The Milliner's Secret

by Natalie Meg Evans

  ‘Are you a spy or something?’

  ‘I was there a couple of weeks ago, playing a morale-booster concert, and I met some of the lads after hours. Bomber crews, mostly, attached to the Expeditionary Force.’

  Coralie didn’t know whether to be glad to see them or not. They looked so foreign. After two and a half years in Paris, she’d got used to French colouring. Apart from a few dark heads, the Englishmen all seemed mousy or ginger. The Corsicans had stopped their assault on the stage and were eyeballing them.

  Blood and teeth before the night’s over, Coralie predicted. She ought to warn the Tommies, though the RAF boys would be easier to approach because they were sitting a little apart. One caught her eye. Tall, with good shoulders and a gleam of dark hair under his cap, he seemed to be singling her out too. The pay-off of wearing a gold hat, she supposed.

  Dezi whispered, ‘Seen something tasty? Don’t let your husband catch you.’

  ‘We go our own way.’ Ramon had one of Henriette’s midinettes in a clinch. He must have decided Julie could look after herself.

  Dezi said thoughtfully, ‘That German you used to come here with? The fella didn’t fix on me like I was a threat. I’d say he didn’t see me at all.’

  ‘He saw you . . .’ Coralie didn’t want to talk about Dietrich. All evening, she’d felt his ghost alongside her. Heard his voice, far off, telling her why he was choosing this or that wine and why she should appreciate meat that was cooked rose-pink. The Corsicans had begun chanting ‘The winners, the winners’ in heavily accented French.

  Coralie asked Dezi, ‘Who won? My Vagabonds or their people?’

  ‘Theirs, of course.’

  ‘I don’t mind my friends losing to better players but that hairy lot couldn’t hold a tune in a bucket— Oh!’

  A bottle thrown from the foot of the stage had just hit Arkady in the face. He stopped playing, and Coralie saw blood on his shirt. After a string of untranslatable oaths, he tucked his instrument under his chin and played on. The joint was still jumping.

  The Tommies were on their feet now, clapping. It was getting tribal. The midinettes looked frightened, and it occurred to Coralie that if she sent them back to work bruised, she’d have Henriette on her tail. Ramon looked as if he was about to charge the Corsicans like a bull. His dancing partner and Una were holding him back. Teddy and his chums were nowhere to be seen. Probably hiding under a table. One of the gangsters got up onstage and grabbed the microphone, shouting, ‘It’s over. We have winners.’

  Arkady head-butted him and that was the cue for more bottles to fly. One broke against the double bass. The Vagabonds held a five-second conference before resuming ‘This Joint Is Jumping’, after which they played a bridging piece, which would take them into ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’. This final number was intended to win ear-shattering applause – had it been a fair contest. A Corsican trumpeter was now on stage, blasting out noises like a suffering elephant.

  ‘Right.’ Coralie hitched up her dress. ‘Now or never.’ She’d started off playing by the rules, but now there were no rules. ‘Girls!’ she shouted to the midinettes. ‘Watch me and copy.’ Running to the stage, she stuck out her hand for someone to pull her up.

  ‘Too dangerous!’ Arkady shouted. ‘No woman!’

  So she heaved herself up unaided. ‘Ignore him,’ she bawled at Arkady, meaning the gatecrashing trumpeter. ‘Forget ragtime. We’ll give them . . .’ She shouted a song in his ear.

  Arkady looked bemused. ‘That? Now?’

  ‘Don’t you know it?’

  ‘Everyone knows it. All Europe sings it, even in Spain, and in Gurs we sing it. But we have not practised.’

  ‘You want Tommies on your side?’

  ‘What is Tommies?’

  ‘Never mind. Blaze away and you’ll have that lot in the black berets roaring along. Give me a bit of instrumental, and I’ll come in with the words.’

  ‘You sing, Coralie?’

  ‘I certainly do, and my girls are going to dance.’

  ‘They know how?’

  Well, like he said, everyone knew this song and the dance that went with it. It wasn’t exactly complicated. All the time she’d been creating tonight’s outfits, she’d thought about getting up onstage. A little finale, to steal the evening. It was a risk, because if anything was going to broadcast her true nationality to the world, it would be this song. But seeing these Englishmen had made her feel just a little bit homesick. Proud, too. They were here to sort out the Germans. They deserved something home-grown to sing along to. The Corsican trumpeter had stopped blowing and was making an obscene hand-show at her. Coralie walked up to him and punched him in the jaw, knocking him clean offstage.

