It Was Only Ever You (4 page)

Leaving the coffees behind, she picked up her bag and her cardigan and walked back out on to the broad suburban street where she hailed a taxi home.

‘I
T
’
S
AN
investment.’

Nessa Brogan had said it straight out, while explaining to her husband, Tom, over breakfast that morning, why almost two hundred dollars of his salary was being spent on a Sybil Connolly gown for their daughter, Ava, to wear to a wedding that wasn’t her own. P. J. Dolan was a high court judge and one of the most powerful people in New York Irish society.

Tom Brogan was a successful insurance broker, one of the rising middle class of Irish Americans, but his real passion was his philanthropic work with young Irish immigrants, many of whom came to be employed in the dance halls owned by his friend Iggy Morrow. Tom and the judge knew each other vaguely through their charitable work for the poor immigrant Irish, but it was apparently well enough for the Brogans to be invited to be one of their eight hundred or so guests at PJ’s eldest daughter Gloria’s wedding. Nessa was determined to make an impression.

The famous Irish fashion designer Sybil Connolly was renowned for her classic designs using the finest Irish tweeds and linens. Jackie Kennedy was a customer. The Brogans were not in the same league as the Kennedys but being invited to Judge Dolan’s wedding was a start and Tom could afford to splash out every now and then to keep his wife and daughter happy. Or rather, his wife. His daughter hated shopping.

Nessa opened her eyes wide and nodded conspiratorially. ‘It’s a big day, Thomas, an opportunity. There will be a lot of important people there.’

Then she mouthed the word ‘husband’. Tom shook his head and blushed, embarrassed. He didn’t see what the problem was. So Ava was taller, broader and not as delicate and pretty as her cousins, but she was still a great girl. She was sensible, practical and as smart as any man he’d ever come across. She could fire through a crossword in an hour and count as fast in her head as any of the young men he had working under him. Ava was a good, kind person too – worth a thousand of these silly American girls with their bows and big busts and their wasp-waists. As far as Tom Brogan was concerned, any man would be the luckiest man alive to marry his daughter. What she needed to find was a good, solid Irishman, like himself. The fact that she insisted on working in the typing pool of his insurance firm didn’t help. She was too independent by far, and men didn’t like that either. Ava could afford to buy her own clothes, but most of the time she didn’t bother. This was her mother’s way of trying to fancy her up a bit. Tom could have told her it wouldn’t work. Ava just wasn’t that kind of girl.

Tom loved his only daughter more than anything and told her she was beautiful every day. The problem was, she didn’t believe him.

‘You can stop talking about me finding a husband,’ Ava said to them. ‘I’ll find my own when I’m good and ready.’

Tom laughed. ‘There now, Nessa, will you leave the poor girl alone?’

Nessa smiled, taking temporary comfort in her daughter’s show of confidence.

‘The fitting is in the Plaza at eleven, we’ll have time for lunch afterwards in the Palm Court...’

‘Steady,’ Tom said.

‘Perhaps your father might call in with one of his colleagues?’

‘She never gives up!’ Tom said, smiling, bringing the paper back up to his face.

‘And I never will,’ said Nessa, picking up her bag, ‘until our daughter is as happily married as we are.’

Tom pulled a face behind his paper so just Ava could see and she winked back at him.

It was important to Ava that she let her parents know that she neither noticed nor cared that she wasn’t especially pretty. Except that Ava did notice and she did care. Her nose was too long, her eyes were close together and her face was broader than it should have been. She had good hair that set easily – but it was a dull shade of mousy brown and she was nervous to dye it a shade darker for fear of looking ghoulish. Glamorous ‘Hollywood’ blonde would have been a ridiculous notion on a girl of her size – almost six foot tall, with broad shoulders and long limbs. She was slim, but not curvaceous. Ava had long since decided that she was not going to apologize for her size. She did not want to make herself invisible and shrink into the corners of the dance hall to become a wallflower. She had lots of friends, and people liked her – men liked her too, just not in a romantic way. At least, not the ones she liked. Ava’s favourite film star was Doris Day and since she was a young girl she had tried to emulate the star’s feisty, independent manner. Doris had shown her that a girl didn’t have to be sultry like Lauren Bacall, seductive like Marilyn Monroe, or romantic like Grace Kelly. She could be tomboyish and plucky and full of fun. But she still had to be pretty if she wanted a man. If she wasn’t pretty, a girl didn’t stand a hope in hell of finding love. Ava knew, from seeing how happy her parents were, that without love, life was nothing.

