The Girl Who Dreamed of Paris

by Natalie Meg Evans

  ‘I was deeply involved in retail in London,’ Coralie explained to him, neglecting to add that she’d picked up her technique in Bermondsey’s fruit and vegetable market. You didn’t need to be a genius to see that the barrow-boys who cried their wares the loudest always sold out first.

  September arrived and a tanned Teddy Clisson came home. Finding Voltaire healthy and Coralie busy and radiant, he invited her to stay a week or two more. ‘I have so many traveller’s tales, I need an audience.’ Studying her waistline, he asked, ‘Are you really expecting, or was it a hoax to invoke my pity? I see no signs of a baby.’

  ‘Believe me, there’s a baby.’ She’d been disguising her swelling shape under loose blouses belted at the hip. Teddy apart, only Madame Zénon and Amélie so far knew of her condition. Give it a few weeks, nothing would hide her bump. ‘I shall find a place of my own,’ she promised him. ‘I can’t stay here – people will start gossiping about us.’

  ‘What fun.’ He handed her a box containing a watch of filigree silver with a black enamel bracelet. ‘For being a friend to Voltaire. No, I don’t need to be hugged.’ He became businesslike. ‘My landlord always has property to rent along rue de Seine, if you aren’t fussy about airy views or reliable lifts. He’s quite reasonable.’

  Within days, they had found her a place a few strides away towards the river end of the street. It was on the top floor of a very old house, and had no lift, but Coralie took it. The building was only three storeys high, and she reckoned that going up and down with a baby in a basket would keep her trim.

  Henriette Junot’s 1937 autumn–winter line launched on 9 September. Henriette travelled up from her rented château to preside, bringing her lover – the two of them posing in the new models, giggling like schoolgirls. She then spent a week upsetting Coralie’s work regime, sacking juniors and getting on everybody’s nerves. The day she left, Coralie felt a silent cheer run through the building.

  ‘When she’s in love,’ Madame Zénon confided, ‘she doesn’t give a fig for her business. But when the break-up comes, she is like a mother bear robbed of her cub.’ The première dropped her gaze to Coralie’s midriff, hidden under a pleated tunic. ‘I hope you’re putting a little money aside. Madame may have female lovers, but it does not follow that she likes women. You understand?’

  ‘I’m saving like mad.’ Coralie was also racing to build up a portfolio of designs and to amass the experience that would allow her to open a salon of her own. All she needed was for Henriette to stay seven hundred kilometres away for the next few months – oh, and not discover that Coralie was pregnant. The vile sickness had stopped, thank goodness, and the baby must be small, because Coralie could still get into her skirts with elastic loops attached to the buttons. But all secrets come out in the end.

  *

  One mid-October afternoon Coralie was watching Madame Zénon sketch the profile of a hat they were designing together when she realised that one of the petites-mains – a millinery assistant – was staring at her side-on, a shocked look in her eye. Coralie quickly pulled her stomach in but later she was aware of staff members whispering behind their hands.

  Right, she thought. Time to face the guns. She called an evening meeting, at which she informed a crowded salon that she was due to give birth in February. Ignoring the gasps and whispers, she injected a bit of humour: ‘From now on, I won’t be running about the place and I’ll be taking the stairs two at a time, not three.’

  ‘Does Madame know?’ asked one of the older secondes. She was one of the few people Coralie disliked there, as she was known to spy for Henriette.

  ‘Of course,’ Coralie lied cheerfully. ‘She’s going to be godmother. Meeting dismissed.’ Give me Christmas and one more season, she prayed that night in her poky bedroom. If her dates were right, she could squeeze out a spring–summer collection in early February before she went into labour.

  November answered her prayers, though in the form of disturbing news. Henriette was ill. A cold caught while bathing in the lake beside her château had gone to her lungs. Pneumonia, pleurisy, blood on her pillow. It was unlikely, she informed Madame Zénon and Coralie in a shaky letter, that she’d be back for Christmas. She trusted them to shepherd her business through this vital season.

  Of course, with Henriette, ‘trust’ went only so far.

