‘It won’t look or smell as pretty as this once we open for business,’ Garth joked as he directed the caterers to give everyone a glass of champagne before sitting down to eat.
‘If you think I’m going to let you turn it into a rough house, then think again,’ Mog retorted. ‘And there’ll be none of that “men only” business in here either. As I understand it, some of the ladies in Blackheath like to come into the snug for a glass of sherry.’
She had re-upholstered the cushions on the settles in the snug, which was separated from the main bar by a partition with attractive stained glass at the top.
‘Now we’re married, Mrs Franklin,’ Garth said, looking at her tenderly, ‘you’ll do as I tell you.’
Everyone laughed, for it was patently obvious that Garth worshipped Mog and consulted her about everything.
‘It’s difficult to believe those two are the same people we lived with when we first met,’ Jimmy whispered to Belle. ‘My uncle was so fierce and grumpy and she was like a little grey mouse.’
Belle giggled. She had only known Garth then by repute, but it was said that if anyone upset him he’d boot them out into the street. Mog had been old beyond her years, she wore dowdy clothes and rarely contradicted anyone.
Love had made Mog blossom and gain confidence, and since Belle came back she’d encouraged her to wear more fashionable clothes that showed off her neat little figure. She no longer scragged back her hair so severely, it was as glossy as new conkers and fixed in a much softer chignon. When she let it down and brushed it to go to bed she looked no more than twenty-five.
Lisette came up to Belle just before they sat down to eat. ‘You look so chic today,’ she said in her delightfully accented English. ‘It is no wonder Jimmy has eyes for no one else.’
Belle laughed. She had told Lisette about Jimmy at the time she was ill in the nursing home after her ordeal at Madame Sondheim’s and Lisette was convinced they were meant for each other. ‘There aren’t any other unattached women here to compete with me,’ she said.
‘That is true, but if there were, you would still have all his attention,’ Lisette insisted.
‘How is Jean-Pierre settling in at his new school?’ Belle asked. Both Noah and Lisette were always saying such things about Jimmy and it was a little wearing.
‘He is so ’appy there,’ she said with obvious delight. ‘His English is as good as mine now. He is reading well and likes to do sums.’
‘And are you happy you came to England?’
‘Oh yes, I do not miss France, except perhaps for the good wine and food. The butcher the other day say to me, “You Frenchies are too fussy.” ’
Both of them laughed. Noah often said how she picked over vegetables and fruit in the shops. By an unspoken agreement they never talked about how they really met. They both implied that Noah had introduced them, and only Mog, Garth and Jimmy knew the truth.
‘Well, it’s good English fare today,’ Belle said. ‘Roast beef with all the trimmings.’ She went on to tell Lisette that her mother had secured the lease for the shop she was after. ‘You must come to the opening,’ she said. ‘You can turn your French charm on the Blackheath ladies and show them how to wear a hat with style.’
Lisette leaned forward and kissed Belle on both cheeks. ‘The bad times are over for both of us now,’ she whispered. ‘You brought me Noah, and I hope you will soon see Jimmy is the one for you.’
Almost three hours later after a hearty meal and a great deal of wine, all the wedding guests accompanied Mog and Garth to the station to wave them off on the train to Folkestone. Mog looked like a fashion plate in a cream costume with a peplum waisted jacket and a straight skirt which just skimmed her new brown patent leather ankle boots with a small heel. Belle had made her cream felt hat with a plaited band of cream and brown ribbon.
As the train pulled out of the station, all the guests dispersed, mostly on to the other platform to await a train back to Charing Cross.
Jimmy and Belle walked back to the Railway Inn to pay off the caterers whom they had left clearing up.
‘It will be strange going back to Lee Park alone,’ Belle said as they walked out of the station. ‘I’ve got so used to Mog being there all the time.’
‘I think Annie hoped you’d ask if you could go back with her,’ Jimmy said. ‘She looked a bit forlorn when she said goodbye.’ Annie had left earlier, as she had to make dinner for her boarders.
‘I don’t think it was that, she was a teeny bit jealous of Mog. But wasn’t it lovely of her to make the shop happen for me?’ She’d told just about everyone about it during the wedding breakfast, and apart from her own delight it was good to be able to show her mother in a more flattering light.