*

The lavishly decorated suite was on the tenth floor of the Plaza Hotel. It had panelled walls and heavy silk drapes at the windows that were closed to preserve the client’s modesty. Light was provided by occasional lamps with large yellow shades that threw off a warm, flattering light. Twice a year, Sybil Connolly would take a suite here and New York’s wealthiest and most discerning fashion lovers would make appointments to be fitted with her elegant, classical designs. Ava left her clothes in a pile on the thick, navy carpet and came out from behind the ornate Chinese screen in her undergarments. Her long pale limbs were shivering, less from the cold than from the shame of being almost naked in front of a complete stranger.

Sybil’s assistant pulled out a magnificent evening gown for her to try on. It was made of Connolly’s trademark pleated linen, in a shade of soft, dove grey. Her mother had wanted her to have this dress since reading about it in
Harper’s Bazaar
. The handcrafted effect was produced by closely pleating up to nine yards of handkerchief linen to produce one yard of delicate fabric. It could be packed away in a bag then shaken out and emerge as good as new.
Harper’s
had declared Sybil’s evening dresses both ‘modern’ and ‘practical’.

‘Just like you,’ Nessa had said, hopeful that the cutting would light a fire under her daughter’s lack of interest in how she dressed. Ava had agreed to give it a try and Nessa remained optimistic that this expensive dress would turn her daughter into a princess.

‘There now,’ Sybil’s assistant said, holding open the huge, pleated skirt. ‘Step into this, like a good girl.’

Ava loved the way the Irish talked. As if they had known you all their lives. At least half the people at their church were ‘full Irish’ not just born to Irish parents, like she was. The assistant talked in a kindly, matronly way, although she couldn’t have been much older than Ava.

Ava stood in front of the full-length mirror as the assistant pulled the bodice up over her slim hips and narrow chest. The grey dress had a skirt, which spread out in a soft triangle from the waist. The bodice crossed over her bust and the fabric felt as soft and sublime as a cloud. It was, truly, a magnificent gown. However, it looked the same on her as all the magnificent dresses her mother had been making her try on since she was a little girl. Just ordinary. She glanced across at her mother and saw the shadow of disappointment flicker across Nessa’s face before she plastered on her usual hopeful smile.

The dress was beautiful, but her daughter Ava was not. Another expensive mistake, she thought. The more elaborate the dress, the plainer her daughter seemed to render it. Ava was plain, and as each year passed, getting plainer. In the year since she had been home from finishing school she went about the house in slacks and her father’s weekend sweaters, only putting on a skirt and blouse when her mother forced her into them. Nessa didn’t want to destroy her confidence but if her daughter didn’t smarten herself up she would never find a husband, and without a husband Ava would never be happy.

‘Oh no.’ Sybil Connolly swept into the room and stood behind Ava, her dark hair swept back from her face in a high set, her severe eyebrows raised in a look of thoughtful disapproval.

‘Oh no – I do not like this dress on you, young lady – at all. This is all wrong.’

Nessa began to bristle. She was paying a lot of money for the dress and did not appreciate the woman’s tone. It was one thing for Nessa herself to comment inwardly on her daughter’s unremarkable looks, but quite another when somebody else did it.

‘We want the finest dress for our daughter,’ she asserted. ‘Money is no object.’

Sybil smiled at her curtly. ‘I don’t doubt it – but this dress is all wrong on her.’

‘But it’s this season,’ Nessa objected, adding sharply, ‘And the most expensive you have.’

‘Seasons mean nothing,’ Sybil said. She gave a formidable glare. ‘And price is of little interest to me.’ Nessa blushed, regretting her faux pas.

Sybil turned her attention back to Ava. ‘What this young lady...What is your name, my dear?’

‘Ava.’ She had never met anyone like Sybil before. So outspoken, so... certain. She reminded Ava of some of the stricter nuns in her boarding school but with lipstick and coiffed hair.

‘What Ava needs is something to suit her own style. Isn’t that right?’

Ava was not aware that she had a style.

‘I suppose.’

‘Tell me, my dear, do you like this dress?’ Sybil said as she stood behind her, smoothing down the exquisitely soft pleated skirt.

