They were in the fashion section of the Victoria and Albert Museum, a place where Peter had never ventured before, although he had been elsewhere in the place, like every London school child. Voluntarily to the British Galleries; he had been to see the throne of the Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the Sacred Silver and Stained Glass on Level 3 and the Asian Galleries on Level 1, lingering over carpets, wood and stone rather than the ephemera of clothes. The world divided on entry through the main doors, he supposed, between those who wandered and sat, rapt, and those herded through and those who took notes on the history of every kind of domestic sophistication from the humble to the palatial, to the fruits of industry to those of piracy. He could see why he had been forced on the school trip, in an attempt to see how history connects, all inventions lead to variations upon themselves and how everything, it seemed to him then, stemmed from a mysterious East. He regretted how bored he had been. He was not bored now.
He could see a garment as a work of art, rather than a means to an end. Hen Joyce and everyone else in here looked equally drab when staring through glass at spotlit clothes designed by Givenchy and Calvin Klein. Personally, he liked the idea of crinolines. He was trying to think like a woman, and as a woman he would have liked big clothes because it would stop anyone coming too close. That would suit Marianne Shearer, too. Wig and gown had a similar effect.
‘Have you got a favourite in here?’ he asked Hen.
She led him to it. From the other side of the glass, he saw a simple dress of sky-blue linen with short sleeves and artful seams delineating a high waist and a skirt falling to ankle length, with large pockets inset at the side. The only other detail was a lace collar and a floppy polka dot bow at the neck.
‘That’s my dress,’ Hen said. ‘It smells of summer and happy days on the beach. It’s a proper, useful frock for romping around in and playing hide and seek. The sort my mother made for me weren’t so different. My mum was influenced by the clothes she had, in the days when fashion was rationed after the war. Mass-produced, using minimal labour and cloth. You could feminise it with padded shoulders and nipped-in waists, but buttons were limited to three, and turn-back cuffs eliminated as wasteful. Hardy Amies specialised. My mother made a little material go a long way. You can see why the “new look” followed. I don’t think Shearer would have wanted to wear this linen dress. Too plain.’
‘You know so much,’ Peter said.
‘No, I don’t,’ Hen protested. ‘I’m reading the labels. I’m making it up as I go along. Look, here’s that cape I told you about. Similar colours to that skirt. The skirt’s a copy of the fabric. It’s better as a cape.’
Peter stared through the glass and turned away, blinded by colour.
‘Nineteen forty-nine… American… They obviously didn’t have rationing.’
The lifelike models unnerved him slightly. He wanted them to move.
She led the way out of there, not to the grey daylight outside that he craved, but to another floor. She walked very fast and he had time to notice what she was wearing: cropped trousers, a cardigan with flowers for buttons. With her swift steps in soft, red boots, she looked like a pantomime boy, treating this as her own stage, taking him exactly where she wanted. Upstairs, downstairs, in my lady’s chamber.
‘This is the interactive bit,’ Hen said. ‘Just to give kids and people like you an idea of what a difference clothes can make. Here you can get an idea. They leave things for people to try on. Don’t worry, I won’t make you do it.’
They were in a room with a stripped wood floor, displays of curios, turquoise walls, and free-standing mirrors, in which he could see himself looking rather down at heel. He ignored his own image and watched Hen. She was wrapping a boned bodice round her own torso, pulling in the laces at the front.
‘A bustier, for someone without a lady’s maid,’ she said before putting on a hooped skirt and tying it round her waist. The skirt had seven hoops of cane sewn inside the cotton, the broadest hoop at the bottom. It fell in a circle round her feet, swaying and moving as she walked round the room.
‘These are the undergarments of an early Victorian lady,’ Hen said. ‘They were designed to make her walk upright. See?’
He could see. A lady would walk upright with her skirts moving in front and behind. She would flow, she would glide on invisible feet with easy grace.
‘Not suitable for trains,’ Hen said. ‘But it does make a lady walk tall, and turns a woman into a lady. If you couldn’t add to your own height or status, you could always use volume to make an entrance.’
‘What’s the modern equivalent of making a statement like that? I mean making an entrance purely by using your clothes?’
‘Nudity, I suppose,’ Hen said. ‘That’s the only way left.’
‘Works for me. Would you like to demonstrate that,
too?’
She grinned at him. He thought for a moment she would respond to the merest suggestion of a dare, strip off her clothes and run through the august halls of the Victoria and Albert Museum naked as a rose. The idea was appealing: he could see her taking the challenge. Hen grinned wider. Then the phone in his pocket rang, in tune with the one in her bag. Both fumbled; each of them walked to opposite corners of the room and answered the summons, Peter because he could ignore his phone once or twice, but never indefinitely, Hen because hers never usually rang at all. It was strange and suddenly extremely funny to watch someone speak into a mobile phone while wearing a hooped petticoat. It was as if time had moved sideways, leaving them marooned somewhere in limbo. Murmured voices on mobiles in a panelled, Victorian room. Hen said, ‘Yes, I’m sorry. I’ll speak to you as soon as I get out of here.’ On his own phone, Peter thought Thomas Noble’s strident voice could be heard from the other end of the building, saying what the hell was he doing pissing about in the middle of the day and would he please go somewhere he didn’t have to talk in whispers? Where was he, in church or something?
Of one accord, they listened and replaced their phones. Hen took off skirt and bodice, leaving it where she had found it for the next member of the public, and walked out of the room towards the exit. Both seemed in need of air; Peter was glad to follow her, otherwise he would have been lost. Got to go and see a lover. Come here first, it’s on the way. Wear clothes. What?
Outside, winter drizzle marred the view of Brompton Road. Hen looked bemused and upset. Peter wanted the grin back, took her arm and led her, unresisting, down the grand steps, across the deafening lanes of traffic to the other side. The sudden noise was disorientating after all the respectful silence of the museum, making him wonder which was the real world. Starbucks beckoned, a hundred yards away.
Rain hung like glitter on her hair as she sat, waiting for coffee. Peter thought at least I’m good for something, waiting impatiently in line for the laborious making of a cappuccino. He added pastries: she looked as if she needed sugar.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked gently.
‘My father,’ she said. ‘My very angry father.’
‘Can I help?’
She was tearing a croissant into very small pieces, spreading crumbs.
‘I don’t think so. You’re a stranger.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not. Not any more.’
He had read too much.
Continuation of cross-examination of Henrietta Joyce by Marianne Shearer, QC
MS. I’d like to go into your family background, Miss Joyce. Not a lot, only a little.
Interruption: Is this relevant?
MS. Highly relevant, your Honour. It’s relevant to establish what exactly motivates this witness to conspire with her younger sister in the creation of a tissue of lies and false allegations against a man she did not know. Family relationships are the key to such motivations. I’ll be brief.