Mademoiselle Chanel Read online

  I also gained my share of attention. My doubts over my looks began to diminish as I heard such fervent declarations from Balsan’s friends that I was almost tempted to believe them. But I did not, having developed a well-honed suspicion of flattery. With a carefree laugh, I brushed aside these scions of the high bourgeosie even as I toiled in the House of Grampayre and sang several evenings a week at La Rotunde. I refused to be seen as another impoverished seamstress, willing to forgo her virtue for a rich man’s bed. Every centime I earned went into my tin under the floorboard. I also continued to decorate my hats, though Madame G. refused to sell such “atrocities” in her shop and I had to wear my creations myself, hoping in vain to attract notice from some milliner.

  Balsan attended my nightly performances. I had only to peer out through the layer of smoke over the crowded tables to find him at his spot near the stage, his legs crossed to reveal his exquisite Italian-made boots, sometimes in his pressed blue uniform with its epaulettes and sash, other times in a tailored suit, but always with a smile on his lips.

  Afterward he would take me out for a late supper. It was during these intimate evenings that I began to learn about him. He told me of how he’d been sent to an exclusive boarding school in England where he developed a passion for Thoroughbred horses and demonstrated singular disregard for his studies (“I sent a telegram to my family from my dog Rex, advising them that I’d failed all my courses,” he laughed). Later, he rebelled against the expectation that upon his father’s death, he’d assume a position in the family cloth business.

  “I only enlisted in the military because of my uncle,” he explained as we lingered over coffee. “He said that breeding horses is a hobby, not an occupation, and I must support our name with some accomplishment. Oh, how I hated hearing that,” he sighed, lighting a cigarette and passing it to me. Having noticed how the other chanteuses at La Rotunde employed cigarettes to make themselves appear seductive (and how their artful blowing of smoke rings earned them extra tips), I’d trained myself to master the vice, enduring the burn in my lungs and coughing until I could do it with ease. Adrienne despised it, calling it a filthy habit, but I had made more money because of it. Men loved seeing a woman with smoke coming out of her nose, for some reason.

  “I hate military service,” Balsan went on. “I first enlisted in the foot regiment, which was intolerable. I wanted to be with horses, so I had myself transferred to the cavalry instead—if I must serve my family name, let it serve me, as well—and was dispatched to Algeria to the African Light Cavalry, which was boring, unbearably hot, and boring.”

  “You said twice that it was boring,” I remarked.

  “Did I?” He rolled his eyes. “That’s because it was. I was so bored, in fact, that I ended up sleeping while on duty and was thrown into lockup. But then our horses began to suffer from a skin ailment the veterinarians couldn’t cure. I made a pact with my superior. If I could treat the horses successfully, they would transfer me to a post in France. I distilled an ointment used in England for such ailments. I had no idea if it would work, but it did, and so here I came, to the Tenth Light Horse of Moulins—which, I might add, was as boring as Africa until I met you.”

  I feigned a careless smile, though his story fascinated me. That he’d forgone a lucrative post in his family business to indulge in his obsession for horses and challenged his uncle’s expectations—it made my head spin. I, who had nothing, with no name to speak of, found his contemptuous disregard of his advantages both shocking and intoxicating.

  “As soon as I’ve completed my service,” he said, “I’m going to do as I please. I am twenty-six and my inheritance is mine; my uncle can’t take it from me, no matter how much he threatens. I’m going to buy a château and breed the best racing horses this country has seen. I don’t care what anyone thinks. We have one life. I intend to live it by my rules.”

  Although I still did not find him particularly attractive, my feelings toward him deepened in ways I could not explain. Perhaps because I had never met anyone like him, his brazen confidence and nonchalant air burrowed inside me until I found myself eagerly awaiting his arrival, the rest of my existence taking on a grayer hue when he was not there.

