He used to say more—the crowds love a dose of Colt family history, all the pomp and stateliness of the old money—but since his father’s death, he has revised the lines. He likes to think that one day the foundation will outgrow its ancestral origins and come to exist in its own right, valued for all the good that it does rather than the name—the name—it carries.
* * *
“Marvelous, Rafael, as always. You definitely have your father’s gift for public speaking.”
A florid-faced man shakes his hand vigorously. Rafael doesn’t recognize him, but smiles as though he does.
“My daughter’s single you know,” says the man, with a jovial wink-and-nudge, “and I think it’s high time she settled down. You wouldn’t be in the market for a wife by any chance?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Found someone already, have you?”
“Not even looking.”
“Are you homosexual?”
“No. Just…playing the field.”
“Right ho, can’t say I’m not envious. Why commit yourself when you can have all the fun of the fair?”
“Absolutely.”
Rafael flatters the man with an old-boys’ locker-room wink, then eyes the room for Mimi, who is immediately on hand to steal him away to another crowd, for more quips and compliments. One more circuit of the room, he thinks, then please let me end this charade, let me slip away quietly.
After the sixth round of priority greets, Rafael is weak with hunger. He tracks a team of waistcoated attendants as they glide around the hall, bearing trays of delicately rolled rare beef and horseradish, caviar blinis, and miniature pavlovas, but the thought of these polished, diminutive offerings depresses him. His mind and body ache for pizza, dirty, sloppy take-out pizza with extra pepperoni, the kind that makes you sweat pure salt. Another night, perhaps. In another life.
When no one is looking, he heads for the exit.
“Raf! Don’t you dare go without saying hi to your best friend’s girl.”
Kate Michaels. Someone he genuinely likes talking to at last. Kate is the partner of one of his oldest friends and sound for an LTG (long-term girlfriend), despite the fact that she has denied him the last of his single friends. He leans in, kisses her on both cheeks.
“Nice to see you, Kate. Tell me you’re here to save me from the clutches of social despair.”
“Great speech, Raf. Rick and I are so impressed by everything you’ve done with the foundation. You’ve worked so hard.”
“Thank you.”
“Sorry Rick couldn’t make it. He’s on a booze cruise to Calais, stocking up for the nineteenth—”
“The nineteenth?”
“Ha ha, Raf.”
“No, seriously. What’s the nineteenth?”
“Er…I believe you’ve been recruited by the groomsmen squad. Just the small matter of a wedding in Scotland. Rick and I tying in the knot in Loch Lomond.”
“Oh—oh yes. I hadn’t forgotten. I just—”
“Blocked it out?”
Rafael winces.
“You’ll be there won’t you?”
“Of course. Honestly, I’m…hugely looking forward to seeing you two lovebirds have your…special moment. Can’t wait.”
“Bullshit.”
“Will there be whisky?”
“Obviously. There’ll also be a ceilidh.”
“Good god.”
“Oh, don’t panic, Raf. Who knows? Maybe a chapel in candlelight will soften your hard heart.”
“I wouldn’t count on it.”
* * *
On the cab ride home, the pressure unwinds. As Rafael sinks into his seat, the lights of the Embankment twinkling through his window, he thinks of her again—how she’d had the nerve to force the dress upon him, like he should want it. Like he should care. Okay, so throwing it in the trash was perhaps a little harsh, but what else could he do? She’d pushed him to it. Francesca Delaney. What was it she said she was? A vintage wedding dress expert. Please. Is that even a job? As for the dress, he had no idea that his mother had kept it, that, after all she’d been through, she hadn’t thought to cast it out. He sighs. Letting go of the house will be healthy, he thinks. No good can come from nostalgia. A severance from history, a restart, fresh and untainted. He is tired now; his eyelids grow heavy as he slides into the cocoon of the back seat. He wants pizza. He tells the driver to stop at the first cheap takeaway he can find, which isn’t obvious in such an exclusive part of London.
“We’re nearly at your home, sir—are you sure?”
Rafael can see his block, the smooth white shield of marble across the walls, the neat chrome balcony rails, and the black Thames glistening in front. He considers the comfort of his bed, but then aches inside—not just to eat pizza, but to live, to release, to feel…something…anything…
Everyone around him is in love. Everyone is getting married. Everyone has someone.
“Actually, I could do with one more drink.”
“Seekers?”
“That will do.”
After twenty minutes, the driver pulls up outside a bar in Old Street, its discreet neon sign announcing Seekers. Rafael hands the driver a bundle of twenty-pound notes and tells him to wait, then removes his jacket and tie, climbs out of the cab, and nods at the doorman.
The black walls and low ceiling make it difficult to see, but the club is busy. As Rafael approaches the bar, the barman greets him.
“Old-fashioned?” he says, anticipating the favored drink choice.
He mixes bourbon, sugar, and soda in a stout glass, while Rafael leans back and scans the room. If he buys enough drinks and talks enough crap, he knows from experience, the charm will work. He downs the drink, warm and sweet, and sets his sights on a table. Three women laughing in a corner, leaning over an empty cocktail jug, each attractive in their way, stylishly dressed, professional looking, probably lawyers or accountants. He orders another jug of whatever lurid cocktail is on special and carries it over.
