The Girl Behind The Fan (Hidden Women) (21 page)

‘Let your shawl fall from your shoulders,’ said Arlette.

‘But I’m cold,’ I complained.

‘For goodness’ sake.’

Arlette tugged the Indian shawl down for me.

‘There. Don’t hide your assets, silly girl,’ Clemence tutted. ‘You have to make small sacrifices. A little chill here in the theatre in exchange for a blanket of spun gold later on.’

Arlette focused her opera glasses on the Vicomte’s box again.

‘It’s working. The Vicomte is utterly enraptured. Oh, this is so exciting! Who would have thought my little Breton housemaid could pull off such a coup? He is one of the wealthiest men in all Europe. You cannot fail to make your fortune if you just indulge him, Augustine.’

‘Amuse him,’ Clemence added. ‘Pretend to be interested in him, though he talks about nothing but horses and war, and you could be his lover before the week is out. I know it.’

I turned to Arlette, my mouth dropping open in shock.

‘But . . .’

She understood at once my objection.

‘Remi Sauvageon? Forget Remi, my dear. He has long since forgotten you.’

Arlette’s words stung. They brought tears to my eyes.

‘The Vicomte is a thousand times richer than Remi. He’ll never leave you in the cold to go back to his papa like some milksop.’

Arlette was right to remind me that Remi had let me down most terribly and yet, as I sat there and failed to concentrate on the scenes playing out on the stage, I was not ready to love anyone but my beloved, cowardly artist. I only wanted him back. As the opera drew to a close, I resolved to tell Arlette and Clemence that I could not be their protégée. I would thank Clemence for offering me the opportunity to see an opera but there was no way I could ever lie down with the Vicomte. He was old enough to be my
grandpère
! I would beg to keep my job as a maid. I would work for Arlette until I was an old crone, but I could never love another man. Especially not one who looked so close to death.

Then the opera reached its finale. The singers tried to break our hearts with their soaring voices. My heart was broken far more easily when I looked down into the stalls and saw Remi among his friends.

It was the first time I had seen him since he kissed me goodbye on the doorstep in the Rue de Seine and stepped out into the snow wearing every scrap of clothing in his possession.

Why had I not noticed him before? He must have crept in while the theatre was in darkness. Despite everything that had happened, my heart leapt at the sight of him. I prayed he would look up at me. I scoured his demeanour for news that he was as unhappy as I had been. But the truth was that Remi looked far from unhappy. In those few months at his father’s house, he had recovered his health. He looked well, he looked energetic, and he looked pleased with himself. And then he turned to the woman at his side and I was suddenly sure I could tell from his eager expression that he was trying to make her love him, just as he had captured me. My heart cracked in two. I turned my face away before he saw me and put up Arlette’s fan as a shield.

Arlette, who had been following my gaze, reached for my hand and squeezed it tightly.

‘Love has such thorns,’ she whispered. ‘Hold steady, dear girl. Keep your dignity.’

I sucked in a quavering breath.

‘Will we meet the Vicomte now?’ asked Clemence.

Arlette nodded. ‘I think Augustine is ready.’

‘I knew you would come to your senses,’ Clemence told me. ‘I have already sent a note to invite him for supper. I feel sure he will accept.’

The Vicomte did accept. That night Elaine had to eat supper alone back at Arlette’s house while I was seated alongside the Vicomte de Chanteduc in pride of place at Clemence Babineaux’s dining table. Ordinarily, I would have been delighted by the rich food Clemence’s servants laid before me, but I could not concentrate. Not while the elderly Vicomte stared at me as though he were a starving dog and I was a sausage. He praised my eyes, my hair, my lips and my cheeks until I felt them burning.

‘I would like to see you again,’ he said. ‘Alone.’

Dread crept up my neck like icy fingers.

‘Alone?’ I whispered.

‘Yes, indeed.’

