The Dress Thief Read Online Free Page B

weed. ‘Believe me, Aliki, go into that trade, you might as well put your life on a roulette wheel.’

Chapter Three

    It was all very well for Mémé to tell her to stay safe, Alix mused a few days later as she crossed the Jardin du Luxembourg on her way to meet Paul, her hands deep in her pockets, her head bowed against a bitter wind. After all, there’d been no sign of caution the day Mémé announced they were moving to Paris.
    July 1935, they’d been sitting atthe kitchen table of their home in south London. The day was sticky and hot, an open window letting in the noise of tradesmen’s traffic. It was also Alix’s once-a-month afternoon off from Arding & Hobbs, the department store where she’d worked since leaving school. She’d intended to spend her free time on Clapham Common, making a sketch for her portfolio. Back then her unstated ambition was to goto art school, starting with evening classes, then full time if she could ever afford it … somehow progress from there to being a dress designer. An ambition not helped that day by Mémé’s demand that she stay home and trim a bucket of runner beans a neighbour had given them.
    As Alix de-stringed and Mémé sliced, her grandmother had announced, ‘I want us to live in Paris.’
    Alix had laughed withoutlooking up.
    ‘I mean it, Aliki. I’m sick of London.’
    ‘Why Paris?’
    Mémé waved her paring knife. ‘The other day I took lace collars to a place in Portman Square. Hours I’d spent on them! The buyer –
dummkopf
slattern – picks them up as if they are a bunch of watercress.’
    ‘What’s that got to do with Paris?’
    ‘In Paris, such girls are not given the job of buyer. In Paris, such girls sell watercress.I know I shall be happy in Paris.’
    ‘You won’t. You don’t know anybody there.’
    ‘My friend Bonnet is there.’ Then Mémé had stopped, as if astonished by her own words. Before Alix could question her, however, she added quickly, ‘He lives in a rough quarter and keeps strange hours, so we won’t meet him. What I mean is, half of Alsace lives in Paris. I will see people who look like me and sound likeme.’
    ‘But I won’t know a soul.’
    ‘What will you miss? After all, I don’t see any school friends calling.’
    ‘Because they’ve all gone to finishing school in Switzerland.’ She silently added,
I never had real school friends, none who would visit me here
. ‘What about my job?’ Alix continued. ‘I got a goodreport last month and there’s a vacancy coming up in the silks department that I’m certainto get.’
    ‘In Paris, you’ll have fifty silk departments to choose from.’
    The truth eventually came out, though it took a few days. It was nothing to do with
dummkopf
buyers really: Mémé was frightened by the rise of anti-Jewish feeling in London. She told Alix, ‘While you were tucked away at school in the country, Moseley’s Blackshirts were taking lessons from Hitler. Jews are being attackednow in the East End. London is not safe.’
    ‘Nobody round here supports them. Nobody with any sense.’
    A neighbour, who was taking tea with them that afternoon, took Alix’s side: ‘They won’t come over the river, Mrs Lutzman.’ She’d winked at Alix. ‘No Blackshirts in Wandsworth.’
    ‘No?’ Mémé’s logic was offended. ‘I was on the bus. I went to Spitalfields to buy silk thread and some boys got on andshouted at us old women. They knew we were Jewish. They were Black-shirts.’
    ‘Spitalfields is east London, Mrs L.’
    ‘And now they know which bus I get on, so they can find me.’
    Nothing would dissuade Mémé. In her mind, London had become a nest of Nazism: of window breaking, of beatings and attacks. Always thin, by the time the August heat arrived she resembled a bundle of sticks. Alix caved in.She handed in her notice and spent August organising travel papers. She sold their furniture and acquired the addresses of accommodation agencies from the French embassy. By the time