  She strutted to the microphone. ‘That’s called manners where I come from. Ready, boys?’

  Arkady turned and mouthed to the others, ‘One, two, three, four . . .’

  Coralie winked at the Tommies, who were shouting, ‘Come on, Goldie!’ She tucked her thumbs into imaginary braces and sang, ‘“Any time you’re Lambeth way, any evening, any day . . .”’

  People rushed to pair up. ‘The Lambeth Walk’ had been a huge hit in ’37, spreading from London across Europe, like a dose of flu. It had stormed New York. Even Germany had its version. Maurice Chevalier had made it a hit at the Casino de Paris. The Cockney walking dance with ‘oi’ after the chorus was everywhere from public ballrooms to diplomatic receptions.

  Coralie sang on; according to the lyrics, everything in life was free and easy. People could do as they damn well pleased . . . In Lambeth, or anywhere for that matter.

  The Tommies certainly thought so. They were mobbing the stage and the Corsicans were piling in behind, pulling off caps, tearing collars. Soon fists were flying, women screaming. A bottle crashed at Coralie’s feet. She hurled it back. ‘“You’ll find yourself, doin’ the –’ one of the gangsters got hold of her leg ‘– “Lambeth walk, oi!”’ On ‘oi’ she kicked him but he pulled her down anyway. Shrieking, she grabbed her hat to protect it. Arkady got her under the arms and heaved in the opposite direction. Coralie shouted at him to let go. If she didn’t split in half, her dress would. She landed with a thud on the dance floor, and before she had time to refill her lungs, she was hauled up. Shutting her eyes, she softened every muscle to withstand the coming blow. Not a black eye, please.

  The blow didn’t come. Instead she was pulled to her feet and hustled away towards the stairs. She staggered along, her hand in a stranger’s, gold hat over her eyes. She hoped Julie, Una, the midinettes and Teddy had run for the exits too. Ramon could look after himself. She stumbled through the lobby, past the cloakroom, whose attendant flashed a muted torch, and out on to boulevard de Clichy where the air was as cold as sea spray. A smudge of moon gave just enough light to make out the outline of a man with padded shoulders, wearing a cap. He had a belted middle. She realised she’d been pulled out by the tall RAF man she’d admired earlier. ‘Merci beaucoup,’ she panted, continuing in French, ‘You ruined my chance of an encore.’

  Hands linked behind her head and she was looking up into a face that was lean and serious, faintly familiar. A second later, she was being kissed so hard she could hardly keep her feet on the ground.

  When it ended, his lips stayed on hers and he said in English, ‘Do you know how long I’ve waited to do that?’

  Without thinking, she shot back in the same language, ‘Bloody cheek! I’m a married woman and my husband is down in that club.’ That was another of Ramon’s roles: to be the eternally jealous husband whenever she wanted to discourage an over-enthusiastic man.

  ‘Married? Cora, what have you gone and done? And what the hell are you doing here?’

  Cora . . . She stared up, trying to impose on the hard face the soft features that matched the voice, which had grown deeper, the worried inflection gone. ‘Donal Flynn. Donal . . . what the hell have you gone and done?’ She pulled a serge sleeve.

  ‘Joined up, of course. You didn’t think I’d still be pu
shing laundry carts now we’re at war? Cora, why did you go? Why did you run? I looked high and low for you. I thought you were—’

  ‘Shush.’ Her gaze scavenged the frosted boulevard. It was empty. ‘Donal, don’t call me Cora. I’m Coralie, Coralie de Lirac. Never call me anything else.’

  ‘I went looking for you after the Derby. I looked for you for days, and then for your body, on all the waste sites and the culverts, and down by the docks—’ He broke off, pulling her to him again.

  ‘You thought I was dead?’

  ‘I thought Jac had done for you. I cornered him in his shed, got him by the throat, but he swore he hadn’t touched you. I knocked him down. Oh, Cora. Alive and three times as beautiful. Cora—’

  ‘Coralie! And, hey, you owe me an explanation too. Leaving me stranded at Epsom Downs—’

  He groaned. ‘I know. I went home – I was fuming and it never dawned on me I had your ticket till I woke up in the dead of night. I fetched my jacket and there it was. I swear I went straight round to your house and knocked on the door, but nobody answered. Cora—’

  ‘Coralie. I’m Coralie now.’

