The Milliner's Secret (39 page)

‘You must have told him, then. Nobody else ever knew.’

‘I have never told, Coralie. It has to be your lapse, your carelessness.’

‘So what will you do?’

‘Martel hopes I will reward him for silence. He plans a little blackmail, I think. It would solve the problem if I took you to eighty-four avenue Foch myself and turned you over to the Gestapo.’

‘You hate me that much?’

‘Ten lifetimes could not dispel what I feel towards you.’

‘This letter . . . I shouldn’t have opened it . . . No, it was hiding it, wasn’t it? That was the very wrong thing.’

He returned the letter to the attaché case, shutting the lid with aggressive clicks. ‘Goodnight.’

She couldn’t get up quickly enough to follow so she turned in her chair. ‘Tell me why.’

But he was gone, and she was left contemplating the remains of dinner. To her astonishment, she slept deeply that night and woke as the midday sun blared through a gap in the curtains. She found a letter outside her bedroom door.

rue de Vaugirard, 1 a.m.

14 July

Dear Coralie

Had I more self-command I would have stayed. Did you really believe I might turn you in to the Gestapo? No, I am not so debased. I doubt Serge Martel will denounce you either, as he perceives you to be under my protection. Should you ever be questioned, I have few qualms, as you stood up well to my interrogation. I am obliged to leave Paris, so have arranged for a car to take you home. Before then I must – I need – to make you understand the grievous wound you inflicted. Be brave enough to take breakfast with me, around eight o’clock.

Dietrich

Eight o’clock . . . She found her watch. Only four hours too late.

CHAPTER 23

La Passerinette reopened on 3 September 1940, a full year after the outbreak of war. The hats Coralie had snatched back from Henriette Junot drew a stampede. She’d added black gauze and feathers to the pink models and her customers were enchanted by this departure from the usual autumn tans and russets. Journalists mingled with clients at the reopening party. Fewer pages and ersatz paper took away the gloss, but magazines thrummed with the latest ideas and were desperate to tell their readers how to be chic with less.

As for the doll-hats, Coralie was selling all that the Ginslers could make. The response had initially been cautious, so Coralie had recruited Una, who had not only survived that night at the Rose Noire, but now had a Waffen-SS
Sturmführer
among her troupe of official admirers. ‘All above board, hands above the table. He will never put a toe over my threshold, and take that how you please.’

Una had moved back into avenue Foch, picking up the reins of her social life. She was again a leader of fashion
and
a nursing heroine. Having declared that ‘To wear a hat no larger than a teacake is not only modish but patriotic’, she had established the doll-hat craze in under a week.

They proved popular with German soldiers, who discovered that they could buy an authentic Paris hat small enough to send home to a wife or lover in the regular mail-transport. Men in uniform queued down boulevard de la Madeleine. At the end of September, Coralie deposited twelve thousand francs at the Crédit Lyonnais
bank. One day, she hoped, it would find its way to Ottilia.

Of Dietrich, she’d heard nothing since finding that letter outside her bedroom door. She guessed that he had taken her absence at breakfast as a slight.

She thought of him, however, every time she set off to work on her new bicycle. She’d been wobbly at first, horrified to find herself cheek by jowl with cars and vans. The streets were a battle zone, military troop trucks demanding right of way, French vehicles snarling with frustration. Many drivers had attempted to overcome the fuel shortage by converting their vehicles to run on
gazog
è
ne
burners that consumed wood and charcoal and belched out smog. Coralie would carve through the chaos, competing with high-stepping trap-pulling ponies for the bit of space granted to them.

She found her confidence, however, and soon she was flying the four kilometres between home and shop twice daily. She created her own style
à la bicyclette
. A short jacket, comfortable culottes, ankle socks, a silk square to keep her hair in place and a hatbox in her front basket. Free advertising. Arkady had attached a klaxon to her handlebars. Friendly shopkeepers would get a toot, and so would German troopers taking breakfast in their
Soldatenheime
. Coralie was happy – as happy as anyone in hungry Paris could be. She was busy and successful and she felt safe. Even though he was absent, Dietrich had somehow erected a protective screen between her and those who might seek to betray her. Noëlle was thriving in the care of a new nanny, and Coralie had her flat to herself again, Arkady having joined Una at avenue Foch.

