Luncheon of the Boating Party

by Susan Vreeland

  “Respectability is everything to her,” Camille said. “I know for a fact that she prays, ‘Our Father who art in a respectable heaven, swept daily,’ so you mind your manners, young man.” She pulverized his shoulder with the bowl of a spoon, and stepped back to her stove.

  He turned to Aline. “Will you still come?”

  “I would have to tell my mother that I’m going with Géraldine to La Grenouillère.”

  Auguste chortled. “If she’s set on protecting you from lascivious eyes, don’t tell her that either. That’s out of the frying pan into the fire.”

  “I could say Géraldine and I are going rowing. She knows I like that.”

  “So do I.” His arm might be strong enough, but now his ribs would be the problem.

  “I don’t know if Jacques Valentin Aristide likes it.”

  All this time she was saying with her eyes, Convince me. He ought to tell her he would pay the modeling fee, but could he?

  “If you pose for me, I’ll make sure we’ll take him for a ride.”

  Had he lost his mind? “If not this Sunday, then the next. I’ll need you three Sundays, at least.”

  Her eyes widened. “Three Sundays? I don’t know, Monsieur Renoir.”

  “Ten francs each sitting.”

  “Mm.”

  She’d finished her plate and was patting the napkin against her puckered mouth. He chuckled. “I can feed myself just by watching you eat.”

  “That’s one thing. I do like to eat.”

  “Every Sunday we have one of Mère Fournaise’s delicious meals. So far we’ve had canard à la paysanne with artichauts à la vinaigrette, poulet forestière with asperges d’Argenteuil en conserve, lapin en gibelotte, friture d’ablettes, de gardons et de goujons.”

  “Mm. The duck must have been nice, but I’m sorry I missed the rabbit stew. It reminds me of home.”

  “And for dessert, raspberry tarts and apple pastry.”

  “Ooh, I would have loved that. What are you having this Sunday?”

  What had Louise told him? “Côtelettes d’agneau à la forestière.”

  She rolled her eyes. He was making progress, thanks to Louise.

  “Oh, I adore lamb, and mushrooms too.”

  He almost had her. He felt the room spin.

  “You didn’t answer me. May I bring Jacques Valentin Aristide d’Essoyes sur l’Ource?”

  “Yes, but I must draw the line. No cutlets for him.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The Blue Flannel Dress

  After work in Madame Carnot’s Atelier de Couture in Montmartre d’en bas, Aline Charigot climbed the steep streets toward the Moulin de la Galette until she found the cardboard sign for Chez Hortense, Ladies’ Clothes to Let. She’d been curious about this place but had never gone in. A bell tinkled when she opened the door. In the narrow, dim interior, two racks of dresses hung from suspended iron rods. She walked through the aisle looking for a blue one, not touching anything.

  A woman with a shadow of a mustache shuffled toward her in violet mules, Madame Hortense she assumed. “Bonjour, madame,” Aline said and smiled.

  The woman returned the greeting but not the smile. “What might you be wanting?”

  “I’d like to rent a dark blue dress, a pretty one.”

  “All my dresses are pretty, mademoiselle.”

  “Then I’ve come to the right place.”

  With that, a smile stretched across the woman’s splotchy cheeks. “Blue, you say?”

  The woman slipped into the familiar tu form. The informality struck her as false, but then this was Montmartre d’en haut, the Butte. Maybe she was being motherly.

  “Why not this green one?” Madame pulled out an elegant dark green dress with draped side panniers trimmed in violet braid.

  “No, it’s got to be blue.”

  “This one?”

  “No, dark blue.”

  “Mon Dieu, you’re a picky one!”

  “It doesn’t have to be a fine fabric. Canton flannel will do.”

  “I’ve got this one, but it will hang on you like a sack. I can stitch it up for you, though.”

  It was the dark blue of boating dresses, and had dark red braid around a deep square neckline and down the front. A lace ruffle lay inward along the braid at the neckline. She felt pinpricks of excitement. “May I try it on?”

