THE TAILOR & THE SEAMSTRESS
IV. Fire
"I have heard from a little bird," Remy said to Belle over the office telephone, "that you are due to have your measurements taken by Mr. Burford next week."
"Oh, you have, have you?" Belle's tone, true to form, was playfully arch. "And who could this little bird be, I wonder?"
Remy chuckled lightly, thinking of the lovely Miss. Anna Raven and her enigmatic smile, her heady mixture of boldness yet uncertainty.
"You know me, chere. I always have a little bird flitting around." He grinned. "It is true then? And you didn't tell me?"
"I would hardly need your assistance to be measured, my dear Remy!" she protested.
"Of course not! But that is merely a convenient pretext for you not to tell me the truth, Belle."
"Oh?" Her tone was now veritably tetchy. "And what exactly do you mean by that?"
"Why, that in having your measurements taken so soon, you are planning on becoming a regular patron of Burford's. I'd wager you have your next ensemble already planned with them."
Belle made a thoroughly unladylike noise.
"Remy, you have never begrudged me my shopping for clothes where I please. You even said yourself that Burford's was the place all worthwhile young ladies of fashion shop. Why play jealous now?"
"Au contraire," he retorted. "I greatly approve. It will give me an excuse to return there."
An audibly dumbfounded breath sounded from Belle's mouth.
"Remy, do you mean to continue this ridiculous spying game?"
"I sense myself getting closer to the source of Burford's magic," he explained. He didn't dare mention his desire to see the seamstress again.
"Tsk! And I sense you are going to ask if you can come along to this fitting I am having."
Belle, of course, knew him far too well to have the wool pulled over her eyes.
"Belle, I always did love you as much for your wit as your beauty," he declared with exuberant sincerity. It was only because she knew it was the truth that she finally relented.
"All right. I'll let you come along. But you must behave yourself, Remy. If you are caught misbehaving, I shall wash my hands of you!"
-oOo-
Remy was at his drawing table when Belle arrived in another wonderfully extravagant outfit, her coat an Orientalist affair in blue silk trimmed with brown fur, a rose and feather-plumed hat perched upon her golden blonde up-do.
"Remy, what in the devil are you doing!" she cried out in lieu of a greeting. "We are already late for our appointment at Burford's – an appointment, may I remind you, that you insisted on attending – and I find you're still stuck here behind your desk!"
He gave her a thoroughly unashamed grin and set down his pencil.
"Apologies, Belle. My muse was calling, and I quite forgot the time."
Belle had rarely paid more than a perfunctory attention to his creative work in the past. The only thing that could induce her to take notice of it was when it inconvenienced her, and so she walked round the table and looked over his shoulder to see what it was that had so consumed him.
A design was beginning to take shape, a fine-looking gown with a daring V-slashed neckline and a sash-clad waist.
"Is this to be my next evening ensemble, Remy?" she asked aloud.
"You like it?"
"Well, it is hardly finished, but it is shaping up to be quite the gown! In a lovely shade of cobalt blue, I should think."
"More blue, Belle?" he frowned. "I hope that ridiculous movie studio isn't pressuring you to have blue be your signature colour again."
He got up and went for his hat and coat.
"Blue does look very well on me, Remy," she protested.
"Yes – but so do many colours. Take my advice – don't let those fools control what you wear, ma chere!" He buttoned up his coat and briskly walked for the door. "Now let us go."
.
Having made the short journey together across the street, they were immediately let into Burford's, with all the pomp and circumstance necessary for an influential new customer. Belle was summarily led to the fitting salon, which he was, of course, denied any access to.
"The lounging room serves tea and other refreshments," a harried-looking floor girl told him. "Otherwise you will have to wait in the corridor, I'm afraid, sir."
Remy obediently took himself out into the corridor; and he was just about to go and find the workrooms again, when a mousy young woman poked her head round a corner and beckoned to him wordlessly.
Intrigued, and sensing the hand of Miss. Anna Raven, he followed.
When he rounded the corner, the mousy young woman had been waiting for him; still wordless she began to march down the passageway, only looking backwards once to make sure he was following her. They turned another corner; and she came to a halt outside a door, which she quietly pulled open for him.
He took the cue and stepped inside.
Here was a smaller, more intimate workroom. Only a handful of girls were busy at their tasks, paying him not a single mind as he stood there, his guide softly shutting the door behind him.
Set up by a suitably sunlit window was the famous Peacock Dress – at least what he assumed was the original, and not the replica. Anna Raven was standing before it, considering it thoughtfully. As he entered, she glanced over her shoulder and her face brightened at the sight of him, as much as he was silently brightened by the sight of her.
Her glance was an invitation, and so he joined her by the dress form.