  ‘But why are you here? Why didn’t you go home while you still could?’

  ‘This is home. And I’d rather face the Germans than my father, or your bloody sister.’

  ‘But that’s it. Your dad’s gone and so has Sheila.’

  ‘Where? To hell in a handcart?’

  ‘They’re in Ireland, lying low, so my dad thinks. The knives came out for them when you disappeared. Secrets came out. Their love affair was the talk of the streets and Sheila got a formal reprimand from her inspector. Which was nothing to what she got from our gran. Then the big rumours started.’

  ‘What rumours?’

  ‘First your mother disappeared, then you. Then your mother’s actor-fellow resurfaced.’

  ‘Who? That Timothy Cartland she ran off with?’ Coralie’s ears hurt from the pressure of her pulse, from forgetting to breath.

  ‘She didn’t, that’s the point. I read in a newspaper that a play had opened in Shaftesbury Avenue, and it mentioned a Timothy Cartland. I went to see him after a matinée. I thought you’d want me to.’

  No, she thought. Why can’t you leave well alone?

  ‘I asked him, “Where’s Florence Masson?” He didn’t know but when I said her stage name, Florence Fielding, he remembered working with her about twenty-five years ago. “A slip of a woman with a big, loud voice.” He swore they’d never had a fling. He had been to New York but he’d travelled alone and come back alone, in 1938, and in all that time, he said, he’d never heard a squeak of Florence Fielding. I went away, thinking, If Florence didn’t go to America—’

  ‘That’s enough, Donal. Leave it buried.’ Coralie reached up and kissed him, the better to shut him up, and was completely unprepared for the physical yearning that coursed through her. It was more potent than sexual desire. Donal had grown into a handsome man. He was in uniform, serving his country, and that was excuse enough, but until this moment she hadn’t realised how desperately she missed love. Missed the comfort of a shared existence. If anybody was safe to be with, it was Donal. They’d shared the same air, the same dust. Yet as he pulled her hard against him and possessed her mouth, her assumptions altered. Bring down the shutters, she told herself. You can’t risk him asking questions and seeing too much. She pulled away, asking, ‘What do you fly?’

  ‘I’m not meant to say . . . but I suppose it can’t hurt. Fairey Battles, light bombers. I’m the observer-navigator and we fly night missions – but listen, Cora—’

  ‘Coralie. You’ve become rather a good kisser, Navigator Flynn. Had a bit of practice?’ She felt the knot of his tie move with his throat, and recognised his old diffidence. Good. Let him get tongue-tied. One day she’d be strong enough to hear the ending to Florence’s story. And one day she might sit down with Donal and tell him all about Coralie de Lirac. But not now. She’d invested too much in her life here to risk being unmasked as a fraud. She stepped back.

  ‘Cora, don’t go!’

  ‘Coralie.’ It wrenched her heart to deny the hope and desire in the hands that reached for her. God knew, she might never see him again. That silver wing above his left pocket was the real thing, not like her cheap glitter. Donal risked his life every time he took to the air, while she danced and sang. ‘I’m going, Donal, and I don’t want you to follow.’

  Was he even listening? ‘I’m in Paris till tomorrow night. We could—’

  ‘No. I’m sorry I kissed you – but doesn’t that tell you I’m as bad as I ever was? I’m not only married, I’m a mother.’ She cinched her waist with her hands and took another step back. ‘I’ve filled out, see? A little bit matronly, these days.’

  ‘You’ve got a shape like a film star. Please don’t go.’

  She walked away, refusing to turn even when it dawned on her that she’d left her comfortable shoes in the club, along with her coat, and that she had a long trek home. And she was still wearing a gold hat. If she avoided being robbed, the first gendarme she met would book her for soliciting.

  ‘Coralie!’ Donal’s anguish reached her, but he wasn’t chasing her.

  ‘Be safe up there in the skies, my friend,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t let the buggers bring you down.’

  CHAPTER 14

  Christmas 1939 froze the pipes and put such thick rime on the windows that Coralie prepared a festive dinner in the kitchen with gloves on. She’d invited Una, Ramon – who had ditched his latest woman, or been ditched – Arkady and Florian to her table.

