The declaration of war with Germany brought a sudden end to the air of normality that most Parisians had clung to with desperation. Young men were mobilised and packed off to training and staging camps, uniformed soldiers now filling the streets and railway stations as pretty girls and sombrely clad matrons waved them off on their way east to meet the German threat. Among the citizens of Paris, a gradual, visceral groundswell saw many pack up their homes and depart for the safer southern regions. They left complaining at the inconvenience, reluctant to move to uncomfortable safety as if they begrudged the war its ability to disrupt their idyllic lifestyle. Children were sent to relatives in the country and schools arranged excursions to the south from which their young charges would not return until the uncertainty of war had been resolved — one way or the other.
On the Boulevard de Clichy where the gilt-edged glass doors of Le Prix simpered in the sultry heat of an Indian summer, there was little movement. A few of the residents of nearby apartments packed and left, their places soon taken by others keen to live in this glitzy hub where politics was a rare and unwelcome intruder. Many of the girls who had special favourites among the patrons were secretly glad to see families packed off to the south leaving the men alone in the city with only their mistresses to comfort them. Coco the bondage mistress immediately doubled her clientele — and her fees. This was profiteering of a different kind.
Lily had little idea of any threat to her own safety and regarded the looming war as a quarrel between foreign politicians who were better left to sort out their problems in the far-off cities of London and Berlin. No-one at Le Prix had discussed the notion of leaving and Lily, leaning out of her apartment window one day, was surprised to hear Madame Fresange, the hawk-eyed landlady of the neighbouring apartment block, discussing the question with Madame Gloria.
‘Non, non, Madame,’ reassured Madame Gloria, ‘we are perfectly safe, my Hubert is at the Maginot Line and he says it is like a fortress.’
‘Your husband is mobilised?’ queried the other, ‘I thought perhaps he was a little old for soldiering.’ Gloria beamed with obvious pride.
‘Yes, I told him as much,’ she replied, ‘but he refuses to leave the younger men to fight without a steadying hand. War is not new to him, you understand, he fought in the last war, you see.’ Madame Fresange greeted the mention of the last war with a spit and a curse.
‘We should have been harder on the Boches,’ she declared, her face contorted with disgust, ‘the soft politicians punished them too lightly and now they threaten us again. You mark my words, Madame, this time they will do the job properly. We will all be under the German heel!’ But Madame Gloria’s faith in Hubert was unshakeable.
‘Our forces will prevail,’ she persisted calmly, ‘our British, American and Belgian friends will help us just as they did last time.’
‘Belgians!’ spat Madame Fresange, who clearly placed her Flemish neighbours even further down the list than the German foe. ‘And what use were the Belgians in the last war? Most of them ended up here, squatting in people’s homes and cluttering up the parks. No, Madame, we have to rely on ourselves. I hope your Hubert is every bit as good a soldier as you believe because we will need a legion of Huberts to stem the tide of Boches.’ Unshakeable belief or not, Madame Gloria was now keen to end her conversation with her neighbour and returned to its opening parley.
‘So you will leave, Madame?’
‘We should all leave,’ retorted the older woman, ‘I have a daughter in Toulon and can stay with her if I wish. But this apartment is my home — it is my life — and I have no wish to see it vandalised by German soldiers.’ She paused to consider this awful prospect, emphasising her distaste with another spit. The rather more refined Madame Gloria grimaced at the watery splat of its collision with the pavement.
‘Non,’ grumbled Madame Fresange, ‘I will stay for the moment and see what these useless politicians can do to prevent us all being murdered by the Boches.’ She turned back to her neighbour. ‘Let us hope for that legion of Huberts.’
On the floor above, Lily closed her window quietly and stood lost in thought. War was not an inviting prospect. She, too, would have to place her faith in the soldiering skills of a man she had never met and who, by all accounts, appeared to be in the twilight of his years. It was a sobering prospect.
