The Girl Behind The Fan (Hidden Women) (3 page)

Augustine finished her modest meal and laid a few coins on the table. It was growing dark. She must make her way to the station at once. She went to ask the café proprietor if he could point her in the right direction. It was while she was asking for the quickest way to the station that one of the café’s other customers lifted her purse. Poor Augustine was quite unaware until she came to buy a ticket.

A weaker-hearted girl might have given up at this point but Augustine was resolute. She would walk to Brittany. She did not care how long it would take. She would beg her way home if she had to.

By midnight, Augustine had found her way as far as the Bois de Boulogne. She spent the night shivering beneath a tree, too scared of what might happen to dare to sleep. In the morning, however, exhaustion overcame her and she could stay awake no longer. She curled up with her bag beneath her head and fell into dreams.

Augustine dreamed that a horse was gently prodding at her with its big warm nose. Its breath gave her a welcome blast of warmth in the coldness of the early day. Augustine touched the velvety muzzle. It felt like kindness itself. The horse snorted, warming her with its hay-scented breath.

‘Is she dead?’ came a human voice. High-pitched. Female. Cultivated.

‘I don’t think so, Madame.’

‘Then for goodness’ sake, Jean-Aude. Don’t let Alphonse eat her.’

The horse’s nose was duly pulled away.

Slowly, Augustine opened her eyes to see a pair of shining boots right in front of her face. Looking up the legs attached to the boots to see a man she did not recognise, she sat up suddenly and clutched the bag that contained all she had left in the world to her chest.

‘It’s all right,’ said the man. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’

Augustine scrabbled along the ground until she had her back against a tree.

‘She’s not dead. Thank heavens,’ came the female voice again. ‘It was so cold last night. She must be absolutely frozen. What are you doing here, girl?’ The woman, who was speaking, or shouting, from the window of her carriage, addressed Augustine directly. ‘Did you sleep in the park overnight?’

Confused and fearful that she would not find the right answer, Augustine struggled for words.

‘You don’t look like a street urchin,’ the woman continued. ‘Are you lost? Where are you from?’

Augustine gave her address. ‘Until yesterday, Madame. I had to move out. All of a sudden.’

‘I know what that’s like,’ the woman said. ‘Where are you going?’

‘I’m going to Brittany.’

‘Ha! Brittany!’ The woman in the carriage let out a peal of laughter, as though that were the funniest thing she’d ever heard. ‘On foot?’

Augustine nodded.

‘Well, you’re heading in completely the wrong direction. Not to mention the fact it will take you three weeks at the very least to get there and I don’t think you’ve the wherewithal to survive another day. Have you any money?’

Augustine shook her head.

‘Come closer. Let me have a proper look at you.’

Augustine got to her feet and walked up to the cab. Getting a proper look of her own at the woman for the first time, Augustine decided that she had a kind face. Very pretty. She had softly curling fair hair and a generous smiling mouth. She was beautifully dressed in the very latest fashion. Augustine knew about fashion; she had stitched a very similar bodice just a couple of weeks earlier. In fact, the dress the woman was wearing so well might have been the dress Augustine herself had made.

‘Not bad,’ said the woman, when she’d finished her appraisal of the waif. ‘But you seem very young to be on your own in the world.’

‘I’m fifteen,’ Augustine confirmed. ‘My mother died last year.’

‘You poor thing. And your father?’

‘Years ago. At sea.’

The kindly woman shook her head. ‘An orphan! How terrible. What can you do? Have you ever been in service?’

‘I’ve been a seamstress.’

‘I often have need of a seamstress.’

The woman held out her arms to display her beautiful quilted sleeves as though they were ragged and in need of mending. ‘Come with me, little Breton girl. I think there is room for a girl like you
chez moi
.’

