Wild Lavender

by Belinda Alexandra

  Kira rubbed against André’s knees. He stroked her head and looked away. ‘What about us, Simone? What about our happiness?’

  We remained still for a few minutes. When André finally turned back to me, our gazes locked and our eyes brimmed with tears. In that instant we knew that our dream was over and our time together had come to an end.

  ‘We had the love of a lifetime, didn’t we, Simone?’ André said, running his finger down my cheek. ‘Something more precious than most people will ever know.’

  The future André and I had pictured together had been snatched from us. But no one could take away what we had shared. The memories of those ten years together were ours to keep for ever. On our last evening at the house, André asked the chef to prepare Loire pike in honour of our first journey on the île de France. Afterwards, we made love in the flickering light of the fire. I ran my hands over André’s cheeks and chin, over every muscle and joint, savouring what had become familiar over the years. He brushed his fingertips over my skin and pressed his lips against mine. I drank the moment in, shutting out the future as best as I could. I did not allow myself to think that after tomorrow I would never feel the crush of his bare chest against mine or that I would never see those beautiful sable eyes grow old. ‘My André’ would no longer be mine; he would belong to someone else. He lifted me to him and I held on with all my strength, kissing him then burying my face in his hair. I did not want to see the morning come, the first silver light of dawn break across the sky.

  After breakfast, which neither of us could touch, the taxi arrived and we watched the driver pack my suitcases into the boot. He placed Kira in her cage on the back seat then held open the door for me. André drew me close. We lingered for a few seconds in the embrace.

  ‘Wherever you go, Simone, whoever you are with, you will always be in my heart,’ he said.

  ‘And you in mine.’

  Slowly I pulled away and he loosened his grip.

  The driver closed the door behind me. I wiped the mist from the window so I could see André through the glass. He was standing so formally, it looked as though he intended to salute me. Only his chin, held high, trembled as he fought to keep back his tears. The gates swung open and the taxi rolled forward. Kira meowed. André and I did not take our eyes from each other. I watched him until we turned into the street and he disappeared from view.

  Part Three

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The months following my separation from André were bleak and colourless. I was torn apart. I could not taste the food I forced myself to eat, sometimes I could scarcely breathe, and each night I paced the floorboards of my new apartment off the Champs élysées until I was exhausted enough to sleep.

  Minot offered me an engagement at the Adriana and I threw myself into the show, afraid that if I stopped working I would not be able to get out of bed. But at each performance I found myself gazing into the audience, hoping that I might see André amongst the sea of faces. Ghosts of him appeared in my dressing room, sitting in his favourite chair and reading a book as he’d liked to do once a show had settled in. Sometimes I woke with a start in the night, sure that I could feel the brush of his skin against mine. But André was not there; not in my dressing room and not beside me. He had been ripped from my life like a photograph torn from a newspaper. All that remained was a gaping, jagged hole.

  It was Monsieur Etienne who informed me of André’s engagement. ‘André told me himself,’ Monsieur Etienne explained. ‘He didn’t want you to hear of it through the press.’

  The news pierced me like a bullet. When we parted, André and I had agreed that we would get on with our lives. For him, that had meant getting married. I thought I had accepted that when I decided we couldn’t go on, but the reality was a blow I had not expected. Nevertheless I did not see André’s engagement as a betrayal. The decision to end our relationship had been mine, and he had only agreed because he feared what the situation was doing to me.

  ‘Perhaps you should leave Paris for a while,’ suggested Monsieur Etienne. ‘You still have those offers from Hollywood.’ I knew that he wanted to protect me from the French press. Even though Hitler’s troops had stormed into the demilitarised Rhineland, violating the Treaty of Versailles and slapping France in the face, the newspapers would be all agog over a society wedding.

  I declined his suggestion. Perhaps I thought that by staying in Paris, the sky might open one day and a miracle would bring me and André together again. My hope was as far-fetched as that of a condemned man who watches the dawn burst on the horizon and still believes a last-minute pardon is possible. The night of the wedding, I collapsed on stage with a burning fever. My press agent announced that I had pneumonia and was returning to my family in Pays de Sault to recover. But I hadn’t contracted pneumonia; the world had simply become too much for me. I had suffered a nervous breakdown.

