Wild Lavender (37 page)

‘Are you so surprised?’ asked André, reaching over and touching my hand. ‘I have loved you ever since I saw you at the Café des Singes.’

I wanted to tell him that I had been dreaming of him for years, but I couldn’t speak. Where was the sense in this? If he had loved me since first seeing me, why had he brought Mademoiselle Canier to Berlin? Why had he never responded to any of my hints?

‘You forget that you were the one who said you only wanted a professional relationship,’ he said, when I finally found the words to question him. ‘I have been in love with you all along. But every time I tried to get close to you, I was thwarted.’

I thought back to André’s visit to my dressing room at the Casino de Paris and my self-righteous speech at Maxim’s, and couldn’t help blushing. ‘But surely you noticed my feelings had changed?’ I protested.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But there were things I needed to sort out.’

I was so lightheaded I thought I might float out of my chair and drift around the room. Was I dreaming? André was telling me that he loved me. ‘What things did you have to sort out?’ I asked.

‘My father.’

My joy deflated. ‘Your father?’

He turned away. ‘I didn’t want my father to think you were someone to amuse myself with until I married someone else. I respect you too much.’

I remembered the wink Monsieur Blanchard had given me when André and I had visited the family in the Dordogne. That was exactly how he had seen me. ‘Has your father given his permission then?’ I asked.

‘Not exactly,’ André said, looking at me again. ‘But he likes you and respects your work, and that’s a start. I am twenty-three now. If we wait faithfully until my thirtieth birthday to get married, my father can have no hesitation that we are meant for each other.’

I glanced at my plate. André sounded confident but doubt gnawed at me. I understood the power Monsieur Blanchard wielded, not only over his own family but over the whole of France. Marrying without his permission would be next to impossible.

André leaned across the table and pulled me towards him. ‘I don’t want to wait to hold you any longer,’ he whispered.

I looked up at him. ‘André, this is crazy!’ I said. ‘Do you realise how crazy this is? Nobody starts a love affair like this. We have known each other for three years and we have never even kissed.’

‘That’s not true,’ he said. ‘You have forgotten New Year’s Eve in Berlin.’

‘That
was
you?’

‘I thought you might have guessed that.’

I shook my head. ‘You surprised me. Besides, I could never tell…’

The wine steward headed towards us again. He raised his eyebrows and I shook my head. He gave a nod and disappeared to the other side of the room. André kissed me. The softness of his lips made my heart melt and my flesh burn. The flame spread from my lips to my spine and down my legs.

When the wine steward finally made it to our table, he would have found a note on it asking him to send champagne to us by room service. André and I had a lot of catching up to do.

This can’t be real, I told myself, as André slipped my camisole down my shoulders and nuzzled his mouth against my breast. His kisses sent tingles down my spine and the backs of my calves. I clutched his hair and breathed in his sandalwood scent. He lifted his eyes to mine and kissed my lips.

Most love affairs start with a passion that fizzles into friendship, if the lovers are lucky, or turns cold and dies if they are not. But André and I had taken the best journey of all. We were friends who had become lovers. We didn’t have to build trust, it was already there. Every touch, every exploration, was only an extension of what we had felt for years.

I glanced at the mural of dancing nymphs on the wall in the cabin. I had heard the bawdy tales of sexual encounters from the chorus girls, and the horror stories of first-time experiences. But there was nothing frightening about being with André. I dissolved wherever he touched me. I ran my fingers over his broad shoulders and muscular arms, admiring his beauty. He slipped his hands under me and lifted my hips to his mouth.

‘Does that feel nice?’ he asked, his breath on my thigh.

‘It all feels nice,’ I told him.

