by Valpy, Fiona
And so here I am, in Paris on a September afternoon, straightening my jacket and smoothing my hair into place before I wheel my suitcase along the busy pavement and press the buzzer on the door of the office. The plate glass windows, half-covered by blinds bearing the Agence Guillemet logo that have been pulled down to keep the glare of the afternoon sun at bay, reflect my anxiety back at me and I realise my heart is beating fast.
With a click, the door unlocks itself and I push it open, stepping into a softly lit reception area.
French grey walls are hung with framed copies of magazine covers – Vogue, Paris Match, Elle – and fashion shots. Even at first glance, I can tell they bear the trademark styles of photographers like Mario Testino, Patrick Demarchelier and Annie Leibovitz. A pair of minimalist sofas, upholstered in a highly impractical ivory linen, face one another across a low table upon which sits a selection of the latest fashion publications in a variety of languages. For a moment, I imagine sinking down on to one of them and kicking off the shoes that are pinching my travel-swollen feet.
Instead, I step forward to shake the hand of the receptionist who has come around from behind her desk to greet me. The first thing I notice about her is the mass of dark curls which frame her face and tumble over her shoulders. And the second thing is her effortlessly chic style. The little black dress she wears hugs the curves of her figure and the flat ballerina pumps on her feet add very little to her diminutive height. I immediately feel awkwardly tall and ungainly in my high heels, and stuffily formal in my tailored suit and tight-fitting white blouse, now creased from my journey and the heat.
Thankfully, though, the third thing I notice is her friendly smile, which lights up her dark eyes as she welcomes me, saying, ‘Hello, you must be Harriet Shaw. I’m Simone Thibault. Very pleased to meet you. I’ve been looking forward to having the company – we’re going to be flatmates, sharing the apartment upstairs.’ She nods toward the ornate cornicing on the ceiling above our heads as she says this, making her curls dance. I warm to her immediately and am secretly relieved that she isn’t one of the snooty, skinny French fashionistas I’d imagined my colleagues might be.
Simone stashes my suitcase behind her desk and then ushers me through a door at the back of the reception area. I am immediately aware of the discreet chirping of telephones and the low murmur of voices in the busy PR office. One of the half-dozen or so employees – the account managers and their assistants – stands up to shake my hand, but the others in the room are completely absorbed in their work and only have time to nod briefly as we walk past. Simone pauses before a panelled door at the far end of the room and knocks. After a moment, a voice calls, ‘Entrez!’ and I find myself standing in front of a wide mahogany desk, behind which sits Florence Guillemet, the director of the agency.
She raises her eyes from her computer screen and removes the dark-rimmed glasses she’s been wearing. She is immaculately dressed in the most elegant trouser suit I have ever seen. Chanel, maybe? Or Yves Saint Laurent? Her streaked blonde hair is cut in a way that shows off the height of her cheekbones whilst flattering a jawline that is just starting to show the first signs of softening with age. Her eyes are a warm amber-brown and they seem to see right through me.
‘Harriet?’ she asks.
I nod, struck dumb momentarily as the magnitude of what I’ve done hits me. A year? In this professional, A-list public relations agency? In the fashion capital of the world? What am I doing here? And how long will it take them to discover how ill-equipped I am – fresh out of university – to contribute anything of any value to the work they do here?
And then she smiles. ‘You remind me of myself, many years ago when I started out in the industry. You have demonstrated both courage and determination in getting yourself here. Although, maybe it feels a bit overwhelming just at this moment?’
I nod again, still unable to find the words . . .
‘Well, that is only natural. You’ve had a long journey and you must be tired. For today, Simone will show you up to the apartment and leave you to settle in. You have the weekend to find your feet. Work starts on Monday. It will be good to have an extra pair of hands. We’re so busy with preparations for Fashion Week.’
The anxiety that I’m feeling, which the mention of Paris Fashion Week – one of the most important events in the couture calendar – only serves to deepen, must show in my expression, because she adds, ‘Don’t worry. You’re going to do just fine.’
