Celeste

by Roland Perry

  Céleste despised them and she could not always hide it. She was motivated by the hope that some of their generosity might trickle or even flood towards her. But this hope now was devoid of any thought of love or marriage. The treatment of Lise had hardened her against trusting or giving her heart to any man. She was glad of this emotional shell on this typical night at the Café Anglais. It usually made her impervious to the insults, slurs and put-downs these rich Parisian dandies hurled her way, as if it were their right. But on this particular night, in the raw emotional aftermath of Lise’s death, Céleste was in a combative mood.

  When supper was served (with the dandies always picking up the tab), Céleste found herself next to a small, thin man with bad teeth, and opposite a tall, handsome man, who was admiring himself in every possible mirror, including the large silver food dishes. Both were boastful, embarrassingly self-centred and devoid of any intelligent conversation. The smaller man began to bait and put down Céleste in the most unimaginative way.

  ‘Whose hair did you borrow tonight?’ brought mirth from the good-looking man opposite.

  ‘And that dress! Surely on loan from the local poor house!’

  He continued on beyond anything that might be thought of as fun, except by his friend opposite, who Céleste thought had to be stupid to be amused by Mr Yellow Teeth. She dubbed him ‘daddy-long-legs’.

  The goading continued. The short one tried teasing her about her efforts at the Hippodrome. Her backhand return was, ‘’Tis a pity your breath matches your fangs.’

  The women were supposed to absorb the teasing or abuse without riposte, but not Céleste. Soon she was receiving more, and louder, laughs than the tormentor. Defeated, the weedy one lost his temper.

  ‘Who brought this whore to the party?’ he asked.

  Daddy-long-legs, with a ‘grin of idiocy’, urged his companion on.

  Frisette could see trouble coming. She whispered to Céleste that it might be better to leave. Céleste refused. ‘No doubt your title is a recent one,’ she told her abuser. ‘If there were no women like us, what would you do? I’ve paid my fee by listening to you, and I am staying!’

  The table fell silent. Pressure from the beaten dandies would normally call for the women to retreat. Any amusement at the banter had dissipated. Bitterness now hung in the air along with the thick smoke of cigarettes, pipes and the odd cigar. Minds had been dulled by too much champagne. Suddenly, an observer intervened.

  ‘Really, gentlemen,’ he said, with a tone of firmness yet familiarity while stroking his moustache. ‘Haven’t you gone far enough? Will you not stop this?’

  All eyes turned to the speaker. He was handsome, tall and well built. He was elegantly rather than garishly dressed. His lively brown eyes flicked with the hint of a smile to Céleste and then with something more serious to the would-be tormentors. ‘Neither your usual good taste nor your generosity seem to be in evidence today,’ he told one of them. ‘There are two of you ganging up on a woman! One would already be too many.’

  Céleste could hardly believe her ears and eyes. Here was the most attractive man in the café sticking up for her with a firm, authoritative eloquence that hinted at reserves of determination. He was not foppish like the others.

  The weedy offender paused at this mild challenge, but seeing that everyone seemed to support the stranger, he backed down a little.

  ‘If I’ve hurt Mademoiselle’s self-respect,’ he said, ‘I’m quite willing to make amends to her.’ Admitting he was wrong to tease Céleste, he said, ‘I have the good sense to pay for it . . . as you are her self-appointed champion, you may name the price.’

  The stranger replied sharply, ‘Fifteen Louis!’

  No one uttered a gasp, but this was the equivalent of 300 francs.

  ‘Right, fifteen Louis it is. She shall have it tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow is too late.’

  There was another silence.

  ‘But I haven’t got that amount on me,’ the weedy tormentor said.

  ‘Never mind. The café manager will lend them to you.’

  The stranger called for Vesparoz, the café manager, who soon returned with the fifteen Louis.

  ‘Give it to Mademoiselle,’ the weedy one directed.

  Céleste refused to accept it.

