bursting around her, like the advance of rifle fire. A man was walking towards them, bursting balloons in his path with the flame of a cigarette lighter.

  Above her head, somebody said, ‘My dance, would you mind?’ The question was without inflection and in English. Serge’s answer was short and obscene.

  Alix saw a burst of flame, felt a lick of heat, then yelped in pain as Serge tore away from her. He was shrieking like an animal, clutching at his mouth. A tall man in evening clothes dropped the hinge on a cigarette lighter. He had dark hair cropped short and the face of someone who has suffered under the sun. Blue, blue eyes. Impossible – she was hallucinating.

  Nothing hallucinatory in the way Serge hunched low, eyes filming over as a terrifying entity seemed to take him over. Alix waited for her rescuer to run.

  He didn’t. He moved in close so that Serge’s punch cracked the side of his jaw. The next blow was his, a piston below the ribs.

  Serge Martel doubled over. As he recovered, an upward punch flung his head backwards. He went down, clasping his nose, blood pumping through his fingers. Music stopped amid screams. Staff hurried forward.

  ‘Shall we dance?’ her rescuer asked. ‘Or go? Go, I think.’ He steered her across the floor, in no particular hurry, which was a good thing. Her legs had forgotten how to walk straight.

  ‘What have you done?’ she moaned.

  ‘Moved the hands of the clock to midnight. Come on. I’ve a car waiting.’

  *

  She thought he meant a taxi, but a long-bodied vehicle stood at the kerb, engine idling, cabriolet top folded back. He opened the passenger door and she fell onto a seat of glove-soft leather. Then he was beside her and the car was moving away with a baritone throb.

  He reached behind for a tartan travel rug, which he dropped on her lap. ‘Where to?’

  ‘Rue Jacob.’

  He threw her a look. ‘Am I to meet another rival?’

  ‘Don’t you dare ask questions after the way you treated me, Verrian Haviland. Just drive.’

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  She changed her mind about Rue Jacob. Mémé would be asleep in the flat, Bonnet snoring in the studio below. She didn’t want to wake either of them. ‘Just drive around.’

  ‘Until I run out of petrol?’ He parked close to Pont Marie and they walked on to Île St-Louis, Alix still wearing the tartan blanket like a shawl. On the tip of the island they sat in the shadows of the foliage, the Seine at their feet. The loudest sound was the creak of mooring lines and the bumping of craft along the wharf.

  ‘You left me,’ she accused. ‘After what happened to Mémé – left me with nowhere to turn.’ This was her moment. She’d waited eighteen months to pour this out. ‘I don’t want you any more.’

  ‘You needed my help just now.’ He put his arm around her. She was too exhausted and shocked to move away. ‘What the hell was happening back there?’

  ‘Serge was going to rip my ear off because I wouldn’t go back to him.’

  Verrian swore viciously. ‘Go back? That means you were with him. A man famous even in Pigalle for violence … how much were you “with him?”’

  He’d never spoken to her in such a voice before and she swiped back, ‘You can talk. You flicked your lighter in his mouth.’

  ‘Not “in”; that wouldn’t have worked. Against. For which nasty technique, derived from Fascist mercenaries, you continue to have the benefit of both your ears.’

  Neither spoke until Verrian said, ‘I gave a letter to someone I trusted, to pass to you.’

  ‘I got no letter,’ Alix said coldly. ‘I don’t believe you wrote one.’ She felt his arm stiffen but thought, If we’re to quarrel, let’s do it. ‘What sort of man writes a letter? You come and you go. You have a wife, you don’t have a wife. You lie about your name and your family. Every man I know does that. Yes, I know who your father is,’ she snapped, feeling him turn towards her, ‘and I don’t care. I can take my pick of better men than you.’ She pulled away, but he pulled her back.

  �
��I didn’t come back to find myself in a queue behind Serge Martel.’

  She heard the anger, the raw disbelief. Male jealousy was a monster, she was discovering. It made even the sanest man dangerous. ‘If you hurt me, I’ll scream,’ she warned him. ‘I’ll swim across the river. I don’t care if I drown.’

  ‘Alix, what happened while I was away?’

  ‘I grew up.’ Another silence, filled with the patient sounds of the water. This time Alix broke it. ‘You can tell me where you disappeared to, if you want.’

  He told her, ‘Spain.’ He told her a little more, then a little more. Marseille first, then the Spanish border at Perpignan. Endless waiting in reception camps. International Brigades, a British Battalion. Uniform. Training and, finally, action. Her head sank on to his shoulder. When she awoke, the sky was milky and Verrian suggested they find breakfast.