Augustine was too tired, cold and hungry to question the beautiful woman’s kindness. Instead, she allowed herself to be helped into the carriage, where she was seated next to the woman like a well-loved friend. When the driver had climbed back into his seat and they were on their way back into town, the woman, who said her name was Arlette, offered Augustine a share of her picnic. Augustine tried hard to remember her manners when faced with the food offered her, but it seemed like a feast after the past few months of grief and dry bread. She could not help gobbling. She let the food run down her chin.

Arlette smiled indulgently as she handed Augustine a napkin. ‘My poor child,’ she called her. She had Augustine tell the whole story of her downfall from the very beginning. When Augustine explained why she had lost her job, Arlette said, ‘I’m not surprised in the least.’

Augustine was offended, until Arlette explained the reasoning. ‘I’m not saying that you led the man on, dear. Far from it. But you are a beautiful young woman,’ she said. ‘Not only are you beautiful, you have the freshness of a newly opened flower. Every sensible woman should be envious of you. Have you not noticed men staring at you in the street? You are exactly what they want. And you are a virgin?’

Augustine was astonished and affronted at the question. ‘Of course I am,’ she exclaimed.

‘Then you’re all the greater prize.’

‘I don’t think of myself that way.’

‘I will have to see to that. Come along.’ She took Augustine by the hand. ‘You must have a bath and go to bed. Your new life begins tomorrow.’

The woman in the carriage confused Augustine. Arlette dressed like a wealthy woman – every finger sported a jewel as big as a cardinal’s ring – and yet she said she was unmarried. She was not old, perhaps twenty-five, but when Augustine asked whether Arlette’s father would mind her bringing a stranger home, Arlette simply laughed.

‘I am my own mistress,’ Arlette explained. ‘I will entertain whomsoever I please. Would you care to stay with me?’

When her other choice was the street, Augustine had to accept this stranger’s generosity. At Arlette’s house on the Rue de la Ville L’Evêque in the eighth arrondissement, Augustine was installed in a
chambre de bonne
. It was a tiny room, but it was a far better place to spend the night than on the road to Brittany. Over tea, Arlette persuaded her that her plan to walk all the way to Concarneau was as realistic as planning to fly to the moon in a Montgolfier balloon. Far better that she stay in Paris for a while, work as a housemaid for Arlette and save her wages. That way she would stay safe, warm and well-fed until she could afford a train ticket. If she still wanted to go, that is, Arlette added with a smile.

Augustine was certain she would still want to go back to her home town, but just a couple of weeks later, she was less sure. Living at Arlette’s house, she saw a side of Paris she had never before experienced. Here near the Palais Royal the streets were clean. The houses were well-kept. Some of them even had gardens. The other girls who worked in the house were kind to her. There were several; all were without family and very young. Arlette sometimes called the house her very own convent. That would make everyone fall about with mirth.

At first, Augustine thought Arlette must have come from a very wealthy family. Like the girls she employed, she had no parents, Augustine knew that. But she had a great many friends and Augustine’s eyes popped out of her head when she saw the names on the visiting cards of some of her employer’s visitors. Arlette entertained dukes and princes. Once, she even entertained Prince Napoleon himself.

‘How well-connected Arlette’s father must have been,’ Augustine remarked to Elaine, who was Arlette’s general maid.

‘Her father? Well-connected?’ Elaine snorted. ‘Are you trying to be funny? Arlette doesn’t even know who her father is. Neither did her mother, more to the point.’

‘But . . . The visitors?’ Augustine voiced her confusion.

‘You are a weird little thing,’ said Elaine. ‘You don’t know why they come here? You’re having me on. You never heard of Arlette before you met her? Honestly? You really never did?’

Augustine had to admit she knew nothing of her mistress but the stories Arlette herself had told her.

‘You’re as green as your namesake! Come with me,’ said Elaine. ‘Walk on your tiptoes and don’t say a word.’

