But Lily’s assumption proved horrifically accurate. In July 1942 came the Grande Rafle — the mass round-up of Jews. Over two days, thousands of Jews were taken from neighbourhoods all over Paris and packed into buses, many transported to a half-completed housing estate in the north-eastern suburb of Drancy, while others were taken to the Velodrome d’Hiver, an indoor cycling velodrome in the 15th arrondissement. The yellow stars began to disappear from the streets almost as quickly as they had appeared.
Poppy and Lily had returned from their visit to Celine Caton agonising over whether to tell Monique that Paul Colbert was clearly also cosying up to the voluptuous Celine. Finally, after a series of whispered conferences in which, inexplicably, Crecy had also become involved, they arrived at a decision: they would have to tell Monique.
‘We just have to tell her,’ insisted the busty blonde, dabbing at the edges of his lipstick with a lacquered purple talon, ‘and she should dump that bastard immediately.’ He sniffed authoritatively. ‘You know, she’d be far better off with a German, they’re so grateful for anything that comes their way. I suppose they miss their flaxen-haired hausfraus, although I imagine they’re terribly dowdy. You know how practical Germans are, very little imagination, I find.’ He sniffed again, the perky nose wrinkling in disapproval.
‘Maybe that’s why Coco does such a roaring trade,’ ventured Poppy, ‘all those Germans on a voyage of discovery. Imagine the impact on their dowdy hausfraus!’ The girls giggled in unison while Crecy smirked. Lily eyed Crecy with a smirk of her own.
‘So, how is Robert with the nice mother?’ Poppy laughed aloud.
‘You really do have trouble keeping up, Lil, don’t you?’ Lily looked confused as Crecy sighed and daintily tapped the ash off the end of his cigarette.
‘Poor Robert,’ he cooed mournfully as if Robert had unexpectedly passed away. ‘He just wasn’t up to the mark, poor lamb. So full of promise, but just couldn’t deliver, even with a little bit of help ...’
‘So it wasn’t the mother?’
‘Well she did turn out to be a bit Catholic, and she seemed to expect me to fritter away the best years of my life washing his socks.’ He sighed ruefully and drew on his cigarette before realising that the expectant looks of his audience meant that further explanation was required. ‘Well, a girl needs variety, dahling, life is simply too short to spend it washing socks — I would have thought that’s what mothers do.’
‘So you’re back with Toby?’ Lily ventured tentatively, conscious of the fact that the intricacies of Crecy’s love life were well beyond her powers of recall.
‘Oh dahling, he was sooo remorseful, eyes full of tears and his little face all puckered up,’ and Crecy produced a rendition of Toby’s puckered face to illustrate the point but which only succeeded in sending his listeners into paroxysms of laughter.
‘I do just love a remorseful man. I simply couldn’t resist him. And besides,’ he added, drawing a magnificent silver flask from the mysterious depths of his substantial cleavage, ‘remorseful men are so very generous. Look what he liberated from some German — just for me!’ And the beautiful silver flask was passed around and admired, while the topic of telling Monique languished unaddressed.
A week later, the girls were still procrastinating. This was a decision that none wanted to make. Perhaps, they told one another, they would just wait and see. Perhaps the villainous Colbert would meet with a nasty accident or Monique would discover his perfidy for herself. Yes, they decided, warding off an uncomfortable feeling of cowardice, best not act too hastily.
Summertime had seen Madame Claudette regain her previous energy and its accompanying critical eye, and her rehearsals recovered their former sharpness, the girls drilled strenuously, their movements critiqued and repeated until Madame pronounced them almost adequate for the paying public. This was a compliment in Madame’s book and she rarely praised her dancers unless their performance was exceptional. The girls were used to Madame’s exacting standards and her tough ways, grateful that there was much they could still learn and that they had a renowned dance mistress such as Madame Claudette to direct them. However, while Madame was reinvigorated, she still tired easily and spent some days directing the girls from her cushioned chair, propped up by a series of soft pillows that the mousy pianist Madame Gartrille arranged around her in a fashion reminiscent of the sandbags that currently cocooned the iconic Nôtre Dame Cathedral.
