Orphans of War (37 page)

She sauntered towards Marshfields, which was Bella’s stamping ground; the bridal department with its rich silks and satins, ball gowns and evening wear bedecked with sequins, lace, braids and ribbons. She fingered them all lovingly, the materials soft and silky in her palms, smoothing her own ruffled feathers.

The assistant eyed her up. ‘Modom is looking for something?’

‘Not really. They’re all so beautiful,’ she sighed. ‘But too expensive for a student.’

‘You’d like to try them on, yes?’

‘I can’t afford them.’ Trust her to land a pushy saleswoman.

‘This would look lovely on you…try this on. I’d like to see for myself how it looks.’ The blood-red gown was shoved in her hand, she was told to strip in the
cabine
and then the vendeuse buttoned it up, throwing a sequined bolero over her shoulders.

‘Let’s just brush your hair up off your neck, like this,’ she insisted, and Maddy was beginning to feel trapped and uncertain. She’d only come in to have a look round.

‘Perfect…Now walk this way. You live in Leeds?’

‘Yes,’ muttered Maddy. ‘West Park. I’m at college.’

‘Excellent. Wait one moment.’ She closed the curtain
and when she opened it again, a man and a woman in black were eyeing her with interest.

‘Don’t you think?’ whispered the vendeuse. ‘What’s your name, dear?’

‘Madeleine Belfield.’ Now she was really in trouble. They were eyeing her up like a piece of steak.

‘Ah, La Madeleine. Beautiful, yes.’

Then to her surprise everyone clapped and she blushed as the other customers stared at her. They were making a big mistake if they thought she was going to buy this dress. ‘Please, I can’t buy this,’ she said, trying to look firm.

‘But we are all getting the pleasure of seeing how this gown should be worn on a lovely young woman with the perfect figure. See, our customers are gathering to admire you, looking and wondering if they too will look like this in it.’

Sure enough a clutch of women hovered and smiled. Then she caught sight of herself in the wall mirror. Who was this elegant stranger with sloping shoulders, slim-hipped and flushed in the cheek with such a long neck? How strange, she was stopping the traffic through the department.

‘Now we will have you in the gold.’

Another quick change, this time into a slim figure-hugging jacket in gold and black with a bouffant skirt. A pair of court shoes was shoved onto her bare feet and she posed and nearly fell over as she towered over the proceedings.

‘
Brava!
’ The vendeuse clapped her hands, nodding to the man in the suit, and he nodded back.

Maddy tried on three more outfits and paraded round like a dressage horse, then changed back quickly into her tweed suit.

‘Mr Percival will see you in his office,’ said the lady in the black frock with the phoney French accent. What had she done now?

She knocked on his door, wondering what was going to happen next. The whole afternoon had been so bizarre.

‘Come in, Miss Madeleine. You were very brave to go with Madame Delys’s little whim. She has an eye for talent and you have it in spadefuls, young lady. Tell me about yourself.’

Maddy gave him a bare outline of her life to date.

‘And your family?’ She told him about her parents.

‘Ah, the Bellaires. I remember them well on the wireless: such a pity for them to be lost and you so young. And you have their presence: tall, graceful, very arresting to the eye. We could use you…’

For what? she mused. Who on earth was he talking about? Surely not herself? Her puzzled look made him explain.

‘We like to have floor walkers, mannequins to show off to special customers, models for parades and events, tall girls who carry clothes well and know how to walk. You will do perfectly.’

‘But I’m at college,’ she explained.

‘Naturally, but not every day. We can use you on Saturdays, perhaps in the vacations to cover for other models at first.’

‘But I have no experience,’ she said, still not taking all this in.

‘We will take care of all that–how to walk and sit and pose. That can be taught, but a clotheshorse has to be born, shoulders, ankles, neck, face and height. These can’t be altered, only disguised. Our customers are just from the street, with flaws and lumps. When they see you gliding around in that “Scarlet Passion” number, they see themselves transformed. You carry the dream of what they might be.’

