Page 13 of The Dressmaker's Gift
‘Don’t worry about me, I’ll be out to dinner on Saturday evening,’ Claire replied, turning away from Mireille towards the light, the better to concentrate on stitching some intricate beadwork on to a chiffon bodice.
‘But we never seem to see each other, apart from at work these days,’ Mireille said sadly.
Claire shrugged. ‘I know. You always seem to be out on the evenings when I am not.’
‘Well, one of these days we’ll have an evening in together and you can tell me all about this new man of yours.’ It had recently become public knowledge in theatelierthat Claire was ‘seeing someone’, after one of the girls in the flat had seen her slipping out one evening wearing a pair of silk stockings, which must have cost far more than any of them could afford on their wages. Under close questioning, Claire had admitted that they were a gift from an admirer. The same admirer she had been seeing since New Year’s Eve.
Mademoiselle Vannier clapped her hands to quell the murmuring of the girls. ‘That’s enough now, everyone. The excitement is over. Don’t expect you are all going to be invited downstairs so that clients can give you tips. That sort of thing only happens once in a blue moon. Quiet, please! Pay attention to your work and save your gossiping for your breaks.’
Mireille reached for the lining that she’d left on the table and began, once again, to tack it together with careful, quick stitches. As she sewed, she reflected that she’d had no idea that some of the clothes she was making were commissions for Monsieur Leroux. That had been a woman’s coat that the model was wearing, and it was a woman’s suit that he had pointed to on the mannequin. Did he have a wife? Or a mistress? Or both perhaps? How strange it was to be linked to so many people through the network and yet to know nothing about them, even though they each held one another’s lives in their hands.
It was only the following day, when she went to fetch some more silk from the dyer, that Mireille heard why last night’s operation had had to be cancelled. Madame Arnaud, from the safe house, had been picked up outside the baker’s shop and was found to have more than her ration of bread in her basket. That sort of black market activity was, fortunately, not enough to have her deported and she had been lucky to be released with just a severe reprimand. But then she had realised that their house was being watched, and had managed to get a message through to Monsieur Leroux to cancel the previous evening’s assignment. The Arnauds would need to lie low until they were no longer under suspicion. So activities would be suspended for a while, the dyer explained, until they worked out which other houses could be used to hide the network’s cargo. He would let her know when it was safe to begin again.
Claire had spent her Saturday morning in the usual way, standing in queues outside shops in the hope of picking up that week’s food rations. Two women, who’d been gossiping just ahead of her when she’d joined the line, had turned and given her a scornful glance, taking in her silk scarf and fine stockings. She’d met their look with defiance, holding her head high: so what if she had a German boyfriend who loved to pamper her? Just because she wasn’t a scrawny old bird with varicose veins like them was no reason for her to deserve the filthy looks that they shot at her as the queue shuffled forwards, inch by inch.
Walking home, as she turned into the Rue Cardinale, she swung her shopping bag, planning the bean stew that she would make for lunch, flavoured with a precious morsel of pork belly that she’d managed to find at the butcher’s.
And then she noticed the young man sitting in the doorway of Delavigne Couture who scrambled to his feet when he caught sight of her. She didn’t recognise her brother at first. When she’d last seen him, his hair had been long and unkempt and he’d been wearing his thick fisherman’s jersey, the wool heavy with a mixture of engine grime and fish oil. He looked different – older, somehow, but ill-at-ease and surprisingly vulnerable in a workman’s cotton jacket, with his normally tousled hair trimmed short and neatly combed, exposing a tender strip of pale skin where it had been cut away from the back of his neck.
‘Jean-Paul! What are you doing here?’ she exclaimed.
He took a step towards her, then hesitated as if unsure how to greet the elegant young woman his little sister had become. But she reached across the space that separated them and put her arms around him, breathing in his scent of woodsmoke and sea salt and feeling an unexpected pang of homesickness as he hugged her back.
‘You look good, Claire.’ He stood back to appraise her, his grey eyes crinkling as his weather-tanned face creased into a smile. ‘Quite the Parisian lady. The city life obviously suits you. I don’t know how you can stand living here, though; too many people and not enough fishing boats for my liking.’ He gestured towards the scuffed canvas duffel bag that leant against Delavigne Couture’s plate glassvitrine. ‘I’m on my way to Germany. Been ordered to report for work in a factory there. I’ve got an hour or so before I have to be at the station, though, so I thought I’d look you up on my way through Paris.’
