At last, a train rattled into the station and a flood of passengers got off. With grim determination, Mireille elbowed her way on, pulling the man behind her and then pushing him on to one of the double banquettes. As the doors closed and the train pulled away from the platform, the man next to her closed his eyes and rested against her, breathing a quiet sigh of relief.
Above ground, in the crowds that milled around the bars and restaurants of Les Halles, Claire stood stock still for a moment. Was that really Mireille she had just seen, entwined in that man’s arms as the stairway to the Métro swallowed them up? So intent on her secret lover that she hadn’t even noticed when Claire called to her as they’d lurched past just a few feet in front of her. So that was her game, was it? Some friend, who couldn’t even be bothered to confide in her. Let alone include her in their outings and maybe ask him to introduce her to a friend of his . . . Well, you certainly learn who your real friends are, she thought.
And with that she turned away and followed the two other girls into the bar, where soldiers in grey uniforms lounged at small tables, on the lookout for pretty French girls to spend their money on and help them forget how far away from home they were on Christmas Eve.
Harriet
One of the things on the top of my to-do list since my arrival in Paris has been to visit the Palais Galliera, the city’s very own museum dedicated to fashion. I’ve seen pictures of it, but nothing has prepared me for the jaw-dropping beauty of the place. It’s a gem of a palace, a perfect wedding-cake building conjuring Italian style with its white stone columns and balustrades. I enter through the ornately carved gatehouse leading off a leafy street in one of Paris’s most elegant districts, and feel as if I’ve stepped out of the city and into a rural idyll. Trees fringe the neatly manicured parkland and, just beyond their autumnal branches, the Eiffel Tower points towards the blue of the sky. Statues dot the grounds, and the verdigris figure of a girl, the centrepiece of a fountain in front of the palace, is surrounded by ribbon-like beds of flowers, carefully planted in a mosaic of yellow and gold.
My heart beats with anticipation as I climb the broad white steps to the colonnaded entrance.
To my even greater delight, they are running an exhibition of styles from the Fifties. So I feel as if I’ve been transported back so close to the war years that I can almost reach out and touch the work of Claire and Mireille, reminding myself that the dresses, suits and coats they sewed were the immediate precursors to the garments I’m looking at now. I wander through the main gallery, drinking in the elegance of that golden age of haute couture. Christian Dior’s ‘New Look’ dominates – the nipped-in waists and flowing skirts that were fashion’s response to the restrictions of the war years – but as well there are classic Chanel suits and stunning, deceptively simple-looking, Balenciaga gowns encrusted with rock crystal embroidery. These are pieces that represent both the start and end of an era – the last, short-lived blooming of French couture when the war ended, which was rapidly overtaken by the fashion houses’ new trend for ‘ready-to-wear’ fashion.
I linger in the museum’s galleries, entranced by the displays. As well as the exhibition of Fifties couture, there are rooms filled with fashion history, from garments worn by Marie Antoinette and the Empress Josephine, to the black gown which Audrey Hepburn wore in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. It is all, quite simply, breathtaking.
When, at last, I emerge into the crisp autumnal day, I decide to walk back along the river rather than ducking underground into the Métro. The leaves are turning to gold along the riverside quais and the waters of the Seine glint with the same golden light until they are churned to pewter, in a kind of reverse alchemy, by the passing tourist boats.
As I walk, transported back in time by the sight of those beautiful clothes in the Palais Galliera, I mull over what I’ve learned so far about my grandmother’s life during the war here in Paris.
My feelings are mixed. Now that I know a little more, I’m impatient to know everything else that happened.