Wild Lavender (43 page)

Camille and I starred in the biggest show of that year. Lebaron spent four million francs producing ‘
Les Femmes
’ and recouped more than that in the first two months. Although it was a music hall show with variety acts rather
than an American-style musical, the theme of female competition and solidarity ran throughout it, from the comedians to the chorus girls, from the clowns to the acrobats. Camille and I did all our numbers together, and two of the songs became the year’s greatest hits: ‘Welcome’ and ‘Stone Around My Neck’.

Our reviews blew away all the others including Mistinguett and Maurice Chevalier. One paper described the show as
‘Simone Fleurier’s triumph and Camille Casal’s comeback
’, although Camille saw things differently. ‘I am going out with a bang,’ she confided in me, as we ate supper one evening at Maxim’s after the show. ‘When the run is over, I will retire.’

I was shocked by her announcement. Working together on such a successful production, and sharing the limelight, I felt that we had finally become friends. In the old days, Camille would not have confided in me. But when I asked about her daughter this time, she told me she had taken her out of the convent and that she was staying with a piano teacher in Vaucresson to get a ‘lady’s education’. When I asked why her daughter was not living with her, Camille had answered, ‘I can’t let people know that she is my daughter. I want her to make a good marriage.’

I remembered what she had told me all those years ago in François’s apartment:
men like that don’t marry girls like us!
Even though André had wanted to marry me, the statement had proved true. No matter how successful we became, Camille Casal and I would always be on the outside of society.

‘But you have been so well received,’ I protested to Camille, regarding her decision to retire. ‘You could do anything now. Make a record. Make another movie.’

She shook her head and gave me one of her wan smiles. ‘I only ever sang and danced in order to find myself a rich patron for life,’ she said. ‘I have collected enough trinkets and apartments to last me until I am old, but I never did quite get that. Still, the show isn’t over yet, so who knows what the future may bring.’

One evening there was a knock at my dressing room door. It was the interval, so it wasn’t likely to be the stage manager. And it didn’t sound like my dresser’s knock. I shrugged. My dressing room was still ‘by invitation only’.

Whoever it was knocked again.

‘Who is it?’

No answer.

I tugged the clip from my hair and let my tresses fall loose, smoothing them with my fingertips. If it was one of the stagehands then they were going to get a talking to. I tied my dressing gown at the waist and swung the door open. My heart nearly stopped when I found myself facing André. I had told myself that I had forgotten him, forgotten that I had ever loved him. But one look at his face and I knew that was not true.

‘I’m sorry. I know that you don’t have much time,’ he said. ‘But I haven’t been able to reach you all day.’

Something about him seemed pitiable. His face was still young but the vitality had vanished from it. He was stiff and artificial.

I nodded for him to come inside although my heart was pounding. I could see by the uneasy way his eyes roved about the room that he was as unnerved as I was by this reunion. The chair that he used to sit in was no longer there so I invited him to sit on the sofa. I placed myself on a stool opposite him.

André took a few seconds to compose himself before asking: ‘Did you know that Count Harry died?’

I could not believe what I was hearing. When André had returned from Lyon the year before, he had told me that the Count’s health had deteriorated due to the upheaval of having to flee his home for the second time. But the Count had written soon afterwards that he was on the mend.

‘I can’t believe it,’ I said. ‘He was so full of life.’ I looked up and noticed for the first time the leather folder tucked under André’s arm. I wondered what it was.

‘I am sorry to tell you this in the middle of your performance,’ he said. ‘But the funeral is tomorrow.’

I shook my head. ‘I’m glad you did.’

André took the folder from under his arm and placed it in his lap. He stared at it, as if reluctant to tell me what it contained. But the sound of the call boy making his way down the corridor woke him from his dream.

‘I never told the Count that we weren’t together any more. He thought we were and bequeathed this to us,’ said André, passing the folder to me. ‘It’s the pages from his diary where he wrote about us in Berlin.’

