Leonie (6 page)

A maid brought hot chocolate and some small cakes, setting the tray down on the low table by the fire. “Sit here, Léonie,” invited Caro. “Have your chocolate first and get warm. We’ll unpack the parcels later.”

Léonie sat on the edge of one of the coral velvet chairs, as she sipped her drink, barely believing that she was here, watching Mademoiselle Montalva as she sat at her desk writing a note. She must remember it all, so that tonight when she was in bed she could recall all the details, all the colors and the textures and the way it smelled—heaven must surely be like this room.

Caro could see the girl reflected in the mirror above the tulipwood desk; the color was coming back into her cheeks and her damp hair was drying, lifting with a floating energy to curl in tendrils about her face. How very attractive she was; she was wasted working at Serrat!

Léonie finished the chocolate and began to unpack the parcels for Mademoiselle Montalva to see, arranging the fragile garments carefully, the dozen sets of chemises and knickers in sapphire, amethyst, and topaz, embroidered minutely at the hem with her monogram, “CM”—and
no
lace. Caro
never
wore lace on her underwear. Léonie smoothed the creases from robes of panne velvet as blue-black as summer midnight and as deeply aquamarine as a tropical sea, and set beside them their matching satin slippers with their puffs of swansdown and delicate heels. She glanced down at her own feet and sighed; maybe they, too, would look small and delicate if she had shoes like that.

Caro pushed aside the robes carelessly, settling herself on the chaise. “Well, Léonie, how do you like working at Serrat?”

“Oh, I love it, Mademoiselle Montalva; it’s the loveliest place in Paris! Or at least”—Léonie glanced around the room—“I thought it was until I came here.”

“Tell me about yourself,” commanded Caro, intrigued. It was late, and she would have no more visitors on an afternoon like this. Léonie was a welcome diversion.

“There’s not much to tell. I come from a village in Normandy and now I’m here, working in the salon.”

“And why did you leave Normandy? Why did you come to Paris? And why Serrat? Come on, Léonie,” she said, laughing, “tell me
everything.
”

Caro coaxed the story out of her, smoothing over the rough parts, holding Léonie’s hand sympathetically when she told tearfully of her mother’s death and how at the age of thirteen she had been left completely alone and had gone to work at the café. You poor child, she thought, you poor, lonely little thing. The words tumbled out in a torrent as Léonie confided to this beautiful stranger her dreams of having a marvelous job where she would “belong.”

“What do you mean, ‘belong’?”

“It’s just that I don’t really belong anywhere. I’m always on the outside looking in—everyone in Paris ‘belongs.’ Do you understand what I mean? How do you ‘belong,’ mademoiselle? What do you have to do to become a part of it all?”

Caro stared at her in surprise, hearing an echo of her own youthful longings when she had been trapped in the rigid Spanish household, yearning to escape to a world where there was romance and love and passion. It was the same feeling that she had had then, that
life
was taking place somewhere else. Her heart went out to the girl. She had been just as simple and innocent as this, once, long ago. She glanced at the girl’s face and sighed—it was expectant, waiting for her reply as though she had some magic formula. “How old are you, Léonie?”

“I’m sixteen, mademoiselle, I shall be seventeen next month.”

“I’m twenty-four—not that much older than you. I’m not sure how it happens—belonging—just one day you feel that it has happened and you’ve grown up. Maybe it’s when you first fall in love, or suddenly get a good job, or it’s spring and the world falls
magically into place for you … it’ll happen, though, I’m sure of that. Do you have friends, Léonie?”

“I have Maroc, my friend from Serrat. And Loulou, Bella, and Jolie at Madame Artois’s—but they are busy at the cabaret most of the time, and so I usually only see them on Sunday evenings.”

So she was virtually friendless, too. Oh, how could she help her? What should she do? What should she tell her? Caro stared out of the window into the gloom. The street lamps were a pale flickering blur in the swirling flakes and the snow had piled in thick drifts in the courtyard. The street was deserted, even the café on the corner had closed. “I’m afraid you’ll never get home in this, Léonie,” she said, an idea forming in her mind. “It’s my fault, I shouldn’t have kept you talking.” She smiled at her. “But since you are here you’ll stay the night with me—you can be
my
friend and keep me company. We shall have supper together and I’ll tell you my story.” She laughed gaily. “After all, it’s only fair: you told me yours. We’ll have supper together by the fire, it’ll be fun.”