While the gradual and sporadic exodus of Parisians had little impact on the daily routine at Le Prix, the mobilisation had an immediate effect — albeit, not an effect that Monsieur Maurice could have foreseen. The ranks of the patrons were now filled with handsome, uniformed soldiers eager for a night of fun before heading off for the serious business of training for war. The girls were delighted. Even the most nondescript young man looked dashing in a well-cut uniform. The crowds increased and Maurice considered opening for an extra night to accommodate all Le Prix’s would-be patrons — and maximise profits, of course. With the acquiescence of Monsieur Le Prix’s Owner, the cabaret extended its nights to include Tuesdays and Madame Claudette choreographed new routines with a military theme.
The artistes likewise expanded their repertoires and adapted to the times. Coco, who performed as a burlesque dancer as well as a bondage mistress, added several bejewelled pieces of weaponry to her routine and her audience swelled in response. Coco was a striking young woman in her late twenties who had been a member of the company for some three years. She was tall and imperious with short, velvety black hair worn in a chic, mannish style. Her features were sharp, her eyes dark and smouldering and she oozed charisma. She favoured tailored men’s suits for her off-stage wear and smoked exotic cigarettes in an elegant diamante holder. Coco’s voice was deep, rich and syrupy and she exuded an air of dominance. She was a tantalisingly sensual burlesque dancer, removing her clothing in a series of provocative movements to reveal the leather corsetry of a bondage mistress. She would tease the audience, singing husky, titillating songs and stirring them into a frenzy with the clever manoeuvring of a series of whips, the main props for her act. Coco was one of the major drawcards boasted by Le Prix and her following was slavishly devoted to her.
But Coco was not just an on-stage performer, she also entertained clients off-stage in her room at Madame Gloria’s apartment boarding house. Her clients ranged from the illustrious and the wealthy to impoverished poets and artists who had fallen under her spell. She ran appointments in the hours following her performance until closing time at Le Prix, her clients making their way through a side door to the apartment via a narrow alleyway. Other customers wove their way to her door on weeknights when Le Prix was closed and under cover of darkness. If Madame Gloria herself knew the nature of Coco’s flourishing business which operated under her very roof, she offered no sign. Coco’s little cottage industry remained discreet and never threatened to disturb the carefully nurtured veneer of respectability under which Madame Gloria operated.
Coco’s most bizarre trait, however, was that she was an avowed manhater. The girls whispered that this made it easier for her to punish her male clients as they demanded. Sabine had earlier entertained some notion that Coco may have been of her own persuasion — a notion that Coco dispelled with a haughty laugh and a pointed rap of her little whip. No, Coco did not share Sabine’s predilection and the company remained lost as to the nature of her actual preference. Whatever it was, her audience loved her and the threat of war gave her yet more material for a spicy show in which she played a leather-coated German spy with whip at the ready. Monsieur Maurice shrugged and consigned Coco’s antics to the realm of ‘entertainment for the troops’.
Perhaps the only artiste who seemed to understand Coco’s bizarre tussle with her own sexuality was Crecy Duplessis who clearly regarded himself as more woman than man. Crecy was slightly older than Coco and an accomplished singer and comedian. On stage he was witty and brazen, quick with repartée and saucily amusing. Off stage, Crecy had difficulty grasping reality and, as if abandoning the fight altogether, chose not to, remaining ostensibly fe
male to all outside the confines of Le Prix. It was not difficult for Crecy to pass himself off as female with his fine build and softly shaped features. His lips were full while his eyes were lazy, dreamy and drooped slightly at the corners baring a latent sensuality that he used to full effect. He was naturally blonde, although his penchant for peroxide meant that he became increasingly platinum. He kept his hair long and it fell obligingly into natural curls that bounced at the back while framing his face in cherubic ringlets. Crecy’s voice was soft, husky and feminine and his hypersensitive nature made it easy for him to play the frail damsel, wronged and distressed. He attracted two distinct followings: those who genuinely mistook him for a ravishing blonde, and those who knew his true gender and shared his proclivities. His friendship with Coco was more difficult to categorise and impossible to explain.
