The Decision (37 page)

Jeremy left for New York; he even phoned her the day before he left, ‘I thought I’d just say goodbye, seemed a bit unfriendly not to and we are still friends aren’t we?’ Slightly bemused, but grateful, she agreed.

Christmas was – well, it was odd. All right, of course, but odd. The Summercourt Christmas that she had known all her life, the perfectly decorated house, the huge tree, the carol service on the village green, midnight mass, the whole family gathered by the fire for presents, the enormous turkey carved by her father, the evening’s charades – all this was barred to her. There was a slightly chilly note from her mother: they obviously couldn’t host Christmas this year and were invited to spend it with local friends instead.

‘And I really don’t feel able to ask if you can join us, under the circumstances, I think they would find it rather uncomfortable.’

‘Fucking hell,’ said Matt when she showed it to him, laughing, for she knew its absurdity would amuse rather than offend him. ‘What am I supposed to have done, kicked a litter of puppies to death? I tell you what, my family wouldn’t be uncomfortable inviting you, want to experience a Clapham Christmas? Scarlett’ll be there, you like Scarlett, don’t you?’

Eliza did like Scarlett, very much; she seemed to have all Matt’s virtues and none of his vices. She was good company – although Eliza sensed a sadness underlining the sharp remarks that she couldn’t quite pinpoint. She told Eliza she thought she was very good for Matt. ‘He’s not nearly so pleased with himself as he was. As far as I can see all his other girlfriends have let him walk all over them, I like to see him stood up to.’

Eliza, who actually found it quite difficult to stand up to Matt and more often than not gave in simply for a quiet life, was very pleased by this and resolved to be firmer with him in future.

Scarlett had a very nice flat in Kensington, which Eliza would have priced beyond her air-hostess salary, but then she told herself she didn’t actually know what that was; she also had a lot of very expensive clothes, including a fur coat, which she kept telling Matt was rabbit. Eliza, who knew sable when she saw it, was intrigued and resolved to ask her about it when she knew her better.

They spent much of Christmas day in bed; but in the evening, they went over to Clapham and Eliza was introduced to Matt’s family. She liked Sandra very much, she was pretty and jokey and had the same sense of style as her daughter, and the two boys were great, but she wasn’t so sure about Pete. She could tell he felt the same, was clearly suspicious of her and more than once made a joke about her ‘slumming’, as he put it. It was clearly a situation that would either resolve itself or not; there was nothing she could do about it.

She was interested to observe Matt in the heart of his family. She had half-expected him to behave differently, but he was exactly the same, bit cocky, quite touchy, very affectionate to his mother.

They drank a lot, watched TV, and after a bit Matt and his brothers and Pete went out to the pub ‘just for a couple’.

‘Sorry about this,’ Sandra said apologetically. ‘Pete doesn’t feel it’s Christmas if he doesn’t go to the pub. When they get back we’ll play Monopoly if that’s all right, Matt’s favourite since he was quite a little chap.’

Eliza said she didn’t mind at all, and asked Sandra where she bought her clothes, ‘I just love that dress, it’s completely fab’, and then settled down to an evening of Martinis and Monopoly, watching Matt sweep the board – she had a strong suspicion he cheated – and buying not only Park Lane and Oxford Street and a whole lot of hotels, but all the London stations as well. She wondered if he would ever do it for real, and decided that, with him, nothing was impossible.

‘So!’ Mariella’s huge dark eyes danced at Eliza. ‘Tell me,
cara
, tell me all about this new love of your life. It sounds most romantic.’

‘He most certainly isn’t romantic, I can tell you that.’

‘Unlike the noble Jeremy.’

‘Well, yes. Yes, Jeremy was really romantic. I mean, did I tell you, he even knelt down in a muddy field to ask me to marry him.’

‘And you still said no!’

‘I still said no.’

‘And Matt – how did he ask you?’