The mousy young woman quietly took her seat near the door, picked up her work and began to sew quietly.
"Hello," he greeted her softly.
"Hello," she returned the greeting just as softly.
For a few long moments nothing was said, and they simply stood side by side, contemplating the dress. It was odd – in her presence he felt a kind of free and easiness he rarely felt with women. She made no demands of him, just as he felt no inclination to make demands of her. With her he felt as if… he was stood next to an equal.
"The bodice is all but finished," he noted, not wishing to break the moment, but feeling he should say something.
"Yes," she nodded. "Almost. But as we both can see, something is missing. I just can't put my finger on what it is yet." She slid him a sideways look. "Would you like to take a closer look?"
He was quite surprised at the offer. He had sensed from the beginning that she was rather possessive of this dress; and the fact that she was allowing him closer access was an extension of trust he could not mistake. He stepped forward and slowly circled round the entire gown. Here, under sunlight and such close quarters, he could finally appreciate the craftsmanship that had gone into this unique ensemble. Its designer, he felt, must surely have been touched by some rare genius when he had conceived of it. He wasn't easily given to jealousy, but he almost was in that moment.
He took his place back at Anna's side.
"You and your girls have certainly worked some sort of magic," he praised her. Unlike the first time they had met, she took the compliment gracefully.
"They're good girls," she agreed. "Well – what do you think?"
"I think there's very little that can be done to improve upon perfection," he replied.
She looked as if she didn't know whether to laugh or to frown.
"You tease, Mr. LeBeau," she scoffed.
"Perhaps a little," he smiled. He stepped over to the dress again, and chanced touching the bodice. Again, he was almost surprised when she let him do so.
"Here," he said in more serious tone, "you need another colour to break up the blue and green tones. There is already gold in the embroidery here. I would suggest lifting it to prominence." He stepped back again, feeling as if he were overstepping a boundary to touch the gown any longer. "I saw a fine piece of gold silk in your other workroom the first time I was here. I think it – or something similar – would do well here."
He finished, wondering whether his suggestion would meet with her approval. He knew he had it when she passed him an appreciative little smile.
"See," she said lightly. "I knew it was a good idea to employ your opinion, Mr. LeBeau."
He had long given up trying to make her call him Remy.
"You simply needed a fresh pair of eyes, Miss. Raven," he shrugged.
"There are few like yours though," she returned with a twinkle. "Seeing as yours are keen observers of beauty." For a moment her gaze seemed to laugh at him, before she turned back to the gown. "I think you are right. There is so much blue, and green, and white. And the bodice needs to immediately draw the eye. Gold seems such a natural tone with which to achieve this."
Having concluded the thought, she pivoted on her foot.
"Would you like to see our fabrics store?" she asked him.
Would he! He was secretly longing to see how it would compare to Maison Maillot's.
"I would be very honoured to do so."
"Then I'll show you," she said. She walked to the door, pausing only to address the mousy young woman there and say, "Please keep an eye out, Kitty."
"Yes, miss," the girl bobbed her head; and he followed Anna back into the corridor.
"You have spent a lot of time around dresses," Anna remarked, as she led him up a back flight of stairs to the next floor. It was an odd observation, or so he thought.
"Naturally," he replied. "Working where I do."
"I mean," she continued, with a slight smile back at him, "you have spent a lot of time paying attention to them. The tailors here spend all day every day working on them – they could tell you the best cut for almost anything – yet they couldn't make the sort of suggestions you do."
He was almost dying to tell her the truth of the matter, but he still didn't think it wise, especially not on enemy territory.
"I've been working in women's dress for a long time," he answered at last. "Since I was young."
"Apprenticed as a boy?" she asked.
"You might say so," he responded, his tone a shade darker. "If observation is an apprenticeship."
"All apprenticeships require observation," she commented.
"Mais oui," he returned. "But rarely are they nothing but."
She gave him a puzzled glance – but he wasn't inclined to divulge anything further to her. In any case, they had reached the store; and she pushed open the double doors, letting him enter first.
It was as if an Aladdin's Cave of treasures had swallowed him up.
Here, he found, was the Hokusai, the Greek Geometric, the Alhambra he had briefly encountered the first time he had visited the House of Burford, in all their unrestrained glory.
He had often wandered the fabric store of Maison Maillot, immersed himself in the infinitely variegated textures held within. It had always been a sight to behold, a feast for the senses – but Burford's store was something else. Colours and patterns whirled and shimmered and burst like scattershot, one against the other, in a sublime battle for sensory dominance. Against every wall bolts of fabric painted a rainbow-hued palette across the room; and from the ceiling hung panels of cloth of all weights and tones, like banners in some medieval war. It was only when she walked into his peripheral vision that he realised he was holding a breath.
