More Than You Know

by Penny Vincenzi

  “Oh—sure, yes. Very nice bloke.”

  “Isn’t he? Oh, Maddy, darling, hallo, fab party—sorry I’m late; God, look at Simon Butler; God, he’s such a tart; bit early to be carrying on like that, I’d have thought—tiny bit reckless too. And how many Maddy Brown dresses are here?”

  “Oh—quite a few. Yes. Oh, God, Suki’s passed out; I’d better go.”

  Eliza drained her glass and smiled at Matt. She did seem to be feeling really friendly.

  “Want another of those?” he asked.

  “Umm … yes … no … oh, listen, it’s ‘She Loves You,’ absolutely my favourite at the moment, Matt; dance?”

  And she took his hand and led him into the dancing.

  She danced well, really well. And she knew it. It began as a performance, and entirely by her; she moved into the music, ignoring him, her head thrown slightly back, her body bending, twisting, turning, her hair flying, her eyes shining; she had a smile on her face that was part pure pleasure, part look-at-me self-confidence. And Matt simply followed where she led. But then—for he knew he too danced well, really well—he began to perform too, oddly sure of himself suddenly, and she recognised it, her smile now for him, not her audience, her eyes fixed on his, her body following his, every move, every twist, every turn, pushing double, treble beats into every one; slowly everyone else stopped, staring at them, caught up in what was a virtuoso display, and at the end, when the music momentarily finished, when the beat changed, they seemed quite alone together, the evening briefly but entirely theirs, and Eliza stood there, staring at him, her eyes huge and shining, breathing heavily, and he stood too, neither of them moving, caught in a kind of sweet shock, frozen in time.

  And then, of course, the music went on; everyone began to dance again, people talking, smiling at one another; and there was a shout of, “Eliza,” and a tall, blond man was waving at her from the door, and she leaned forward and gave him a quick, half-embarrassed kiss and said, “Sorry, Matt, I’ve got to go; we’re only just looking in,” and the magic was gone and it wasn’t the princess in the story who had changed into a raggedy kitchen maid, but the prince become a nobody once more.

  But Matt didn’t care; he left quite soon after that, having thanked Maddy, shaken Esmond’s rather cold white hand, and even felt emboldened to kiss Suki, who was sitting on one of the sofas, weeping helplessly—he had no idea why—and drove most happily home.

  He wasn’t quite sure what had happened, but he felt as if things had changed. As if he was—or might become—a rightful person in Eliza’s life, rather than someone she was rather self-consciously nice to; and as if she was a rightful person in his, rather than someone impossibly out of reach. He didn’t quite understand it, but there was sex in there somewhere; that was for sure.

  She couldn’t be—could she? Surely, surely not. They’d been so careful; she always was. She had never allowed any man to take the responsibility, however much they might assure her it would be all right.

  But here she was, more than two weeks late, with boobs so sore she could hardly bear to touch them.

  “I did tell you,” the gynaecologist said slightly reprovingly, “it’s not one hundred per cent. Nothing is.”

  “So … what can I do?”

  “One of two things. Have it. Or not have it.”

  “I can’t have it,” said Scarlett. “I really can’t. Do you know anyone who could … well, help me?”

  “My dear girl, of course I don’t. It’s illegal. And if I did, and I told you, I could be struck off.”

  “Old bat,” said Diana. “And I bet you anything she’s had a couple of abortions herself. Oh, Scarlett. I’m so sorry. You poor thing.”

  “Yes, well. My own fault, I suppose.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous! Are you quite sure?”

  “ ’Fraid so. The lady toad has laid her eggs.”

  “So bizarre that, isn’t it?” said Diana absently. “To think our pee can make a toad ovulate. Sorry, I’m not helping, am I? What bad luck. Oh, dear. You can’t … well, you know—”

  “What?” said Scarlett.

  “Well … might he … marry you? If you told him?”

  “Unlikely,” said Scarlett. “He’s married already.”

  “Ah.” Diana was silent for a moment, then said, “What have you tried?”

  “Oh, you know. Castor oil. Gin. Gin and castor oil together. In a very hot bath. But … no good. I spent the night on the toilet, and in the morning—right as rain. Or rather the baby was. Don’t know what else I can do.”