Today was clearly one of her ‘bad days’ when Madame Claudette confessed herself to be ‘exhausted’ and was duly arrayed in her chair, her customary lacquered holder produced, complete with lighted cigarette, its tip smoking lazily. The girls limbered up, stretching their long legs and finally commencing the rehearsal proper. They were no sooner into the first number when Madame rapped her stick furiously, startling Madame Gartrille at the piano and summarily halting the dance of her fingers across the keyboard.
‘Non! Carin, you and Poppy are too close! Where is your spacing?! Lily, move forward towards Sabine, Sadie close up and Monique, move further to the left ... Monique ... Monique?’
Monique was standing, idly tapping one foot, staring dreamily ahead and obviously lost in a world of her own. Madame Claudette banged her stick loudly and the girls jumped as one, startling Monique from her reverie. She blushed deeply as she realised that all eyes were on her. Lily gave Poppy a meaningful look, replete with hope that Monique’s dreaminess was not some sort of sign that her liaison with the odious racketeer Paul Colbert was developing into something more serious.
‘What do we do?’ hissed Lily furiously as she and Poppy tripped out of the practice room heading for Madame Gloria’s for a cup of ersatz coffee and a few hours’ rest. ‘We can’t tell her about Celine, she’s clearly in love with the blackguard!’ But Poppy was much calmer.
‘Maybe we have to work a bit harder to remove him from the scene.’ She thought for a moment. ‘I could tell Gunther that Colbert has been threatening us ... or that we think he’s a British spy — ooh, that would do it!’ Lily brightened instantly.
‘That’s it!’ she declared, ‘I’ll tell Bobby the same thing and the Germans can fight over him.’ They chortled together in wicked glee.
‘Phew!’ breathed Poppy, ‘now we won’t have to tell Monique about Celine.’ And they exhaled in unison, a wave of relief washing their cowardice well and truly over the moral horizon and conveniently out of view.
Chapter 24
Dirty Dietrich comes to call
If Monsieur Maurice thought he had conquered most of the challenges the occupation would hurl at him, he was set for a nasty surprise. In June 1942 the French government had introduced a system known as the Service du travail obligatoire — commonly referred to as the STO — under which increasing numbers of young, able-bodied French men and women were conscripted to work in Germany. The German war effort which underpinned the bloody battles with the Russians on the Eastern Front had robbed its industries of vital manpower and the Germans were desperate for labour. The French government had obligingly introduced the STO to meet German demand and squads now patrolled the streets in search of young men and women who were likely conscripts. Monsieur Maurice had been alarmed at news of the introduction of the STO — not because Le Prix boasted a number of able-bodied young men, which it did not — but because of its population of young, fit women. The Germans were keen to transport as many young women as possible to Germany to work in munitions factories and on farms. Monsieur Maurice was just as keen to ensure that his girls would be exempted. At the first opportunity he had sought the Governor’s assurances that his favourite cabaret would not be subject to the STO. By now the Governor had become firmly entrenched as a regular, his table close to the bar reserved at all times for him and his staff. He was fond of several of the showgirls and had been known to steal a sideways glance at Crecy as he sashayed past, shaking his platinum curls and blowing kisses in the Governor’s direction. No, Monsieur Maurice was almost certain that the Governor would prefer to
have his cabaret preserved as a bastion of frivolity and a reminder of the glamour that had first attracted the Germans to Paris. Maurice decided to play all his cards in one hand and confided to the Governor that Le Prix would be forced to close should its artistes, showgirls and management staff be subject to the STO. The Governor had been predictably dismayed at the prospect of losing his favoured night-time haunt and hastened to assure Maurice that he would be exempt, his establishment far too important to the morale of the German officer corps to lose. Both Maurice and the Governor had then breathed a considerable sigh of relief.