  *

  Friday, 5 November, was stormy. In the salon, arranging ivy and Christmas roses on the display plinth, Coralie contemplated an unpleasant journey home. She shivered as hail pelted the window. Her flat had a fireplace, but she had nobody to make a blaze for her. At the counter, Amélie was writing up the day’s sales, also in no rush to face the weather. The door crashed open.

  Assuming the wind had forced it and anxious for the glass, Coralie ran to lock it, ivy trailing from her hand. Colliding with the man who stepped in from the darkness, she managed to drape it over his shoulder. He plucked it off, laughing. Deep, black eyes, swarthy colouring and a thick moustache lent him the air of a brigand. Coralie reversed back to the display table, and picked up her scissors.

  Amélie, however, was all smiles. ‘Monsieur Cazaubon, how nice to see you! Have you brought news of Madame Junot?’

  ‘I’m just back from seeing her.’ The stranger kissed Amélie on both cheeks, then looked sideways at Coralie. ‘I left Henriette slightly improved but, I’m afraid, very unhappy. Her friend has left her.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ said Amélie, though her voice held little surprise.

  ‘I wanted to take her to our parents at Céret, which is only ten kilometres from the Château de Jarrat, where she’s staying, but she wouldn’t agree. So I appointed a pair of nurses to look after her and I hope to God they don’t strangle her.’ The man laughed at Amélie’s pursed lips. ‘Come on. My sister is difficult enough when she is in health, we all know it. When she is ill – I would strangle her!’

  He spoke fast, almost too fast for Coralie to keep up, and with the accent and rolling rs of a southerner. Cazaubon . . . Was this really Henriette’s brother? He looked more Spanish than French, but perhaps there was an explanation for that. Henriette, she knew, had taken the name ‘Junot’ to distance herself from her roots, which lay in French Catalonia. Whoever he was, he must have come on foot from the Métro because his hair glittered and he’d left wet prints on the carpet. He caught her disapproval. ‘You are Mademoiselle de Lirac.’

  Coralie folded her arms. ‘I think I know who you are.’

  He bowed. ‘The apple of Henriette’s eye.’

  Yes, and I’ll stake my new watch you’ve been sent to check me over. Her heart bumped, and it wasn’t just anxiety. For the past four months, the only males in her life had been Teddy Clisson, the accountant, Monsieur Moulin, and Voltaire. Cazaubon’s stocky masculinity, the teasing gleam in his eye, promised a taste of something richer. There will be others, one way or another. She blushed.

  ‘So, is it true, Mademoiselle?’

  ‘Is what true?’

  He made an apologetic gesture. ‘One of the old cats upstairs wrote to my sister that you are in the family way and –’ he whispered theatrically ‘– unmarried.’

  Coralie held his gaze, knowing instinctively that he was searching for weakness. Moving her Christmas greenery to one side, she allowed Cazaubon an eyeful of her shape. ‘One baby and no ring.’ She presented her left hand. ‘Have a proper look.’

  He did. When he met her eye again, the gleam had sharpened. ‘Tell me, are you eating for two?’

  ‘What are you, a doctor?’

  ‘A civil engineer. Because if you are, I’d like to take both of you out to dinner.’

  Laughter jumped from Coralie’s throat. Astonishment colliding with relief. Whatever this man wanted of her, it wasn’t her immediate downfall.

  Ramon Cazaubon had been sent by his sister, he told her later. Henriette had asked him to poke about the stockroom, to go
through the accounts. ‘She is afraid of you, Coralie, and I understand why. Unlike her, you do not wait for life to unfold. You ride after it, like a gaucho roping a steer.’ It was crystal clear, he said, that Coralie could out-business Henriette blindfolded, with her hands tied. ‘Anyway, I will write and say all is well.’ As for looking over the books, for his sins he spent his days staring at lines on paper. Evenings, he said, were for friendship. And nights were for pleasure.

  Against her better judgement, Coralie allowed him to take her out that first time, then a second and a third. Soon, she was looking forward to the bump of the door, the energetic wiping of feet that announced his arrival in the salon. She’d told him off for spoiling the carpet.

