Wild Lavender (10 page)

‘Look,’ said Camille, tugging my hair back into a scarf and dabbing at my face, ‘you need to take your greasepaint right up to your hairline and back over your ears so there’s no edge. And even though you’ve got olive skin, you need to use something darker. Everything washes out under the lights.’

I glanced up at Camille. The charcoal around her eyes brought out their blueness. Her greasepaint blended with her skin and the red on her lips was smooth. The colours enhanced nature. She looked as perfect as a piece of waxed fruit in a bowl. I shifted on the stool self-consciously. Why couldn’t I look like that?

Camille flipped open her cosmetic box and hunted through its contents. ‘Here,’ she said, holding up a pot of pearly cream. She opened the lid and smeared the substance under my eyebrows and lower lashes. ‘Always highlight your assets and downplay your faults,’ she said, patting out the two circles of rouge that I had applied to my cheeks and replacing them with sweeps of colour along my cheekbones. She wiped her powder puff on the back of her hand and patted it over my face. ‘Humans are only animals with clothes,’ she said. ‘When those girls pick on someone, they are either trying to eliminate the weakest beast in the herd or scare away a new member they consider a threat.’

I fingered the violet that sat in a saucer on her dressing table. ‘Are you from Marseilles?’ I asked her. Camille was blonde and fine-featured like a northerner. No one at Le Chat Espiègle knew very much about her. She had a reputation for keeping to herself and never talking about what she had done before she joined the theatre.

Camille let out an exasperated sigh. ‘You’re a busybody,’ she said. ‘Now look up so I can get those clumps off your eyelashes.’

I did as I was told and she brushed my lashes with a tiny comb. ‘How’s that?’ she said, turning my head towards the mirror. I looked like a doll in a shop window with long lashes and Cupid’s bow lips.

‘Thank you,’ I said, not so much thanking Camille for the make-up as for five minutes of her kindness; as a young girl on my own I needed it.

Camille nodded. ‘Don’t be a weak animal, Simone,’ she said. ‘My mother was a weak animal. That’s why she let my father beat her before working her to death.’

I wondered why Camille had confided that in me. Perhaps she was tired of her rich suitors and the ‘stage-door Johnnys’ who hounded her every night after the show.

Camille must have told Monsieur Dargent what had happened because the following evening I was moved to dressing room number three. The room was occupied by Fabienne Boyer, the show’s buxom
chanteuse
, and acrobats Violetta and Luisa Zo-Zo. It was divided down the centre by a row of oriental screens and a piece of lattice, and we had to be careful not to slam the door otherwise the whole flimsy construction would collapse. Fabienne dressed on one side of the barrier, and the Zo-Zo sisters and I on the other. On the rare occasions we were all in the dressing room at once, it was a congenial atmosphere. Violetta and Luisa were sometimes solemn before their act but chatty afterwards, and Bonbon was welcome to sit in her basket by the door whenever she wasn’t with Madame Tarasova in the wardrobe area.

‘The audience is
fantastico
!’ the Zo-Zo sisters would announce, bursting into the dressing room. I found the red welts on their palms and the backs of their legs unnerving, but the rope burns didn’t bother them. They wiped the sweat off with towels and rubbed an olive oil and lavender salve into their skin.

‘It’s because it’s the tourist season we have such a large audience,’ Fabienne told us through the lattice. The division had been her idea, but it wasn’t because of haughtiness on her part. Rather, she had made it out of consideration for us because she received so many visitors. The screens didn’t stop sound though, and the Zo-Zo sisters and I would have to stifle our laughter when Fabienne practised her warm-up exercises. ‘Ma…Me…Mi…Mo…Mu. Maaa…Meee…Miii…Mooo…Muuu…’

The only quality her squeaky voice possessed was an ability to stay reasonably in tune, but no one came to see Fabienne for her singing. It was her pert face and fabulous
figure that drew the crowds. Flat-chested flappers may have been the rage in women’s fashion, but men drooled over her 38–28–40 figure. Her dressing table was always covered with flowers.

While the conversation Fabienne’s callers made was discreet—‘Mademoiselle Boyer, your appearance on stage fills my heart with joy, you are magnificent’—there was something presumptuous about the men that made my skin crawl. They would bid Fabienne good evening, kiss her hand and swagger to the door, turning for a final bow, always with a glint in their eyes that made me think of wolves. A few minutes later, Fabienne would feign a yawn and say that she was going home.