But Maurice was far too canny to believe that the word of the Governor alone would be sufficient insurance to prevent his employees being dragged off at some inopportune moment. He knew the French bureaucracy well enough to understand that its members preferred to comply assiduously with German instructions and beg forgiveness for any unintended consequences later. So he spoke to each of his male employees, particularly Alain, Guy, Orlando and Hiram, and warned them not to stray far from Le Prix. Their identity papers might allow them freedom of movement, but they also proclaimed them as ripe for conscription for the STO. To Alain and Guy he gave careful instructions that they must preserve the image of their disabilities. Alain would continue to wear his arm in a sling and Guy must make his limp even more pronounced. Orlando and Hiram, vulnerable to over-zealous conscriptors despite their status as foreign nationals, would simply have to guard their movements carefully and never wander far, particularly alone, a warning he also extended to his showgirls and female performers. The added anxiety prompted Maurice to seek solace with Madame Gloria and share a strong cup of ersatz coffee laced with something far stronger that only Madame could identify. He mopped his brow as she patted his hand and they vowed to see this latest crisis through ... somehow.
It was half past seven on a Monday night when the walls of Madame Gloria’s comfortably shabby apartment echoed to a thunderous knocking which threatened to send the building into a terminal decline. Lily, Poppy, Sadie and Sabine were lounging in the smoke-filled sitting room chatting, sharing a bottle of brandy Poppy had ‘borrowed’ from the unwitting Gunther. They started in alarm at the sound of the fusillade at the front door, their faces frozen in fear. Lily recovered first.
‘Bit early by Gestapo standards,’ she muttered, grinning at the panicked expressions of her friends and glancing at her little gold wristwatch. The other girls smiled wanly in reply, concerned that the battering would indeed reveal the leather-coated gents of whom most Parisians lived in fear. But Lily imagined only that one of her fellow residents had forgotten a key and was now banging impatiently on the front door.
She pulled herself up from the sofa and, wrapping a silky shawl around her shoulders, traipsed heavily downstairs to answer the door which was almost always left unlocked. Madame Gloria had gone to the picture theatre and would not be back until just before curfew and Lily could only think that she had locked the door behind her in a moment of absent-mindedness. The other dancers sat nervously, torn between the desire to bolt for the back door of the apartment and the rather more comforting thought that the unholy racket might simply herald a fellow resident demonstrating uncharacteristic impatience. They sat, quietly apprehensive, waiting to see what manner of being would appear at the top of the stairs.
The banging increased as Lily approached the entrance, now increasingly alarmed by the muffled scuffling noises that signalled the intruders were making preparations to open the door by force.
‘Just a minute!’ she yelled, annoyed at their impatience, ‘the doorman’s finished for the day,’ she added with ill-judged frivolity as she reached the entrance. She opened the door to a squat man in a leather coat and a black fedora hat surrounded by a squad of German soldiers who immediately pushed past her on their way through the building.
‘I don’t recall asking you chaps to pop by,’ she told the German soldiers as they shouldered their way past, resorting to flippancy to mask her fear. The squat man strolled in slowly and stood squarely to regard the lanky showgirl, gazing at her coldly. His face was shadowed by his hat, pulled over one side. All Lily could see was a thin mouth that resembled a scar.
‘If you have not broken the law, you will have nothing to fear,’ he told her in guttural French, ‘in the meantime, shut your mouth.’ Lily returned a look of defiance which was not lost on the Gestapo officer who paused a moment, clearly debating whether Lily should be his first arrest at the apartment. But he thought better of it and pushed her ahead of him, striding furiously up the stairs after her as a group of his soldiers disappeared towards the first floor of the building, others moving to the second floor while the remainder engaged in a furious search of the ground floor. They were obviously looking for someone. Lily, her heart in her mouth, hoped frantically that Guy and Alain would not choose this moment to wander in, relieved that they had been repairing some loose boards in the orchestra pit and, by a fluke of timing, were not sitting with the girls ready to be arrested.
Her fear mounting, Lily stumbled ahead of the man as his short legs pounded a solid thump up the stairs behind her. In the sitting room, the few first-floor occupants of the apartment who were present were lined up, a series of white faces moving sporadically as their owners twitched with fear, shivering in a pathetic, dishevelled parade before the grim-faced soldiers. The stolid, leather-clad agent strode onto the landing, eyeing them steadily, an evil leer playing across his face.
