Page 28 of The Rebel of Seventh Avenue

The after party of the autumn/winter parade of 1924 was mirroring the success of the show, the order book was filling up and the noise in the salon was getting louder as I took a step to one side, leaning on the doorframe, and watched my clientele: those ambitious mothers and their hopeful daughters; the editors of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar as well as the fashion editor of the New York Times ; serious women; working women; those extravagant and outlandish women seeking frivolous embellished dresses to enhance the excesses of the season. Men were increasingly seen at my fashion parades, men like Bunny Hoptoun, all gaudy and showy, only here to make the most of my discreet serving of whiskey before he headed off to his favourite speakeasy. But tonight there was a very different man attending, a tall, broad-shouldered, sandy-haired man who seemed to mesmerise every woman he met. There was something about him that held my attention, an aura that surrounded him, producing little bubbles of interest in my chest. I followed his journey around the room, greeting and cajoling, laughing and encouraging, until he arrived before me with a petite, taut woman.

‘Miss McIntyre. I’m Marianne Monte Smyth and this is my husband, Senator Torridon Smyth. We wanted to congratulate you on such a colourful show.’ The smile didn’t reach beyond her lips, the words had a hollow ring.

Senator Smyth, impeccably dressed with shiny patent shoes and a sparkling diamond tie-pin, thrust a large hand out to me and, shaking my hand enthusiastically, said, ‘ Smyth. Pleasure to make your acquaintance. I’d just like to say I’ve not enjoyed an afternoon so much in months. Your talent seems to increase every year.’

I frowned. ‘Have you been to one of my shows before?’ I enquired.

Just as he was about to answer his wife interrupted. ‘My husband simply can’t get enough of you. He’s been following your career ever since your Protest Dress appeared at Mrs Woolman Chase’s fashion fête. I frequently find him with my copy of Vogue or Harper’s Bazaar , critiquing the latest fashions, but whenever he sees one of your creations, he never has a bad word to say.’ She sniffed slightly before continuing. ‘Unfortunately, our views on dress do not match. He loves colour and grand flourishes, I abhor colourful pattern and far prefer the darker, plainer colours and the subtle, clever draping of Chanel. I’m afraid I have now taken a vow never to buy anything that isn’t Chanel.’

Confused as to why this woman was even at my show, I decided to ignore her slight. ‘I’m flattered that you’ve taken the time out to come and see us this afternoon, Senator Smyth. And I’d just like to say I followed your work closely on the Factory Investigating Committee and I’d like to thank you for your persistence in getting the laws changed on stricter regulation for the safety and health of the garment workers in New York and also for making sure people are now more aware of the terrible conditions the women have been made to work in.’

His eyes twinkled but his wife gave me a look as if she’d just bitten into a lemon.

‘We should talk,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you could help with our continued work.’

Before I could reply, his wife touched his arm and pulled him away. He gave me a wink before turning his attention to her. I couldn’t help but watch them, such a strange mismatched pair – she so tiny and uptight, keeping a sharp eye on her husband, he so congenial and open, enjoying the attention of the many women who fawned over him.

A little later I noticed him whispering in his wife’s ear and then stepping outside onto the front steps of the building. I picked up a teacup, patted my pocket to make sure I had my hip flask and slipped out of the room.

Senator Torridon Smyth was sitting on the steps to our building smoking a large cigar, enjoying the early evening scene in front of him: the busy street filled with cars waiting for some of my guests, customers in the restaurant opposite, the summer heat abating. I sat down beside him and brought out my hip flask.

‘You look like you might want some of this,’ I said, pouring whisky into the cup and handing it to him.

A wry smile accompanied a quiet chuckle. ‘Why, I do believe you have the measure of me already, Miss McIntyre.’ And he downed the liquid in one and pushed the cup back in my direction. ‘May I?’

I smiled and poured another shot. Without a word he savoured this portion more carefully, looking down the street at nothing in particular, a strange look of contentment on his face.

‘A fine Highland malt. But I guess I should expect nothing less from a lass from Edinburgh.’ He handed the cup back to me. ‘I won’t ask where you could have possibly obtained such a thing.’ He winked. ‘Genteel ladies wouldn’t have a notion.’

Without looking at him, eyeing the coffee-drinking customers across the road I said, ‘There is nothing genteel about me.’ I held the teacup in both hands in front of me, laying it on my knee. I hit the side of it with the nail of my right middle finger, considering my next words.

‘I admire a man who can appreciate women’s fashion, especially one who has such an interest in the workers behind it all.’

We sat silently on those steps for a good while, enjoying the background noise of Manhattan. Our silence was easy and companionable. For the first time in over ten years, I realised, my heart was beating a little too fast and I was nervous, a little self-conscious. I kept my eyes on the shop front ahead of me, not entirely knowing what to do. My romance with Joseph had happened slowly, over time, little by little, sneaking up on me. But here, I was prepared to jump right in, to be impulsive and reckless, to do something wholly unexpected.

