Wild Lavender (11 page)

Camille’s smile faded for a second. She rubbed her arms. ‘How could I tell him?’ she said. ‘He gave me a start. But Paris…’ Her eyes lit up again. ‘That’s where you go if you want to be a star. The Adriana, the Folies Bergère, the Casino de Paris, the Eldorado. I can’t stay in Marseilles, Simone. But every time I tried to tell Monsieur Dargent, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.’

A niggling doubt about the truth of Camille’s words prickled me but I ignored it. I couldn’t resent her wanting to go to Paris. It was the place everybody said you had to go if you wanted to be a real star. But I was worried about what Camille’s departure meant for the rest of us. Monsieur Dargent might have to cancel the show.

‘He’ll find someone else,’ she said. ‘Believe me, he’s good at it.’ She reached into her purse, pulled out an envelope and pushed it towards me. ‘I trust you with this, Simone. It tells him everything that is in my heart and begs his forgiveness. When he gets this letter from me, he will understand.’

I breathed a sigh of relief. So Camille
had
given Monsieur Dargent’s feelings some thought.

‘You will give it to him, won’t you, Simone? And not until tomorrow?’

‘Yes, of course,’ I said.

I should have known something was wrong. The warning was there in the way the shoes Camille had given me pinched my toes and rubbed my heels, and the look in Fabienne’s eye when I passed her on the steps of Le Chat Espiègle.

‘You weren’t at the cast party last night,’ she said, glancing over my dress. I wondered if she recognised it as Camille’s.

‘Cast party?’

‘At the end of a run there is always a party. Everybody was there, except for you and Camille.’

I hadn’t known anything about a party. Why hadn’t Camille mentioned it?

‘Well, next time make sure you go,’ Fabienne sniffed. ‘It doesn’t look right if you run off with Camille and snub the others.’

It was hot inside the theatre. The walls of Le Chat Espiègle had a way of absorbing and retaining heat that was phenomenal. I wiped at the droplets of sweat on my neck. It was the first time I’d noticed how splotched the wallpaper in the foyer was from water seepage. The whole crumbling structure was riddled with cracks and the carpet reeked of mould. The cashier sat in her booth, stamping tickets for the next show. The fan in the metal cage on the cupboard was turned off. ‘The stupid thing blows the tickets around if I turn it on,’ she complained. I asked her where Monsieur Dargent was and she cocked her head towards the auditorium. ‘With the stage manager, planning out the new show.’

The doors to the auditorium were propped open. A murmur of men’s voices floated out from the darkness. A light on the stage was beaming towards the doors and I had to squint past it to see inside. Monsieur Dargent was
leaning against the stage telling Monsieur Vaimber something about the lighting. My shoes clicked on the floorboards. Monsieur Dargent broke off mid-sentence and looked up. His eyes met mine and he relaxed. I had the impression that he had been expecting someone else.

‘Yes? What is it?’

‘Mademoiselle Casal asked me to give you this,’ I said, holding out the envelope.

Monsieur Dargent regarded me for a moment and his brow furrowed. ‘Bring it here,’ he said. The uneasy expression returned to his eyes.

I shuffled down the aisle towards him. Monsieur Vaimber turned around to see what was happening.

‘When did she give you this?’ Monsieur Dargent asked, snatching the letter from me.

I clenched my toes. ‘Last night.’

‘Where?’

I wondered why he didn’t just open the envelope instead of asking me so many questions. ‘At Nevers.’

Monsieur Dargent glanced at Monsieur Vaimber, then hooked his finger under the flap and ripped open the envelope. I watched him unfold the paper and read it. It couldn’t have been more than a few sentences long from the speed with which he finished it.

‘What does it say?’ asked Monsieur Vaimber.

Monsieur Dargent thrust the paper at me. ‘Read it out to him!’ he said. I took the letter and stared at it for a few seconds before I could bring myself to believe what it said or, more precisely,
all
that it said:

Off to bigger and better things.

Au revoir

C.

‘There must be something more,’ I said. ‘She promised a full explanation.’ I took the envelope from him and searched inside it. But there was nothing.