  During Uncle Gerome’s illness, my mother had stayed in Aunt Yvette’s house along with Bernard. After Uncle Gerome died, she remained there. On my return home, my mother saw that I swung from a desire for company to a need for solitude and set me up in my childhood bedroom in my father’s house. Each morning she lit the fire in the kitchen and I spent the day by it, with Kira sleeping in my lap. Sometimes I read to distract myself, but usually I just stared into the flames. I had a sense that I was falling into darkness and somehow the firelight gave me something to cling to. I fought against the question that constantly sprang up in my mind: what was André doing now? I knew where he was and it wasn’t with me.

  ‘Any creature in shock needs warmth,’ said my mother, stoking up the fire. She had always been softly spoken, but during those days she only whispered to me. Her voice was imbued with healing spells; she wanted to soothe the pain in my heart.

  At midday, Aunt Yvette would struggle through the chilly wind to bring me something to eat. One day it was ewe’s milk cheese with warm bread, another it was anchovies and eggs. One bitterly cold day she cooked a stew and Bernard helped her carry the terrine to my father’s house.

  ‘You and Kira have come to look alike over the years,’ Bernard said, setting the terrine on the table and sending steam, aromatic with red wine and bay leaves, wafting around the room.

  Aunt Yvette gave him a sideways glance. It was the kind of look a wife might give a husband long after the passion has cooled but the love and regard remain. ‘What are you talking about, Bernard?’ she laughed.

  Bernard smiled and ladled the stew into a bowl. ‘They are both beautiful and graceful.’

  I could have said the same thing about Aunt Yvette and Bernard.

  In the nurturing company of my family I started to heal and by the time spring came I felt well enough to spend my days walking the fields. I watched baby rabbits leap up from their burrows and young goats stumble on their first steps. The tone began to return to my muscles and colour reappeared in my face. But my healing was nearly undone when a strange car sped up the road one day.

  I watched from the farmhouse window as a slope-shouldered man stepped out of the car, holding something under his jacket. Bernard called out a greeting and hurried towards the stone wall, assuming the man was a stranger who had lost his way or a farmer looking to buy some land in the area. But after a brief exchange Bernard’s voice lowered to a growl.

  The man retreated but as he did, he caught a glimpse of me. He pulled the object out from under his jacket. A camera. I stepped back just in time to avoid having my picture taken. The man shouted: ‘The Marseilles press would like to know if Mademoiselle Fleurier will be sending André Blanchard a congratulatory telegram now that the Princesse de Letellier is expecting a child.’

  Bernard picked up a rock and aimed it at the reporter, who backed away to his car. It wasn’t Bernard’s nature to be violent, but he wanted to protect me. His threat was convincing because the reporter threw his jacket and camera into the car, revved the motor, and was soon nothing more than a speck on the dusty road.

  After the reporter’s vis
it, I retreated to the house again although the weather was turning warmer. André’s first child. I hadn’t allowed myself to even imagine that.

  ‘I have wasted years of love,’ I said to my mother when she tried to coax me out into the sunshine one day. ‘I was destined to lose André.’

  ‘Nothing is ever wasted, Simone,’ she said. ‘The love we give never dies. It only changes form. Never be afraid to keep giving love.’

  Soon afterwards, I received a telegram from Monsieur Etienne informing me that I had been invited to sing at the World’s Fair in Paris.

  ‘It is an honour,’ said Bernard, reading the telegram to my mother and aunt. ‘Simone will be representing France.’

  It was the highest honour that could be bestowed on any French entertainer, and it showed how much I had achieved. But I was the most famous singer in the country because of André.

  ‘What is wrong?’ my mother asked.

  I lowered my eyes. ‘I can’t face Paris,’ I said. I didn’t need to look at her to sense her dismay.

