So I know well what you are playing with. I urge you, only, to be prudent. Utilize your bit of freedom to keep a supply from the pharmacy. I use both cocoa butter and quinine before, and vinegar after, secrets I only came across by working with the wayward women who come to the YWCA for help; and who have taught me that our bodies and the concept of virtue are not inextricably bound. I believe there is more to us than that.
Un gros câlin pour toi, petite sœur,
Cécile
9
When Cécile finished her public schooling, she had great ambitions to go on to university, but both financially and as a French-Canadian woman, the only feasible option was to sit in on lectures and classes as an unregistered pupil. This was what she settled for in the end, and she was soon coming home with new ideas that she’d managed to pluck out of the most old-boy setting imaginable.
She would describe to Claire in great detail how, as the only woman in a room that was stuffy with suited men, everything she did was constantly observed, as if she were a bizarre imposter from some distant planet, brazenly infiltrating their ranks in broad classroom light. She would sit strong and straight, and try to appear oblivious to their non-stop, dumbstruck gawking, focusing on the professor, who would also pause to observe each minuscule change in her manner — when she re-folded her hands, or opened her books, turned their pages, dabbed the tip of her pen into her inkwell. It all, somehow, proved endlessly riveting to them, as if they were all motherless, had never seen a female before in their lives. And it was astounding to think, Cécile would say, that this very herd of oxen would be running the country in a few short years.
Though the possibility that might be changing did appear to be drawing closer. Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan had just granted women the right to vote in provincial elections, and much work was under way to win the right nationally. There was even ardent lobbying for women to be able to run in politics, and the notion was gaining surprising ground. Caught up in the momentum, Cécile volunteered most of her free time to the Fédération nationale St-Jean-Baptiste, one of the only francophone organizations bent on furthering women’s rights in the city. And, as she was still living at home, she would report every success and bit of progress to her grandmother — who would, in response, give a single elated clap, or lightly thump the arm of her chair with her palm, as if it were the anvil at the closing remarks of some righteous proceeding — Cécile reading La Bonne Parole aloud to her in the boudoir, a magazine written not only for women but by them.
Cécile met a man at a suffragist rally who had come all the way from Quebec City to participate. He was mild and calm, but stood his ground with firm integrity. A bank manager who dabbled in politics, Gilles Taillefer had made his affections known to Cécile in a timely and respectable manner, and they were soon travelling between the cities to visit each other, in the reputable ways one might expect of a banker dabbling in politics. At an assembly near the end of 1918, in the midst of a crowd gathered to celebrate the announcement of not only the national vote being granted to women but the passing of an act that permitted them to run in federal elections, he got down on one knee and asked for her hand in marriage. She assented, on the condition that he continue to support her while she fought to win women’s suffrage in Quebec’s provincial vote, as well as a few other provisos. He agreed, and they were married early the next year, with Cécile moving to his modest townhouse in Quebec City.
Claire, who had just finished school, was the only child left in the household. She hadn’t really been fazed by all this excitable suffragist rhetoric that had quivered through the house, having been much more absorbed in her classes at the École de Danse Lacasse-Morenoff. She eagerly mastered the dances they taught her — traditional and folk dances, ballroom, some exotic Spanish steps, the hop-trot, one-step Peabody, and even a little rudimentary ballet — warming up on the barre in front of the admiring mirrors that climbed the high walls with their reflections, stretching clear up to the ceiling with flattery.
When she was fifteen, through a friend from her classes, she landed a contract to work weekends at one of the city’s cinemas — even if it was one of the more out-of-the-way and shabby ones — as an adagio dancer, part of a troupe that entertained in front of the screen between short movies, or when the reels were being changed for a feature film. Many of the girls were younger than Claire, most of them thirteen, and together they made up an eye-catching line of sixteen showgirls, dancing in unison to lively ragtime. It was the first applause she had ever received that wasn’t coming from a family member or someone she knew, and she noticed how the clapping sounded all the more raucous and sincere because of it. Sometimes, looking out beyond the blaring lights into the darkness of the audience, she wondered how many people had come just for the dancers, whose act was always disappointingly interrupted by the moving pictures. The piano and trumpet players who helped them to entertain often told them at the end of the day how spectacular they’d been, sensational really, their hands brushing the small of the girls’ waists as they filed out the back door to return to their unsequined civilian lives and another dusty week of school.
The limits of how evocative things could be onstage were just beginning to be tested in earnest by the cabarets and revues, the burlesque theatres, vaudeville, and musical comedies, all of which were nudging the envelope forward. Claire’s parents had been to see two of her acts when she first got the job as an adagio dancer, and had reluctantly agreed to let her continue, glad of the extra revenue added to the household. But the moment she was finished school, sixteen years old and eager to move up and on from her inconsequential cinema job, they went to see her again, this time unannounced, and sat near the back of the theatre. In only one year, things had changed significantly. To their befuddled dismay, what they saw was their daughter, undeniably a young woman now, in a costume that revealed her legs in their entirety, as well as the white spans of her arms, and even a hint of her cleavage, all while she danced back and forth on the stage in what was (as chance would have it) the most risqué number she had ever performed. They left hushed and affronted.