I was surprised by the weight of the folder. It had looked so thin. ‘Berlin?’ I whispered. I didn’t know if I had the strength to remember those days: the Hotel Adlon, the Unter den Linden, the Resi. The past rushed at me and then receded. Seeing André again and hearing of the Count’s death were two shocks too many.

‘Berlin,’ I said again. My mouth was dry and I could barely speak. I saw how uncomfortable and sad André was. I wanted to make this meeting easier for him, but I couldn’t. Each time I looked at his face I couldn’t help thinking of that first time he had come to my dressing room at the Casino de Paris. We had been so young then, just starting out on the adventure of getting to know each other. Now we were standing in the wreckage.

André’s voice faltered. ‘I think it is best if you keep them,’ he said. ‘It is not appropriate for me.’

I drew back. It was as if he had stuck a knife into me and now he was twisting it. But I knew André and understood that he would not do that on purpose. Of course it wasn’t appropriate for him to keep them: he was married.

The call boy knocked on the door. ‘Ten minutes.’

André rose from his chair. ‘I am sorry, Simone,’ he said. I had a sense that he wasn’t apologising for breaking the news about Count Kessler so abruptly but rather he was apologising for our lives.

After André left, I opened the folder and read the first entry:

Met a marvellous young woman today in the company of André Blanchard. Mademoiselle Fleurier approaches each new experience with the same wonder and enthusiasm of a child opening her Christmas packages. She has a spirit that reaches into me, making me feel young again. I am certain that she will accomplish great things: in the music hall and in the grander theatre of life.

That night, I sang my numbers as if in a trance. I had to block out my memories of Berlin. The Count was dead and, in a way, André was too. Our lives were so far apart from each other now that we might as well be living in different countries. Was the André I had seen this evening really the man who had made my career? The first man to have loved me? He was a stranger now. It took supreme effort to get through the show, and when the final curtain came down I retreated to my dressing room where I cried as forlornly as I had the night my father died.

The Count was buried in Père Lachaise cemetery. There was only a handful of mourners at the funeral. Where were all the artists the Count had supported? All the people who had called him ‘friend’ when he was rich and generous? I had only learnt the previous night from André that the Count had been unable to retrieve his paintings and other treasures from his house in Weimar because the authorities had permitted the local population to loot it.

I avoided meeting André’s eyes. The Princesse de Letellier was with him. She was a waif-like woman with blonde curly hair and a wide forehead. Every so often she would turn and stroke André’s arm, letting him know that she was there to support him. I would have preferred to avoid her too, but when I passed her in the aisle she reached out and touched my arm.

‘I am sorry, Mademoiselle Fleurier,’ she said. ‘My husband has told me how much the Count meant to you both.’

The Princesse de Letellier would have known that André had wanted to marry me, but she behaved graciously. I sensed that her sympathy was sincere. I didn’t know a lot about the princess except that she was well-educated and, unlike most of
Tout-Paris
, was the patron of many charities. André had married a decent woman. In other circumstances, perhaps the princess and I might even have been friends.

‘Goodbye, Count Harry,’ I whispered when they lowered the coffin into the ground. I tossed my roses to fall alongside the other dozen that lay over it. I remembered the Count’s mischievous laugh and his sparkling eyes the night he played a joke on me at the Eldorado. Those lively eyes were closed now and he would laugh no more.

I thought of his diary entry and what he had said about his first impression of me. The Count had lived with backbone and, despite his ill health, had lived fully. I idolised him too much to ever put myself in the same league as him. I could not know that his faith in my ability to accomplish things in the grander theatre of life was soon to be put to the test.

J
ean Renoir invited me to the première of his film
La Grande Illusion
at the Marivaux Cinema in June 1937. Monsieur Etienne escorted me and we were both excited to see how French cinema had grown. The story was about three Great War pilots in a German prisoner-of-war camp and their relationship with the commandant. It was a love song between the French and the German soldiers, who could have been brothers if not for the war.