Thus it was that Le Prix d’Amour and its curious collection of artistes coped well with the declaration of war — so well, in fact, that profits soared to record heights and Monsieur Le Prix’s Owner bought a little holiday house in Marseilles. While men all over France were mobilised, there were no men in Le Prix’s motley company who were in danger of a military call-up. Monsieur Maurice and most members of the little orchestra were too old, and the only ablebodied young men, Hiram the Brazilian trumpeter and Orlando the illusionist, were foreign nationals. Orlando proclaimed himself a patriotic Spaniard, a refugee from Franco’s civil war that had ravaged that country, although his precise origins remained something of a mystery. As was his way, Monsieur Maurice allowed the specifics of Orlando’s past to languish undiscovered. The other male members of the company were so clearly unfit for military service that Monsieur Maurice held no fears that the war would see him denuded of either staff or performers. As he liked to joke with Hiram, the female members of Le Prix would have made far better soldiers than their male counterparts. He eyed the squat Chinon, the delicate and feminine Crecy, André the consumptive Hungarian violinist and Cabot the wizened janitor as he shook his head.
‘Send them Coco, Poppy or Sabine,’ he was fond of saying, ‘they’ll keep the Germans at bay!’
Most Parisians tried hard to take the looming prospect of war seriously but, in the end it simply eluded them. In the first few weeks following the declaration of war, many of the capital’s citizens had hurried south, fearful of the westward advance of the rampaging German army. Those who remained had been issued gas masks and Le Prix’s enterprising performers had incorporated these into their routines with surprising results. Coco, in particular, proved adept at manufacturing new and bizarre uses for the gas mask, pairing it with her trusty whip. Crecy followed suit, teaming a black velvet, sequined gas mask with a luxurious evening gown. Air raid shelters were designated and Le Prix obligingly advertised these at the commencement of every show, Chinon announcing in his throaty ringmaster’s tones that the closest shelters were located in the basements of buildings that flanked the theatre. The idea of building an air raid shelter in the basement of Le Prix was only briefly entertained by Monsieur Le Prix’s Owner who declared that such a move would be bad for public morale. But he was persuaded by Monsieur Maurice that he should at least provide some protection for his employees and the basement was duly fitted with sandbags, soft furnishings and ugly necessities such as torches, the door now bearing the faintly threatening sign ‘abris’ — air raid shelter.
Potentially worse for public morale was a move by the government to close all theatres and cinemas following the official declaration of war. Monsieur Le Prix’s Owner was outraged and pulled strings with impunity in an effort to have the edict overturned. He demanded an appointment with his close friend Georges who was a member of the French Parliament and to whom he pleaded with tears in his eyes that the soldiers must have their entertainment or they would suffer extreme nerves on the battlefield.
‘Have pity on our young men,’ he beseeched, ‘they are soon to meet the Boches in bloody combat and must have something to fight for!’ Having argued persuasively that Le Prix represented a cause for which the flower of the nation’s manhood should fight, he managed to wrest an exemption from the government and Le Prix remained open while other furious cabaret owners were forced to close.
But the serious business of war did not last. The Germans, having ravaged Poland, seemed to lose interest in fighting, and the marauding Germanic hordes appeared becalmed. Parisians settled into a strange state of war which they dubbed ‘la drôle de guerre’ — ‘the funny war’. The men who had mobilised, donned their uniforms and departed bravely to tearful farewells at railway stations were now back from the front wearing an air of desperate boredom and eager to rediscover the delights of cabaret life they had missed so badly in their shelters and redoubts. Had they seen any Germans? Not so much as a glimpse. Perhaps the Germans had heard of their fighting prowess, had remembered the defeats of the last war and had recognised the invincibility of the Maginot Line. Perhaps the legions of Huberts had materialised and, following some fist-shaking and an exchange of biting insults, had sent the browbeaten Germans on their way. Perhaps common sense had prevailed in the rarefied atmosphere ofthe Reichstag and someone had persuaded Monsieur Hitler to stay at home. The handsome soldiers laughed at the notion of the moustachioed dictator trading his hysterical rallies and martial parades for a night at home in front of the fire wearing his comfy slippers and re-reading Mein Kampf for the hundredth time.