‘Where are they?’ he demanded, looking from one ashen face to another. Silence.
‘Where are they?!!’ he bellowed suddenly, the ferocity of his shout frightening the girls into screams of alarm. The silence was now punctuated by muffled sobs as the showgirls tried unsuccessfully to disguise their terror. The squat man motioned to a soldier who grabbed Sadie and dragged her forward, holding her fast while his leather-coated superior walked slowly towards her. He jerked her head back by the hair and spat his demand into her face.
‘Where are they?’ Sadie sobbed and whimpered, while the others pleaded pathetically for her release.
‘Who are you looking for?’
‘There is no-one else here, Monsieur.’
But Lily knew. They were after Guy and Alain. Her heart continued to pound as she wondered how long Sadie would resist before Guy’s whereabouts came tumbling out. She could not blame her — after all, Lily knew that she herself could not endure such pain for long. Sadie gasped and whimpered as the man tightened his grip. Any minute now, thought Lily, her mind working feverishly, wondering what she could say to divert the German’s attention and stop Sadie’s pain. She glanced at Poppy, standing next to her shaking visibly and also clearly trying to find a diversion. Sabine turned slightly and caught her eye. No, agonised Lily, she’s going to tell him. Sabine opened her mouth just as the front door banged. Lily felt her heart sink. It must be Guy. He had finished at the theatre and was coming home to her. She waited for his customary cheery greeting as he walked in on what would be a scene of nightmarish proportions. He would be arrested, tortured and executed. That was it. These were his last few minutes of freedom on this earth. Lily felt the tears well.
But there was no cheery greeting. Silence had fallen. The parade of residents stood frozen. The leather-coated German, a slight smirk shifting along his scar-like mouth, loosened his hold on Sadie and motioned to the soldier to release her. She almost fell, staggering over to be caught by Poppy and propped, sobbing, her shoulders heaving. The squat man’s smirk broadened in anticipation of his prize arriving, delivered neatly into his arms. He stood squarely, hands on hips, and waited. Light, even footsteps sounded on the stairs as the prize drew near. A tapping sound accompanied every footfall as if a cane was being struck against the banister. Lily stopped herself mid-gasp as she suddenly recognised the whipping action and knew immediately who the latecomer was. It was Coco. Lily turned towards the top of the stairs, forgetting her imposed silence, ready to warn Coco of the raid.
‘Coco,’ she bega
n, as a glossy head appeared above the banister, ‘this gentleman ...’ she got no further. Coco reached the landing and stood stock still, her head on one side, her furled whip tapping furiously against one leg, and regarded the Gestapo officer with undisguised contempt.
‘Gentleman!’ she spat, ‘this is no gentleman!’ Lily felt her heart leap. Abusing a lone soldier was one thing, but a Gestapo officer with a full complement of armed men was quite another. She began to wonder who they would shoot next once they had despatched Coco. She tried to make herself shorter so that she could remain unnoticed and perhaps live a little longer, but gave up this obviously pointless exercise. For a young woman who stood five feet eight inches in her stockinged feet, it was a hopeless task. Instead she stood locked in place, rivetted by the scene unfolding in front of her.
Coco moved closer to the leather-coated man, her tight black pants and low-cut velvet bustier creating an air of boyish sensuality, starkly at odds with the whip that tapped angrily against her thigh. She stared down at the squat man, her face barely an inch from his. He glared back at her from under the fedora, his stare wilting under the blazing ferocity of her gaze.
‘This is no gentleman,’ she said again, her tone low and demonic, ‘this is dirty Dietrich!’ Now she circled him, the whip still tapping ferociously, a lion tamer circling her quarry, aggressively confident that she was in command.
‘Why are you here?’ she hissed in one ear, continually circling and tapping. The hissing and sneering became more vehement. She stopped her circling and stood to face him.
‘You have no right to intrude on my house, you will have to be punished!’ She spat the word at him and Lily was convinced that the time was ripe for an act of contrition. The effect on the German, however, was immediate. He swallowed hard and allowed the line of his mouth to acquire a tiny, wavering smile. Coco resumed her tirade.
Secrets and Showgirls Page 23