‘Monsieur?’ he asked weakly, his face again clouded in confusion.
‘When you are requesting your fuel supplies from the Governor, you might like to consider requesting a little more than you need. Coal is the winter currency of Paris — know what I mean?’ Maurice was appalled.
‘Oh, non, Monsieur, I could not — it would not be right.’
‘What is right about having to ask for coal in the first place?’ hissed the big man vehemently. ‘This is our city, this is our country and we are forced to live as second-class citizens! We owe the Germans nothing — they owe us!’ Again he glared at Maurice for a long moment before finally releasing the captive hand which Maurice rubbed to relieve the red imprint of Napoleon’s iron grip. Madame Gloria stood behind him watching the scene, her hands covering her mouth as if she anticipated an atrocity. Napoleon’s look softened and his face broke into a wan smile.
‘Let me give you some advice, Monsieur. You are a decent man. You want to look after your performers and your staff, eh?’
‘Oui, oui, of course,’ Maurice croaked, nervously awaiting Napoleon’s advice.
‘At some stage you will need some extra money ... for food, for medicines, for repairs, to buy one of your performers out of trouble. I can guarantee that this will happen. I suspect that you have very little extra money for such emergencies, am I right?’
‘You are, Monsieur.’ Napoleon nodded knowingly.
‘I thought so. I tell you what I will do. If you can find it in your heart to ask for some extra coal, I will take it off your hands for a good price — and then you will have your little emergency fund ... know what I mean?’
‘Thank you, Monsieur, I will do my best.’
Napoleon studied him once again, beamed and nodded to Madame Gloria, then stamped his way out the door as the building shook on its foundations.
‘Cognac, Monsieur?’
‘Thank you, Madame, large if you please.’ Maurice sank his head in his hands. He was caught squarely between the black marketeers and the Germans, his precious principles in tatters. Now, at last, he knew the full cost of survival.
Chapter 15
The unexpected acrobat
Monsieur Maurice took Napoleon’s words of warning to heart, not least because his beloved Madame Claudette was faring badly in the cruel winter chill. The winter of 1940-1941 was the coldest many Parisians could remember and Monsieur Maurice found himself drawing on his little emergency fund to pay for medicines for Madame prescribed during the frequent visits of his doctor and friend, Paul Reynard. Dr Paul refused to charge for his calls, although his did accept a bottle of cognac and some cigars pressed on him by his grateful friend. But medicines were expensive and could be difficult to source. Maurice quickly realised the universal truth behind Napoleon’s advice. The price of survival was high and, to Napoleon, it was the Germans who should be made to pay this price, albeit indirectly. Maurice swallowed his patriotism and summoned the courage to ask the German Military Governor for several bags of coal. The sale of an extra bag proved more than adequate to pay for Madame Claudette’s medicines, relieving the agonies of a rasping cough that shook her sparse frame with every bout.
Madame Gloria also benefitted from Maurice’s German sacks of coal and she rationed her supplies carefully while ensuring that her tenants remained cosy, insulated against the merciless cold of the winter. For their part, the performers and showgirls — like the rest of Paris — sought new ways to stay warm. Many spent longer periods in the heated rooms of Le Prix, while others made alternative arrangements. Sadie spent increasing amounts of time with her banker who seemed to have limitless supplies of fuel despite the fact that he could no longer manage his own bank and had been warned that his house could be confiscated by the Germans. Sabine had found herself a wealthy young widow and now spent her free time in the warmth of her lover’s apartment. Poppy’s German friend, Gunther, had recently moved to the Hotel du Barry which, given its primarily German clientele, also remained well heated.
‘You should have seen his previous hotel,’ she told Lily and Crecy, ‘mon Dieu, it was a flea pit!’ Crecy tut-tutted and shook his rollered head in dismay.
‘With all the might of the Third Reich behind them, you’d think the Germans could afford a decent hotel!’ Poppy agreed, keen to take up residency herself now that the Hôtel du Barry was on offer, although Gunther seemed less enthusiastic. Lily had high hopes of a budding romance with Bobby Metzinger — a process that seemed to be taking rather longer than she had anticipated. After three months, the most she had achieved was a cosy friendship, albeit one marked by regular gifts of food, cigarettes and coffee. She pursed her bright scarlet lips and vowed to persevere. Time, she decided, was on her side as the suave Bobby showed no sign of abandoning his Paris business and his regular trips to Le Prix.