Fun! Léonie couldn’t believe it. Is this really happening to me—Léonie Bahri—she asked herself, following the maid into the rose room. The rose room! The bed was a vast, pillowed, fluffy dais lacy and beribboned. She tested it with her hand and then sat or it, bouncing gently up and down; she wanted to burrow into its pillows and soft blankets as warmly pink as summer roses. She noticed the door on the opposite wall and ran to open it. A vast white porcelain tub encased in mahogany sat in the center of the room and she gazed in awe at its splayed brass feet and complicated matching brass taps. It was the first real bathtub she had ever seen—all her bathing had been done in small clammy gray zinc tubs filled from pots of water heated over a stove. You climbed in and sat with your knees under your chin and washed yourself as quickly as possible, but this tub, this looked big enough to wallow in. Tentatively, she felt the cold porcelain, running a finger along the taps. “I’ll run your bath for you, mademoiselle,” said the maid bustling into the room.

“Oh, no, no, I’ll do it myself,” she protested, turning the gold taps, hot water gushing into the tub. After all, she was hardly a guest here, she was here only because she was trapped by the storm.

“Madame sent this for you to wear.” The maid arranged the bronze velvet robe on a chair and placed the slippers next to it
with a doubtful glance at Léonie’s feet. “Is there anything else, mademoiselle?” she inquired.

Léonie stared at her in astonishment. What else could there be?

“Oh, no. No, thank you.”

She stripped off her clothes, casting aside the prickly wool chemise and drawers, and stood naked in the warm steamy room gazing at her reflection in the mirrored wall opposite. She only possessed a tiny square mirror; this was the first time she had seen herself naked, all at once, not just in sections. She gazed curiously at her reflection, running her hands over her high round breasts, along the deep smooth line of her waist and the long slope of her thighs, fingering the curled tuft of blond hair. With a shiver she turned to the tub. An enormous bowl of blue-green crystals tempted her and she sniffed them. Tossing an experimental handful into the water, she smiled as the heat released their fragrance. Léonie lay back, stretching her legs, arching her back, soothed by the hot water and smoothed by the oil from the crystals. The sponge was enormous, soft and squishy, and she lathered it with a vast cake of perfumed soap until it foamed. She rubbed it slowly across her breasts, pushing it lightly, around and around until her nipples swelled pink and firm. Filled with a new kind of excitement she stood up and began to soap herself, watching herself, a stranger in a steam-clouded mirror—head flung back, trembling. With a sudden wild cry she flung herself back into the water, rolling around and around in it like a dolphin, laughing out loud.

Caro handed Léonie a fluted glass and watched as she took her first sip of champagne. The bronze robe suited Léonie’s peachy skin, and her cheeks were flushed from the bath. Her bare feet peeked prettily from beneath the hem and, as she drank, her toes curled into the softness of the carpet; the girl was enjoying herself.

“It’s wonderful,” said Léonie. “This whole day is wonderful, mademoiselle.” She rested her head against the cushions, her eyes dreamy, her body relaxed. Caro stared at her curiously. This was a different girl from the nervous frozen child who had come through her door only a few hours before. There were no labels of poverty on her now. In her robe and with her golden hair drying in front of the fire she could be anyone—she was a girl just like herself. “You must call me Caro,” she said, “everyone does.”

A small table had been set up in front of the fire and the heavy curtains were drawn, shutting out the blizzard and the silent
streets. Caro watched Léonie eat, enjoying the sight of someone so obviously relishing her food. Afterward they sat on the rug together in front of the fire and she peeled the peaches specially grown for her in the enormous hothouses at Alphonse’s country estate. They dunked fleshy slivers of fruit in their champagne, giggling as they licked their winy juices. They were isolated by the storm, forced into an immediate intimacy, trapped together with no men around—“Like schoolgirls,” said Caro, laughing.

“Please tell me,” begged Léonie, sitting cross-legged on the rug, the sumptuous velvet robe wrapped around her, a glass of champagne in her hand. She felt elated, all her senses were alive, her body was drifting on a sea of champagne bubbles.

