Wild Lavender (19 page)

‘You have beautiful eyes and cheekbones, but they are diminished by the way you wear your hair. I think you should cut your hair short. It would be much more chic and Madame Baquet would love it.’

Styling advice from someone as well groomed as Mademoiselle Franck could not go unheeded. ‘I would,’ I said, ‘but I have no one to do it for me here. My mother trimmed my hair at home.’

Mademoiselle Franck shook her head. ‘You must have a professional cut it. You don’t want to end up looking like a boy. I can take you to my salon, if you like. We can go now.’

We caught the
métro
to Tuileries and walked across the Place Vendôme because, although the wind had turned icy, Mademoiselle Franck insisted that I see it. The massive space was surrounded by buildings with classical pediments and columns. Mademoiselle Franck told me the names of the cars parked around the Colonne Vendôme in the centre. ‘That is a Rolls-Royce, that is a Voisin, and that is a Bugatti.’ Then she tugged my arm and pointed to the window of a jewellery shop. ‘Look at those,’ she cried.

My eyes nearly popped out when I saw the velvet bust bedecked in diamonds—real diamonds. Minute spotlights reflected off a mirror behind the bust and added to the chimerical effect of the stones. Next to the jeweller was a
couturier
. The mannequins in the window were draped in
crêpe de Chine
dresses with fitted sleeves and gilt buttons.

‘That is the Hotel Ritz, over there,’ said Mademoiselle Franck, pointing to a palatial building to the left of the square.

The decadence all around sent me into a panic. ‘Mademoiselle Franck, I don’t think that I will be able to afford your hairdresser.’

‘Please, call me Odette,’ she said, linking her arm with mine and tugging me forward. ‘The hairstyle is my treat. I wanted you to see the Vendôme because this is where you will shop when you are rich and famous. When you appear at the Casino de Paris, then you can return the favour to me.’

Madame Chardin’s salon was on Rue Vivienne. While it wasn’t the Place Vendôme, one look at the gold fittings and the marble reception table and I could understand why Monsieur Etienne put away a third of Odette’s income. The customers were not bunched together, the way men are in barber shops. Each woman sat in an individual cubicle created by Japanese silk screens. I caught a glimpse of a customer with a Pekinese on her lap and her hair in rollers. In the cubicle next to her a woman was having her hair brushed into a lofty bouffant by a girl in a white uniform.

‘
Bonjour
, Mademoiselle Franck!’ called a woman wearing a taupe dress with a pearl brooch in the shape of a peacock. She strode across the tiled floor and welcomed Odette with kisses. The woman was about forty with chestnut hair sliced straight across her forehead and graduating in length from the nape of her neck to her chin.

‘
Bonjour
, Madame Chardin,’ Odette returned. ‘I want you to do something wonderful with my friend’s hair.’

Madame Chardin glanced at me. Next to Odette I must have appeared miserable in my country dress and worn coat, but if she noticed, Madame Chardin had the good manners not to show it.

‘Of course.’ She clapped her hands. ‘I can even do it myself because I am free right now.’

Madame Chardin steered us to a cubicle at the far end of the salon. She slipped on a white cosmetician’s coat and laid out some bottles and combs on a tray. I eyed her curiously. Most women her age were turning matronly, but with her slim figure and effervescent manner she maintained a sense of the
gamine
about her. Odette lowered herself into a seat while Madame Chardin perched me on a stool. She grabbed a comb and tugged it through my knotty hair. Far from being appalled at my disorderly tresses, Madame Chardin seemed to grow more excited with each strand she managed to untangle. Perhaps such a challenge did not come her way often. I must have been to Madame Chardin what Africa was to an explorer.

After she had finished combing my hair, Madame Chardin brushed it back from my face and traced a shape in the mirror with her finger. ‘Good cheekbones,’ she muttered. ‘A pretty mouth and a strong jaw. We don’t want anything too short. What’s needed is a soft fringe and some curls to frame your face.’

‘Exactly!’ agreed Odette, leaning forward in her chair and clasping her knees.

Madame Chardin picked up a pair of scissors and snipped lengths of about ten inches from my hair, dropping them into a basket by her feet. I gulped as the reality of what was happening hit me. I couldn’t remember ever having short hair. If the style was a disaster, I had no idea how long it would take to grow back.