  ‘Give it to me,’ the stranger said. He turned to Céleste, smiled and gestured politely for her to join him. Céleste hesitated, but his kindly manner persuaded her. She sat beside him.

  ‘You really did not need to do that,’ she whispered, touching his forearm.

  ‘Oh, yes I did,’ he said softly. ‘I realise you can look after yourself. You gave as good as you got. But there should be no such games when a gentleman addresses a woman. There should be respect.’

  He was distracted by the weedy one making another comment to his daddy-long-legs friend and their subsequent forced laughter.

  ‘For every insult you make from now on,’ the handsome stranger addressed the two men, ‘it will cost you fifteen Louis.’

  ‘There won’t be anymore,’ the weedy one mumbled with an apologetic gesture.

  After a brief chat, the stranger was taken aside by a dandy who wished to talk ‘business’. He excused himself to Céleste.

  ‘Can we continue this later?’ he asked, taking her hand and kissing it.

  She nodded and smiled. His chair was taken by Frisette.

  ‘Do you know who that is?’ Frisette asked, wide-eyed. ‘Only one of the most eligible, sought-after bachelors in Paris: Count Lionel de Chabrillan.’

  ‘What do you know about him? Is there a countess?’

  ‘No, but plenty would like to be.’

  Céleste glanced over at Lionel. She smiled but said nothing.

  ‘I used to date one of his best friends, Count Roland de Napoli. The Chabrillans are a rich and very powerful family, descended from the Knights of Dauphine.’

  ‘Should I be impressed?’

  ‘Yes, you should be,’ Frisette said with a grin. ‘Lionel’s father was attendant to Charles X.’

  Céleste wrinkled her nose, as if she wasn’t overwhelmed.

  ‘Wait. It’s the mother you should know about. She’s the matriarch. She was the daughter of the top French diplomat to Constantinople at the height of the Ottoman Empire. Their real wealth may have come from that association, but I don’t know much about it. Lionel’s elder brother, Marie-Olivier, holds a position at the Council of State. I don’t like him. Met him twice. Treated me like dirt. Of course, a girl like me is dirt to someone from the aristocracy. He has two sisters—’

  ‘I don’t care about his siblings,’ Céleste interrupted. ‘Tell me more about him. He’s quite beautiful.’

  ‘He’s the poor little rich boy of the family; the youngest, only twenty-five. Bit of a failure in the eyes of the family. His mother got him a job in the French Legation in Copenhagen. That didn’t last long. Roland told me that all Lionel wanted to do was own land and a castle in Berry.’1

  Céleste glanced across at Lionel again. He gave her a coy smile.

  ‘But what is he doing now?’ she asked.

  ‘Not much,’ Frisette said. ‘He’s a bon vivant, an inveterate gambler.’

  ‘Gambling at the track?’

  ‘Yes, but mainly roulette. He’s obsessed with it. Do you play?’

  ‘No. I must learn.’

  They both laughed.

  ‘Is he a womaniser?’

  ‘Strangely, no, not really. He’s had the odd mistress. I’ve seen him at the usual dandy haunts with a stunning partner. But remember I only know a bit about him.’

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘He drinks only the best champagne. I recall that.’

  ‘Very interesting.’

  They both laughed again.

  Other men, including her two abusers, asked Céleste for a dance, but she rejected them. They were attracted to her feistiness, it seemed, as much as her outstanding physical appeal and natural sensuality. But Lionel had not appr
oached her to dance. She caught him looking at her. He must like me, she thought.

  Céleste was confused that he did not pursue her, but she was not going to die wondering about it. She summoned courage and walked over to him.

  ‘I really wish to escape the men pestering me,’ she said. ‘Could you take me home?’

  ‘With pleasure, my dear,’ he replied with a languid grin, ‘but only after you’ve danced a waltz with me.’

  Céleste was too overwhelmed to speak as he put his arm around her waist.

