Secrets and Showgirls

by Catherine McCullagh

  ‘You could if you were hungry enough!’ snapped Madame Fresange acidly. ‘Killing it isn’t the problem,’ she added, ‘Napoleon could do it with his bare hands.’ She mused on this afterthought, her face softening perceptibly as if this were an image she could truly enjoy. ‘No,’ she continued, recollecting herself, ‘the issue is that we need somewhere to raise rabbits and Madame Pithviers at the greengrocer’s tells me she has several in her bathtub. Apparently they’re quite clean, although the bathroom does smell a bit after a while.’ Madame Gloria’s distaste for her allotted task was increasing by the minute.

  ‘Can’t they go in your bathtub?’ she asked, half surprised at her own courage. La Fresange was evidently even more surprised at the tone of Gloria’s question. She paused a moment as if to digest the unlikely combination of the mousy Gloria with a question that smacked of insubordination.

  ‘Of course not,’ she responded stridently, ‘I use my bathtub.’

  ‘So do I,’ replied Gloria a little more timorously.

  ‘Can’t you share a bathroom with one of your tenants?’

  ‘Can’t you?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ Madame Fresange was becoming frustrated with the strength of Gloria’s fight. If this sort of attitude persisted she would have no option but to speak to Napoleon about cutting Madame Gloria’s supplies until she returned to her right mind. It really would not do.

  ‘My tenants are very respectable older people and artistes. Can you imagine Madame Claudette agreeing to share her bathroom? Madame Auguste? Your tenants, on the other hand, are mostly floozies of dubious reputation who probably don’t even use their bathrooms on a regular basis.’ Madame Gloria was becoming increasingly incensed and now decided to make a stand.

  ‘Madame Fresange,’ she stated coldly, sitting up straight and eyeing her neighbour frostily, ‘I cannot allow you to make such assertions about my tenants. They are respectable girls engaged in the same business as Monsieur Maurice and Madame Claudette. Had they not been respectable, Monsieur Maurice would never have hired them.’ La Fresange noted the frosty look and coldly polite tone and heaved a sigh. Argument was getting her no closer to solving her rabbit problem. Perhaps compromise was best after all.

  ‘Very well,’ she responded, dismissing Madame Gloria’s spirited defence with an airy wave of her hand, ‘we’ll just have to find somewhere else for the rabbits to live. But mark my words, rabbits are the answer.’ Madame Gloria was happy to acknowledge the universal truth of this statement. Rabbit pie was certainly one of her favourites and, with some judicious supplementation, she could stretch one rabbit to several pies and a stew or two, enough to feed her tenants for a week. Yes, she would join La Fresange’s rabbit-breeding venture, but not at the expense of her bathtub. There must be another option.

  Monsieur Maurice was searching frantically for Chinon who had disappeared, as was his habit, following the end of last Saturday night’s show. Maurice had seen neither hide nor hair of his Master of Ceremonies since the curtain had last fallen and, given that it was now Wednesday morning, this was sufficiently unusual for the diminutive manager to be concerned. He trotted through the gloom of Le Prix’s theatre looking for Madame Lucille and Alain. Madame Lucille was in the wine cellar reading off an inventory as Alain counted bottles, stacking boxes ready to move them to the bar. Neither seemed concerned about the missing Chinon.

  ‘He’ll turn up,’ was Alain’s comment as he returned to packing his boxes. Lucille was more helpful.

  ‘Ask the girls,’ she said simply with a sly wink to Maurice. The manager thanked her and hurried up the steps to the practice rooms, stroking his ginger moustache in contemplation. Perhaps his policy of remaining studiously aloof from the private lives of his showgirls had its pitfalls after all. He reached the main practice room and tiptoed in, his footsteps lost in the plaintive notes of the piano and the harsh tones of Madame Claudette’s scolding.

  ‘Non, Margot, step wide, Carin you must move closer, Lily you have to step further back, you are too tall for the front, Monique, this is the cancan — kick higher! Spacing, girls, spacing!’ Maurice smiled to himself. This was a clear sign that Madame was recovering her former spirits and, he hoped, her previously robust good health. He nodded a greeting to the pale Mademoiselle Gris who gave him a faint half-smile, the closest he had ever seen her approach joviality.

