‘Or there’s the café, on second,’ the girl said. ‘Gentlemen are perfectly welcome to wait there.’ She gave a smile, blithely ignorant of the offence she had caused him, and turned, with a swish of her bias-cut lilac panels, and drifted away again.
‘Coffee it is then,’ said Alec. ‘I’ll see you up there when you’re done.’
I tore myself away from the perfumery and scarves and padded up the broad staircase (it was carpeted – carpeted!) to the first floor. Here, although there was no scent for sale, the enveloping fragrance went on and I saw one of the assistants puffing clouds of it out of a scent spray into the air. She was dressed in a very pale eau-de-nil as all the girls were, no more dove grey and lilac, and I was enchanted to see that the tape measures some of them wore around their necks were that colour too. How was that possible? Had they dyed them? Even the pins, the very pins, had bobbles on the ends like little pale green pearls. Altogether, I thought that if the gowns were anything like as soigné as the fittings I should really send Grant down here for a treat one day.
I squinted around again looking for hat stands. There was one curtained archway clearly leading into a bridal gown salon, for boughs of orange blossom were hung around the entrance, with a great cluster of gilded horseshoes and slippers as a centrepiece. Another arch promised a lingerie salon, and in the most provocative way: by means of a mannequin halfway through the entrance dressed in a satin nightgown and trailing a matching satin and lace wrap – I supposed one might call it a negligee if one could bring oneself to – along the floor behind her. I turned around to look in the other direction, towards the front of the store, and gave a happy sigh.
The gowns – there were no frocks here – were simply blissful. I supposed Hepburns’ had to sell some coat and skirt suits, some jerseys and warm coats, might even be able to provide one with fair isle and corduroy for bicycling, but on the shop floor, draped over the impossible mannequins – all six feet tall and with figures like pythons – the gowns were silk, lace, a little silk velvet here and there but only with lots of satin ribbon and only in sugared-almond colours, a great deal of chiffon, and some very daring cloth of gold, almost backless and, when one imagined it on a woman not six feet tall, pretty nearly frontless too.
‘We have it in tinsel as well as the pongee, madam,’ said a voice beside me as I stood staring.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Tinsel, madam. Cloth-of-silver. With madam’s olive complexion, a tinsel would be much more dashing.’
No one had ever called my complexion olive before, It had been dubbed sallow by my mother and been sallow ever since except that an artist friend had once referred – not kindly, in my opinion – to its green tones, and Grant has a quelling habit of holding up prospective frocks under my chin and then whisking them away again saying: ‘Beige’.
‘Dashing,’ I echoed, wondering if I had ever attempted to look dashing in my life.
‘Does madam have any emeralds?’ said the girl. I nodded ‘And emerald eye-paint?’ I shook my head, trying not to look too startled. ‘We carry it downstairs in the perfumery,’ she went on. ‘So long as madam isn’t against the notion of a good dark lipstick, tinsel, emeralds and matching eye-paint with a peacock-feather headdress would be most becoming.’
I could feel myself physically swaying towards the mannequin, entranced by the mental vision of this silver and peacock-green creature, this dashing stranger I could apparently so easily become, and then I shook myself and asked the girl to direct me to Millinery.
‘Just past tea-gowns on the left, madam,’ she said. ‘Then round the corner opposite our new cocktail range. You can’t miss it.’ Tea, cocktails and evening gowns: did none of Hepburns’ customers ever get up in the morning? Did they have breakfast and luncheon in bed in one of those satin negligees and only descend at half past three in florals?
‘And I’ll look out a model in silver for madam meantime,’ the girl said. ‘If we have one in a small enough size.’ I wish I could report that I rolled my eyes and tutted at the ‘small enough size’ for it was a ploy of no great subtlety and I was old enough not to be reeled in that way, but I must admit I felt a burst of pleasure and bestowed a flattered smile.
‘So… these are ready-to-wear?’ I said. Taking one home in a box tonight might prove irresistible.
‘No, madam,’ said the girl. ‘Not this particular style, but House of Hepburn likes to keep some trying-on models if we can. It’s more fun trying-on than just looking.’
I nodded as I walked away; this whole place was like a glorified playroom, I thought, dressing-up box and Wendy house combined; no wonder poor Aitkens’ had to do what it could with sensible tweeds. For a moment I pitied Mirren as a child, playing at shops in the Emporium instead of here, and then, remembering why I had come, I hurried my pace, ignoring the floral tea-gowns and the fringed and sequined cocktail range, and rounding the corner with earnest purpose back at the helm.
The Millinery Department took the whole escapade one stage further into the realms of fantasy: it was pink. The floor was carpeted in pink, the little chairs in front of the looking-glasses were cushioned in pink and unless I was greatly mistaken the bulbs around these looking-glasses cast a decidedly pinkish light too. I was reminded of a Fragonard – or do I mean a Boucher? – well, of tumbling cherubs on blush-coloured clouds, and I slightly began to lose patience with the Hepburn way. What woman wouldn’t look better by the light of pink electric bulbs? And what woman would not regret the hat she had bought by the light of these bulbs when she got it home and saw it in her own bedroom? Except that probably they sell the pink light bulbs somewhere too, I thought, beside the green eye-paint probably.
From a back room a tall and willowy woman in her middle years emerged, carrying a lavender and grey straw hat, ribbons trailing.
‘I do apologise, madam,’ she said. ‘I didn’t hear you arriving. How can I help?’ She set the lavender and grey hat down upon the nearest pink velvet hat stand and smiled at me. She was the right sort of age and despite the searing refinement of her vowels I thought she was probably the right level of social standing to be a policeman’s wife but I could not imagine this wand-like creature with her silver shingle and her long tapering fingers going home and mashing turnips for the inspector’s tea. She gestured me to sit down on one of the little pink chairs set before a glass, with hand mirrors and hairbrushes laid out. It made me think of mermaids.
‘Mrs…’ I stopped myself. Hepburns’ pink powder-puff of a Millinery Department should not be tarnished by the uttering of such a name. The shock might blow a bulb. ‘Are you the milliner?’ I substituted. ‘Margaret-Ann for Hats?’
‘I am, madam,’ she said, bridling a little with pleasure to think that her fame had gone before her. ‘How can I help you?’
‘Mrs Hepburn recommended that I come to you,’ I said. ‘Mrs Hepburn Senior. Dulcie.’ The woman’s eyes clouded and she caught her lip in her teeth, nodding. ‘And so I’m glad I’ve caught you today,’ I said. ‘Here, I mean. At House of Hepburn. You are the milliner at Aitkens’ too, I believe?’
‘There’s a place in this world for spinach as well as ice-cream,’ she said, with an unexpectedly wicked grin. ‘There comes a time when we all have to get our hats from Aitkens’, madam, when our Hepburn days are gone. But you’re a long way from there yet. What can I show you this morning?’
‘Well, mourning,’ I said, spreading my hands. ‘Do you carry mourning hats?’
‘I do,’ said the milliner. ‘Lord knows, Aitkens’ does and I’m trying to see what I can put together for House of Hepburn this very morning.’ She gestured to the lavender and grey. ‘This had red ribbons and silk poppies on it half an hour ago. But if it’s black you’re looking for, madam, you’d better go up the road. Is it a close bereavement?’