‘As doorkeeper and friend,’ Una insisted, though Coralie suspected more. Perhaps the difference in their ages and the social gulf between them made them wary of revealing too much.

One morning in mid-October, Kurt Kleber called at La Passerinette. Would Coralie make a hat for his wife as a surprise? She would be joining him shortly in Paris. His clear eye softened as he spoke his wife’s name, and Coralie thought, My God, lucky girl.

Unfortunately, it hadn’t occurred to Kurt to find out his wife’s measurements. ‘She is a little like you in looks, Mademoiselle de Lirac. Well, blonde, anyway.’

‘Have you a photograph at least, so I can see the shape of her face?’

‘Naturally I have picture of Fritzi.’ In his pocket book, next to his heart.

Coralie pinned it to her work-board and created a hat by empathy. When Kurt called back to check progress, he thought the result magnificent. He paid her in occupation currency, which had twenty times the value of the franc, and gave a delivery address on avenue Marigny. ‘This is General Hanesse’s headquarters, where I have taken an apartment more suitable for a married couple. Did you know Dietrich is back at rue de Vaugirard? You must have thought him a stupidly long time in Switzerland. I did, I can tell you. Will you not call on him?’

So, he’d been to neutral Switzerland. She’d love to ask why, but pride stopped her. And, no, she wouldn’t call.

Kurt decoded her expression. ‘I wish you would. I saw how proud Dietrich was when he brought you to our pavilion. I saw him look at you. I have known him several years, but never truly happy until then.’

‘It didn’t last. He left me.’

‘You know why?’

‘Not really, but, look, I’ve customers waiting.’ She pulled open the door, eager to get Kurt through it. ‘I’ll have a delivery lad bring the hat as soon as it’s done. Tell Frau Kleber to pop in – I’ll show her how to wear it and we’ll adjust the sizing.’ She watched Kurt go. Nice man, but she couldn’t risk overstepping the line into friendship. Where was the line? It amused her to sell doll-hats at a thousand francs apiece to the boys in grey uniforms. As she handed over the little poplar-wood boxes, she’d say, ‘Your sweetheart will think she’s getting a French cheese. When she opens the box –
ooh, là là
.’

She’d hear herself vamping up the sexy accent and think, ‘I’m no better than Serge Martel, taking their money with a synthetic smile.’ It
was
collaboration, made worse because some of those boys genuinely believed that, in a matter of weeks, they’d be heading north to launch
Blitzkrieg
on England. Every saucy comment, every wad of occupation currency she accepted from a soldier’s pocket, betrayed two countries. Liking Kurt Kleber wasn’t collaboration, but visiting Dietrich in his flat was. The line was a wiggly one, but she saw it clearly enough.

A few days before the end of October, the roar of engines broke the early-evening peace. A moment later, two glowering youths thrust open the door, barged in and shouted, ‘You have Jewesses working here.’

Coralie stepped between them and the client she was serving. Actually, she had just appointed two new backroom assistants, Paulette and Didi Benoît, French-born Catholics. And it was absolutely no business of these louts. ‘Get out,’ she said.

One of them waved a brick. ‘This is going through your window if you’re lying.’

Red mist descended. She was not Jac Masson’s daughter for nothing. Grabbing the youth’s hand, Coralie made the brick collide with his nose. She shouted over his howls, ‘Out of my shop, you nasty little shits!’ and reached for her scissors. Left-handed scissors Una had given her last spring to celebrate her first collection. ‘Out, or I’ll slice a hole in your face big enough to post your sodding brick through.’

They backed out, just as one of Coralie’s regular clients arrived, escorted by the German officer she was having an affair with. The officer demanded to know what was going on.

The uninjured youth, whose accent and
argot
linked him to the backstreets of Montmartre, made a form of salute and thrust out a card. ‘We can do what we like!’