  Ramon shared his sister’s brusque impulsivity, but his nature was warmer. Fiery, even. He never flagged. By midnight, when she was begging to go home and sleep, he was suggesting they go on to Pigalle or boulevard de Clichy, to this or that nightclub. He seemed to know every dance band in Paris. Working by day in one of the drawing-offices of the national railway company, he descended by night into vaults and basements, and soused himself in modern music. He lived several lives in parallel, he told her.

  ‘I adore Paris, but I am also at home in the foothills of the Pyrénées. I am an intellectual, a wage-slave, a hunter and also a Bohemian. I am a politician who hates politics, an anarchist who believes in God. I am a warrior who loves peace. Life is short, Coralie. My parents are like oak trees, growing one slow ring at a time. Henriette, with all her talent, is like a field of standing corn waiting to be cut. To me, life is a rampaging bull. I throw myself over the horns, daring it to gouge and trample me.’

  ‘It might, one day,’ she warned him.

  ‘Then I hope I have you to bind my wounds. I am not comfortable to live with, but I know my mind.’

  A week into December, he asked her to marry him.

  *

  She said no. Twice in her life, she’d thrown herself into uncharted love. Twice-deserted and pregnant, she was wiser. And she didn’t love him. ‘And you, in your middle thirties, a steady wage-earner . . . there’s a reason no woman’s caught you yet. What’s in it for you?’

  ‘I have bedded many, many women, but never until now have I wanted to marry one. I like your spirit and I want your body.’

  ‘With another man’s child inside it?’ She’d intended to shock him. She failed.

  ‘I love children.’

  Still, she held back. ‘I’m not a charity case.’

  ‘Far from it. But your child is.’ He knew how to aim his attacks. ‘Being a bastard is a bad deal. If you don’t believe me, wait till you go into hospital. See how the nurses treat you, and the officials at the mairie when you register the child’s birth and can’t put a father’s name to the form. Your little one will come home from school every day, crying. And just think, if you marry me—’

  ‘I get you every night!’ Could she live with his relentless vigour? She had not yet slept with him. He didn’t mind her belly, but she was sensitive about it. He would be a red-blooded lover and she needed to be strong.

  ‘I was going to say, if you marry me, it will really annoy Henriette. She cannot bear me liking other women. She is jealous when a fly lands on her food. It’s her nature and I smell the rivalry between you. You like to win.’ And the final persuasion: ‘I like you, Coralie, and respect you. I am willing to try to be a good husband. I think you need a man to care for you.’

  The word ‘care’ broke her and she began to cry. He put his arms round her and it felt good to be held. They married a week before Christmas.

  On her wedding day, she presented her false documents at the town hall and saw the presiding official accept them without a blink. Even the page of mad scrawl from Henriette, railing at her for having the temerity to marry her brother and palm off a bastard on ‘one of the oldest families in France’ – even that failed to dent her new-found security.

  *

  On the afternoon of Christmas Eve, 1937, Coralie was lighting candles in the shop window, dreaming up ideas for the spring collection, when pain tore through her, followed by a gush of liquid down her legs.

  An American client in the fitting room heard her howl of dismay. As the salon girls fluttered about helplessly, the American came and helped Coralie to her feet. Supporting her until the pain passed, she said, ‘Honey, you’re going to be pulling Christmas crackers in hospital. You, Mademoiselle,’ she beckoned a vendeuse, ‘go holler at my chauffeur, have him drive right up on the pavement. Someone get towels and somebody else fetch the husband. This lady is in labour.’

  *

  At seventeen minutes past midnight on Christmas Day, Coralie’s daughter was born, weighing a shave over five pounds. They named her Noëlle Una. Noëlle because the midwife suggested it, Una in honour of Madame Una Kilpin, whose Rolls-Royce had ferried Coralie through the Paris traffic, and who later offered to stand as godmother.

  Coralie took December and the whole of January 1938 off work. On the first of February, however, she left baby Noëlle with a nanny and took a taxi through the chilling rain to rue Royale.