‘Technically it is as good as the American movies,’ said Monsieur Etienne when the lights came up. ‘The picture isn’t blurry and the sound doesn’t scratch.’

Renoir’s directing had always been able to override technical imperfections but now, without them, his vision was magic. I knew from working with him that he didn’t like to fragment scenes in the usual way by having ‘close-ups’ cut into ‘long-shots’. He preferred to shoot his actors in close-up then follow their movements, subtly passing from actor to actor in what he called a ‘ballet of the camera’. In a way it mirrored the natural movement of the eye. Of course, only insiders knew this. To the audience, the movement was so flawless as to be imperceptible.

I congratulated Renoir at the party. ‘It is a beautiful story, so gently told.’

He lifted his eyes. The lively spark I associated with him was not there. ‘Simone, you and I are old friends so I can say this to you. Ever since I started making films, I have had only one theme: our common humanity. When I made this
film I was hoping to stop a war. But I see now that art can’t stop anything. It can only document it.’

The talk in the salons and cafés at that time was whether France was likely to be dragged into war with Nazi Germany. But wasn’t France the most civilised country in the world? Didn’t we, of all nations, truly know how to live? If we could not stop a war, who could?

‘Do you think war is inevitable?’ I asked him.

‘We have traitors and fools to lead us,’ said Renoir. ‘The rest of us just look on in despair.’

One morning, nearly a year after the première, I opened the paper and remembered Renoir’s remark about traitors. The headline announced that there were doubts that the new premier, Edouard Daladier, would defend Poland and Czechoslovakia should they be attacked by Germany. Georges Bonnet, a Hitler sympathiser, had been appointed to the position of foreign minister.

But if the rest of Paris was worried, they didn’t show it. The city was dancing and revelling more ardently than ever.

In July 1938, King George VI and his queen visited France for a royal tour so sumptuous that it cost France twenty-four million francs. I was asked to sing at a gala performance of the best of everything French, which followed a state dinner of
lobster À Marinier
accompanied by 1923 Château d’Yquem. As I sang I was aware that I was part of an expensive publicity stunt. All the pomp and extravagance, the parades through a cheering Paris, the laying of the wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, were to show Hitler that Britain and France were allies. Surely the dictator would not be so foolish as to attack France when we had such a powerful nation on our side?

‘They seem to be missing the point,’ said an exasperated Minot. ‘While we are throwing money at their royalty, the British prime minister is making appeasement deals with Hitler.’ With André no longer in my life and Renoir
overseas, Minot had become my companion in political discussions.

‘
Not a widow, not an orphan for the Czechs
,’ the newspaper headlines were screaming in September. Day after day
L’Action Française
printed on its cover ‘
No! No War!
’ and repeated its claim that it was the Jews who were pushing for war because they didn’t like Hitler’s policies against them.

Hitler had demanded the cession of much of Czechoslovakia. He wanted to claim the Sudetenland, but it was clear that soon he would want the whole country.

‘The idiots,’ Minot said one day when we met for drinks at Café de Flore. ‘Even if the French and British governments don’t care about the shame of deserting an ally, they should at least think about the help the Czechs can give us if we are attacked. The Czechs have the most modern armaments factories in Europe and a well-planned defence along the German border. They are one of the few democracies left in Europe—and we aren’t exactly surrounded by friendly nations.’

After my conversation with Minot at the Café de Flore, I returned to my apartment with a sense of rising fear. Paulette was out for the afternoon so I put the percolator on the stove myself to make coffee. There was a letter from Bernard on top of the other correspondence. When I opened it I found that Aunt Augustine had died and left her house to me. I sat down at the dining room table staring at the view of the Champs élysées and sipping my coffee. Aunt Augustine hated me, I thought. Why would she leave her house to me? I imagined her torn between giving the house to a niece she despised or letting it go to the state. I must have been the lesser of two evils. Of course I would sell the place; I couldn’t stand the miserable memory of it.

Down on the street, a newspaper boy was shouting out the afternoon headlines. People were cheering and calling out the premier’s name, ‘Daladier! Daladier!’, praising him for his ‘enlightened’ policy.