‘He didn’t,’ said Eliza and even to herself her voice sounded abrupt.

‘So – you gave up Jeremy, you gave up a fortune, you gave up your family’s love—’

‘Mariella,’ said Eliza, laughing, ‘you’re making it all sound much more dramatic than it really was.’

‘I don’t think so. What did I say that was not true?’

‘Well – nothing, I suppose. But—’

‘Are you living with him?’

‘Yes and no.’

‘And what does that mean?’

‘Well – I spend a lot of time at his place, obviously. But I still use my flat as home. I keep my clothes there, and so on. If he’s busy, I stay there.’

‘So, he allows you to use his place for sex. And nothing else.’

‘Mariella! No. We eat there sometimes. I cook supper.’

‘You cook supper!
Cara
,
cara
, at the very least he should be cooking for you.’

‘He doesn’t do that sort of thing.’

‘And why not?’

‘Well – he – he doesn’t come from a background where men cook.’

‘Giovanni neither. But he often cooks.’

‘I don’t think we could compare Giovanni and Matt.’

‘I would disagree. To me they sound very much the same. Both – what do you say, made by themselves—’

‘Self-made.’

‘Exactly what I said. Both very married to their work, both with women they are most fortunate to have. I must tell you, Eliza, so far I so much prefer Jeremy.’

‘Mariella, you haven’t even met Matt.’

‘Well, we must put that right. I shall make a special visit. I might even bring Giovanni, he needs some more shoes.’

‘That would be lovely. But the whole point about all this is, I didn’t love Jeremy.’

‘But that does not mean Matt should treat you badly.’

‘He doesn’t treat me badly.’

‘
Mi scusi
,
cara
, but he does not treat you well. Therefore I think, he treats you badly.’

‘No, but you see, he didn’t ask me to leave Jeremy. I decided to. It was all down to me.’

‘Even so – if he loves you—’

‘Mariella, I’m really sorry, I’ve got to go, I’ll be late for Cardin at this rate. See you very soon, maybe tomorrow?’

She was in Paris for the collections, with a horrendously difficult idea to realise. She had regretted having it at all, had tried indeed to banish it from her brain, but she had finally, almost against her better judgement, pitched it to Jack. Jack inevitably had loved it, and had told her that if she managed to pull it off, he would display it as a fold-out extension on heavier paper than the rest of the magazine. Eliza felt quite faint at the thought of both the responsibility of that and the incredible kudos she would gain from it.

Her idea was that instead of the normal run of eight or ten photographs of clothes from all the different designers,
Charisma
would offer its readers just one big picture, featuring the clothes from ten or twelve houses all together. This was, everyone told her, completely impossible. The dragonesses who policed the releasing of garments held rigid timetables, the competition from other fashion editors not only for the clothes but their permitted release was intense, the models were fully booked up to eighteen hours a day.

But she had a plan, and it was to shoot at two o’clock in the morning. The hours between midnight and six were quiet; all she had to do, she told herself, was a bit of persuasion.

She had booked Rex Ingham to do the shoot; he had sorted out a studio, and she had managed to bribe at least half a dozen models, largely by paying them double their normal fees, but more successfully by promising them future work with
Charisma
. It was the magazine they all wanted to be in at the time,
Vogue
apart, and Eliza was notoriously picky, always after a new girl, a new look.

She had arranged sandwiches, wine, cigarettes and even allowed it to be known unofficially that should the odd spliff appear she would turn a blind eye.

So far, with four days to go, she had only managed to secure three outfits. Most of the
vendeuses
just sneered at her.

By the end of the next day she had hit on another plan: to beg the outfits from all the editors who were doing late-night shoots, promising to return them first thing in the morning. This meant that they would avoid the responsibility of getting the clothes back and enduring the purse-lipped, inch-by-inch examination of each garment by the directrices. Which brought her total up to seven.