  *

  Their evening clothes caused a stir at Laurentin’s. The patron let out a roar, ‘Ehhh, mon ami. You went so suddenly we thought you’d got a girl pregnant.’ He noticed Alix and whistled. Her evening dress was her own design – a successful version of No. 10. A step on from the version she’d seen on Rhona in blue chiffon velvet with a plunging back and a sweeping skirt.

  ‘Quick, quick, put a cloth on a table, Marie,’ Laurentin shouted to his waitress. ‘Wipe two chairs.’

  Bread, crisp from the oven, butter, Auvergne ham and pâté were placed in front of them. An enamel jug of coffee followed, with hot milk and two bowls. Alix slipped marcasite combs out of her hair and let her curls, now grown to nearly the length they had been before, fall loose. Laurentin happened to look her way. Something about her must have ignited a memory because he shouted, ‘You came looking for him, sweetheart! Slapped my face because I couldn’t help you find him.’ He laughed in delight. ‘All forgiven, eh?’

  Stealing a look over the rim of her coffee bowl, Alix caught a glimpse of the old Verrian. A slight thaw, a smile.

  ‘You came searching for me?’ he asked.

  ‘I wanted to break things off with you.’

  ‘Break off what? We weren’t a couple.’

  ‘Then why write me a letter?’ She reached for bread, buttered it lavishly, rolled ham into cigars and balanced it on the bread.

  ‘Maybe I was breaking things off with you.’

  ‘Why bother, as you were about to leave? Here –’ she passed the pâté – ‘get going or I shall eat it all.’ She made a face. Marie was passing with trenchers of steaming andouillettes, strongly flavoured sausage derived from the inner organs of pig and veal. ‘You’d need to have done a long night’s work to want that.’

  ‘D’you know, I had my first conversation with you from that lobby?’ Verrian pointed to the gap in the curtains. ‘You were my lady telephonist. My “Hello Girl”. I adored your voice.’

  ‘You asked me to marry you. You should be ashamed.’

  ‘Even then, I knew you weren’t just anybody. You look exquisite, by the way.’

  ‘Serge liked me to look like a mannequin.’ She touched her ear, which brought to mind Solange, swan neck bloodied … If Verrian hadn’t come when he had … she wanted to throw her arms around him, but he looked so forbidding she didn’t dare.

  ‘Was Serge your lover all the time I was away?’

  She parried. ‘The night Mémé was attacked, did you know you were leaving?’

  ‘No. I got a call in the early hours.’

  She nodded. The sunburned skin and new scars filled out the story he’d told her earlier. A white scar lay between the fingers of his left hand, bright as Shellac against his tan, but that wasn’t a battle wound. That was a blade in a dark hallway. ‘Why so suddenly?’

  ‘I explained in my letter: I answered a cry for help from a Spanish friend who was stranded in Marseille.’

  ‘So you could have come back within a day.’ It flooded back, all that waiting. A tear rolled on to her cheek. ‘I thought you’d left me because I was always getting into trouble. I was in trouble. What was their plight to mine, these Spanish friends?’

  He reached for her hand, and when she withdrew hers coldly, took out cigarettes instead. Finding the packet empty, he flung it down on the table. ‘You live in a country at peace. You had Rosa, Paul, Bonnet, the Comte de Charembourg. In Marseille I realised I had to go back to Spain and pick up a gun or never again look in the mirror and see a man I liked and trusted. It mattered.’

  ‘More than me?’

  ‘More than you. I was under arms for fifteen months. Afterwards I could have gone to England, but I came here.’ This time he grabbed her hand and kept it. ‘For you.’

  ‘And what about your wife, the one whose ring you used to wear?’

  ‘That’s over.’ He paid the bill and they got up to leave, fending off Laurentin’s enthusiastic reassurances that Verrian’s old room was empty, if he wanted it.

  Walking out into daylight, Alix discovered that the car with the baritone throb was a new model Hispano-Suiza J12 Torpedo in cigar brown with gold trim. ‘This isn’t yours,’ she accused.

  ‘Actually it is. I had it shipped over some time ago. It’s garaged at the Hôtel Polonaise, where my father retains permanent suites. I’m staying there. Would you like to come back with me?’

  She wavered, the thought of a hot bath, a soft bed utterly beguiling. But Mémé would be waking soon, calling for her. And she had Modes Lutzman to run – mauled and semibankrupt as it was, it needed daily attention. And, from now on, she was going to be picky over her bedfellows. ‘No,’ she answered curtly.

