Le Prix closed at two o’clock in the morning and, by that time, the girls had exhausted the adrenalin that charged their performance and were ready to wend their way home to bed — theirs or another’s, as the case may be. All the girls knew, however, that they must arrive at the theatre in time for the first rehearsal the next afternoon at one o’clock sharp. On this point, Monsieur Maurice was unequivocal. He was prepared to give immediate notice to any girl who arrived late or in a state that rendered her unfit to dance.
In amongst the frenzy of learning a dozen new routines, Lily attended endless fittings with Mademoiselle Gris and her army of assistants. Fortunately, Sybilla had been the same height as Lily, although she was far more voluptuous with what had clearly been a magnificent bust. Adjustments to Sybilla’s costumes were quickly effected and Lily found herself with an entire wardrobe of dazzling creations, bejewelled, feathered, sequined and silky. The only costume that was crafted exclusively for her was a gold-encrusted matador’s cape, a tangible sign that her initial burst of spontaneity on the day she had discovered Le Prix had been a stunning success. And it was. The audience loved the matador and Lily soon found her painted visage staring out from one of the gilt-framed billboards that thronged the foyer of the cabaret.
Serving champagne at the end of the evening may have been a chore to some, but to Lily, it was an opportunity to come face to face with the extraordinary variety of patrons who flocked to the show and packed its bar until closing time. It was a collection of colourful diversity, from the callow youths on their first outing to the grizzled septuagenarians who had seen the show grow and develop; from the shabby patched suits of those who earned little but loved life, to the classic cuts of the gentry. Most of the patrons were men and all delighted in the showgirls. Yes, it was a piece of sheer vanity, Lily admitted, as she slipped through the maze of tables collecting the compliments that were tossed at her like so many bridal bouquets. She deserved these compliments, she told herself, she had earned them. She had worked hard, rehearsing again and again until Madame pronounced herself satisfied that her girls were ‘adequate’ and that, as long as the patrons were sufficiently drunk, they would be pleased enough with the show. This was as far as Madame’s praise extended — she was never truly satisfied, no matter how many times the girls rehearsed, no matter how effusive the plaudits of the audience. And the audience loved the girls. The applause thundered, the compliments rained and the post-show champagne flowed in equal abundance.
Becoming used to the long days was difficult at first and Lily found herself exhausted at the end of her first night. She greeted closing time with barely concealed joy, desperate to rest her aching legs. Poppy had disappeared with a charming moustachioed patron and Lily followed Sadie, Chloe and Sabine back to the apartment. By the time they arrived at Madame Gloria’s front door, only Sabine remained, Sadie and Chloe both having disappeared on assignation. Lily began to think that playing mistress to a patron was more common among the dancers than she had first supposed.
‘Where did those two go?’ she quizzed Sabine who flicked her silky bob.
‘Sadie has a Jewish lover,’ replied Sabine casually, ‘a respectable banker, I think, so she can’t be seen with him in the club, and Chloe ...’ she stopped as she pushed the door open and laughed, turning back to provide more details on what she clearly considered to be Chloe’s unorthodox tryst. ‘Chloe is with Chinon,’ she said, smirking at the incongruity of the revelation. Lily thought she must be mistaken.
‘Chinon .’ she stammered, ‘but isn’t he ...’
‘The dwarf?’ supplied Sabine, apparently relishing the fact, ‘Mmmm, interesting, isn’t it?’ She laughed again at Lily’s shocked face and evidently felt obliged to supply more salacious details. ‘Chloe says it happened quite by accident, but that he’s a very satisfying lover. Ask her sometime — she’d love to tell you all about it!’
Lily had absolutely no intention of asking Chloe, despite the fact that she found the whole notion intensely intriguing — mindboggling, in fact. Sabine took Lily’s arm as they traipsed up the stairs and paused at the landing where the little sitting room opened up in front of them. Lily’s mind continued to wrestle with the images that crowded her consciousness. Sabine pulled her closer.