“You can’t sit there with empty drinks,” he says, smiling smoothly.
The women look puzzled, a little wary.
“Humor me,” he says. “It’s been a long day, and you all look like you’re enjoying yourselves. It’s a refreshing sight, that’s all. So…have a drink on me.”
The women glance at each other, then back at Rafael.
“Uh, thanks,” says the one nearest to him.
“Why don’t you join us?” says the second.
“Always room for one more,” says the third, eyeing him up and down. “Pull up a chair.”
“Sure.”
Within less than an hour, the third woman is in his bed, or more precisely, the bed of room 206 at the Park Lane Hilton. The sex is mediocre. It scratches an itch but doesn’t satisfy on a deeper level. And in the night, the moonlight shining through the window, Rafael wakens. She—Francesca Delaney—is in his head again, and the sight of another unnamed Seekers girl snoring in the bed beside him feels more lonely and hollow than ever.
* * *
The sisters and cousins of bride-to-be Melissa West, in comparative efforts of denim, have gathered at the Whispering Dress to aid Melissa in her wedding dress quest. Amid a furtive discussion about penis straws, they grapple inside their shopping bags, eager to demonstrate an array of bachelorette paraphernalia: inflatable sunglasses, synthetic boas, and miniature chocolate dildos. Ever resourceful, one of them produces four bottles of prosecco and a sack of chipotle corn snacks. She has, however, forgotten the disposable plastic flutes.
“They were those screw-in ones—don’t laugh—the ones that screw together, top and bottom.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll just drink from the bottles. We’re classy like that.”
A round of raucous cackling. Melissa herself has been ushered to the opposite end
of the shop, to a secluded area in front of a mirror draped with beads, pearls, flower garlands, and fragments of Honiton lace, a shrine to the goddess of wedding accessories. Melissa giggles sweetly, a foil to the coarseness of her entourage. Where do they come from, Fran wonders, these women, all hooting and crowing and claiming their own little piece of Melissa’s sacred moment? Here for themselves no doubt, for an excuse to drink and gossip, under the pretense that their tell-it-to-you-straight responses will help their girl find the wedding dress of her dreams. Fran tries not to judge too harshly however. Their vulgarity won’t outwit the dress, and besides, she likes a buoyant, happy energy when she works.
The dress itself sits in wait behind a damask curtain. It hasn’t, as yet, been seen by its new bride, which perhaps explains some of Melissa’s nervousness. Fran invites Melissa to take a seat. She chooses the velvet pouf over the louche, oversize Moroccan floor cushions or the battered Winchester. She perches, hands on lap, knees stiff. Poor thing, thinks Fran, sensing she is more worried about the judgment of her entourage than her own future life and happiness.
“So, are you ready?”
The moment, the magic, the chance to witness a whispering dress make its first potent impact on its new bride—time for all that painstaking research and resonance to come out and breathe, take form, find purpose.
“This dress,” urges Fran, eyes glinting, “is going to change your life. You have my word.”
Melissa, smothered by her own meekness, merely shrugs.
“I just hope everyone likes it,” she says. “When I walk down that aisle, I want them to turn around and think, Actually, you know what? She isn’t so bad.”
Fran pauses, because such naked self-doubt requires attention. “Or perhaps,” she says encouragingly, “they’ll think, My goodness, she’s radiant!”
Melissa shrugs again. “You know how it is though.” She leans forward, stares at herself in the mirror. “I probably shouldn’t be so hard on myself, but sometimes I look in the mirror and…I feel hideous. If I could lose a bit of flab around the middle, tone up my belly, get my nose fixed, my teeth. I try to keep up. You wouldn’t believe the amount of squats I did yesterday, but it’s never enough.”
Fran nods. She has experienced this many times, the monologue in front of the lace-draped mirror, a final pummeling of premarital insecurity. So many of her brides seem to find verbosity in the space between sitting and seeing the dress, as if the anticipation itself is an amplifier of all their hopes and fears. It is good, she thinks, cathartic.
“Just so you know,” Melissa confesses, “I had four takeaways last week, so if it doesn’t do up at the back—”
No more. Fran dives behind the damask, pulls it back, and reveals the magic. Melissa blinks, shifts, then blinks again, her mouth falling open in a perfect O.
“So?”
“It’s…it’s…”
“Perfect?”
“Red. It’s very red. I mean, um, it’s redder than a wedding dress usually is.”
“But you like it?”
“I…like the skirt bit, but what are those?” She points to a froth of marabou trim.
“Ostrich feathers. Aren’t they fabulous?”
“They’re a bit—”
“Delicate?”
“Scary.”
Unperturbed, Fran lifts the dress from the hanger and offers it to her bride.
“Just touch them,” she says. “Feel the way they bounce.”
“Are they dirty?”
“They’ve been steamed and dyed and trimmed by feather professionals. They couldn’t be cleaner. They’re over seventy years old yet in perfect condition. You won’t find an equivalent on eBay.”
“I’ve never looked for feathers on eBay.”
“Don’t. I’ve tried. They’re beastly.”