  It was a wrench, leaving her newborn, but Coralie knew that, professionally, she was riding a wave. At Ramon’s strong suggestion, Henriette had reluctantly made Coralie directrice and head designer, effectively giving her full creative control of the business. Then, still unwell and feeling ill-used by the world, Henriette had left for Italy. Her doctor had recommended the warmer climate for her lungs and she’d taken one of her nurses with her. Rumours soon reached Paris of a new relationship. Everyone agreed: Henriette would not be back for a while.

  As 1938 unfolded, and profits rolled in, Coralie thanked Providence for her job. For all his promises, his passion, Ramon was not a good provider. His desire for her had not waned. He was an ardent, if sometimes thoughtless, lover. But his salary somehow always melted away before rent day. He had stopped going out to nightclubs so often, but was still addicted to dark basements. Only now it was to attend meetings of left-wing political groups. Coralie knew he was personally funding two or three, and supporting political refugees too. His only useful contribution to their household was coal, which he ‘liberated’ from the freight-marshalling yard alongside his office.

  ‘Be fair, Coralie,’ he would say, when she blasted him yet again for failing to pay her any housekeeping. ‘I gave you the best gift. My name. You are Madame Cazaubon.’

  True. Thanks to her marriage, she was now a fully fledged French citizen. The secret English part of her slept.

  Part Two

  Chapter Ten

  Germany, 6 November 1938

  He’d stood motionless for so long that his feet seemed to belong to some far-off frozen continent. The leather coat protecting him from the icy rain was beginning to let the moisture through. His ears felt raw, but there was no point putting his hat back on because that was dripping wet too.

  Hiltrud stood like a fur-clad pillar, seemingly untouched by the cold. He started to say something, then gave up. It was implicit that whoever broke silence at the graveside was the one who cared least. The one guilty of recovering from intolerable bereavement. It was invariably him.

  Rain made the letters on the headstone shine darkly. ‘A beloved son, Waldo Dietrich von Elbing, 16 September 1921 to 28 July 1937’. Above Waldo’s name, the words ‘Blut und Ehre’; ‘Blood and Honour’. Above that, a tilted swastika. Hiltrud and her father had instructed the stonemason to make the swastika larger than the Christian cross at the base. It was Hiltrud who insisted they come out to this graveyard on the banks of the river Havel every Sunday, but what did she see here? That trumpeting stone or the pitiful mound under which lay their son?

  Like many other youths of his age, Waldo had been sent to do his Landjahr, his year of service, learning to farm. Sent in spite of an inherited heart condition that resulted in defective oxygenation of the blood. Hiltrud and
her father had hidden it from his supervisors because, in perfectionist Germany, inborn weakness was a cause of shame.

  My shame, Dietrich railed at himself, though he hadn’t known just how far Waldo’s health had deteriorated, that he was collapsing after long stints of outdoor work. Or that the other boys were mocking him, calling him ‘girl’ because he was so pale. Had Waldo said any of this in his letters, Dietrich would have stepped in. Instead, he’d persuaded himself that his son would emerge fitter and stronger from his experiences. He, meanwhile, had thrown himself into his love affair, into his Paris adventure.

  His poor, beautiful boy. Taking advantage of Dietrich’s absence, Hiltrud and her father had arranged for Waldo to move on from farm work. To military camp, to learn artillery skills. Ultimately to become a member of an anti-aircraft battery. They’d been determined to make a soldier of the boy. The moment he’d learned their plans, Dietrich had left Paris for Hohen Neuendorf. It was unthinkable – a military camp, where boys were made to run miles every day with weighted backpacks? Where they loaded and fired guns, dragging them across rugged terrain while a Gefreiter screamed orders and smoke-bombs were thrown to mimic real warfare? For strong, war-minded boys, no doubt it was the best kind of life. For Waldo . . .

  Arriving back in Germany, Dietrich had discovered that his son had already started his military training. During a tense family summit, Hiltrud had begged him not to rock the boat. Her father had called in so many favours to gain this cherished posting, it would be an insult if Waldo were recalled. Hiltrud’s father had thrown his weight behind his daughter, declaring he would not stand by and watch his grandson denied the opportunity to grow manly.

  At artillery camp the bullying had worsened and Waldo’s letters to Dietrich that summer had echoed his grandfather’s phrase: ‘If I show them I am a man, they will stop.’