The Girl Who Dreamed of Paris Read online

  ‘No. You aren’t small or pretty enough.’

  Cora nearly opened her mouth to point out that that hadn’t stopped Joan Crawford, but in the end, said nothing. Being an actress was a red herring. She didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life, only that she couldn’t bear the idea of growing old at a workbench, or marrying some bloke called Albert or Bill just to get away from her dad’s fists and the factory whistle.

  Now, as the Epsom-bound train chugged past the cramped backyards of New Cross, Forest Hill, Croydon, Cora reran that conversation and finished it: ‘The thing is, I don’t want to stay at Pettrew’s. I want to go to Paris. Or Timbuktu or China. Anywhere, Miss McCullum. But I haven’t got the courage. I’m a coward, see, like Granny Flynn says: stuck like a hobnail in a crack in the pavement.’

  *

  Donal and Cora bought passes for the public grandstand. Standing only, but you got a decent view of the racecourse. The other side of the white rails was The Hill, where the public roamed for free, a mosaic of spectators, cars and open-top red double-deckers. Sunlight bounced mercilessly off metal and Cora was glad of her shadowy veil. ‘What race is next?’ she asked Donal. A squadron of jockeys was cantering towards the backfield.

  Donal checked his card. ‘That’ll be the two thirty going down to the start. Half an hour to the big one.’ The betting rings were heaving, tic-tac men signalling coded messages. Odds were being bellowed, starting prices chalked up, rubbed out, rewritten. Each time the price of a horse changed, a roar went up. She’d given Donal two pounds. They’d each bought their fares and grandstand passes and kept back a few shillings to feed themselves. Everything she had left was going on one horse, to win.

  ‘Here’s the plan,’ she shouted, over the roar that heralded the start of the two thirty. ‘You get us a drink and something to eat and I’ll maggot into the crowd. I’m going to find out which horse is the best outsider for the Derby Stakes.’

  ‘Outsider? Are you sure?’

  ‘I like outsiders, Donal. I feel like one myself.’

  As Cora got near the runners’ and riders’ board, the two-thirty thundered past. Deafening, and when the winners were declared, the crowds went wild. It was a quarter of an hour before the boards were wiped clean and the Derby runners were chalked up. She read the list.

  Cash Book and Perifox were joint favourites at seven to one. After that, it was Le Ksar and Goya II at nine to one. Cora rolled their names on her tongue, waiting for the jolt that would tell her she’d pronounced the name of the winner. Her eye stopped at number ten: Mid-day Sun. She felt . . . not electricity, just an emotion, the roots of which she couldn’t find.

  Mid-day Sun was on at 100 to seven, as was a filly, Gainsborough Lass. Those were mile-long odds. She looked for Donal, but all she could see were men and women scanning their race cards. She’d have to make her own choice. Her eye kept going back to Mid-day Sun. One hundred to seven, if he won. For a stake of two pounds ten, she’d win . . . she felt her brain grinding . . . between thirty and forty pounds. That would get her away from her father and keep her while she found herself a more pleasant job. Cora, you can stop getting your hopes up, she admonished herself. The chance of Mid-day Sun winning the Derby was about the same as her dad coming home with a fish-and-chip supper and a big bunch of flowers. Even so, she couldn’t shift the fizzy-sick feeling in her stomach.

  A man in a group in front of her was saying that his choice, Perifox, came from Kentucky and that he liked the going firm. Kentucky . . . was that a posh name for Kent? Cora dug her heels into the grass. It felt pretty firm. What about Mid-day Sun? Did he like firm going? She stamped and a yowl filled her ear. She turned to see a man in full morning dress hopping in apparent agony. She moved towards him, ready to catch his top hat if it fell off. He glared at her. ‘Why the devil did you stamp on my foot?’

  ‘To know if the ground was hard or not.’

  ‘The heel of your shoe is, I promise you.’

  She was desperate to apologise, but all she managed was an inappropriate grin. He was ridiculously good-looking. Light-haired, brown eyes, with a glint of green. Hazel, a colour she’d always craved for herself. His mouth was long and firm with the promise of humour, though she’d have to wait for proof as his teeth were clenched. It said volumes about her background that she was admiring a man for being well-shaven and clean, but so it was. How often did she look at a man’s collar and find it pearly white, unless it had just come through Granny Flynn’s laundry? How often did she see a suit that fitted, none of the seams gasping for breath? A dark grey morning coat, top hat with a black band – good enough to be from Pettrew’s – and striped twill trousers advanced the impression of good breeding. The most striking thing about him was his beauty. Beauty. She’d never used that word about a man, ever. Suddenly, she had a feeling she’d seen him before.