“Tell you what?”

“Your story … Caro,” she added, pleased to be allowed to use her name.

“My story … ahh.” Caro’s lovely face looked suddenly wistful. “It was a fairy story, Léonie … for a while. My home was in Spain. I suppose if being loved means being ‘spoiled,’ then I was a spoiled child. My father was handsome and my mother young and beautiful. I remember how I used to wait, for what seemed ages, every morning until she awoke and I was allowed in. She’d be lying there in that great old bed, tiny, dark-haired, always in something pale and lacy and always holding out her arms for me, laughing as I’d run across the room and hurl myself into them. Papa would hear us and put his head around his dressing room door, laughing, too, as he saw me covering her face with kisses. And then it was his turn to be kissed and he’d swing me up in the air so that I could reach his face—sometimes I’d have to smooth away the soapy foam where he was shaving and sometimes he’d hold my hand over his long-bladed razor and allow me to ‘help’ him shave. And afterward I’d receive a little dab of his cologne behind my ears. Then we’d both go and sit on Mama’s bed and nibble at her breakfast. I remember sneaking a finger into the little dish of delicious peach preserves and giving it to Papa to lick. They were both so young, so beautiful—and so very much in love. I know now how selfish lovers can be and I suppose I was lucky that they let me share that love.

“As the elder son, my father had inherited a title and everything that went with it, a castle, townhouses, estates. And Mama was rich, young, and beautiful. They were truly the golden couple on whom the gods smiled. But one day the smiling stopped. They
had left to spend a weekend at the country house of some friends, it was November, the weather was foggy, the roads icy.… There was an accident.…”

Caro’s face reflected the pain of twenty years ago and Léonie turned her eyes away, not wanting to intrude.

“No one told me,” whispered Caro, “that was the worst thing. I suppose they wanted to shield me from the pain. The servants who were my friends went around red-eyed, bursting into tears when they looked at me, the curtains were drawn, mirrors draped in black; there was whispering. I couldn’t understand it. Then suddenly the house was full of relatives, lawyers, priests … and everyone in black. My father’s brother, who now inherited the title, explained finally what had happened. He said that they had gone to a better place and were happy there. He took me to see them. They were lying side by side in coffins lined in white satin, they looked so lovely—just the way they always looked—but they didn’t hold out their arms to me. I was five years old and they had gone forever. And so had all the loving, the spoiling, and the sharing. I, who had been the center of their universe, was to live with my uncle and aunt and their eleven-year-old son.”

Caro took a sip of her wine and sighed deeply. “It wouldn’t have been so bad if it weren’t for my aunt. Of course, looking back I realize that she and my mother could never have been friends. Aunt Macarene was a plain woman who’d done well to marry the second son of a good family. She was strong and domineering and uncle was an academic man, lost in his world of ancient manuscripts and texts in Latin and Greek. Aunt Macarene ran his life and now she ran mine. From silks and muslins and colored ribbons woven through my hair by my mother’s loving fingers, I now wore blue serge and a white pinafore and stout shoes. My hair was brushed back so tightly into its braid that I could feel it pulling my scalp. I had meals in the schoolroom and was kept in the nursery at night so as not to disturb uncle, or so she said. I think I must have cried for years and years—every night my pillow would be soaked.” Her eyes met Léonie’s in understanding. “I was so lonely, Léonie—like you. My cousin was older, away at school, uninterested in my misery. Uncle had inherited the estates, but it had been my mother’s money that had kept up the houses so beautifully, that had paid all those servants, bought all the extra extravagant pleasures, and I had inherited it all. I suppose my aunt coveted it for her son—what good were estates and titles
without money? Gradually she managed to deprive me of everything I was used to and had loved: my mother’s little dogs were no longer there, my pony was sold, lessons were long and dull—there was nothing to open up my mind, to excite the imagination or curiosity. It was no use appealing to my uncle—he was often away giving lectures on his favorite classical heroes, and besides, he wouldn’t have understood. ‘Your aunt takes care of all that,’ was all the response I ever got. I had to wait until I was sixteen to shock him into action. He had just emerged from his study as I was crossing the hall and, still lost in his translation from the French, he spoke to me in French. When I couldn’t reply, he was stunned. He engaged a French tutor for me at once.”