Maddy didn’t know what to make of this offer. She’d never thought of modelling gowns for a living. It was the sort of thing Bella’s friends did in their spare time for charity and magazines. She was going to be a secretary to an important businessman one day, not a tailor’s walking dummy, but some of those dresses were rather beautiful.

‘Let me give you some advice. Finish your course, by all means–you can be a secretary all your life, but a mannequin is for a short time only. Alas a few years, then other girls will come and take your place. Why not enjoy the chance of a career here? It will take you out of Yorkshire and beyond. Why not give it a try?’

The man in the pin-striped suit with razor-sharp creases and slicked-back hair smiled a warm smile. ‘Think about this offer. It’s genuine.’

Why not? Maddy breezed out of the department store with both feet off the ground. Why ever not? This bit of news would give them all at the Brooklyn something to splash on the walls, and the Misses Meyers too. Bella would be envious, Ruth and Thelma appalled, Caro and Pinky nonplussed. Their hearts were stuck
in muck and sheep; they wouldn’t care either way. But Madeleine Belfield, a mannequin?

Skinny mallink, boss-eyed Maddy? Who’d ’a thowt it! She laughed all the way back to her digs.

‘Come on, Charlie, pedal to the metal!’ yelled Greg as they tore across the forest track at breakneck speed.

‘You just concentrate on the map and stop giving me orders. This bit is going to be tricky in the slush and mist,’ said Charlie Afton, Greg’s co-driver.

It was only the second time that Greg had navigated for his friend and he still hadn’t got the hang of it. They were making good time, but Charlie was cautious round the bends. Only he who dares would win this time trial. It was fun, but Greg knew he ought to be back supervising the guys on the building site. He didn’t trust them to keep at it without him beating the stick.

He navvying days were almost over, but if need be, he would take off his jacket and muck in with the best of them. He’d bought some land, just a derelict plot outside Headingley, jumped in quick and made an offer, and now he’d got four semis going up, with inside bathrooms, proper kitchen-cum-diners, in the American style.

All of them were sold just from the plans alone,
and he was on a deadline and shouldn’t be out enjoying himself. But hell, it was good to be getting some fresh air.

‘Where next?’ Charlie said.

For a second Greg had lost concentration. ‘Sorry. Just keep going ahead, I think.’

‘Keep your flaming mind on the bloody job, Byrne!’

They were still arguing when the car skidded, crashed into the side of a tree and spun off the road into a ditch.

‘That’ll teach you to concentrate on the job. You can pay for the damage!’ Charlie was furious but unhurt.

‘You OK?’ Greg sighed, knowing he should’ve stayed in Leeds and got on with his building. He jumped out of the car and went for help.

The motor rally was in full throttle, engines roaring through the forest in the distance when Maddy Belfield arrived late for the photo shoot in the park. It was one of those dark winter snowscapes, a grey light, monochrome, with the old house etched against a darkening sky as a backdrop.

They wanted her to model the latest fur wraps and jackets, and she was frozen stiff standing in the muddy slush, trying to keep her teeth from chattering. There was a rush to get her hair coiled into a chignon. She must give her best Lady Muck look, standing by her sleek Daimler hired for the shoot.

Nobody had warned her how unglamorous being a photographic model could be. Piers, the flamboyant photographer, was fussing like an old hen, clucking
about getting the right light and shadow for the glossy shots needed by Marshfields store, who were promoting this winter advertisement in a Yorkshire magazine.

As one of their favourite mannequins, they had demanded Maddy made herself available.

Her toes were numb in the patent court shoes and her make-up had to be touched up to disguise a blue nose. The assistant had shoved a hot-water bottle up the hidden back of the coat just to warm her through.

They’d borrowed the big Georgian house outside York where Bella’s family lived, so at least she had a bed for the night.

Since leaving Yorkshire Ladies’, Maddy’s feet had scarcely touched the ground, much to Miss Meyer’s dismay.