  ‘There is something amusing about me?’ He spoke in the clipped way the Pettrew’s directors did when they stood up in their silk plush hats to address their workers.

  ‘Sorry, I was trying to pick a horse.’ It came out as ‘an ’orse’. You can take the girl out of Bermondsey . . . Her mother, whose finest hour had been playing Gwendolen Fairfax at the Prince of Wales Theatre, had taught her that to speak nicely, you must start by lifting your nose as if smelling a rose, and saying, ‘an egg’. Saying ‘an egg’ now would make her sound barmy. Just don’t say anything beginning with H, she told herself. ‘I didn’t realise anyone was behind me.’

  ‘Did you not think in a crowd there would be someone behind you?’

  ‘I was trying to picture the winning . . . er, runner. To feel a spark.’ Her new, cultured voice seemed to do the trick. The man looked intrigued.

  ‘Did you? Feel a spark, I mean?’

  ‘Sort of.’ She was feeling one now and it wasn’t just this man’s looks doing it: it was his smell, reminiscent of empty spice jars. ‘I get it in my belly. I mean, stomach. I mean, in my middle.’ She patted the place. ‘I fancy Mid-day Sun.’

  He glanced at her waist and, for the first time, smiled. She’d tucked her gloves into her belt, not wanting a barrier between her hand and her borrowed bag. Thieves were rife at race meetings. The gloves had curled over, like begging paws.

  ‘Interesting. To say he’s unfancied would be an understatement.’

  ‘Stupid choice, probably,’ she agreed.

  ‘Not wholly. He won at Lingfield, at the Derby Trial Stakes, so he’s proved himself over a mile and a half in good company.’

  ‘Blimey, has he?’ Lingfield wasn’t Newmarket or Ascot. It wasn’t even York . . . Actually, Cora couldn’t have found Lingfield on a map if her life depended on it, but that didn’t matter. Mid-day Sun had form, so her funny feeling wasn’t so funny. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he turned out to be a bomber.’

  ‘Now you’ve lost me – bomber?’

  ‘Comes from behind.’ As Cora spoke, an auburn-haired woman did just that, slipping a cream-kid hand under the man’s arm. With a fleeting glance for Cora, she said something in a breathy voice. Not in English, in German.

  Lots of foreigners came to Pettrew & Lofthouse, and because she’d learned French from her father, Cora was often asked to show them around the make-room. French was the language of the hat trade, but she’d picked up a smattering of German, too, because some of the best Berlin department stores regularly sent their buyers.

  So she knew that the woman disliked being in a crowd and hated the smell of frying food. And when she gazed up at her companion and murmured, ‘Nicht so, Dietrich?’ Cora sucked in her cheeks, assuming they were saying how much like Marlene Dietrich she looked. It was only when the man replied without looking at her that Cora realised he must be called Dietrich.

  He hadn’t sounded foreign. Though, now she thought of it, he did choose his words carefully, the way a stamp collector picks rare pieces from a box with tweezers. It explained why they were
there, alongside the suburban matrons and stripy-suited commercial men, instead of swanning in the members’ enclosure. Poor saps must have bought the wrong passes.

  The man called Dietrich recalled Cora’s presence. He said, in English, to his companion, ‘This young lady thinks Mid-day Sun could be a bomber.’

  Auburn brows lifted. ‘Really?’ She sounded bored. Like many women there today, she wore white from head to toe. A silver fox collar made a sumptuous frame for her face and her clutch coat revealed a dress of snowy chiffon. She wore silk stockings and kid shoes that the grass hadn’t yet marked. A triple row of pearls closed the gap between glove and sleeve. As for her hat, Cora couldn’t take her eyes from it. White beaver belly, its crown formed two V-shaped peaks, like yacht sails at different points on the horizon. Or, if you were being fanciful, it was a trifle topping. It would have looked silly on virtually every woman in the world, but on this one, it was almost perfect.

  Almost. Impelled by an impulse she couldn’t explain, Cora spoke: ‘Your hat’s crying out for a brim. It’s too narrow to balance your collar. Either you need more hat, or less fur.’