‘It is a rich colour,’ said Madame Chardin. ‘My husband once had a racehorse—’

The bell on the salon counter tinkled and a voice boomed around the space. ‘Can somebody do my hair? I’m in a hurry.’

We turned to see a girl standing by the reception desk. She wore a cloche hat, a mauve dress with hibiscus flowers embroidered on it and brocade shoes. One of Madame
Chardin’s assistants greeted the woman and led her to a cubicle.

Madame Chardin resumed cutting my hair but leaned forward to whisper to us. ‘I like those American girls. They speak their minds and they’re fun. But
oh la la
, they have no idea how to dress!’

‘So many colours on a large girl isn’t flattering,’ agreed Odette.

‘Let us hope no one mistakes her for a sofa,’ said Madame Chardin and winked. ‘Mind you, I didn’t learn how to dress properly until I was already married.’

‘Tell Simone about Mademoiselle Chanel,’ Odette urged her.

Madame Chardin stretched my hair between her fingers. ‘When my husband and I first moved from Biarritz to open my salon here, I was nervous about Parisian women and desperate to please. Mademoiselle Chanel, the
couturière
whose salon is around the corner on Rue Cambon, was one of my first clients. She had cut her hair short before anybody else did and came to me because she had heard from her Biarritz clientele that I was good.

‘One day she arrived in a terrible mood because she’d had an argument with some buyers. She wasn’t happy with the cubicle I put her in, complaining that my hands were too cold and that the chair was too low and it was hurting her back. While her hair was setting I had to sneak out for a sip of
fine À l’eau
to stop my hands from shaking. When I returned she was raving about what awful dressers the Americans were and that you couldn’t teach them anything. “We are a country of restraint,” she moaned. “They wallow in excess.”

‘That day, because I knew Mademoiselle Chanel was coming in, I had worn my best dress and thought that I looked
très chic
. I didn’t put on my cosmetician’s coat, as I normally do, because I wanted to impress her. In her bad mood she didn’t notice anything, so I tried to humour her by asking, “And how would you dress the Americans, Mademoiselle Chanel?”

‘She sprang from her chair and seized my scissors, her eyes ablaze. For one terrifying moment I thought she had lost her mind and was going to cut my throat. She pointed the scissors at me and snipped the baubles off my collar. Then, before I could register what she was doing, she cut off the lace from my waistline and the ruffles from my sleeves. The only thing she left was my gardenia corsage. My four thousand franc dress was in ruins.

‘“There,” she said, oblivious to the tears in my eyes. “Always take away, pare down. Never add! The Americans wear too much of everything.”’

‘That’s terrible,’ I cried, not quite able to imagine what a four thousand franc dress would look like. ‘What an awful woman! Did you make her pay for the dress?’

‘Ma chérie,’
laughed Madame Chardin, ‘it was the best lesson I have had in my life. Decoration must have no purpose other than to set off simplicity.’

I stared at Madame Chardin. She was speaking a foreign language. ‘I thought decorations were to make things pretty.’

‘
Look at this
,
’ said Madame Chardin, stepping back and opening her coat to reveal her dress and elaborate brooch. ‘The line must be plain and perfect. Then you choose one decorative thing so that, like a diamond on a piece of velvet, it will stand out. The Americans can never make up their minds between the pair of red shoes, the African beads, the jade bracelet.
They wear them all!
But in order to be stylish
,
you must know where to draw the line. Choose one decorative item and one only. That is the secret of looking
chic
.’

When Madame Chardin had finished cutting my hair, she heated a curling iron and put waves into my side locks and ends. I stared at my reflection, unable to take in the transformation. I was stunned but pleased. I pictured myself drinking a
café crème
at the Rotonde. I could go anywhere in Paris with hair like this.

‘Goodness,’ said Odette. ‘You are stunning. Wait until my uncle sees you!’

Outside, the sky had turned grey and it was beginning to sleet. ‘We’ll get a taxi,’ said Odette, waving one down. The car came to a stop and I clambered in after her.

‘Galeries Lafayette,’ Odette told the driver.

‘Why are we going to the Galeries Lafayette?’ I asked.

Odette rolled her eyes. ‘For the new dress you need to go with your hair.’

