Daughters of Paris Page 5

  Colette eased her wrist free. ‘I will, Mère. Now, if you will excuse me, I am tired. This afternoon has been rather strenuous. I think I shall go lie down.’

  ‘I agree. I shall do the same until my headache goes,’ Delphine said, pouring the remaining dregs of a Seapea Fizz into a glass. She ambled over to the chaise longue in the window bay and lay down. Colette turned away, shaking her head. Delphine would be asleep there until Louis returned from the factory. She had not changed in the slightest.

  Colette did not get as far as the bedroom before she heard her name being called. It was a girlish voice that she had not heard for nearly a year. She turned to find Fleur standing at the top of the stairs, holding a pile of towels.

  Colette walked back along the landing to her, taking time to examine the girl who had once been her closest friend. She was much prettier than Colette was, Colette realised with a touch of envy. She had grown a little taller but was still small-boned and dainty. Her eyes looked incredibly large in her pale face, giving her a young and innocent air.

  It was disappointing to see that her former friend was still working here when she had been so ambitious. Colette felt a little guilty that she had not written to Fleur, but then again, Fleur had not written to her, and she had promised to.

  ‘Fleur! I wasn’t sure if you still lived here. I haven’t seen you since I got back.’

  ‘That was only yesterday, wasn’t it?’ Fleur asked. She gave a nervous smile that flickered on and off her face rapidly. ‘I don’t work here all the time. Four days a week I work in a bookshop, but Tante Agnes still needs my help.’

  ‘Oh that’s good to hear,’ Colette said with genuine pleasure. ‘You always liked books.’

  ‘Yes, I did. I mean, I do,’ Fleur replied. She pressed her lips together awkwardly.

  Colette curled her fingers into the cloth of her skirt. This was excruciating. They had once been so close, but now had nothing to say to each other.

  ‘Do you still share the room with your aunt?’ Colette asked.

  At this Fleur smiled. ‘No, your father was kind enough to let me turn one of the box rooms on the top floor into a bedroom of my own. It’s small but has everything I need.’

  ‘Then you will be almost above me,’ Colette said.

  ‘I’ll try to be quiet if I come in late,’ Fleur said.

  Colette wondered where she went that made her come in late. A bookshop wouldn’t be open in the evenings. Did she have a boyfriend? She must have friends. Again, Colette felt a stab of jealousy. Fleur had been her special friend but now they were practically strangers. Fleur had had the freedom of Paris all the time Colette had been away. It was unfair! She silently cursed Gunther once again.

  Fleur gave a brief smile. ‘We must talk properly at some point. We must have lots of news to share. You must tell me everything you did in England. I want to hear all about it.’

  A siren screamed in Colette’s head. Once she would have shared all of her secrets with Fleur, but Delphine and Louis had sworn her to secrecy about her shame. She couldn’t tell Fleur about vomiting until lunchtime while day by day her belly swelled and she read disappointment in Edith’s eyes. Couldn’t describe the agony of her body splitting wider over nine hours as a baby sought freedom. Couldn’t share the mix of relief and heartbreak that the child had been whisked away as soon as it had emitted its first wail, without Colette even learning its sex.

  ‘There isn’t much to tell, I’m afraid.’

  Fleur looked disappointed. She motioned to the towels in her arms. ‘Well … I had better put these away. It was nice to talk to you.’

  Fleur clearly felt she had been rebuffed, and though Colette could never explain why, it filled her with melancholy to do so. Colette nodded.

  ‘Of course. I’ll see you soon, I hope.’ She walked away but as she reached her bedroom, Fleur called her name again. Colette turned back.

  Fleur smiled nervously. ‘I planted the strawberries. They grew really well. I was sorry you missed them.’

  Colette had no idea what she was talking about, but it obviously meant something significant to Fleur.

  ‘Thank you. I’m sorry I missed them too.’

  She went into her room and looked around at the disarray of her luggage that was spread out on the bed and floor. She would arrange things in the morning but now she felt quite overwhelmed. She was a stranger in the home she had grown up in.

