And he had just been smoking a Gauloise when he met Louise. It was at the cinema. As usual, it was his genius for making himself useful that enabled him to pick her up.
The Louxor wasn’t just any cinema. It had only just opened then, in 1921, but it had instantly become one of the exotic landmarks of Paris.
Sitting splendidly on its corner site on the boulevard de Magenta, a short walk east of the Moulin Rouge, the Louxor was a mock Egyptian palace worthy of the pharaohs or of Cleopatra herself. With its Egyptian pillars, its golden ornaments and richly painted walls, it reminded Luc of those fantasy Oriental rooms in some of the most expensive brothels—if, that is, the brothel were on the scale of the palace of Versailles.
The cinema was often sold out, so Luc had not been surprised, arriving early one evening, to find twenty or thirty young people being sorrowfully turned away at the doors.
Why had she caught his eye? Because of her looks, of course. And she was alone. That was intriguing. But there was something else about her that aroused his curiosity. Something different. He decided that he needed to find out.
There are many kinds of womanizer. With some it is vanity or a sense of power, with others greed. With Luc it was that purest of all motives: endless curiosity.
“I am sorry you could not see the film, mademoiselle.”
“Yes. It’s annoying.” She was polite, but cautious. He had a sense that if he made one wrong move, she would freeze him out. But he also noticed her accent. Very pure. The best French, not even the slightly pointed enunciation of the Paris sophisticates. She might be from a very high-class French family, or she might be a foreigner who had learned the language in that environment.
“I haven’t got a seat either, but I am still going to see the film.” He smiled. “My nephew is the projectionist. I’m going to watch it with him, up in his little box.”
“Really?” She looked amused. “Then you are fortunate indeed, monsieur.”
He smiled, bowed, and started to walk away. Then he hesitated and turned. She was still watching him.
“Mademoiselle, I think there is room for one more person up there. If it would amuse you.” He shrugged. “You will be quite safe, I promise. And should my nephew, who is a good boy, be distracted from his duties by your beauty, one scream and the entire audience will turn around, while the management comes running.”
She laughed, gave him a quick, careful look, and evidently decided that he was respectable.
“Very well, monsieur, I accept the adventure. But if the film frightens me, I shall also scream.”
“Then thank God it is Buster Keaton,” he replied.
The girl’s mind was quickly set at rest when the man at the door greeted him politely, “Bonjour, Monsieur Gascon.”
“My nephew’s up in the projection room? I’m going to take this young lady up there, if that’s all right.”
“Whatever you wish, Monsieur Gascon.”
When they got up into the projection room, and Louise encountered a most surprised young man of about her own age, who he informed her was his nephew Robert, Luc did not permit her to introduce herself at all, raising his hand and declaring: “This young lady is an angel who has come down to earth to watch the movie. When it is over, Robert, she will fly back to the heavens—though we may hope for her benediction before she goes.”
The evening’s entertainment consisted of two Buster Keaton movies. As the projection room was not very comfortable, Luc was glad that they weren’t watching one of the new epics—for he knew that Abel Gance in France, and von Stroheim in America, were both producing movies that would run for seven hours or more. The girl seemed to be enjoying herself, anyway.
When it was over, it was time for young Robert to go off duty, so Luc said he’d walk home with him as soon as he was ready to leave. Meanwhile, he escorted Louise down to the entrance, and said he hoped she’d enjoyed the show.
“Very much, monsieur. I’m not sure if I thanked your nephew properly.”
“I will do it for you.”
“He seems to have a limp.”
“He has a wooden leg, mademoiselle. He came by it honestly, serving his country in the war. He was working in the family restaurant, but I could see his leg was troubling him, so I was able to get him this job instead. I happened to know the manager of this cinema.” He paused. “We are going to have supper at our restaurant now, in fact, just along the street. If you would like to join us, please be our guest. We can find you a taxi to take you home afterward.”
“I mustn’t be too late. It would upset the elderly lady with whom I live.”
“Not a problem.”
A quarter of an hour later, Luc had her comfortably installed in the restaurant, eating a croque monsieur and haricots verts. Business was fairly quiet that evening. Édith came by to chat for a few minutes. “This is my sister-in-law, the mother of Robert,” he explained. “And how should I introduce you, mademoiselle?”
“Just Louise,” she said.
“Mademoiselle Louise, then.” He smiled. “Who speaks a French so elegant and so pure, that either she comes from a château or a manor house in the Loire Valley, or she was sent there by her parents to perfect her French.”
Louise laughed.
“The latter, monsieur. I am English. But I have French family connections.”
“All is explained, mademoiselle. I will guess that through your parents, perhaps on the advice of the consul or someone in the embassy, you lodge in the apartment of a widow, whose husband was a civil servant, perhaps, so that you can live respectably protected, while you study here in Paris. However, since you were alone this evening, it would seem that for some reason you have not chosen to make many friends among your fellow students.”
Louise laughed.
