A New Dream by Maggie Ford (world of reading .TXT) 📕

prospect of going dancing and having fun, only this time without Jimmy Waring whom she had now apparently got over.

‘I’ll soon find somebody else,’ she said brightly, full of self-assurance. ‘Plenty more fish in the sea and next time I won’t make the same mistakes again.’

She took it for granted that she’d land on her feet and she did, with Simon of course offering to find and pay for a flat for her to live in.

Julia might have thought he was being taken for a ride by her sister, but she had no time to dwell on it. She’d had enough of worrying about her family. Work was coming in too thick and fast now for her to worry about anything else.

Julia would have spent all day in her small workroom, designing and draping the results on a plaster mannequin she’d had for years, if she hadn’t had to keep up a mounting succession of meetings with shops willing to take her creations, or go looking for just the right materials for her work. She now had the services of a small factory to turn out copies of her various designs to send round the West End shops, and she was slowly making a name for herself. Simon too was well occupied with his own side of the business; he was now expert at knowing just what the public wanted in fashion jewellery.

By September their present premises were beginning to prove too small for a business that was rapidly expanding. There was no doubt that the economic situation was having an influence; there was more money around, and fashions were becoming more and more outrageous, with day and evening dresses skimpy, hems the shortest in history, hardly hiding a stocking top.

Women’s hair too was being worn almost as short as a man’s, in styles known as the shingle, the Eton crop and the bob. These were mostly hidden under deep, head-hugging cloche hats that Julia now bought in specifically to match each dress she designed. Every moment of her days and much of her evenings was taken up designing ever more exciting styles to cope with customer demand. She was creating a label to be stocked in a few West End boutiques and needed to find another cutter to help Betty. In addition she was now employing six machinists. There simply wasn’t the room to accommodate such a workforce and even Simon was getting worried.

‘We’re just going to have to find larger premises,’ he said to Julia one evening in late September as they lay together in bed before falling asleep. ‘I’m tired of living over the premises anyway. We’ve enough in the bank to expand and start living in a decent flat, somewhere we can entertain without feeling ashamed.’

These days they needed to entertain business people, maybe a client or two, but always in a fine restaurant or nightclub.

‘It would be so good to be able to bring people back for drinks, hold a party or two,’ he went on, but Julia wasn’t thinking of that.

‘What about my mother?’ she asked, sleep momentarily swept aside. ‘We can’t leave her here. I know she has James and Ginny but when they’re not here, I’m only a call away. And she’s not getting any younger.’

He put his arm around her and drew her to him. ‘We’ll find her something nice and roomy nearby and I’ll pay someone to cook and keep the place tidy.’

‘It’ll have to be very near, otherwise she might feel she’s being ostracized.’

‘I don’t see why. She was the one who threw Stephanie out, and you too, darling. She’ll still have Ginny and James living with her.’

‘One day both of them will marry and leave her.’

‘Then she’d be on her own anyway, darling. Time marches on. You can’t go on coddling her. She doesn’t appreciate it anyway; she still sees us as living in sin.’

That remark, though made lightly, started her thinking that they should again discuss when they would finally set a date for their wedding. But before she could say anything, he had laughed at his little quip and squeezed her tightly to him, kissing her, and she knew it was a moment to make love and not worry over anything else for the time being.

Twenty

‘I can’t believe this is all ours!’

Julia twisted round and round with joy, flinging wide her arms as if to embrace the huge lounge. The flat, with its two large bedrooms, fine reception room and beautifully appointed kitchen also had a lovely bathroom. No longer would they have to run across a workroom to the toilet, or use a tin bath.

‘I never dreamed years ago that we would ever live in any place like this,’ she went on.

After four months of pent-up anxiety about whether or not they could afford it, the place was finally theirs. As well as the flat, they had purchased new business premises which boasted a large showroom, an inviting reception area, a workroom and all the facilities, a separate cutting room and good-sized office where business could be done in comfort. All this had diminished her and Simon’s finances to an extent that had been terrifying. But it was done now and it was up to them to make a success of it.

She had no qualms on that score. These past four months had been productive, her worries about her family thrown aside to concentrate on her own future for a change. Compared to the well-established fashion houses, Jacques Doucet, Paul Poirot, Worth, Lucile, Callot Soeurs, she was still small fry but proud to have her creations known by the name Julia Layzell. Though she and Simon were still not married, who cared so long as a Layzell garment was the one to have?

She might never be up there with the names that were now breaking new ground, Elsa Schiaparelli, Coco Chanel or Madeleine Vionnet, but she could always dream that one day it could happen. And as she told herself, if you dream hard