Monsieur Dargent hissed. ‘Camille has been trying to get out of her contract for a while now. I told her that she could go after this next show. And she promised me that she would stay. This is a disaster. I have no star.’

Monsieur Vaimber looked down his nose at me. ‘It seems you knew about this?’

‘No!’ I said, clenching my fists. ‘Not until last night. That was the first I’d heard that she was going to Paris.’

‘You should have come straight to me last night,’ said Monsieur Dargent. ‘Not waited until the middle of the day. Don’t you know what this means? It means we don’t have a show.’

Despite his warning that without a star there wouldn’t be a show, Monsieur Dargent didn’t call off the afternoon rehearsal. Instead, he waited for everyone to assemble in the auditorium before clambering up onto the stage, running his hands through his hair and announcing that Camille Casal had abandoned the show. A gasp ran along the chorus line and came to an abrupt stop with Claire, who folded her arms across her chest and snickered.

‘You find that amusing, do you, Claire?’ Monsieur Dargent asked.

She shrugged. ‘Camille wasn’t
that
magnificent. You can find another person to do what she did.’

Monsieur Dargent scrunched up his face. In his white suits and coloured shirts, he usually looked like a dandy, if a little worn down at the heel. But on this occasion, with his hair standing out in two cones because he kept running his hands through it, he looked like a crazed dandy.

‘The only solution, besides cancelling the show, is to entice someone with “a name” from another show. And for that I need money. Will you still think it is so amusing when I have to skim that money off everybody’s wages?’

Claire’s face dropped. A murmur ran through the group.

‘You can’t do that,’ said Madeleine. ‘We’ve got contracts.’

‘I’ve learned that they don’t mean much,’ said Monsieur Dargent, sounding more hurt than angry now. ‘Which do you want more—a contract or a job?’

Although Monsieur Dargent didn’t mention my association with Camille’s betrayal, I noticed the looks the others were casting at my dress. It wouldn’t take long before they started to put a picture together. The thought of their already pathetic wages being cut soured the atmosphere, which was foul enough with the benzene stink of the cleaned costumes and the paint the artists were using to create the backdrops for the next show.

I watched Monsieur Dargent storm out of the auditorium. I was furious at Camille for turning me into her stooge, but even more angry with myself for letting her. Why had she invited me to Nevers? She could have left the envelope in her dressing room. Or was she worried somebody would find it
before
she left for Paris? Camille’s departure couldn’t have come at a worse time because I needed Monsieur Dargent and the cast on side. True to his word, Monsieur Dargent had given me more parts in the new show which was based around the story of Scheherazade. I appeared in five of the seven chorus acts, and even had a vaguely glamorous role in the pantomime as a reclining odalisque in the Palace of Shah Shahryar. I was sufficiently employed not to have to work as a dresser, and Monsieur Dargent had hired a mulatto seamstress to replace me. But what I really wanted to ask him for was a singing part.

‘Simone!’ Gilles, the choreographer, called out to me. ‘Join the chorus girls on stage and I’ll walk you through your routine.’

I made my way up onto the stage. Gilles had been Camille’s dance partner in a
pas de deux
in ‘On the Seas’. He was nineteen years old with skin as smooth as chocolate. All the girls swooned over him, even though he preferred the company of the male members of the cast and crew.

The opening number was set in a harem. The chorus would perform the dance of the ‘seven veils’—or Gilles’ interpretation of it—dropping each veil to eventually appear in sheer harem pants and jewelled satin brassieres.
My comic role was to shimmy along with them in the beginning, but to have one continuous veil which I could never quite unravel. Claude had used his magic skills to create the required prop: a bolt of silk hidden in the trunk of a palm tree with one end wound around me, giving the appearance that the more I tugged the veil, the more material appeared. Monsieur Dargent thought the idea so amusing that he had scripted me to appear in several scenes afterwards, including an intimate one between Scheherazade and the Shah, still trying to unravel my veil.