He let it out again slowly.
"Some of these," he began uncertainly, not quite knowing how to articulate the thought, "…they are… they are fabrics I have never seen before."
She nodded.
"Beautiful, aren't they?" She moved towards a table, where several bolts had been unrolled for various projects. "We have samples from all over the world. The suppliers we buy from don't tailor their textiles for the Western market. These are all made for local use, in their country of origin. We have buyers that travel to bazars and souks and flea markets. Whatever is unusual, whatever is most authentic, they buy, and bring back here."
She ran her fingers over a length of cloth woven with deceptively simple geometric patterns in strikingly bright primary colours – red and blue and yellow, with slashes of bold green.
"This is from Ashanti, in Africa," she explained. "They call it kente. Such bold colours are so out of favour here in the West. But I find the combination so heady, so powerful."
Her voice, her expression… they were almost dreamy as she spoke. Her love for textiles was intense, and contagious. She snatched his breath away almost as much as the room and its contents did.
"You say I have an eye for detail," he remarked softly. "But you have quite the one yourself, Miss. Raven."
She looked up at him, reflected pleasure glistening in her eyes.
"Ah, well, unlike tailors, seamstresses always concern themselves with minute little details. Flourishes no one ever sees. Colours no one will ever pick out."
He smiled.
"That is true," he agreed.
Silence fell. He stared at her, and she stared at him. It was an intimate little moment, and she broke it first.
"I think I know the fabric you were speaking of," she said, her former propriety restored. "Come."
She led him among the hanging panels, stopping when she had reached the one she had in mind. He halted and looked at it. It was indeed the silk he had seen, though it was paler under daylight than he remembered it. A subtle champagne gold, with stylised clouds discreetly picked out in a brighter gilt thread.
"Ah," he said, "oui. This is the one."
He touched it, and it shimmered under the shifting sunlight.
"Where is it from?" he asked her.
"I'm not sure," she admitted. "Japan, I think."
He studied it a moment.
"It's perfect," he decided.
She looked at him curiously.
"How would you embellish it?"
He thought a beat or two, before singling out a section and pulling it gently taut at one end. Almost instinctively, she reached out to do the same with the other.
"Choose a blue thread," he suggested, "and a green thread, ideally with a little shimmer."
"And beads?"
He considered it.
"Yes," he agreed at last. "Beads would do very well."
"Some curlicue pattern," she continued the thought aloud, half to herself, "through the mesh here – to break up the gold – to blend it with the rest of the dress. Sewn on with the blue and green thread. The closer to the border, the more detailed the pattern."
He nodded.
"Just so."
She marvelled at it.
"What an idea!" she said on a little laugh.
"You came up with it," he said to her.
She glanced up at him, her face flushed with pleasure, and pride.
"I suppose I did."
They gazed at one another. An impulse took him in that instant – a realisation that he didn't think he had seen anyone so beautiful as her, even in among this room full of exotic treasures – and all of a sudden his senses were thrumming and his loins were on fire and his heart was crashing in his chest.
"I am going to kiss you now, Miss. Raven," he murmured helplessly.
"And I am going to let you," she murmured back.
No woman had ever said that to him before. He wasn't sure if it could have endeared her to him any more than she was already, but it did; and it hardly mattered anyway, for suddenly he was kissing her, and she was kissing him, and he was preoccupied with nothing but the taste and the texture of her, a texture far richer than any of the exotic fabrics in that room.
He'd kissed so many women, but he was about to discover that there was none like her – for when they paused for breath, he was unable to fully stop, nor would she let him; and when he pulled her closer, she did not flinch, but raked her fingers through his hair and pulled him in closer too.
There was fire in this woman, and only in that moment did he realise it.
At this juncture, the only thing that could have interrupted them was some outside force; and when it came it was as a knock at the door, a neat little rap, rat-a-tat-tat, that almost sounded pre-arranged.
She gently pushed at his chest; and as they quickly broke the kiss, she tugged briefly, lightly, at his lower lip with her teeth, a move that all at once astonished and titillated him.
Fire, he thought giddily, as the doors opened up and Belle's footsteps clattered into the room.
"Remy!" he heard her call; and he stepped out from behind the panel of fabric, his senses still burning with kiss of Miss Anna Raven.
"Ah, there you are!" Belle said; and he saw that the mousy little seamstress was standing deferentially behind her. "What on earth have you been doing?"
He leaned against the worktable, touching the kente cloth Anna had so admired. "Merely finding a suitable fabric for your next ensemble, my dear Miss. Boudreaux," he spoke, a breathless hitch to his voice. Belle looked down at the cloth under his fingertips and pulled a face.
"What an ugly pattern!" she declared. "Surely not!"