‘I’ll ask nothing of you, but I’ll never wait for your call. I’ll never insist on you regularly visiting. I have my own life to live, an all-consuming business to run. If you want to see me, you’ll have to come to my house. I imagine it’s best not to be seen in public. I’m discreet and I’m not demanding. You’ll need to give me at least two days’ notice and I’ll let you know if I can’t see you due to a prior engagement, because I won’t drop everything for you.’

He took a deep drag of his cigar and as he blew out the smoke he gave me a huge smile that overtook his features and made my heart leap.

‘So, Miss McIntyre isn’t demanding?’ He eyed me sideways. ‘I have only one question.’

I held his eye.

‘Am I allowed to smoke in your house?’

The first time we met alone was laughably nerve-wracking. I’d already moved out of my apartment in MacDougal Street into a small three-storey townhouse on West 17th Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues. I couldn’t sit. Pacing up and down my bedroom, wondering how this first so-called ‘date’ would go. We didn’t have that first casual meeting, maybe a walk in the park or dinner at a favourite cosy restaurant, there was no opportunity to gradually get to know each other. We were charging down the helter-skelter, feet first.

Over time, without fully realising it, I’d turned my whole house into a sort of display area for all the things that inspired me: fabrics, dresses, coats, hats, shoes, belts and buckles, lampshades, crockery, rugs, curtains, tableware, wall hangings, books, the occasional painting and an eclectic mix of furniture – all things I’d collected during the fourteen years I’d been in New York. I’d curated this colourful, slightly chaotic private exhibition which I would spend my spare time updating, adding to and taking out anything that I’d outgrown or lost favour with. I knew it was eccentric but it was a place that calmed me, took me away from the noise and commotion of running a business, of having to produce two collections a year and employing coming up to one hundred staff.

I rarely let anyone into my home, I wasn’t someone who entertained, who liked to show off their personal effects; it made me feel vulnerable, as if I’d been stripped bare and cold air was running over my skin. This was the place I retreated to after a long day at work, where I could take off the mask of Maison McIntyre and become the real me. It was difficult enough admitting to myself that I again had a man in my life, but showing him my house, my strange, eclectic collection was unnerving. As a child, Netta had poked fun at the little odds and ends I used to keep in the corner of a drawer: scraps of colourful fabric, a china thimble I’d found on the street painted with tiny buds of lavender, an ivory button, a smooth and perfectly round pebble, a green-glass bead. These were the few things I owned, and they felt as precious as if they were made of gold. She used to say that I loved these things more than our family, that I could easily collect things, but found it more difficult to collect friends.

‘Let me show you around,’ I said on that first visit, my heart beating a little too fast as I wondered what he would think. ‘Mind you behave. No one has ever seen the whole of my house before. You should take it as a compliment that I’m even allowing you beyond the front door.’

Wordlessly he slowly toured the house, his fingertips touching a tassel here, a feather there, smelling a piece of carved sandalwood, appreciating the silky touch of a small elephant whittled out of soapstone, admiring a mahogany wardrobe from India, opening a Japanese parasol, trying on an Afghan Pakol hat.

‘Your very own museum,’ he said in a whisper, turning around and picking up a bright-green feather boa, a note of envy in his voice. ‘If I had a house to myself it would be full of every kind of whisky made by man, every different kind of cigar and old law books. Yes, old law books and a fine leather chair, a mahogany drinks cabinet with a never-ending supply of ice and an ashtray that would be emptied frequently by a fine-looking maid.’ We were in one of my reception rooms, walking around the room until he suddenly came to a halt in front of a small bookshelf. He pulled out one of the books and flicked through it.

‘Have you read this?’ he asked, holding up my copy of The Wizard of Oz .

I gave him a slight shake of my head, biting on the inside of my mouth, embarrassed at possessing a book I’d never read. ‘You remember that green and red dress at the fashion parade? It was inspired by the cover and some of the colour plates.’ Terrified he’d think me stupid and laugh at my inability to read a children’s book, I carried on talking, trying to hide my embarrassment. ‘Sometimes I just buy a book because I like the way the title has been embossed onto the leather or the style of the pictures – I don’t even read the text.’

He held my stare until a smile began to creep across his face and then, in that great booming voice that I was getting used to he said, ‘There is nothing monochrome about you, nothing black and white about Maisie McIntyre.’

We had an unspoken agreement that we would meet every six weeks or so, always at my house, neither of us wishing to be seen together in public. I’d leave work early on the Friday of his arrival and dismiss my cook and maid for the weekend. I’d stock up on food, drink, and cigars. As I waited I would relish those last moments to myself, sitting by the fire with a glass of whisky, enjoying the fact that I wasn’t needed, no customer required my attention, nobody wanted to discuss finances or the latest schedule. I was so rarely alone I’d become unused to it. These moments before arrived became my way of transitioning from one life to another, from very public couturier to private mistress.

