Chapter 15

Fen and Magda chatted away about less serious subjects until they arrived at the address printed on the very smart little calling card that Simone had passed to Fen that morning. The atelier didn’t have a showy shop window and was in fact only recognisable from the discreet brass plaque next to the door. Fen was about to rap on the door when it opened and Simone appeared behind it.

‘Hello, Fenella, and…’ Simone stopped and stared at Magda for a brief moment before introducing herself to her. Pleasantries were made and Simone ushered the two women into the building. ‘Did you have any trouble finding your way?’ Simone asked as Fen and Magda hung their coats up on the stand in the vestibule.

The entrance hall of the building was sparse in its own way, black-and-white tiles chequerboarded the floor and the only furniture was the stand, on which they’d just hung their coats, an upholstered bench seat and a mahogany receptionist’s desk, which was currently unoccupied.

‘No, not at all. We found it quite easily in fact.’ Fen’s sense of direction was something of which she was quite proud, plus she’d been to this neighbourhood before, as a girl, accompanying her mother on jaunts to her dressmaker. She had remembered the way, even if so many of the once-familiar shops and dressmaker’s ateliers had been closed now and some even boarded up.

Magda spoke up too, echoing Fen’s thoughts. ‘This was always such an exciting part of Paris to come to, in the old days, I mean.’

‘As it is now,’ Simone said rather coquettishly, placing a hand on her hip.

‘Yes, of course,’ Magda agreed, ‘and I’m sure it will be just as delightful as it ever was, even if perhaps my purse strings need to be pulled a little tighter these days.’

Fen reached out and squeezed Magda’s hand, before realising that Simone was still waiting for them at the partially opened door, which led to the rest of the atelier.

The atelier itself was a hive of buzzing sewing machines and scratching pens on drawing boards. Simone showed them into what she called the cutting room. Here, on one side, there were draughtsmen sitting at large white drawing boards, while seamstresses dressed mannequins and stood over large, wide tables measuring and cutting fabric. There were great windows, like those in Rose’s apartment, letting in the early-afternoon light, and drawings and sketches filled the walls. The whole place felt industrious and purposeful, and Fen could now understand Simone’s outrage at the way fashion models like herself were attacked and sworn at in the street. Here in the atelier of Lucien Lelong, for that had been the name on the brass plaque by the front door, progress was being made one stitch at a time.

‘Come, let me introduce to you to my friends. They will simply adore that crazy dress you’re wearing, Fenella. Is it one of Rose’s? She’s a scream that woman. Christian, Pierre!’ Simone led a rather self-conscious Fen and obviously rather awkward Magda through the cutting room to where two middle-aged men were sitting at their drawing boards. ‘Miss Churche, Madame Bernheim, may I introduce you to my mentors here at Lelong, Monsieurs Christian Dior and Pierre Balmain.’

‘Bonjour, mademoiselle, madame,’ the rather handsome Christian leaned over and kissed Fen’s hand, then that of Magda, while Pierre laughed and saluted them both from behind his drawing board.

‘These two men are geniuses,’ Simone gushed. ‘Their designs are so full of life…’

‘…And luxury,’ Pierre laughed. ‘Luckily for Mademoiselle Mercier here we like to dress her up like our younger sister and parade her around.’

Simone tutted and huffed in that particularly Gallic way, but Fen could tell she was in her element, being the darling of these two trailblazing designers.

‘Next let me show you the pattern designs,’ Simone pulled Fen along with her as the two designers waved them all off. Once out of earshot, she pulled Fen and Magda into a huddle and said in a conspiratorial whisper, ‘Don’t you dare tell anyone, but Christian is leaving soon, he says.’

‘Oh dear. That will be a loss for Monsieur Lelong.’ Magda sounded genuinely worried for the proprietor. ‘My mother used to come here in the twenties…’ her voice trailed off and Fen looked at her with concern. ‘I’m all right, I’m all right,’ Magda confirmed as she fished around in her handbag for a handkerchief.