  It was only when she was brushing her hair before bed that she remembered what the reference to strawberries was. The scent of warm earth on baking hot tiles, mingled with floral fruit filled her memory. How simple her life had been then.

  Fleur had not completely forgotten Colette if she had planted things in their secret hideaway.

  It was good to know.

  Delphine drove her and Colette to the Luciennes’ hotel herself. Not many women in her circle could drive and she prided herself on the skill.

  ‘I met your father when I was chauffeuring a doctor during the Great War,’ she reminded her daughter.

  Colette nodded, only half paying attention while she looked out of the window. Paris had changed since had been away. Street names that Colette recognised were now accompanied by newer signs indicating the location of shelters.

  There was also a level of paranoia there hadn’t been before, which echoed what she had seen in England. Everything was overlaid with a veneer of anxious anticipation that things were about to change. Like the British, the French government had issued gas masks, which were to be carried everywhere.

  ‘Are you listening?’ Delphine asked. ‘You aren’t, are you? What are you thinking about?’

  Colette dragged her attention away from a huddle of pinched-faced, foreign-looking women and children who stood at the edge of the entrance to the Bois du Boulogne. They had a hunted look about them, as if they were used to keeping one eye always over their shoulders.

  ‘Everyone is anxious here. It was the same in England. Anticipation that things are about to change. Those women there…’ She pointed at the group. ‘They might have been dancing and choosing autumn hats from fashion magazines only a few months ago and now they are begging for aid on foreign streets. What if the same thing happens to us?’

  Delphine grimaced. ‘It won’t. And don’t mention the subject over lunch.’

  ‘But the lunch is in aid of Czechoslovakian refugees,’ Colette pointed out.

  Delphine shook her head and sighed wearily as if Colette was simple-minded. ‘Yes, but who wants to be reminded of that while we’re trying to enjoy ourselves? We’ll raise money to help them. That’s enough.’

  The atmosphere at the event was forcedly bright. The guests at the luncheon were women who usually picked slowly at dishes but today they ate everything, as if preparing for future hunger.

  Talk of war was consciously avoided until Madame Brassai announced in a voice swimming with irritation, ‘My dressmaker has left the city. Jewish, so of course the whole family have simply abandoned the atelier. It’s very inconvenient.’

  The room rippled with conversation as other women described their own experiences of closed shops and departed workers. Colette pushed her spoon around the plate, scraping up the final smear of lemon crème brulée and thinking that however inconvenient it was for the women to have to order clothes from elsewhere, at least they still had homes to return to.

  Chapter Five

  When Colette accompanied Sophie and Josette to the cabaret that evening, the atmosphere was wildly different. They stopped at the bottom of the steps of Montmartre in front of a modest doorway with a sign that read ‘Cabaret des Papillons’. They were admitted into a dimly lit corridor, but when they passed through the heavy velvet curtains Colette discovered she had stepped into a world of vibrant hedonism.

  Screeching jazz was blasting out from the band while women wearing barely more than a few feathers kicked their legs and shimmied across the stage. On the dance floor couples held each other more intimately, it seemed to Colette, than she and Gunther had been on the night they had first made love in the Secret Garden.

  Josette and Sophie rid themselves of their coats and revealed themselves to be wearing dresses that were short, sleeveless and practically backless.

  ‘I think I am overdressed,’ Colette whispered to Josette. She smoothed down her black satin dress. It was calf-length with wide straps and cut on the bias to drape over her hips and emphasise her waist. It was more suited for dinner with her parents’ circle than the wild dance floor where couples flung each other around and shrieked with delight in time with the throbbing beat of the bass drum.

  ‘A little,’ Josette said, giving Colette an appraising look. ‘But you’re pretty enough that it doesn’t matter and no one will be looking at your dress. You will know next time.’