Three knocks, wait a beat, and another knock signalled his arrival.

I double-locked the door behind him, and we hugged, a long, silent embrace. That touch, his large enveloping body against my light frame began the process, the mechanism for drawing out all the bad stuff: the late nights, the political meetings, my own business worries, the continual deadlines.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said. ‘The train from DC was delayed.’

I handed him a tumbler of whisky and led him upstairs. We’d stay in that bath for over an hour and gradually he’d come alive, the hot water slowly taking away the grime of the week, the whisky taking on the role of reviver. Often, we didn’t say a word until he’d sloughed off the skin of his life as a senator and begun assimilating the serenity of a weekend with me. It wasn’t until after our bath, until after we’d made love, until we lay together in my bed with another whisky and a plate of bread and cheese that we’d begin to talk. We’d cleansed ourselves of reality. We could commence forty-eight hours behind closed doors where no one could see us.

‘You know we don’t have to be here every time,’ he said. ‘We could take a suite at The Plaza or the Waldorf. I have to take a suite anyway, otherwise Marianne will get suspicious. If she telephones, I’ve asked the staff to take a message and send it over. But she hasn’t telephoned yet. I think she likes having the weekend to herself.’

I looked up from my plate, staring at him. ‘You pay for a suite at The Plaza that you don’t use, every single time you come here.’ I was wrapped in my satin dressing gown, sitting cross-legged on the bed.

‘I do. I know… it’s a little ostentatious, but it’s worth it to make sure there is no inquisition when I get home. It also means there are no questions from my office. I’m, supposedly, accounted for.’

I was silent, slightly stunned by his level of deception. But when did I get so worried about that? Whether I liked it or not, I was part of this ruse.

‘I worry that you should be out there, having a good time with some young man,’ he continued, ‘building your life together, getting married, having a family, not stuck behind closed doors with someone almost twice your age.’ He was sitting up in the bed, propped up by the pillows.

I smiled and took a sip of my whisky. ‘Are you worried that I’m going to demand you leave your wife and insist you marry me?’ I laughed. ‘Because if you are, let me put you straight right now. I could never be your wife. I could never attend election rallies, host dinners, glad-handle politicians, sweet-talk your rivals or potential political enemies. I can admire your wife for having the stamina, the conversational deftness, the iron smile, and the selfless ambition for her husband; political wives are a breed of women that are furlongs apart from the person I am. I would fail at the first hurdle: I would insult the guest of honour, misunderstand the political nuances, or show a face of extreme boredom during an important speech. I am not built for that life.’

‘You are nothing if not brutally honest.’ He shook his head with a rueful smile.

‘Well, if you want me to be brutally honest then I should tell you that I don’t believe I’m someone who can maintain a full-time relationship. I’d find it too exhausting, too distracting. It would use up too much of my energy, energy that I want to use on my work.’ I sidled up to him and nestled into his shoulder.

‘You see, when you’re not with me, I can forget all about you.’

‘Well, that’s so good to hear,’ he said with a sarcastic grin on his face. ‘Not even for a few minutes each day?’

Truth was, when I was in the frenzy of work, I didn’t consider him at all. Perhaps when I went to bed at night, I’d wonder where he was, what he was up to, but there was rarely the kind of longing I’d had with Joseph. I never dreamed of , but I often dreamed of Joseph, sometimes I thought I could smell his skin, feel his touch. Sometimes I’d wake with the weight of beside me, wishing it was Joseph.

I avoided the question. ‘Don’t tell me that you’re thinking about me all the time. Not when you’re in one of your committee meetings or those party meetings.’

‘Have you ever been in one of those meeting? Of course I think about you, more often than you’d imagine. When I see a woman wearing a dress I like, I wonder if it’s a Maison McIntyre. When I hear of a good tip on the stock market, I make a note to tell you, because I think it would be good for your portfolio.’

‘I don’t have a portfolio.’

He sat up. ‘We’d better rectify that. If ever there was a time to invest in stock, shares, property, honey, now is the time. I’ll make you an appointment with my broker.’

‘So, you’re only thinking of me in business terms.’ I narrowed my eyes at him. ‘Don’t you ever think of me in… how shall I put this?’ I pretended to think. ‘Hmmm… sensual terms.’

That booming laugh that would hit me in the chest, deep and resonant. ‘Oh, Miss McIntyre, I always think of you in those terms. There’s nothing unusual about that.’

I frowned. ‘Do all men do that?’

He laughed again. ‘Now, I’ve never taken you for na?ve, but, yes, it’s our biggest failing. How did you not know that?’