Simone waited for Magda to finish blowing her nose and then carried on with her juicy piece of gossip. ‘It will be a disaster for this atelier, yes. Christian’s designs are out of this world, you know? They are in the new style, so fresh.’

‘Promise we won’t say a word,’ Fen assured her.

‘Good. I’m hoping that he might take me with him. If I’m still living in Paris by then, of course.’

‘Are you planning on leaving Paris?’ Magda asked but didn’t wait for an answer as she put her handkerchief back in her handbag and carried on. ‘I don’t think I could ever leave, not again. Never again.’

Fen slipped her arm into Magda’s and gave it a squeeze as Simone merely shrugged and led them into another room, this one full of rolls of fabric, all standing on their ends, like a vibrantly coloured version of the Giant’s Causeway.

Fen wanted to ask Simone what she meant about leaving Paris but was swept up by the sight of so much fabric. She remembered repurposing a pair of Mrs B’s old curtains to make a skirt during the war, and how Kitty had laughed at her as a rogue curtain hook had fallen out during a tea dance. Put it this way, the fabric in this room would have dressed the whole of West Sussex for the entirety of the war, with spare left over for the VE Day bunting.

‘Gosh aren’t these patterns wild!’ Fen ran her finger along a wide roll of brightly coloured silk, feeling the texture as much as seeing the pattern. ‘My friend Kitty would be in seventh heaven here!’

‘These are the fabrics for Christian’s new look, he’s very particular about them.’

‘I can see why, one yard of this is probably worth more than my entire wardrobe!’

‘Can you imagine,’ Magda joined in, ‘I used to come here and think nothing of ordering dress after dress. And now…well, same as you, Fen, dear, just being in this room is about as close to bespoke tailoring as I’ll get any time soon.’

Simone smiled and carefully tucked a stray few strands of her hair behind her ear. ‘I know what it’s like to be poor, too. Though I’ve never resorted to borrowing old lady’s clothes.’ She touched the fabric on the slightly unfashionable squared-off shoulder of Rose’s tea dress and laughed. ‘So thirties!’

‘Oh, well, I mean…’ Fen trailed off as Simone carried on talking, her manner suddenly less carefree.

‘Still, I would have only dreamed of a dress like yours back then. I was a young girl when Paris was in crisis, you know? The depression?’

Fen knew it well. It was The Crisis of Paris that had weighed on her mind heavily when she was deciding what to do for the war effort. She had witnessed the poorest in Paris starve back in 1934 when the shops ran empty and even bread was hard to come by. Her family had moved back to England the year after, but it had always haunted her, how it was the worst off in this world who suffered the most during times of depression, and how economic depression so often followed war…

‘We were starving. My father was out of work and my mother had died in the winter of ’33 from pneumonia. You might have been buying dresses here at Lelong, Madame Bernheim, but I was dressed in rags.’ Simone looked intensely at Magda.

‘I’m so sorry.’ Magda dropped her eyes and seemed to carefully examine the floor.

‘Tch, it is what it is. We have all been through hell and back these past few years. Back then, we were alley rats, vermin on the streets of Paris. My sister and I were old enough to help our father ply the streets but too young to realise what was happening. You could say that we were dying, but we didn’t know it.’

‘What happened?’ Fen couldn’t help but find it hard to tally the story Simone was telling her to the cosmopolitan young woman standing before her.

‘I realised I was beautiful.’ Simone paused as if waiting for Fen and Magda to agree with her, and sure enough they did both nod. ‘And I traded it as my best asset.’

‘Oh, I see…’ Fen was slightly shocked, while Magda took to examining the floor again.

‘No, not like that.’ Simone stood taller, more proud. ‘I was barely seventeen when the war started. A woman, yes, but not worldly, you know? But I modelled for artists and became a waitress and then I worked for the Resistance in the war as a lure for the Germans.’