I closed my eyes and remembered the youth who had shouted at me on my first day in Berlin.

We will defeat France! We will drive her to the ground! There will be no more France! No more French! We will spit on her like a used whore!

My skin turned cold. I could almost smell the acrid sweat and malevolence oozing out of the youth’s pores. I rushed to the bureau in the drawing room, pulled out some note paper and began writing.

Dear Bernard,

War is coming to France. You may not feel it in the south yet, but as surely as I breathe I know that the German army is going to invade. I am sending you some extra money this month. Please use it to buy whatever you need long term for the farm. Regarding Aunt Augustine’s house, I think I will have use for it. Please arrange to have it repaired and painted. Please do not discuss these matters with anyone.

I paused. My intuition was making plans ahead of my conscious thoughts. My family were in what was probably one of the safest places to be in France if war did break out—surrounded by rugged mountains and far from major cities, borders and the coast. And Marseilles was within sailing distance of Africa. If the Germans invaded from the north, the south was going to be the best route of escape. But it wasn’t myself or my family I was worried about right now.

‘Simone!’ laughed Odette, rubbing her pregnant stomach. ‘You are making a drama out of nothing. Germany is not going to invade France. And even if they tried, the Maginot line is there to stop them.’

We were in the kitchen of her parents’ house in Saint Germain en Laye. Odette and Joseph were staying there until after Odette had her baby. A sunbeam played through the lace curtains and shimmered on the table. The kitchen
was painted sunny yellow and the furniture was white with blue trims. I watched the steam from the kettle on the stove rise up and arch into the air.

‘I don’t think anybody has faith in the Maginot line any more,’ I said. ‘The bunkers stop where the Belgian border begins.’

‘Because Belgium is our ally,’ she said, setting a cup of coffee and a slice of chocolate cake in front of me before sitting down herself.

‘The Germans will march right over them, as they did in 1914.’

Odette flashed me a dubious look. ‘So you are not a singer any more, Simone,’ she said. ‘Now you are a military strategist.’

‘I can’t see what it has to do with strategy,’ I said. ‘It’s common sense. We French are supposed to be great thinkers, but we are being incredibly stupid.’

Odette’s face stiffened and she shifted in her seat. ‘Joseph has just opened his new shop, and when the baby is born I’m going to help him. He is my husband. If he says there is nothing to worry about, then I have to believe him.’

I glanced at my hands. A mere music hall star I may be, but was Joseph so naive that he didn’t understand the implications for a Jewish family if the Nazis invaded? Surely he had read about the laws that had been passed in Germany? I had once thought that the way the Germans treated the Jews could never happen in France, but now I saw that wasn’t true. The circulations of anti-Semitic newspapers had increased threefold in the last two years.

Odette sipped her coffee and hummed a tune under her breath. As sweet as she was, I knew her well enough to understand that she became obstinate in the face of confrontation. If I wanted to persuade her to leave Paris, I would have to do it over time and subtly. The problem was, I had no idea how much time we had. Odette was married and pregnant. I was facing the end of the world alone. Perhaps that was why I could see things more clearly. There wasn’t much else for me to think about.

‘So have you decided on a name for the baby?’ I asked, changing the subject.

Her eyes lit up and a smile came to her face. ‘Yes. Michel if it is a boy and Simone for a girl.’

My face flushed. I could feel Odette’s love beaming across the table. I knew I was lucky to have a friend like her.

‘Really?’ I asked.

Odette nodded and put her arm on my shoulder. It was wonderful to be loved like that. My broken heart felt almost alive again.

‘I appreciate what you are saying,’ Monsieur Etienne told me when I went to visit him at his office. ‘And I am touched by your concern. But Joseph has a point too. The Germans have a superior airforce, one that has tested itself in Spain. They are just as likely to bomb our ports as they are to invade by land. But what if they are stopped before they even reach Paris? We will have given up our homes and businesses for nothing.’