‘They will be coming for you soon, Simone,’ Fabienne said one evening, squirting her lilac perfume into the air. It was her polite way of camouflaging the onion-tinged smell of sweat that the Zo-Zo girls brought back with them.

I thanked Fabienne for her encouragement although the attention of men wasn’t first in my mind. I wasn’t a prude. I’d been born on a farm and, unlike the stories the English chorus girls told us, my parents had never forbidden me to be in the fields when the animals were mating. I had always known ‘the facts of life’. But the story about Madeleine being forced to have an abortion, and the idea of having my fate pegged to the whims of a man, filled me with terror. If that was the cost of being with the opposite sex, I didn’t want it.

Nevertheless, I had a desire running in my veins as strong as sex. Each night I lusted for the sound of the audience’s applause, and was not satiated until I had received at least two encores. I was about to turn fifteen but I already knew what I wanted in life—and it wasn’t to be a second-rate comedian chorus girl. If I couldn’t be a great stage beauty, then at least I could be a famous singer.

On the second-last night of the ‘On the Seas’ show, I came off stage to see Camille peeking out from behind an artificial palm in the stairwell. ‘Meet me in my dressing room,’ she said, sweeping the edge of her tunic into her arms and disappearing like a goddess who has given her command.

I tramped up the stairs, narrowly missing Claude the magician who was negotiating his way down them, his bird cage balanced in one hand and a card table tucked under the other arm. I waited in my dressing room until I heard Camille humming in the corridor and the sound of her latch clicking. I had no idea what we were being so secretive about.

‘Come,’ she said, waving me inside when I knocked on her door. She shut it behind me and I stopped short. For a moment I thought we were standing in someone else’s dressing room. There was nothing of Camille’s usual clutter: no underwear draped over chairs; no feathers and shoes scattered across the floor; no strings of beads and scarves tumbling from the dressing table drawers. The only item of clothing visible was a crimson dress hanging on the armoire door.

‘You’ve tidied up,’ I said, noticing the suitcase beside the dressing table.

Camille turned to where I was looking. ‘Oh that,’ she said. ‘I always like to pack things away at the end of a run. Then I pull everything out again on the opening night of the new show.’

I nodded. Every performer had a superstitious ritual. Mine was to kiss the locket holding my parents’ photograph before I went on stage. Fabienne crossed herself before her act, and the Zo-Zo sisters slapped their hands and stomped their feet. Albert once told me that the impresario Samuel ‘The Magnificent’ turned up to opening nights in a moth-eaten hat and with a two-day growth. He thought that dressing for the occasion would bring the company bad luck. Our lives were so precarious that some sort of ritual was necessary for a sense of stability.

The muffled voice of the male singer, Marcel Sorel, penetrated the wall. He was talking to Monsieur Dargent. ‘In the next show I want the last slot in the first act,’ he said.

‘Why?’ asked Monsieur Dargent. ‘Do you have an engagement at another music hall? That is breaking your contract.’

Camille lowered her voice. ‘Listen, Simone, Monsieur Gosling wanted me to ask you to have dinner with us tomorrow night.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He’s very taken with your act and wants to meet you.’

‘Me?’

‘We’ll be dining at Nevers.’

Camille had meant to entice me but her words had the opposite effect. Nevers was one of the finest restaurants in Marseilles. I had a vision of the elegantly dressed women I’d seen in the restaurants along the Canebière when I used to walk Bonbon there.

‘What’s wrong, Simone?’ she asked. ‘If you want to be a success it’s not enough to perform on stage. You have to mingle with the right people. People who can help you.’

Although I found it hard to believe that Monsieur Gosling had any interest in me, it was my clothes that were worrying me. I didn’t have a dress good enough for church, let alone Nevers. I glanced down at my feet and Camille threw back her head and laughed.

‘Is that the problem?’ She walked to her armoire and grabbed the crimson dress. ‘You can have this. I’m tired of it anyway. And I’ve got shoes to match. You can stretch them if they’re too small.’

I remembered the dress Aunt Yvette had intended to make for me. The material for that had gone over the side of the Gorges de la Nesque with my father. Despite my enthusiasm for the theatre, not a day went by when I didn’t miss him or think about my mother, Aunt Yvette and Bernard. I worried whether the lavender cultivation was succeeding and how my mother was faring
under Uncle Gerome’s control. Camille mistook my sadness for stubbornness.