‘No more than you deserve,’ Jimmy said. ‘You won’t know yourself, having so much room to make hats in. They are beginning to take over Lee Park!’
Belle had begun hat-making in earnest about six weeks ago, and with half a dozen sitting on blocks and boxes of trimmings and other materials piled all around, the living-room looked like a workshop.
They walked into the pub to find the caterers ready to leave. Jimmy paid them and thanked them for everything, then locked the door behind them.
‘Help!’ Belle made a pretend-horrified face. ‘I’m alone with a man!’
‘And I’ve locked the door,’ Jimmy said with a leer. ‘Now I’m going to ravish you.’
‘Please don’t, kind sir,’ she said, running out into the kitchen. ‘I’m just an innocent maid, and if you ruin me, who will have me?’ she called back over her shoulder.
He came running after her and caught her in his arms. ‘Unhand me, sir,’ she said.
She knew he was only playing, but his arms around her felt so right that her body just moulded into his and she put her hand on his neck, drawing his head down to kiss him.
His lips were tantalizingly warm and soft, and as the tip of his tongue flickered against hers, she felt a surge of desire she hadn’t expected. One kiss went into another, then another, and time seemed to stand still as they devoured each other.
It was Jimmy who broke away first. He was flushed and breathing heavily. ‘And you, maiden, must unhand me,’ he said, ‘or take the consequences.’
‘And what might those be?’ she asked, smiling coyly at him.
‘You will have to marry me.’
His offer to marry her months ago on the day out to Greenwich had been made lightly, and he’d said nothing more about it since. Since she and Mog had moved into the rooms in Lee Park and only saw Jimmy and Garth on a Sunday, Belle had really missed Jimmy, but she refused to believe he could ever be more than just a good friend.
But now, in the light of how his kisses had made her feel, she was no longer so certain of that.
‘I love you, Belle, I always have,’ he said softly. ‘I met other girls while you were away, but they meant nothing, you were the one that was always on my mind. But it’s time I walked you home now, I dare say we’ve both been affected by the wedding and drunk too much, and I’m not going to make a bigger fool of myself by pestering you.’
‘You aren’t making a fool of yourself,’ Belle said. ‘Just kiss me again before we leave.’
He swept her into his arms and kissed her until she felt she was going to faint with wanting him.
‘Home now,’ he said, taking her hand and leading her to the door. ‘I think you need time on your own to think this through.’
Belle tossed and turned that night, unable to think of anything but Jimmy’s kisses and how they had made her feel. She’d kissed only five men in her life – Etienne, Serge, Faldo, Clovis and Jimmy. Serge didn’t count at all, for blissful as his lovemaking had been, she had never been under any illusion that it was anything other than sex. Faldo didn’t count either for she’d felt nothing but a vague affection for him. Clovis was someone she regretted deeply. As for Etienne, she was still just a child when he kissed her, and after all she’d been through just before she met him it was likely she became infatuated because he was so kind to her.
She’d written back to him just before she and Mog moved to Blackheath, and told him about her life back in England, about Lisette and Noah, and how Mog and Garth were getting married. She’d said she hoped he’d find true happiness on his little farm, but said nothing of her feelings for him.
She realized now that her letter had finalized it for her. She’d met him at a desperate time in her life, and his kindness and wisdom had helped her through it. Looking back, it was hardly surprising that she’d put him on a pedestal. On top of that he was the one who rescued her from Pascal. What woman wouldn’t love him for that? Yet in the past three months of being secure and happy she’d rarely thought about him, and when she did it wasn’t with sadness for what might have been, only gratitude he’d been there when she needed someone.
Yet if Jimmy was to go out of her life she knew she wouldn’t forget him in a hurry. He was part of her past, of the present, and she wanted him there in her future. Did she love him?
If someone was your best friend, someone you never wanted to lose, and you desired them, if that wasn’t love, what was it?
She tried to think about her shop, to imagine how she would decorate and arrange it, and display her hats in the window. But her mind kept slipping back to Jimmy.
Everyone she knew would be delighted if they married. Even her mother had said that he was a diamond.
What was she waiting for? Did she expect a thunderbolt from the heavens to make her see it was meant to be?
She got out of bed, and as she so often did when she couldn’t sleep, she picked up her sketchpad and a pencil.
