Belle

by Lesley Pearse

  Her eyes had grown used to the dark now and she stood by the bed for a moment or two looking down at Clovis. He was handsome, and it had been a fun night until she got too drunk, but he was no gentleman, behaving as he did. There had been around three hundred francs in his wallet, and he could count himself fortunate she hadn’t taken it all. But she wasn’t and never would be a thief.

  Then, after tucking the money into her little reticule, she stole out of the room on tiptoe, leaving Clovis still snoring softly.

  Downstairs in the reception hall a night porter was dozing at the desk, and Belle crept quietly past him and went into the small cloakroom where she had left her coat hours earlier, and which luckily was still there.

  As she came out and was approaching the main doors, the night porter woke, sitting bolt upright.

  ‘Revenez au sommeil, doux monsieur,’ she said cheekily, and blew him a kiss. Madame Albertine had said this to one of the men on Christmas Day when he’d missed something she said, Belle was told it meant ‘Go back to sleep, sweet sir.’ Whether it did actually mean that she’d never know, but the porter grinned bashfully, and Belle slipped out of the door.

  It was very cold out on the street and still dark. Belle followed the road down the hill because logically that had to lead to the harbour. She hoped a café would be open there, where she could get a hot drink and directions to the train station. It was fortunate her coat was long enough to hide her evening dress, as she would look very odd being seen in it by day. She would need to buy a warm everyday dress with some of Clovis’s money. She couldn’t of course go back to Madame Albertine’s to collect her belongings and her savings.

  As she walked down the deserted street, she felt desperately ashamed of herself and foolish, too, that she’d taken people into her confidence and allowed them to manipulate her. She was tired and she felt like bursting into tears. That was hardly surprising as she’d had so little sleep and had had to part with all her clothes and belongings. But on the plus side she was sure a hundred francs would be more than enough to get to Paris, and she did have the lovely evening dress to keep.

  *

  It was late afternoon when the train pulled into Paris. Belle had been fortunate in that before she reached Marseille harbour, she saw a sign to the station off to her left, and found she was just a couple of streets from it. A train was due to leave for Paris at six, in just half an hour, and a café was just opening where she bought a cup of coffee.

  She fell asleep almost as soon as the train started moving, and only woke at midday because the other people in the carriage were making so much noise. They appeared to be all from the same family, two women in their mid-twenties, a man of around thirty, and a much older couple who were probably their parents. They were arguing, but it seemed to be good-natured as there was a lot of laughter, and they were passing out food from a basket.

  The mother said something to Belle, which she assumed was an apology for waking her, and a little later offered her a slice of a savoury flan from her basket, soon followed by bread and cheese. Belle smiled and thanked her in the little French she’d learned in the last few days, but she was relieved that none of the group knew any English, so she didn’t feel obliged to hold a conversation.

  It was only as the train gradually chugged closer to Paris that she began to worry. To find a cheap room, a change of clothing and toiletries, all without speaking French, was daunting enough. But she knew she had to make some more money too, and somehow acquire some papers to get back into England. There had been no problem in Marseille, where an official had come aboard the ship to check on the crew’s papers; Captain Rollins didn’t mention he had any passengers and they didn’t ask. Once the officials had left the ship, she was free to go. It wouldn’t be like that going into England, that much Belle was sure of.

  As she looked out of the carriage window at the flat, bare fields she was reminded of a similar view in the hospital house where she’d been in Paris. She wondered whether the French police would help her get back to England if she explained to them what had happened to her.

  Something told her that wasn’t a good idea. Hadn’t she learned yet that she couldn’t trust anyone?

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  The streets around the Gare de Lyon station in Paris were dimly lit and crowded with people who all seemed to be in a tearing hurry. It was dirty, noisy and smelly, much worse than Marseille, and Belle felt threatened by every man who glanced at her. On top of that it was very cold and starting to rain. There were hotels everywhere she looked, but there was nothing to say which were good, bad, expensive, cheap, safe or dangerous, for they were all equally shabby. She was very aware of her evening dress beneath her coat, and her shoes, designed to be worn indoors, were not suitable for traipsing along city streets. She was also hungry and very thirsty.

  This wasn’t the Paris of her imagination, with wide, tree-lined boulevards, grand buildings, ornate fountains and beautiful shops and stylish restaurants. Everywhere was so grey and dreary, and it brought back the memory that this was the city where she had been raped by five men.

  How could she have expected anything good to happen to her here?

  She came to a restaurant and stopped to look in the window. It was as cheerless as all the others but it was very busy. Most of the customers looked like office workers, so she thought it might be good value for money.

  Belle took a seat at a table with two girls who weren’t much older than her. They were neatly but plainly dressed, their hair scraped back from their faces. She smiled at them, and said bonsoir. They greeted her too, but returned to their conversation.