  Sophie took Colette by the hand and wove a path through the tightly packed tables to the front, right beside the band, waving and calling hello to various people. There was a small table with a card bearing the girls’ surname.

  ‘I’ll find us some partners while Josette finds us some drinks. You wait here and make sure nobody tries to take our table,’ she instructed. She disappeared back into the darkness of the room, while Josette waved her hand towards a waiter clad in an immaculate, crisp white uniform and reeled off an order without even asking Colette what she might like. The dance partners arrived before the Dempseys that Josette assured Colette she would adore. Two men and a woman. Colette wrinkled her brow in confusion.

  ‘Victorine is for me.’ Sophie giggled, wrapping her arms around the neck of the statuesque ice-blonde woman dressed in a man’s tuxedo. They whirled off together into the crowd and vanished.

  ‘Which do you want?’ Josette asked, cocking her head towards the two men. Both were simil
ar with slicked back brown hair. One had a thin pencil moustache and the other was clean-shaven. Other than that, there was very little to distinguish between them.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Colette said.

  The man nearest to her – the moustachioed one – reached for her hand and pulled her from her seat.

  ‘You’re mine in that case, mademoiselle.’ He grinned as he spoke and swung Colette into his arms, breathing a fug of alcohol and tobacco into her face. She almost recoiled, but managed not to. They danced on the edge of the crowd, Colette resisting her partner’s attempts to pull her further into the swell of bodies.

  ‘Relax, ma bichette, you’re too stiff,’ he murmured into her ear.

  Contrary to his instruction, Colette grew even tenser. It had been so long since a man had touched her and the feel of strong arms around her waist, and his chest pressing against her breasts made her heart thud and blood rush to her throat and cheeks. He had called her a doe, and for a moment her mind filled with the image of a wide-eyed creature she had seen standing impassively on the Yorkshire moorland just before being brought down with a shotgun.

  ‘I’m sorry, it’s been a while since I’ve been anywhere like this. It’s all very strange. Everything seems so wild.’

  He gave a leering smile. ‘Of course we are wild. Nobody wants to miss a moment. The world might end tomorrow and we want to take advantage of it while we can. We can sit and have a drink though if you’d rather.’

  They returned to the table. The Dempsey turned out to taste strongly of apples and liquorice. It was interesting, but Colette decided she’d rather have champagne. She sipped it again and thought back to what the man had said.

  ‘What do you mean while it lasts? While what lasts?’

  He lit a cigarette and took a drag before answering. ‘Peace. I work in the government offices and I can tell you that there is great concern in all departments. We are increasing munitions manufacture and preparing for defence.’

  ‘Of Paris?’ Colette’s heart leaped to her throat.

  ‘Of course not, silly child. But of the borders. Austria might have welcomed Adolf Hitler’s incursion, but France never will. He says he won’t but, just in case he decides to change his mind, we will be prepared.’

  He tossed his cocktail down his throat and held his hand out. ‘Now, let’s dance. That’s what we’re here for after all.’

  He pushed her backwards, taking control of the steps and for the rest of the evening, no doubt thanks to the Dempsey, Colette managed to put all sinister thoughts out of her mind and enjoy herself. By the time the band left the stage, her calves and feet ached.

  ‘Do you still think English men are the most exciting?’ Sophie asked as they gathered their coats.

  Colette thought before answering. She had danced with a series of men, all more charming and debonair than the last, but no one in particular had given her the internal shivers that Gunther had.

  ‘Perhaps.’

  Sophie had spent the evening dancing with Victorine. There had been other female couples and a few male couples dancing together. Seeing them and realising no one else was shocked made Colette feel very unworldly. ‘I do think men in general are exciting. Don’t you?’ she asked.

  ‘Not really,’ Sophie said. ‘They are a necessary evil if one wants to have children and a home, but I get my kicks in other ways. Did you have fun?’

  Colette slipped her sable throw over her shoulder. ‘I really did, though now the music is over, I’m thinking about what the first man I danced with told me. He said he thinks war is coming. He said that is why everyone is so determined to have fun.’