  “Look, I’ll ask around,” said Diana. “Some of the girls are pretty clued up, you know. I know Amanda got preggers once. She swore it just sorted itself out, but I never believed her.”

  Scarlett’s heart lifted just a little.

  It had been Eliza’s idea, their Paris fashion feature. It was something Jeremy said that gave her the idea; she had told him that she would be going to Paris as Fiona’s assistant and he had said, “Several of my mother’s friends go to the collections to order their clothes for the following season. Most couturiers spend their time dressing middle-aged women, once the razzmatazz of the press shows are over. It must be quite depressing for them, I always think.”

  Eliza had reported this to Fiona the next day, simply by way of a distraction after another tear-inducing session with Jack Beckham, and she had sighed and said yes, it was true, but there were a few young women, “mostly film stars,” who famously bought couture. “Like Catherine Deneuve, for instance, and Elizabeth Taylor, and, of course, Audrey Hepburn is Givenchy’s muse.”

  “Are there any young ones who aren’t film stars, do you think?” asked Eliza, and Fiona said yes, she supposed there must be, millionaires’ third wives, that sort of thing.

  “Well, maybe we could find one, follow her round all the collections, feature what she liked …”

  Fiona stared at her in silence. Then: “Eliza, you are a genius,” she said. “Whiz over to the picture library and get out all the files on the best-dressed women, that sort of thing. Photocopy any you think look really good, and let’s have a look.”

  Eliza came back with a bulging file.

  “There aren’t many young ones,” she said, “mostly older people, like the Duchess of Windsor and Diana Vreeland. There’s poor Jackie Kennedy, of course—oh, and Princess Grace of Monaco.”

  “No, none of them would do it, and anyway, Jack would say they were too obvious,” said Fiona distractedly—and then suddenly: “But here, Eliza, look at this woman; she’s gorgeous. Who’s she?”

  Mariella Crespi gazed at them from the fading pages: a dazzlingly chic brunette, thirty-seven years old, married to Giovanni Crespi—“he’s much older than her, gosh, over seventy; clearly she’s an old man’s darling”—one of Italy’s richest men. Mariella, who had been a debutante, according to the cuttings, and had worked in the art world, had married him on her thirtieth birthday. She had never quite made the top spot on the best-dressed lists, but had appeared on several for the past four years. According to Women’s Wear Daily, fashion was her religion and the salons of Paris, Milan, and New York her places of worship.

  “One day I will make it,” she was reported as saying, “right to the top. It is my big ambition.”

  “It’s worth a try,” said Fiona. “She might think it would be fun, and it would up her profile a bit. Let’s send her some copies of the magazine and a grovelling letter, and FedEx them off absolutely straightaway.”

  Fiona wrote and rewrote the letter seven times, and it was parcelled up with the magazines to go to the villa on the shores of Lake Como, which was the Crespis’ main residence.

  “I’m not very hopeful,” said Fiona, handing the package to Eliza to dispatch, “but you never know. And it’s terribly short notice.”

  “I think she’ll do it,” said Eliza. “I just feel it in my bones.”

  Mariella Crespi was in bed eating her breakfast of brioche and caffe latte when her maid delivered the package fro
m England. She read the letter swiftly, then started to leaf through the magazines. As she read, her expression became increasingly enthusiastic; after half an hour she pulled on a robe and went to talk to her husband.

  He was in his study, dictating letters to his secretary, as he had been for over an hour already, for he still ran his industrial empire with great energy and enthusiasm.

  Mariella adored her husband, as he did her; she was well aware that people assumed she had married him only for his money, and the assumption was wrong. Of course, the money was very nice, but she also found him interesting, thoughtful, concerned, and, of course, admiring. He was also, even in his seventies, an extremely attractive and beautifully dressed man; she was proud to be seen on his arm.

