Wild Lavender (35 page)

‘What’s happened?’ I asked.

‘One of the chorus girls has put on weight and burst out of her costume.’

‘They hardly wear anything,’ I said. ‘What could have burst?’

‘A row of beads. But it was enough to send the wardrobe mistress into a fit.’

Although I didn’t hear half of what Odette said about Joseph’s purchase of a furniture store and how they were planning to marry the following year, her happy chatter soothed me like the sound of a record playing in the background. And she was patient too. I had to get out of my costume once she had hooked me into it for one more ‘nervous pee’. By half-past eight I could hear the callboy knocking on the dressing room doors and a few minutes later the chorus girls tromping down the stairs. They weren’t as boisterous as usual and I asked Odette if there was something wrong.

‘No,’ she said. ‘That is in deference to you. Monsieur Minot ordered quiet on the stairs.’

When the callboy knocked on my door I almost jumped out of my costume again. Odette patted me on the back. ‘You will be wonderful,’ she said. ‘Just do what you have been doing in the rehearsals and everything will be fine.’

I followed the callboy to the flies with the same cheer Marie Antoinette must have felt heading towards the
guillotine. I could hear the string section warming up and the hubbub of the audience. ‘Good luck!’ the boy whispered to me. I ruffled his hair so he would know that I wasn’t a stuck-up diva, I was just too nervous to speak. The key dancers were lined up at the top of the stairs, ready to make their entrance before me. The chorus girls were bunched up in the wings. A couple of them sent me cheerful smiles. I did my best to grimace back.

At a quarter to nine the
trois coups
—the three thumps of the staff on the stage to signify the show was about to begin—sounded. The audience fell silent and the orchestra started up. I beat my fist against the lump in my chest. My blood was humming in my ears.

The stage manager gave the cue and I watched the row of dancers move forward. They descended into the flood of light, their eyes ablaze, their faces glowing. Other celestial beings were lowered to the stage on glass platforms like genies on magic carpets. For a moment I forgot my nerves, everything looked so beautiful. The audience must have thought so too; I could hear their ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ rising up towards me.

The music changed tempo and the audience let out a cheer as togas and wreaths were whipped away and the performers danced to the jazz tune. Some male dancers in top hats and tails arrived on the stage in a Hispano-Suiza sports car. The stage manager gave me a nod and a wink. I smoothed my dress and took a deep breath before moving to the top of the stairs and walking down them into the burning light.

Bonjour Paris!

It’s me!

Tonight of all nights the stars will come out and shine, Shine for the whole of Paris to see.

Although I’d had visions of myself toppling down the steep staircase and landing dead on the stage, my legs ceased to tremble as soon as I started singing. My voice carried so
well that it surprised even me. I reached the stage and led the top and tail dancers in a Charleston, then everyone in a foxtrot, before the lights dimmed and the principal male dancer and I did a slow tango, a reference to my past. The audience cheered.

The lights changed to blue and a dummy grand piano was wheeled on stage. I was lifted onto it by the men and I danced the Charleston again, the lights flickering over me so I looked like I was dancing in slow motion on film.

The audience didn’t wait for me to finish before they applauded. The light turned to gold and I could see their faces. They were beaming at me. But it was the expressions of four men sitting in the third row that pleased me most: Lebaron, Minot, André and a man who looked like André, only older. They were grinning from ear to ear. I sensed that if I could please the patriarch of the Blanchard family, I could satisfy anybody.

The cast rushed forward and we sang the refrain together. The audience clapped and cheered again. There was no doubt they liked what they saw.

Until the stagehands could reverse the set we were to hold our poses, but I could feel my right leg beginning to shake again. Standing on top of a piano in a short skirt, there wasn’t much I could do to hide it. Something that Doctor Daniel had told me came to mind. ‘Energy either goes inwards or outwards. With performers, if you let it in, it is fatal. Your energy must always go out.’

Although it wasn’t scripted into the number, I flung my arms out and shouted, ‘
Bonjour Paris! C’est Moi!
Hello Paris! It’s me!’

From the auditorium came a roar as the audience rose to its feet and shouted back: ‘
Bonjour
, Mademoiselle Fleurier! And welcome!’

