Followed by her bridesmaids, Muriel charged, unseeing, past the world’s most impressive cheese counter, through ‘handbags’ and ‘haberdashery’ and was wafted in the lift to the sanctity of the bridal department, where Madame Duparc, whose varicose veins were stabbing like gimlets, schooled her face into a welcoming smile and, flanked by Millie and Violet, the underpaid and undernourished sewing girls, gushed her way towards Muriel.
‘Everything is ready, Mees Hardwicke and I think you will be very, very pleased. With one fitting, we should complete. Of course mademoiselle’s measurements are so satisfying… the perfect figure…’
Soothing, flattering, joined now by the chief vendeuse. Miss Taylor, Madame Duparc led the entourage towards the three luxurious fitting booths at the far side of the room with their omate mirrors and plush-lined stools.
Into the centre booth there now vanished Muriel Hardwicke, to be followed by Madame Duparc herself. Into the right-hand booth passed the Lady Lavinia Nettleford, humbly accompanied by Millie. Into the left-hand booth, its curtains held aside by the obsequious Violet, stepped Cynthia Smythe. From a mysterious upper region there now appeared three more girls in the Fortman uniform of pale.green carrying, in swathes of tissue, the bridesmaids’ dresses and the wedding gown itself. Directed by the chief vendeuse, they vanished into the appropriate booths, from which came twittering noises of admiration as the little seamstresses pinned and flattered, measured and soothed.
Meanwhile Anna and the Honourable Olive had arrived downstairs and were wending their eager and interested way through the food hall. Tom’s plan had succeeded. In exchange for a promised taxi afterwards to take her to West Paddington, Anna had expressed herself delighted to deliver OHie at Fortman’s. Now the two girls were sniffing their way appreciatively between jars of Chinese ginger, beribboned chocolate boxes, marzipan fruit…
‘Isn’t it a lovely shop, Anna!’
‘Beautiful!’ said Anna, her eyes alight. ‘How many things can you smell, Ollie?’
The little girl wrinkled her nose. ‘Cheese and coffee and a sort of sausage-ish smell and soap …’
‘And freesias and cigars and duchesses …’
Ollie giggled. ‘Duchesses don’t smell.’
‘Oh yes, they do,’ said Anna. ‘It’s a very rich smell with fur coats in it and lap dogs and blue, blue blood.’
They were still laughing as they went up in the lift, but as they approached the opulent silence of the bridal department and passed an amazingly disdainful looking dummy swathed in white tulle, Ollie suddenly became quiet, overcome by the importance of the occasion.
‘Could you… stay till Tom comes back?’ she asked, letting her hand creep into Anna’s.
Anna nodded, glad that she had not given Pinny a definite arrival time.
‘But of course. \
Madame Duparc, momentarily relegating Muriel to two minions, now came forward to welcome them. ‘Ah, this is the little flower girl for whom we have been waiting,’ she said, smiling down at the child with her flame coloured curls and brave limp.
‘Come, ma petite, your dress is ready. The others are next door so we will go into this room and give them a surprise.’ She turned to Anna, in no way deceived by the plainness of her clothes and said: ‘You will wish to ac company your little friend, mademoiselle?’
‘Thank you.’
Ollie stepped into the booth. Anna helped her out of her coat, her dress. Very small, utterly expectant, wearing her petticoat with real lace the Honourable Olive stood and waited.
Then they came, two girls, ceremoniously carrying the ensemble that for weeks now had been the stuff of Ollie’s dreams. They carefully unwrapped the rose pink dress, the velvet cloak, the pearl-encrusted muff.
‘Oh, Anna, look! said the Honourable Olive, holding her arms up. ‘Oh, gosh…’
----*
Next door things were proceeding less smoothly. Cynthia Smythe, it was true, oozed meekness and gratitude as she turned and twisted at the fitting girl’s behest and the Lady Lavinia, in her booth, staring over the heads of the assistants with the bored hauteur of a thoroughbred being decked out for a minor agricultural show, gave relatively little trouble.
The same could not be said of Muriel Hardwicke. Muriel had the clearest possible ideas about the way her dress and train and veil should look and these ideas, though she expressed them forcibly, the staff of Fortman and Bittlestone were failing to realize.
‘No, no … that dart is in quite the wrong place. And the sleeves are much too full at the wrist.’
‘But when mademoiselle has her bouquet—’
‘I’m not carrying a bouquet,’ snapped Muriel, ‘flowers are far too unreliable. I’m carrying a gold-bound prayerbook, so please don’t use that as an excuse.’
The girls grew hot and flustered, Madame Duparc’s varicose veins throbbed and pounded across her swollen legs… But at last, though grudgingly, Muriel declared herself reasonably satisfied.
‘If the others are ready, tell them to come out, please. I want to see the effect of the whole ensemble.’
The door of the left-hand booth now opened and there emerged, like one of the puppets in Petroushka, the apologetic and slightly goose-pimpled figure of Miss Cynthia Smythe.
The door of the right-hand booth followed - and the Lady Lavinia Nettleford, lofty and indifferent in her eighteenth bridesmaid’s dress, stepped out.
After which Madame Duparc, the little sewing girls and the chief vendeuse gave the same experienced and slightly weary sigh.
For her bridesmaids Muriel had chosen identical dresses of rose pink satin with a bloused bodice, a pink velvet sash and the three-tiered skirts which the great Poiret had just introduced in Paris. A wide frill of pink accordion-pleated chiffon lined the hems, encircled the cuffs of the short sleeves and edged the square neck -and dipping low on their foreheads like inverted tea cups, the girls wore close-fitting, pink satin-petalled caps.
Pink is a lovely and becoming colour and the image of a rose is never far from the minds of those who contemplate an ensemble of this shade. Unfortunately, there are other images which may intrude. Cynthia Smythe, emerging soft-fleshed, goitrous and apathetic from her ruffles, suggested a prematurely dished-up and rather nervous ham. The Lady Lavinia had other troubles. Though the bodice was generously bloused, the Lady Lavinia was not. With her stick-like arms, jerky movements and the tendency to whiskers which has been the Nettleford scourge for generations, she relentlessly reminded the onlookers that pink is not only the colour of budding roses, but of boiling prawns.
But now the door of the centre booth was thrown open and there emerged - to the sound of imagined trumpets - the bride herself.
Muriel had chosen not white, but a rich brocade of ivory which better took up the colour of her creamy skin. Cleaving to her magnificent bosom, clinging till the last possible moment to her generously undulating hips, the dress fanned out dramatically into a six-foot train, embroidered with opalescent beads and glistening pailettes. Richly elaborate threadwork also spangled the bodice and, eschewing the simple white tulle so beloved of ordinary brides, Muriel had set her diamond tiara over a veil of glittering silver lace.