‘At first you must look like a regular chorus girl, Simone,’ Gilles said. ‘But then…with your eyes and a little twist of your mouth, you give a signal that all is not right.’

Gilles shimmied and gyrated his way through the routine, stopping every so often to point out something of importance. ‘If you roll your shoulders at the same time as you snake your arms, it is more sensuous.’ He looked feminine when he danced, although his bare chest and back were muscular.

‘Okay, now you try and I’ll watch,’ he said, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. He nodded to Madame Dauphin who began an oriental tune on the tinny rehearsal piano.

We moved in time to the music and Gilles flittered among us, calling out directions and correcting our positions. I imagined how the music would sound with the pipes and drums of an Arabian orchestra and let my limbs and torso flow with the rhythms and arcs the music suggested.

‘Nice,’ Gilles whispered in my ear. ‘You’re a natural dancer.’

If only Madame Baroux could hear him say that, I thought.

The doors to the foyer slammed open, sending a shudder through the hall and loosing a sprinkle of plaster from the ceiling. Madame Dauphin froze on a chord and the chorus girls stopped mid-twirl. The figure of Monsieur Dargent
loomed like a phantom against the daylight from the foyer. Even from where I was standing I could see that his face was red.

‘Scandal!’ he shouted, his voice echoing around the space. He held up a newspaper in his fist. ‘SCANDAL!’

Claire glared at me. I held her gaze. I may have delivered Camille’s bad news but I had nothing to do with any scandal. And yet a niggling feeling in my stomach told me that if something dreadful wasn’t going to happen to me, it was certainly going to happen to someone else.

‘Simone Fleurier!’ Monsieur Dargent shouted. ‘Step forward so I can see you!’

I froze to the spot at the sound of my name, but the cast shuffled to the sides so that Monsieur Dargent was looking at me down a human corridor, like Moses standing before the opening of the Red Sea.

‘Have you seen this?’ he asked, brandishing a copy of
Le Petit Provençal
. I shook my head. He unfolded the newspaper so I could see the front-page headlines:

Heir to Soap Fortune Runs Away With Music Hall Star

Steals Family Jewels

Lovers Helped by Comedian Chorus Girl

‘I did no such thing,’ I protested.

‘Shh!’ said Monsieur Dargent. He began reading the article in a theatrical voice.

As well as withdrawing money from his trust account, Monsieur Gosling stole a diamond necklace, bracelet and tiara from his mother’s jewellery collection, claiming in his farewell letter that he would destroy the heirlooms if his family attempted to stop him. It appears that the heir to the Marseilles soap fortune intends to put the full force of his wealth behind helping Mademoiselle Casal launch herself in Paris. According to diners at the exclusive restaurant Nevers, the couple was not acting alone. A young girl, believed to be the comedian chorus girl from Le Chat Espiègle, Simone
Fleurier, seems to have assisted the couple in their flight. They have been dubbed ‘The Romeo and Juliet of Marseilles’ for defying the Gosling family and finding true love in each other’s arms.

Laughter sounded throughout the auditorium. I felt a lump in my throat and couldn’t have spoken even if I had thought of something to say. The Romeo and Juliet of Marseilles? Camille was using Monsieur Gosling.

‘Fire Simone!’ Claire screeched. ‘Before she ruins the rest of the show.’

‘Good riddance,’ agreed Paulette. ‘She has been nothing but a nuisance from the beginning!’

Monsieur Dargent knitted his brows. ‘Fire her? Are you insane? This is a SCANDAL! And do you know what a scandal means? PUBLICITY!’

I
t is one thing to get your name on the billing because you have earned it with your talent; and quite another for it to be there because you have been involved in a scandal. Each time I saw my name on Le Chat Espiègle’s billboard, I cringed. Monsieur Dargent had created a new role for me: I played a handmaiden who helped Scheherazade’s younger sister and the Shah’s brother to elope. The characters, played by Fabienne and Gilles, risked their lives for love in the mood of misogyny and terror that the Shah had unleashed in the palace, and they turned to a handmaiden to help them escape. ‘Just as she helped “The Romeo and Juliet of Marseilles” in real life,’ the publicity read. I was interviewed by
Le Petit Provençal
and, with Monsieur Dargent twisting my arm, went along with the story that I had assisted in the love tryst.