  “Bien sûr. It’s a good choice. A nice demi-polonaise drawn into a modest drape over the derrière. Not too bouffant, but enough to wag when you walk.”

  As it fell over her head in the back of the shop, it was like putting on a holiday spirit. She’d never had a dress with a polonaise drape.

  Madame fastened the back hooks. “Such a clean one for a country girl. Your neck is as white as a swan’s. Sometimes I have to give the girls a scrubbing they’ll never forget before I let them have a try-on.”

  “How do you know I’m from the country?”

  “You take a week to say anything. And your r’s.”

  With warty fingers, Madame Hortense went to work pinning the side seams. “This won’t take but an hour. Then you can get started tonight.”

  “I won’t be needing it until Sunday.”

  Madame Hortense shook her head, pins pinched in her mouth. “Sunday’s the worst day to start. They’re with their wives on Sunday.”

  Madame made basting stitches up the side bodice. “You’ll be needing a place to take them, so you come back here tonight. The key for a tithe, by the hour. Two hours, two tithes. Discreet and clean. Mind you, bring this dress back as clean as I’m giving it to you. No grease spots from man or beast.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Oh yes I do, certain enough. No need to be coy with Mère Hortense. Eventually you’ll be needing a hôtel de passe. It’s good to keep up good relations with the proprietor. Bring him little cakes once in a while. Then, if you run over your hour by a few minutes, he won’t charge you for two. Try Hôtel Maître Renard on boulevard Rouchechouart.”

  “I only want the dress, madame. Not a recommendation.”

  Madame Hortense scowled. “For how long do you want it?”

  “Just three Sundays. Maybe more. You can have it back in between.”

  “Just Sundays! C’est ridicule. Raise your arm.”

  “Please, madame, I want the dress. It’s perfect.” She touched the narrow lace ruffle at the sleeve, coveting it.

  “No. I can’t be letting the dress on again, off again. As good a dress as this is? No, it’s steady customers I need, night after night.” Mère Hortense lifted Aline’s arm, but Aline resisted until she saw a razor in her hand. Madame ripped out her stitches with one swipe of the blade. “Let go of the dress.” Madame unhooked the back, but Aline held the bodice to her chest. “Let go.”

  “What if I paid you a little more?”

  “Impossible.”

  Aline let the dress fall in a billow around her, flattening sadly, like a deflating soufflé.

  “Step out.” Madame Hortense flicked her hand. “Out. Out.”

  “How much would the dress cost to buy?”

  “A far sight more than what you’ve got in that string bag of yours. This dress is a prime moneymaker. It wouldn’t do me any good to sell it. Out.”

  She stepped out and into her own gray muslin.

  “You come back if you want it on my terms.”

  She nodded, picked up her drawstring bag, and left.

  She couldn’t afford a ready-made from Le Bon Marché or even La Samaritaine, the least expensive department store. It meant only one thing. She’d have to make one. Four days! She’d never made a whole dress start to finish, much less in four days. And she could only work on it in the evenings and Saturday after half-day work. Maman could do it with time to spare, but she would ask what it was for, and if she told her, there would be war. A fine pickle she’d gotten herself into. Géraldine would have to help.

  She went to the charcuterie where Géraldine worked. Closed. She went to Camille’s c
rémerie. Not there. She went to Aux Tissus de la rue Blanche, the boutique de tissu that Madame Carnot used when a fine lady like Madame Galantière of the avenue Frochot ordered a dress. Through aisles of bolts—crêpe de Chine, mousselline de soie, brocades, striped satin du Barry—her mind spun with fantasies of Monsieur Renoir being astonished at her beauty, but the plain dark blue he wanted was all she could afford.

  The shopgirl recognized her from the times she’d been sent to pick up Madame Carnot’s orders, and inquired what Madame needed. When she learned it was only cotton flannel for her, she brought out the right nautical blue and gazed out the window in complete disinterest.

  Aline stroked the cotton nap. “I have no idea how much I need.”

  “What does your pattern say?”