But instead of drawing a hat, she found herself drawing a veil, and that led to a wedding dress.
It was barely light when she began, and she became so engrossed in the detail, her own face beneath the veil, the beading on the dress, a train sweeping out behind, even a frothy bouquet of roses and orange blossom in her hands, that she lost all sense of time.
As she finished it she glanced at the clock and was surprised to find it was nine o’clock.
She looked down at the finished sketch and smiled. ‘That’s the closest you’re going to get to a thunderbolt,’ she murmured. ‘So I think you should go and tell him.’
Read on for a taste of Belle’s further adventures in
Belle’s War
, to be published by Michael Joseph in spring 2012.
Chapter One
July 1914
The name ‘Belle’ in gold italic writing above a shop window made Etienne Carrera stop in his tracks and his heart beat a little faster. It was raining hard so he sheltered under a haberdasher’s shop awning to look across the street at the little bow-windowed hat shop. It had to be her shop, it surely couldn’t be mere coincidence when he had come out to Blackheath for the sole purpose of finding out how she was.
Etienne could see two ladies silhouetted inside the shop; their hand and head movements suggested they were excited by the hats on display. If the shop belonged to his Belle then he knew he should be satisfied that she’d achieved her ambition to become a milliner, and could go back into London happy that life was treating her well. But just the thought that she might be less than twenty yards from him sent a tingle down his spine.
A vivid image came into his mind, of saying goodbye to her over two years earlier at Gard du Nord in Paris. Her train to Calais was about to leave, doors were slamming, people were rushing frantically to get aboard and smoke was belching from the engine. Belle looked up at him, dark curls escaping from a little pink hat, her lovely eyes brimming with tears. She had pleaded with him to say something to her in French.
He couldn’t remember his exact words now, only that they came straight from his heart. He said something like he would face any perils, walk through fire and floods just to be with her.
He should have simply said that he loved her, for her French wasn’t good enough for her to understand much more than that simple phrase. She tried to smile as the guard blew his whistle, and then ran to get on the train.
He remembered that she waved from the window until he could no longer see her.
Why had he been such a fool? They had shared so much and he knew women well enough to know that she had felt the same for him. He should have followed her to London within a day or two and told her, in English, what she meant to him. But he didn’t because he’d believed he was doing the right thing for her by staying away.
Weeks passed before he even wrote to her. He found it difficult to write in English and he guessed his letter was stilted and lacking in warmth. She replied, but her writing too was very formal, without any hint that she had hoped for more from him.
Turning, Etienne looked at his reflection in the shop window behind him. Old friends back in France claimed he’d changed in the last two years, but he couldn’t see any difference in himself. He was still lean and fit – hard work on his small farm kept him that way – and his shoulders were broader and more muscular than before. But perhaps his friends meant that his angular features had softened and made him look less dangerous.
There was a time when he had delighted in being told his blue eyes were icy, and that just a look from him was enough to strike fear into people. But back then he’d needed to be tough and ruthless, for that was all part of his work. While he knew he was still capable of violence if threatened or provoked, he wasn’t part of that world any longer.
He’d come to England on business and, on a whim that he was almost regretting now, he’d gone to the address where Belle had lived when she got back from France, a public house in London’s Seven Dials. But the public house had changed hands, and he was told the old landlord and his nephew had moved to Blackheath in south London.
So he took the train out here, asked the ticket collector if he knew Garth Franklin, and was directed to the Railway Inn. As it was closed until five-thirty he’d taken a walk up the hill towards the Heath, and here he was, looking across the street, hungry to know more about Belle.
A plump, rosy-faced matron, struggling with an umbrella which had blown inside out, joined him under the awning to shelter from the rain. ‘If it don’t stop soon we’ll all get webbed feet!’ she remarked jovially as she tried to turn her umbrella back the right way. ‘I don’t know what possessed me to come out in it.’
‘I was thinking the same myself,’ he replied, and took the umbrella from her to straighten out the spokes. ‘There you are.’ As he handed it back to her, he added, ‘But I expect it will do the same again in the next gust of wind.’
She looked at him curiously. ‘You’re French, aren’t you? But your English is very good.’
Etienne smiled. He liked the way English women of her age didn’t hold back from questioning complete strangers. French women were much more reserved.
