Christmas Holiday (7 page)

“He’s good-looking,” she said. “These ladies will be pleased to see him.”

“Where is Madame to-night?”

“She’s gone home to spend the holidays with her family. I am in charge.”

“We’ll go in, shall we?”

“You know your way.”

The two young men passed along the passage and opening a door found themselves in a vast room garishly decorated in the pinchbeck style of a Turkish bath. There were settees round the walls and in front of them little tables and chairs. A fair sprinkling of people were sitting about, mostly in day clothes, but a few in dinner-jackets; men in twos and threes; and at one table a mixed party, the women in evening frocks, who had evidently come to see one of the sights of Paris. Waiters in Turkish dress stood about and attended to orders. On a platform was an orchestra consisting of a pianist, a fiddler and a man who played the saxophone. Two benches facing one another jutted out on to the dance floor and on these sat ten or twelve young women. They wore Turkish slippers, but with high heels, baggy trousers of some shimmering material that reached to their ankles, and small turbans on their heads. The upper part of their bodies was naked. Other girls similarly dressed were seated with men who were standing a drink. Simon and Charley sat down and ordered a bottle of champagne. The band started up. Three or four men rose to their feet and going over to the benches chose partners to dance with. The rest of the girls listlessly danced together. They talked in a desultory way to one another and threw inquisitive glances at the men who were sitting at the various tables. It was
apparent that the party of sight-seers, with the smart women from a different world, excited their curiosity. On the face of it, except that the girls were half naked, there was nothing to distinguish the place from any night club but the fact that there was room to dance in comfort. Charley noticed that at a table near theirs two men with dispatch-cases, from which in the course of conversation they extracted papers, were talking business as unconcernedly as if they were in a café. Presently one of the men from the group of sight-seers went and spoke to two girls who were dancing together, whereupon they stopped and went up to the table from which he had come; one of the women, beautifully dressed in black, with a string of emeralds round her neck, got up and began dancing with one of the two girls. The other went back to the bench and sat down. The sous-maîtresse, the woman in the coat and skirt, came up to Simon and Charley.

“Well, does your friend see any of these ladies who takes his fancy?”

“Sit down with us a minute and have a drink. He’s having a look round. The night’s young yet.”

She sat down and when Simon called the waiter ordered an orangeade.

“I’m sorry he’s come here for the first time on such a quiet night. You see, on Christmas Eve a lot of people have to stay at home. But it’ll get more lively presently. A crowd of English have come over to Paris for the holidays. I saw in the paper that they’re running the Golden Arrow in three sections. They’re a great nation, the English; they have money.”

Charley, feeling rather shy, was silent, and she asked Simon if he understood French.

“Of course he does. He spent six months in Touraine to learn it.”

“What a beautiful district! Last summer when I took my holiday I motored all through the Châteaux country. Angèle comes from Tours. Perhaps your friend would like to dance with her.” She turned to Charley. “You do dance, don’t you?”

“Yes, I like it.”

“She’s very well educated and she comes from an excellent family. I went to see them when I was in Tours and they thanked me for all that I had done for their daughter. They were persons of the greatest respectability. You mustn’t think that we take anyone here. Madame is very particular. We have our name and we value it. All these ladies here come from families who are highly esteemed in their own town. That is why they like to work in Paris. Naturally they don’t want to cause embarrassment to their relations. Life is hard and one has to earn one’s living as best one can. Of course I don’t pretend that they belong to the aristocracy, but the aristocracy in France is thoroughly corrupt, and for my part I set much greater value on the good French bourgeois stock. That is the backbone of the country.”

Mademoiselle Ernestine gave you the impression of a sensible woman of sound principle. You could not but feel that her views on the social questions of the day would be well worth listening to. She patted Simon’s hand and again speaking to Charley said:

“It always gives me pleasure to see Monsieur Simon. He’s a good friend of the house. He doesn’t come very often, but when he does he behaves like a gentleman. He is never drunk like some of your compatriots and one can talk to him of interesting subjects. We are always glad to see journalists here. Sometimes I think the life we lead is a little narrow and it does one good to talk to someone who is in the centre of things. It takes one out of one’s rut. He’s sympathetic.”

