Wild Lavender (12 page)

‘I would like to introduce Mademoiselle Zephora Farcy—the new star of the show.’ Monsieur Dargent took the woman’s hand with exaggerated courtliness.

It took a few seconds for the cast to recover from their shock and greet her. The skin on Zephora’s forehead was so smooth she couldn’t have been more than thirty but the
rolls of fat on her chest and upper arms were so matronly she could have been anyone’s mother or even grandmother. Her breasts were like two sandbags hanging from her chest and her rotund stomach was barely contained by her girdle.

‘She must be a good singer,’ Gerard whispered.

The stage lighting caught the fuzz on Zephora’s cheeks and made me think of dandelions. Framed by her red lips, her crooked teeth were sensual and her mildly crossed eyes glistened. The smile she flashed at Monsieur Vaimber and the other men in the room was full of feminine charm, but her face turned stony and her mouth pinched into a scowl when she laid eyes on the rest of us.

‘She’s no Camille,’ Fabienne muttered to Marcel but he didn’t hear her. From the way his eyes were shining, he was as taken with the new star as Monsieur Dargent.

It is just as well, I thought. He’s playing the Shah. He has to kiss her.

Oblivious to our stunned expressions, Monsieur Dargent clapped his hands and announced that Mademoiselle Farcy had recently completed a run with Madame Lamare’s Theatre in Nice and before that had performed at the Scala in Paris.

Madeleine and Paulette exchanged glances. The mention of Paris made it more understandable why Monsieur Dargent had chosen Zephora to replace Camille. Having performed in the capital gave her kudos. All Monsieur Dargent would have to do to draw audiences was mention that he had a ‘Paris star’. It wouldn’t matter, at first, if she were any good or not.

Later that afternoon, we rehearsed a scene from the second act that included Zephora, Marcel, Fabienne and myself. Those not in the scene milled around the wings, curious about the new addition to the cast. ‘What’s she doing here when she could be in Paris?’ Claude asked Luisa. ‘Something seems fishy to me.’

‘The chorus girls aren’t needed in this scene any more,’ Monsieur Dargent called from his place in the front row of seats.

‘What?’ asked Claire.

‘Mademoiselle Farcy doesn’t dance, so we don’t need you in the scene. Simone’s dance will be enough.’

The other girls didn’t care either way. They shrugged and left the stage. Only Claire remained, her fists clenched by her side. It was the number where she cartwheeled and danced all the way from the backdrop to the front of the stage; it was practically a solo. She bit her lip and jutted out her chin. For a moment I thought she was going to cry. But she dropped her shoulders and seemed to think better of it. After all, she had rent to pay and the change in schedule wouldn’t affect her wages, only her ego. She flashed her eyes at me and stormed off the stage. I listened to her stomp up the stairs to the dressing rooms. Where had all Claire’s tricks got her now? I could dance. So could Fabienne. If either of us were playing Scheherazade she could have kept her part.

Zephora was unmoved by the chorus girls’ departure. She sat on a bench, reading over the score, oblivious to the rest of us.

Marcel eyed her curiously before sidling up to her. ‘
Bonjour
, Mademoiselle Farcy,’ he said, bowing. ‘We haven’t been properly introduced. I am Marcel Sorel, your leading man. It is a pleasure to meet you.’

Zephora glanced up at him but didn’t smile. ‘I think we should stick to what’s on the page, don’t you?’ she said.

Marcel gaped, puzzled over whether he had been slighted or not. Zephora picked up her score again and gave no indication that she was aware of his existence. He slouched away like a beaten dog.

From the haughty way she looked at me, I knew better than to approach Zephora directly. I took all my instructions from Monsieur Dargent. But I did have to read some lines with Zephora and it surprised me when I heard her shrill voice and muffled enunciation. Up until then I had been feeling embarrassed about being on the stage with a performer whose part I had tried out for and had failed so miserably to get. But any sense of superiority I had was
dashed when Zephora sang. Marcel and Fabienne’s jaws dropped open with awed respect.

Zephora had a commanding voice. It was a touch brassy, and her tremolo was so exaggerated that the floor vibrated with every rolling ‘r’, but when she sang you were drawn to her, like a fish being reeled in to shore. And even though the flesh on her hips wobbled when she shifted her weight from foot to foot, she oozed charisma rather than obesity. Zephora was a beehive dripping with honey. I knew that she was going to be a success with the men in the audience. And considering that about ninety per cent of the people who came to see shows at Le Chat Espiègle were men, that was what really counted.