‘Well, it’s beautiful.’

‘Of course it is. As your mother tells me,’ and she arched a perfectly painted eyebrow, ‘it’s the most expensive dress money can buy. But do you like yourself in it?’

Ava wasn’t sure what she meant. She didn’t like how she looked in anything and avoided looking at herself as much as possible. Standing in front of a full-length mirror like this was torture. She thought she should answer truthfully if she wanted to get out of it so she shook her head and said with certainty: ‘No. No, I don’t.’

‘Good,’ Sybil said. ‘So we will find something else.’

The older woman clicked for an assistant to come and undress Ava as she walked across to a clothes rail by the window and instructed another assistant to pull out items for her one by one.

She flicked past dresses, rejecting them with a ‘No – not that one, wrong colour. Again...’

Ava felt a curious wave of depression come over her. She had been in this position before. Hours spent in the dressing room of Saks, Fifth Avenue while Nessa and a bevy of shop assistants passed in dress after dress, nothing ever fitting her properly, and nothing ever looking quite right. Hope followed by the humiliation of just not being quite pretty enough, not quite feminine enough to pull anything off. Now this was happening in the rarefied atmosphere of the Plaza and in front of this very important woman.

‘STOP!’ Sybil said, and then dramatically added, ‘Now – what have we got for you here, Ava?’

Her assistant was holding up a tweed suit. It had a straight, slim skirt and a fitted jacket, nipped in tight and flaring into a waved pelmet at the waist, all pulled smartly together by eight mother-of-pearl buttons at the front. But by far the most unusual thing about the suit was its colour: an exquisite shade of pink.

‘It’s the colour of a rose,’ Ava said.

‘Well yes,’ Sybil said. ‘How charming of you to notice. As a matter of fact this tweed was commissioned by me from the wonderful nuns in Foxford Woollen Mills on the west coast of Ireland. It is a match for the wild roses of Mayo, the most delicate flowers you will ever see.’

While her assistant held the skirt open for Ava to step into, Sybil herself pulled the jacket over her bare shoulders and buttoned it up the front with confident speed, pinching the fabric with her strong manicured fingers.

As Sybil stepped back and Ava saw herself in the mirror in the rose suit, she could not quite believe her eyes.

Encased in the structure of this skirt and jacket, her tall gangly limbs looked statuesque, almost royal. She lifted her chin and noticed how the V of the neckline seemed to elongate her neck and make her look slimmer. Holding her own gaze in the mirror, Ava turned to one side and, arching her back slightly, checked her profile. She had miraculously acquired curves. The rose colour of the tweed was unmistakably feminine and yet it did not look ridiculously out of place on her broad shoulders. It was a wonderful outfit. More importantly, she was wonderful in it.

‘I look so different,’ she said. She smiled nervously at herself in the mirror.

‘You look beautiful,’ Nessa said.

‘What she looks,’ Miss Connolly added, ‘is stylish. A sense of style will carry a woman much further than beauty, if she knows how to use it.’

Nessa looked at the designer, wondering if she was being negative about her daughter’s appearance, but she seemed not to be. Although she was, indeed, a very stylish woman, Miss Connolly was no great beauty herself.

‘Beauty fades with age, Mrs Brogan. Style matures. If a woman has the right clothes with the perfect fit, she will never be without confidence and grace.’

All Ava knew was that, for the first time in her life, she felt beautiful. She had never wanted anything as much in her life.

‘We really were hoping for a dress,’ Nessa said. ‘It’s for a wedding, you see. My husband’s colleague—’

‘I prefer the suit, Mother – please?’ Ava pleaded.

‘A suit is perfectly acceptable for day wear at a wedding,’ Sybil asserted, pulling out a lace blouse from her rack. ‘And this will dress it up for evening wear – I assume you have pearls?’

‘Of course she has pearls,’ Nessa said, anxious to reassert her status, and resigning herself to lending her daughter her own pearls in the interests of fulfilling her husband-finding potential.

Ava was barely listening.

She could not take her eyes off her own reflection. She did not think she was beautiful. Indeed, that would never be the case. But in this suit there was no denying she had something. Style, Miss Connolly had called it, but it was more than that. When Ava Brogan looked at herself in the mirror she saw somebody she recognized. Neither the gawky girl of her childhood, nor the gangly tomboy of her young adulthood – but the person she was always meant to be.