If one thing became clear that day, it was that Odette and I were as impractical as each other. I lived in a room with no heating and one thin mattress. I needed a rug on the floor and curtains at the windows to keep the cold out, otherwise I would soon be dead from pneumonia. But instead I paid everything I had for a black dress, knowing that if I had shown it to my mother and Aunt Yvette, they would have looked at its straight lines, the V-neck, the velvet on the cuffs and the fine
crêpe de Chine
material and asked: ‘Whose funeral?’

T
he entrance to Café des Singes was a door at basement level under a bedding store. I pushed the buzzer and waited for an answer, checking my hair in the reflection of the brass plate. No one answered so I tried the buzzer again. When there was still no answer, I turned the door handle and was surprised to find it unlocked.

‘Hello?’ I called out, pushing open the door and staring into the gloom.

I hesitated by a potted palm and wrinkled my nose: the air was congested with the faded smells of tobacco, mint and anisette. The only natural light source was frosted panels on either side of the door, and the club’s decor of brown carpet, leather chairs and wood-panelled walls conspired to absorb the little illumination they gave. The club was what was called a
boîte de nuit
; squashed into the space was a bar with no stools and a wall-length mirror behind it. In the opposite corner to the door was a platform with a piano. Scattered in front of it were a couple of tables for groups of six and about a dozen for pairs. Beyond the tables was a swing door which I assumed led to the kitchen. I projected my voice towards it.

‘Hello?’

There was a sign informing patrons that while drinks and food could be consumed during a performance, they could only be ordered between the acts. Clearly this was a club that took its musicians seriously. I ran my tongue over my lips, pleased and nervous. Monsieur Etienne must be
taking me seriously to suggest that I audition here. I hoped that I wouldn’t disappoint him.

There was a menu lying on a table. I glanced at it.
Cassoulet—15 francs.
My mouth dropped open. I had paid three francs for an entire meal of bread, mutton cassoulet and wine at the student café. I ran my hand over my dress, glad that Odette had made me buy it, and shuddered to think that I would have come wearing my old dress to a place where people paid fifteen francs for a meal.

I examined the menu again:
Pâté de foie gras truffé—25 francs; coq au riesling—20 francs.
My stomach growled. I opened the flap and found another menu tucked inside.
Menu Américain.
Corned beef—15 francs; fried chicken—16 francs.

A woman’s voice bellowed in the darkness. ‘You hungry?’

I looked up. The woman was standing near the kitchen door, garbed in a sequined hobble skirt. She stood with her stout legs planted on the floor, in heels as high as her feet were long. Her red hair was cut short around her heavy jowls and decorated with a beaded headband.

‘Yes. I mean, no!’ I stuttered, dropping the menu.

The woman gave me a sideways smile. ‘We’ll feed you soon enough,’ she said with good-natured scorn. ‘When Eugene finishes stuffing his own face in the kitchen, we’ll do your song.’

From her gravelly laugh and beaming presence, I knew that she had to be Madame Baquet. She told me to take off my coat and sit down at a table. She sat opposite me, the chair creaking under her weight.

‘See anything you like?’ she asked, pointing to the menu.

Although it was the most luxurious menu I had ever seen, my nerves got the better of me. All I could say was that an omelette would be nice.

She threw her head back and sent a laugh thundering around the room. ‘We’d have to go down the street for one of those. How old are you? You’re younger than I thought you’d be.’

For a second I considered lying, then thought better of it. She was too sharp for that. Stretching the truth was better. ‘I’m almost sixteen,’ I said.

‘A baby, just as I thought.’ She made a clucking sound with her tongue. ‘It’s a long time since I was your age. Still, Monsieur Etienne said you were exceptional, and if anybody understands that term he does.’

The sound of pans crashing to the floor burst from the kitchen. Madame Baquet swivelled around and shouted, ‘Eugene! Are you coming or are you just destroying the place?’

‘Coming!’ a man’s voice answered from beyond the swing door.

The buzzer sounded and Madame Baquet got up to answer it. I was relieved to see Monsieur Etienne and Odette waiting on the step.

‘
Bonjour
,’ Madame Baquet said. ‘I’ve just been speaking with your singer. Eugene’s working on giving himself indigestion in the kitchen but he’ll be out in a minute.’

