The Girl Behind The Fan (Hidden Women) (6 page)

One of the things my flirtation with Marco had done was help me make peace with some of my own body issues. Fresh from a break-up and suspecting that a younger and more classically beautiful girl had replaced me, I had been hiding away. My unhappiness was reflected in a wardrobe of baggy jumpers and a refusal to do so much as put a dab of concealer on a spot. Marco made me want to celebrate myself again.

That day in the library, when I had watched myself in a mirror while following Marco’s prescription for ecstasy, I had seen myself through loving eyes. For just a little while I had not worried that I was carrying more weight than usual or my breasts looked less perky than before. I didn’t wonder if my hair was too dry or my cheeks a bit too flushed. I had seen myself as a woman at the height of her seductive powers. However I looked, I looked perfect because Marco and I were connected via our minds.

How ironic then, if my suspicions were true and Marco was the man Bea met at the ball – the one with the disfigured hand – that I couldn’t give Marco the same confidence in himself. I couldn’t make him believe that what I loved about him was an awful lot more than skin deep.

Chapter 7

Paris, 1838

How naive I had been to think that family riches supported Arlette’s lavish lifestyle! Now that I thought about it, no truly noble family would ever let their daughters have so much freedom. Riding out in a carriage whenever she felt like it. Visiting the theatre on her own. And all the men who came and went! Why had I not before noticed what lengths Elaine would go to to ensure that none of the visitors so much as passed each other in the hall, though they would certainly have known each other from school or court or battlefield?

Arlette was a
prostitute
. The men who visited paid her for her favours. They simply paid more than the sailors who went to the brothels in the docks.

‘I prefer to use the word “courtesan”,’ Arlette said to me when I finally admitted I knew the source of her wealth. ‘Prostitute sounds so very downcast.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I thought you knew! If not, you might have guessed by now. Any half-intelligent young woman would. Surely.’

Arlette smoothed my hair away from my face. ‘Sweet Augustine, you really are as innocent as you look. It’s rather funny.’

I didn’t think it was funny at all. But neither was Arlette’s story as to how she came to be in her position. I might have felt misled and somewhat misused as a result of my discovery, but when Arlette recounted the details of her early life, I could not help but admire her courage. If I thought I’d had some bad luck when it came to my childhood, then Arlette’s story made me feel rather blessed. For my mistress, prostitution was a family business. Just as I had become a seamstress because my mother passed on her sewing skills to me as I sat on her knee in our kitchen in Brittany, Arlette had learned her own particular trade from her mama.

‘My mother was uneducated but she was clever,’ Arlette explained. ‘She saw I had an unusual look of refinement and realised it would be my salvation. Though she could have sold my virginity a hundred times over from the moment I started growing tits, she insisted on holding out for a proper price – more than a year’s wages to any of the idiots who lived on our street – and she invested the money from that first transaction in an education for me. She knew that’s what she would have to do to make me more appealing to the upper classes. And it worked. Within a few months, I could pass as a real lady and I was soon out of the slums. She was a businesswoman, my mama. A sharp one.’

Arlette’s mama sounded hateful to me, but it was clear that Arlette was fond of the shrewd city woman who had sold her to the owner of a factory when she was just twelve years old.

‘What happened to your mother?’ I asked.

‘She was stabbed to death a couple of years ago,’ Arlette said matter-of-factly. ‘I did my best to help her after I got settled but she was proud, we had a fight, and she went back to working in Pigalle. And one night she met with a beast.’ Arlette drew a finger across her throat.

I shuddered.

‘Don’t you ever worry about that happening to you?’ I asked.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘There’s always the possibility. Money doesn’t necessarily equal manners. But far more women are murdered by their husbands than strangers.’

I think Arlette thought that might cheer me up. She squeezed my hand and gave me a wink. ‘Come on, Miss Innocence. I need help with this bodice. The General will be back again soon.’

Though most of her clients, such as the general, liked to visit alone and in private, there were some people who Arlette allowed to visit as a gang. Charles, the poet who had almost disturbed the general the afternoon Elaine revealed the hole in the floor to me, was one of them. Charles ran with a pack of fascinating young men. At least, they liked to think they were fascinating. They called themselves poets, writers, painters and playwrights but they never seemed to do a stitch of work, creative or otherwise. Instead, they liked to spend their evenings in Arlette’s house, drinking wine paid for by her wealthier lovers, while they discussed the pressing matters of the day. These pressing matters were sometimes political but they were more often simple gossip regarding their friends. Who was doing what to whom and who was having to take mercury as a result? I learned a great deal by listening in to their conversations and asking Elaine for explanations of the coarser points.

That said, though my mistress was a prostitute, she made certain her guests always treated me with the utmost respect. And they did. They never addressed a lewd remark towards me and often apologised for being uncouth in my company when I came to serve them tea. I quite enjoyed being around them.

I could tell that Arlette liked these young men best of all. She called them ‘my boys’. Charles the poet in particular was very dear to her. I suspect that if he’d had any money of his own, she might have forsaken all her other lovers to be with him. While her other lovers turned up at the house in carriages laden with roses, Charles arrived always on foot and usually bearing some weed he had tugged out of the ground on his way through the Tuileries. But I knew when Arlette looked at those weeds they were as precious to her as any hothouse flower. She insisted on putting them in her best vases: scrubby little daisies in her best cut glass like they were as beautiful as roses.

‘Love can perform alchemy,’ she told me, confirming all.

