A War of Flowers (2014) by Jane Thynne Read Free Book Online

float with colour and light, a mirrored cocoon of cream, black and gold. Around the lavish sitting room with its white
satin armchairs, lacquered, Ming dynasty Coromandel screens were grouped, whose silver cranes and dragons glinted beneath crystal chandeliers. Banks of sofas were piled with velvet cushions and
heavy gold drapes framed the long windows. Long, smoky Venetian mirrors turned the guests into Mondrians and oriental tables were clustered with silver vermeil boxes, bronze animals and a
gold-plated frog. The guests at Chanel’s salons – international socialites, playwrights, poets, politicians and artists, members of the
haut monde
– were just as gilded.
Jean Cocteau was a regular. Salvador Dali came frequently. Winston Churchill was known to call in.
    Clara caught sight of her elongated image and thought how easy it was to change a perspective. Being here, in this looking-glass world, had a transformative effect on the guests. Just like
certain actresses who, on the street, seemed as unremarkable as any waitress or shop assistant, yet were transformed into astonishing beauties once they stepped in front of the camera, so these
elegant people might have existed in a different universe from the anxious crowd outside. They even smelt different. Most of the people you passed on the street, or pressed up close against on the
Métro, smelt of old clothes, sweat-stained at worst, mothballed at best, but patched and mended and made good. Here there was a mingled aroma of fur, cigars, champagne and perfume, a haze of
opulence dominated by the complex undertow of Chanel’s own No.5, which the hostess liked to spritz on the coals in the fireplace.
    ‘
Good manners and a fine disposition are the best beauty treatments
.’ It might have seemed that way to Ovid, but that view wouldn’t pass muster here. The women, long and
lean in sumptuous confections of lace and tulle, with hair as sleek and polished as the pelts of the animals they wore, were made up to the nines. They held flutes of sparkling champagne and their
antique Russian necklaces, star medallions and enamel cuffs were studded with glass stones according to Chanel’s own fashion for costume jewellery, which mixed real gems with glass and paste,
so that one didn’t know what was real and what was fake. As far as the guests’ clothes went however they were all genuine. Every dress was by Chanel; no one would have dared to wear a
Schiaparelli suit or a dress by Patou, Lanvin or Mainbocher. The only fake in the room was Clara herself, who had always admired the sleek dresses and narrow jersey tailored suits that made
Chanel’s name, but would never be able to afford her prices. That evening she was wearing a green silk dress with a matching short jacket with pearl buttons made by her friend Steffi
Schaeffer, a Berlin dressmaker who tailored costumes for the Ufa studios and ran up clothes for Clara at bargain rates. Her hair was fastened at the back and fell to her shoulders in loose
curls.
    Sipping her champagne, she wondered if there was any way Chanel would be able to detect that Clara’s lipstick was by her arch rival Elizabeth Arden. The manager of the Elizabeth Arden
salon on the Kurfürstendamm, Sabine Friedmann, was another friend and often gave Clara samples of lipstick, mascara and the fabulous Eight Hour Cream. Indeed Sabine had sent a couple of
messages recently asking her to call in. She hoped it was for something nice.
    Across the room the mellifluous flow of French conversation was intercut with the jagged, polysyllabic growl of German. There was no need for Nazi uniforms here; the men in their impeccable Hugo
Boss suits and mandatory swastika pins were identifiably Nazi government officials, but in Chanel’s salon they were spared the looks of hostility or trepidation they met elsewhere in Paris.
That must account for their boisterous good humour. The leader of the group was a handsome man with sandy hair swept off a high