Arlette interrupted. ‘I will talk to my young cousin in private and ascertain her wishes,’ she said. ‘But for now I can tell she is getting tired. I must take her home.’

The Vicomte nodded. ‘I understand. Well, thank you, dear ladies, for allowing me the pleasure of your company tonight.’

Once Arlette and I were back at home, Elaine joined us by the fire and we discussed the evening at length. Arlette told me I had done her proud. I was as poised and beautiful as any of the women in the theatre that evening. There wasn’t a lady of noble birth who could have outshone me in my pink dress and pearls.

‘The Vicomte is all but yours,’ she said. ‘Clemence is absolutely sure of it.’

‘But what if I don’t want him?’ I protested.

‘My dear, do you think anyone ever did? That face!’

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘He is a hideous old man.’

‘But generous to a fault,’ said Arlette.

Elaine was already spending his money.

‘He’ll have to set you up with a place of your own. And you’ll need a companion,’ she told me. ‘I’d be very happy to come with you. Any time. Just give me the word.’

‘Elaine!’ Arlette exclaimed. ‘Where’s your loyalty?’

‘Perhaps the Vicomte will give her a house big enough for the three of us,’ said Elaine to mollify her. ‘You’ve seen the monstrosity that funny prince from Portugal is building for Madame Delaflotte on the Champs Elysées. He’ll want to compete with that. I hear it has nineteen bedrooms.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Arlette. ‘Our little Augustine will have twenty rooms, an orangery and fountains. She will have a beautiful carriage and her own horses. She will make a fortune with her looks, just as I predicted when I pulled her out of the dirt in the Bois de Boulogne.’

Arlette brushed my cheek as though she were brushing that dirt away. ‘My clever little girl. You’re on your way to becoming a very wealthy woman.’

‘No. I cannot lie down with that man. I cannot!’

‘And neither will you have to,’ said Arlette. ‘At least, not if you get a better offer.’

Arlette and Elaine were happy. I tried to be happy too. I tried to remind myself that this new way of living would be better than starving. And if Remi no longer loved me, then in any case the rest of my life would be nothing but a long wait for death.

But I could not believe that he didn’t love me. That night, when I went to bed, I tried to communicate with Remi across the distance between us. I told myself that if I thought about him hard enough, he would feel my wishes across the whole of Paris. Silently, I tried to push my love towards him.

How I missed the feeling of his warm body next to mine. Without Remi, the
chambre de bonne
was once again just a tiny room full of shadows and spiders. The draught blowing in through the badly fitted window was twice as cold as I remembered it. I pulled the covers up to my chin and tried to warm myself with a happier memory. I went back to a day when Remi and I were in this room together. The day when he gave me the tin ring that I kept in a matchbox beneath my pillow still.

I had been so happy and so had he. We’d made love so tenderly. How many girls could claim to have enjoyed the moment of their deflowering so well?

That kind of love didn’t just disappear. As much as I missed Remi, I was certain that he was missing me too. That girl in the opera might have been anyone. She might even have been one of the sisters upon whom he claimed to dote. Yes, that was the real story. I hugged it to me. Remi was with his sister. He did not seek me out at the opera because there was no reason on earth why I might be there. I was a lady’s maid. Maids did not generally go to the opera.

But he was back in Paris. I wondered then why he had not gone back to our old neighbourhood and asked about my progress. Much as my friend Jeanne-Marie had insisted she would turn him away and spit on him as he went, I was sure that if he had asked about me, she would have told him I’d gone back to Arlette. He might have guessed that and come straight to the Rue de la Ville L’Evêque anyway. The thought of his last encounter with my mistress wouldn’t have put him off. Surely not.

A little voice deep inside me urged me to face the truth. I could continue to mourn Remi and face the inevitable threat of destitution should I ever fall out with Arlette, or I could earn some security for myself. I could embrace my fate. And the Vicomte.