The German inspected the card, shrugged and handed it back, explaining later to Coralie, ‘They’re with our police.’

‘They’ve joined the Gestapo?’

He made a ‘sort of’ noise. ‘They’re under Gestapo protection.’

‘So they
can
do what they like?’

Yes, pretty much, was the answer. From that moment, Coralie truly understood that there were two enemies: uniformed Germans with their obsession for new rules and counting ‘
Ein, zwei, drei!
’ as they entered buildings in tight formation, and the home-grown scum, who were finding undreamed-of power and were answerable to nobody. Her new-found happiness and feelings of safety drained away.

The last day of October, All Saints’ Day, was a Thursday and quiet. Coralie was sitting over the books with Madame Thomas, sharing a small desk in a corner of the salon. Jeanne Thomas had asked if she might work downstairs because it was warmer than in her flat upstairs. Coralie had agreed because, though nobody said so, they felt safer if they were all bunched together.

As Madame Thomas ruled lines down a clean page of her ledger, Coralie discreetly eavesdropped on Violaine – or, more particularly, Violaine’s new client. A stunning girl with the figure of a fashion mannequin, she’d strolled into the salon with a German companion, announcing loftily that ‘darling Rudi’ had been recommended to this place by ‘darling Jakob’, who turned out to be the officer who had helped see off the brick-carrying youths.

Violaine had invited Rudi to make himself comfortable on the sofa, before pulling out a chair at one of the mirror-tables and inviting the newcomer, ‘If Mademoiselle would please sit here?’

Mademoiselle had insisted on having the table turned around so that her back was to the window. Perhaps she wanted to gaze on her German prize, or was she even a little nervous of him? Rudi cut an imposing figure in his Stygian-black SS uniform, ice-blue eyes radiating a combination of blankness and rigid discipline.

‘. . . must make provision for tax, of course, Mademoiselle de Lirac.’

‘Sorry, Madame Thomas?’

‘You have made a profit, so must pay tax.’

‘Yes, of course. Better to pay a little extra than too little.’ The German Revenue imposed heavy penalties for errors and defaults. Coralie’s eyes drifted back to Violaine’s lady customer, who said sharply, ‘Don’t stare at me. And don’t you stare either, Rudi. Read a newspaper, why don’t you? Will you find him one?’ She clicked her fingers in Coralie’s direction.

Coralie rose, with what she hoped was quiet dignity. ‘Of course, Mademoiselle. French or German?’

‘German, obviously.’

Coralie bought two newspapers each day, the
Allgemeiner Zeitung
and
Le Figaro
. After passing the
Zeitung
over, she walked back to her place, passing behind Violaine, who was lifting their customer’s lustrous black hair to reveal the shape of her head. Rude and uppity she might be, Coralie thought, but this nameless young woman possessed the kind of neck poets write about. Only – Coralie gasped – her left ear looked as if it had been eaten by rats. The girl tensed and Coralie passed on.

Watching Madame Thomas print ‘31 October’ at the head of her new page, Coralie murmured, ‘Ramon’s birthday.’ She’d been planning to buy him a packet of cigarettes and take Noëlle to see him. And, if she were honest, to look over his new woman. But she’d bumped into Bonnet last Sunday at the quai de Montebello and had not quite recovered from something he’d told her. She and Noëlle had been looking for story books among the stalls. Bonnet had been selling some of his own books, and he’d broken off from haggling to greet her. ‘Ramon’s lady! And Ramon’s child?’

She’d introduced Noëlle.

Bonnet had shaken his head. ‘A fool, Ramon leaving you for that piece he’s with now. Oh, she’s pretty enough but she’s out every night and,
mon Dieu
, they argue. The language. She slams out, and I hear her tap-tap-tap down the street. He runs after her . . .’ Bonnet had mimed a man desperately in love ‘. . . “I cannot live without you, Julie!”’

‘Julie who?’

Bonnet didn’t know. ‘There are thousands of Julies in Paris.’