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mother kept her at home, for her business had picked up and she was busy. Lucette and Michèle had brought other girls, for whom she made short swinging skirts and beautiful crêpe de Chine blouses. Dolly was sent out to buy buttons,
passementerie
, perhaps a length of fabric. The rest of the time she sat brooding in the workroom. With the rumours of war one or two of the girls spoke of leaving Paris, but most of them stayed. If France were invaded business was bound to be good. It might not be what they were used to, but there was an officer class in every army, and after the war, which would surely end quickly one way or another, there was that bar in Saint-Raphaël to be thought of, that bright reward for their many days and nights of hard work. If they worried about anything they worried about the fate of Fanny and Dolly Schiff, for ‘Schiff’ denoted a suspect foreignness. Fanny, who had learned a certain amount of worldly wisdom, gave it out that she came from Alsace, although Schiff is not the most common of Alsatian names. Remembering her husband, of whom she never thought, she said that she was from Colmar. The disappearing husband had also been Jewish, but that was easy to overlook. These days she sometimes went to church if she were not too tired, but, like her daughter, in matters of faith she was entirely uninvolved. She did not need to learn patience, judged her fortitude to be equal to the task, and felt only discomfort when asked to contemplate Christ’s wounds.
    After the Occupation, it did not occur to her to pray forher own safety. She was too simple to believe herself in danger: in any event she had the protection of a street network of girls, many of whom had joined up with German officers. In due course Lucette and Michèle, Simone, Sylvie and the others had gone up in the world, had been elevated to the status of regular mistress, were being shown the sights of Paris as they had never seen them before. Their wardrobes increased exponentially: Fanny was busier than ever. She was paid in comestibles as well as in money, so that they never went hungry like the majority of Parisians. In this way they did quite well under the Occupation.
    Dolly brooded throughout the long dark evenings, when there was nothing to do and nowhere to go. Her impatience was growing, the impatience which was to be so marked a feature of her later life. At twenty she was still a virgin, and her expression was becoming a little fretful. When the Americans liberated Paris she was in the crowd in the place de la Concorde: within minutes she was being picked up, kissed, whirled around by the tallest man she had ever seen. Because she was so darkly pretty, because she was so beautifully and simply dressed, she was appropriated by her tall American and given what he called a raincheck for later in the evening. He told her to meet him in the bar of the Crillon, a hotel she had hardly ever walked past. But there was no point in going home, and she was not frightened. She squared her shoulders, and marched into the Crillon, her own proud looks and her mother’s exquisite dressmaking guaranteeing her a respectful welcome.
    Her American, Charlie, was with several of his friends; all seemed eager to know a French girl. She taught them a fewwords of French, for which they seemed exaggeratedly grateful, and in return she learned her first few phrases of English, which she was to perfect rapidly in their company. The genius of Dolly was her adaptability. No sooner was she in the company of strangers than she learned their language, studied their habits, noted their susceptibilities. With Charlie and his friends, all handsome in their olive drab uniforms, with that crew cut cleanliness she found so refreshingly different, she went through several stages of a belated girlhood: she danced, flirted, and above all seduced men, one or two of whom were genuinely in love with her. She also ate the enormous meals to which the conquerors were entitled,