Page 6 of The Dressmaker's Gift
This was not the first time she’d passed messages on for the network. Shortly after she’d returned to Paris, when she was dropping off some silk at the dyer’s to be matched as a lining for an evening dress, she’d spoken to a contact there whom she’d guessed might be involved in Resistance activities. Through him, she’d been introduced to a member of the network and had soon been given assignments like this one. She was aware that they were testing her at first, making sure she was who she said she was and that she was a reliable courier. She wasn’t even certain whether the messages she’d been passing on had been real so far. But today’s assignment was a little different from the usual, and she guessed that the proximity of the pick-up point to the Gare d’Austerlitz, which was one of the arrival points in Paris for trains from the east and the south as well as a point of departure for transports to the work camps, held an important significance. So she tried to ignore the cold, which seeped through the soles of her shoes, worn thin by the miles she’d walked in them, and pretended to study a bus timetable as, out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed the customer in the homburg hat entering thetabac.
A cloud of warmth, noise and cigarette smoke engulfed Mireille as she pushed open the door and stepped across the threshold of the Café de Flore. She picked her way around the pillars, making for the back corner of the room by the wood-panelled bar, as directed. At a banquette near the door, a group of soldiers in Nazi uniform laughed uproariously and one clicked his fingers in the air, summoning the waiter and ordering another bottle of wine. As Mireille passed, one of the soldiers leapt to his feet, blocking her passage. Her heart thumped against her ribs at the thought that he might demand to see what she was carrying in her bag and discover whatever message was concealed within the pages of the newspaper. But instead he made an elaborate bow and pretended to offer her his seat, to the raucous cheers of his comrades.
Suppressing her first instinct to spit in his face, and her second instinct to turn and run, Mireille managed to summon a polite smile and, with a diplomatic shake of her head, she stepped past the soldier and headed for the table in the back corner where a sandy-haired man wearing a paisley-patterned silk tie sat sipping acafé-crème, reading his own copy ofLe Temps.
The man set down his paper and rose to his feet as she approached, and they embraced as if they knew each other well. For a second, she breathed in the expensive scent of his cologne – a subtle blend of cedarwood and limes – and then she settled herself on the banquette opposite him.
A waiter appeared and the man ordered her a coffee while she casually pulled the folded newspaper out of her bag and laid it on top of the one on the table. The man ignored it completely, pushing both papers to one side so that he could lean towards her as a lover would do.
‘I’m Monsieur Leroux,’ he said. ‘And you, I think, must be Mireille? It’s a pleasure to meet a new friend of our cause.’
She nodded, feeling awkward and self-conscious, unsure what to say to this man about whom she knew absolutely nothing, even though he clearly knew a bit about her.
She had fulfilled her task and now she wanted nothing more than to push her way out of the café and hurry back to the peace and safety of her attic room. But she forced herself to stay seated and to smile and nod, playing out the charade.
There was a momentary silence between them as the waiter appeared and set a cup of coffee down in front of Mireille, slipping a scribbled note of the price under the ashtray in the centre of the table. Monsieur Leroux used the opportunity of the arrival of the coffee to move the two newspapers, tucking them casually into the pocket of his overcoat which was draped over the back of his chair.
He watched her as she picked up the thick china cup and blew cautiously on the contents to cool them down enough to take a sip. The coffee wasn’t too bad – a little watery but not overly tainted with the bitterness of chicory.
‘So, you are one of Delavigne’s seamstresses? How is the world of couture faring these days? I hear special licences have been granted to all the major fashion houses to enable them to continue trading. It appears our German friends like to dress their wives and mistresses in the best French finery.’
He spoke evenly, his tone pleasantly conversational, but she detected the undercurrent of scorn for the occupying enemy in his words.
‘We’re busier than ever,’ she agreed. ‘Even with two teams back up to full strength, we can scarcely keep up with the demand. Every well-dressed woman in Paris still wants her new suit and her evening dress for the season. And it’s true, even though the government rations the food we eat and the fuel to heat our homes, it has ensured that buttons and braid are not rationed. It can be hard to get enough material sometimes though, and the prices are extortionate, naturally.’
Monsieur Leroux nodded. ‘What a bizarre playground for the Germans Paris has become. While her citizens starve and freeze, her newest inhabitants parade around in world-class designs in the finest of fabrics, drinking vintage wines and entertaining themselves at the Moulin Rouge.’
Again, Mireille was struck by his facade of equanimity as he spoke; only the bitterness of his words belied the air of pleasant social conversation with which they were delivered.
As she sipped her cooling coffee, Monsieur Leroux asked her a series of questions about theatelier. What did her work involve? How many seamstresses were there? And how many lived above the shop?