A week later, her mother gave her the good news: she had found a real job for Claire. It was a job in which she could contribute, decently, to the family’s income, and to her grandmother’s burgeoning medical bills in particular. It had come from one of the well-dressed men who sometimes sauntered in from the opulent English-speaking wards, to walk the length of a working-class francophone street — Montcalm, Wolfe, Visitation — just to recruit a jeune fille for some affluent household to the west. A jeune fille was a kind of live-in maid, a position that offered an (often welcome) elimination of freedom for the teenage girl involved while paying entirely for her (assumed) lavish room and board, as well as sending a dependable cheque for her services directly to the family’s mailbox every month, for between eight and twenty dollars. Claire’s mother was elated to tell her that she’d been hired out for seventeen dollars. Just think of the way Claire would be helping her grandmother, she’d said.
A showy touring car picked Claire up and drove her across town, to the other side of the Main, into another world, one where people spoke another language entirely, held other customs, and had very different expectations. They pulled up in front of a stout brick mansion on Sherbrooke Street with classical white columns and a tight shield of lawn. She was given a brief tour of the interior, massive salons with oriental rugs and posh furniture, many of the rooms guarded by the low and swirling citadels of marble fireplaces. She was then led to a small room in the basement, her very own, next to the laundry facilities. It smelled of bleached mildew. That first evening, the woman of the house came down to make sure she was settling in all right. She was excessively cordial, and before bidding her a “simply splendid, magnificent first sleep,” she handed Claire a welcome gift. A textbook on advanced English from France.
Claire spent the next days being schooled in her duties and responsibilit
ies, straining to understand the exhaustive instructions in English. The woman was patient with Claire, and tirelessly repeated herself. Eventually, Claire knew enough to be left on her own to work, though the tasks were much harder than she’d imagined. She was barred from contact with people, cleaning unused rooms to a sheen, passing carpet sweepers over the endless rugs, lathering expensive clothes across a washboard. In the first forty-eight hours she thought of running away several times, but on top of letting her father and grandmother down, she knew several girls her own age, other adagio dancers, who had run away from home and were now struggling to make it on their own in an unforgiving city, joining the ranks of the desperate and impoverished majority. These girls tended to show up to work less and dance less, as their obligations to establishments in le Red Light persistently increased. Claire reasoned that, while working as a jeune fille was only temporary, before she left her post she would have to have at least some kind of plan or assurance in place. Besides, she reasoned, at least she still had her Wednesday evening dance classes to look forward to.
That Wednesday, after washing the dishes and eating her dinner (at her station, on a stool at the kitchen counter), she changed her clothes and asked for something she thought was quite reasonable, a dime for a return trip on the tram that ran the length of Sherbrooke Street, to where her dance school was located in the east end. She stood before the couple, in her clothes for going out, a small bag containing her dance attire on her shoulder. The man and woman looked at each other, shocked. Finally the woman, stuttering to start off, explained that no, Claire could not leave the house on Wednesday evenings, or ever, really, except for the twelve hours on Easter and on Christmas Day that had been agreed to in the contract.
As this sank in, Claire’s mouth dropped open. Her bag fell from her shoulder. With water welling in her eyes, she cupped her hands over her nose and tried to hold back the wave of hysteria that was surging through her. She was visibly shaking, convulsing now with voluble sobs, gripping onto her hair in fists, buckling at the waist.
It wasn’t the woman who went to Claire but her husband, a mild and relatively soft-spoken man. But when she saw him approaching, Claire screamed into his face, “Me touche pas!” Then her hands, as if of their own volition, were suddenly out in front of her, towing her body to one of the marble fireplaces, where she grabbed a hefty candlestick from the mantel, spun round, and hurled it at the wide-eyed man, whom it narrowly missed as he dropped to the ground on all fours. The silver candlestick clanged onto the floor behind him, rolling into a wall, and when it stopped, Claire scurried back down to her quarters and collapsed on her bed to weep.
She cried for quite some time, and when she suddenly stopped, she turned and faced the ceiling with solid resolution. She would not be defeated, not be denied. She would get to her dance classes because she willed it to happen. She willed it so forcefully that she wondered if something might transpire to get her there that evening. Her only problem in achieving her aim was that she didn’t have any allies, didn’t have anyone who actually understood her plight. This, she strategized, was the only thing she required. So, then, all that was left was to will this to happen. Claire clamped her eyes shut, stiffened her body, and bent all her concentration and strength and focus on this one thing. An ally. An ally now. Now. Now.
There was a timid knock on the door. She breathed a soundless sigh, and propped herself up on her elbow. “You can enter, please.”
It was the husband again, his wife being apparently a little weak in the knees after such an outburst of emotion. “I . . . I would like very much to apologize, miss. I do believe the gentleman with whom I made the arrangement wasn’t entirely forthcoming as to some of the details of the contract. And I —”
“Please, sir,” Claire interrupted, “please come in. I wish for you to understand something.”
