Coffin in Fashion

At the moment she was tired. For the last few months she had been working hard for her boss, and even harder at a project of her own. She had this little private scheme going with her good friend Charley Moon, the young photographer, whose South London studio was in an old stable belonging to Belmodes.

She turned into Mouncy Street. It was a quiet, working-class street of small houses, some in a better state of repair than others. It was the sort of street that seemed respectable by day, but which you didn’t fancy too much at night.

Behind Hook Road School, in an area bounded by the main road and Paradise Street to the south and a large park to the north and Mouncy Street to the west, was a club for dancing and drinking called Tiger’s. There had never been a tiger present, but in the 1930s a travelling circus had rested in the park for a week. Tiger’s was partly owned by a man called Joe Landau, who had also put money into Belmodes, which Rose was sweating to pay off. His partner was a local businessman who kept a shop, liked to live a quiet life and not worry his mother who was an invalid.

A lot of troublesome people poured out of Tiger’s after dark, as Gabriel knew. She had been there with Charley and summed up the customers as ready for anything. ‘Living on the edge, that lot.’

Perhaps she was imaginative, but some weeks ago, after one of her long sessions with Charley, she’d treated herself to a taxi home (not a frequent indulgence in her hard-working life); she had looked out of her window and seen a woman walking down the gutters.

Walking. Stopping. Then walking again. Finally the woman had sat on a wall outside a house.

With a shock she had recognized her employer, Rose Hilaire. She could hardly believe her eyes. What was Rose up to? Was she drunk or ill?

Gabriel had leaned forward to ask the taxi-driver what he made of it, but he said he’d seen nothing and no one. She was pretty sure he had, which made it seem worse.

Next day Rose had seemed normal, although pale, but she had said nothing, and Gabriel had certainly not mentioned it.

After all, she had her own secret to keep. Moreover, she was resentful of Rose Hilaire.

‘I could kill that woman easily. Be a pleasure.’

Charley Moon disliked this. ‘Don’t talk so much about death and killing,’ he had said. ‘I don’t like to hear it. Worries me.’ At this time in their relationship they often quarrelled. Partly because they had known each other for a long time and could afford to be cross with each other, and partly because they were both restless and unhappy.

‘She’s holding me back.’

‘She’s run that shop of hers and this factory for years. She must know what she’s about.’

‘I’m in a straitjacket … I design the clothes. She takes all the credit, and she pays me peanuts.’

‘She knows the market. Her market.’

A market of comfortably off ladies who could afford to pay high prices but did not move in circles which demanded couture clothes. ‘Pretend’ couture, echoes of Paris and Milan, were more their line. These Rose Hilaire provided.

But the market was changing. Fashion was becoming bright, crisp and street-orientated. For the moment high fashion was casual-chic and even Rose Hilaire’s ladies were noticing.

Gabriel got off the bus at the corner of Mouncy Street, looked hungrily at the ham rolls in the delicatessen, remembered her diet and swung off towards the factory. Her skirt was mid-thigh and met her boots on the way up. Both skirt and boots were soft white leather, cuffed with suede. She passed the chemist’s shop and then turned back to buy some aspirin. It looked as though it was going to be that sort of day. Harry Lindsay handed her what she wanted across the counter without a word. One of his silent days. He was into silence. [He’d been blown up during the war as a small boy, and people said it had made him sad. But Gabriel attributed it to the perpetual presence of his invalid mother.] He was also into late-nineteenth-century interiors of genuine old-fashioned chemists’ shops, and high stiff collars on his shirt to go with it. The sunlight filtered through the great red, green and yellow jars standing in his window, not many of them about now, and coloured his face and cheeks with bands of colour.

By the end of the day she had been grateful for the aspirin but her head still banged. She popped another aspirin in her mouth and followed it with coffee. Was the man at the bus stop ending the day with a headache? He looked as though he knew what pain was. But pain came in different parcels for everyone.

‘If I tried to kill old Rose, that cow, what method would you suggest, Charley?’

‘Shift your head.’ Charley did not want to pursue the theme. ‘To the left.’ He was setting up the lights above her head, checking what he saw in the lens, getting ready to photograph her.