  Adrienne probed me about him. “Has he expressed his intentions?” she asked as we lay tumbled on our cot, having spent the night dancing with Balsan and his friends. “I see how he looks at you. He watches you every moment. He doesn’t seem to care that you sing in the café or mend petticoats. Do you think he might love you? Has he tried to kiss you yet?”

  I felt her trembling; I had the impression she had already been kissed more than a few times. Her questions only roused my anxiety, for Balsan had not so much as touched my hand. He had reason, even if I did not afford him opportunity. He must know that others in his circle had tried in his stead; I was also young and pretty enough, if not beautiful, to entertain several admirers, as Adrienne did. Yet I did not want to. I had no interest in those boastful men. Balsan was the only one who appealed to me, so why did he not stir any of the feelings I had heard Adrienne go on and on about with her baron?

  I wondered if there was something wrong with me. I had never wanted to belong to any man save my father. Had he imparted such a harsh lesson that I could not bring myself to rely on anyone? Did I not want to get married and have a family of my own? Adrienne had made it her entire reason for living, but I—I felt none of those yearnings, though surely these were the only acceptable ambitions for girls like us.

  “Balsan and I are just friends,” I finally said, and I turned away, silencing her questions.

  But I soon found myself watching Balsan as much as he watched me, for a sign that I meant more to him than a casual dalliance. He asked me about my past, expressing an interest that made me more insecure, for when gentlemen did that, Adrienne had said, it usually meant they were debating our suitability.

  In my eagerness to appear more than what I was, I spun outrageous stories of how my father had gone to America to build his fortune after my mother died, leaving me and my sisters with caring aunts, who had us educated by the nuns. I never mentioned Aubazine or my lost brothers or that I had turned my back on my grandparents. After I heard these falsehoods reel from my lips, I waited, breathless, for him to burst out laughing and chide, “Coco, what a liar you are!” But he never did. He accepted everything I told him and I began to see how easy it was to conceal my past. After all, other girls must find themselves in my position, especially as I took pains to elaborate that I’d chosen to earn my own way, because the alternative—to be sent to a matchmaker or wed one of the boys whose families knew mine—was unacceptable.

  “Though of course,” I added airily, “I hope to marry someday.”

  “Of course.” He leaned to me. “It seems we both share an intolerance for expectations. Perhaps we are destined for each other, ma petite Coco.”

  It was the first time he had alluded to a possible future together and it roused equal parts hope and consternation. My plans had not come to fruition; I had not sold a single hat. No milliner in Moulins would give me the time of day. I was still under Madame G.’s thumb, singing my throat raw in the café, and though the money in my tin slowly increased, if no one wanted to buy my hats, what could I do? At this rate, I feared I would become my mother—enslaved to work that paid enough to keep a roof over my head but never enough to raise me out of the gutter. Balsan could change my fortunes with a snap of his fingers, but did I want him to? I had no illusions that he might propose; men like him did not take girls like me for a wife. And while becoming his mistress would resolve my financial difficulties, could he make me happy?

  I evaded my own conflicted emotions, never asking him to state clearly his intent. After nearly two years of working in Moulins, I decided staying was pointless. Adrienne and I had to make a change, and after much cajoling, I persuaded her to move with me to Vichy, where we would rent a room and find work in the more sophisticated cafés of that city. We had experience now, I argued;
surely, that counted for something. She was reluctant until Balsan assured her that he thought it was a delightful idea and he would provide us with sufficient means to establish ourselves. Moreover, her besotted baron declared that he would follow her to the ends of the earth and Vichy was hardly that far.

  “But won’t it be like . . . ?” she fretted as I threw our few belongings into our suitcases, after having enjoyed the satisfaction of delivering our notice to Madame G.

  “Like what?” I barely paid attention to her, prying up the floorboard to remove my tin box and counting the money inside, half hoping it might have reproduced on its own.

  “Well, like . . .” She lowered her voice. “Like those women who sell themselves.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Are you saying that if we accept Balsan’s help, it makes us prostitutes?”

  “Not exactly,” she said, though her troubled expression contradicted her. “Only that, well, it is his money, and if we accept it, it does carry a certain expectation . . .”