‘We didn’t train you up for you to go off and be a window dresser’s dummy,’ sniffed Hilda as she handed over Maddy’s certificates. ‘You young gals…where will it end?’

It was Miss Hermione who wished her good luck and slipped a lovely compact into her hands. ‘You enjoy yourself while you can,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t listen to her. We never got much of a chance after the Great War–no young men left for us. Hilda is bitter. I shall look out for you in the papers.’

Now her weeks were filled with fittings, rehearsals, shows, parades. Sometimes she was sent into the big warehouses for their seasonal show for buyers. It was hard work, stripping off and on, keeping her hair smart, pouring into waspie waist cinchers and silhouette
corsets and huge petticoats, trying not to snag her nylon stockings.

Sometimes she did feel like a painted doll, especially when she looked in the mirror. In her eyes she was still plain Maddy with the gawky frame and hunched back, but now she could switch on and become ‘La Madeleine’ the minute she walked down the catwalk.

If Plum was disappointed in her new career she said nothing. She was too busy with her own business. Her sidekick, Gloria, ignored all the fuss over this new career and never showed any interest when her picture appeared in a local magazine.

Maddy preferred to think she was in demand because she turned up on time, didn’t complain when they stuck pins in her, was pleasant to buyers and tried to show off the clothes as best she could, even though some of the stuff was ridiculously froufrou and over the top with beading or lace. Tight waists were
de rigueur
now, full skirts à la Dior, which took yards of material, fussy hats and gloves that must be spotless, make-up that must not be smudged or look too theatrical. She suffered constant backache from standing in high heels, trying to look haughty and sophisticated, which gave her a fixed smile. This was the look for now.

For all the glamour on the outside, there was still a burning part of her inside that remained distant and uncertain, as if all this was happening to someone else who deserved this success, not her.

‘Madeleine, hold that faraway look,’ someone shouted. When she was tired her slow eye turned
slightly, but no one seemed to mind and it didn’t show on the full shot.

Now, on this freezing slushy afternoon all she could think of was a hot bath and a mug of cocoa, of being wrapped in a thick silky eiderdown, but the roar of the engines kept whirring, disturbing her reverie and she turned.

‘Don’t move!’ yelled Piers. ‘Just one more.’

How many times had she heard that line? ‘It’s only a motor rally in the forest. Take no notice. They’ll be gone soon…’

But the engines seemed to be getting closer, and they heard a screech of brakes and the unmistakable crunch of metal against tree, and then silence.

‘What was that?’ Maddy shouted, turning as someone came running out of the woods in mud-splattered leathers and a helmet like a parachutist.

‘Where’s the nearest phone? There’s been an accident…’

Then he stopped, staring at this strange set, backing off.

‘Oh, I could use you for contrast…just move over closer to Mads,’ said Piers. For a second the man stopped again, distracted by the scene, and then he ran on.

‘Go up there,’ Maddy yelled, ‘to Foxup Hall…We ought to go and help too.’

‘No need, love,’ shouted the mystery man in his dark leathers. ‘Just need a bit of a shove out of the way. Only a prang, no bones broken.’

‘The driver?’ Maddy asked, wondering just how bad it was.

‘A bit shook up. We don’t want to hold up the race, though. The marshals are seeing to it.’

The man raced off up the drive and soon Bella and her father were racing down with the gardener.

‘Damn rally boys! I knew it was a mistake to let Alexander’s lot loose. This is all your doing, Bella. That bloody husband of yours…’

‘Oh, Daddy, it’s only a bit of fun, a practice run, and no one’s hurt–well, not too bad.’ She turned to Maddy with a smile. ‘Darling, you look absolutely frozen. Go back up and thaw out, the light’s going. You will stay for the party tonight?’

Maddy shook her head. ‘I’d better get on my way. I promised Aunt Plum I’d fetch her up for her birthday.’

‘That’s tomorrow. Saturday night is party night and you’re going nowhere. Come on, chop chop.’