  ‘He held me to him and I felt his heart beat,’ she wrote in her diary later. ‘I closed my eyes and let him lead me. I knew a flash of happiness that passed like lightning.’

  This was a pure spark of romance she had never felt before. It was heady. The tough shell around her had been broken down in a few moments and she was in a quandary. Lionel took Frisette home first and then drove to Céleste’s place.

  ‘Really sorry to have put you to this trouble,’ she said.

  ‘It’s a pleasure,’ Lionel replied. ‘I wouldn’t have dared ask you. I didn’t want to be the third one to persecute you.’

  He pressed the fifteen Louis into her hand.

  ‘You must take it,’ he insisted. ‘It’s yours.’

  She had forgotten about it. Her thoughts were on the romance of the moment.

  ‘I’ll call on you at four p.m.,’ he said, looking into her eyes. He did not kiss her. Instead, he gave her a lingering handshake.

  Céleste wrote that her head and heart were filled with images of the count. ‘How foolish of me to have lost hope in life!’

  Céleste’s luck seemed to be turning. She had written the week before to her Dutch baron, telling him of her recent financial and other woes. Guilt-ridden over the poor way he had treated her in The Hague, the baron sent her 2000 francs. This, coupled with the 300 windfall from the rude dandy, was a small fortune, at least for Céleste. It would have taken her more than two years to earn that amount at the Hippodrome. She would now be able to pay off her debts and live for a time without working. But before she could contemplate fully this sudden change of luck, at 4 p.m. as he’d promised, Lionel arrived from his apartment in salubrious Faubourg Saint-Germain at her place on Rue Geoffroy-Marie. He was in an attractive phaeton led by two high-stepping black horses. Céleste came out to greet him as he disengaged the carriage and tethered the horses himself, rather than asking his two servants to do it.

  He invited her to dinner at a ‘clubbish’ restaurant off the Champs-Élysées. When he knocked on the wooden door, a panel slid back. The manager then ushered them in to a dining room, full of discreet cubicles with purple couches to lounge in rather than chairs. The other diners were up-market, she thought, from their dress, manner and the way they scrutinised her. She was both charmed by the atmosphere and intimidated. Her feelings of inadequacy and her class background made her self-conscious in such an environment. But when she looked at Lionel, he seemed relaxed and very pleased to be escorting her. They sat next to each other on a couch. He asked for champagne and a waitress took their food orders. Céleste was astounded to discover he knew her history, and she had the courage to mention her misgivings.

  ‘But my background is very . . .’

  ‘I don’t care about your background,’ he said with a dismissive wave. ‘I care about you. That is what matters.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be with someone, you know . . . from the aristocracy?’ she asked, going to the brink.

  ‘That’s what my family keeps telling me,’ he said with a languid smile. ‘They don’t know my feelings. And anyway, what’s so special about the women of my so-called class?’ He paused to light a cigar. ‘None of them have your courage. The way you rode at the Hippodrome! You have such guts!’

  ‘Is that important? My courage?’

  ‘It goes to character.’

  ‘But you don’t know how afraid I was before I entered the arena.’

  ‘A matador would be a fool not to be afraid before a bullfight. I see the results of your fortitude. That is what counts. You dare things no man I know would do, unless mad.’

  ‘Maybe I’m crazy . . .?’

  ‘Not from my observation,’ he said, touching her hand tenderly.

  ‘Do you know I was once in Saint-Lazare? Were you aware I worked in a brothel?’

  He laughed. ‘I didn’t know, and I surely don’t care. I see what you are now. Not what befell you in the past.’

  ‘But doesn’t someone’s past dictate their future?’

  ‘If you let it,’ he said, looking into her eyes. He flicked ash and puffed smoke to a whirring roof fan. ‘I’ve heard rumours about your past: the prostitution. I was told by jealous friends.’ He leaned forward. ‘I don’t think you realise that every man who has ever seen you perform has fallen in love with you.’

  ‘Ah, an image! They’ve fallen for an image, something unreal.’ She sipped champagne that had just been poured and asked, ‘Have you?’