  That night the moon was full and the air was tinged with the warmth of early summer. I left my shutters open and let the moonlight fall over my skin. I breathed in the scents of my childhood: lavender and pine; cypress and cedar. Suddenly, out of the shadows, my mother appeared in a scarlet dress. She held a basket of eggs. I tried to sit up but my legs and arms were so heavy I couldn’t move. My mother took the eggs one by one and rolled their cool shells over me, chanting under her breath. She moved the eggs across my forehead, along my arms and over my chest. I felt something drag up inside me, as if the darkness in my heart was being sucked away. She rubbed the soles of my feet then turned me over and caressed my back. I floated upwards, buoyed by a sense of lightness and joy that had escaped me ever since I had left André. I flipped over and sank down to the bed as lightly as a feather drifting on air. The mattress pressed against my back and my limbs were free to move. I glimpsed my mother disappearing back into the shadows and I fell into a peaceful sleep.

  The next morning when I awoke and saw the sun shimmering over my bed, I knew I had to find the strength to return to Paris and rebuild my life.

  The day after my performance at the World’s Fair, Monsieur Etienne, Minot and I had dinner at one of the outdoor cafés on the grounds, sampling the food of the provinces and listening to the foreign accents buzzing around us. The tourists had returned to Paris and smiles lit the faces of the hoteliers and restaurateurs once again after years of the Depression. Afterwards, we wandered around the American and Spanish pavilions and visited the formal garden of fountains which spouted water shaped into trees, hedges and blossoms.

  ‘Look at that,’ I said, pointing to the fountains in the centre of the Seine which shot up water like geysers. Gold lights glinted on the river’s surface.

  ‘They have used a thin layer of oil sprinkled with gold dust to achieve that effect,’ explained Minot. ‘When the searchlights hit the river, the water glitters like tinsel.’

  ‘It is very pretty,’ I said. ‘And so Parisian.’

  ‘You are glad to be back then?’ asked Monsieur Etienne, gesturing for us to sit down on a bench. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a newspaper. He handed it to me, pointing out an article from that morning’s Le Figaro:

  Simone Fleurier, after being away from Paris for nearly a year, gave a triumphant performance at the World’s Fair last night. She is, and will always be, our shining star; the brightest light in the City of Lights. Welcome home, Mademoiselle Fleurier. We are glad that you are back, lifting our spirits with your vibrant voice and thrilling us with your dancing.

  ‘What a declaration of love!’ I said. ‘So Paris missed me after all.’

  ‘We all missed you,’ said Minot.

  ‘You are sadder,’ said Monsieur Etienne, pressing my hand, ‘but it doesn’t affect your performance. If anything I have never seen you sing with as much depth as you did last night.’

  I sensed the sympathy in his words and was grateful that he had broached the subject of André so discreetly. We walked on towards the Pont d’Iéna and the Eiffel Tower. ‘Look at that,’ said Minot. Looming before us was the German pavilion, brilliantly lit with searchlights. At its entrance a tower soared above all the other pavilions. A golden eagle perched on top of it, clutching the swastika in its claws.

  Monsieur Etienne clucked his tongue. ‘You can see it from everywhere. I think it is in bad taste, considering Spain.’

  I thought about the painting by Picasso we had seen in the Spanish pavilion. It was called Guernica and showed a woman crying out in pain, clutching her dead child; a disembowelled horse in its death throes; a figure falling from a burning building. It was Picasso’s ode to the Basque town that had been brutally bombed by the Italians in planes supplied by the Germans. Italy, Germany, England, Russia and France had agreed on a policy of nonintervention in Spain, but Germany and Italy weren’t playing by the rules.

  ‘You would think that France would stand up for democracy,’ I said. ‘But we stand by and watch as the legitimate Republican government and their supporters are slaughtered by the Fascists.’

  ‘Be careful, Mademoiselle Fleurier,’ said Minot. ‘You are speaking like a Jew. Don’t you know that L’Action Française says that the Jews are pushing for another European war?’

  ‘I am not pushing for a war,’ I said. I understood why the French didn’t want to get involved in Spain. My own father had suffered during the last war and I had seen enough widows, orphans and disfigured men to be sickened by the thought of more fighting. ‘But many people say that France will find herself involved in a war anyway if she continues to shrink in the face of the Nazis.’