The man hesitated, cast a glance at the open door behind him, and then sheepishly stepped forward, towards the bed. She grabbed onto his wrist and pulled it up to her chest, opened his hand and placed it flat on her bosom. Her heart was thumping to a measure he could clearly feel in the bones of his hand.
“Look at me. Please,” asked Claire, waiting until he did so. “Now. I. Need. To dance.” She drew a heaving breath into her lungs. “If not. I will die.”
The husband searched her expression. “I . . . I see . . .” he murmured, clearing his throat. “Well, . . . . I will . . . discuss this with my wife and —”
Claire shook her head. “No. I don’t want you to discuss it. I want you to say to me, now, promise, that I can dance.”
“I . . .” The man tried to pull his hand away from her grip, but she wrestled it back into place, onto the centre of her chest. Finally, “Okay. All right, I promise, you can . . . next Wednesday — and every . . . Wednesday — you can . . . you can dance.”
Claire closed her eyes in gratitude. “Thank you. Thank you. Much.” But when she opened them, she wasn’t quite met with an expression that mirrored her own clear and steadfast resolve. It occurred to her that she might have to give something in return. Yes, now that she was calm enough to think, surely, in exchange for a long-term ally, something would be expected. Such things weren’t acquired for free.
Claire reached a hesitant hand out to his neck, her cold fingers sliding into his collar. She paused, tugged him closer, waiting for him to pull back and resist. He did not. With his face close to hers, there was nothing else to do but kiss him, at first with a closed pucker, but soon with a teary, open-mouthed softness, until she’d begun a slow and brave exploration with her tongue. Their breathing swelled. She moved his hand from the centre of her chest and into her dress’s collar, then down, to cup one of her breasts. They leaned farther back, tipping onto the bed.
There was the sound of a drawer upstairs, closing louder than it needed to, and with that, the husband sprang back, stood up from the bed, straightened his tie, wiped his lips, and smoothed his neatly parted hair. As he was leaving the room, Claire called his name. He paused in the doorway, his back to her, and turned his head just enough to take her in out of the corner of his eye. “I thank you again,” said Claire, having sat up on her bed, posture perfect. The man gave a feeble smile, nodded, and left.
The next Wednesday, as promised, Claire attended her dance class, as she did every dance class after that, for almost an entire year. Dancing made her weeks more bearable. The couple, who were from old money in England, eventually understood this necessity of hers, each of them having their own set of much-needed diversions and pastimes. For the woman, it was her rigid weekly schedule of tea with friends, an evening of cards, shopping downtown on Fridays, and an operetta or orchestra concert “at the weekend.” Her husband had his own English pursuits, institutions that had been exported and adapted to fit a new, Canadian setting: golf, rowing, lawn bowling, even well-organized fox hunts — packs of hounds and terriers, men in trim red coats and teams of horses, bugles and hunting horns, all bearing down on a single rusty canine as it fled madly, and in vain, through a pre-scouted forest on the outskirts of the city.
The couple’s predictable lives and schedules meant there were foreseeable slots of time when the husband and Claire would be in the house alone together, and he visited her room whenever he could. At first, for Claire, it was quite enticing, a kind of learning curve of increasing satisfaction, but then she realized she could use it to leverage more than just dance classes. With a bit of advice from the girls at the École, Claire learned that she could also insist on his giving her pleasure exclusively. To Claire, this was incredible. It was as if his desire for her was capable of completely blinding him — to consequences, to his own absurdity, his own folly. Sometimes, just to see if she could accurately forecast his behaviour, she would deny him, and then watch him, just as she’d expected, back out of her room, holding up his hands as if she were pointing a gun at him, his demeanour half embarrassed, wholly awkward, and slink away like some co
wering vermin. Then, as simple as elementary arithmetic, the next time he knocked, his desire would be twofold.
This meant that, by careful degrees, and learning as she went along, she asked him for more things. First, to pay for her dance classes. Then, a couple of months later, for some new clothes, dresses (she lied) for dancing. Then, a few months after that, a gramophone, just for her, and some records, in order, she said, to practise. These requests would take place, unfailingly, just before lovemaking, during the frantic buildup, as his hands began to slide more firmly over her body but at a point when he could still pause to speak. He granted every request immediately, almost without hesitation. She made sure to remind him he had done so afterwards as well, just before he left the room. “Right,” he would say, as if distantly recalling it, “of course. Of course, yes.”
Eleven months later, when she asked for permission to go out on both a Thursday and a Friday morning for an audition at one of the city’s premiere vaudeville houses, the man finally voiced some reservations. Claire begged him, though even if he’d said no, she would have found some way to go. It was a great opportunity for her, one a friend from her dance school (whom she’d known for years) had set up for her. The girl was one of the few people Claire knew who was actually making a living at dance, working the vaudeville scene. She was even living in an apartment with two other dancers, and hinted that there was room enough for one more. And, just as Claire had willed it to happen, after the second long morning of auditions, she was offered the job.
That weekend, she told him about the changes he could be expecting, in her schedule and availability. They were alone in her room, Claire’s back to the door, while he was on the edge of the bed, taking off his shoes and dress socks, loosening his tie. His wife was downtown, springtime window-shopping with friends.
Serafim and Claire Page 8