  Ten minutes later, Madame Claudette called a break to rehearsals and summoned the reedy, masculine pianist, Madame Gartrille, to her side to discuss the tempo of the last dance routine. Madame Gartrille wrapped her faded brown cardigan close to her body to ward off the non-existent chill and trudged to the dance mistress’s side, her gait ungainly and square. Monsieur Maurice made his way to the throng of showgirls who smoked in a huddle and gossiped, their netted, rollered heads bobbing and nodding with emphasis as they sampled the tales on offer.

  ‘Morning ladies!’ called Maurice gaily, ‘and how are the fabulous showgirls of Paris’s premier cabaret today?’ The girls greeted their manager with smiles and lobbed courtesies. They were fond of Monsieur Maurice and grateful to enjoy his patronage and protection in these troubled times. Maurice waited for a lull in the cheery bustle before addressing his question to the cluster of bodies.

  ‘Has anyone seen Chinon today?’ All eyes turned as one, focusing on Chloe, the smallest of the dancers. Smiles and titters accompanied the glances. Chloe shifted feet and blushed slightly.

  ‘Oui, Monsieur, I have seen him.’ She moved to take Maurice aside and speak to him apart from the listening crowd. ‘He is in my room in the boarding house. Do you wish to speak to him?’ Monsieur Maurice not only wished to speak to his ringmaster, he wished to ascertain for himself that Chinon was ready to take the stage for the night’s performance. Replacing his cabaret front man at the last minute was not a prospect the ginger-haired manager wished to explore only hours before the curtain lifted.

  Monsieur Maurice trotted into Madame Gloria’s apartment calling a friendly greeting to the plump little landlady as he passed. He climbed the two flights of stairs to Chloe’s room, pausing for breath at the top of the second — and thankfully final — landing. The rooms on this floor bore the first names of their occupants written on pretty little cards in Madame Gloria’s dainty hand. Maurice passed two rooms before he found the one that bore Chloe’s name on the door. He knocked tentatively and called reassuringly to its occupant.

  ‘Chinon? It is I — Maurice.’ A faint groan issued in reply. ‘May I come in, Chinon?’ Heavy steps staggered unevenly to the door which fell open to reveal darkness and the overpowering smell of brandy and cigarette smoke.

  ‘Chinon?’ asked Maurice gently as he crept uncertainly into the room, his handkerchief to his nose to block the densely wafting smell. He wished fervently that he carried his gas mask as the universally ignored regulations stated he should. The fumes began to penetrate and he felt a little light-headed as he breathed the alcoholic gas.

  ‘Ah, Maurice,’ groaned Chinon dramatically, ‘it is all too much, I can cope no more.’ Maurice’s eyes had adjusted to the semi-darkness by now and he saw Chinon lying on the bed shirtless, several empty brandy bottles littering the floor of the room.

  ‘What is it, mon ami?’ asked the manager softly, gasping against the dense, choking fog.

  ‘This!’ Chinon cried with passion as he thrust a newspaper at Maurice with a sudden burst of energy. It was a grimy copy of the clandestine communist newspaper L’Humanité, banned by the Germans since the occupation and the French before them. Maurice inhaled sharply despite the fumes and immediately closed the door.

  ‘Chinon!’ he exclaimed in a strangled whisper, ‘Are you mad? If you are seen with this newspaper you will be arrested — and so will I!’

  ‘Oui, oui, Maurice,’ responded the dwarf wearily as if this were some tiresome eternal truth, ‘but look at the headlines!’ Maurice took the newspaper gingerly as if by merely holding the paper he could be condemned by the Germans and dragged off to the t
orture chambers that reportedly filled the basement of the Gestapo headquarters at 11 rue de Saussaies. He turned the crumpled paper and read the banner headlines that screamed at him in bold, black ink. The Germans had invaded Russia. He looked down at his avowedly communist ringmaster.

  ‘Alas, Chinon,’ he murmured sympathetically, ‘this is very bad news.’ Chinon burst into noisy tears, sobbing angrily, beating with his fists and kicking with his feet like a child in the midst of a violent temper tantrum.

  ‘We thought we had a deal! We thought the Germans would honour their partnership with the great Russian proletariat and that, eventually, the communist dictatorship would prevail.’ His sobs choked him momentarily and he gasped for breath. ‘Maurice, we have been betrayed! From now on, I will join my communist brothers in working for the downfall of the Third Reich!’