‘Yes, I’m French, but I spent some time in England when I was young.’
‘Are you here on holiday?’ she asked.
‘Yes, visiting old friends,’ he said, for that was partially true. ‘I was told Blackheath was a very pretty place, but I didn’t pick a good day to explore it.’
She laughed and agreed that no one would want to walk on the Heath in such heavy rain.
‘You must live in the south of France,’ she said, looking at him appraisingly. ‘Your face is very brown. My brother has holidays in Nice, he always comes back as brown as a conker.’
Etienne had no idea what a conker was, but he was glad the woman seemed prepared to chat. He hoped he might learn something more about Belle from her.
‘I live near Marseille. And that shop over there reminds me of the French milliners,’ he said, pointing to the hat shop.
She looked over to it and smiled. ‘I believe Belle learned her trade in Paris. All the ladies in the village love her hats,’ she said, with real warmth in her voice. ‘I’d have popped in there myself today if the weather wasn’t so bad. Such a lovely young woman! She’s always got time for everyone.’
‘So she has good business then?’
‘Yes indeed, she gets ladies coming from all over to buy from her, I’m told. But you must excuse me, I must make my way home now, or there won’t be any dinner tonight.’
‘It was a pleasure talking to you,’ he said, and helped her put her umbrella up again.
‘You should go over there and buy your wife a hat,’ the woman said as she began to walk away. ‘You won’t find a better shop, not even up in Regent Street.’
After the woman had gone he continued to look across the street, hoping for a glimpse of Belle. The older woman’s praise for her was evidence that the more scandalous episodes of her past hadn’t followed her here, and that she was liked and respected in this genteel village. His mission had been accomplished and he knew he ought to go straight back to the station and catch a train into London.
The tinkling of a doorbell alerted him that someone was leaving Belle’s shop. Both the ladies he’d glimpsed inside emerged – he guessed that they were mother and daughter for one looked to be in her forties, the other no more than eighteen or so. The younger one ran to a waiting automobile with two pink-and-black striped hat boxes in her hands, the older woman looking back into the shop as if saying goodbye. Then, suddenly, he saw Belle in the doorway. Slender and as lovely as he remembered, wearing a very demure high- necked pale green dress, her dark shiny hair piled up on her head with just a few curls escaping around her face.
At once he knew he had to speak to her, just one last time. Rumblings of war had become increasingly loud in the last year, and since the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria had been assassinated back at the end of June, war seemed inevitable. Germany was bound to invade France and Etienne knew when that happened he would have to fight for his country, and might never get back to England again.
The two women got into the automobile and were driven off. Belle closed the shop door, and on impulse Etienne darted across the street through the rain. He paused to look through the window before going inside. Belle had her back to him, arranging hats on little stands. There was a row of tiny pearl buttons down the back of her green dress, and he felt a pang of jealousy that he would never be able to unbutton them for her. She bent forward to pick up a hat box from the floor and he caught a glimpse of shapely calf above pretty lacy ankle boots. When he rescued her in Paris he had seen her naked and felt nothing then but concern for her, yet now even a few inches of her exposed leg was arousing.
She turned as the doorbell tinkled and on seeing him her hands flew up to her mouth and her eyes opened wide with surprise. ‘Etienne!’ she exclaimed. ‘What are you doing here?’
He immediately saw the wedding ring on her finger and realized that she must have married Jimmy Reilly, the childhood friend she’d so often spoken about and who he knew had settled in Blackheath too.
‘I’m flattered that you remember me,’ he said lightly, hiding his disappointment. ‘And you are looking even more lovely. Success and married life clearly suit you.’
He took a couple of steps nearer her, intending to kiss her cheeks, but she blushed and backed away as if nervous. ‘How did you know I was here in Blackheath?’ she asked.
‘I called into the Ram’s Head in Seven Dials. The new landlord there told me Garth and Jimmy had moved here, and as you’d told me in your letter that Garth was going to marry Mog, I expected that you’d be here too. I had a day to spare before I left England, so I caught the train out here. I meant to go into The Railway and introduce myself to Garth, but it was closed, so I walked up here and to my delight I saw your shop.’
‘Forgive me, I should have written to you again and told you about Garth and Mog’s wedding, and told you that I married Jimmy,’ she said, looking both anxious and flustered by his sudden appearance. ‘But …’ she faltered, making a little gesture with her hands that implied she hadn’t known how to.