I imagined myself sitting in a river on a hot day, the water tickling my flesh. André’s lingering touches buoyed me up. ‘I love you,’ he whispered, lifting himself over me and planting kisses on my collarbone. I felt his hardness gently push against me. I opened my thighs wider to let him inside. I had waited for him so long that there was no resistance. I circled his hips with my legs. As he moved in and out of me, every nerve in my body sprang to life. I was filled with light. A burning sensation swept across my chest and an ache of pleasure pulsated from between my thighs, making me gasp and my back arch. André moved faster, his own breath coming quicker. I reached out and clutched a pillow, my nails tearing the material. The light became brighter and brighter before exploding into stars and floating away.

Apart from dining in the ship’s restaurant or taking Kira out for walks on the deck, André and I spent the rest of the voyage in bed. We had agreed to be careful that I not fall pregnant until we were married, and André boasted that he had bought every
capote anglaise
that the ship’s pharmacy stocked. ‘Everyone else is going to have to hold off or tie a knot in it,’ he laughed.

On the night I was to sing for the captain and first-class passengers, André and I woke up at eight and scrambled to bathe and dress before my performance at nine o’clock. I was trained for quick costume changes, but my problem was the bird’s nest our afternoon’s lovemaking had made out of the back of my hair.

‘I will have to cut it,’ said André, holding the ball of tangled hair and trying to tug a comb through it.

‘No!’ I said. ‘I am not having a bald patch at the back of my head.’

‘Maybe we can put a hat over it, or a scarf?’

‘Neither will go with what I’m wearing.’

We tried to smooth it out with André’s hair oil but that just made my hair look flat.

‘Maybe we should use egg white from the kitchen?’ he suggested, although we only had half an hour left to get to the dining room. Eventually we decided to wash it in the basin. After a rubdown with the towel I stood with my head out the porthole, letting the fierce wind blow it dry. The result was a wavy bob which hid the knot and didn’t look too bad when we tamed the frizz with some hair cream.

I sang four numbers and was a success with the audience. I was also a success at the beauty parlour the next day, where the hairdressers were besieged by women requesting the ‘new Simone Fleurier do’.

‘It’s really quite easy,’ André told one woman who came up to ask for my autograph. ‘But you do need to spend an afternoon on it.’

On the last day of our journey, André and I were up at dawn to join the other passengers waiting to sail into New York Harbour. We cheered when we passed the Statue of Liberty and the Manhattan skyline loomed up ahead. I felt a surge of joy and hope: André’s tenderness had given me confidence in the future of our love. After all, hadn’t Liane de Pougy married her Prince Ghika? And Winnaretta Singer her Prince Edmond de Polignac? They had lived much racier lives than I had. There was nothing André’s family could reproach me for except not being born into money.

André and I kissed, as happy as a couple on their honeymoon. Although, of course, we were not married. Not yet.

T
he Ziegfeld Follies of New York were as famous as the Folies Bergère in Paris, but while Paul Derval adhered to the French dictum that ‘uniformity breeds boredom’, Ziegfeld was famous for his ‘factory’ of beauties with long necks, similar proportions and homogeneous height. ‘The perfect Ziegfeld girl has measurements of a bust of thirty-six inches, a waist of twenty-six inches and hips exactly two inches bigger than her bust,’ he was quoted as saying.

At the time Andrè and I arrived in New York, musical theatre was undergoing changes. Whereas the music hall had been born of variety acts, the American public liked musicals in which the songs and dances revolved around storylines. Ziegfeld had made himself a millionaire all over again the previous year by following the new trend with two of the most successful productions of his career: ‘Show Boat’ and ‘Whoopee’. But when we arrived at the Ziegfeld Theatre on Fifty-Fourth Street, with its bowed façade that looked like a wedding cake, it didn’t take us long to sense that something was wide of the mark with ‘Show Girl’.

We were greeted in the foyer by Ziegfeld’s secretary, Matilda Golden, who he always called ‘Goldie’. She was a softly spoken woman who told us that Ziegfeld was in a meeting and had asked her to show us around the theatre until he was finished.