  “I don’t have one. I was hoping to use one of Madame Carnot’s.” That would save some money. If she waited to find out for certain, she would lose a day. “Can we just make a good guess?” She described the dress with the demi-polonaise in back. “It only drapes from the sides, and the skirt is narrow.”

  “To be safe, you had better buy five meters.”

  “How much would that be?”

  “One franc sixty-five per meter. That’s eight francs twenty-five.”

  “That much?”

  “If you want the polonaise.”

  Oh, she did. A polonaise was what separated the bourgeoisie from the working girl. She counted all her coins and watched the long metal blades of the scissors follow an invisible line across the flannel, cutting future from past. She waited until the piece was cut to say, “I’m short by two francs eighty-five. Would you trust me for that until tomorrow? You know I work for Madame Carnot.”

  “You should have counted before I cut.” She went back to confer with someone and returned. “We’ll save the piece if you pay what you can now.”

  “I’ll come back midday tomorrow.”

  “We close from noon to two.”

  Now she had to find Géraldine. She’d be good for two francs eighty-five until Saturday noon when Madame Carnot paid her girls for the week. On rue Saint-Georges she asked the concierge at Géraldine’s flat to buzz her. She waited ten minutes, perspiring into her dress. Géraldine didn’t come down.

  Why wasn’t anything easy? Four nights, nearly three francs short, no pattern, and no money for red braid or lace. She went home discouraged until she heard Jacques Valentin Aristide bark as she opened the door.

  “Oh, you poor thing, home alone all day.” She scooped him up and cuddled him. “Mon grand, mon grand,” she cooed. He squirmed to lick her cheek with his small pink tongue.

  “I took him out. He had already made a puddle,” her mother said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She avoided her mother’s glance, ate a slice of terrine de campagne and some fried potatoes, and slipped a morsel to Jacques Valentin.

  “Where have you been?” her mother asked.

  “With Géraldine. She’s going to make a dress, and I went with her to choose the fabric.” The wings of a trapped bird beat in her chest. “I might help her sew it too.”

  Maman’s left eyebrow wormed up into an arch.

  She didn’t want to say more. She took Jacques to bed with her, feeling terrible for having lied when Maman had done nothing to deserve it. She fell asleep worrying where the lie would lead.

  Wednesday already. At the crémerie in the morning she explained it all to Géraldine, who dumped out on the tin tabletop all she had and drew back enough to feed her for the day. Two francs thirty were left.

  “What will you say when you bring the dress home and wear it on Sunday?” Géraldine asked.

  “I didn’t think of that.”

  “You’d better have your story rock solid,” Camille said, “or your mother will call you a trollop traipsing after artists, and take after you with a broomstick.” Camille snapped one franc onto the table and pushed the thirty centimes back toward Géraldine.

  Aline flung her arms around her. “Oh, thank you for eavesdropping again. I’ll pay you both back as soon as I can.”

  She arrived out of breath at Madame Carnot’s atelier. It was an old-fashioned workshop with only one Hurtu-l’Abeille sewing machine, which only Madame’s protégée, Clarisse, was permitted to use while she and Estelle worked by hand. Her mother worked in a better atelier that had three machines.

  Madame took one look at her. “Early? That’s not like you.”

  “I need to make a dress in four days.”

  “You know I don’t allow my girls to take on private clients.”

  “It’s for me. A boating dress. I’ll have the fabric today, just cotton flannel, but I don’t have a pattern. Is it possible…would you let me look through your pattern file? I want a square neck and a small drape in back. After work, would you let me use the cutting table? I’ll pay for the thread.”

  “Slow down, Aline. I’ve never heard you talk so fast. What’s this for?”

  “You have to promise not to tell my mother. It’s so that I can pose in a painting. She doesn’t want me running with artists. I need it on Sunday.”

  “We have orders backed up, you know.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t think of putting mine first. I just need the cutting table today after the atelier is closed. Please, madame.”

  “You’ve never done a set-in sleeve. Or buttonholes.”

  “I know. But leastways I can try.”

  “Can’t it be next Sunday?”