In those surroundings, as though he felt himself strangely at home, Simon was easy and genial. If he was acting it was a very good performance that he was giving. You would have thought that he felt some queer affinity between himself and the sous-maîtresse of the brothel.

“Once he took me to a répétition générale at the Français. All Paris was there. Academicians, ministers, generals. I was dazzled.”

“And I may add that not one of the women looked more distinguished than you. It did my reputation a lot of good to be seen with you.”

“You should have seen the faces of some of the bigwigs who come here, when they saw me in the foyer walking on the arm of Monsieur Simon.”

Charley knew that to go to a great social function with such a companion was the kind of joke that appealed to Simon’s sardonic humour. They talked a little more and then Simon said:

“Listen, my dear, I think we ought to do our young friend proud as it’s the first time he’s been here. What
about introducing him to the Princess? Don’t you think he’d like her?”

Mademoiselle Ernestine’s strong features relaxed into a smile and she gave Charley an amused glance.

“It’s an idea. It would at least be an experience that he hasn’t had before. She has a pretty figure.”

“Let’s have her along and stand her a drink.”

Mademoiselle Ernestine called a waiter.

“Tell the Princess Olga to come here.” Then to Charley: “She’s Russian. Of course since the revolution we have been swamped with Russians, we’re fed to the teeth with them and their Slav temperament; for a time the clients were amused by it, but they’re tired of them now. And then they’re not serious. They’re noisy and quarrelsome. The truth is, they’re barbarians, and they don’t know how to behave. But Princess Olga is different. She has principles. You can see that she’s been well brought up. She has something, there’s no denying it.”

While she was speaking Charley saw the waiter go up to a girl who was sitting on one of the benches and speak to her. His eyes had been wandering and he had noticed her before. She sat strangely still, and you would have thought that she was unconscious of her surroundings. She got up now, gave a glance in their direction, and walked slowly towards them. There was a singular nonchalance in her gait. When she came up she gave Simon a slight smile and they shook hands.

“I saw you come in just now,” she said, as she sat down.

Simon asked her if she would drink a glass of champagne.

“I don’t mind.”

“This is a friend of mine who wants to know you.”

“I’m flattered.” She turned an unsmiling glance on Charley. She looked at him for a time that seemed to him embarrassingly long, but her eyes held neither welcome nor invitation; their perfect indifference was almost nettling. “He’s handsome.” Charley smiled shyly and then the faintest suspicion of a smile trembled on her lips. “He looks good-natured.”

Her turban, her baggy trousers were of gauze, pale blue and thickly sprinkled with little silver stars. She was not very tall; her face was heavily made up, her cheeks extravagantly rouged, her lips scarlet and her eyelids blue; eyebrows and eyelashes were black with mascara. She was certainly not beautiful, she was only prettyish, with rather high cheek-bones, a fleshy little nose and eyes not set deep in their sockets, not prominent either, but on a level as it were with her face, like windows set flush with a wall. They were large and blue, and their blue, emphasized both by the colour of her turban and by the mascara, was like a flame. She had a neat, trim, slight figure, and the skin of her body, pale amber in hue, had a look of silky softness. Her breasts were small and round, virginal, and the well-shaped nipples were rosy.

“Why don’t you ask the Princess to dance with you, Charley?” said Simon.

“Will you?” said he.

She gave the very faintest shrug of one shoulder and
without a word rose to her feet. At the same time Mademoiselle Ernestine, saying she had affairs to attend to, left them. It was a new and thrilling experience for Charley to dance with a girl with nothing on above the waist. It made him rather breathless to put his hand on her naked body and to feel her bare breasts against him. The hand which he held in his was small and soft. But he was a well-brought-up young man, with good manners, and feeling it was only decent to make polite conversation, talked in the same way as he would have to any girl at a dance in London whom he did not know. She answered civilly enough, but he had a notion that she was not giving much heed to what he said. Her eyes wandered vaguely about the room, but there was no indication that they found there anything to excite her interest. When he clasped her a little more closely to him she accepted the more intimate hold without any sign that she noticed it. She acquiesced. The band stopped playing and they returned to their table. Simon was sitting there alone.