The following day I had an appointment with Madame Tarasova to be fitted for my costume.

‘Why the gloomy face?’ she asked, glancing up from her sewing machine. Her hair was plaited and coiled on top of her head in a style that was more fetching than her usual tight chignon. I wanted to leave the subject of my failed audition alone and tried to change the conversation by complimenting her on her hairstyle. But Madame Tarasova saw through my tactic and persisted. ‘Well?’ she asked, arching her eyebrows. ‘Who died?’

Vera was hanging costumes on an upper rail with a stick. ‘She’s upset about the audition,’ she said.

Madame Tarasova scoffed. ‘It was your first audition and you were foolish to try one without any preparation. You might be able to get up and sing at a wedding, but it’s not like that on stage. You must practise and practise.’

She stood up from the machine and pulled the measuring tape from around her neck. ‘Why don’t we adjust the costume Camille was supposed to wear?’ she said. ‘The new leading lady is going to need one in an entirely different size.’

‘What should I have done for my audition?’ I asked Madame Tarasova, when she bent down to measure my legs.

‘I was wardrobe mistress with the opera in St Petersburg,’ she said. ‘Believe me, good performers practise for hours to make what they do look easy. You just don’t stand on stage and become a star, even if they make it seem that way.’

Vera held a scarf against my hair. ‘You’d make a much better Scheherazade than Zephora if you trained your voice,’ she said.

‘You think so?’ I asked, my mood lifting.

‘Your tone is good,’ she said, ‘but your voice is untrained. There is no way you could sing for a whole show.’ She drew in a breath and sang a phrase from one of the ‘Scheherazade’ songs, holding the last note before letting it fade away. The sound was even and pretty.

Vera laughed at my astonishment. ‘I was planning to be a singer myself, but the Bolsheviks had other ideas.’

‘You could help Simone with her voice,’ said Madame Tarasova, slipping her tape measure around my waist. ‘Although she will need proper lessons eventually.’

‘We can practise on the piano in the basement,’ agreed Vera. ‘We can do the songs from “Scheherazade” before anyone else comes along for rehearsals.’

I chided myself for being so easily defeated. The problem was not me; it was a lack of experience. And Madame Tarasova and Vera seemed to think that if I worked at it, I could be a good singer.

‘Scheherazade’ was Le Chat Espiègle’s most successful show. By the end of the second week word had spread and the crowd lining up for seats spilled from the cashier’s desk, through the foyer, down the steps and along the square. The patrons weren’t even deterred when the skies opened and a torrent of rain poured down. They merely raised their umbrellas and chatted beneath them while waiting for their tickets. As well as our regular clientele of sailors and factory workers, the publicity had attracted shipping clerks,
teachers, doctors, hairdressers, town officials and other respectable inhabitants of Marseilles. Monsieur Dargent was aglow with his first real success. The gauntness that had sucked in his face since Camille’s departure vanished in a matter of days. He slapped our backs, pinched our cheeks and took to smoking cigars like a true impresario.

The success of the show didn’t put a stop to the backbiting, however. If anything, it became worse. Gerard watched from the wings, rubbing his hairy knuckles and muttering about everyone else’s shortcomings. And even though Claire’s cartwheel dance was put back in the show, it didn’t stop her scowling at Monsieur Dargent or hissing at me. There was a rumour that Paulette had replaced Madeleine’s spirit gum with honey and that was why she had lost her
cache-sexe
during the Wednesday night show and had to be pulled offstage by Monsieur Vaimber. In retaliation, Madeleine had mixed sand into Paulette’s cold cream, and now Paulette was nursing grazes on her cheeks and chin. But, somehow, all those egos vying for the limelight improved the performance of the cast.

Zephora remained aloof and her coldness even began to extend to Monsieur Dargent. Before and after the show she would retreat to her dressing room and refuse callers. One night Monsieur Dargent begged her to show her face to the fans waiting at the stage door and he received the curt reply, ‘Go away! I’m too tired!’

Fabienne and I were sent down to make conversation with Zephora’s eager fans instead, although I had no idea what to talk about with the multitude of babbling men outside the stage door. Fabienne, who took adulation as her lot, helped me. ‘Oh, don’t harass her. She’s far too young for you. Come over here and talk to me.’