I manage to find my voice again and blurt out, ‘Merci, Madame Guillemet.’ But then the phone on her desk rings and she dismisses us with another smile and a wave of her hand as she turns to answer it.
Simone helps me lug my suitcase up five flights of steep and narrow stairs. The first floor, she explains, is used as a photographic studio, rented out on a freelance basis. We poke our heads around the door to take a look. It’s one vast room with clean white walls, empty save for a pair of folding screens in one corner. With its tall windows and high ceiling it’s the perfect space for fashion shoots.
The next three floors are sublet as offices. The brass nameplates on their doors announce that the rooms are occupied by an accounting firm and a photographer. ‘Florence needs to make the building pay its way,’ Simone says. ‘And there are always people looking to rent a little office space in Saint-Germain. It’s a condition of the lease, though, that the top floor rooms cannot be rented out, so that they can be a perk of the job. Luckily for you and me!’
The top floor of the building, tucked in under the eaves, consists of a series of small rooms, a couple of which are used as storage, filled with filing cabinets, boxes of old office materials, defunct computers and piles of magazines. Simone shows me the cramped galley kitchen where there’s just enough space for a fridge, cooker and sink, and the living room, which has a round, bistro-style table with two chairs in one corner and a small sofa pushed against the far wall. Its compact size is more than compensated for by the sloping roof light set into the low ceiling which allows sunshine to pour in. If I stand on tiptoes and crane my neck a little, I can see the Parisian skyline and glimpse the roof of the church from which the Boulevard Saint-Germain takes its name.
‘And this is your room,’ Simone says, pushing open another door. It’s tiny – there’s just enough space for a single iron bedstead, a chest of drawers and a utilitarian, free-standing clothes rail which looks like it may have been salvaged from a warehouse at some point in the distant past.
If I stoop beneath the sloping ceiling, from the small square of the dormer window I can see an ocean of slate rooftops, across which a flotilla of chimney pots and television aerials are scattered, under a clear blue September sky.
I turn to smile at Simone.
She shrugs apologetically. ‘It’s small, but . . .’
‘It’s perfect,’ I say. And I mean it. Because this tiny room is mine. My own space, for the next twelve months. And somehow, even though I’ve never seen it before in my life, I have a sense of belonging here: it feels like home.
An old, long-forgotten photograph, discovered by accident in a box of fading memories, is my only tenuous link to this place. But then I don’t really have any other strong connections in life and so this most fragile of threads, as fine as a strand of age-worn silk, has become the only lifeline I know, binding me to this tiny bedroom in an unknown building in a foreign city. It has drawn me here and I feel a strong compulsion to see where it takes me, following it back through the years, back through the generations, to its source.
‘Well, I’d better get back to work.’ Simone glances at her watch. ‘Another hour to go before the weekend can officially begin. I’ll leave you to unpack. See you later.’ She leaves, closing the door of the apartment behind her, and I hear her footsteps fade away down the stairs.
I open my suitcase and dig beneath the layers of carefully folded clothes until my fingertips connect with the hard edges of the frame, wrapped for safe-keeping in the folds of a woollen jumper.
The eyes of the three young women in the photograph seem to be fixed upon mine as I search their faces for the thousandth time for clues about their lives. As I set the picture on top of the chest of drawers beside my narrow bed, I am more conscious than ever of how rootless I am and of how vital it is for me to find out more about them.
I’m not just searching for who they are. I’m trying to find out who I am, too.
The purposeful sounds of people who are homeward bound at the end of another working week float in through my window from the street below. I’m just hanging the last of my clothes on the rail when I hear the apartment door open. Simone sings out, ‘Coucou!’ She appears in the doorway of my room and holds up a bottle, the glass beaded with dew from the chilled white wine within. ‘Would you like a drink? I thought we should celebrate your first evening in Paris.’ She lifts the shopping bag she holds in her other hand and says, ‘I got a few bits and pieces to accompany it, too, as you haven’t had time to explore the shops yet. I can show you where things are tomorrow.’
