Secrets and Showgirls

by Catherine McCullagh

  ‘The Party is probably concerned that its members will wipe themselves out in some sort of pointless challenge to the Germans,’ replied Maurice soothingly. ‘Why sacrifice yourselves in some futile heroics?’

  ‘But this is collaboration!’ hissed the little communist, ‘and this I will not do! We are selling our souls!’

  ‘Chinon,’ murmured Maurice, ‘no-one is asking you to chat to the Germans in the bistro. Let those who want to present a friendly face do so, while you bide your time. As long as you do nothing to bring the wrath of the occupation army down on Le Prix, you can preserve your dignity and avoid the Germans.’ Chinon looked his manager in the eye, locking him in a steely stare as he ripped the broadsheet to shreds. Maurice nodded and sighed with an air of resignation.

  ‘Your turn will come, mon ami.’

  Chapter 10

  A delicious diversion

  Lily jostled her way into the nearest railway carriage, third class of course, as only the invader was permitted to travel first class on le métro in occupied Paris. She plumped heavily next to a rotund, middle-aged lady clad in a bright floral dress, an oversized hat in matching fabric perched uncertainly on her head. Lily thought she resembled a floral sandwich and wondered whether the wallpaper in her house echoed her gaudy tastes. She pictured the generously proportioned lady matching her decor so completely that she disappeared from view, camouflaged against the unwelcome call of the Germans on a midnight raid. Now that would be gaudy taste put to good use. Lily smiled at the lady who was evidently a great deal cleverer than she looked. The dumpy lady smiled back in the instant camaraderie that was born of life in a conquered city.

  The packed commuters swayed from side to side with the mesmerising motion of the train, their lives dulled by the struggle to exist under the tightening vice of food shortages, curfews and the myriad rules of the invaders. By now they were inured to the smell of sweat, the result of the tight rationing of soap, and the daily wait in the ration queue which lasted untold hours and often ended in failure as the paltry supply of goods was exhausted. The carriage door banged and the commuters turned towards the noise as one, their senses universally heightened. Lily unconsciously tightened her grip on her precious parcel as a young German soldier entered the carriage, head bowed, intent on checking the papers of the travelling public.

  ‘Paperrrss! Paperrrss pliz!’ barked the young man as his greygreen uniformed figure moved up the aisle. Lily watched him as he approached. He moved automatically, his gait irregular with the motion of the train, his face masked by an officious glare as if to hide his nervousness. He moved systematically from row to row, discharging his duty with studied efficiency. The commuters ignored him with a steely intensity, proffering their papers automatically but not sparing so much as a passing glance for the soldier who demanded them. He arrived at Lily’s row and she greeted him with a slight smile as she handed over her papers.

  ‘Good morning Monsieur,’ she murmured, adding drily ‘welcome to gay Paree!’ The soldier’s face clouded with confusion.

  ‘Pardon, Mademoiselle?’ Clearly French was not his forte. Lily continued to smile at him — it was senseless to labour the point. The soldier smiled shyly back. Oh, he was very young, decided Lily. He looked extremely uncomfortable. Perhaps he was as unhappy to be in Paris as Paris was to have him. He took longer to study her papers as if he wanted to spend more time in the sympathetic glow that she had thrown around him. Finally he returned her papers and bowed slightly in a tiny salute to her courtesy. He inspected the papers of her neighbours and, with the merest glance in her direction, was on his way through the train. Another lost boy, thought the showgirl with a maternal sigh, another young man who simply needed his mother.

  The train screeched to a halt, its human cargo falling forward and cursing in unison. The alighting commuters fought their way through the human thicket, Lily tumbling inelegantly onto the platform in a tangle of legs and high heels. Never mind her tousled dignity, the precious package was safe. She hurried through the jumbled crowds, setting off briskly to walk the last block to Le Prix. She rounded a corner and almost collided with a massive German soldier, one of several milling around a checkpoint searching passers-by. Lily sighed internally. Searches were part of daily life in occupied Paris, but they were no less tedious for their monotonous regularity. She stopped as the bear-like soldier blocked her path with an outstretched paw. She pulled out her papers, turning her gritting teeth into a grin that she hoped would disarm the soldier into a summary glance at her papers and permission to proceed.