  ‘He probably just said that in the hope you would go to bed with him,’ Josette scoffed. ‘We are determined to have fun because we can. War might be fun though, our mothers seemed to enjoy themselves. Ours nursed in the American Hospital in Neuilly and said it was wonderful to be free and busy.’

  Josette and Sophie’s mother still enjoyed being busy from what Colette had seen. She oversaw the female staff at the hotel and busied herself with organising charitable dinners and lunches there for various causes. Colette couldn’t say whether Delphine had enjoyed her time nursing at Montfaucon during the Great War, but she seemed happiest in the house with a cocktail glass in her hand.

  ‘Anyway, there won’t be a war,’ Sophie said decisively. She linked her arms through the other girls’ and they walked back down the winding streets to the Metro station together.

  As long as Colette could remember, the family had spent August in a house on the coast of Normandy where the breeze was fresh and clean enough to make the heat bearable. Her stay in England meant she had missed a year and she was devastated to learn the family would remain in Paris. Even so, she did not take the news as hard as Delphine who stormed around with a frown for days.

  ‘All this because your father wants to buy some old houses to turn into another factory. Even if he has to stay in Paris, I don’t see why we can’t go, or why I can’t go myself. I could stay with Max and Aline in their house. They always rent somewhere with plenty of rooms for visitors.’

  ‘You could go and sit in the garden,’ Colette suggested, opening the window of her mother’s salon and leaning out to catch the breeze. The temperature remained high even into the evening, and however often one bathed it was impossible not to become sticky and dusty. ‘There is some shade on the terrace and a lovely breeze by the fountain.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Delphine said with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. ‘You don’t seem to care that we can’t go to Houlgate.’

  Her voice was almost accusatory and Colette made her mind up not to admit her annoyance even under torture.

  ‘I haven’t been back in Paris long enough to grow bored even though it’s hot,’ she said airily.

  Delphine narrowed her eyes. ‘There isn’t a man, is there? You haven’t heard from Gunther?’

  Colette felt a violent stab in her breast. ‘No I haven’t. And I won’t, I imagine. I don’t even know if he is still in Paris. He probably returned to Trier.’

  ‘He will no doubt have enlisted in the army or that dreadful youth organisation,’ Delphine said, frowning. ‘It’s just as well that things ended when they did. Just imagine if you had married him. You would have had to leave Paris and join the Nazi party.’

  ‘You’re talking nonsense,’ Colette snapped in a rare moment of inescapable irritation. ‘Gunther is far too old to join the Hitlerjugend and I don’t think everybody in Germany is a Nazi. Gunther wasn’t and he wanted to live in Paris to become a film star.’ She dropped her head. ‘Besides, he never wanted to marry me, as you well know, and it upsets me to hear you talk like that.’

  She stood and walked out of the salon. Even if Delphine did not want to sit in the garden, Colette would take advantage of the cool shade. She went outside and saw Fleur was already sitting on the iron bench at the end of the terrace.

  Colette ambled over.

  ‘Hello, Fleur, isn’t it warm!’

  ‘Very. But the night stock smell lovely currently. I’d rather sit out here than in the kitchen.’

  Fleur was working her way through a pile of mending from the basket at her side and had her feet up, stretching out along the whole of the bench. She didn’t move, even though Colette was standing, so it was pretty clear she didn’t want company.

  ‘Well, it’s nice to see you. I’d better go get ready; I’m going dancing again.’

  Fleur snipped off the thread and gave her a quick smile. ‘Have a nice time.’

  Colette stood for a moment, feeling like the intruder. It was toe-curling. Fleur was friendly enough when they met, but she had her own life and interests and the closeness they had shared was long gone. She walked back to the house feeling like a cloud was filling her stomach. In her bedroom, she pulled out her new dress and felt slightly better. It was emerald-green silk with thin straps and a fringe of silver beads that finished just below her knees. Much better for the club than her old black dress.