The Dress Thief Page 12

  The man tucked his hand under his companion’s arm and they sped away.

  ‘I hope this happens to you one day,’ Alix yelled after them.

  She caught the attention of a young man in an overcoat and cap. Desperation had set in and she shouted loud enough to stop him in his tracks. ‘I’m locked in. I need somebody to fetch a policeman or find the caretaker to let me out.’

  ‘Anything for you, darling,’ the young man grinned, wiping rain off his face. ‘You stay right there.’

  Her relief lasted half an hour, the time it took to realise that her white knight had given up or never intended to help. Maybe she’d have to jump. She leaned over the window ledge and was hit by a wave of nausea. Jump? ‘I hate this place,’ she bawled into the darkness. ‘I hate couture. I hate Paris.’

  ‘That’s a shame, Mademoiselle.’

  Alix squinted through slanting rain lit by headlights. A black car had pulled up below. A rear door was open and a man stood looking up at her. He was wearing a trench coat and hat and his arms were folded.

  ‘I made my taxi stop, Mademoiselle. I thought you were about fall out.’

  ‘I wasn’t.’ She knew him from the fedora hat and from the hint of Spanish in his French and she cringed. Did he always have to see her at her worst? ‘I was seeing how far it is to the ground, but I’m afraid of heights and felt sick.’

  He came directly beneath her. In the darkness, with a glare behind him, he cut a jagged shape. ‘Pardon my curiosity, but are there no stairs? No lift? Just a question.’

  ‘Of course there are stairs!’ A day’s misery spurted up, finding expression in her tone. ‘Hasn’t it occurred to you that I’m locked in? Or did you imagine I like jumping out of windows?’

  ‘You haven’t jumped,’ he pointed out. ‘And I think it’s too far actually. You’d break an ankle or land on someone and break his neck. Isn’t there a better way?’

  ‘Of course there is. Find the person who holds the keys to this damn building –’ Alix stopped, realising she was spitting fury at the one person available to help. She swallowed and said, ‘Would you kindly fetch the caretaker?’

  ‘Of course. Tell me who he is and where he’s to be found.’

  She sank to her knees, her head on the sill. All week, since she’d stepped over the threshold, she’d been drinking in facts about Maison Javier, but hadn’t thought to ask how the place was locked up at night or opened in the morning.

  A cough from below. ‘I’m still willing to help, but I don’t want to stand here getting soaked. I could try to find a ladder.’

  ‘No. I don’t mind being on a ladder, but I would never be able to climb out and step on to one. I can’t. It terrifies me.’

  ‘Right. Then it’ll have to be the fire brigade.’

  ‘No!’ Return on Monday as the girl who brought the pompiers to Maison Javier? Clanging bells and blazing lights? ‘I’ll climb over the sill and drop down. It’s not far. If you would stand by and make sure I’m all right?’

  ‘Scrape you up if you crack your skull? Right.’ This sounded more decisive. ‘Stay there, Mademoiselle.’

  He walked back to his taxi, and Alix expected him to get in and leave her, but he went to the driver’s window and indicated the man should wind down the glass. She thought it was odd that he hadn’t recognised her.

  He returned. ‘Are you brave enough to drop into my arms?’

  ‘What? I would kill you. I’m quite tall, you know.’

  ‘I don’t mean from the second floor. No man can actually catch a woman falling from that height, except in the movies. And besides –’ whatever he added was lost as the taxi driver lined up with the building, getting as close under her window as he could without damaging the bodywork. Was she supposed to drop on to the car roof without leaving a dent? Parisian taxi drivers were not known for their forgiving temperaments.

  Her rescuer took off his coat and spread it on top of the car. Then he stepped up on to the running board, wheel arch, bonnet, finally the roof. He was lithe for a big man, something cat-like in his movements. The coat, she realised, was to stop him slipping.

  ‘You must wriggle out backwards, then drop. I’ll break your fall. Only a few feet between us, so remember to bend your knees. Aim for the car, not the gap.’

  She moaned, ‘I don’t think I can.’

  ‘Well, that’s fine. You’ll have to stay overnight. Is there anyone you’d like me to inform?’