My unearned billing made me more determined to speak to Monsieur Dargent about a singing part. After the first rehearsal of the pantomime sketch with Gilles and Fabienne, I caught him before he left the auditorium.

‘Can I speak with you?’ I whispered, glancing over my shoulder.

Fabienne and Gilles were still on stage, discussing some changes to their blocking. Paulette and Madeleine were near the wing, heads close together, gossiping. They hadn’t been required in the skit but had hung around from the earlier chorus line rehearsal. Paulette looked up and glared at me. I turned back to Monsieur Dargent. I would have preferred to wait until everyone had left, but with the show
going into production I needed to speak to him as soon as possible.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘Have you found a Scheherazade yet?’

He tucked his notes under his arm and fiddled with his cravat. ‘I am going to Nice tomorrow to see someone. Why? Have you heard from Camille?’

I drew a breath. ‘No, I’d like to try out for the part.’

Monsieur Dargent shook his head. ‘I don’t have understudies in this show. I can’t afford them. And everyone is fully occupied.’

‘I meant for
the part
.’

Monsieur Dargent frowned and ran his finger down the side of his nose. I was taking the chance that he would at least humour me. I wasn’t expecting to get the role of Scheherazade; I was trying for a chance to show him what I could do and perhaps get a solo singing part. I hoped that if he liked my voice he would give me Fabienne’s role and let her play Scheherazade, but I had become savvy enough to know that if I asked to try out for her role directly, it would only cause trouble.

Monsieur Dargent reached into his pocket and glanced at his watch. ‘Go and find Madame Dauphin,’ he said. ‘Pick a couple of songs and I’ll be back here at four o’clock to listen to them.’

I wiped my palms on my tunic. ‘Thank you, Monsieur Dargent,’ I said. ‘Thank you!’

The news of my having approached Monsieur Dargent for the lead part spread throughout the cast in minutes. On the way to see Madame Dauphin, I passed the chorus girls’ dressing room and overheard Claire say to the others, ‘Simone is getting too big for her boots. I’d like to fix her.’ I hated the bitchiness of backstage life. After I had been given a billing for the show, even Jeanne had stopped speaking to me. Such was the jealousy and insecurity of our lives. Only Marie, with her rosy cheeks and effusive charm, remained friendly.

‘Good luck,’ she said, slipping into the hallway when she
saw me heading down the stairs. ‘I can’t stay after the rehearsal to watch you but I know you’ll do well.’

Madame Dauphin was waiting for me in the room under the stage. She opened a satchel and dumped a pile of sheet music on the floor. ‘Take your pick,’ she said. ‘Whatever you think you’d be good at.’

I bent down to examine the pile. ‘I can’t read music,’ I told her, shooing away a beetle that had fallen out with the mess of paper. ‘Perhaps you can help me choose?’

‘Oh?’ Madame Dauphin said, squinting at me over the top of her pince-nez. I didn’t let her tone of disapproval discourage me. I knew that Fabienne and Marcel couldn’t read music either and that they learned everything by ear. Madame Dauphin took a folder from the top of the piano and shuffled through the song sheets. ‘I’ll choose something from the score then,’ she said, flicking through the music for ‘Scheherazade’. ‘We will try two numbers. One upbeat and one slow, so you can show your range.’

I listened to the first number, and joined in as soon as I understood the melody. My voice resonated in the empty basement. It sounded clear and pretty. But Madame Dauphin didn’t compliment me; in fact, she showed no expression the entire rehearsal.

Who cares? I told myself. I won’t let her put me off.

I was pleased with my performance and after an hour left to attend the chorus line rehearsal with Gilles, confident that I would impress Monsieur Dargent with my audition. I tried to keep my thoughts from straying while Gilles took us through the harem routine until he was satisfied that we rolled our hips and undulated our stomachs with ease. ‘You’re as stiff as a corpse,’ he said to Claire, who screwed up her nose at him as soon as he turned his back.