“I attend several classes which interest me, monsieur, but as I’m not following a particular course, I’m not thrown together with the same group all the time.” She shrugged. “I have made a few friends, all the same, but sometimes I prefer to be alone. Everything else you said is correct, however, in every detail. I don’t know how you knew all that.”
“Uncle Luc knows everything,” said Robert.
“He thinks he does, anyway,” Édith remarked. She gave Louise a thin smile that might have been friendly, or might, Louise thought, have contained a hint of warning.
“It was an easy guess,” said Luc easily.
Louise turned to Robert.
“You are fortunate that your family owns a restaurant,” she said with a smile.
“It’s my uncle Luc who owns it, really,” he said between mouthfuls. “But he lets my parents run it. He looks after everybody.”
And Louise was just deciding that Luc must be a very nice man when he cut in swiftly.
“My nephew is making me out to be better than I am, mademoiselle. It’s true that I started the bar next door, where Robert’s father is now. And a stroke of luck enabled me to acquire this little restaurant. But my brother and his wife kept them going for me during the war, and after that I didn’t really want to do it.”
“My parents are happy, that’s for sure,” said Robert. Louise liked the way he was determined not to let his uncle escape the credit for his kindness.
“Your mother is happy. She likes to run the restaurant. My brother would rather be out of doors on a building site. But he’s getting a little old for that, and your mother prefers him to be safely at home. He runs the bar very well.”
“And what about you?” Louise asked.
“I have what I want, mademoiselle. I take a share of the profits, I eat here for nothing whenever I wish. And I’m free to engage in a few small businesses that interest me.” He shrugged and smiled. “I don’t like to be tied down.”
He had been watching her more carefully than she realized. Her long, dark hair was quite striking. Her features were regular, but there was something interesting about her face, a muselike quality that was hard to define. Her body was slim. If she cut her hair in
the short gamine style, there would be something both feminine and boyish about her. She would photograph well, he thought.
And what kind of girl was she? She had class, that was obvious. Intelligent. Sexually innocent, so far. Lonely. He could tell that she was lonely, but whether that was a passing mood, or something deeper, he’d have to find out.
It crossed his mind that this girl could even be useful to him. She had all kinds of potential. But it would take careful handling. Very careful. Finesse. A challenge.
“Tell me, mademoiselle, have you ever modeled—I mean modeled clothes for a serious couturier?”
“No, monsieur. I’m sure I wouldn’t be nearly chic and sophisticated enough. There’s a special walk, isn’t there?”
“It can be learned.” He paused. “I certainly cannot promise you anything, but I have an idea … If you come by this restaurant in a week’s time, I shall leave a note for you with my sister-in-law. It may be nothing, but there might be an introduction for you. We’ll see. Would you be prepared to do that?”
“I suppose so. The evening has been full of surprises.”
“Good. Now I shall find you a taxi. What quarter of the city will you be going to?”
“Near Place Wagram. Not far. I could really walk.”
“Absolutely not,” he said. And a few minutes later he returned to tell her that the taxi was at the door, and that the driver had been paid to take her to that quarter of the city. “Perhaps we shall meet again, mademoiselle, and perhaps not. But there will be a note for you in a week’s time.”
Louise had lied. She quite often did with strange men—for her own protection. It was better that they should think that she was a respectable young woman with a family to protect her.
And it was mostly true. She was a respectable girl, studying in Paris. And she was living in the apartment of a widow who had been recommended by the British consul.
But she was not being watched over, even from a distance, by her parents. Because her parents were dead.
It had happened soon after her return from the Loire. She’d been feeling so pleased with herself. Back at the big, Edwardian house behind its high hedges, the world had seemed so secure. She’d rather shocked her parents by telling them that, until such time that she found a husband, she’d like to teach French in one of the better London schools. They didn’t approve, but she was quite determined to be independent.
And then suddenly the world had changed. It had been such a foolish business, really. Her father had a Wolseley motor car of which he was very proud, and he liked to drive it himself. He and her mother had gone out one misty day. There weren’t many cars driving on the lanes near the house.
But the big tractor coming toward them had been too much even for the solid Wolseley. And suddenly Louise hadn’t any parents anymore.
Mr. Martineau, the senior partner at Fox and Martineau now, had been very helpful. Her father had left her an inheritance in trust. Enough to tempt a prospective husband, perhaps, though not enough to keep her in the style to which she’d been accustomed. She’d get the principal when she was thirty and only a modest income until then.
So what was she to do? Become a French teacher in London, perhaps? Or something more adventurous?
She had no one else to please. No one to approve or disapprove. She was of age. She could do exactly what she wanted.
And the British pound went a long way, in postwar France.
So she had gone to Paris. She could live quietly there, take some courses, and continue to lead a genteel student life for as long as she wished. Or until something interesting turned up, of course.
After all, she was French really, whoever and whatever her parents were.
Chanel. She was to present herself at 31 rue Cambon, just behind the Ritz Hotel, where the maison de couture had its sublime headquarters. Chanel: of Paris, of Deauville in Normandy, where the racing set gathered, of Biarritz on the Atlantic coast in the south where the rich Spanish liked to holiday. Chanel, who lent her Paris house to Stravinsky, and underwrote the production of The Rite of Spring. Louise couldn’t believe it.