When she set her empty cup back on its saucer, he reached across and put his hand over hers. To the casual observer, it would simply look like a gesture of romantic intimacy. ‘Thank you for helping, Mireille,’ he said. ‘I wonder, might you be interested in helping us a bit more? Although I must warn you, the dangers are very real and very serious.’
She smiled at him and withdrew her hand from his, the picture of bashful propriety. ‘I wish to do all that I can to help, m’sieur.’
‘Then there may well be a further role for you. Our mutual friend, the dyer, will let you know. Thank you for coming today, Mireille. Take care.’
She stood, pushing back her chair, gathering up her coat and bag. ‘You too, Monsieur Leroux.’
As she left the café, she glanced back to where the man with the sandy hair and the paisley print tie was paying the waiter.
He stood and shrugged on his overcoat. And she could just make out the corner of a folded newspaper, barely visible, where it protruded from the pocket.
Outside the tall windows of the sewing room, the December sky had taken on the same dull gunmetal-grey colour as the uniforms of the Nazi occupiers, as if it, too, had surrendered all hope and capitulated with the new order. The glare of the lightbulbs overhead seemed to Claire as bright as the searchlights sweeping the darkness for Allied aircraft, whose beams could be seen in the distance if one peeped out from behind the blackout which covered the attic windows at night. She held the bodice of the scarlet crêpe de Chine evening gown that she was working on a little closer to her face as the stitches blurred and swam, her eyes having been strained in focused concentration for hours on end. It was draughty in her seat by the window, but she wouldn’t have exchanged it with any of the other seamstresses for a chair closer to the cast-iron radiators on the far wall. She needed the light to work by. And those radiators didn’t give out that much heat anyway nowadays, since coal for the furnace in the basement was so strictly rationed. It would often go out and not be relit for days on end, although there was always enough coal to keep the fireplace in the salon blazing so that clients would be warm enough when they came in for fittings.
Claire and the other seamstresses were all thinner now, surviving on the measly rations that they had to queue for at the weekends. But, glancing around the table, she realised that it only showed in their faces where the lights cast dark shadows beneath sunken cheekbones and eyes. Their bodies looked bloated, well-padded under their white coats, and on some of the girls the buttons strained and gaped. In reality, this illusion was down to the layers of clothes that they wore to try to keep out the cold while they sat at work in theatelier.
Delavigne Couture was busier than ever and the run-up to Christmas was proving, if anything, even more hectic than in the years before the war. Paris had become an oasis of luxurious escapism in war-torn Europe, and the Germans flocked in to spend their pay on black market food, wine and designer gowns for their wives and mistresses. And their money went a long way now that the exchange rate had soared to almost twenty francs to the Reichsmark.
Even the German women who had been assigned to Paris to help run the new administration could afford to have couture creations made for themselves. The saleswomen in the salon scathingly referred to them as ‘grey mice’ behind their backs, because they looked so frumpy and dowdy in their uniforms when they came in for their fittings.
Mademoiselle Vannier left the room for a few minutes to go and fetch another bolt of the thin, unbleached muslin that was used to make the mock-ups of the more complex garments. Once they’d been cut out and tacked together, thesetoileswere then taken apart again and used as templates to make sure the more expensive fabrics used for the finished garments were cut accurately and with minimal wastage.
Taking advantage of Mademoiselle Vannier’s absence, Claire joined in the chatter and gossip with the other seamstresses around the table: one of the models from the salon was rumoured to have taken up with a German soldier and opinion amongst the girls was divided. Some were shocked and disgusted, but others asked what a girl was supposed to do? With so few Frenchmen left now that any able-bodied males of working age who had survived thus far were being sent to work in the factories and camps in Germany, young French women were faced with the choice of becoming old maids or being spoiled and pampered by a rich German lover.
From beneath her lashes, Claire glanced at Mireille in the seat next to her. She seemed so distant these days. Mireille didn’t join in the chatter any more, remaining studiously focused on her work. She was always preoccupied now, a far cry from the vivacious, fun-loving friend she had been before the Occupation, and she seemed lost in her thoughts most of the time. She kept to herself more, too, in the evenings and at weekends, often disappearing without inviting Claire to come along. And there was no point asking questions, Claire had learnt, as Mireille simply smiled her sad-eyed smile and shook her head, refusing to answer. Maybe she really was playing at her ‘Resistance’ games, as she’d threatened to do when she first came back to Paris, but Claire couldn’t see what earthly good any of that sort of thing might do. However, if Mireille wanted to be all cloak-and-dagger and keep her own company then so be it.
But Claire did miss the friendship they’d once shared. There were only two other girls sleeping in the rooms above the shop at the moment and they were in the other team of seamstresses, so they tended to exclude Claire from their weekend outings, probably assuming that she’d be spending time with Mireille.