‘It was designed by Joseph Urban, the same man who is designing the sets for the show,’ explained Goldie, opening the doors to the auditorium. ‘He’s from Vienna.’

André and I followed her into the delicately lit space. I could see a resemblance to the work of the artist Gustav Klimt in the gold tones of the carpeting and seats. The colour flowed up the walls and blended into a mural of romantic figures from various epochs, including Adam and Eve. It covered the ceiling and formed a border around the stage. The hall had been built without mouldings and gave the impression that we were standing inside a giant decorative egg.

‘Monsieur Urban is a true artist,’ I said, my excitement growing at the prospect of working in such a breathtaking theatre.

Goldie curled a ringlet behind her ear. ‘Mister Ziegfeld
never
compromises on beauty,’ she said.

After showing us the music library and the dressing rooms with their bevelled mirrors and en suite bathrooms, Goldie took us to the seventh floor to meet Ziegfeld. My stomach fluttered in anticipation. Could this really be me, Simone Fleurier, here in New York and on her way to meet the great impresario Florenz Ziegfeld?

As it turned out, I heard him before I saw him. Goldie raised her fist to knock on the door to his suite but before her knuckles had a chance to touch the wood, a nasal voice roared, ‘Damn it! Don’t you dare storm into my office and give me drivel like that!’

I assumed that the voice was Ziegfeld’s because he had said ‘my office’. Later I would realise that his pinched voice was what they called the ‘Chicago accent’.

Another voice answered. ‘It would help if your genial Bill McGuire could get his rear end into motion. We could write songs so much faster
if
we had a script!’

The second man’s voice was more resonant than Ziegfeld’s. The accent was American too, but the way he stressed some of his syllables in odd places, he could have been Russian.

Ziegfeld roared again. ‘Just do what I asked you to, George! Go to that trunk of yours and dig out a couple of hits!’

‘Oh, dear,’ said Goldie, ushering us towards her office. ‘They’re still at it.’

I didn’t really want to be bundled off to Goldie’s office—the conversation was interesting—but I followed dutifully.

‘And you, Ira,’ continued Ziegfeld. ‘You’ve got nothing to complain about. I’ve got you Gus Khan to help with the lyrics.’

George? Ira? Ziegfeld must be talking to the Gershwin brothers—the songwriting duo famous for its energetic music and witty lyrics! I nudged André who nodded back at me. I hadn’t known that they were the composers for the show. I wondered what kind of song they had come up with for me. Something sensual? Something urbane? Or maybe a clever play on words?

Goldie offered us seats next to her desk and shut the door. ‘Mister Ziegfeld hopes to repeat Maurice Chevalier’s success with you, Miss Fleurier,’ she said, pouring us coffee. ‘His guest appearance in “Midnight Frolics” was very well received.’

‘Do you have a copy of Mademoiselle Fleurier’s score?’ André asked. ‘We want to start rehearsing as soon as possible. The American scene is new for us and we want to make sure that she fits into the show smoothly.’

So much for our holiday, I thought with a smile. André was straight into business. Although this time, at least, we were sharing a hotel room.

Goldie took a slurp of her coffee and waved her hand in front of her mouth. ‘Boy, that was hot,’ she said, glancing at her telephone. Before André could repeat his question, Goldie swung around on her chair, reached for a plate piled with doughnuts and thrust it at him.

‘Try a nut?’ she said, stuffing one straight into his mouth. ‘The hole’s the best bit.’

The door to Ziegfeld’s office slammed and footsteps thumped down the corridor. I hadn’t heard Ira speak earlier but I assumed it was he who said to his brother, ‘You know what I’m gonna answer next time somebody asks us “What comes first? The words or the music?”’

‘What?’ George asked.

‘I’m gonna say, “The contract”.’

Goldie’s telephone rang and she picked up the receiver. ‘Yes, I’ll send them in right away.’ She smiled at us. ‘Mister Ziegfeld is ready for you now.’