‘When you leave on a Monday morning, I shut the door on you both physically and metaphorically because I’m raring to get to work. It’s as if my creative reservoir has been filled to the brim. Being with you seems to regenerate me. You revitalise me.’

‘Well, I’m glad to be of service, ma’am.’ He gave me a salute, a twinkle in his blue eyes.

‘Seriously. I know that if we lived together it would be altogether different, I think I would find it…’ I was worried about saying the word, but we seemed to be into the truth, so I just went ahead. ‘Stifling.’

He smiled, that crinkle of skin beside his eyes, those dimples in his cheeks. He pushed the hair off my face. ‘That’s what I love about you, Maisie McIntyre. You’re wholly independent, not in the least needy. You don’t want to be seen on the arm of a powerful man because you have your own power. You have Maisie McIntyre power and I find that incredibly arousing.’

He pulled me toward him, his hand in my hair, pressing into me.

Was I only attracted to him because I saw him so rarely, because I felt no responsibility towards him? Perhaps the same could be said for him, perhaps that’s why we worked so well.

The breaking down of social barriers since the end of the war, the increasing independence of women, the mixing of new money with old and a certain acknowledgement of the working woman made it easier for me to socialise with my clients. Occasionally I would gather my courage and make the effort to be seen at some of those wild cocktail parties, always with an eye to finding new clients. There was an element to these parties that I loved; they were full of colour and sparkle, energy and effervescence. The men and the women dressed in wild, gaudy colours, jewels displayed in melodramatic fashion, peacocks wandering the grounds of those grand Long Island mansions, champagne fountains glittering, dancers iridescent and twirling, the laughter even appeared to be a shimmering shade of silver. I would dress in a fairly low-key manner, hoping to fade into the background as I watched the evening change gear, a strange mania take over; the noise increasing, glasses smashing, women thinking nothing of jumping into the swimming pool in their expensive evening dresses, high-jinks the order of the evening.

‘You look as if you’d rather be anywhere but here.’ A whisper in my ear, that voice that had once poured oil on my rusty heart, the smell of sandalwood and leather, hair cream and whiskey.

‘Aidan Cruickshank.’

He kissed my cheek, lingering a little longer than he should have.

‘How is it that we’ve managed to avoid each for over ten years? I hear so much of you, I see a Maison McIntyre dress practically everywhere I go, I see flickers of you in the distance. Do you make it your life’s ambition to hide from me, to hide in the shadows of fabric?’

I smiled at his words. ‘Maybe I do. Maybe I find fabric is a better companion than most.’

Simultaneously we both looked over the garden, at the floating cocktail glasses, the cigarette holders, the feathers and shawls, listened to the shrieks, the laughter, the orchestra, the feet stamping on the dance floor; the highly strung exuberance just kept on increasing, building to a crescendo of frightening proportions. He turned to me, his dark, penetrating eyes looking straight into me. ‘I’ve realised that I find Maisie McIntyre a better companion than most.’ Then he grabbed me by the hand and said, ‘Come on, we need a drink.’ And pulled me into the maelstrom and towards the bar.

‘Two whiskey sours.’ He nodded at the barman.

‘And where has the elusive Aidan Cruickshank been?’ I asked, taking a sip of my drink.

‘He flits from light to dark, his favoured place being in the shadows, where he can indulge in his fantasies. Occasionally he emerges into the light just to make those that matter think he’s living a heterosexual life: he takes out a debutante, flirts with a bored wife, has a dalliance with an enlightened artist. It covers the trail to his real life.’

‘You sound sad,’ I said, seeing a lost little boy, vulnerable and in need of affection, no longer the confident, cool Aidan, once so smooth and charming.

‘Only you would know that. Only you can see beyond the well-cut suit and well-used patter.’ He sighed. ‘I’ve missed you,’ he said, before downing his cocktail in one.

‘Damn it.’ He turned to the bartender. ‘Another.’ And then back to me. ‘Why couldn’t you fall in love with me, and I in love with you? Wouldn’t our lives have been so much easier? It seems I’m doomed to love men, complicated men who want to bully me, use me and keep me under wraps. Life would be so much more fun if it could be lived with the notorious Maisie McIntyre.’ He picked up the newly filled glass and held it up. ‘Here’s to a life of whiskey sours in the shade.’ And promptly drained the glass.

‘So melodramatic!’ I laughed. But as I did so the inkling of an idea began to form, a whisper of a plan that might suit the both of us, but it wasn’t allowed to fully gather, the swirls blown into the night by an interruption from a tall, bulky woman with a loud, slurred voice.

‘Don’t you know Miss McIntyre here made me this slick new dress, she’s a genius. You really should go and see her; she’ll make sure you stay part of the right set.’ She pulled her companion towards me, so that she stood directly in front of me. ‘Miss McIntyre, I absolutely insist that you take on Marion and sort her out.’ She swayed slightly holding a cocktail glass in one hand and the girl in her other.