The largesse of the debonair Swiss businessman was very much in evidence late one morning as Lily and Poppy sat among the sofas on the landing, huddled in chenille dressing gowns and smoking elegant filtered cigarettes — a gift from the attractive entrepreneur — to ward off the late winter chill and the usual pangs of hunger. Crecy plumped himself among them, his platinum curls rollered and netted and his enormous bust tucked into a cherry-coloured velveteen housecoat. He balanced a cigarette delicately in blood-red fingernails, waving them occasionally to help the polish dry. Poppy studied her own fingernails, a deep, syrupy brown marred by the occasional chip.
‘Poor Gunther,’ she murmured softly, ‘sometimes I feel so sorry for him.’
‘Poor Gunther?!’ mocked Lily, her face lighting with amusement, ‘is he missing the call of the alphorn? The smell of bubbling sauerkraut? The yodelling of flaxen-haired fraüleins?’ Poppy ignored her friend’s flippancy and sighed again.
‘I think he’s lonely.’
‘Lonely?!’ exploded Lily, ‘But the place is full of Germans! How can he possibly be lonely?!’
‘He says the locals aren’t being nice to him. They won’t smile at him or chat to him. They ignore him or walk away. No-one has invited him into their homes for a meal or to meet the family since he left Germany more than a year ago.’
‘Oh, poor Gunther!’ soothed Lily, her mock concern deepening, ‘didn’t he make any nice friends as he stomped his way through Poland or Denmark or Belgium?’
‘I don’t think you know what he’s going through ...’
‘Poppy, they’re a conquering army, not a travelling troupe! People don’t like being conquered — did that ever occur to him?’
‘Let’s not be hasty, Lily-pilly,’ interjected Crecy in deep, husky tones, ‘I’d be happy to be conquered by Gunther and I haven’t heard Poppy complain.’ Crecy batted his glittering false eyelashes lazily at Poppy who narrowed her eyes in return.
‘Perhaps,’ continued Lily, deciding that frivolity was the best policy after all, ‘you should encourage him to wear his best lederhosen next time he visits, to make him feel more at home.’
‘Ooh,’ trilled Crecy, ‘do tell me if he turns up in lederhosen, dahling, such a defining garment in all the right places.’ The girls laughed, attracting a fleeting smile from Coco who threaded her way past the sofas as they chatted, tapping her whip against one thigh.
‘Do you use lederhosen, dahling?’ Crecy cooed after the leather-clad Coco.
‘I certainly use hoses,’ tossed Coco with a smirk as she disappeared down the corridor, ‘but they’re not usually leaden ... rubber is more my thing.’
‘Hmm, rubber lederhosen,’ mused Crecy, eyeing Poppy pointedly, ‘now that would take the poor boy’s mind off his loneliness.’
With the onset of spring, Parisians reappeared on the streets, ending their winter hibernation. The ration queues lengthened and deliveries of precious farm produce from country relatives and contacts returned to their previous levels. Madame Gloria’s apartment boarding house resumed its hustle and bustle and she greeted the milder weather with a vigorous spring clean. The showgirls came and went in happy profusion
, the shadowy forms of their admirers now tiptoeing up and down the back stairs on a regular basis. Coco’s clients slipped in and out at consistent intervals, their faces buried under the angled brims of lowered hats and their retreating footfalls echoing off the brick walls that defined the alleyway.
Around seven o’clock on a sleepy Sunday morning, a sharp rap on the door interrupted Madame Gloria as she poured her first glass of champagne for the day. She added an extra dash just in case she needed her wits about her and drained the dram with the swift scull of the habitual. Tucking her woolly dressing gown around her and slipping her feet into her fluffy white slippers, she trotted towards the door, patting her rollers in place under her nightcap in case the caller should prove to be Napoleon, her beefy black marketeer. She slid the bolt of the door and turned the key in the lock just as the caller rapped again.