I had heard from one of the American dancers at the Adriana that Ziegfeld was a tyrant and his manner of speaking to the Gershwin brothers supported that image. So when I followed Goldie into the impresario’s office I was surprised to find a smiling man with the most fascinating eyes I had ever seen. Round and twinkling like a teddy bear’s, they were the kind of eyes that never grow old.

‘Mademoiselle Fleurier!’ Ziegfeld gushed, lifting my hand to his lips. He nodded briefly to André before slipping his arm around my shoulders and guiding me to a cluster of easy chairs. His office was the size of a banquet hall and furnished with antique tables and cabinets. Everywhere I looked—on the shelves, on his desk, on a refectory table—I saw elephants made from jade, gold or silver. They were charging with their trunks raised.

‘Ah,’ said Ziegfeld, clapping his hands, ‘you’re observant, Mademoiselle Fleurier. They’re my good luck charms. If the trunks were down that would mean bad luck.’

Despite the heated argument I had heard only a few moments before, Ziegfeld looked as cool as a member of the White Raj sipping on iced tea and being fanned by slave girls. He was dressed in white linen pants and a grey jacket with a gardenia in the buttonhole. Each time he moved the scent of Guerlain’s
eau de cologne
seemed to float up around him.

‘Mademoiselle Fleurier,’ he said, glancing me over with those lively eyes, ‘we have such magnificent ideas for costumes for your act. Magnificent! Magnificent! You will be like a beautiful constellation bursting out on the stage.’

‘I am wondering about the score, Mister Ziegfeld,’ said André. ‘I would like to get Mademoiselle Fleurier settled into her rehearsal routine as soon as possible.’

I wasn’t sure which word offended Ziegfeld the most: ‘score’ or ‘routine’. He screwed up his face and turned as red as someone stuck in an elevator with a bad smell.

‘Young man,’ he sneered, ‘I can see that you are new to the business. My productions are not born of scores, scripts and schedules. If you want those, perhaps you can find yourself a position as a business manager with the Shuberts. The most important thing to start with is a concept of beauty…a dream.’ Turning to me, he added, ‘Mademoiselle Fleurier understands that. She understands it because she is an
artiste
. And
artistes
must not be bothered by mundane things like scores and routines.’

André glanced at me, bemused but not reproached. Even so, I was relieved when he didn’t pursue the matter further. Otherwise I was sure that with Ziegfeld’s temperament we would soon be out of the production and looking for a job with the ‘Shuberts’
,
whoever they were.

‘You know what they say about Ziegfeld, don’t you?’ said André, while we were snuggled up together in our bed at the Plaza Hotel a few mornings later. We had spent the previous day sightseeing: walking the grid system streets of the city hand in hand, our necks craned up towards the Art Deco skyscrapers looming overhead. It was the first modern city I had seen, and after Marseilles, Paris and Berlin, it gave me the impression that I hadn’t just travelled to New York; I had travelled to the moon.

‘You will have to tell me,’ I said.

André made a comical face. ‘They say that he is like a man who goes to a jeweller and can’t decide what he wants, so he buys everything. It is only when he gets home that he sorts out what he wants to keep and what he has to discard. He is known to have thrown away yards of material and dozens of sets when he has changed his mind.’

‘That sounds like an expensive way to work,’ I said,
propping myself up on my elbow and brushing a lock of André’s hair off his forehead. ‘How can he make a profit?’

André shook his head. ‘I’m not sure that he always does. He is good at spending money, that’s for sure. In the past few days I’ve learned that he spends as much time in court fending off lawsuits as he does in his office. On top of that, he is a compulsive gambler.’

It seemed to me that Ziegfeld was well suited to New York. When André and I explored the city we were taken by its pace: everyone spoke quickly, walked fast and listened to jazz, boogie and blues all at once. The architecture screamed of wealth and industry and the magazine racks were full of slick journals promoting the ideal Park Avenue lifestyle:
The New Yorker
,
Vanity Fair
and
Smart Set
. The energy was intense and the city’s inhabitants seemed to do nothing by halves. But I knew that kind of frenetic energy could turn in on itself, because it never looked outward—or inward—closely enough.