No sooner had Monsieur Etienne and Odette greeted me than the kitchen door swung open and a black man wiping at his lips with a serviette rushed into the room. He flung the serviette down on one of the tables. ‘Hello,’ he said, reaching out a sticky hand and grabbing mine. ‘What a lovely-looking lady you are. Why, your face just says joy all over it!’

He took Monsieur Etienne’s hand and said something I didn’t catch because he mixed up English words in amongst his French sentences. From the crystal clarity of his voice I took him to be an American.

‘Parlez-vous anglais?’
he asked me, sensing my confusion.

Of course I didn’t speak English, but as everyone else seemed to understand him, and I was so eager to please, I answered, ‘A little. I know
Yawl
and
Schure
.’ I did my best to imitate the American accents I’d heard on my first night in Pigalle.

Madame Baquet roared with laughter and slapped the table. Eugene sent me a cheeky smile and rolled his eyes.

‘She’s funny, Monsieur Etienne,’ said Madame Baquet. ‘I like them cute and funny, and as she’s brought her music along I think we’d better get her to sing.’

I followed Eugene to the piano. He wiped his fingers on his pants and took my music from me. ‘These all French songs?’ he asked, flicking through them. ‘Nice. Yep, now we’ve got someone to sing in English, someone to sing in German and someone to sing in French. We should change our name to Café des Singes Internationales.’ This time I understood his joke and laughed. I was beginning to see that there was a lot of laughter at the Café des Singes.

Eugene picked out the music for ‘It’s Him I Love’. I was glad he’d chosen that one because it was the song the rehearsal pianist and I had worked on the most. The pianist had emphasised that for a
boîte
, delivery was as important as technical skills. I had solved my problem of never having been in love by thinking of my father when I sang the song. I might not understand
l’amour
but I understood loss.

It’s him I love

Though he’s far away

It’s him I love

But I should live for today

Eugene’s hands sprang over the keys. For a moment I was mesmerised by them; the movement was so fluid, his touch so agile and light. Luckily, my concentration returned fast enough that I didn’t miss my first line. From the instant I sang my first note, I knew that I had Madame Baquet on my side. When I sang, she couldn’t sit still. She fidgeted in her chair and tapped her foot, her teary eyes gazing at me all the time with wonder. When I finished the song everyone clapped. Monsieur Etienne and Odette beamed with pride.

‘Sing another,’ Madame Baquet called out. ‘You’ve got us wanting more now!’

Eugene began another number: ‘
La bouteille est vide
. The Bottle is Empty’. It was about a man who loves
champagne so much that he drinks himself to ruin, the cynical words contradicting the upbeat tune. Eugene played it faster than I’d rehearsed it but I did my best to keep up. Madame Baquet hummed along at first, then started singing in a husky voice when she caught on to the words. She drifted from singing along with me to discussing my contract with Monsieur Etienne and then back again without a break.

‘Monsieur Etienne, I want you to make up a contract this afternoon. I don’t want any other club grabbing this girl. I can start her on eighty francs for two performances a week, plus tips. And I’ll give her a good meal after each show to fatten her up.’

I kept singing even though I was on the verge of fainting on the spot. Eighty francs for two performances a week
plus
tips? I had estimated that, living frugally, it was going to cost me at least four hundred francs a month for my rent, meals and
métro
tickets. Assuming that I could double what Madame Baquet was paying me with tips, and deducting Monsieur Etienne’s agent’s fee, I was going to be making almost five hundred francs for just two nights’ work! I continued singing my song, dizzy with thoughts of what I was going to buy with the extra money, completely missing the irony of the words or the warning in them:
The more you get, the more you want, you want and want, and then it’s all gone.

Although I normally wouldn’t be required to arrive at the Café des Singes until half past one, Madame Baquet suggested I get there earlier on the first night. ‘You can watch Florence and Anke and get to know the place,’ she said.

I caught a taxi on the Boulevard du Montparnasse, feeling pleased that I didn’t have to take the
métro
just to save money. When the driver stopped in front of the Café des Singes, I was startled by the difference in atmosphere
from when I had seen it during the day. The mesh shutters of the bedding store were closed and spotlights flickered around the entrance of the club. A man in a coat and velvet hat worked the door.