  ‘Good morning sergeant,’ she addressed him cheerily, without the least idea of his rank. The soldier took a long look at her, half-smiling as if a full smile were forbidden under some Wehrmacht regulation. As he studied her papers he began to shake his head as if the papers were failing to perform some allotted task under scrutiny.

  ‘Your papers, Mademoiselle, I will need to have a closer look at them,’ he folded the papers and turned his cheerless gaze on their bearer.

  ‘But sergeant,’ Lily protested lightly, ‘they were checked on le métro only a few minutes ago by a very efficient officer and he found no problem.’ Her bluff failed dismally and the massive soldier shook his head slowly and sadly as if the papers were mortally wounded.

  ‘I do not think so, Mademoiselle.’ He pocketed the papers and placed an enormous hand on her arm. ‘You will have to come with me,’ he told her.

  ‘Oh sergeant,’ Lily protested, her smile remaining faithfully on duty, ‘I am as French as the Eiffel Tower!’ She made her point with appropriate drama, appealing to the bear-like soldier’s sensibilities. He replied with a glance at the Eiffel Tower itself, its steel nose poking above the skyline. From the highest point of the superstructure a massive swastika wafted on a passing breeze. Lily followed his gaze and shrugged.

  ‘It’s still French,’ she explained unconvincingly, ‘just under new management like the rest of us.’

  ‘This way, Mademoiselle.’

  ‘Come now, sergeant,’ Lily protested sunnily, playing for time, ‘where’s your sense of humour? Tell me, what did you do before you were press-ganged into invading neighbouring countries?’ The soldier’s grip tightened as if a vice had closed on her arm.

  ‘My apologies,’ Lily corrected herself — clearly this soldier’s understanding of French far surpassed that of the majority of his compatriots. ‘I meant to say before you took up arms to serve the glorious cause of the Fuhrer.’

  ‘I was a policeman,’ replied the soldier baldly.

  ‘Ah,’ Lily realised now that this was no converted farmer or conscripted postal worker, this was a man who arrested citizens for a living. She gave up the fight and allowed herself to be frogmarched along to where a group of soldiers stood around a truck. Lily wondered idly why he did not simply shoot her on the spot to save himself the effort of carting her away. If she were to be martyred, she would prefer to be slain in the bright sunlight and under the curious gaze of her fellow Parisians.

  But Lily’s impending martyrdom was stayed by a crisp voice that arrested the bear-like soldier’s progress.

  ‘What seems to be the problem, corporal?’ A smartly dressed businessman approached from a black Mercedes that stood humming by the kerb, its uniformed driver staring ahead impassively. Lily was not sure whether to feel relieved or concerned that this man might present a more serious threat than the bear-like soldier. After all, only those who worked for the Germans were still permitted to own private cars. The effect of the man’s arrival on the massive soldier was instantaneous. He dropped his prize immediately and stood stiffly to attention. It was abundantly clear to Lily that the suited businessman was well known to the German.

  ‘Well?’ demanded the man, his tone icy as the soldier’s eyes shifted uneasily under the blistering glare of his interrogator. The corporal seemed to have momentarily lost his voice, but was allowed little time to find it.

  ‘This lady’s papers are suspicious, Herr Oberst, I
believe they may have been forged.’ The businessman turned to Lily and spoke to her in crisp, precise French.

  ‘This soldier seems to think your papers are forged.’

  ‘Forged!’ expostulated Lily, ‘upon my mother’s grave, I have never heard such slander!’ The businessman eyed her shrewdly for a moment before turning back to the soldier.

  ‘I will take care of this young lady,’ he announced, smiling faintly at Lily’s discomfort. The soldier opened his mouth as if to protest but was silenced by a look.

  ‘Papers please!’ snapped the businessman, holding out his hand to the sweating soldier in what the showgirl regarded as a beautiful reversal of their positions. The papers were duly handed over and the soldier sent on his way. The businessman turned to the young woman at his side and bowed slightly.