  The story told in the newspaper cuttings of a lovely young debutante who had met Signor Crespi at a ball was not entirely correct; she was not in the least aristocratic, but the youngest of five sisters who had grown up in a two-bedroom apartment in a poor area of Milan. When she was sixteen, her widowed mother, Nina, had looked at the treasure in her midst, the olive-skinned, dark-eyed, full-bosomed beauty, with her mass of shining hair and deep, throaty laugh, and entered her in a local beauty contest. Mariella won, and then another and then another, and at the age of nineteen she was competing at a national level.

  Signor Crespi was chairman of the judges at one such event and pronounced her the winner. The prize was five thousand lira, and Mariella used it to attend a course on the history of art. She gained a qualification and was employed as a guide in one of the smaller galleries in the city, where Signor Crespi was a frequent patron; he remembered her, invited her to dinner, fell in love with her, and in a fairly short space of time asked her to marry him.

  It was, astonishingly, a happy marriage. Mariella was a tender and devoted wife; her only regret—and it was a deep and sad one—was that he had been unable to give her any children. When they were first married, Giovanni was in his late sixties, and very far from impotent; but as the years passed, it became evident he was equally far from fertile.

  However, Mariella was a pragmatic creature, not given to regret; she was a successful member of Milanese society and enjoyed it greatly, only occasionally allowing herself to admit to a certain ennui in her life; the letter from Charisma magazine therefore fell into it like manna from heaven.

  Having sought the permission of Giovanni, she cabled the fashion editor who had written so charming a letter, saying she would like to meet her and summoning her to the Grande Hotel et de Milan in a few days’ time.

  “She’ll hate me, I know,” wailed Fiona. “She’ll be horrible, all spoilt and hard and condescending.” But she came back starry-eyed and dizzy with excitement.

  “She is just amazing. So, so nice, absolutely beautiful, and terribly excited about it all. She’s going to go to all the collections, and we can talk to her after each one and hear what she has to say about it and then photograph the clothes.”

  “But not on her?”

  “No, no, they wouldn’t fit her; they’re all model sizes, although she’s so glamorous we can certainly do some pictures of her outside each house or something like that. She wants as much exposure as she can get, and she wants to come to the sessions too, amazingly. I told her they were often in the middle of the night and she laughed and said, ‘So much the better.’ And, best of all, because she’s an actual client, and such a high-profile one, we’ll be able to borrow the clothes that fit more easily. It’s perfect, Eliza. Really perfect.”

  “I know she can’t model the actual clothes for the sessions,” said Eliza slowly, “but maybe … maybe if she wore her own example of whatever designer we’re doing, we could include that in some way. Shoot her alongside the model, or separately, but on the same page or spread. Do you think she’d do that?”

  Mariella said she would adore to.

  She was staying at the Meurice; she invited Fiona for cocktails the evening before the first show. Fiona came back overflowing with excitement.

  “Jacques Fath tomorrow. She always orders at least three things from them, she says. And then she’s going to Cardin, Chanel, of course, Balenciaga, Balmain, Dior—Oh, Eliza, it’s so exciting.”

  She dressed by preference at Jacques Fath and Cardin—“And Pucci, naturally, I adore Emilio so”—but she was not above the ready-to-wear market as well. “Of course I wear Missoni; who would not?”

  She had taken a fancy to Eliza, whom she had met in the studios, and who kept her supplied with the Italian Murillo cigarettes she loved, as well as playing cards with her while the hairdresser did her hair.

  “I think it’s because you’re posh,” Fiona said. “Takes a nob to know one.”

  “I’m not a nob,” said Eliza crossly. She spent a lot of time trying to shed this image, in what was supposed to be the new classless society; nothing seemed to work.

  “Course you are. Anyway, I’m grateful—anything that keeps Mariella sweet.”

  Keeping her sweet wasn’t very difficult, Eliza reflected as they sat chatting in the dressing room of the studio waiting for the makeup artist, presently working for Vogue, to grace them with her presence.

  “This is all such, such fun for me; you have no idea. So much of my life is always the same, day after day after day. One day I will tell you all about it, and then you will understand.”

  Eliza supposed living with a man in his seventies must have its drawbacks. Even if he was a multimillionaire.