Chapter 29

On Saturday evening, Steven arranged to pick me up at my flat. I’d considered meeting him at the opera, so he would not be able to get a look at my new private space, but then decided that was just petty. If Steven and I were going to be friends – and only friends – why shouldn’t he pick me up from my door? All the same, I spent time tidying up in a way I would not have done for any ordinary pal. I flung open the windows to let in the air and decorated the stark white sitting room with an arrangement of red camellias, bought from the expensive florist down the street. I knew that Steven would appreciate the contrast. He had an eye for interior design. He had an eye for beauty.

I needn’t have bought flowers for myself. When Steven arrived, the bouquet he was carrying dwarfed him. More camellias. Though his were white.

‘Must be the season. Plus,’ he added. ‘I thought they would be apt. Given your new project.’

He was referring to one of the most famous Parisian courtesans of all. Marie Duplessis, the younger Dumas’s tragic
Dame aux Camélias
, who was never seen in public without the flowers and used them to signal her availability. White for yes, red for no.

‘They’re beautiful,’ I said, arranging them in yet another white vase.

‘So is this place,’ said Steven. ‘And you say you’re staying here for nothing while you do the research?’

I nodded. ‘Greg Simon, the producer, said his company took this place on a long lease when they were filming in Paris last year. It was just standing empty.’

‘They must have money to burn,’ Steven observed. ‘Lucky you. I’ve never heard of accommodation this luxurious going with the job before. Not unless the job is Président de la République.’

‘Well, I’m making the most of it,’ I said. ‘Shall we go?’

Steven nodded. ‘You look amazing, by the way,’ he said. I was wearing a dress I’d bought just that afternoon. As with tidying the apartment, I’d told myself that I shouldn’t make an extra-special effort on Steven’s behalf, but when it came down to it, I had just one dress suitable for the opera in my wardrobe and it was the dress I’d worn to L’Infer, the sex club where we finally pulled ourselves apart. I couldn’t wear that. So I had to hit Galeries Lafayette and buy the dress I was now wearing.

It was a simple little black number but what made it special was the quality of the fabric and the cut, which subtly clung to my contours and gave me curves in all the right places. It was sleeveless. I knew I looked good in it. Even the sales assistants, who were ordinarily so disdainful of anyone less than a supermodel, were grudgingly complimentary when they saw me step out of the dressing room. When a man passing by gave me a nod of approval I knew I had found the perfect LBD.

‘You’ve changed your style,’ said Steven.

‘Paris makes you feel like you ought to make an effort, don’t you think?’

‘I like it. It’s very sophisticated.’

Steven helped me into my jacket.

It was a warm night and it wasn’t far from my apartment to the Opéra, so we walked. I was wearing heels, forgetting that the pavements of Paris are notoriously tricky, so when Steven offered me his arm I took it gratefully. It was strange to be hanging on to him like that. Once again I was close enough to get a deep lungful of his delicious aftershave – my own equivalent of Proust’s madeleine.

I wondered what he had been doing in Paris. When he wasn’t at work, that is. At the same time I didn’t really want to know. There were bound to have been other women; a man like Steven never wanted for female attention. I wasn’t certain I was ready to hear about it. We kept our conversation to uncontroversial subjects. He told me he had already dipped into my thesis and was finding it very interesting.

‘She was quite a girl, your Luciana.’

‘Yes, she was.’

‘Funny, isn’t it, how every generation thinks they’ve invented sex, but here’s a seventeen-year-old in the eighteenth century getting more action than I ever could have dreamed of at that age. And you say you think you ended up living in an apartment in the house where she used to visit Casanova?’

‘I think so. It all seemed to add up. The route she took to the house and then the bed. It was like something out of a horror movie. All covered in carved monkeys, which were the emblem of Ernesta Donato, who actually owned the house. There can’t be more than one.’

‘I’d like to see it. Maybe you could show me one day. The bed.’

That comment sent a strange frisson through me. I looked at Steven. I could tell that he was watching my reaction carefully.