She took him by the hand. ‘Come up to the apartment, then.’ Taking the key from her bag, she pushed the door open and led the way upstairs. ‘Oh, Jean-Paul, I can’t tell you how good it is to see you. How is Papa? And the others?’
‘Papa is well. Told me to make sure you’re looking after yourself in the big city and getting enough to eat. He sent you these.’
With a grin, from the top of his bag Jean-Paul drew a newspaper-wrapped parcel tied with twine and set it on the table. She opened it to find three mackerel, their skins gleaming, as silver as the sea off the Brittany coastline from which they’d been pulled.
‘And the others? Marc and Théo and Luc?’
Her brother’s face grew serious then and his eyes clouded with sadness. ‘Théo and Luc went to fight when the war was declared. I’m sorry to have to tell you like this, but Luc was killed, Claire, when the Germans broke through the Maginot Line.’
Claire gasped and abruptly sat down on a chair, the colour draining from her face. Her eldest brother, dead for nearly two years and she hadn’t known. ‘And Théo?’ she whispered.
‘We received word that he was captured and kept in a camp for prisoners of war for a while. But when France surrendered he was released, on condition that he work in a German factory. That was the last we heard. I’m hoping that I might be able to find out where he is and request a placement in the same factory so that we can be together. Though I’m not sure whether the Germans will allow that.’
Claire buried her face in her hands and sobbed. ‘Thank God Théo is okay. But Luc ... gone ... I can scarcely believe it. Why didn’t you let me know?’
‘Papa did write. He sent a letter, but it was just after the Germans had taken over so it probably got lost in the chaos. And he tried to send you one of those official postcards but it was returned to us marked “inadmis” because he’d written more than the permitted thirteen lines. He’s been knocked sideways by the loss, Claire. You wouldn’t believe how it has aged him. He spends every waking minute out on the boat these days, hardly says a word. Marc and I have been trying to support him. But some days he goes out on his own, in all weathers. Doesn’t even wait for us. It’s like he doesn’t care that he’s taking such risks, almost like he couldn’t care less if he lives or dies.’
He put an arm around Claire and she could feel the definition of his muscles, like twisted strands of rope, beneath the rough cotton of his jacket as she sobbed into his shoulder.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said at last, drawing away to fish a crumpled handkerchief out of his pocket so that she could blow her nose and dry her eyes. ‘Marc has stayed behind to take care of Papa for us all. And I will be closer to Théo very soon. It will make them all happy to know that you are doing so well here in Paris. Maybe send Papa and Marc a postcard now and then if you have the time though? It would do them good even to receive a line or two from you. Papa treasures the postcards you send us at Christmas – keeps them on the shelf in the kitchen so he can see them every day.’
She nodded, hanging her head with shame that she’d been too wrapped up in her own life to spare anything other than the occasional thought for her family back in Brittany. Because she’d never received her father’s attempts to write to her, she’d assumed they didn’t care, that they were all there, busy with the routine of fishing all day and mending the creels in the evenings. But now she realised how very wrong she’d been. It was the war that had separated them, not a lack of concern on their part. The chaos of France’s surrender and then the iron-clad strictures of the new administration had cut her off from her family. Another wave of grief and homesickness enveloped her as she wiped her eyes on her brother’s handkerchief again.
Pulling herself together, she put a hand over Jean-Paul’s. ‘You will be alright, though, in Germany. I have a friend here, a man called Ernst. He is from a city called Hamburg. He says that the French workers who go over there to help the war effort are well looked-after.’
Jean-Paul withdrew his hand from hers and studied her in silence for a long moment. Then he nodded slowly. ‘This German “friend” of yours, Claire ... Is he the one who buys you your fine clothes? Did he give you that jewellery?’ He pointed at the locket that she wore around her neck.
A pang of guilt pinched at her heart at the tone of his words which, although he kept his voice level, sounded accusatory to her ears.
She met his eyes with a look of defiance. ‘No, Jean-Paul, this locket was a gift from my friend Mireille. Ernst does like to buy me pretty things sometimes, though. Why shouldn’t he spend his money on me if he wishes?’
‘But he’s the enemy, Claire,’ her brother replied, struggling to keep his voice level, suppressing his anger. ‘He is one of the ones who killed Luc. Who put Théo in a prison. Who has torn apart not just our family but our country too.’ He shook his head in sorrow. ‘Do you never think of us? Have you forgotten your family so completely, Claire?’