  We turned from the German pavilion and walked through an archway, finding ourselves strolling by the Seine again.

  ‘Camille Casal’s agent has approached me,’ said Minot, turning to lighter topics. ‘He wants Mesdemoiselles Fleurier and Casal to do a show together. He thinks it will be novel to put two of Paris’s most famous women on stage at the same time.’

  ‘It would be interesting to have two rivals together,’ agreed Monsieur Etienne, ‘but Mademoiselle Fleurier is the bigger star. She will get top billing.’

  He was thinking like a true agent, but the thought of performing alongside Camille made me uneasy. We hadn’t spoken to each other since I had seen her in Cannes and told her that André and I were getting married. I had thought her warning about the Blanchard family was motivated by jealousy. Now I saw that she had been right.

  ‘We can share the billing,’ I said. ‘It would make more sense.’

  ‘Don’t defer,’ said Monsieur Etienne, lifting his eyebrows at me. ‘Camille Casal’s star has been falling for some time. I think her agent is hoping to boost her career by riding on your wings.’

  Whether I was the bigger star or not, my old insecurity about being compared to Camille began to creep in again. When I was on stage by myself, I felt attractive. But next to Camille’s glorious beauty, I was in danger of being swamped. Still, I thought, remembering Marlene Dietrich in Berlin, a petite blonde and a tall brunette could make an interesting combination.

  ‘Let’s do it,’ I said. ‘I will call Camille myself.’

  Camille arrived at our first rehearsal in a gold Rolls-Royce. She had just returned from Hollywood where she had done screen tests for Paramount Pictures. ‘Unless you want to lie around on set and mutter inane lines like “Look into my eyes, darling”, I don’t suggest you try to work in American movies,’ she announced to the cast.

  To my surprise, rather than being intimidated by Camille as I had expected, I was glad to see her again. And finally I understood why: she was a nostalgic link to my past, a reminder of a time when I didn’t know what being a star was. My mind flashed briefly to a picture of myself in a worn dress, scrubbing Aunt Augustine’s kitchen floor. That could have been the rest of my life. It was Camille who had inspired me to become an entertainer. I suddenly realised how much of my success I owed to
her.

  ‘It’s good to see you again,’ I told Camille, kissing her cheeks. ‘You too,’ she said. She looked me over but I sensed that it was not for signs of cracks as my other rivals did when they met me. ‘You’re doing very well,’ she said. I knew she was referring to my life without André. But, to my relief and admiration, she never mentioned it.

  Camille and I starred in the biggest show of that year. Lebaron spent four million francs producing ‘Les Femmes’ and recouped more than that in the first two months. Although it was a music hall show with variety acts rather than an American-style musical, the theme of female competition and solidarity ran throughout it, from the comedians to the chorus girls, from the clowns to the acrobats. Camille and I did all our numbers together, and two of the songs became the year’s greatest hits: ‘Welcome’ and ‘Stone Around My Neck’.

  Our reviews blew away all the others including Mistinguett and Maurice Chevalier. One paper described the show as ‘Simone Fleurier’s triumph and Camille Casal’s comeback’, although Camille saw things differently. ‘I am going out with a bang,’ she confided in me, as we ate supper one evening at Maxim’s after the show. ‘When the run is over, I will retire.’

  I was shocked by her announcement. Working together on such a successful production, and sharing the limelight, I felt that we had finally become friends. In the old days, Camille would not have confided in me. But when I asked about her daughter this time, she told me she had taken her out of the convent and that she was staying with a piano teacher in Vaucresson to get a ‘lady’s education’. When I asked why her daughter was not living with her, Camille had answered, ‘I can’t let people know that she is my daughter. I want her to make a good marriage.’

  I remembered what she had told me all those years ago in François’s apartment: men like that don’t marry girls like us! Even though André had wanted to marry me, the statement had proved true. No matter how successful we became, Camille Casal and I would always be on the outside of society.