  I restrained the impulse to remind her that not long ago she had suggested I might aspire to be a grande cocotte. Now she was worried about accepting assistance from a man we had known for months, with whom I had done nothing improper?

  “It’s not the same thing,” I retorted, for while I thought her fears absurd, her suggestion carried a disquieting truth. “Étienne Balsan is a friend. It’s a loan. We will pay him back.”

  “Louise is very upset,” she went on, gnawing at her lip. “She told me when I went to see her that this move of ours is most ill-advised and Vichy is no place for us to be on our own. She said if we are so unhappy here, we should move to Varennes to live with her.”

  “And do what?” I banged my tin on the floor, making Adrienne flinch. “Help her decorate those silly hats and tend to the goat? Honestly, Adrienne. You’ve a baron in love with you and me at your side. If you want to go to Varennes, do so. But I am going to Vichy—with or without you.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. I had to hold her in my arms as she snuffled and choked out between sobs that not everyone had my courage, and sometimes I could be a perfect brute.

  “I know,” I said, wondering why I didn’t share this paralyzing fear of independence that she, my sister Julia, and so many other girls felt. “But we’ve been to Vichy before and you can do all the things you do here, and visit Louise, too, as we’ll earn enough to buy the train ticket.”

  “It won’t be the same,” she muttered but she stood by with our valises while I haggled with Madame G. over our final wages.

  Balsan had bought us third-class tickets for Vichy, at my insistence; I didn’t want to accept more charity than necessary. He left for a monthlong visit to Lyons to see his family but promised to come see us once he returned.

  Third class was better than the coach, but we still arrived in Vichy after standing the entire time, the few available seats taken by others. And the room I had rented during a previous trip with Balsan didn’t look nearly as nice as when I’d first seen it. The one lopsided window opened onto an alley swarming with leavings from nearby restaurants; it smelled of damp and garbage, and I had to squash an enormous cockroach under my foot and kick it under the bed before Adrienne saw it. But we had livable furnishings, including a cracked mirror over the sagging bureau, and as Adrienne regarded it in miserable resignation, I said, “At least we don’t have that awful stove to worry about,” and proceeded to unpack with determination. “We’ll be fine, you’ll see,” I kept saying. “In a few weeks, we’ll have more work than we know what to do with.”

  It didn’t turn out that way. Most of the cafés had a surfeit of chanteuses and queues of hopefuls at their back doors, as did the local shops. We managed to find part-time work taking in mending but the pay was no better than Madame G.’s, and though I emptied my precious tin to purchase an appropriately corseted costume for auditions, no proprietor of the boulevard cafés offered to hire me. Finally, as the summer season ended and Vichy emptied of its spa guests, I received my only offer from an off-the-boulevard cabaret named Le Palais Doré, though the only thing that could be described as golden about it were the nicotine stains on its walls.

  Here I sang every night in the beuglant: ten of us, arranged in a chorus, subject to howling sailors on leave and other riffraff. I fended off more hands and slobbery lips than I could count and walked home every night, despite the drunkards on every corner. As soon as I opened the door to find Adrienne wilted on the bed with the daily mending at her feet, I adopted a bright smile and declared I’d made more tips in a night than in an entire week at La Rotunde.

  “That is wonderful,” she said, unconvincingly, and we cobbled together a cold meal out of three-day-old bread and fatty ham the charcuterie sold us at a reduced price.

  Then one day, when I arrived home, nearly at my own wits’ end, I found her waiting in her now-soiled linen travel suit, her suitcase packed and crumpled hat on her head.

  “I’m going back to Moulins. I love you like a sister, Gabrielle, but I cannot take this anymore.” Her voice caught. “Maurice hasn’t visited me once, and if I stay away too long—”

  “No. Say no more,” I whispered, embracing her.

  I accompanied her to the train station, bought her a third-class ticket home, and waved from the platform as the train pulled away in a jangle of gears and a cloud of black fumes.