  Had they been anywhere else, deafening silence would have greeted this remark, but as the Derby runners were now parading past the stands, her impudence went no further than Dietrich and the woman, who asked in heavily accented English, ‘You are a hat-maker?’

  ‘Yes . . . I’m – I’m a milliner. Quite a famous one, actually.’

  ‘Indeed?’ The woman appraised Cora’s black-feathered hat so intently, she wondered if it had slipped back, revealing her bad eye. She knew it when the woman said, ‘You have had an accident, perhaps?’

  ‘I tripped getting out of my automobile.’

  ‘And you were in Paris recently?’

  ‘I . . . um . . . not that recently.’

  ‘Because your hat comes from La Passerinette, in boulevard de la Madeleine.’

  Cora felt the ground shift. How did the woman know? ‘Boulevard . . . as you say. I don’t always wear my own hats.’

  ‘Why not? Surely, at the Epsom races, a good milliner wears her own designs.’

  ‘No.’ Cora dug for a credible reason. ‘I’m here incognito. That’s why I’m not in the members’ enclosure. Ladies are always wanting the hat off my head.’ Only she said ‘’at off my ’ead’. An egg, a bloody egg.

  ‘If you are well known, I will have heard of you. What is your name?’

  She could have said Cora Masson. But ‘Cora’ had always felt like a charwoman’s name and ‘Masson’ was marred by her dad’s knuckles and his drunken breath. A swift glance at the runners’ board showed her Le Grand Duc at odds of 100 to nine. When he wanted to impress the butcher or the coalman, her father had his bills sent to ‘Jacques Masson de Lirac’, claiming descent from some ancient French dukedom. If he could pretend, so could she. ‘My name is Coralie de Lirac.’ ‘Coralie’ had been her mother’s pet name for her.

  ‘You have a card?’ the woman asked.

  ‘A race card?’

  ‘Business card. I am curious about this La Passerinette hat. I have – I had – one very similar and would like to know if somebody is copying it.’

  Anticipating questions she couldn’t answer, Cora improvised, ‘I dropped my cards when I fell out my motor-car but tell me your address and I’ll send you one in the post.’ The anticipated snub finally arrived.

  ‘One presents cards only to social equals. Dietrich,’ the woman touched her companion’s arm, ‘I am very bored now. Take me away.’

  Donal chose that moment to return, clutching jars of ginger beer and two paper parcels reeking of fried onion.

  ‘Extra mustard, Cora!’ he shouted, over the heads of the crowd. ‘By the way, some geezer in the queue reckoned the Kentucky horse is a banker.’ Reading her crushed expression, he stared hard at the departing man in immaculate morning dress, the lady in her silver fur, and blared, ‘Ruddy hell, they didn’t try to pickpocket you, did they?’

  Cora took a long swig of ginger beer. Its sweet gassiness made her feel empty and sick at the same time. Too long since breakfast. Donal pointed at the runners’ board. ‘Perifox. He’s the one.’ When she sniffed, he said, ‘He’s an American champ, goes like a bullet.’

  ‘If he’s come over on an Atlantic liner, he’ll be wanting a lie-down. Epsom’s a rogue’s course. Any horse can win if it’s ridden well and has a bit of luck. I’m backing Mid-day Sun.’

  Dropping fried onion in shock, Donal listed all the reasons why she was idiotic, ending with ‘And he’s owned by a woman. Women don’t win classic races.’

  ‘She isn’t running, is she? She’s not riding either. She just owns him.’

  Donal’s face closed. ‘Women don’t own Derby winners.’

  ‘Says who?’

  ‘Everyone.’ He cast his head from side to side, searching for a reason. ‘Women can’t buy the best horses – they never have enough money. And men won’t sell them good horses because women pick horses like they pick hats. They want the chestnuts and the greys or the ones they feel sorry for. It’s a man’s game. Men ride, men train, men win.’

  That sounded like life in a nutshell, but Cora flicked a speck of mustard into Donal’s face. ‘Times are changing.’ I could be a supervisor at Pettrew & Lofthouse, on two hundred pounds a year. And a woman could be leading the winner into the ring in half an hour’s time. Anything can happen. She belched delicately behind her hand, the ginger beer doing its usual trick. She still felt sick, and still hungry. ‘I need to dash – Donal, you put my money on for me.’ She handed him two pounds ten shillings. ‘On the nose, to win. Don’t go all soft and do an each-way.’