‘What have you got me into, André?’ I laughed, then, imitating Ziegfeld: ‘Scripts! Scores! Routines! You imbecile!’

André reached over to the bedside table and opened the drawer. He pulled out a document and placed it on the pillow next to me. ‘
Voila
,’ he said. ‘My father said not to leave France without a completed contract, but I trusted Ziegfeld’s word and agreed to sign it when we arrived in New York. And it seems my hunch was correct.’

I was surprised that André had not waited for a proper contract before we had left France. He was usually fastidious about such things.

André grinned. ‘For
artistes,
payment is not a problem. It is only stagehands, seamstresses and dirty business managers like me who are made to wait.’

I picked up the contract and glanced over it. To my surprise Ziegfeld had already signed it before giving it to André.

‘The part for the payment amount is blank,’ I said, glancing at André. It was careless of Ziegfeld to have done that.

André gave me a wry smile. ‘Mademoiselle Fleurier, the space is blank because you are an
artiste
. You simply fill in the amount that you want to be paid.’

As much as Ziegfeld’s method of working amused us in the beginning, after six weeks of no score, no rehearsals and no word from the impresario, André and I became impatient. Ziegfeld had paid my fee and was footing the bill for our hotel room, so we weren’t disgruntled over money. We were madly in love with each other and every moment we spent together was bliss, but there were only so many nightclubs, zoos, museums and galleries that we could visit before we wanted some routine back in our lives. We were annoyed that we were biding our time when both of us were itching to be working. For all the time Ziegfeld had wasted, I could have made another record in France.

By the seventh week, André was telephoning Ziegfeld twice a day. Each time Goldie told him that the impresario was out of the office.

‘You try,’ André said to me. ‘I have the feeling that he is there, he just doesn’t want to talk to me.’

Goldie put me straight through to Ziegfeld. ‘Now, don’t you worry, Mademoiselle Fleurier,’ he reassured me. ‘Your costume and the set—ah, they will be magnificent!’

I asked when I would start rehearsing.

‘I’ll give you plenty of notice,’ he told me. ‘Now, you get as much rest as possible. People pay a lot of money to see my shows and they don’t want any of our ladies looking tired.’

‘The problem is the writer,’ André told me, after doing some checking himself. ‘The Gershwins are complaining that McGuire turns up hoping to be inspired by their songs. The only problem is, they don’t know what to write about until they see the script.’

‘But the story is from a book,’ I said. ‘It’s about a girl from Brooklyn who wants to become a Ziegfeld chorus
girl. Why is it so difficult to write a script about that? What does McGuire need to be “inspired” for?’

André shrugged. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. I thought Lebaron and Minot were crazy, but at least in the end we had a schedule and we had a show.’

Another two weeks passed and nothing happened. André and I resigned ourselves to the fact that if Ziegfeld didn’t call us in by the end of the week, we should leave for South America. The following day, after dutifully phoning Ziegfeld and being told he was out, André suggested that we go to Brooklyn. We went on the rides at Coney Island and spent the afternoon walking along the promenade.

We were surprised at the mix of nationalities of the people around us. Not just Americans, but Italians, Russians, Poles, Spaniards and Puerto Ricans.

‘If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live?’ I asked André.

He pulled me close so I could feel his warm breath on my cheek and pressed his palm against my heart. ‘I would be happy living anywhere as long as I always belonged here.’

I yielded to his touch. I am the luckiest woman in the world, I thought. I not only have the love of a man I adore but I respect him too. Part of me knew that in New York, away from the society pressures of Paris, André and I were living in a safe harbour. But I kept thoughts of trouble out of my mind and let myself tumble into love without hesitation or safeguards.