  *

  Verrian dropped Alix off in Rue Jacob. He’d have liked to see inside her building, but she hadn’t invited him in. A big, rickety place she must struggle to maintain, he thought.

  As she unlocked her door, he stared into the courtyard. His gaze hardened as he saw a bearded man smoking beside an overgrown shrub. Bonnet – still painting? Verrian had enjoyed endless thinking time in Spain, and a lot of it had centred on Bonnet, his undoubted talent and his love of gambling dens. He’d thought about the Comte de Charembourg too. Yesterday Rosa had given him a letter which had arrived months ago. She’d kept it, assuming Verrian would eventually return. He wished she hadn’t, because now he had the burden of passing on its contents.

  The letter laid bare a cruel deception. From his suite at the Polonaise, while a valet set a bath running and brought him his shaving brushes and soap, he telephoned Alix’s workplace, inviting her to join him at five that afternoon for a tour of the News Monitor. Having just left him, she was suspicious, and so she should be. Verrian knew he was going to hurt her, but it was a surgical decision. Like cutting off an infected limb to save a life.

  *

  The receptionist at the News Monitor was the one Alix had crossed swords with before. Back then she’d been in shock and badly dressed. This time, in high heels, an hourglass suit and a stingingly chic hat, she was better prepared.

  However, the girl made Verrian her focus. Peering at the colourful bruising on his jaw, she fluttered her eyelashes. ‘May I help, sir?’

  Verrian peered back at her. ‘I don’t recognise you. Are you new?’

  ‘I’ve been here for over a year.’

  ‘Mmm. Well, I’ve been away longer than that … I’m Verrian Haviland and this is Miss Gower. I hope Miss Theakston’s still with us?’

  ‘Goodness, yes! She’s in her office. Mr Haviland, did you say?’ The receptionist slowly made the connection. ‘I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t realise—’

  ‘Call Beryl, would you?’ Verrian steered Alix towards the lift. ‘Tell her we’re on our way up.’

  In the lift Alix hissed, ‘I still think it was rotten of you not to tell me your father was Lord Calford.’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Yes. I made a fool of myself by not knowing.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘When I came here.’

  ‘You came here?’

  ‘No. Well, only to check you were all right. When y
ou vanished, I thought you might have had an accident.’

  The lift gave a rattling shrug as it reached its floor. Verrian unhitched the door, ushering Alix over the metal sill. ‘When you discovered that instead of the out-at-elbows hack you thought me I was the boss’s son, did it change anything?’

  ‘Of course. I’m a republican.’

  ‘Are you?’ He grinned. ‘You’d sweep away wealth and privilege, and the couture houses with them?’

  ‘What I mean is, aristocratic titles are a … a … they’re old-fashioned. Americans get by without them.’

  ‘My title is a courtesy, and I never use it.’

  Through the windows of a glass-walled office Alix saw a woman bending over the open drawer of a filing cabinet. Verrian tapped on the door, pushed it open. ‘Beryl?’

  The woman gave a cry and whatever she’d dug out of her drawer flew sideways as she rushed towards them. ‘Mr Haviland, you’re back! Have you any idea how anxious we were? Goodness, what have you done to your face?’

  ‘I walked into the protruding foot of an equestrian statue.’

  ‘Really? Your pilot friend … what was his name?’

  ‘Ron Phipps?’

  ‘Came here, said he’d flown into Le Bourget without you because you’d gone to fight in Spain. We couldn’t trace you and feared the worst. The casualty lists were dreadful in the summer of ’thirty-seven. Then the man who replaced you as Spanish correspondent said he’d seen you near Madrid and you seemed to be in one piece – but that was before last summer’s bloodshed … oh, but you’re back. Does Mr Chelsey know?’

  ‘Not yet. Give him a few more minutes’ untrammelled happiness. Beryl, may I introduce Miss Alix Gower?’ He drew Alix forward. ‘Alix, Miss Theakston runs the Paris edition of the Monitor – Oh, you do, Beryl, and you know it.’

  Alix was aware of being closely investigated. Aware, too, of proprietary feelings rising from a well-buttoned-up breast. But Miss Theakston shook her hand cordially.

  Verrian said, ‘Beryl, did Phipps bring a letter for Miss Gower? Because she didn’t receive it.’

  ‘Yes.’ Miss Theakston drew her brows together. ‘I delivered it next day, as directed.’ She turned to Alix. ‘We met outside the entrance of Javier’s couture house. I introduced myself, asked your name and handed you the letter.’