  Alix tried to imagine this man trying to stop Mémé wringing her hands long enough to explain that she should retire to bed, leaving Alix incarcerated in the centre of Paris. ‘That’s not possible either. Oh, heavens.’

  ‘Quite so. By the way, we’re attracting a crowd. Soon somebody will call the police and then it will be the fire brigade.’

  ‘All right. I can do it.’

  ‘Remember, flex on landing, and trust me.’

  She only half heard, because having made up her mind to go, she couldn’t hesitate. She leaned over the sill, wriggling until her legs were outside. There she balanced, aware of her stockings and the clear view upward should her rescuer be ungentlemanly enough to look. Then, crying, ‘Are you ready?’ and receiving an assurance, she dug her toes against the wall, pushed back, yowled in fright and plummeted.

  About six feet. She landed with a thud and a scream. She heard the rip of fabric, felt arms close around her as her legs went from under her. She coasted on her backside on the slick roof, thought she was going over the edge but came to a stop with her feet dangling. Relief brought hysterical laughter. Then she heard cheers and clapping and struggled to sit up.

  ‘Bravo, Monsieur,’ a woman shouted. ‘Will you do it for me if I jump?’

  ‘Stay still –’ this was spoken into her ear. ‘I’ll get down first.’ A moment later, he was holding out his arms and Alix slithered into them, her knees crumpling as she met solid ground. She leaned against him.

  ‘Come on, girl, aren’t you going to kiss him?’ demanded the same woman. ‘He’s saved your life and ruined a good coat!’ A straggle of cheers made Alix hide her face against the man’s waistcoat. The sky finally rescued her. Rain suddenly pelted down so hard the onlookers dashed away. Alix was aware of being kept in a very wet embrace. Her rescuer wore no jacket. White cotton plastered itself to his arms, revealing a wiry strength. His face glinted under the sodden halo of his hat as he waited for her to speak – to thank him, which she should.

  But she didn’t know what to say, conscious that her blouse was pasted to her body and her hair was running rivers. So she just looked upward, noticing that his collar was torn – her fault – that his throat was muscular. And then, without really knowing how, they were kissing. A kiss that tasted of rain and which felt completely right. Her lips parted and the kiss caught fire. Hands knitting into her hair told her that her response had ignited something in him. Never mind that they were on a public street, a torrent of water gurgling along the gutters beside them in search of a drain.

  Four blasts of a car horn broke them apart.

  ‘How did you persuade the driver to let us use his car?’ she asked.

  ‘I promised to pay him and told him any damage would be reimbursed. I doubt there was any. Your fall had the grace of thistledown.’

  She bunched her lips. ‘That’s a polite lie.’

  ‘At least you didn’t go through the roof.’ He sounded different tonight. A bit impatient. ‘Mademoiselle … do you spend your life getting into tight spots?’

  ‘You recognise me from the other day?’

  ‘Course, but I thought I should get you down before mentioning it. Have you recovered from being attacked?’

  ‘Mostly.’

  ‘And tonight’s calamity?’

  ‘I got locked in.’

  ‘You should be more careful. It’s Javier, isn’t it, this place?’ He looked up at the façade. ‘You told me you worked here. In the car, when I took you home. Are you one of his models?’

  ‘Me? No, I’m just
… just a seamstress. A midinette.’ A skivvy. A table monkey.

  ‘You’re shivering. Come on.’ He opened the taxi door.

  ‘Your coat’s still on the roof.’

  He laughed. ‘Wetter than I am. Get in.’ When she was inside he said, ‘Fancy dinner, or is it St-Sulpice?’

  ‘St-Sulpice,’ she answered with regret. Was he going to get in beside her?

  He wasn’t. He leaned in at the window, saying, ‘We live on different sides of the river. I shall bid you goodnight and walk.’

  Alix heard him giving the driver directions. She saw money being handed over, large denomination notes and called out, ‘Monsieur, that’s too much!’

  He came back to her window. ‘For allowing his cab to be used as a trampoline? Cheap, I’d say.’

  ‘You’re sure your employer will reimburse you?’ She picked up the ghost of a smile and wished she’d kept her mouth shut. Her next try was even worse. ‘I’d better see you again …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I mean, since we …’

  ‘Since we … ?’ He tilted his head.

