Chapter 17

Apartment 5,

15 Rue des Beaux-Arts,

Paris, October 1945

Dear Mrs B, Kitty and Dilly,

A few days have passed now since I arrived in Paris and, boy, do I have some stories to tell you. Kitty, you would never believe it, but I have been to a bona fide fashion house and met some real designers. I’d watch out for names such as Christian Dior and Pierre Balmain – both lovely chaps, who I met at their drawing boards at the atelier my new friend Simone works in. Such beautiful fabrics too – if I can, I’ll see if I can get hold of some of Simone’s hand-me-downs for you all. I’m afraid I’m keeping the rather jazzy silk scarf Simone gave me for myself!

Paris is alive, though perhaps not totally ‘well’. At every turn, it seems you meet some brave person who was in the Resistance, but equally there are stories too sad to tell of loss and hardship. Still, I plan to see and do all that I can and I’m really trying very hard not to miss my dear Arthur too much.

Simone and James took me out last night and tonight we’re off again to see the marvellous Josephine Baker in revue. She’s recently back from North Africa and I daresay as fabulous as ever! I’ll write again soon and tell you all about it.

Kitty – did you get the answer to the clue? It was a play on words you see, a Pullman is part of a train, while ‘t’ or ‘tea’ fits in just before a shower, i.e. a rain shower! TRAIN. How about this one, it’s called a letter clue – so look to the starts of the words (initially, see?) to help solve it. Here goes: I watched it dry initially, perhaps an idler notes time? (5). Let me know how you get on.

Much love, etc.,

Fen xx

Fen hurriedly sealed up the envelope and caught up with James and Simone as they trotted (in James’s case; more of a glide in Simone’s) down the cantilevered staircase of the apartment building. They were indeed off to see the marvellous Josephine Baker, the American singer and dancer who had made her home in Paris many years ago. Fen felt a little as if she were just ‘hanging on’ as she had done when she was seventeen and snuck along to see Miss Baker at the Théatre Marigny with her brother in those heady days just before they left Paris to return to Oxford.

Josephine Baker had been something of a favourite among Fen’s school friends, who all collected pictures of her extraordinary menagerie in their scrapbooks. And that night at the theatre back in 1934 had been an eye-opener, to say the least, not only because Miss Baker was really quite daring in her dancing, but also because Fen had never seen her nineteen-year-old brother blush such a deep shade of crimson when she was on stage. The memory made her smile and James asked her why she was grinning to herself quite so much as she closed one of the big grey doors behind them all.

‘I think sneaking out to see Josephine Baker when I was seventeen was quite possibly the naughtiest thing I ever did.’ Fen shook her head, ‘It was a blast though. That dancing!’

‘If you think that’s naughty,’ Simone emphasised the last word, ‘you should see what I had to do as a seventeen-year-old!’

‘Speaking of naughty,’ James said rather quickly, and Fen wondered if Simone had told him what she’d had to do as part of the Resistance, and if he disapproved. ‘I had a shirt stolen in the hotel.’

‘Really? Have you asked the laundry?’ Fen asked.

‘Well, that’s the darnedest thing, I don’t remember leaving it out for the maid. I’m sure it’ll turn up. Aha,’ he raised a hand and called out to the man walking towards them. ‘Ahoy there, Gervais!’

‘I didn’t know he was coming too.’ Fen pulled her coat tight around her, the chill autumn air of the evening cutting right through to the blue, flowery tea dress she was still wearing, with Rose’s blessing, from the outing to Atelier Lelong today.

‘We thought it might be nice for you to have some company, Fenella,’ Simone trilled as she slipped her arm into James’s. The slight shrug to her shoulders gave Fen just the message Simone intended and Fen opened and closed her mouth like a goldfish a few times as she tried to think of what to say to put Simone off trying to matchmake her. Arthur was barely cold in his grave – the thought of replacing him with someone else was as far from her mind as it was possible to be.

Still, Fen thought, manners maketh man, or in this case woman, and she waved a cheery greeting to the chubby Frenchman.

Miss Baker was astounding. Though not in her first flush of youth, she was as dynamic and as dazzling as ever before, if perhaps slightly less flamboyant. She held the audience in the palm of her hand, her beautiful voice filling the theatre as she sang songs by Cole Porter and Vincent Scotto. Her dress was covered in gems and sparkled under the stage lights.

