Page 78 of Sisters Making Mischief
Phew, got away with it then.
‘And this,’ Paulette said handing over a white silk shirt with what looked like a pattern of tadpoles all over it.
After some hesitation, remembering the parlous state of my rather ancient bra, and looking around for somewhere to strip off, I gave up and hauled my T-shirt off.
An immediate barrage of tutting filled the room from both Paulette and Eugénie, who dramatically pretended to faint off the side of her chair and had to be caught by Isabel, who heaved her back upright.
‘No, I cannot believe what I am seeing,’ she croaked.
‘What?’ I said, looking down. Okay, it sort of fitted, and it was still what I thought of as my comfortable bra. It had once been beige, so perhaps they were overreacting?
‘I will tell you a secret that all French women know, that my mother told me,’ Paulette said, ‘Si une femme porte quelque chose de beau sous se vêtements, elle s’envoie un message très puissant.’
‘If a woman wears something beautiful under her clothes, she sends a powerful message to herself,’ Eugénie interrupted, pointing at my bra, ‘andthatis not powerful, notformidable, that is not even slightly persuasive. There is no place in your wardrobe for… that!’
‘But I like it,’ I said, rather feebly, ‘it’s one of my favourites.’
They both laughed.
Paulette dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. ‘You English! It’s an old bra, not a beloved toy!’
‘But no one is going to see it,’ I said.
I cast a despairing look at Isabel, who just shrugged and pulled aside the neck of her shirt to show me the strap of ascarlet and very lacy bra. Her eyes sparkled with something like mischief.
‘You must go to Zaza in the next town,’ Paulette said very firmly, ‘c’est impératif,and tell her I sent you. She will give youune réduction– a discount.’
25
We went to Zaza.
Despite my feeble protestations that it wasn’t necessary, I was overruled by all three of them. It wasn’t as though I was planning to show my underwear to anyone.
Tant pis, was the answer. Tough, you’re going anyway.
Zaza was a redoubtable woman in a rigid black dress who looked as though she had been corseted by armourers. She didn’t speak much English at all, but what she couldn’t say she more than made up for with hand gestures and eye rolling. And so, colours and styles were offered, some of them quite frightening to my untutored eye, straps were lifted, and things tightened until I felt like a horse being put into its harness.
Isabel sat outside the curtains for a while, flicking through magazines on a comfortable armchair, and then started wandering around the little shop, looking through the rails and muttering things like:oh yes, I have this one, and this one. I like the look of that, perhaps Felix would be frightened, on the other hand he might think all his birthdays had come at once.
Evidently my sister didn’t have such a cavalier attitude towards these things as I did.
After an exhausting couple of hours, we left the shop with a carrier bag containing things which Zaza had approved, and despite the discount, probably cost more than I had spent on underwear in ten years. She also took away my old favourite chain store bra with amouéof distaste as though she wished she had tongs, presumably to consign it to the dustbin. So my hopes about keeping it and maybe wearing it a bit longer were dashed.
‘Right then, you are sorted, apart from your hair and your shoes,’ Isabel said.
‘Leave me alone, haven’t I suffered enough?’ I said.
‘Stop moaning, I have some you can borrow, kitten heels, pale champagne colour, go with anything.’
‘When do you wear kitten heels?’ I said, rather astonished. All I had seen my sister in up to then was walking boots and very casual clothes, sometimes decorated with mud and dog hair.
‘You’d be surprised what I get up to,’ she said with a wink.
I didn’t ask. Perhaps I should.
On Friday I spent the morning helping Isabel out in thebrocantebarn and we had a very successful time. It was strange how things that had remained unsold when they were ridiculously cheap, suddenly sold when the price increased. Perhaps it was a psychological thing, that second-hand things selling for a few euros weren’t worth having and were disregarded as junk, but the same items at five times the price were vintage and therefore desirable.
This set me thinking about the parallel between that and my own sense of self-worth. If I didn’t value myself, why should anyone else?