“What kind of red is it?”
“I’d like to say scarlet.”
“As in the actress?”
“As in the color.”
“Does it come in white?”
Fran sighs. This is a little too much, even for her.
“White is merely a modern Western convention,” she says, railing. “All around the world, and throughout history, dresses of color have held equivalent matrimonial status.”
“But in Streatham, white is normal. Everyone will expect white.”
“Why be normal when you can be…extraordinary? Think of this dress as a statement, a colorful exclamation mark pledging independence from all those tired and overdone assumptions about purity and virgins, which are only as old as Queen Victoria. And she only chose a white dress because it matched a fancy piece of lace that she wanted to show off. In fact, it was a business decision, her secret plan to give a boost to her country’s flagging lace-making industry. Yet somehow we’ve gotten stuck with the idea that a big white ball gown is the only way to say ‘I’m a bride!’ Honestly, Melissa, a white dress can be fabulous, but it’s by no means a rule. Plus it does dreadful things to certain complexions. This dress, on the other hand, scarlet or otherwise is bespoke vintage, a one-off, selected and altered especially for you.”
Over the years, Fran has come to realize, no matter how individual her brides are, their issues are often universal. She has even considered arranging her dresses into categories: the “People Pleasers,” the “He Never Talks about His Feelings” dresses, “Otherwise I’ll Die Lonely,” and the ever-popular “Once we’re married, I’ll change him” collection. She is careful not to make her judgments known however. Each bride needs to feel like her wedding is special, like she is the first, last, and only one of her kind. But the human species, Fran fears, is staggeringly inept at learning to conquer the art of the heart. Thankfully she is here to help, because bride after bride, dress after dress, the answers to marriage’s uncertainties always arise in the cycle of time.
“The woman who first wore this dress,” she continues, “was brilliant and fierce. She didn’t stop to worry about how white her teeth were or how flabby her middle was. She married in 1942 and spent her wedding night in an Anderson shelter, where she laughed and danced and drank like she was at the Ritz. Two weeks later, she learned to drive a fuel tanker and helped restore power to hundreds of bomb-frightened homes. I can tell you anything you want to know about her, but the one thing you actually need to know is that she knew how to love another human because, and this is the important bit, she knew how to love herself.”
Melissa leans away. “Is she…still alive?”
“She died two years after her husband in 1977, but I like to think she lives through this, her wedding dress.”
“Creepy.”
“Don’t think of it that way. Think of it as a gift. This dress—now your dress—it’s had a life, one that it carries within its fibers, like an echo passing from wearer to wearer. Try it on. You might sense it.”
Melissa finally rises from the pouf, ventures toward the dress, and begins to investigate the detail of the fabric.
“Is it tight? It looks tight.”
“Find out. And remember, there’s good tight and there’s bad tight. This tight will fit and flatter you to perfection.”
She lifts the gown from the satin boudoir hanger and holds it against Melissa’s body.
Melissa enlivens instantly. “It is a good color on me! I never thought I’d get away with pink…scarlet, I mean.”
“Find out more,” whispers Fran.
Melissa slips behind the curtain and begins to change. As Fran busies herself with her antique accessories, acquired to aid her brides in their wedding day vision—satin slippers, tiaras, brooches, beads, laces, sprigs of dried flowers, ribbons, and diamond hair clips—a sense of satisfaction creeps over her, for she knows, she knows she has found Melissa’s perfect dress. The curtain parts. Already Melissa seems taller, straighter, brighter. Fran ushers her forward and encourages her to twirl�
��a sparrow now transformed into a flame-bird, as strong and striking as the scarlet dress itself.
The cut is simple, a column of shin-length red chiffon with a neat belt and a marabou stole—a bit of fun to lighten the austere mood. Its original owner had been clear about the design from the very beginning: nothing predictable, no white, no veil, no train, no sprig of orange blossom. A bold, self-assured dress for a bold, self-assured woman.
“How do you feel?” asks Fran, because it is never about how a bride looks, but how she feels.
“Amazing,” says Melissa, a laugh on her lips, eyes moist with tears, captivated by the way the feather trim flutters and settles in rhythm with her movements. “This is it! You found it! I can’t believe it! I just know…this is the one!”
She begins to waltz—or a variation of it—around the space, snaking her arms and tipping her head, surveying the beauty of her sumptuous décolletage. Fran senses she doesn’t look at her reflection very often, at least not in a favorable way—she’s a scrutinizer, a faultfinder, a worst self-critic. But to Fran, it is simple: If you look for ugly, you find ugly. So look for beauty.
“I swear it makes me look thinner!”
“It makes you look like you.”
Pulling and pinning, Fran makes deft adjustments to the sleeves. As she works, she offers a little more of the dress’s history. Just a little though. It has to feel like it belongs to Melissa.
“The chiffon came from France. The designer dyed it himself. It was the bride’s wish that it was scarlet, her favorite color. It caused a few raised eyebrows at the reception, but she didn’t care. She was a very self-assured woman, some might say wayward.”
“What was her name?”
“Meryl Percy.”
“What did she do?”
The Second Chance Boutique Page 4