  The menu meant nothing to Belle, so when the waitress came for her order she pointed to what looked like a beef stew on one of the girls’ plates. ‘S’il vous plaît,’ she said with a smile. The waitress frowned. ‘Je ne parle bien français,’ Belle added, feeling proud of herself for remembering that phrase.

  As the waitress walked away, one of the girls asked if Belle was English. She nodded.

  ‘You one time in France?’ the girl asked.

  ‘Oui,’ Belle said, relieved the girl spoke English, even if not very well. ‘I’m scared because I don’t know which hotel to go to.’

  The two girls looked at each other and then gabbled away in French together. ‘You want clean hotel, not too much francs?’ the first girl, the one with the darker hair, asked her.

  Belle nodded.

  The two girls consulted each other, then the darker one pulled a small notebook out of her handbag, tore out a page and scribbled on it with a pencil.

  ‘This one good,’ she said, handing it to Belle. ‘Not be scared.’

  She had written Hôtel Mirabeau, rue Parrott, and drawn a rough map to show it was in the street which ran roughly behind the one they were in. She smiled at Belle. ‘Bonne chance,’ she said.

  The Hôtel Mirabeau was as tired and shabby-looking as everywhere else. If it hadn’t been for a peeling sign swinging above the front door, Belle wouldn’t have noticed it as it was in the middle of a terrace, squeezed in between a bakery shop and a boot repairer’s. But it was too cold on the street to look further afield, and her feet hurt too, so she walked up the three steps, pushed open the heavy door and entered.

  The front door opened directly into a small sitting-area-cum-hall with a reception desk. Belle stood there looking around her for a moment or two before ringing the bell on the desk. The room, and the staircase which led off from it, had dark red paper on the walls, which made it appear cosy, and made a good backdrop for the large collection of paintings hanging there. They were all farming scenes: men reaping corn with a scythe, men riding home on a haycart, a shepherd with a flock of sheep. They’d obviously been painted by the same person, and Belle wondered if it was the owner of the hotel.

  A bony, stoop-shouldered woman came through a door by the staircase. Her grimace was presumably the nearest she could get to a smile. Belle asked for a room, holding up one finger to signify it was fo
r one person. The woman nodded and said fifty centimes.

  That sounded cheap enough to Belle, so she agreed and was handed a key attached to a six-inch-long piece of metal, then the woman beckoned her to follow and led the way up to the fourth floor. She opened a door and Belle went in. It was a small room, the furniture and rug on the floor old, but it looked and smelled clean.

  ‘Thank you,’ Belle said. ‘It’s fine.’ She was too tired now even to try to think what the French for that would be.

  The woman gave her a hard look. ‘No visitors,’ she said in English. ‘Two nights in advance. One franc, if you please.’

  Belle blushed, assuming the woman knew what she was. But as she got her purse out she realized the woman was suspicious of her only because she had no luggage.

  ‘I had my suitcase stolen,’ she lied. ‘Tomorrow I must buy new clothes.’

  The woman nodded, but her face remained stern. ‘Petit déjeuner de sept à neuf.’

  Belle understood the words for breakfast but not the rest. ‘Which hour?’ she asked, holding up her fingers.

  ‘Seven until nine,’ the woman said curtly. ‘Salle de bain dans le couloir.’ Then she walked out, shutting the door behind her.

  Belle assumed that meant the bathroom was down the corridor. She prodded the bed. It was hard and almost certainly lumpy, but she resisted the urge to cry. Instead, she thought how good the meal she’d just eaten was, congratulated herself on finding a room, and told herself that everything would look better in the morning.

  Belle woke at the sound of people in the passage outside her room. She knelt up in bed and pulled the curtain back a little. The sky was getting light, so she guessed it to be around seven-thirty, but there was no view, just the houses opposite which looked much the same as those on her side of the street.

  She had slept well. The bed had been surprisingly comfortable, the sheets had smelled of lavender and the blankets and eiderdown were very warm. She put her coat over the camisole she’d slept in, picked up the very thin towel folded on the chair, and went to find the bathroom.

  The bathroom was very clean, though very cold, and the water was cold too. But she took off her camisole, stood in the bath and washed herself all over. She wished she had a toothbrush as her mouth tasted nasty.

  Fifteen minutes later Belle went down to the dining room. To her surprise it was an unexpectedly warm and inviting room painted bright yellow. The tablecloths on the six tables were blue check, and a stove was blazing away. She took the empty table closest to the stove, wrapping her coat tightly round her so her evening dress couldn’t be seen. There were two couples eating, and one man alone who was reading a newspaper. He glanced at Belle and half smiled.