  Eliza had seen only one show: Chanel. In spite of the savage heat, a poor seat (gained by sheer force and elbowing other people out of the way—“It’s like a rugby scrum,” Fiona said. “You really do have to fight, I warn you”), an hour-long wait for the start, and a thumping headache, she would not have missed it for the world. She was amazed by the length of the thing—over two hours, one girl after another, showing almost identical suits and completely identical dresses, the differences often as infinitesimal as a change of button—and the solemnity of the occasion … it really was rather like being at some hugely important religious ceremony. What made it work for her, really, she had to admit, was the fact that Chanel herself was there, a small, rather forlorn little figure, sitting at the top of the famous spiral staircase, dressed in a pale pink tweed suit and a boater hat, smoking throughout; Eliza hadn’t quite believed she would be there, had thought it was some kind of legend. Which Chanel was, of course, a living legend. I shall be able to tell my grandchildren about this, Eliza thought.

  There was a huge drama one day, which Fiona and Mariella regaled her with later, goggle-eyed: one of the newspapers had smuggled a photographer in; another got wind of it and there was a great chaos as the show was halted; he was identified and thrown literally out of the doors. The newspaper photographers were used to such hardship; the directrices of the salons despised them absolutely and would allow them to take only two pictures after each collection—“of the ugliest girls, and more or less in the dark,” Fiona said.

  “Move this girl, would you?” Evangeline Turner, scourge of the younger fashion writers, éminence grise of the couturiers’ salons, and fashion editor of the Daily Post, waved her hand imperiously at Eliza. Eliza stared at the directrice of the salon. They wouldn’t move her. Surely they wouldn’t. She hadn’t asked to be in the front row; it was Fiona’s place—poor Fiona, who was lying in her hotel room with oyster poisoning. And she really hadn’t expected to be given it; front-row seats were for the big editors of the big glossies, Vogue and Queen, and the really prestigious papers, the Sunday Times and the Daily Express; assistants, if they got in at all, were usually right at the back behind a pillar.

  Eliza was trying to resist the efforts of the directrice to eject her from her seat when Mariella arrived, looking rather flushed in a red silk dress and black fur stole. She kissed her ecstatically. “Darling. Where are you going? Stay here with me; I want to show you something …”

  She sat down, pulling a small Cartier box out of her bag. Eliza sank down again, flash
ing a sweet smile first at the directrice and then at Mrs. Turner. Life really didn’t get much better than this.

  Paris was a revelation to Eliza: about how the world of high fashion really moved, about how crucial it remained to the industry, about the power of the press to make or break a house—however contemptuous the directrices might be. Her role as assistant was not to attend the shows, but to wait to collect the chosen dresses from each one—booked out to a timetable by the directrices, which could entail anything up to a two-hour wait—take them to the photographic studio, where Fiona and Mariella would be waiting, and then return them, usually to a shower of abuse for being late. She had to organise slots at the studios, taxis, sandwiches, coffee, cigarettes, had to run around quite literally from dawn to dawn with bagfuls of gloves, belts, shoes, hairpieces; on two days they did photographs out of the studio, and she had to hire limos of a sufficient size to double as dressing rooms for Mariella, who loved it, and the challenges of pulling up her stockings and even once changing her bra while the chauffeur smoked and acted as bodyguard—“Darling, this is so much fun.”

  Eliza had to keep Fiona calm—not easy—wake her up in the morning—even less so—and try to stop her drinking too much at night—almost impossible. But she didn’t care; she was happier than she could ever remember, totally involved in everything; she would have scrubbed the pavements if they’d asked her, without complaint. And when finally, that last day, she found herself in charge of the session, while poor Fiona lay moaning in her bed, directing the hairdresser, choosing the accessories, and then actually daring to argue with Daniel Thexton and his insistence that Mariella put out her cigarette—“I think a cloud of smoke sort of round her face would look fantastic; let’s just try, Mariella. Yes, that’s wonderful; look, Daniel, don’t you think?”—and he agreed! That was tell-her-grandchildren stuff for sure.

  She returned home exhausted, went to bed, and slept for twelve hours, to be woken by Fiona with the news that Jack had actually said the pictures weren’t bad at all; and when Jeremy rang a little later and asked her whether she had missed him, she realised that she had hardly thought about him from one day’s end to the next.