I wondered if I would ever be in love as Arlette loved her young poet. I wondered also if anyone would ever be in love with me. When there were no visitors at the house, Arlette was happy for Elaine and me to wander in and out of her rooms like little sisters with a free run of the house. From time to time, she let me try on some of her clothes and did my hair in the latest fashion. When I looked at myself in the mirror then, dressed like the very chicest Parisienne on her way to the opera, I could almost imagine some gentleman calling for me. Arlette gave me one of her fans and showed me how to use the old Spanish semaphore to signal my readiness for flirtation. Or more.

‘Open the fan and touch your cheek like this,’ she said. ‘That means you might be interested.’

As I posed in front of the mirror with Arlette’s beautiful fan, I conversed with an imaginary lover. I held his gaze and smiled seductively. I flipped the fan open with one hand. I tapped it closed again. I covered my mouth with it in the way Arlette had explained, ‘means you’re sending him a secret kiss’.

What would he be like, the man I fell for? Would he be handsome? Would he be clever? Would he be rich? Would he be like my father, who though he had very little to his name, often told my mother he was the wealthiest man on God’s earth because he had her love? That was what I really hoped for. A love such as I had seen in my childhood by the sea. It was no wonder my mother died of misery without the man she’d married.

Then, one day, my question was answered. It was a Friday evening. Arlette had been to the Comédie at the Salle Richelieu with the general, but dissuaded him from coming into the house by telling him that the soprano’s screeching had left her with a terrible headache. Ever the gentleman, the general bid her goodnight on the doorstep. But no sooner had his carriage left the driveway than a new bunch of visitors arrived. It was the poet and his cohorts. Six of them had climbed into a carriage meant for two. When they tumbled out, it was clear they were already half drunk and ready to be rowdy. I expected my mistress to send them away but instead she insisted that they stay for dinner. Elaine and I flew into the kitchen at once.

I later learned that my mistress had decided to feign a headache upon seeing the poet and his young men on the other side of the theatre. Secret signals were passed by the flicking of my mistress’s fan and a rendezvous was arranged. The poor general had no idea he was being set up for an evening alone.

Elaine and I set about making supper for the six. We knew five of them well but that evening they were joined by a new face.

‘Who is this?’ Arlette asked the question we all wanted to hear answered.

‘Remi Sauvageon,’ he announced himself. ‘From Guerville.’

Introductions made, Remi Sauvageon told Arlette about himself. I must admit that I lurked about in order to listen. He was very handsome, this Remi. His face was noble and kind. His eyes were dark brown. His black hair had a wave to it. When he stood to warm himself by the fire, I took note of his fine legs, well-shaped and athletic in his fashionable grey trousers, which were cut very close. He held himself very straight, with an attractive confidence. When he looked directly at me, it made me blush.

In the contact of our eyes, I felt again that sensation which had come over me when I was watching Arlette and the general through the keyhole. My insides were all aflutter and I could hear my blood pounding in my head. I thought I might fall down at any moment, I hoped he hadn’t noticed how distracted I became.

But when he spoke, the sensation only grew stronger. His voice was educated. It was manly but not rough in the least. He was the son of a wealthy family. He’d been educated at a very smart establishment with the intention that he would go into the family business. But the provincial life was not for Remi. He told us that he had come to Paris to be a painter. He wanted to meet Corot and several other famous artists, perhaps even get an apprenticeship. He felt he could learn from their work. Maybe they could learn from him too, he added with a touch of unexpected arrogance.

Arlette encouraged him. She said that she knew one artist he’d mentioned quite well and might be able to effect an introduction. She was very kind in that respect. She had recently introduced the poet to a publisher. The publisher said he thought the poet had no talent whatsoever, but for Arlette he would have published a laundry list, spelling mistakes and all.

Remi Sauvageon stayed until late that night. He praised Elaine’s cooking and made Arlette glow with pride when he said she would be a good subject for a portrait. He seemed popular with his fellows; they all laughed at his jokes. Even Charles seemed happy for Remi to take centre stage, showing good humour when Remi teased him by intoning a scrappy poem in impersonation of the poet at some other high-society salon. When Remi turned his attention to me and praised my elegant method of pouring coffee, saying that he wished he could capture my style in a series of photographs, I slopped half a pot on the rug. Fortunately, Arlette found that hilarious.

‘You like him, don’t you?’ said Arlette when we were alone in the kitchen later on.

‘Who?’ I feigned ignorance.

‘Remi, the new boy, stupid.’

I looked at my hands. I was washing the pots. I felt too vulnerable to answer her.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Arlette. ‘I can tell he likes you too.’

‘Really?’ I clutched at her encouragement. ‘How could you tell?’

‘Every time you were in the room, he could not take his eyes off you. Every point he made for the amusement of his friends, he was really making just for you. He never failed to look in your direction to see what you had made of his jokes. He wanted to impress you.’

‘Impress me? Why? I’m just a maid.’

‘He doesn’t see you that way. He sees a slim waist and an attractive bosom. He sees your soft skin and your lustrous hair. He sees the way your lips curve when you smile. He is besotted. Soon he’ll be entirely in love.’

I hardly dared believe it, but I went to bed happy that night.

I got happier. Elaine, who was two years older than me but decades more worldly wise, had told me about a way to give myself pleasure. In fact she’d offered to show me but, horrified, I’d demurred. Later, however, in the privacy of my room, I had pondered Elaine’s instructions and given them a try. What a revelation to discover that the part of me I had always considered most shameful was also capable of offering such joy.

With not enough light to read by in my dingy attic room, I soon grew quite expert at bringing myself to a climax. Sometimes, I thought of the goings-on I had seen in Arlette’s room. This time, I thought of Remi. I’m ashamed to say that a few hours with my eye at the hole in the floor had given me a knowledge of sexual positions as wild and varied as the
Kama Sutra
. I knew about the
Kama Sutra
too; Arlette had several editions with illustrations so perplexing that I had to rotate some pages to be able to see what went where.