‘Come and sit down, sweetie, and I’ll massage your back for you,’ she offered. Lily’s aching back quivered at the heavenly notion of a massage, but there was something in Sabine’s voice and the look with which she devoured Lily’s form that was not quite right. Her tone was almost lascivious — something that Lily was quite unused to in her female friends. She hesitated, looking for the right words to extricate herself without offending Sabine. She was saved by a husky voice at her elbow and a firm grip on her arm as someone moved past from behind and took her from Sabine. It was Crecy Duplessis.
‘Sabine,’ murmured Crecy in a velvety whisper, ‘Dodo’s looking for you.’ Sabine reacted immediately.
‘Dodo? Where did you see her? Was she in the theatre?’ She moved quickly past and darted down the stairs without waiting for an answer. Lily watched her go with a feeling of all-consuming confusion.
‘Who’s Dodo?’ she asked Crecy as they gazed after Sabine’s retreating form. Crecy paused until the front door closed with a dull thud before turning to face Lily.
‘Dodo,’ he said, his head tipped at an angle as he regarded her, ‘is a figment of my imagination.’ Lily gasped and then laughed as she took in the painted face under the profusion of platinum curls. Crecy was slightly built, standing a little shorter than Lily, slim-hipped and finely appointed. His features were sculpted, his cheekbones high, his lips full and pouting. Big green eyes stared at her from under glittering false eyelashes, heavily lidded in several layers of shimmering eye shadow and rimmed with a thick edging of kohl that would have suited Cleopatra. Crecy’s hair was voluminous and bounced in giant curls, held to cascade by a jewelled clip in the sinuous shape of a serpent. His dress, while brilliant red, gaudily sequined and bedecked with large jewels, was cut discreetly and an enormous bust disappeared behind clever silken tucks that endorsed whatever they contained. For all that Lily knew Crecy Duplessis was a man, she was quite certain that most of the patrons in that dark, smoke-filled theatre would never have imagined that this was anything but a magnificent and voluptuous woman.
‘Dodo,’ explained Crecy, ‘is my best friend. She saves me on a delightfully regular basis.’ He plumped on a sofa and drew a cigarette from a little packet left on a nearby table. His movements were elegant and graceful, his long, slender fingers caressing in a soft, languid sequence. Lily seated herself opposite, fascinated by this exotic creature. Crecy drew daintily and exhaled soft wisps of pale smoke. The femininity of his movements astonished Lily. A moment later, Crecy resumed his musings.
‘Dodo is, like me, a creature of my mind ... a night-dweller, like the rest of us. The daylight drains me of my life, it saps my vitality, my joie de vivre and, worst of all, it robs me of my looks.’ He paused to draw on the cigarette, oblivious to the ash that fluttered gently to the floor, tiny grey snowflakes in the dim half-light.
‘The me you see now,’ he said, turning to Lily, the big green eyes wide under finely arched eyebrows plucked to form delicate lines, ‘is my night-time persona. It’s the real me, the one that can’t live with daylight. I do my best to cope with the day, but it makes my skin look so grey and positively flattens my set.’ He patted the huge coiffed curls and Lily followed his delicate movement with her eyes, her mind refusing to believe that anything at all could dent the serpentine coils.
‘But you, Lily-pilly,’ Crecy continued, now in a voice tinged with mournfulness, ‘you have the good fortune to be just as gorgeous during the day as you are at night.’ He sighed heavily, a dramatic gesture that heaved his entire bosom and shifted the angle of his head in a single, complementary move. He paused momentarily as if to allow Lily to absorb the full weight of his words, stubbed his cigarette and rose from the sofa.
‘Well now,’ he announced, his husky voice now brisk, ‘can’t hang about, dahling, I have a little beauty treatment to try before I meet Toby at three.’ He winked and tossed his coiffed curls before strolling to his room, his hand fluttering a farewell. ‘Nighty night, Lily-pilly,’ he sang. The door closed and he was gone.