At four o’clock the dance rehearsal ended and Monsieur Dargent made his way into the hall with Monsieur Vambier. They slipped into seats in the second row. Madame Dauphin turned around and nodded to them. She shuffled through her notebook on top of the piano and unfolded it
at the first song we had rehearsed that afternoon. Monsieur Dargent took out his watch and placed it on his knee. I glanced around the room. To my dismay, the other girls showed no sign of leaving. Madeleine, Ginette and Paulette took seats a few rows behind Monsieur Dargent and whispered to each other behind their hands. I wondered why Monsieur Dargent didn’t send them away. Perhaps he wanted to see how I performed in front of an audience.

‘Whenever you are ready, Simone,’ Monsieur Dargent called out.

Even on that first night, when I was pushed on stage for the Hawaiian number, I hadn’t felt as nervous as I did now. I didn’t have anything to lose then. The stakes were higher this time: if I failed the audition I wasn’t likely to be allowed to try again.

Madame Dauphin ripped into the song’s introduction without waiting to see if I was ready. She played it an octave higher than the one we had practised in and I had no choice but to start singing:

It’s up to me—don’t be frightened

It’s up to me—I’ll bewitch him

It’s up to me—I can do it…

In the wrong key, my voice sounded tight. I strained to lift it higher. I’d planned to give the song a warm, sweet tone. Instead, I was singing like a shrill bird. But Monsieur Dargent didn’t appear displeased. He was leaning forward, studying me. If I get through this okay, I thought, he might let me try it again in the right key.

Madeleine and Paulette sank lower into their seats and giggled. I did my best not to let them intimidate me. Monsieur Vaimber was staring at the ceiling. But that wasn’t a bad sign; if he didn’t like me, he would have stopped me before now. My body loosened and my confidence increased.

Other girls have gone to their deaths—but not me

I’m stronger

Other girls have lost their heads—not me

I’m smarter

He might be the ruler

But I am a woman.

The curtain in the wing next to me fluttered. I thought it was the breeze, then lost concentration for a moment when I saw Claire lurking in the opening. She was in full view of me but hidden from the audience. ‘You won’t get it,’ she muttered, just loud enough for me to hear. ‘You’re awful and you’re as skinny as a bean.’

Irritation swept over me but I resolved to carry on. If I stopped the number, Claire might get in trouble but it would end my audition too. Monsieur Vaimber was a stickler for continuing to sing no matter what. ‘Performers need to know how to hold the attention of a hostile audience as well as a friendly one,’ he often said. Le Chat Espiègle certainly had its share of hostile audiences. Even towards the end of its run, when ‘On the Seas’ had full houses, the success of the show didn’t stop rowdy hecklers throwing cigarette butts and programs rolled into missiles at the chorus girls. But Monsieur Vaimber made it clear that we were to go on despite the hooting and catcalls.

A burning sensation seared my throat and my eyes watered. I tried to blink away whatever it was that was irritating them. A stinging vapour filled the air. Through my blurry vision I saw Claire pouring something from a bottle onto the floor. It ran towards my feet in an oily line. In the heat, the smell was noxious: ammonia. My hand flew to my mouth and I missed a beat. I tried to take in enough air to complete the chorus but I couldn’t breathe. My voice went off key. Monsieur Vaimber shook his head and Monsieur Dargent frowned. I tried to struggle on but it was no use. The blood pounded so loudly in my ears that I could barely hear the music.

I was on the verge of crying when I reached the final chord. But before I could catch my breath, Madame Dauphin launched into the next number. Monsieur
Dargent held up his hand. ‘I think that’s enough for today,’ he said.

‘But Monsieur Dargent,’ I gulped. ‘It’s not fair…I can do better. It’s just that—’

‘It is one thing to start well but you need to be able to finish a song well too,’ he said. ‘Otherwise how can you perform a whole show?’

It was not said unkindly, but there was no need for him to say anything more.