  ‘I do apologise for the conduct of that rather over-zealous soldier,’ he told her in his beautiful French. Lily was too relieved to be angry.

  ‘Ah, Monsieur,’ she smiled graciously, ‘no need to apologise, I’m sure he was just doing his duty.’ She received the papers gratefully and opened the wad for a closer look. ‘Is there really something wrong with them, do you think?’ she asked the man. He shook his head and laughed. Studying him, Lily realised suddenly that he was much younger than she had first presumed and was perhaps only in his early thirties. He was tall, lean and finely built, his face handsome and evenly featured. His eyes seemed to be a curious combination of blue and green and, decided Lily, warranted closer investigation. He smiled at her again.

  ‘I think he just wanted to ... take a closer look at you, Mademoiselle.’ He laughed again at Lily’s expression of distaste. ‘Do you live around here?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she told her rescuer, ‘I’m almost home, in fact.’ She pointed to the little apartment at the rear of Le Prix, its red chintz curtains fluttering gaily in the breeze. She gestured towards the theatre. ‘That’s where I work.’ The businessman was momentarily flummoxed.

  ‘You work there?’ he asked, shades of confusion crossing his handsome face. Lily laughed — it was an expression that she met on a regular basis.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied brightly, ‘I’m a dancer, you see.’ He surveyed her long legs and neat figure for a split second as if to confirm the veracity of her response. Lily laughed again and tapped a flourish with her legs and one free arm. ‘Have you seen our show?’ He shook his head slowly as if the thought had never occurred to him.

  ‘Oh, but you must come, Monsieur, I promise you it will be a night to remember! We’re open from Thursday through to Sunday ... our show is wild and fun and the champagne flows. In fact, if you come along one night, I’ll treat you to a bottle of champagne to thank you for rescuing me — what do you say?’

  ‘In that case, Mademoiselle, how can I refuse?’ he told her politely, smiling and bowing once again.

  That was enough for the lithe-limbed showgirl. With a cheery wave she trotted off towards the gilt-edged solidity of Le Prix, simmering with suggestion in the sultry summer heat, as the bemused businessman watched in her wake. For her part, Lily’s mind was filled with the excitement of meeting an attractive man and the promise of adding romance to her already frenetic life. The dull weight of the parcel she carried reminded her that she had an additional reason for not wishing to be detained by German soldiers. Covered with copious layers of newspaper and wrapped in brown paper tied neatly with string, the doleful eyes of three fish, liberated earlier that morning from the Seine by enterprising schoolboys and sold to Lily by their equally enterprising mother, stared dully out.

  Chapter 11

  Racketeers and revelations

  With Le Prix’s reopening such an overwhelming success, Monsieur Maurice could afford to turn his mind to the practicalities of operating a cabaret in an occupied city. He was relieved to have secured the patronage of the Military Governor and knew this to be a considerable coup, albeit one he preferred to keep up his sleeve in the uncertain climate of the occupation. Monsieur Maurice was sufficiently prescient to feel the need to stockpile certain commodities such as fabrics and feathers, sequins and diamantes and other embellishments for costumes and shoes. Already popular rumour predicted that leather would soon be in short supply as the German military requisitioned all available stockpiles. Gasoline was strictly rationed and private automobiles had been commandeered for use as German staff cars. Monsieur Maurice had taken the precaution of hiding his own car in a garage at the back of the apartment boarding houses, now disguised as a storeroom. While pre-war food rationing remained in place, the ban on pastries had been lifted to allow the patisseries to reopen and the Germans now flocked to indulge their love of the delicate culinary delights.

  Like every other Parisian housewife, Madame Gloria and her boarding-house neighbour, the sharp-tongued Madame Fresange, quickly discovered that Paris was ill-equipped to feed an occupation army that numbered in the thousands as well as its own citizens. France was being bled dry to feed the vast German war effort and there was little food left for the ordinary Frenchman. It was all very well for that lovely Marshal Pétain to announce that the first task of the government was to feed its citizens, declared Madame Fresange, the good Marshal was not obliged to queue for food every day. The two ladies looked towards the portrait of the white-haired Marshal that Madame Gloria had hung in a burst of patriotism and heaved a collective sigh.