  ‘You’d be mad not to back him each-way. He could come third, just, but he won’t win. You’ll lose the lot.’

  ‘My money, my risk. You’re going with Peri— What’s his name?’

  ‘I might. Or the one with the Russian name.’

  ‘Le Ksar?’

  ‘That’s it. But probably Goya eye-eye.’

  ‘What?’ Cora checked her race card. ‘Goya the Second, nitwit. You want to give the bookies a laugh?’

  Donal gave a superior sniff. ‘You never give the bookies the horse’s name, Cora, only the number.’

  ‘Yeah, well, get in that queue. I’ve got to run.’

  *

  Cora was violently sick in the ladies’ lavatory. After she’d pulled the chain, she leaned against the cubicle wall. Her tumble in Shand Street had finally caught up with her. After washing her hands and rinsing her mouth at the basin, she went out into sunshine that seemed to have doubled in strength. By the time she found Donal, it was eight minutes past three, but the race had been delayed.

  ‘Couldn’t get the horses in a line.’ Donal threw her an odd glance. ‘You all right?’

  ‘Did you put my money on?’

  ‘I still think you’re mad. To be honest—’ Someone bumped into him and, as wary as Cora of thieves, he clamped his arms to his sides. A roar like a flock of invisible birds rose from the blind side of The Hill. The Derby Stakes was under way.

  The first five and a half furlongs were run on the far side, so they couldn’t see a thing. Then everyone was looking to the left. Those with binoculars raised them. An instant later, the field was peeling round Tattenham Corner. Someone adept at reading jockeys’ colours cried out, ‘It’s Renardo, Fairford and Le Grand Duc.’

  Cora and Donal stared at each other in dismay.

  ‘Fairford’s leading,’ their informant shouted. Cora strained to catch the first sight of horses coming onto the straight, only Donal was jumping up and down because the cry had gone up that Goya II was challenging Fairford for the lead. ‘Go on, my son!’ he bellowed.

  ‘Where’s mine?’ Cora wailed. ‘Where’s Mid-day Sun?’

  ‘Fairford’s lost it,’ somebody shouted. ‘It’s going to be Goya the Secon
d or Le Grand Duc.’

  ‘It’s Perifox!’ somebody else countered.

  ‘Goya!’ Donal beat the air to drive his horse home. ‘I backed him nine to one.’

  Cora felt sick again. Donal was right: she was a sentimental sop who had no place on a racecourse. But she’d been so sure.

  Horses swept past, two bays locked in a private challenge.

  ‘Who’s won? Donal, who’s won?’

  ‘It could have been Goya. Holy Mother, I’ll buy myself a bicycle if he’s done it.’

  ‘Who was coming up on the outside?’ But nobody could answer her, not even the know-all behind them. It was a painful wait, until a new roar went up and the winner’s name appeared on the board.

  Cora’s shriek hurt even her own ears. ‘He’s done it! Mid-day Sun! I could kiss him. I’m going to kiss you!’ Reaching for Donal, she was surprised to find herself grabbing a complete stranger. Donal was already heading away, through the crowd.

  *

  Mid-day Sun first, Sandsprite second, Le Grand Duc third. When Cora finally collared Donal, his face resembled cold suet pudding.

  ‘Oh, God,’ he said.

  She gave him a hug. ‘I’ll share my winnings, then you can have another go. The way my luck’s going, we’ll win enough to get you two bicycles.’ She’d have danced a jig had Donal not been a deadweight. So she jigged on her own. ‘Miss McCullum can stick her promotion. I can give notice. I’ll leave home tomorrow. What’s that poor bookie going to say when I tell him he’s got to hand over thirty-five quid or more?’ She waited, waited longer than she liked. ‘Donal? Give me the betting slip.’

  At what point did she realise it wasn’t disappointment crushing Donal? ‘Where’s my betting slip?’

  ‘I—’

  Looping her arms round his neck, she kicked his right leg from under him. He went down, herself on top, her knee on his chest. Never mind that people stared in shock. ‘Where is it, you dimwit?’

  ‘Cora, I didn’t place the bet. I thought Mid-day Sun would lose and I could give you your money back and you’d be pleased. I didn’t want you to be disappointed.’