Augustine followed Elaine through the labyrinth of corridors to the
chambre de bonne
on the very top floor of the house: the room that had been made up for Augustine. Not speaking and taking care not to make the floorboards squeak, the two girls entered the room. Elaine motioned that Augustine should help her roll back the worn silk rug. There, in the centre of the floorboards, was a hole where a knot in the wood had been knocked through. The hole sent a shaft of light into the dingy maid’s quarters. Augustine had never noticed it, though of course she had rolled up the rug when she was cleaning.

Elaine got down on her knees and put an eye to the hole. A smile spread over her face.

‘Just in time to see the finale.’

She indicated that Augustine should lie down on the floor beside her and take her turn. When Augustine was in position, Elaine slapped her playfully on the bottom.

‘Look, you goose. Here’s the reason why all them notable gentlemen come to pay their respects to our Arlette.’

The room beneath swam into focus. It was Arlette’s bedroom, the paradise of gilt and silk and chinoiserie that Augustine loved tidying most of all. Augustine let her gaze find the bed. It was a four-poster, with diaphanous muslin curtains, but Augustine could see that Arlette was sitting on the edge of it, with her legs dangling freely. Her stockings were round her ankles and her skirts were pushed up her naked thighs, white and smooth as alabaster. Between Arlette’s open knees knelt the general Augustine had admitted to Arlette’s salon an hour earlier. He had his face buried in Arlette’s mound of Venus and was making a great deal of noise as he busied himself with bringing her to a climax.

Augustine sat up and asked in anguish, ‘What on earth is he doing to her?’

‘What do you mean, what’s he doing? He’s licking her cunt!’

Augustine covered her mouth – open in shock – with a hand.

Elaine was delighted by Augustine’s horror. ‘He loves it. Can’t get enough of it. It’s all he ever wants to do. Can only get an erection if he’s nose-deep in her pussy.’

Augustine kept her hand clamped over her mouth.

‘Arlette says that’s why he’s one of her favourites. She only has to lie back and let him get on with it and while he’s getting on with it, he can’t bore her stupid with his war talk.’

Elaine laughed and continued to elaborate. ‘The one she really hates is Girodin.’ This was the politician who had called the day before. ‘He’s the opposite of the general. As far as he’s concerned, it’s all about his cock. Which would be fine if he ever got a proper stiffy, but sometimes she sucks his prick until she’s got lockjaw and the bastard still refuses to come. And then he takes it out on her, of course. He gets angry and then he gets vile. Tries to stick it up her arse and ends up slapping her for being too tight. She’d have stopped seeing him ages ago but if he gets angry, afterwards he gets ashamed of himself and when he’s ashamed of himself, Girodin brings her pearls.’

Augustine sank back against her narrow maid’s bed for support. To think all this might have been going on right beneath her as she said her rosary before sleeping.

‘Don’t look so shocked,’ said Elaine. ‘It’s just the way of the world. And it keeps you and me safe and warm. Men want what Arlette’s got. All three of us – you, me and our mistress – want the money they give her in exchange.’

‘But . . .’ Augustine couldn’t begin to find the words to express her dismay. She didn’t have time. From downstairs, a bell rang to announce that Arlette had yet another visitor.

‘Arse,’ said Elaine. ‘That’ll be the poet. And the general still hasn’t gone. He’s taking his own sweet time today. I better go downstairs and keep the poet busy while the old warhorse finishes her off.’

Straightening her apron, Elaine returned to duty, leaving Augustine alone in the
chambre de bonne
. Augustine continued to sit against the bed for a moment, half paralysed with shock as she tried to take in the truth of the situation. Her mistress was a prostitute. She was living in a common prostitute’s house! It went against every moral teaching Augustine had ever heard. She could end up in the vile book – the police chief’s list of immoral women and their associates. And yet Elaine was right. Arlette’s sin had been Augustine’s salvation. Arlette had shown her great kindness and Augustine had come to love her as a small child loves an older sister.

What should Augustine do? For the good of her soul, she knew she should leave at once. She had saved a little money. She could catch a train halfway to Brittany at least and perhaps find work along the way. But how could she expect anyone to hire her when her last reference came from a kept woman?