I sat back in my chair. Was I being neurotic? Odette was staying outside of Paris. If the Germans were to bomb us, she would be safer there than in a house in the centre of Marseilles. For a moment Count Harry’s face on the day of his exile from Germany loomed up before me. I remembered the time I had spent in Berlin and the ominous feeling of darkness that pervaded the decadence. It seemed that the predictions for a second world war, more devastating than the first, were coming true. I had to do my best to warn my friends.

‘Look,’ I said, scribbling out the addresses of the Marseilles house and the farm in Pays de Sault, ‘it is a gut feeling I have. Please keep these in case you need them. Who knows what will happen?’

To my relief, I had no trouble persuading Minot to cooperate with my emergency plan. He had an elderly mother to think about. Lebaron had fled for the United States two months earlier, leaving Minot in charge of the Adriana.

‘I have bought a car and am sending supplies to my family in Provence,’ I told him. ‘If the Germans invade, you and your mother are welcome to come and stay with us.’

‘You are very kind, Mademoiselle Fleurier,’ he said. ‘I will send my paintings to the house in Pays de Sault in advance. I don’t want the Krauts getting their hands on them.’

I smiled, imagining the walls of our twin farmhouses decorated with paintings by Picasso and Dali. Poor Minot, I thought, I hope he doesn’t expect to be staying in a
château
with marble bathrooms. Maurice Chevalier and Joséphine Baker had country retreats, as did many wealthy French people. I had always thought it was something I would buy with André when we married. Such houses had been done up over the years and were no longer the ramshackle structures they had been when I was growing up. But Pays de Sault was still wild country and my family liked simplicity. Our houses were more rustic than chic.

‘Make sure the paintings are packed in crates,’ I told him. ‘You don’t want them to warp in the heat.’

Minot’s cooperation gave me some peace of mind. I questioned myself every day as to whether my impulse was an over-reaction. How embarrassing if, after all this preparation, nothing happened. But how much worse if it did and we were unprepared. There was no hint of concern in the faces of the people who came to my music hall and nightclub appearances. Paris was shining more brightly than ever, with spectacular operas, plays, fashion shows and parties. The Polish ambassador hosted an elegant ball on the same night Odette went into labour and gave birth to a girl. The German ambassador was invited to the ball and we danced waltzes and mazurkas and finished the evening watching fireworks spinning into the sky. Wasn’t that a sign that all was well?

As it turned out, the only mistake I had made was to panic one year too early. Two months after the ball, Germany invaded Poland. When the Franco–British ultimatum to Hitler expired, the French army was mobilised. People walked around the streets in a state of disbelief. Could this be real? Were we really at war against the Third Reich?

Minot and his mother moved in with me in case we found ourselves having to leave Paris in the middle of the night. Elsa Maxwell sent invitations to a party that, instead of an RSVP date, was inscribed with ICNW: In Case No War. It felt impossible to plan anything.

‘How can I go on vacation?’ my secretary moaned. ‘My husband might be called up to join his regiment.’

But month after month dragged by before anything happened. The newspapers called this time the
drôle de guerre
, the phony war.

One Thursday afternoon, after the weekly air-raid drill, I met Camille at a café near the Ritz. Minot had organised for me to do a series of tours along the Maginot line to entertain the soldiers who were restless with boredom in their bunkers. I wanted to catch up with Camille in case she had left the city when I returned. The mannequins in the boutique windows in the Place Vendôme wore gas masks with ribbons tied at the neck. It was a joke, but the thought that we were preparing to face an enemy capable of dropping mustard gas on civilians did nothing to comfort me.

In the café, the chocolates and cakes had been moulded into the shape of bombs. ‘It is good to see that not everyone has lost their sense of humour,’ Camille said, opening her purse to pay the waiter as soon as he brought our drinks. That was the system in Paris now: the servers no longer waited for the saucers to accumulate; you had to pay for each drink as it was delivered in case the sirens went off and everyone rushed to the shelter.