Although we were rushed off our feet, Vera wasted no time in getting down to work on my voice. No matter how late we finished the night before, we met every morning at eleven o’clock in the basement. She played notes on the piano for me to sing to, moving higher and higher as far as I could follow.

‘You have a delightful mezzo-soprano voice,’ she told me. ‘And your projection is good. I don’t know what happened at your audition. Perhaps it was nerves.’

Vera explained that I could overcome my nerves if I breathed properly. ‘Don’t take in any more air than you would need to sniff a rose, then let your voice glide over that cushion of air,’ she said. We sang all the songs from ‘Scheherazade’ and she demonstrated how to phrase them properly and put the right amount of emotion into each one.

I was enjoying my lessons and performing so much that, instead of feeling jealous of Zephora, I tried to learn from her. I studied her whenever I could, from the wings or during rehearsals. Although her voice had a different quality to mine, I memorised her delivery of the songs, imitating her when I was on my own. Then when I met with Vera, we adapted the songs to my own style.

During one matinée I was surprised when Zephora gave a listless performance. Her voice sounded hoarse and, despite her make-up, there were circles under her eyes and a feverish tinge to her cheeks.

‘Please take me with you to the Shah’s palace,’ I said, giving her the cue for her song. She stiffened. For a moment I thought she had forgotten her lines and tried to mouth them to her but she did not respond. Fabienne tried to get Zephora’s attention by stamping her foot, but that didn’t work either. The conductor lifted his arms and directed the orchestra to play a few bars of the song before going back to the beginning. His trick succeeded: Zephora snapped out of her dream and began singing. Fabienne and I let out a sigh, but Zephora’s heroic song about going to the palace to outsmart the Shah came out more as a whimper.

‘If you ask me, she’s taking opium,’ said Fabienne later in the dressing room. ‘I hope she pulls herself together for tonight’s performance. It’s shaping up to be our biggest night yet.’

‘Ah,’ sighed Luisa, ‘she’ll come to no good if she takes drugs. Where we performed in Rome, one of the chorus
girls used to snort cocaine. One night she fell asleep on the rail tracks.’

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘She was squashed like a tomato!’ replied Luisa, slapping her hands together.

Fabienne and I grimaced. I had heard that in the fancier clubs, audiences were sometimes served drugs on platters, and occasionally a chorus girl at Le Chat Espiègle received a bag of crystalline powder from an admirer. Often I would go into the laneway to escape the heat of my dressing room and find groups of men there, huddled together or staring at the sky, their noses streaked with white powder. Once, during interval, I saw a man screaming that he had cockroaches crawling under his skin. His pupils were dilated to twice the normal size and he was sweating and shaking. Albert threw a bucket of water over him and told him to go away. The man responded by vomiting all over our feet.

The chorus girls who took cocaine said it made them feel ‘on top of the world’. For me, just going out on stage was enough of a rush.

‘Zephora certainly covers up for such a vamp,’ said Fabienne, wiping away her greasepaint with a cloth. ‘Mind you, I would too if I had those size thighs.’

I cut a peach into quarters. It was sour but I was too hungry to care. I wasn’t interested in maligning Zephora; I was worried about what would happen if she pulled out of the show, as Camille had.

‘I bet she was kicked out of Paris,’ said Fabienne. ‘Otherwise why would you want to play at this theatre when you could be strutting your stuff before millionaires at the Scala?’

‘I hear there will be a few reporters in the audience tonight,’ I said, trying to change the subject. ‘I hope they give us good reviews.’

‘I hope there will be a few rich men in the audience,’ laughed Fabienne, clutching her breasts and pushing them skyward. ‘And I hope that they will give me good reviews too.’

I sat in front of the mirror and watched my hand tremble. I put on my eye make-up, rubbed it off and daubed it on again. The liner was still crooked and the flicks at the corner of each eye were too curly. My shadow and eyeblack looked like bruises on my lids. I sighed, picked up my facecloth and charcoal pencil, and poised to try all over again.

I had received a telegram from Bernard saying that he was coming to tonight’s performance. The last letter I had written home had been to tell them I was working as a seamstress. I hadn’t said anything about performing on stage. I was sure Bernard was coming to see if Le Chat Espiègle was a legitimate establishment and to allay some of Aunt Yvette’s fears. What a shock he was in for.