  As rationing tightened its grip, the queues lengthened and tempers shortened. Madame Fresange and Madame Gloria took turns to queue, but soon realised that they could queue all day only to find that the shops were bare. They paid the children of neighbours and friends to queue outside several shops at once hoping to reap the fruits of their labour in at least one of these. But the rewards were few and their frustration mounted. There simply had to be another way.

  As if signalled by the onset of rationing, a flourishing black market had sprung immediately into operation to supply every rationed commodity — and more. While both Madame Gloria and Madame Fresange considered themselves upright and respectable citizens, they had boarding houses to manage and mouths to feed. And there was never enough food to sate the appetites of all their tenants. Then there was the added complication that certain of them did not have ration cards. Ration cards were linked to identity papers and many of Le Prix’s performers were anxious to hide their identity from the Germans for a number of reasons. Instead, they paid Madame Gloria to buy extras wherever she could to supplement the meagre offerings of the shops. Buying those extras was now becoming a task that stretched the resourcefulness of the canny little landlady.

  At the end of one particularly difficult week, Madame Fresange had arrived at Madame Gloria’s apartment determined to find a way through the rationing dilemma. La Fresange was short and bulky with dun-coloured hair pulled back severely into a tight bun. Her face was dominated by a beaked nose and a heavy jaw that devolved into a series of sagging chins. Her beady eyes sat below a perpetual frown and were restlessly mobile, generally employed in scanning for signs of the laxity of morals or illegal activity that she could report to the nearest German patrol or lurking French policeman. However, given the severity of rationing and the clear impossibility of living within the culinary rules of the current regime, Madame Fresange’s carefully nurtured sense of right and wrong had experienced something approaching a seismic shift.

  They sat at Madame Gloria’s kitchen table sipping a carefully hoarded bottle of champagne — Perrier mineral water for the abstemious Madame Fresange — and debating their choices.

  ‘We could find more people to queue for us,’ Madame Gloria offered helpfully as she traced her finger over the stem of her glass. Her companion snorted, showering the unfortunate Gloria who reached discreetly for her handkerchief.

  ‘What’s the point of queuing when there’s nothing in the shops at the end of the queue?’ Madame Fresange snorted again to Gloria’s dismay, before looking around her as if checking that the kitchen cupboards were not eavesdropping. Then she lo
wered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘I think I know someone who could help us.’ Gloria eyed her intently.

  ‘My Gaston,’ she stopped and crossed herself in a gesture of remembrance for her long-dead husband. Gloria quickly followed suit, too intimidated by the formidable Fresange to do otherwise. ‘He had a friend,’ she continued, ‘who could find things that other people could not.’ She paused to allow her words to sink in and Madame Gloria nodded slowly in admiration of the friend, of the departed Gaston for having such a friend, and Madame Fresange for having Gaston.

  ‘He could help us,’ pronounced the formidable Fresange finally.

  ‘Not ...’ Madame Gloria now realised the full import of what her neighbour was implying. ‘You mean the black market?’

  ‘Shhh!’ La Fresange hissed violently lest there be more eavesdroppers lurking under the kitchen benches. Both women looked around them. Satisfied they had not been overheard, Madame Fresange resumed.

  ‘There was a man named Napoleon who worked at a truck repair shop and he used to find things for Gaston.’

  ‘Napoleon?’ queried Madame Gloria vaguely, ‘isn’t that an unusual name for someone who wants to remain secret?’

  ‘It’s not his real name,’ snapped La Fresange regarding Gloria quizzically. Really, she could be so obtuse at times. ‘It’s his code name — it’s known only to those who can be trusted. This is a very dangerous business you realise — what if the Germans found out?’ She turned a severe look on the now quivering Madame Gloria. The hapless Gloria had none of the brazen courage of Madame Fresange and fancied herself rather timid in comparison. Nonetheless, she knew she had to find a source of food for her tenants or they would all starve. She silently thanked the Almighty that she had the clearly well connected Madame Fresange to help her in these desperate times. She had no idea what she would have done without her brusquely resourceful neighbour.