The following morning, I woke to see that the sky had turned grey. Water gurgled down the drainpipes. Rain that alternated between downpour and drizzle splattered the houses and turned the streets into dank-smelling channels of mud. The spring rains had been so brief as to be barely noticeable and the summer had been dry. I hadn’t seen rain like this since the day of my father’s death and for a moment I thought I was at home again on the farm. A trail of subdued light fell across Bonbon, who was still asleep by my leg. I ran my hand over her silky fur. Long rehearsals and late nights had made me a heavy sleeper but I couldn’t sleep any longer that morning. I pulled the covers around me and listened to the water drip from the roof tiles. I thought about the letter I had received from Aunt Yvette when I returned from the theatre after my disastrous audition.

Dear Simone,

I am very worried to hear about you working in a music hall…I know that you are a good-hearted girl but I have heard bad things about those kinds of places and am concerned about you…Bernard will come to see you as soon as possible. He thinks he can find you work in a factory in Grasse.

PS I have also enclosed a message from your mother.

I was sure that the job Bernard had suggested was light, clean work—probably with perfume—but Aunt Yvette’s letter could not have come at a worse time. I needed her to have confidence in me because I had lost it in myself.

The enclosed message from my mother was a picture she had drawn of a black cat. I had smiled at that through my tear-stung eyes. She was telling me ‘good luck’. I had always been closer to my father than my mother, although I loved them both. Now my father was gone, my mother’s mysterious messages meant more to me than ever.

‘You did not inherit my gifts, Simone,’ my mother had once told me when scrying into the fire. ‘You are too logical. But my, what marvellous gifts you have been given. And what a glorious flame you will ignite when you are ready to use them.’

I squeezed my eyes shut and wondered what face-saving stratagem I would have to use to make myself go back to Le Chat Espiègle for the rest of the show. What hope was there of achieving a better life if I was never going to be anything more than a chorus girl kicking my legs to make seventy francs a week so I could pay the rent on my single room with a communal cold water tap and a lavatory down the hall?

‘But you would have done a great job if it hadn’t been for Claire,’ Marie whispered while we waited in the wings for the harem dance rehearsal that afternoon. ‘She’s the one who spoiled your chance. You should still believe in yourself.’

‘No,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘If I was really good, I would have ignored her.’

‘You are too hard on yourself,’ Marie said, touching my arm. ‘Wait a while. You’re still young. There will be another chance.’

I put on a cheerful smile and wiggled my hips and arms as if I didn’t have a care in the world although the rehearsal was torture. When Gilles called out instructions he either avoided looking at me or stared at me too long. Once I saw him flinch when I caught his eye. The sympathy in his gaze hurt
me more than if he had ignored me. While I practised my solo part, the other girls sat in the front row to watch. Claire made a show of yawning until she was sure that she had caught my attention, then she smiled. I ignored her. She was nothing to me. But my hardened attitude was a day too late.

Monsieur Vaimber supervised the rehearsals while Monsieur Dargent was away in Nice negotiating the contract with the new star. One afternoon, a few days after my audition, he took us through the final number. The whole cast was in the scene, including the Zo-Zo Family who were to be giant birds swooping overhead as Scheherazade and the Shah declared their love for each other. The couple were to be spirited away on a magic carpet, thanks to an illusion involving ropes and mirrors which had been designed by Claude. The scene was to wind up with a frenzied dance by the chorus girls, a song by Fabienne, and me finally unhooking my veil. Madame Baroux filled in for the part of Scheherazade. Most of the time she posed like a prop rather than a performer, but for the final scene she made the effort, despite her walking stick, to strut down the rehearsal staircase on her spindly legs, her vertical axis so perfectly straight that I could almost see the ‘imaginary piece of string’ she so often talked about running from the top of her head to the ceiling. Suddenly, the auditorium door opened and slammed against the wall. We all turned to see Monsieur Dargent standing in the aisle next to a woman with yellow hair.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, gather around,’ Monsieur Dargent called out, waving to us to move forward. We wiped our faces and necks with handkerchiefs and towels and crept towards the edge of the stage.