  “No, I have to fill a hole in a painting this Sunday. Oh, I so want to help this man. I’ve been watching him at the crémerie where I take my meals. A nice, funny man. A good man, I think. This is my chance, madame.”

  “My chance to lose you, you mean.” Madame smiled in a motherly way. “You’re not usually so jittery. Take a look in the pattern file and show me what you choose. Only the commercial patterns, not my own designs, mind you.”

  “Yes, yes. Merci, madame.”

  The drawings on each envelope showed copies of dresses from chic shops on the boulevards. She found one with a square neck, but it didn’t have a polonaise, and one with a polonaise, but it didn’t have a square neck. She had her heart set on the square neckline. It was more nautical. She brought the two patterns to Madame. “Is it possible to use this bodice with that skirt?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much fabric will I need?”

  Madame read the two envelopes. “Five and a half meters.”

  “Oh, no!” Heat went to her throat. “I only have five.”

  “You should have asked me first. Au travail! Do Madame Galantière’s hems now. Remember, she inspects them for any stitch showing through.”

  “One other thing. May I take my lunch early to get to the boutique before they close for midday?”

  “You are a tumble of requests today, aren’t you?”

  “You won’t get a stitch less out of me for your clients, I promise you.”

  The hours ticked by at a snail’s pace, but she got the fabric, and hugged it to her chest while hurrying back to Montmartre d’en bas, giddy all the way despite the heavy humidity. She tried to be more agreeable than usual, more careful with her stitches, and six o’clock finally came. Estelle and Clarisse left, Madame cleared off the long cutting table, and Aline unfolded her fabric and began to place the tissue shapes.

  “All the same direction,” Madame warned. “See the arrows? Flannel has a nap. Double lines mean to place it on the fold.”

  She placed them the same way and had one tissue shape left over.

  Madame was getting ready to leave.

  “Wait!” Aline held up the piece.

  Madame looked at her as though the answer was obvious to anyone with half a brain. “You’ll have to buy more.” She pressed a key in her palm. “Don’t stay past seven-thirty. It will be too dark to work past then anyway. Be sure you clear off the table when you’re finished.”

  She felt like a marionette whose legs were collapsing.

  “You’ll
do fine. Just read the instructions before you do anything. Bon courage!”

  The door closed. Buy some more. Read the instructions. She might as well have said, Climb to the moon. When had there been time to learn to read more than simple words in short strings? Fourteen she was when Maman had brought her here to launder and press. Three years of that before Madame ever put a needle in her hand. One year spent in doing only hems, another to learn seams, and now, bon courage! She needed more than good wishes to put this dress together. She needed an act of God!

  Her hand trembled when she made the first cut. She made the second. The third. She stacked the cut shapes until there was only the leftover pattern piece without fabric. She took it with her and locked the door behind her.

  The boutique de tissu was closed. That meant another night of worry. What would be missing from her dress if they’d sold the rest of the bolt?

  The next day, Thursday, she asked Madame for two more favors—to adjust her lunchtime again so she could go to the boutique de tissu, and to be paid her two francs twenty-five each day this week instead of the total on Saturday noon. “I borrowed to buy the fabric and now I need to buy more and pay back my friends.”

  Madame agreed, and Aline took the pattern piece to the boutique at lunchtime. All afternoon, doing the hems on a three-tiered visiting dress for Madame Galantière who had never sewn a stitch, she thought only of the puzzle of the cut shapes.

  At six o’clock Madame said, “Do a running stitch around the arm scyes and corners of the neckline first,” and shut the door.

  How did a person spell scyes? She laid out the shapes. Which pieces were they? She would die of humiliation if Madame found out that she couldn’t read the instructions. She held up the pieces against her body to see where they fit. With no one in the atelier, she examined dresses partially assembled and guessed the order of things. She did the running stitch, the darts, basted the bodice seams, and stopped. What next?

  On Friday, she skipped lunch to work on her dress, worked after everyone left, and at half after seven took the pieces to Géraldine’s flat to work some more.

  On Saturday morning, she arrived at work early and showed Madame what she’d done.