From that moment on, I knew there would be no turning back. Paris loved me.

‘
B
onjour Paris! C’est Moi!
’ was the most successful revue ever staged at the Adriana or any of the other Paris music halls. It ran for over a year, a total of four hundred and ninety-two performances, with a short break before the commencement of the new revue, ‘
Paris Qui Danse
’. The reviewers of every major paper, from
Le Matin
to
Paris Soir
, were in raptures and as well as the usual audience of
Tout-Paris
and well-to-do tourists, we were honoured with the presence of VIPs such as the Prince of Wales, the King and Queen of Sweden and the royal family of Denmark.

If André and I had worked torturous hours before the revue, then we were firing on all cylinders during it. I rose at seven o’clock for a breakfast of orange juice and toast. Then I had my bath before my hairdresser, manicurist, masseuse and secretary arrived. I dictated correspondence to my secretary during my beauty treatments. Afterwards I headed to the Adriana for meetings with Lebaron, Minot and André to plan for ‘
Paris Qui Danse
’. Because of the success of ‘
Bonjour Paris!
’ Lebaron was determined that the new revue was going to be even better. Afternoons were devoted to rehearsals, costume fittings and press interviews. In the evenings I was at the theatre by half-past seven and didn’t leave until one o’clock in the morning. Every other spare moment was devoted to something that I would soon learn to hate: an exercise of contortions, false smiles, image manipulation and ‘white lies’ whose slogan was ‘Talent is not enough for success’. That exercise was called publicity.

I had fallen in love with the music hall for its magic, and it was my joy to dance and sing for an audience, but I learned that being ‘a star’ was different to what I had expected. A star has to be in the public eye not only when she is on stage but off it as well if she wants to keep her edge. As my wealth increased—and, to Monsieur Etienne’s delight, André invested some of it—I also learned the difference between being rich and being famous. Anyone who saw my
haute couture
dresses, my diamonds, my chauffeur-driven Voisin, my apartment, the handsome André who accompanied me to social occasions, must have assumed that I was living a wonderful life. But it wasn’t a life; it was an image. There was no time to savour any of those things for myself. They were all for public consumption.

I had once heard Mistinguett say that she would never lose her diamonds to gain notoriety. But Mistinguett, Joséphine Baker and I were always having to out-sensationalise each other. Mistinguett insured her legs for a million dollars; Joséphine staged a marriage to a count, who was actually an Italian stonemason pretending to be a count; and my publicist ‘leaked’ that the secret of my vitality was to drink speckles of gold flakes in my coffee each morning and to bathe in milk and rose petals. He even had a milkman arrive at my door each morning with several vats of milk to prove it. It was the kind of frivolous nonsense that got us bad press in places like Austria and Hungary, where people had barely enough to eat. One communist paper claimed that the amount of milk I ‘bathed’ in each day would have kept ten children alive for a week.

Joséphine Baker and Mistinguett had an ongoing public battle of cattiness and rivalry. They even got into a spitting fight once at a film première at the Cinéma Apollo. The two divas had battled it out, digging their nails in each other’s arms and scratching at each other’s faces. Mistinguett tried her tactics on me one evening at the Rossignol when André and I went there for supper after the
show. She was sitting at a table surrounded by young men, pearls strung around her still youthful throat, when she signalled to me and shouted, ‘Hello, baby girl. Have they cleaned behind your ears yet? Why don’t you salute me?’ and grinned at me with her piranha teeth. You could almost see the columnist for
Le Petit Parisien
, who was sitting behind her, reaching for his pen.

‘Good evening, Madame,’ was my reply. She was more than thirty years older than me and I had been brought up to be respectful to my elders. The
maître d’hôtel
gave a sigh of relief but Mistinguett’s face collapsed with disappointment.

‘You are going to have to improve your one-liners,’ André said, once we were seated. ‘Otherwise you will be perceived as a snob who thinks she is too good for a catfight. If you and Camille Casal were smarter, you would have started one long ago. It would have helped her fledgling career and it wouldn’t hurt you to be seen as her rival.’ I was glad to see from the mischievous twinkle in his eye that he was joking.

