Kitty’s news trailed off and Fen read the couple of clippings from the local newspaper that Kitty had deemed worthy of the postage. She couldn’t work out if she was meant to be impressed or shocked at the size of Mr Rivers’s prize-winning marrow, photographed complete with bow and rosette, or if the piece about Reverend Smallpiece losing his spectacles at the church fête was meant to be comical or not. The mental image of the kindly old vicar from their local church on hands and knees under the cake table in the tea tent did make her smile though.
Midhurst, West Sussex… Fen sighed as she pushed aside one of the heavy curtains and looked out over the skyline of Paris from her window. I couldn’t be in a more different place. As keen as she was to see Kitty, Dil and even old Mrs B, she was glad to be back in her favourite city, even if right now all she wanted to do was sleep.
She clicked the catches of her suitcase open and fished out her nightdress. It felt odd undressing and putting her nightie on at the wrong time of day, but she hated the thought of getting in between those beautifully clean sheets in her travelling clothes.
Folding the letter and slipping it back into its envelope, Fen slid in under the counterpane and crisp white sheets and, within moments, her eyes had closed and she had fallen asleep, the letter from her best friend still clasped in her hand.
Five
‘Well, that just sounds incredible,’ Fen was listening to Simone talk about her work in the fashion atelier. She had slept all morning and most of the afternoon, and had finally roused herself as she’d heard Simone return home from work. Rose had been good enough to heat up the soup and fetch out the pâté from the refrigerator and the three of them had eaten together.
Now the two younger women were washing up the dishes in the kitchen and Fen was running out of superlatives in reply to Simone’s stories. Hearing about the swathes of fabric in the cutting room had been ‘super’, the idea of modelling clothes for the wealthy aristocrats who came to purchase them was ‘simply splendid’ and Fen had even blurted out a ‘by Jove’ when Simone had told her about the possibilities of travelling abroad for photo shoots.
‘I swear, it is the most fun a girl can have, no?’ Simone asked rhetorically, describing a fashion shoot in which she had modelled recently.
‘A beautiful girl like you maybe,’ Fen blushed a bit. Her old land girl friends back at the farmhouse in Sussex would have died to be able to talk to a real-life model and hear about her day from the cutting room to the catwalk. Fen made a mental note to write to Kitty and Dilys and tell them all about this glamorous creature.
‘Fenella…’ Simone laid a slightly soap-sudded hand on Fen’s arm. ‘It is all a mask, see…’ She pouted her lips and raised her eyebrows and mimicked putting on lipstick, rouge and mascara.
Fen laughed at her, but didn’t disagree. Simone may be stunning, but Fen wondered if she was actually one of those quite plain girls underneath, who just knew exactly how to accentuate their best features. She took another sopping plate from Simone and started to dry it.
‘I can show you some tips. You have very dark eyelashes, which I would kill for…’ Simone winked at her and Fen smiled, ‘… and such good skin, if maybe a little weather-worn.’
Fen put down the plate she had dried and raised her hand to touch her cheek. She felt like she was on a slide under one of Madame Curie’s microscopes and wasn’t sure she entirely liked the scrutiny she was getting from Simone, who now pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes to fully gauge Fen’s pores and wrinkles.
‘A few too many days in the fields, perhaps,’ Fen agreed and turned her face back to the drying rack, hoping Simone would stop analysing her. At twenty-eight she wasn’t exactly old, and she did rather pride herself on her appearance, albeit not in an overly vain way. She did wonder, though, if her nightly ritual of just putting on Pond’s cold cream and hoping for the best would pass muster here in Paris among the ultra-chic urbanites.
Luckily, Simone turned back to the washing-up bowl and changed the subject. ‘Oh it was terrible though, you know, last week. We were posing on the steps of Montmartre modelling a new look, much fuller skirts, like this one,’ she swayed her hips at the kitchen sink to indicate the folds in the skirt, ‘and women – not men, mind you – women started shouting at us! Can you believe it? Every name under the sun!’ Her soft brown eyes looked imploringly at Fen, and Fen found herself just nodding along while she dried up one of the soup bowls. ‘It is a world gone mad. And you know why? Because apparently we flaunt the fabric. And it’s not de rigueur, you know, it’s not done. But it’s progress, it’s victory, that’s what we’re celebrating. Victory over oppression, victory over poverty.’
‘And victory over the Germans?’
Simone shrugged. ‘Yes of course, and that too. After all, fashionable people suffered like everyone else. Models and designers were going missing all the time. Like Catherine, my friend, she is only just back from Ravensbrück, you know, and the things she tells me, ooh la la.’
‘Ravensbrück…’ Fen knew of the concentration camp since its name had been splashed on the front of the newspapers back home when it was liberated by the Soviets in April.
‘A camp.’ Simone looked imploringly at Fen. ‘A death camp.’
‘Oh my word.’