  Monsieur Maurice felt his sympathies evaporate and he thought, rather caustically that, as Frenchmen, the communist brotherhood should have been working for this noble cause for the past year. But he simply nodded and kept his thought to himself, hastening instead to warn the passionate Chinon to temper his enthusiasm with a little common sense.

  ‘Chinon,’ he hissed, ‘caution, my friend, lest you and the brotherhood end up in a Gestapo cell. You must exercise great care or you will lose your fight before you have started.’ Chinon suppressed his sobs and calmed himself with an effort, turning to listen to Maurice, his tears flowing unchecked as the sturdy shoulders heaved with remnant sobs.

  ‘If you are arrested,’ the manager whispered sharply, ‘the names of all your brothers will be extracted from you under torture — have you not heard the stories? The Germans hate the communists almost as much as they hate the Jews — you must exercise great care. You must also take care not to implicate Le Prix in your activities or we will be closed down and all of us sent to some terrible camp. Do you hear me?’ Chinon nodded sadly.

  ‘But I cannot forsake the fight, Maurice, I cannot!’

  ‘No-one is asking you to forsake the fight, Chinon, just to ensure that you are very careful and discreet. There are ways of fighting that do not require you to attack the Germans in their beds at night or storm the pillboxes on the Champs-Élysées. Can you see that?’ Chinon nodded mutely, his rage abating gradually.

  ‘I will not endanger you,’ he stated solemnly, ‘although, when the communist brotherhood reigns supreme, I cannot guarantee that you will not be called to account for your actions as a member of the bourgeoisie.’ Maurice nodded wearily.

  ‘Of course, Chinon, I would expect nothing less.’

  ‘I will put in a good word for you, Maurice, of that you may be assured.’ Maurice smiled softly. The triumph of the communists did not figure largely on his list of concerns at present.

  ‘Thank you, mon ami, I am grateful for your generosity.’ He bowed slightly and Chinon bowed in response. The pantomime over, Maurice remembered his reason for seeking Chinon in the first place.

  ‘Chinon,’ he told the stocky little man, his tone serious and his face grave, ‘it is very important that you are in the best possible position to help your comrades with the information they need to maintain the fight.’ Chinon nodded emphatically. ‘For this,’ explained the manager earnestly, ‘the Germans must suspect nothing. You must continue as before so that the brotherhood has time to organise a response. You must not draw any unwanted attention to yourself. In fact, you will be of most use if the Germans trust you and feel they can speak freely in your presence.’ Chinon nodded more emphatically, his eyes beginning to lose the cloudy haze of intoxication. Maurice decided to act. ‘Get dressed and come down to Madame Gloria for a cup of coffee and something to eat and you will feel much better. You will be able to think more clearly and plan your actions. What do you say?’

  ‘Very well, I will do as you say, Maurice,’ affirmed the little communist, gathering his clothes and his wits.

  ‘Excellent,’ responded Maurice heartily, quietly shoving the banned newspaper into his waistcoat pocket. He would thrust the offending broadsheet into Madame Gloria’s stove and watch until every last scrap was burned to cinders. Only then would he breathe a little more easily ... until Chinon’s plans for the downfall of the Reich began to take shape, that is.

  Having located his Master of Ceremonies and delivered his dire warnings on the price of overt hostility to the occupying power, Monsieur Maurice continued to devote his energies to the operation of his cabaret. Alain had quickly proved himself a talented assistant with a clear head for figures and an eye for opportunity. He was popular with the staff and the performers, although he preferred to remain in the background, his arm in its customary sling, during the performances and while the cabaret’s bar was open to its predominantly German clientele. Alain’s position as a former French soldier made him wary of the Germans despite the fact that his identity papers gave his occupation as a civil engineer, his profession prior to his mobilisation in 1939. Lucille was protective of the young man, sending him to the wine cellar if an unfamiliar caller hammered at the gilded doors of Le Prix. Monsieur Maurice was pleased with the way his staff colluded and protected one another in the face of any threat from the Germans. It made him feel as if they were all part of a family and Maurice enjoyed the feeling of gentle paternalism enormously.