‘One moment, please,’ she called through the door, ‘I’m just unlocking —’
She began to open the door, but was forced back by an insistent push from the caller, a smartly dressed woman, who barged through the door with all the passion of an avenging fury.
‘Where is my husband?’ she demanded angrily, her ringing tones echoing up the staircase and back down again. ‘Where are you hiding him?’ she peered past Madame Gloria into the gloomy interior of the entranceway. ‘Paul? Paul!’
‘Calm yourself, Madame,’ soothed Madame Gloria, recovering herself from the valley between the door and the wall where she had fallen. The woman who fretted before her in a maelstrom of anger and concern was tall and slender with a perky pillbox hat and expensive gloves. She was young and pretty with a soft blonde bob peeping from under the pillbox, a splash of bright red lipstick and a long neck that disappeared into the collar of a busily patterned dress. She turned back to the little landlady.
‘Where is he? I demand that you bring him to me now!’
Madame Gloria wished heartily she had had time for a second glass of champagne.
‘Madame, I regret I do not know your husband,’ she began uncertainly.
‘He is Monsieur Paul Charbonnier,’ retorted the young woman as if this were a fact known to mankind in general. ‘I am Madame Annette Charbonnier and I have it on good authority that he is here with one of the girls who lives in this dubious establishment.’
Madame Gloria was an avowed pacifist and an amiable creature seldom roused to passion. Yet, if there was one aspect of her life on which her defence was strong, it was her apartment boarding house. She flushed crimson and her soft features hardened.
‘Madame Charbonnier,’ she declared indignantly, ‘this is a very respectable boarding house. My residents are individuals of the finest character — they have references!’ She announced this last valued attribute as if it implied the impossibility of any tarnish on the morals of her tenants. Annette Charbonnier turned on her.
‘I don’t care if they are related to the Archangel Gabriel,’ she responded haughtily, ‘my husband is in there somewhere and I want him back. Why, I can even tell you the name of the girl who has stolen him away.’
‘Indeed?’ replied Madame Gloria archly.
‘Indeed! She is Sabine something or other and she is a showgirl from Le Prix.’
‘Well,’ replied the landlady, her lips pursed, ‘let’s go and ask her, shall we?’ And she turned towards the staircase without the least notion of whether Monsieur Paul would be found lurking in Sabine’s room or anywhere else in the boarding house for that matter.
Madame Gloria was not the only resident of the apartment boarding house to be woken by the untimely rapping that Sunday morning. Lily poked her ruffled head out of her bedroom door, shaking her tousled curls as if to loosen the excesses of the night before.
‘What’s up?’ she called sleepily to Madame Gloria whose distinctive pit-pat now ascended the stairs towards her. Behind those pit-pats she heard the more definite tread of high-heeled shoes, resonating with purpose.
‘This lady,’ replied Madame Gloria loudly and incredulously, ‘insists her husband is here —upstairs with Sabine, no less!’
‘Sabine?’ replied Lily, suddenly all too awake and emerging in a rumpled confusion of pink chenille pyjamas. ‘No, Madame, she is mistaken, there is no way on God’s earth he could be with Sabine,’ she declared with absolute conviction. Madame Gloria turned to Annette Charbonnier who stood behind her at the top of the stairs.
‘You see?’ she said smugly, ‘no way on God’s earth.’ Annette gave her a look that could have toasted a croissant.
‘I don’t believe you!’ she declared in ringing tones. ‘Where is this Sabine’s room? I will see for myself!’ Madame Gloria shrugged and turned to Lily.
‘Suit yourself,’ said Lily with a wry expression, pointing down the corridor. ‘It’s the second on the left. But,’ she added as the stately blonde marched determinedly towards the door, ‘I wouldn’t advise you to ...’ her voice trailed softly as the woman rapped purposefully on the door of the room.
‘Paul? Paul! I know you’re in there.’ There was no answer and the now slightly discomforted Annette, feeling herself under the gaze of Madame Gloria and Lily, tried the door. The handle opened obediently and she strode through the door, tossing her audience a jubilant look as she disappeared inside. A brief silence ensued before a cry of horror escaped from the room. Lily and Madame Gloria exchanged smug looks. A moment later, Annette Charbonnier flung herself from the room, her face white with shock.