  ‘Yes, I have, but not an image. I’ve fallen for the real person,’ he said with a shyness that made her feel more comfortable with him.

  ‘You’re telling me you love me?’

  He nodded. ‘I am.’ He smoked for a moment. ‘And how do you feel about me?’

  Emboldened, Céleste told him, ‘I love you and will go on loving you for a long time.’

  ‘I feel the same,’ he said, and kissed her on the lips, long enough to turn heads at other cubicles.

  ‘You are my first true paramour,’ he said, sounding pleased to announce it. ‘I lose inhibitions with you. I love your vivaciousness, your fierce independence. I cannot believe your courage at the Hippodrome! I loved your counter-punches at the Café Anglais. You didn’t really need me. You were more than a match for those idiots.’

  ‘But you did intervene . . .’

  ‘Yes, because I wanted you to notice me.’

  ‘I don’t care why. I only care that you did.’

  ‘I’ve never seen a courtesan dare in public what you did. You hit back. You defied . . .’

  ‘My class? My station in life?’

  ‘No. You defied what is expected from courtesans.’

  Céleste began to dare believe that the dream would last. She trusted Lionel like no other.

  Céleste always believed that the way men had sex with her gave clues to their character. Lionel was the best experience she’d had, or felt she’d had since Denise at Saint-Lazare. Denise had shown tenderness and consideration, but she was female and Céleste had been just fourteen, and extremely vulnerable after the rough, frightening treatment from Vincent. Looking back eight years, she did not reproach Denise but she did resent being taken advantage of. Though she had no lesbian tendencies, she did not regret what had happened. Denise had aroused her physically, even though Céleste had no deep feelings for her. Lionel managed both. He was gentle, almost apologetic in the way he treated her, but she encouraged him to be stronger by her own actions and movements, not her words. He responded the way she wanted and liked. He was caring by nature and this was apparent in bed. There was none of the rough-house or the voyeuristic in him.

  She enjoyed making love to him and it deepened her already extremely strong feelings. She would not have cared if he’d been a poor lover. But he was more than adequate in every sense. More than anything it was his tenderness and sensitivity that impressed her. Céleste spoke of her ‘rhythm’ with Lionel. It had happened fast but it was this ‘fitting together’ in harmony that affected her. She didn’t know how she had reached this point in her life without knowing what real love was on so many levels.

  Céleste now trembled at the thought of losing it.

  Lionel didn’t like her neighbourhood so Céleste rented an apartment in a more acceptable district at Place de la Madeleine and turned the dress shop over to her mother. Two months into the relationship she was invited to a dinner party at an apartment. While the wine and champagne flowed, she heard open reference to a woman called Zizi. She a
sked a friend, Albert, who this was.

  ‘Oh, you didn’t know?’ he said. ‘She’s Lionel’s mistress.’

  Seeing her expression of surprise, he added, ‘And this is her apartment. Or at least it’s one he pays for.’

  Suddenly, dreams of being with Lionel exclusively collapsed. She kept her head, although she was itching to challenge him. Céleste waited until people had left the dinner table before she cornered him.

  ‘Zizi isn’t exactly my mistress,’ he said. ‘It’s true that a woman I’ve known for a long time lives here. But this apartment belongs to me. I intend to leave her, and when I do, I shall let her have all that is here.’

  He didn’t sound defiant or defensive, just matter-of-fact. Céleste was now herself defensive. Lionel had appeared too good to be true in this ‘game of high stakes’, as she called it. No matter what he said from now on, Céleste remained ‘buried in just one thought: He had a mistress!’

  The dinner party went on, the tension obvious between them. The champagne was now acting as a ‘singing syrup’ with Lionel’s friends. Céleste learned that Lionel had a lot of debts. He was a classic dandy, tearing through the family inheritance long before it was his; there would be nothing left to inherit if he continued on his present course. Céleste liked the idea that he could end up impecunious.