  Chinon kept his word to Maurice, maintaining his on-stage antics to the delight of the audience and disappearing at the end of the evening lest he betray his true feelings under the influence of his favourite brandy. Maurice was more concerned to ensure that Madame Claudette remained healthy as the summer temperatures rose and the practice rooms began to resemble saunas. The girls’ tempers frayed and Maurice altered the rehearsal program to shorten the length of the practice sessions while increasing their frequency. In the early afternoons, many of the girls wandered home for a siesta while the more energetic checked the timetable for le métro — which the Germans changed on an almost daily basis — and rode to the river for a quick dip to cool off, frolicking in the shallows alongside families with small children and off-duty German soldiers. The cool of the evening was greeted as a godsend.

  With Alain’s help, Madame Gloria resolved her dilemma over where to raise rabbits. She paid two of the greengrocer’s children to scout for something she could use as a hutch and, three days later, the two gangly boys returned with pieces of an old iron bed, complete with the spring underwire. Alain fashioned the frame into a generous hutch, the springs forming a cage to keep the furry residents contained. The hutch sat outside Madame Gloria’s back door in a shady section of the tiny courtyard at the rear of the apartment building during the day and graced her laundry at night. The greengrocer’s children negotiated a careful contract involving the supply of grass from nearby parks and roadsides which they collected regularly for their bunny clients. Madame Gloria was delighted, not only with the hutch, but also with the generosity of the hirsute Napoleon who had offered to take care of the distasteful task of killing the rabbits in return for their pelts which he could sell to cobblers to line the winter boots of Parisians in the cooler months. It was an arrangement that worked well and Madame Gloria began to compile a list of dishes to serve to her tenants once her rabbits came of age. Madame Fresange reached a similar arrangement with Napoleon who refashioned an abandoned child’s playhouse and the discarded remnants of a broken chicken coop to make a serviceable hutch. There was no more talk of rabbits in bathtubs, although Madame Fresange was now keen to investigate keeping pigeons in her late husband Gaston’s greenhouse. Napoleon shook his massive head and assured her that, given the warm summer temperatures, the hapless pigeons would cook in the greenhouse long before they were ready for the pot.

  It was late on a Monday night when Monsieur Maurice’s thoughts returned to Chinon’s vow to end the thousand-year Reich in its infancy. Maurice was dozing peacefully when a melee at the front of the apartment woke him with a start. He leapt out of bed, thankful for once that Madame slept in an adjoining room, and grabbed his dressing g
own, racing to the door as an icy chill gripped his heart. Clearly the Gestapo had arrived to arrest him and he must now do his best to defend his beloved Madame and the good people who were his performers and staff. Maurice flung open the door of his apartment to find an enraged Madame Fresange wielding a poker and threatening a small, bedraggled figure who was backed into a corner, arm raised to defend himself and crying piteously for help.

  ‘You rascal!’ screamed Madame Fresange, advancing on the cornered villain, ‘how dare you think you could rob us! Did you plan to murder us in our beds? I’ll show you how to murder! Scum! Vermin!’ Maurice rushed to disarm her before she could make good her threat and splatter the unfortunate burglar against the wall.

  ‘Madame, please, let me take the poker.’

  ‘Stand over him, Monsieur, while I go and fetch the police,’ and Madame Fresange started for the door, continuing to glare at the cowering rogue.

  ‘Wait, Madame, a moment please,’ something about the man looked familiar and Maurice now peered at him.

  ‘Monsieur Maurice, please ...’ It was Chinon who curled in the corner, quite obviously in fear of his life.

  ‘Madame, I know this man, he is no villain.’ La Fresange turned, her face contorted with righteous indignation. The curlers in her hair had begun to unroll and Maurice thought she bore a striking resemblance to a French Medusa. No wonder Chinon had cowered in abject terror.

  ‘What is he doing breaking into my boarding house?’ bellowed Medusa, turning her full fury on the little man. ‘Well?’ she demanded, ‘what do you have to say for yourself?’ Maurice interrupted gently.

  ‘Madame, if you would care to leave him in my care, I’m sure there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for his presence here at this hour. I will visit you tomorrow and explain all.’ Madame Fresange looked as if Maurice had just relieved her of her birthday.

  ‘Very well, Monsieur,’ she answered begrudgingly, ‘I will look forward to a full explanation in the morning.’ Maurice restored the poker to her and waited until the door had closed behind her. He motioned Chinon to silence, fully aware that, for Madame Fresange, eavesdropping was second nature, before helping him up from his corner and leading him to the apartment Maurice and Madame Claudette called home.