Madame Chanel herself was there, just back from the South of France. Dark-haired, very simply dressed, it seemed to Louise that she exuded an elegant sexuality, and that she had the eyes of a watchful panther.
“So, you are the one Luc Gascon found. Turn around. Walk forward. Turn, and walk back. Tell me about your education and upbringing.”
Louise did so.
“So you speak elegant French and English. That is rare. You could do very well, depending on how you wish to live. How many lovers have you had?”
“None, madame.”
“If you wish to succeed in life, you should do something about that at once. Choose wisely. My lovers made me rich. The rest comes from my talent and hard work. Are you ruthless?”
“I don’t think so.”
“The English bring their children up not to be ruthless. It is all a lie. Those who succeed are just as ruthless as the rest of us. This we call English hypocrisy. Are you a hypocrite?”
“No, madame.”
“Good. Hypocrites soon become boring. That is their punishment. Nobody wants to talk to them. Find a rich lover and become ruthless. The girls will show you how to walk. I shall pay you a little. Maybe more, later, if you are any good.” And with brief instructions to one of her assistants, she waved Louise away.
In the succeeding days, Louise learned how to walk, and much else besides. As to the rich lover, she decided she would have to think about that.
It was a week later that, sitting in the restaurant early in the evening, Luc Gascon saw Louise approaching. He rose politely to greet her, and she accepted his offer of a little food.
“Just a salad.” She smiled. “I am slimming.”
“I have a bottle of Beaune, as you see. A glass can do you no harm.” He poured.
“I came to thank you. I am doing a little modeling for Chanel. You seem to know everyone in Paris, monsieur.”
“Not everyone, mademoiselle.”
“She is paying me. I feel I should owe you a commission. A present at least.”
“It always gives me pleasure to help people discover their destiny. That is my art, if I may say so. And you are giving me a charming present by finding me here and sitting at my table.”
They chatted for a while. She liked Luc, she thought. He was so easy to talk to. She liked the faint aroma of Turkish cigarettes that he carried with him. He gave her his complete attention, asked what she thought of all sorts of things and seemed to take her opinions very seriously. It was nice that a mature man should treat her with such respect.
She decided that he was quite handsome, in his way. In a former century, she supposed, she could imagine him as one of a powerful Italian family like the Médicis, made a cardinal at twenty and enjoying the fleshly delights of Rome until he became pope. But perhaps not, she thought. The lock of dark hair that fell so elegantly over his broad brow seemed better suited to a maître d’hôtel than a priest, though she couldn’t say exactly why. Anyway, she could see that he knew how to charm the girls, and good luck to him.
“Forgive me, Mademoiselle Louise,” he remarked after a while, “but although you have this new excitement in your life, it seems to me that, nonetheless, there is a certain sadness about you.”
“Oh,” she said. How had he detected that? “It’s nothing.”
“A lover giving trouble, perhaps?”
“No.” She laughed. “None of those yet, monsieur. Madame Chanel told me to find a rich lover, but I wouldn’t know how. That’s not how I was brought up.”
“I am glad to hear it,” he said, with a fine insincerity.
“The truth is,” she confessed, “that I was not entirely frank with you when we met. One has to be careful. My parents died not long ago, leaving me an orphan. I live very respectably and study, but it is sometimes a little lonely.”
“I am sure you have friends in England, mademoiselle,
” Luc said kindly. “You can always go back when you tire of Paris.”
“Yes,” she said, “I know.” But then, because she felt the need to confide in someone, she added: “The trouble is, it’s more complicated.” And then she explained about her adoption.
She did not tell him everything. She did not tell him how she had gotten the information about her mother, nor did she give him any names. He might be a sympathetic ear, but he was still a comparative stranger. She protected her privacy.
Luc listened, and now he understood. This was the key he had been searching for.
“So you believe that you are French.” He nodded thoughtfully. “Do you want to discover your French family? Have you any information at all?”
“I am not sure. I have my mother’s name. That’s all.”
“There are records. In every town hall. They’re not always open to the public. But I know a lawyer who specializes in searches. He’s quite reasonable.” He took out a little notebook, wrote down a name and address on a page, and tore it out. “There. You can always see him if you want.”
She waited two weeks before she went to see the lawyer. Monsieur Chabert was a compact, gray-haired man with a quiet voice and very small hands. He agreed to start a limited inquiry.
“I shall begin in Paris, mademoiselle. Most likely the Corinne Petit you seek was a young woman when this happened, and was sent out of the country to have the child. If that is the case, I should have a list of possible candidates quite soon.” He mentioned an amount that would use up the spare cash she had after a couple of small payments she had just received from Chanel. “I shall keep within that budget, mademoiselle. Before incurring any extra expense, I shall ask your permission. Come to see me again in ten days.”
When she returned, he greeted her with a smile.
Paris: The Novel Page 67