There was a commotion at the door. Joséphine Baker, followed by her entourage—which included ‘Count’ Pepito de Abatino, her chauffeur, her maid and her pet pig—stormed into the restaurant.

André raised his eyebrows at me.

‘I am too tired,’ I said.

Although I didn’t say anything to André, I had never seen Camille as my rival. I was in awe of her. A month into the show I invited her to dine with me at my apartment. For some reason I thought her approval of my transformation would give it the stamp of success. But as soon as Camille arrived, I realised that even with my groomed hair and stylish clothes I was still diminished by her physical perfection. She sauntered into my apartment wearing a mauve dress with layers of pearls circling her neck. The air around her was scented with Shalimar. It seemed
impossible that anyone could have such chiselled features or such flawless skin.

‘You’re doing well,’ she said, eyeing the rosewood bureau as if she couldn’t quite believe that I lived in the apartment. Some days
I
couldn’t believe I lived in the apartment either. Camille and I had travelled miles since we had been in Aunt Augustine’s house in Marseilles. I glowed with pride from the indirect compliment.

I lead Camille to the drawing room and offered her a seat. She pulled out a cigarette and I leaned forward to light it.

‘So you took my advice about men, after all,’ she said, running her silver nails over the sofa. ‘It seems André Blanchard has done a lot for you.’

‘It’s not like that,’ I assured her. ‘Our relationship is professional.’

The look of disbelief on her face turned into a frown. I noticed for the first time the circles under her eyes, cleverly powdered but present just the same. Her relationship with Yves de Dominici was over; he had married an Italian countess. But I had heard that Camille was seeing someone high up in the War Ministry. I wondered about her daughter, who would be turning five years old soon, but knew not to ask after the child. Camille had told me that she would take the girl out of the convent as soon as she found a rich enough—and permanent enough—patron. The man from the War Ministry was married to a woman who controlled the purse strings, so that wasn’t going to happen any time soon.

‘So the show is going well?’ she asked. ‘What will you do when it finishes?’

I wondered if she knew that she had been considered for the star role in ‘
Bonjour Paris!
’ But as she didn’t mention it, neither did I.

‘André wants me to make a record.’

‘André Blanchard must be very taken with you,’ she said, glancing about the room. ‘I can’t believe a man would do so much for a woman and not expect something in return.’

I blushed, not so much from embarrassment as shame. It gave me a certain amount of self-respect that André truly believed in my talent and didn’t expect sex in return for helping my career. But not to desire me at all when I was besotted by him? That made me feel like a wallflower and nothing at all like ‘the most sensational woman in the world’.

My maid, Paulette, announced that supper was ready, saving me from having to explain my relationship with André further. I knew that Camille had the appetite of a small bird so I had asked the cook to prepare stuffed cabbage with tarragon sauce and champagne. During the meal Camille was distant, her mind somewhere else.

‘I am leaving Paris,’ she announced after a while. ‘I’m going to make a film with GW Pabst.’

My heart skipped a beat. I knew then that no matter what I achieved, Camille would always be several steps ahead of me. I would love to star in a film. The medium was new but I found the idea of telling stories through images thrilling. And who better to work with than GW Pabst? The young German was already earning a reputation as a notable director.

‘You will be a film star,’ I said, sincerely happy for Camille’s good luck but coveting a little of it for myself too.

After the meal, I walked Camille to the door where Paulette helped her with her coat. Camille kissed me goodbye and wished me well. I gave her a bouquet of roses to take home with her and a Chinese lacquer box. She complimented me on the fragrance of the flowers and the exquisite pattern on the box, but she left me with the impression that she had preferred my company when I was poor and out of luck.

When the show had ‘settled in’, André’s father invited us to visit the family
château
for the weekend
.
Because of urgent business matters, Monsieur Blanchard had been unable to meet me after the opening night performance, but he had
sent word through André that he thought I was magnificent. The praise pleased André so much that he gave all the performers a bonus out of his own pocket.