Fen was transfixed and loved every second of the virtuoso performance. She would have enjoyed it even more if Gervais had stopped trying to talk to her throughout it all.

‘So you’ve known Madame Rose Coillard for many years, you say?’ was one such question.

‘Yes, since I was a girl,’ Fen had turned her face back towards the stage as soon as she’d spoken, hoping that she hadn’t missed a beat of the show. But still Gervais persisted.

‘She is a proper bourgeoisie, you know. Society connections. But even I, Gervais Arnault, have met her a few times.’

Fen had smiled at Gervais, acknowledging his slight brag, and then turned her attention back to the stage, bobbing her head around to try and see past the annoyingly tall man sitting in front of her.

‘A good lady though, you think?’ Gervais had continued.

‘Oh the best, absolutely. Why?’

‘No reason, no reason.’ Gervais had raised his hands off his lap in mock defence. Fen had given him another quick smile and then faced back towards the stage, hoping that would be the last of his chit-chat.

Gervais did indeed stay relatively quiet for the rest of the show, but afterwards as the four of them retired to the bar of Deux Magots, he asked Fen again what she thought of Rose and if she knew Henri Renaud at all. Henri had been a particular hook of Gervais’s to hang his conversation from and Fen had barely sat down at the small round table in the Deux Magots bar that James had found for them all when Gervais enquired all about him.

‘You’d not think that a lowly mechanic like myself would know such grand people, eh?’

‘I thought you said you had a fleet of vehicles?’ Fen had cheekily reminded him.

‘Well, fleet, you know it is a wide definition…’

‘I’m only teasing,’ Fen had unconsciously reached over and touched the mechanic’s arm as she said that, as a way to reassure him, but withdrew it quickly as she saw his cheeks redden. He had carried on talking, though, regardless.

‘Yes, yes, well you see, just like in the old days when everyone needed a farrier or stable boy, well now, you see, everyone needs a mechanic, or driver.’

‘I do see, yes.’

‘So, you see, I get to meet all sorts of important people. Like Petain himself.’

Fen raised her eyebrows at the mention of the Vichy army general and stifled a laugh as James caught her eye. His attention was quickly drawn back by Simone, however, who rose from the table and led James across to the bar, no doubt to find somewhere more private for the two of them to talk.

Gervais continued, unfazed by their leaving and puffing his chest out more as he spoke. ‘And celebrities, you see, I have driven Judy Garland and Clark Gable.’

‘Really?’ Fen wasn’t convinced he was telling the truth.

‘Yes, yes. You don’t believe me, I’m hurt!’

‘It’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s just—’

‘And your friend Henri Renaud, he wouldn’t have been able to save all the artwork without his trusted driver, that’s me.’

‘I’m sure he’s very grateful.’ Fen was unsure where this conversation was going, but she could see that Gervais was keen to keep telling her about his society connections.

‘He is grateful, France is grateful. He is a good man though, you think?’

Fen thought about it for a moment. ‘I don’t have any cause to think otherwise. He seems as straight as anyone I’ve met. And a patriot—’

‘We are all patriots!’ It was on this little outburst that Fen, not unhappily, realised that Gervais was growing tired of their conversation and only a few moments later she had bid him adieu as he’d made an excuse to join some other friends over the other side of the bar.

Fen looked back at her own drink and saw that it was empty. A second wouldn’t hurt and she cast her eyes around to see if James or Simone fancied getting another. At first, she couldn’t see them, and wondered if they’d gone back to the bar already, but she scanned the louche types propping it up and resting their backsides on the fixed-in-place stools – James and Simone, it seemed, weren’t among them. She was just starting to feel like a little bit of a lone poppy in a muddy field when she caught sight of them, having a smooch behind the telephone kiosk at the end of the bar.

‘Looks like James is getting his own round in,’ Fen murmured to herself, as she collected the empty glasses from her table.

Slightly unsteady on her feet, she realised she’d probably had quite enough to drink for one evening, so leaving James and Simone to it, and with a cheery wave over to where Gervais was now standing with a group of men, including his taller, thinner, and balder brother Antoine, she picked up her coat and bag and headed for the door.

Paris nightlife was definitely an experience, she thought to herself as she walked out of the bar. But, she had to admit, maybe it had been a little more thrilling when she’d been seventeen…