‘A lure?’

‘Yes, you pretend you want, you know, jiggy-jiggy with them and then lure them into an alley where others were waiting.’ She ran her finger across her throat and Fen instinctively raised her hand to protect her own neck.

‘Cripes!’

‘No more than they deserved,’ Magda crossed her arms, looking more defiant than Fen had seen her.

Simone laughed and pulled a scrap of fabric out from an end of one of the rolls and draped it over Magda’s shoulder. ‘Suits you,’ she said and then coolly carried on with her story. ‘Of course, there was always that temptation to let them go, or accept their offers of money and ration books…like The Chameleon obviously did.’

‘That brute.’ Magda practically spat the words out, then hurriedly fetched her handkerchief out of her bag and blew her nose again.

‘Were there many double agents, do you think?’ Fen was curious, and while not wanting to upset Magda by dwelling on the subject, she wanted to know more.

‘Yes. More than you’d think.’ Simone looked thoughtful, and Fen watched as she took in the obvious sadness in Magda’s eyes. ‘Anyway, now my life is full of silks and brocades, not mouldy bread and rat droppings. Oh, this fabric is so beautiful, don’t you think?’ Simone seemed easily distracted, even from her own story.

The other two women murmured their agreement over the prettiness of the fabric and Fen, her natural curiosity still burning, willed Simone to continue. She wasn’t in luck, however, as Simone walked them out of the fabric room and back through the cutting room to the salon where smart Parisiennes would come to watch girls such as Simone model the latest fashions.

‘Here, I have a gift for you both.’ Simone slipped down behind the raised walkway and pulled out two neatly tied packages. She handed one each to Fen and Magda. ‘Pop them in your handbags, quick. Don’t let anyone see on the way out,’ she winked at Fen. ‘They keep these scarves here for important clients. A little sweetener to encourage les madames to buy the clothes.’

Fen couldn’t help but have a quick peek and peeled open one end of the brown paper and gasped. Magda had done the same but couldn’t even manage to make a sound. Fen quickly closed the paper up and offered the parcel back to Simone.

‘Oh Simone, I can’t possibly take this.’

Simone pushed the parcel back into her hands. ‘Honestly, it’s not a big deal to us. I have two or three of these scarves in the new patterns. Take them, take them.’

‘This is too much,’ Magda had found her voice. ‘I…I don’t know what to say.’

Fen could see that Magda very much wanted to keep the pretty silk scarf that was wrapped up in the brown paper, but was torn, like her, by the morality of accepting such an expensive and luxurious gift from a near stranger.

But Simone all but forced them on to the women. ‘Catherine says I have an eye for design,’ she explained. ‘I cut the fabric for these scarves myself. To me, fashion is a disguise, you know, like a mask. You can wear something beautiful now and for a moment you can forget your past.’ Simone ran a finger down the sleeve of her own blouse, which Fen noticed was pure silk and utterly divine. Simone looked up again, awakened from her own reverie. ‘Please, have them. I am glad to be able to bring a little joy, especially to you, Madame Bernheim.’

‘Thank you, Simone,’ Fen touched her arm, careful not to snag the silk, while Magda gathered Simone into an impromptu hug.

Simone smiled at them both. ‘I will do anything, you see, anything to not go back to the poverty of my childhood. But I know I am the lucky one now, being here among this luxury. You’ve both suffered too, and sharing a bit of this good fortune, well, it’s the least I can do.’

‘Thank you, again.’ Fen said, feeling the softness of the silk inside the packet. ‘And, well, yes, you’ve landed on your feet here, I think. Pierre and Christian obviously think very highly of you and—’

‘And maybe I can marry well now the war is behind us and I look so smart, yes?’ Simone winked at Fen, who smiled back at her, finally realising what she meant about not being in Paris much longer.

Oh you’ll marry well, all right, she thought, knowing exactly who she had her sights on. I think I may know just the chap…