Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris & Mrs. Harris Goes to New York by Paul Gallico Read Free Book Online Page B

coat and clothes of the Countess Wyszcinska, for whom she cleaned from four to six in the afternoons, the one she sometimes sniffed in the streets when, as she passed, someone opened the door of a luxurious motor car. It was compounded of perfume and fur and satins, silks and leather, jewellery and face powder. It seemed to arise from the thick grey carpets and hangings, and fill the air of the grand staircase before her.
    It was the odour of the rich, and it made her tremble once more and wonder what she, Ada ’Arris, was doing there instead of washing up the luncheon dishes for Mrs Fford Foulks at home, or furthering the career of a real theatrical star like Pamela Penrose by seeing that her flat was neat and tidy when her producer friends came to call.
    She hesitated, her feet seemingly sinking into the pile of the carpet up to her ankles. Then her fingers crept into her handbag and tested the smooth feel of the roll of American bills. ‘That’s why you’re ’ere, Ada ’Arris. That says you’re ruddy well as rich as any of ’em. Get on with it then, my girl.’
    She mounted the imposing and deserted staircase, it then being half-past eleven in the morning. On the first half-landing there was but a single silver slipper in a glass showcase let into the wall, on the second turn there was a similar showcase housing an outsize bottle of Dior perfume. But otherwise there were no goods of any kind on display, nor were there crowds of people rushing up and down the stairs as in Marks and Spencer’s or Selfridges.Nowhere was there any sign of anything that so much as resembled the shops to which she was accustomed.
    On the contrary, the elegance and atmosphere of the deserted staircase gave her the feeling of a private house, and one on a most grand scale at that. Was she really in the right place? Her courage threatened to ooze again, but she told herself that sooner or later she must come upon some human being who would be able to direct her to the dresses, or at least put her right if she were in the wrong building. She pressed on and indeed on the first floor landing came upon a dark handsome woman in her early forties who was writing at a desk. She wore a simple black dress relieved by three rows of pearls at the neck, her coiffure was neat and glossy; her features were refined, her skin exquisite, but closer inspection would have revealed that she looked tired and care-worn and that there were dark hollows beneath her eyes.
    Behind her, Mrs Harris noted a fair-sized room opening into a second one, grey-carpeted like the stairs, with fine silk hangings at the windows, and furnished only with several rows of grey and golden chairs around the perimeter. A few floor-to-ceiling pier mirrors completed the décor, but of anything to sell or even so much as to look at, there was not a sign.
    Mme Colbert, the manageress, had had a bad morning. A usually kind and gracious lady, she had let herself quarrel with M. Fauvel, the young and handsome head of the accounts department, of whom otherwise she was rather fond, and had sent him upstairs again to his domain with his ears reddening.
    It was merely a matter of his inquiring about a client whose bills seemed to run too long without payment. On any other day Mme Colbert might have favoured the accountantwith a penetrating and not unhumorous summing-up of the client’s characteristics, idiosyncrasies, and trustworthiness, since sooner or later they all bared themselves to her. Instead of which she railed angrily at him that it was her business to sell dresses and his to collect the money and she had not the time to inspect the bank accounts of clients. That was his affair.
    Besides giving short answers all morning, she had ticked off several of the sales girls and even permitted herself to scold Natasha, the star model of the House, for being late for a fitting, when, as she knew well, the Métro and the buses were engaging in a go-slow strike. What made it worse was that the