“Well, does she dance well?” he asked.

“Not very.”

Suddenly she laughed. It was the first sign of animation she had given and her laugh was frank and gay.

“I’m sorry,” she said, speaking English, “I wasn’t attending. I can dance better than that and next time I will.”

Charley flushed.

“I didn’t know you spoke English. I wouldn’t have said that.”

“But it was quite true. And you dance so well, you deserve a partner who can dance too.”

Hitherto they had spoken French. Charley’s was not very accurate, but it was fluent enough, and his accent was good. She spoke it very well, but with the sing-song Russian intonation which gives the language an alien monotony. Her English was not bad.

“The Princess was educated in England,” said Simon.

“I went there when I was two and stayed till I was fourteen. I haven’t spoken it much since then and I’ve forgotten.”

“Where did you live?”

“In London. In Ladbroke Grove. In Charlotte Street. Wherever it was cheap.”

“I’m going to leave you young things now,” said Simon. “I’ll see you to-morrow, Charley.”

“Aren’t you going to the Mass?”

“No.”

He left them with a casual nod.

“Have you known Monsieur Simon long?” asked the Princess.

“He’s my oldest friend.”

“Do you like him?”

“Of course.”

“He’s very different from you. I should have thought he was the last person you would have taken to.”

“He’s brilliantly clever. He’s been a very good friend to me.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but then seemed to think better of it, and kept silent. The music began to play once more.

“Will you dance with me again?” she asked. “I want to show you that I
can
dance when I want to.”

Perhaps it was because Simon had left them and she felt less constraint, perhaps it was something in Charley’s manner, maybe his confusion when he had realized that she spoke English, that had made her take notice of him, there was a difference in her attitude. It had now a kindliness which was unexpected and attractive. While they danced she talked with something approaching gaiety. She went back to her childhood and spoke with a sort of grim humour of the squalor in which she and her parents had lived in cheap London lodgings. And now, taking the trouble to follow Charley’s steps, she danced very well. They sat down again and Charley glanced at his watch; it was getting on towards midnight. He was in a quandary. He had often heard them speak at home of the church music at St. Eustache, and the opportunity of hearing Mass there on Christmas Eve was one that he could not miss. The thrill of arriving in Paris, his talk with Simon, the new experience of the Sérail and the champagne he had drunk, had combined to fill him with a singular exaltation and he had an urgent desire to hear music; it was as strong as his physical desire for the girl he had been dancing with. It seemed silly to go at this particular juncture and for such a purpose; but there it was, he wanted to, and after all nobody need know.

“Look,” he said, with an engaging smile, “I’ve got a date. I must go away now, but I shall be back in an hour. I shall still find you here, shan’t I?”

“I’m here all night.”

“But you won’t get fixed up with anybody else?”

“Why have you got to go away?”

He smiled a trifle shyly.

“I’m afraid it sounds absurd, but my friend has given me a couple of tickets for the Mass at St. Eustache, and I may never have another opportunity of hearing it.”

“Who are you going with?”

“Nobody.”

“Will you take me?”

“You? But how could you get away?”

“I can arrange that with Mademoiselle. Give me a couple of hundred francs and I’ll fix it.”

He gave her a doubtful glance. With her naked body, her powder-blue turban and trousers, her painted face, she did not look the sort of person to go to church with. She saw his glance and laughed.

“I’d give anything in the world to go. Do, do. I can change in ten minutes. It would give me so much pleasure.”

“All right.”

He gave her the money and telling him to wait for her in the entrance, she hurried away. He paid for the wine and after ten minutes, counted on his watch, went out.

As he stepped into the passage a girl came up to him.