On our way to the Dordogne Valley, André hummed tunes from ‘
Bonjour Paris! C’est Moi!’
and looked at me with such tender regard that I had to remind myself that he was not attracted to me. My feminine tricks to test the waters—standing close to him, letting my fingers linger on his arm a fraction longer than necessary—had come to nothing. Why should things change now? But while André was so clearly uninterested in me, there had not been any more Mademoiselle Caniers either. Perhaps he was just one of those men who preferred work to love.

‘I was nervous,’ he said, negotiating a tight bend in the road. ‘I didn’t know what my father would think of my foray into show business. But your talent has won him over. He has nothing but praise for you.’

‘My success has as much to do with you as it does with me,’ I said.

André laughed, his voice booming above the hum of the engine. ‘I think you could have done it without me, Simone. But it was fun to watch you blossom.’

The Blanchards’
château
was surrounded by seventy-two acres of parkland and overlooked the Dordogne Valley, a picture of green fields and oak trees with a tranquil river winding through them. We arrived at the ivy-covered mansion in time for lunch and were guided by the butler to a terrace. The air smelt of freshly cut grass and jasmine. Veronique was throwing a stick to her dog on the lawn. Her instructions to the puppy and the animal’s delighted yelps carried through the summer air. Madame Blanchard sat on a bench between a matronly woman and a bald man. But it was Monsieur Blanchard who moved towards us first.

‘Bonjour!’
he called out, waving to us. He had a voice like a naval captain, deep and used to giving orders. But a friendly smile danced on his lips and made him seem less intimidating than I had expected.

He clasped André’s shoulder and André returned the greeting. I had expected to see them salute each other rather than embrace. Their relationship was not as cold as I had anticipated but there was still something formal about the way they approached each other. I thought of Uncle Gerome and my father. Uncle Gerome may have wanted to love his brother but he had never seemed able to work out how to show it. Deep hurt had destroyed the natural affection between them. I sensed this may be how Monsieur Blanchard felt about André.

‘Now, tell me, Mademoiselle Fleurier,’ said Monsieur Blanchard, taking my arm and leading me towards the others, ‘how did my tone deaf son discover the best singer in Paris?’

He had the same sable eyes as André, but while his son treated me with the manners of a gentleman, Monsieur Blanchard fixed his stare on my breasts. I had the uneasy feeling that he was imagining me naked.

‘André is not exactly tone deaf,’ I said and laughed, more to cover my awkwardness than because I thought what he said was funny. ‘He was simply the first person, besides my agent, to believe in me.’

‘Come on, we are late for lunch,’ called out Madame Blanchard, waving us to the table. ‘We shall be in trouble with the cook if the salad goes limp.’

‘Are we doing away with introductions?’ asked Monsieur Blanchard, ushering us to a table set with white china and bouquets of field flowers. Madame Blanchard blushed but did not look at her husband. She introduced the woman and man with her: André’s sister, Guillemette, and her husband, Felix. I greeted them but neither smiled. Guillemette had not inherited the attractive appearance of her parents, nor their dignity and composure. If André hadn’t mentioned earlier that his sister had just turned thirty, I would have assumed she was at least ten years older than that.

Guillemette and I were seated diagonally to each other, with Felix opposite me, but I found conversing with either
of them difficult. Eye contact with Felix was impossible; when he wasn’t picking at his food, he was staring somewhere over my head. Guillemette, on the other hand, studied me intently.

‘André tells me that you have a passion for riding,’ I said to her, attempting small talk. ‘Is it true that you ride in the Bois de Boulogne every morning?’

‘Yes,’ was her one-word reply. From her tone, you would have thought I had asked her for money. I sensed the undercurrent of resentment although I had no idea of the cause.

André was discussing a business deal with his father so I turned to Veronique for some relief but she was subdued in her older sister’s presence. Later, when the main course was served, she sidled up to André to whisper to him but was cut short by a scowl from her sister. ‘If you have something to say, Veronique, you should say it to everybody.’

Veronique’s eyes filled with tears and her lip trembled. She was not the spirited child I had met in Madame Blanchard’s parlour when André and I had visited there before the opening of the show. Guillemette had the ability to give an
al fresco
lunch on a summer’s day the tense air of an army camp. I was curious to see her relationship with her father, but Monsieur Blanchard addressed all his questions to Felix.