  Only as I trudged back to our grungy room did I realize I’d been abandoned once again.

  However, this time I was truly alone.

  X

  Balsan’s absence had first bewildered, then hurt, then outraged me, so that I squashed his memory like the numerous cockroaches infesting my room.

  One night, as I performed in the beuglant in some awful number, dressed in a humiliating shoulder-baring costume that the proprietor demanded we wear and pay for in installments out of our wages, I saw Balsan enter the cabaret. I recognized him at once, even from across the room, like a kick to my stomach. As the lyrics of the song warbled, bitter in my mouth, he looked around, clearly aghast, at the rowdy stomping of boots and streams of chewing tobacco into spittoons. Then he slowly turned to the stage.

  He must have spotted me, the gaunt one, my bodice held up with pins because I had lost so much weight, but I pretended not to see him. I finished the song and fled the lurid catcalls that followed, rushing backstage to tear off my costume, even as the manager barked, “You’re not done! It’s your turn to take around the purse for tips.”

  The purse he always dipped into, taking a substantial cut. I just glared at him and stormed out the back door, not caring if I dirtied my sole pair of shoes in the alley where customers relieved themselves.

  I felt sick as I raced to my room. Flinging my coat aside, I looked at myself in the mirror. I had avoided it for weeks, not wanting to see the results of my stubbornness. Now, as I finally let myself take in my reflection, a scream rose in my throat.

  I had the face of my childhood again: huge lightless black eyes hovering above pinched cheeks. Whirling away, I reached for my bag and near-empty pack of cigarettes (I smoked incessantly, the cheapest dregs I could buy, because it helped curb hunger).

  A knock came at the door.

  I froze, not moving, until the match I’d lit singed my fingers. I wouldn’t answer. He could knock until his knuckles bled. He could go to hell, back to his privileged existence, to his damn horses and empty promises.

  “Coco,” he said, his voice clear, for the door was almost as thin as me. “I know you’re in there. Open up. I want to see you. I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

  That did the trick. Lunging at the door, I threw it open and before he could step over the threshold, I yelled, “Everywhere? Where did you look? I’ve been here the entire time, in the very room we rented together. You wanted to see me? Well, here I am. Look at me!”

  I would have slammed the door on him had he not stuck his foot in the way. As he came inside I backed away, so enraged I could have stra
ngled him with my bare hands.

  He said softly, “My God. What have they done to you?”

  I crumbled where I stood, covering my face with my hands as sobs overcame me. I had not experienced grief like this since my father left. It came pouring out, all the loss and bewilderment, the disbelief that no matter how much I tried, how strong I thought I was, the world would always be stronger—a tomb of illusions that would bury me under its weight.

  “You’re leaving now,” I heard him whisper, his hands about me, catching me by the waist and forcing me to him as I cried and tried to push him away. “You’re coming to live in my new château. Enough of this pride. I want you with me.”

  XI

  What girl doesn’t want to be taken care of?

  That was what I kept telling myself when Balsan took me to Moulins to say my good-byes. After the ordeal in Vichy, even Moulins seemed like heaven, but I was only there to visit my aunts. I wore the new black linen jacket and skirt he had bought me—my other clothes tossed on the rag heap—and sat demurely as he assured Louise that I would want for nothing.

  Adrienne clapped in delight, as if Balsan had gotten down on his knee to present me with a ring. In the few months we’d been apart, she had reclaimed her self-possession, aglow because Maurice de Nexon had indeed been pining for her, though she didn’t explain why he had not come to see her in Vichy. Louise had found her a suitable chaperone, renowned for her matchmaking skills, who suggested a trip to Egypt for Adrienne and the baron, along with several other couples, to remove the lovers from their environment and see if marriage was truly something they wished to pursue. Adrienne later confided to me as we walked through the town square that Nexon’s family expected him to wed a girl of rank, but he’d told them he desired only her, so she was prepared to do battle to win his family over.