Word was getting round that something extraordinary was happening. Models begged to be allowed to join the shoot, Rex was being offered assistants free, ready to do anything, even carry the clothes on foot through the dark Parisian streets, to be allowed to share in the glory; and a couple of the younger, more adventurous houses offered her the pick of their collections.

The day before the shoot she had fifteen models and called Jack. If the picture was big enough, would he extend the pull-out to three pages? It would be a crime to bunch the models together and not show the clothes properly. Jack said he would.

Mariella asked if she could come along. ‘I will act as dresser,’ she said, ‘I long to see this. It will be fun. And also,
cara
, I am a very skilful make-up artiste. I can help with that as well. And – do you have jewellery?’

‘Not enough,’ said Eliza with a groan.

‘I will bring all of mine. It is naturally only the cooked pieces—’

‘The what, Mariella?’

‘Giovanni says I must not wear my real diamonds, it is too dangerous. They are all in the vault of the bank. But I think you will not be able to tell, in a photograph.’

‘Oh,’ said Eliza, ‘you mean fakes.’

‘Exactly. I said, cooked up. That’s the English phrase, I was told? But it all looks very, very nice.’

‘Mariella,’ said Eliza, ‘I love you.’

She never forgot 24 January, 1965. For most of the English nation, it was a day of shock and mourning: the ninety-year-old Winston Churchill died early in the morning but for Eliza, the bigger drama was taking place in a large photographic studio off the rue Cambon, in a hubbub of noise, activity, beautiful girls and incredibly valuable clothes. By two thirty all but one of the girls were dressed and made up. Rex was taking Polaroids to check his lighting and work out the composition, ‘One long line’s just fucking boring, Eliza, I don’t care what you say, we’re going to have to have some variation in level.’

The assistants stood in for models in the Polaroids – many years later Eliza found one, a fading panorama of fifteen pretty, barefooted, longhaired boys, dressed in jeans and T-shirts, some of them sitting on stools and stepladders, some fooling around, pulling on hats and long gloves, others gazing as haughtily into the lens as the models themselves; looking at it she could almost hear the thud of the Rolling Stones in the background, feel her own excitement and terror. She and Milly sellotaped the soles of shoes, sorted and resorted jewellery and gloves, pinned hems, bulldog-clipped bodices to fit; Mariella and two other girls worked tirelessly on make-up, heated and re-heated Carmen rollers, painted nails, and consumed great jugfuls of coffee. The air was so thick with cigarette smoke that Eliza said there must be no more; there also hung about the place the unmistakably sweet smell of hash.

Only one dress still hung on the rail: the statutory wedding dress. One girl had still not arrived.

‘It would be her,’ groaned Eliza. ‘It just would be. We can’t do without. She’s the centrepiece. Where is she, for God’s sake? I knew it was a mistake, agreeing to her.’

‘Which one is it?’ said Rex.

‘Bloody Alethea Peregrine something or other. Total amateur. But she’s just such an aristocrat. She’s going to look amazing in that dress. Oh God, where is she? Milly, call the hotel. She’s staying at the Castiglione.’

Milly disappeared and then came back looking slightly smug. ‘She’s on her way. But can someone somewhere please find a radio that we can get the BBC World Service on?’

‘Yeah, I got one,’ said Rex.

‘Thank God. I told her we had one here. She said she wouldn’t come otherwise. The thing is,’ said Milly, going rather pink, ‘you know Winston Churchill died this morning.’

‘I know, I know. It’s awfully sad. But—’

‘Well, Alethea was listening to all the stuff about him in the hotel. She sounded as if she’d been crying.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Rex, ‘that’s all we need, blotchy skin, runny nose.’

‘Yes, but I think,’ said Milly carefully, ‘and sorry to sound bossy, but I think it would be an idea if we all seemed terribly sympathetic. Alethea was telling me this morning she was some kind of distant relation of Sir Winston’s.’

‘Pretty bloody distant,’ said Rex, ‘few light years, I’d say.’