It sounds so stupid seeing as I was thirty, had no money, eight toes, a garret rental with a socialite giant, and a temporary job. But suddenly, I felt so free.
1972
Spaghetti Bolognese.”
“No.”
“That is not possible.”
“I tried spaghetti hoops,” said Claire, lying back on the grass.
“I do not know what that is.”
“They’re all right.”
“All right. All right. Why would you put something in your mouth that is only all right?”
Claire giggled. They were having a picnic in the Jardin du Luxembourg. It felt almost magical to Claire that only weeks before she had been looking at the young lovers, so smug and contented with their wicker baskets, their casually discarded bicycles, and empty wine bottles. They made it look so simple; she had been so envious.
And now, here she was too, lying half on a rug, half on the grass under a blazing blue sky. M. and Mme. LeGuarde had taken the children to Provence for a week. Originally Claire had been supposed to go with them. When Mme. LeGuarde had said she wouldn’t be necessary, Claire had immediately panicked and worried she’d done something wrong. Being sent back to the Reverend in disgrace would be more than she could bear.
Mme. LeGuarde laughed at her worried face. In fact, she wanted Claire to give her love life more of a chance without them around, have a little adventure of her own. It hadn’t passed her notice that Claire had come more out of her shell; she was loving and carefree with the children, more willing to speak up. She had roses in her cheeks and a light golden tan from hours walking outside and playing with Arnaud and Claudette in parks; her appetite was good, her eyes were sparkling, her French coming on in leaps and bounds. She was already a long way from the worryingly pale, hopelessly introverted schoolgirl who had arrived on their doorstep two months before. Now, Mme. LeGuarde thought, Claire should have a holiday too.
First, she took her shopping.
“As a thank-you,” she murmured, brushing off Claire’s stammering that they had already done so, so much for her.
She took her to her own atelier, situated just off the Marais. It was a tiny shop front, with a sole sewing machine in the window and no signage. A woman in an immaculate black knit dress cut starkly to the knee with a starched white collar and perfect cheekbones appeared in front of them.
“Marie-France,” said Mme. LeGuarde. The ladies kissed, but with no noticeable warmth. Then she turned her pale blue eyes to Claire, who felt herself quailing under the weight of such scrutiny.
“Her legs are short,” she barked.
“I know,” said Mme. LeGuarde, uncharacteristically humble. “What can you do?”
“But the lower part of the leg should equal the length of the thigh.”
“I shall have them rebroken immediately.”
Marie-France harrumphed and indicated to Claire, without saying anything, that she should follow her up the perilously narrow twisted staircase.
The first floor, in complete contrast to the pokey shop front, was a large, airy room, lit by enormous windows on both sides. At one end, two seamstresses, both tiny bent ladies, hunched over sewing machines without looking up. Another tiny woman was pinning the most beautiful material—a huge, heavy swath of pale gray taffeta that shimmered and reflected the light like running water—onto a dressmaker’s dummy, ruching it at the bust, then pulling it in toward the waist, making tiny, invisible darts with a clutch of pins from her mouth so quickly it was almost impossible to make out what she was doing. Claire stared at her, utterly fascinated.
“Disrobe,” said Marie-France without emotion. If Mme. LeGuarde found this in the slightest odd, she didn’t let on to Claire with even a twitch of the lips, as Claire took off her cheap cotton summer dress and stripped down to her petticoat and bra. With a tcch, Marie-France made it clear that the petticoat also had to come off. Claire felt cross and a bit shaky. Did she really have to be so rude? She’d never taken her clothes off in front of a stranger before. Even thinking this made her think of Thierry and then blush.
Marie-France watched her impatiently, then whipped a long tape measure that had been hanging around her neck like a pale white snake and, at the speed of light, started measuring her up, shouting out measurements—in centimeters, of course, Claire realized, two seconds after she wondered if she’d put on lots of weight without noticing—to the woman who had been pinning taffeta and was now jotting down details in a large, heavy-bound navy blue book.
“Nice flat bosom,” she said to Mme. LeGuarde. Claire had certainly never heard it described like that before. “And the waist is small. Good.”
She glanced up at Claire and addressed her in perfect English, even though Claire had given every indication that she understood her in French.
“That is what your waist should measure now for the rest of your life. It is in the book.”
Mme. LeGuarde smiled. Claire glanced at her.
“That’s good,” whispered Mme. LeGuarde. “If it goes in the book, that means she approves of it.”
Marie-France snorted again.
“I’ve yet to meet an English girl that could hold on to it.”
She looked up.
“The babies come, they think, aha, now I shall lie in a field like a large cow and wait to be fed.”
Claire thought of her own mother, with her lovely rounded bosom and strong capable arms. She had always thought of her mother as beautiful. But you couldn’t get away from the fact that it was difficult to believe that she and Mme. LeGuarde had been schoolgirls at the same time, were the same age. Mme. LeGuarde looked closer to her own age.
“Raise your arms.”
After rapidly jotting everything down, Marie-France made a nod to her assistant, who had led them up another flight of stairs. This room was dark and cramped, lined ceiling to floor and wall to wall with every kind of material possible. It was like an Aladdin’s cave; there was gold ribbon, and silks in the deepest of hues: turquoise, pink, scarlet. There were many different tones of black, in every possible material, from the finest, softest mohair wool, to the lightest, most delicate chiffon; navy too. Florals large and small, some so loud you couldn’t imagine who could wear them, to daisies etched on a heavy sunken cotton so tiny you could barely make them out. There was cut-out voile and large rolls of calico for pattern cutting; stripes in every conceivable colorway, and, over in the far corner, protected by a dust sheet, was the lace, the satin, in white and oyster and cream, for the brides. Claire couldn’t help it—she gasped. Marie-France almost let a twitch cross her lips.