  ‘I mean – since you helped me twice and I owe you two taxi fares.’

  He passed her a white card. ‘My business number. Call me next time you get locked in.’ He stepped back and gave the roof a couple of smacks. Alix sat back, recognising a classic brush-off.

  Silence would be the most dignified state. But she’d suddenly realised where she’d first heard his voice. There was just time to slide across the seat and shout out the window, ‘Did that poor friend of yours survive or did he die in prison?’

  As the taxi pulled away she thought she heard, ‘Deux Magots, tomorrow teatime, and I’ll tell you!’

  Chapter Twelve

  It was while travelling on Métro line eight the following day that Verrian realised he’d found a reason to stay in Paris. A sweet, husky voice which, though it had taken him time to realise it, had haunted him from first hearing. Alix Gower had been the disembodied voice of the telephone exchange. How extraordinary that they kept meeting. Some people would call it fate. There were so many fascinating ingredients to Alix Gower. Like oil and water in a jar, a vigorous shake would emulsify into a rather perplexing girl.

  As the train rumbled into Bonne Nouvelle station, sucked in more passengers and closed its doors, he weighed up his feelings. He was physically attracted to Alix, but she sounded – and had felt – quite young. Kissing her last night had been an irresistible impulse, but not the act of a responsible grown man. Had he not been stirred up from his conversation with Jack, he wouldn’t have done it. He hoped not, anyway.

  Why was he so drawn to her? The first time he’d met her, she’d been slathered in tears. Last night she’d been soaked to the skin. But … the voice and hair and near-black eyes.

  Or was he seeing another face? Was he reaching for Alix because he longed for somebody lost to him?

  ‘Penny for them?’

  ‘Scrap – I’m sorry.’ He’d temporarily forgotten the two women opposite him in the first-class carriage. Studying them again, Verrian felt the same jolt he’d experienced when he’d first greeted them off their train half an hour ago. While he’d been in Spain, his sister – ten years his junior and known as ‘Scrap’ – had evolved from a tomboy in jodhpurs into a young woman with professionally waved hair and a grown-up suit.

  His mother had altered too. Somebody had taken the confident woman he’d kissed goodbye a year-and-a-half ago and replaced her with a nervous matron. Both now rocked with the motion of the train, handbags clasped in tweed laps. Jack’s wire had arrived first thing that morning. Not at Verrian’s lodgings, at the News Monitor building. ‘Ma and Lucy on way Paris, meet Gare du Nord, elevenish.’

  Luckily the Monitor’s editorial secretary was so devoted to her duties she came in on Saturdays. She’d shot a boy-messenger to Place du Tertre and Verrian had woken to the realisation that his squiring duties began in three hours.

  Bloody Jack must have known last night that the women were already on the boat train. Verrian wondered how he was going to juggle his mother and Lucy and still manage to meet Alix that afternoon.

  Lucy was a good face-reader. As the train stopped at Rue Montmartre, she said, ‘We’ve been sprung on you, but don’t worry – Ma and I will spend hours in Printemps and then we’ll collapse into bed. Just so long as you have dinner with us and take us somewhere nice, we’ll be fine. We’ve missed you.’

  ‘Is the old girl all right?’ he asked Lucy in a whisper. Their mother was staring into the blackness of the train window, locked in thought.

  ‘That depends on you. What you drop in her lap this time.’

  The doors closed, wheels rolled. Explanation was impossible.

  *

  He took them to Printemps, the famous department store on Boulevard Haussmann, and bought them lunch in the café under the cupola. Watching his mother poke doubtfully at her pink beef, turning a slice over to see if it was better done on the other side, he reflected that you could take the English landed classes out their country, but you could not take the country out of them. His mother’s philosophy was utterly simple: everything she’d learned during her Edwardian childhood represented Truth in all its forms. Whether the topic was food, politics or marriage, there was a right choice and a wrong choice. And if one came from a good family, one simply knew what the right choice was.

  Lucy, catching Verrian’s expression, imitated the Haviland family cook: ‘Don’t you let them Frenchies palm you off with raw meat, Madam!’

  Their mother glanced up, gravely surprised at the comment. ‘Underdone meat is dangerous, as you’d know if you were Chairlady of the Sussex School Visitors’ Trust. Half the malnutrition we see in rural children comes from intestinal parasites.’