She looks around the room, taking in the few personal touches that I’ve added – a couple of books sit by the bed alongside my bottle of perfume and a painted china trinket box of my mother’s that contains the few items of jewellery that I own: some pairs of earrings and a string of pearls. I keep the charm bracelet in it, too, when I take it off at night.
Noticing the photograph, she sets down her bag of shopping and stoops to look at it more closely.
I point at the blonde on the left of the group. ‘That’s my grandmother, Claire, outside this very building. She’s the reason I’m here.’
Simone glances up at me, a look of incredulity on her face. ‘And that,’ she says, pointing at the figure on the right of the trio, is my grandmother, Mireille. Standing outside this very building with your grandmother Claire.’
She laughs, as my jaw drops in amazement.
‘You’re joking!’ I exclaim. ‘That’s an incredible coincidence.’
Simone nods, but then shakes her head. ‘Or maybe it’s no coincidence at all. I’m here because my grandmother inspired me with the stories of her life in Paris during the war, and it’s because of her links with the world of couture that I’m working here at Agence Guillemet. It seems you and I have both been led here by a shared history.’
I nod slowly, pondering this, then pick up the framed picture, bringing it closer to examine Mireille’s face in detail. With her laughing eyes and the tendrils of hair that refuse to be tamed by the band which draws them back from her forehead, I imagine that I can make out a resemblance between her and Simone.
I point at the third figure, the young woman in the centre of the group. ‘I wonder who she was? Her name is written on the back of the picture: Vivienne.’
Simone’s expression grows serious suddenly and I glimpse something I can’t quite identify, a flicker of sadness, or fear, or pain perhaps? A wariness in her eyes. But then she recomposes her features and says, with careful insouciance, ‘I believe their friend, Vivienne, lived and worked with them here too. Isn’t it astounding to imagine the three of them working right here for Delavigne?’
Am I imagining it, or is she trying to divert the subject away from Vivienne?
Simone continues, ‘My mamie Mireille told me that they slept in these little rooms, above the atelier, during the war years.’
For a moment, I seem to hear the sound of laughter echoing from the walls of the cramped apartment as I imagine Claire, Mireille and Vivienne here.
‘Can you tell me more about your grandmother’s time here in the 1940s?’ I ask eagerly. ‘It may hold clues to some of the questions I have about my own family history.’
Simone glances at the photograph, her expression thoughtful. Then she raises her eyes to meet mine and she says, ‘I can tell you what I know of Mireille’s story. And it is inextricably linked with the stories of Claire and Vivienne. But Harriet, perhaps you should only ask those questions if you are absolutely certain that you want to know the answers.’
I meet her gaze steadily. Should I deny myself this opportunity of finding out about the only family to which I have any feeling of connection? At the thought, a flash of disappointment passes through me, so strong it makes my breath catch in my chest.
I think of the fragile thread, weaving its way back through the years, binding me to my mother, Felicity, and binding her to her own mother, Claire.
And then I nod my head. Whatever the story – whoever I really am – I need to know.
1940
Paris was a very different city.
Of course, some things looked the same: the exclamation mark of the Eiffel Tower still punctuated the skyline; Sacré-Coeur still sat on top of its hill at Montmartre watching over the city’s inhabitants as they went about their business; and the silver ribbon of the Seine continued to wind its way past palaces, churches and public gardens, looping around the buttressed flanks of Notre-Dame on the Île de la Cité and churning beneath the bridges that linked the river’s right and left banks.