  As she trussed the skinny goose she’d bought at the market at ten times last year’s price, she was interrupted by a knock. She was astonished to find Julie at the door, clutching a basket of apples and trying to hide a party dress by holding her winter coat closed at the neck.

  ‘Julie? You were meant to take today off.’

  The girl answered with a nervous giggle. Heavens, had Coralie really expected her to stay at home? Never mind, she was here now. Her parents, uncles and aunts were all dozing with their mouths open, except one aunt who kept making comments on Julie’s new hairstyle.

  Coralie took in the mass of curls and interwoven ribbon. ‘It is rather . . . Hollywood.’

  ‘I know!’ Julie went straight to the hall mirror. ‘The girl at the hairdresser’s said I look just like Bette Davis in Jezebel.’ She took off her coat and turned to Coralie, revealing a cardigan straining over an uplifted bosom. ‘I’ll help you cook and I’ll serve at table.’

  ‘I’ll find you a nice big overall to wear.’ Coralie couldn’t resist adding, ‘It’s just us girls. The men can’t come.’ Seeing Julie’s face drop in dismay, she laughed. ‘Joking. Shall I put you next to Florian?’

  Everyone brought something: coal, wine, a nip of cognac, potatoes, smoked sausage. Una contributed a case of champagne, a gift from a wealthy admirer who worked for the government. Yet more unexpectedly, she brought Ottilia von Silberstrom.

  Una had met the Baronne in London in 1937, but hadn’t given her much thought until Coralie’s brief glimpse of her on boulevard de la Madeleine. Una had afterwards made enquiries, but everybody said the same thing: ‘Poor darling Tilly? Didn’t she take refuge in London? Why would she return to Paris, the way things are?’ Una had been inclined to think that Coralie’s eyes had deceived her.

  Then, a few days ago, Una had found herself standing behind Ottilia in the queue at a tobacconist’s off quai d’Orsay. ‘Turns out, she’s been living like a hermit in rue de Vaugirard since the summer,’ she told Coralie, in a low voice. They both looked at Ottilia, who was bending down to make the acquaintance of Noëlle. She was draped in thistledown fur. Noëlle was stroking a sleeve, clearly bewitched.

  Ottilia looked towards them and smiled, and Coralie returned a nod. The silent exchange was as good as a conversation: We’ve met before. A man we both love stands between us and we will not speak of it.

  Una, seeing none of this, went on in an u
ndertone, ‘I hated to think of her all alone through Christmas so I dispensed with European etiquette and invited her. Don’t say you’re offended! You asked me to find her. ’

  ‘To discuss business. Oh, Lord, look at that.’

  Ramon was now kissing Ottilia’s hand and, like Noëlle, seemed to be slithering under a spell. Had Ottilia had this effect on Dietrich too?

  Suddenly aware of her grease-spotted apron and red cheeks, Coralie escaped to the kitchen, dispelling her emotions by lifting pan lids and slamming them down again.

  Una trailed after her, opening the oven door. ‘Oh, joy! Roast goose, my favourite. Forget work for a day, and get to know Tilly better. When the moment feels natural, we can mention La Passerinette. Let me tell you something, the girl under all that fur and those pearls is a sweetheart.’

  And indeed, over champagne aperitifs and an hors d’oeuvre of braised chicory, Ottilia displayed none of the grandeur that had so offended Coralie on Epsom Downs.

  Later, as Ramon carved the goose, Coralie recalled Dietrich explaining that Ottilia floated through life, the implication being that she didn’t quite ‘get’ the world. The impression solidified when Ottilia said that she’d returned to Paris to oversee the freighting of her art collection back to England.

  ‘My husband insists we bring the paintings to London.’ Franz had been angry with her for leaving them in rue de Vaugirard, she said. ‘I thought they were safe, but he does not trust the French or anybody. And certainly not me.’ Ottilia laughed shakily. ‘He said I must go to Paris to arrange for the boxes to be shipped, only . . . So many!’ She’d sat in her flat all the summer, unable to lift a telephone to seek advice. ‘Graf von Elbing used to do that sort of thing for me.’ She met Coralie’s eye briefly. Not in challenge, in a bid for understanding. ‘I called his home in Germany, but his wife told me he wasn’t living there.’

  Coralie was cutting up meat for Noëlle, checking for bones. ‘So where is he living?’

  ‘Berlin. She gave me a number but told it me wrongly. Deliberately so, I’m sure, because it was like no Berlin number I’ve ever seen.’