  ‘Mummy, honestly,’ Lucy reproved.

  ‘Continentals don’t get them,’ Verrian said, rolling a slice of beef around oiled lettuce. ‘Get school dinner ladies to add garlic to everything, problem solved.’

  ‘They’d be more inclined to add brimstone.’ His mother was cutting the darker meat away, pushing circles of pink to the side of her plate.

  Verrian couldn’t abide waste. His mother’s malnourished Sussex brats would look peachy compared to those he’d seen in Spain. In Madrid, a rumour had spread in that jittery, bombarded city that local con-men were catching cats and selling the meat as rabbit. It had made those plates of olla podrida his hotel had served, a stew of stringy meats cooked with red cabbage, seem a culinary lottery.

  ‘What’s your plan for today?’ he asked.

  ‘Anything but grey,’ Lucy said. ‘I need a couple of suits for my secretarial course and something glam for –’ She broke off so abruptly she might have sketched an exclamation mark in the air.

  ‘For?’

  ‘… Um, parties and things. And this one –’ she pinched her mother’s arm, ‘her wardrobe is a coffin of old tweed. The poor girl’s still wearing dropped waists.’

  ‘Only for gardening. Dear –’ Verrian’s mother patted his hand – ‘you might like to visit the men’s department?’

  She’d been eyeing his jacket and tie-less neck since the ticket barrier. ‘I bought three shirts the other day and a suit and tie,’ he told her.

  ‘But you are not wearing them.’

  ‘True.’ He’d put on the clothes he’d left on his chair the night before, the priority having been to shave before meeting his mother. ‘Some women like the flung-on look.’ An African lady, walking towards them in that undulating way of people used to the Tropics, threw him a smile on cue. He responded and she returned a twinkle. ‘See?’

  Lucy giggled. ‘That’s the third woman you’ve flirted with since we sat down.’

  ‘You’re counting?’

  ‘You are a flirt though. And such an egalitarian. That poor old fright, begging on the station concourse? She had her skirt tucked into her bloomers but you still called her “Madame”.’

  ‘It’s how they’re wearing bl
oomers in Paris this year.’

  ‘Enough,’ said their mother. ‘Not a subject for airing at lunch. Lucy, you should be glad your brother has manners. Verrian, take care you don’t become too foreign.’

  Verrian surreptitiously checked his watch. Skip cheese and coffee, and he’d have time to go home and change before meeting Alix for tea. If she meant to turn up, of course.

  *

  At the Deux Magots, he took an inside table because the spitting wind outside ruffled his newspaper. Might as well find out what the French press were saying about developments in Spain following the Durango bombing. Four o’clock and no sign of Alix. He was betting she wouldn’t come.

  Shame. She’d miss the debut of his new suit, unique for being the first he’d ever bought off the rail. It was stone-coloured linen, a size too large because the Spanish heat had given him a horror of anything tight-fitting. Under the jacket he wore his shirt open, a breezy Left Bank style that in his hometown of Heronhurst would bring cars to a halt and probably cause bicycle tyres to spontaneously deflate. In Heronhurst, gentlemen buttoned their coats and wore their collars starched even on the hottest summer day.

  He ordered coffee, folded the newspaper into a comfortable shape and tried to read. But his attention refused to fix, so he studied the crowd instead. The Deux Magots was a writers’ den. Smoke hazed every straight line. Leather banquettes were occupied by men and women whose pencils worked furiously over notepads held down by their cups. Here one could write all day over one cup of coffee without being moved on or charged for air. The French let culture breathe, he thought, looking up at the wooden statues attached to a corner pier. Those were the magots, the Mandarin wise men that gave the café its name.

  ‘Maggots?’ Lucy had echoed when he’d announced where he was going. ‘You’re meeting someone at “two maggots”? Can we come?’

  No, Scrap, you can’t. The waiter brought him his coffee, but after a sip or two he decided it was making his heart race. It couldn’t be nerves he was feeling. He was only meeting a dowdy and unsophisticated girl about his sister’s age. They were palpitations of embarrassment, he told himself, because what had seemed right yesterday in the dark now felt hideously ill-judged.