‘What is it now?’ she asked, folding the dress over my arm. ‘Nevers. A pretty dress. Dinner at the invitation of the heir to one of the largest Marseilles soap fortunes.’

‘Why are you being so secretive about it?’ I asked.

Camille arched an eyebrow. ‘Because I thought you had caused enough jealousy around here.’

She didn’t sound convincing, but I owed her a favour for being kind to me when the chorus girls had kicked me out of their dressing room, so I agreed to go.

The following night, Camille greeted the doorman at Nevers with a wave of her hand and a shrug of her shoulder, and paused in the entranceway between two urns of ferns. I stood behind her, feeling more like a thief than a customer. I’d washed my hair and scrubbed my face, but even in Camille’s dress I didn’t feel up to the atmosphere. The light from the gas lamps bounced off the crystal glasses and silver cutlery. Women with jewels in their hair sat opposite men with gardenias in their buttonholes. At first I thought we must be waiting for the
maître d’hôtel
, but even after he had welcomed us Camille lingered long enough to catch the eye of every man in the room. When she was sure she had their attention, she nodded to the
maître d’hôtel
and strutted to the table where Monsieur Gosling sat smoking. He snuffed out his cigarette and jumped to his feet.

‘This is Mademoiselle Fleurier,’ Camille said, easing herself into the chair the
maître d’hôtel
pulled out for her.

Monsieur Gosling kissed my hand, then turned back to Camille. ‘How was tonight’s performance,
ma chérie
? I am sorry I missed it, but I had arrangements to make.’

Camille flashed him a smile and rested her fingers on his wrist. She was more interested in him than she had been the first night I had seen them outside Le Chat Espiègle.

‘Simone gave a good performance tonight,’ she said.

‘Really?’ said Monsieur Gosling, swivelling towards me. ‘I’ve never seen the first act. I can never make it that early to the show.’

I glanced at Camille but if she was aware that she had been contradicted, she didn’t show it. ‘This is a nice place, isn’t it, Simone?’ she said.

A waiter brought us an
apéritif
of white wine and cassis. Camille lit a cigarette and passed it to Monsieur Gosling.

‘We should have the bouillabaisse,’ he said, before embarking on a lecture about Marseilles’ signature dish and how no two people could agree on how to prepare it. ‘Our cook insists the secret is white wine,’ he said. ‘But my grandmother throws up her hands in horror at that suggestion.’

Camille rested her chin in her hand, seemingly fascinated with Monsieur Gosling’s speech, while I did my best not to yawn. What was I doing here, stuck between the edge of the table and a bust of Julius Caesar? Maybe Camille had wanted my company to make the time spent with the drivelling Monsieur Gosling bearable.

I was relieved when the waiter brought the bouillabaisse, although it wasn’t what I had expected. I examined the mix of seafood perched in a pool of orange sauce. From Monsieur Gosling’s description I’d thought it was a soup or a broth, but the dish was not either. Apart from the whiting and mussels, I didn’t recognise the other seafood, even the fish that had been served with its head still attached. But when I breathed in the steamy aroma of fish, saffron, olive oil and garlic, my stomach rumbled in anticipation. I lifted my knife and fork and sliced a piece of fish.

A waiter strutted past and raised his eyebrows. I realised that I was slouched over my food while Camille and Monsieur Gosling sat with their spines pressed against the backs of their chairs and their faces far away from their plates. I jolted upright and a piece of fish smothered in sauce dropped from my fork onto the tablecloth. I dabbed at it with my serviette but the ochre stain spread out further
and now I had a soiled serviette as well. I peeked at Camille and Monsieur Gosling, but they hadn’t noticed. They were gazing into each other’s eyes.

‘I have good news, Simone,’ Camille announced when the waiter brought the cheese and fruit. ‘Tomorrow Monsieur Gosling and I are leaving for Paris.’

‘Paris?’ I almost choked on a cracker.

‘Monsieur Gosling is setting me up in Paris with an apartment and a couture wardrobe,’ Camille beamed. ‘I’m going to star at the Eldorado.’

‘But what about the new show at Le Chat Espiègle?’ I asked. ‘Rehearsals start tomorrow.’

Because ‘On the Seas’ had made a profit, Monsieur Dargent planned a more lavish show for the next season. I knew he had spent a fortune on the glittering costumes Madame Tarasova and Vera were working on. I also knew that he was counting on Camille Casal to be his star.