‘You knew!’ she shouted at the two women in the passageway, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Tried to warn you,’ responded Lily with an air of resignation, ‘but you wouldn’t listen.’ Annette threw her a look of disgust and started down the stairs, scolding Madame Gloria as she went, berating her for the quality of her boarding house and squawking like a ruffled hen. Madame Gloria pit-patted after her, still valiantly defending her tenants, her squawks only marginally less shrill than those of the furious Annette.
Lily watched them go as the bleary-eyed Sabine poked her head out the door, closely followed by a blonde girl with dishevelled corkscrew curls. Lily shrugged at her as she marched past to the room at the very end of the corridor. Tapping softly on the door she called to the occupant in a conspiratorial whisper.
‘Coco, your client’s wife is downstairs, it might be a good idea to warn him.’ A movement inside told her the message had been received. A moment later, Coco’s velvety dark head peered out.
‘Where is she?’ she asked in a low hiss.
‘Downstairs berating Madame Gloria — you had better hide the husband in case she comes back up.’ Coco nodded and looked behind her into the room.
‘No problem, he’s gone down the fire escape.’ Lily reacted as if she had been hit.
‘The fire escape?! Coco, he can’t use the fire escape, it’s too —’ a crash at the back of the building confirmed her fears and the two women raced to the window at the end of the corridor, opening it to peer across at the hapless husband. Dangling perilously from a rusty iron railing was a semi-clad man, shouting and pleading for help. The ancient iron stairs that comprised the fire escape had pulled cleanly from the wall of the building and now swayed rhythmically as their sole occupant teetered precipitously two stories above the courtyard below. Lily stifled a giggle with an effort.
‘Oh Coco, you could have given him back his trousers before he leapt out the window!’ The man’s bare buttocks glinted white in the morning sunlight.
‘Ooh,’ crooned a deep voice at Lily’s elbow, ‘ooh, he’s lovely, can I have him when Coco’s finished with him?’ Lily looked at the source of the voice in exasperation. It was Crecy, his platinum curls pushed untidily back from his face which still bore traces of mascara, lipstick and rouge from the night before.
‘Crecy,’ declared Lily, ‘don’t you think the poor man’s been through enough? His wife’s at the front door, he’s been belted by Coco and now he’s hanging on for dear life twenty feet up from the ground!’
�
�Just asking,’ murmured Crecy looking hurt, ‘I think he looks as if he needs comforting,’ he added, peering after the man with a soft smile of solace. Lily exhaled sharply.
‘If you want to help him, you could go and get a bed sheet so we can haul him up before the fire escape gives way.’
‘I’ll help you,’ offered Coco, ‘the wretch hasn’t paid me yet!’
Crecy disappeared after Coco, pausing only to admire a selection of whips that adorned the wall of her bedroom.
‘What do you use this for?’ he asked her coyly, spying a more unusual piece of paraphernalia.
‘Oh do hurry up!’ shouted Lily, hoping desperately that the wretched man could be hauled up out of view before the neighbours noticed his snowy-white posterior.
But it was too late. A window in the second storey of the adjacent apartment building opened and a white-capped head emerged. It was the elderly Madame Auguste Dupleix, noted hypochondriac and long-term resident of the neighbouring apartment boarding house — the domain of the acidic Madame Fresange who made it her business to police the neighbourhood morals. Madame Auguste shook her ancient rollered head in bewilderment before catching sight of Lily.
‘What’s that?’ she shouted in shrill confusion.
‘A man’s bottom!’ muttered Lily to herself in an undertone, adding as if in explanation, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen one of those in quite some time.’ To her neighbour she called sweetly, ‘Don’t worry, Madame Auguste, it’s just a fellow rehearsing some tricks for the show!’ But Madame had noticed the pale, gleaming buttocks and now she disappeared, reappearing a moment later with a large, ornate pair of opera glasses.
‘I was right!’ muttered Lily to herself in confirmation, ‘she hasn’t seen anything like that in a long time!’ Madame focused her glasses, starting in fright as the vision cleared.
‘He’s not wearing any trousers!’ she cried, her eyes never leaving her glasses as if she was afraid the vision might disappear if she took her eyes from it for a second.
Secrets and Showgirls Page 14