Lily sat for several long moments pondering what exactly lay behind that fascinating exterior before she, too, disappeared into her bedroom, closing the door and leaning against it. Her thoughts returned to Sabine. Now she knew the meaning of the covetous look with which Sabine had greeted her on the first day she had joined the company. Now she knew what Poppy had meant when she described Sabine as ‘different’. Thanks Poppy, she thought, mentally berating her new friend, thanks for warning me. She wondered briefly why Poppy had not thought to mention the likelihood of an advance from Sabine. Perhaps this was some bizarre rite of passage that she had to endure so as to be truly initiated into the company. If that were the case, was this the only rite of passage that awaited her? She thought of Sabine’s comments on Chloe’s extraordinary relationship with Chinon. She braced herself, hoping that Chinon would not be the next member of the company to make a bid for her affections. Given that he stood only as high as her waist, it painted an intriguing picture and one that made Lily laugh out loud. That was it, she resolved, the only way to manage the possibility of an amorous Chinon was to remain armed with a healthy sense of humour.
Chapter 4
A shrill portent of war
The little world of Le Prix d’Amour loved, laughed and drank its way through the summer sun of 1938, glorying in its position in one of the most cosmopolitan and hedonistic cities in the world. At Le Prix, business was pleasure and pleasure was all-consuming, even as summer gave way to the chill winds of autumn that blew more than the dying leaves of the boulevard’s trees. The shrill gusts also blew the news of uncertainty and vague warnings of political upheaval within the fractured states of Europe. France’s mighty German neighbour had rearmed throughout the 1930s despite the stringent sanctions of the Treaty of Versailles and the leaching of the German economy through reparations for the dreadful war fought only twenty years earlier, much of it on French and Belgian soil. Monsieur Maurice remembered this war only too well. He had been a young bank clerk who had volunteered in the early days of the conflict and had survived a number of bitter and bloody battles before being wounded at the horrific Battle of Loos in which the French armies had been decimated. His wound had healed slowly and he had effectively missed the remainder of the war, much to his own chagrin and the lasting thanks of his grateful mother who had pleaded with Saint Joan on a nightly basis. A slight limp in his right leg served as a permanent reminder of the effects of war on fragile young men and Monsieur Maurice had no wish to see his country devoured by another such conflict.
Monsieur Maurice was well aware of his wife’s delicate political sensitivities and knew that he could not voice his misgivings over the international situation to her. Instead he held whispered conversations with the leader of his little orchestra, a dusky Brazilian trumpeter named Hiram who had fallen in love with a showgirl during a visit to Paris some years ago and consequently never left. Hiram spoke bad French taught to him by eager missionaries from New Orleans who ran a school in a cheerful, whitewashed building in the slums of Brasilia. His mother had insisted that her lad be educated and godfearing and the missionaries promised to combine both qualities for the price of one. Best of all, in his mother’s view, they had asked only whatever the poor could spare from their meagre daily fare in return for his schooling. In Paris, Hiram’s salvation was his huge, toothy grin that instantly begged forgiveness for his parlous linguistic skills. Hiram was one of life’s optimists. He simply refused to be pessimistic no matter how bleak the outlook.
Maurice sat with Hiram one morning as the orchestra finished its rehearsal and broke for a bowl of steaming café au lait.
‘Hiram, mon ami, have you heard the latest news?’ he asked the gangly trumpeter.
‘I hear it, Maurice,’ answered the trumpeter flashing his enormous grin, ‘but I don’t pay no mind to the bad bits, cos they says we all goin’ to war.’ Maurice shook his head sadly and reached for a cigar, offering one to his dusky colleague.
‘Did you hear about Austria?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, I hear ’bout Austria,’ came the answer, ‘what’s this Anschluss anyway? Did them Austrians want to be German then?’ Maurice lit his cigar and shook his head slowly.
‘Non, non, it’s this fellow Hitler. Seems he’s building himself an empire.’ This dire pronouncement seemed to shake the optimist from his rosy haze and he looked sharply at the older man.
‘Think he’ll want to add us to his empire?’ he asked, a shadow crossing his face.
‘I’m no expert, but I can tell you the Germans in the last war were very keen on empires. I think we’re part of Monsieur Hitler’s plan, no doubt about it.’ The trumpeter looked down at his obsessively shiny shoes as if searching for a means to dispel any hint of veracity from Maurice’s statement. At last he looked up.