Occasionally she acted as a model for Charley if he was hard up, but this time it was for her.

This was her very own collection of clothes, a deep secret from Rose Hilaire who owned Gabriel body and soul, or thought she did, and which Gaby meant to use as a launching-pad for herself. Strictly under the rose, of course, since according to her contract all work done by Gabriel belonged to Rose.

Charley was photographing the clothes for a portfolio she was going to send out, and in the interests of economy she was modelling them herself.

‘Don’t talk for a moment, and don’t even breathe.’ Charley adjusted a screen behind her. ‘I don’t know why you bother with all this. You’re a beautiful girl. Why not settle for a rich husband?’

Gabriel ignored this sally, she and Charley had known each other since art school and his remarks could be passed over. Or bitterly contested, according to how she felt. He did the same in return. ‘Do you know what she said to me today?’ It had been the final insult. ‘She said: “My customers aren’t dolly birds but ladies so please remember that, even if you can’t be one yourself.” That was because she heard Dolly ask me if I was on the pill. And then I heard her on the phone telling Lady Olney that the new blue tunic dress would take ten years off her.’

Charley squinted through his lens. ‘All right, so she exploits you. For my money you fight on equal weights. Look at what you’re doing now.’

‘Blur my face out, won’t you, so she won’t know it’s me if she sees the album,’ said Gabriel apprehensively.

‘She’ll find out in the end.’

‘But it’ll slow her down. All I need is time.’ These designs were as good as she thought they were. She crossed her fingers for luck.

‘She’ll kill you.’

‘No. Just snitch the designs. Let her try.’

‘I bet she could sue you.’

‘And I bet she won’t. She’d have to admit in open court that the designs for the last two years were mine and nothing but mine.’

For a while they worked, Gabriel rapidly changing clothes; she had made every dress with her own hands, cutting and stitching, and she knew exactly how to wear them.

The photograph session was taking place in Charley’s South London studio which was in the loft of an old stable attached to Belmodes. Rose Hilaire was, in fact, his landlady. She also owned, although he did not know it, the terrace house in Mouncy Street which he was considering renting, and another she had already sold. Meanwhile, Charley was camping out in his studio which he was renovating himself. At present he was working on the splendid oak floors, sanding and polishing them. When life got too uncomfortable he stayed with a friend he had living in the district. Or, at odd times, he slept in the van he kept in the access road between Mouncy Street and Decimus Street.

Finally Charley said: ‘That’s it. Let’s dismantle the show.’ He started to take down his lights. ‘I think she’ll beat you: she’s got armour plate all round her.’

Slowly Gabriel said: ‘She’s got one big hole in that armour.’

They looked at each other.

‘You mean the boy?’ said Charley in a low voice.

Gabriel nodded. ‘That sad boy.’

Sadness might be infectious, perhaps it had spread from Rose Hilaire to her son, emptying his eyes and his mind, a kind of family infection that might spread outwards to Gabriel herself.

Another reason for getting away. Bad luck did brush off so, everyone knew that.

‘Do you think he might kill her?’ He’s only a kid, Gabriel thought, for heaven’s sake what are you saying? But she had said it. And not such a kid. Fourteen, wasn’t he?

‘Oh no. It wouldn’t be like that.’ Charley sounded as if he knew.

‘Do you think she might kill him?’

Charley shook his head. ‘Oh no. Not because I think neither are capable of it. Anyone could be – but because there has to be love to kill.’

‘She’s up to something.’ The speaker was a tall sturdy woman with a crest of bright golden hair just turning grey. She was wearing her coat ready to go home. ‘Rose, I’m telling you. Am I your friend or am I not?’ A waft of garlic sped across her employer’s desk.

Rose Hilaire, born Rose Lee, once married, and mother of Steve, whose whole life was hidden, unspoken and out of sight, an underground boy. She firmly believed that he was in no way different, that tucked inside him was a mental giant, but he just WOULD NOT SPEAK. Not to her. Sometimes he wouldn’t even look, only turned his head away to stare at the wall. She knew he understood, though; she could see. Oddly enough he performed well at school even though in an average kind of way. Whatever Steve was he was not average, she told his teacher so. And of course she mentioned that he would not talk to her.