‘I understand,’ he said lightly. ‘Old friends do not need to explain. I am just happy that things worked out for you all. Do you and Jimmy live above the pub too?’
‘Yes, we do, and my mother helped me get this shop. Do you like it?’
Etienne glanced around at the pale pink and cream decor. ‘It’s lovely, very feminine and chic. A woman out on the street told me you couldn’t get better hats even in Regent Street.’
She smiled then and visibly relaxed. ‘Why don’t you take off that wet raincoat and I’ll make us both a cup of tea?’
She went into a little room at the back of the shop, and called out to him, ‘Are you still on your farm?’
Etienne hung his coat on a hook by the door, and brushed back his wet, fair hair with his hands. ‘I am, but I also do a little translating, that is the reason I came to England, to meet with a company I have done work for in the past,’ he called back.
‘So your life is about more than chickens and lemon trees now?’ she said as she came back into the shop. ‘Please tell me you
have
kept to the straight and narrow?’
Etienne put his hand on his heart. ‘I promise you I am a pillar of polite society,’ he said, his voice grave but his eyes twinkling.
Belle giggled as if she didn’t entirely believe him.
‘Do you doubt my word?’ he said with a boyish grin. ‘Shame on you, Belle, for having so little faith in me. Have I ever lied to you?’
‘You once told me you’d kill me if I tried to escape,’ she retorted. ‘And you later admitted that wasn’t true.’
‘That’s the trouble with women,’ he smiled. ‘They always remember the little, inconsequential things.’ He reached out and touched a pink-feathered hat on a stand, marvelling that her determination and talent had paid off. ‘It’s your turn to tell the truth now. Is your marriage all you hoped for?’
‘Much more than I hoped for,’ she said, just a little too quickly. ‘We are very happy, Jimmy is just the very best of husbands.’
‘Then I am happy for you,’ he said, and gave a little bow.
Belle disappeared to the back of the shop once more and reappeared with two cups of tea. She sat on a stool behind her counter and Etienne sat down on one of the chairs.
‘And what about you?’ Belle asked. ‘Do you have a lady in your life?’
‘No one special enough to settle down with,’ he replied.
She raised her eyebrows questioningly.
He smiled. ‘Don’t look like that, not everyone wants marriage and stability. Especially now, with war threatening.’
‘It won’t come to that, surely?’ she said.
‘I think it is only weeks away.’
‘That’s all men talk about these days,’ Belle sighed.
Etienne smiled. Women in France made the same complaint. ‘And what do women talk about?’
‘In here it is mostly about fashion, children and domestic things, but we are all worried our men may have to join up and fight. I don’t see why England has to get involved, it’s nothing to do with us.’
He shrugged. ‘France is more vulnerable than England. We may be invaded, you are safer here across the Channel. But enough of war, tell me about your family. You say your mother helped you get the shop. Does she live near here, and how are Mog and Garth?’
‘Things are better with my mother, but she lives over in King’s Cross and I only see her about once a month. Garth and Mog are very happy, they were made for one another. But why don’t you come home with me and meet everyone? I know they’d be delighted.’
Etienne looked at her thoughtfully for a moment. ‘All things considered, I think it is best I do not meet them. When you moved here you also left the past behind.’
Belle wanted to protest, but she knew in her heart he was right. On the day she married Jimmy she had firmly closed the door on her time in America and Paris. Etienne may have opened it again by coming to see her, and she was glad he had, but Jimmy might not see it that way.
‘Maybe you are right. But what about Noah?’ she asked. ‘You will surely go to see him, you became such good friends? Lisette is expecting a baby and they have a lovely home in St John’s Wood now.’
‘I am having lunch with him tomorrow, near his office,’ Etienne said. ‘We will always be friends, but I don’t call at his home; we both feel Lisette needs no reminders of the past, especially now.’
Belle gave a rueful smile. ‘Respectability has a high price. Noah and Lisette come to see us now and again, we have all been to their home too. But we are always careful to avoid talking about how and why we met. Sensible as that is, it also prevents us from being really close.’
‘Does the past affect your relationship with Jimmy?’ Etienne asked, his eyes boring into her, daring her to lie to him.