But something had changed. Not just the obvious signs, such as the groups of German soldiers who marched along the boulevard, and the flags that unfurled themselves in the wind from the facades of buildings with languorous menace – as she walked beneath them, the whisper of the fabric emblazoned with stark black and white swastikas on a blood-red background seemed to Mireille as loud as any bombardment. No, she could sense something else that was different, something less tangible, as she made her way from the Gare Montparnasse back to Saint-Germain. It was there in the look of defeat in the downcast eyes of the people who hurried past; she heard it in the harsh monotone of German voices from the tables outside the cafes and bars, and it was driven home by the sight of military vehicles bearing more Nazi insignia – those grim emblems which seemed to be everywhere now – as they sped past her through the streets.
The message was clear. Her country’s capital no longer belonged to France. It had been abandoned by its government, handed over by the country’s politicians like a bartered bride in a hastily arranged marriage.
And although many of those, like Mireille, who had fled in the face of the German advance a few months earlier were now returning, they were coming home to a city transformed. Like its citizens, the city seemed to be hanging its head in shame at the brutal reminders that were everywhere: Paris was in German hands now.
As the afternoon light began to stretch the shadows cast by the window frames across the broad expanse of the cutting table, Claire hunched a little closer to the skirt upon which she was stitching a decorative braid. Finishing it off with a few quick over-stitches, she used the scissors which hung from a ribbon around her neck to snip the thread. Unable to help herself, she yawned and then stretched, rubbing the ache of a day’s work from the back of her neck.
It was so boring in the atelier these days, with many of the girls gone and no one to gossip and laugh with at break times. The supervisor, Mademoiselle Vannier, was in an even worse mood than usual as the work mounted up, cajoling the seamstresses to sew faster but then pouncing on the slightest slip in quality which, in Claire’s eyes, was usually imagined.
She hoped some of the other girls would return soon, now that the new administration was organising special trains to bring workers back to their jobs in Paris, and then it wouldn’t be so lonely at night in the bedrooms under the eaves. The sounds of the city beyond the windows seemed to Claire to be muted nowadays, and an eerie silence fell as soon as the ten o’clock curfew arrived. But in the quiet darkness the building creaked and muttered to itself and sometimes Claire fancied she heard footsteps in the night, so pulled the blankets over her head as she imagined German soldiers breaking in and searching for more people to arrest.
She might have been one of the youngest of the seamstresses but Claire hadn’t fled, as so many others had done, that day in June when France fell to the Nazis. It was simply not an option to run back home to Brittany with her tail between her legs, when s
he’d only recently managed to escape the little fishing village of Port Meilhon, where nobody had the slightest sense of style and where the only men left were either ancient or stank of sardines, or both. With the recklessness of youth, she’d decided to take her chances and stay in Paris. And it had turned out to have been a good choice, since the government had surrendered so that the Germans would allow the city to remain intact. The departure of several of her more senior colleagues meant that she had been allowed to work on some of the more interesting orders to be sent up from the salon on the ground floor. At this rate, perhaps she’d catch Monsieur Delavigne’s attention and fulfil her dream of becoming an assistant in the salon and then a vendeuse before she had to serve too many more years of drudgery in the sewing room.
She could picture herself dressed in an immaculately tailored suit, her hair swept into an elegant chignon, advising Delavigne’s top clients on the latest fashions. She would have her own desk with a little gilt chair, and a team of assistants who would call her Mademoiselle Meynardier and jump to her every command.
The supervisor flicked on the electric lights, illuminating the room where several of the girls were starting to put away their things for the day, stowing their scissors and pincushions and thimbles in their bags and hanging up their white coats on the row of pegs beside the door. Unlike Claire, most of them had homes in the city to go to and they were in a hurry to get back to their families and their evening meals.
Mademoiselle Vannier paused as she passed behind Claire’s chair, reaching out a hand for the skirt. She held it up to the harsh glare of the bare bulbs overhead so that she could inspect the garment closely. Her lips, which were already pleated with deep lines – the inevitable consequence of her age and her twenty-a-day cigarette habit – concertinaed into even deeper creases as she pursed her mouth in concentration. Finally, she gave an abrupt nod and handed the skirt back to Claire. ‘Press it and hang it up, then you may pack up your things too.’