The charade continued until most Parisians decided that German inaction was likely to last so long that they might as well wait out the stalemate in comfort. Convoys of cars began to return from southern refuges and the streets filled again with the usual hustle and bustle of life. The theatres reopened, the men in uniform now fewer in number, most belonging to parties of soldiers who had returned from the front for a ‘holiday’. Sadie’s banker, now a familiar figure at Le Prix, decided to leave his family in the south ‘just in case’, much to Sadie’s delight. As winter retreated and the weather warmed in early 1940, Parisians relaxed further, any lingering thoughts of war now banished from the city’s collective consciousness. The French government, however, did not share the apathy of its citizens, warning against the ‘enemy within’ represented by the villainous communists who embodied the treacherous entente between Hitler and Stalin that allowed the Russians to share the spoils of the plundered Poland. Chinon the secret communist became even more determined to keep his political sentiments to himself and the little company at Le Prix closed ranks. Chinon carefully hid his copies of the banned Party newspaper L’Humanité, suppressed his hatred of the fascists — evidently in control of the government of this country too — and vented his fury on the Nazis, the day’s most popular target.
As the warmer weather approached, the French government adopted a sterner mode with its people and rationing was introduced. Bread was the first staple to be targeted and the girls at Le Prix mourned the loss of the soft twists beloved by so many. Croissants had escaped the eagle eye of the rationer and Maurice sighed with relief that Madame Claudette could still sate her appetite for the delicate chocolate croissants she consumed with elegantly restrained delight. The closing of the chocolate and pastry shops on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays raised the ire of the artistes, Crecy Duplessis declaring that the Germans could invade directly as the civilised world had clearly come to an end. He turned on one jewelled heel and took to his bed, moaning softly under a cold compress.
As rationing extended to the consumption of alcohol, Monsieur Le Prix’s Owner sought another audience with his friend Georges. Again, his powers of persuasion saved the day as Georges reassured him that the ban on alcohol extended only to the sale and public consumption of liquor. Le Prix could safely operate in its time-honoured way and the alcoholic haze through which most of its company viewed life would continue to mask the grim face of reality.
Chapter 5
Ragged, all-pervading fear
It was a softly warm late spring morning and the dancers limbered up, flexing and extend
ing, stretching cat-like as they prepared their sinuous bodies for the morning drills that formed the entrée to Madame Claudette’s exacting daily routine. The room hummed with the muted buzz of voices punctuated by the rhythmic sharpness of the piano keys as Madame Gartrille warmed her bony fingers and played snatches of favourite pieces, swaying mutely and wearing a mournful look on her long, pasty face as if hankering for some lost greatness. The girls ignored her studiously, wrapped in their gossip, their rollered, netted heads gathered in conspiratorial bunches as they strained to catch the juicy vocal titbits that were lobbed around the room.
The murmured buzz increased as the rapid clip-clop of Madame’s heeled feet ricocheted off the walls of the corridor and tumbled towards them in an untidy staccato. One or two of the girls stopped talking and listened intently as if somehow there was a change to the familiar pattern of Madame’s strident footfall. There was. Her typically regular gait was broken and stumbling as if she were fleeing something, as if she were running helter-skelter towards the safety of the practice room. One by one the girls’ conversations trailed off and they began to exchange looks of alarm. Madame reached the door and burst in, her beautifully composed face now twisted in fear, her hair in disarray as the wild strands waved in alarm.
‘The Germans are coming!’ Madame screamed at the assembled throng of dancers, poised and trembling in nervous anxiety. She stared wildly at the frozen figures. ‘The Germans are coming to Paris and all who can leave should go now!’ She broke down and fell in a twitching, fluttering heap on the nearest chair. ‘It is too much,’ she sobbed, ‘what will become of us?!’
Secrets and Showgirls Page 4