‘What do we do?’ he quizzed his manager. ‘What if them Germans come to Paris?’ Maurice studied the younger man’s earnest face.
‘It would be best to leave before they came,’ he told him gravely, ‘I saw what they did in the last war and I have no wish to live under the German jackboot.’ His listener reacted with muted shock.
‘You think we should leave?’ he responded incredulously, ‘but Paris is our home ... Le Prix is our home ...,
‘And ours too. We have nowhere else to go.’ He looked at his bewildered trumpeter. ‘Could you return to Brazil? Do you have family who would take you in until any fighting was over?’ Hiram heaved a sigh.
‘I suppose we could go to my folks ... but ... this is our home,’ he repeated dolefully, ‘we want to stay here.’ His eyes pleaded with Monsieur Maurice who nodded slowly and placed a gentle hand on the other man’s arm.
‘It is home to us all Hiram, we all want to stay. The question is: should we stay? Is the risk too great? That is what you and Lisette must consider.’ With that he patted the trumpeter with as much reassurance as he could muster, stubbed his cigar and rose, moving away as his friend remained deep in thought.
The other keen student of international politics whose views were less well known within the red velvet walls of Le Prix d’Amour was Chinon, the stocky dwarf who was the cabaret’s Master of Ceremonies. Chinon was an avowed communist — a belief he kept to himself for fear of persecution — and hated fascism with a fiery passion. Not long after his sombre conversation with Hiram, Monsieur Maurice also found himself comparing notes with the diminutive red.
‘The Boches,’ muttered Chinon darkly, ‘those Nazi fascist bastards are looking this way, Maurice, are they not?’ Maurice nodded gravely.
‘I’m afraid so, mon ami, I fear for this country.’ Chinon thumped the table at which he was seated so violently that he frightened Mademoiselle Gris who was sewing in a nearby corner. She scowled at him and sucked the finger she had pricked in her fright.
‘But we will fight!’ declared Chinon, ‘the French armies will send the German rabble back over the border with its tail between its legs — just as in the last war! We sent them packing in 1918 — you fought, Maurice, you remember how it was?’ Maurice looked at him quizzically.
‘Oui, oui, but I had no idea that you also ...’
‘I? Oh, no, I was too ...’ Maurice stifled the urge to supply the missing word, instead waiting curiously for Chinon’s response.
‘Too young, of course.’
‘Of course,’ replied Maurice immediately, mentally rebuking himself and chasing less appropriate words from his mind.
‘My father fought, as did my brother,’ explained the dwarf, noting the return of confusion to Maurice’s face. ‘I am the only one in my family to be .’
‘Ah, I understand,’ nodded Maurice gently, ready to steer the topic to firmer ground. ‘
And what will you do if the Germans invade us, Chinon?’ Chinon’s face turned purple and his notorious temper showed signs of erupting to the surface.
‘Invade?!! The Boches will never invade! The heroic French army with its valiant English and Belgian allies will halt the Boche bastards at the Maginot Line and teach them a lesson they will never forget! It is said that the Maginot Line is impregnable — I’d like to see the Boches try to breach it! Our French army will pick them off like ducks on a wall.’ And Chinon raised his stubby arm and made a shooting motion that quickly convinced Maurice that he had never held a weapon and never should. He calmed his fiery performer and moved off to wrestle with his foreboding in solitude.
The international situation continued to deteriorate with the passing of the winter months and, as 1938 became 1939, Maurice made repeated attempts to warn his little company of the potential for war. It was a difficult task and he realised quickly that, like his pacifist countrymen, he was fighting a losing battle. It was not that the company members refused to listen; on the contrary, they listened very carefully and dutifully to his oft-repeated warnings of the dire prospect of war. But his business was against him: he was engaged in the fulfilment of pleasure and the prospect of war simply did not fit the business mould. Patrons continued to pour through the golden double doors, visiting artistes of every nationality arrived to perform and any thought of war was simply lost in the hedonistic haze. It took the declaration of war with the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 to wake the company from its self-induced slumber and endow its members with a sense of grim inevitability. By then, it was almost too late.
Secrets and Showgirls Page 3