‘It’s as crowded as a can of sardines in there, Mademoiselle,’ he said, his Russian accent rolling the ‘r’s even more deeply than Zephora’s tremolo. ‘Are you alone?’

I explained who I was and he waved me inside. All I could see at first were the backs of the people huddled in the entranceway, waiting for a table or just some space. ‘Excuse me,’ I said to a man still padded up in his coat and gloves. He scrunched up his face. I thought he was annoyed but then realised he was trying to get enough elbow space so he could lift his arm up for me to pass. The club was full and most people were standing. A wispy woman was on stage, singing a blues number in English. Her voice quivered like her black skin under the lights. Madame Baquet, with a dress of white fringes and a feather in her hair, was flirting with a young man wearing a monocle. She caught my eye and waved, although we had no chance of reaching each other through the crush. She pointed to a stool by the piano and I understood that I was to take it. I zig-zagged my way through the crowd and let out a sigh of victory when I reached the stool and plunked myself down on it. I was surprised to see that the piano player, who I had assumed to be Eugene, was not Eugene at all. He was black and thin with the same protruding eyes, but was younger.

The singer, who I guessed must be Florence, delivered her songs with heavy-lidded eyes and down-turned lips but closed each number and introduced the next one with a beaming flash of white teeth. I didn’t understand a word she said, but when she sang her voice bounced off the walls and vibrated through me.

When her session ended, the audience clapped and showed their appreciation by stuffing notes into her jar. A crowd converged on the bar to order the next round of drinks. French, I thought, listening to their cheerful babble.
They are nearly all French. I wondered where the Americans were.

Eugene stepped out of the kitchen with a tray balanced on his shoulder and served dishes of
pâté de foie gras
and shrimp cocktails to a table by the piano. He caught sight of me and winked. ‘That’s my brother, Charlie,’ he said, thrusting his chin towards the young man at the piano. ‘We take turns waiting tables and playing. It gives us a break. You want anything?’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t like to eat before I sing.’

He nodded, patting his stomach. ‘Good thing about being a piano player—you can always eat.’

Although it was true that Vera had told me that a singer should never perform on a full stomach, my not wanting to eat had more to do with my nerves. I’d been comfortable singing at the audition, but as soon as I’d stepped into the taxi on my way to the club I was hit by shakes and sweats. Seeing the sophisticated audience up close did not help. Was I good enough? What did they expect? Certainly I couldn’t sing as well as Florence whose enchanting voice could bend a note without breaking it. Not yet, anyway. I wondered if the churning in my stomach, the nausea, that tightness in my throat, would leave me once I became a seasoned performer. Or would I have to live with them for ever?

Madame Baquet sang a quirky song about a man who gets caught by his mistress trying to seduce her mother, before announcing that the patrons should take their drinks and settle down because it was time for ‘the fabulous Anke’ to come up on stage. This is the German, I thought.

A man in tails and a top hat pushed through the crowd to the stage. The spotlight settled on his back. Charlie hit the first note and the man spun around. I blinked. He had smooth skin and blue eyes smudged with black eyeliner. The singer was a woman. She’d made herself look like a man by brushing her short hair away from her face and the way she’d swaggered onto the stage. A hush fell over the
audience and the woman started to sing. Her voice was as androgynous as her appearance, discordant and strange. She cupped her face in her hands, flicking out her green-painted nails like claws. I grimaced. Her act was disturbing. Her German words crawled over me like spiders.
Vernichtung. Warnung. Todesfall
. By her third number my skin was itching and I could barely stay in my seat. Yet the rest of the audience was spellbound—not one clink of a glass, not a murmur nor a cough.

When Anke finished she didn’t bow or thank her spectators. She rushed from the stage and shoved her way through them to the door, as if they had made her angry. When she didn’t come back to accept her tips, the audience rose to their feet and applauded wildly, leaving me to wonder what I could do to match her act.

There was a flurry of activity around the cloakroom girl, who stood in a booth not much bigger than a closet. The tables emptied and so did the space around the bar. No one is staying to watch my act, I thought. I couldn’t take it personally. I was hardly ‘a name’ in Paris and the audience was probably rushing off to another show, or to meet friends for supper or more drinks. That was the way of things in Paris. There were so many restaurants, music halls, cafés, bars and theatres, so many distractions to be had in the city, that staying in one place for a whole evening was not an option.