"Not this," he laughed, still a little giddy. "Miss. Raven here was showing me something much more to your taste."
It was at that moment that the said Miss. Raven emerged from behind the panel; and Belle started as she did so, her eyes going wide as she finally apprehended the seamstress's unexpected presence.
It was as if she had suddenly, and for the very first time, recognised that the seamstress actually existed, despite having met her at least twice before. For a moment she took her in, top to toe, and said in a low voice: "Oh, yes?"
He glanced over at Anna. Apart from her slightly reddened lips, she showed no outward sign that anything unseemly had even occurred.
"Would you like to see?" she asked the actress in a perfectly composed pitch.
"Perhaps some other time," Belle spoke, this time firmly. She turned back to Remy. "We are late for our appointment."
Belle was not a foolish woman. When he heard her tone, he knew instinctively he had been caught out. He took out his pocket watch, as he knew was it was his cue to do so.
"You're right," he said, in a more even pitch. "I apologise, my dear. Somehow, the time quite passed me by. We should leave."
In love and war, there were always awkward moments – and this was certainly one of them.
"Kitty," Anna was saying, "please see our customers out."
Kitty, ever as obliging as she was efficient, gave a nod.
"Yes, Miss." She gestured to the door. "If you please, sir, ma'am."
He glanced back at Anna as he left the store.
Her eyes met his, but she did not deign to smile. Her expression was too full of unrepentant longing.
The feeling was mutual. At that current moment in time, there was not a single thing in the world that Remy LeBeau thought he could possibly want more.
-oOo-
They bundled into Belle's motorcar silently; and it was only when the car had started and they were off that Belle turned to him and declared with disapproving wonder:
"Remy! You are in-love with that seamstress!"
He stared out of the window with a little smirk on his face.
"A passing thing, no doubt. How many times have you seen me fall in-love, Belladonna?"
She looked disbelieving, and he turned to her with a grin, unable to help himself from saying, "Isn't she delightful?"
"Tsk." She tutted primly. "You really must stop playing with young lady's hearts, mon cher, especially those so far beneath you. At some point, it becomes, well... very unbecoming of a gentleman. Hasn't your father expressed his wish that you settle down enough?"
"Belladonna," he said witheringly, "I hadn't pinned you for such a frightful snob."
The car was slowly turning into the tiny backstreet that ran behind Maison Maillot. Belle could only give a harassed sigh, choosing to ignore his statement.
"Now I see," she said, "why you are so keen to go there. It is nothing to do with spying at all! You wish to make love* to yet another silly little shop girl! I should have known!"
Well, she wasn't entirely right, but she wasn't entirely wrong either. It was the first time in a long time that her observations riled him.
"She isn't a shop girl," he shot back irritably. "She's an artist."
"An artist?" Belle retorted cuttingly. "Isn't that what you called that painter's model you seduced last year? I wondered then why you insisted on taking painting classes to hone your already perfect drawing skills. It was no wonder when, later, I found that you were enamoured of the nude model the classes employed!"
"You are jealous, Belle," he threw the only riposte men knew to throw at women in such circumstances. She scoffed loudly.
"Remy, it is true I loved you once, enough to be mightily jealous of any woman you cast your wandering eyes at. And perhaps I am still, a little." She turned to him, her expression sombre now. "But I no longer love you in that way, and I can be objective when I say that you ought not to play these games anymore. As a woman, I can say that hearts are fragile things. And as a woman, I implore you to stop breaking them. For you, it may be little more than a game. For us, it can be world-ending."
The car had stopped by the back entrance of Maison Maillot, and was waiting for him to alight.
"Belle," he remarked with a raised eyebrow, "you always did have a romantic soul. I know you are an actress, but melodrama is not quite your forte."
He knew he had really irked her when her blue eyes flashed angrily at him.
"Fine!" she exclaimed, with a toss of her head. "Burn that little seamstress, if you dare! I should hope she burns you back!"
He gave a faint little smirk. Belle's tempers never failed to be rather appealing. He opened the door and clambered out.
"Belle," he said sincerely, "you are a fine friend. I shall try to take your advice."
She pouted crossly, turning away from him.
"Goodbye, Remy," she fumed.
He let out a sigh and shut the door. The car rumbled down the cobblestones and out of sight.
For a while Remy stood at the worker's entrance and thought to himself. He wanted to heed Belle's words. But for some reason the only thing that keep intruding on his mind was Anna Raven's scintillating kiss.
Truth be told, his heart was still racing in the wake of it.
He entered the building, and virtually skipped up the stairs to his studio. He sat at his desk, and got out his pencils and inks. The design he'd started working on, this idea that had budded so spontaneously in his head, was now coming to full bloom.
Fire, he thought, as he silently got to work.
-oOo-