  The woman from the night before came in shortly after Belle had sat down, carrying a tray. This was the breakfast, a pot of coffee, a jug of milk, some croissants in a basket, butter and jam. The woman wasn’t as old as Belle had thought the previous night, probably only in her thirties, but she made no effort with her appearance. Her worn black dress fitted where it touched her and her hair was in such a tight bun that it looked as though she’d painted her head a dull brown. She also had a black and white checked scarf tied around her neck which looked very odd, almost as if it was hiding something on her neck. The previous evening she’d worn one too, but that had been plain black and less obvious.

  There was nothing at all about the woman to suggest Belle had anything in common with her, but she couldn’t resist attempting to befriend her, if only to discover who painted the pictures in the hall.

  As she put the breakfast on the table Belle smiled at her. ‘What is your name?’ she asked.

  The woman half smiled back, which was an improvement on the night before. ‘Gabrielle Herrison,’ she said.

  ‘I’m Belle Cooper,’ Belle said. ‘Later, could you tell me where to buy some second-hand clothes?’

  Gabrielle’s face softened marginally. ‘I find you leetle map,’ she said. ‘Good shop near.’

  Belle was apprehensive as she entered Madame Chantal’s little shop. Madame Herrison didn’t look the kind of woman who knew anything about clothes, so she expected the shop she’d recommended to be like the second-hand clothes shops back in Seven Dials. They reeked of mildew, stale sweat and worse, and the clothes, all jumbled up together, were usually so shabby that only someone really desperate would buy them. But to Belle’s surprise, in this shop the clothes were hung neatly on rails, and she could smell nothing other than freshly made coffee.

  A small woman with greying hair, wearing a black dress with a mink collar and cuffs, came towards her, greeting her in French. Belle thought she was probably asking what she was looking for. She asked if the woman spoke English, but the answer was a shake of the head. So Belle took off her coat to show the lace evening dress and mimed someone running off with her suitcase. Surprisingly the woman appeared to understand as she nodded and indicated a rail of ordinary day dresses.

  Belle looked through them. They were all good, plain dresses, but she needed something with a bit more flair if she wanted to hook some rich men.

  Perhaps the owner noted her lack of enthusiasm as she looked through the rail of dresses because she said something Belle couldn’t understand and held out a two-piece costume for her to look at.

  It was pale blue with darker blue embroidery on the figure-hugging jacket. It looked as if it had been very expensive and it was much closer to what Belle had in mind. But the colour was all wrong. Belle smiled and nodded, so the woman knew she approved, then pointed to a purple dress and a red one, and back to the costume.

  The woman nodded. After rummaging through the rails for a minute or two she pulled out a red costume with black frogging across the chest which made it look slightly military, and a purple one with a black velvet collar and cuffs.

  Belle held the red one up to herself and looked in the mirror. It would be perfect as long as it fitted, classy and fashionable but just a bit racy, and the colour really suited her.

  The woman led her to a cubicle at the back of the shop to try it on. She pointed to a silk label in the jacket which said ‘Renee’ and Belle realized she was trying to say it was special, not just made by an ordinary dressmaker. Belle could tell by the feel of the fabric, the stitching and even the cut of the costume that it had belonged to a rich woman. She could hardly wait to put it on.

  The shopkeeper was gabbling away in French just outside the cubicle, and Belle was fairly certain she was giving it a big sales pitch, saying it belonged to someone young and beautiful just like her. The moment she had fastened the skirt at her waist, she could see the owner must have been the same height and size, for it was the perfect length, just an inch from the floor, and clung to her hips like a second skin. She held her breath as she slipped the jacket on, willing it not to be too small, and it wasn’t; like the skirt, it was a perfect fit.

  ‘Magnifique! Il est fait pour vous,’ the shopkeeper crowed as Belle came out of the cubicle, and she had to assume that meant it was perfect for her.

  It was indeed perfect in every way. The fit made her waist look tiny, the colour contrasted well with her dark hair, and the military style frogging gave it a slightly saucy air.

  ‘Combien?’ Belle asked. That was one word she’d learned from Madame Albertine while in the market with her.

  ‘Vingt francs,’ the shopkeeper replied, and put up all her fingers twice.

  Belle swallowed hard. She knew that twenty francs was a very reasonable price for such a beautiful costume, but it would make a huge hole in the money she had. She needed the right clothes to make more money, but what if her plan in the hotels didn’t work? What then? Besides, she also needed a change of underwear, an ordinary day dress and a better pair of shoes.

  The shopkeeper was looking at her questioningly, and Belle pointed to her shoes, lifted her skirt to show she had no petticoat, and finally touched one of the day dresses. She took twenty-five francs out of her reticule and showed it to the woman.

/>   She certainly understood what Belle was trying to tell her, but she didn’t like it. She muttered and rolled her eyes, and paced up and down looking angry, but Belle held her ground and just looked crestfallen. Finally the woman calmed down and walked to the back of the shop where she had shoes, returning with several pairs, all in excellent condition. The little side-buttoned black ankle boots fitted Belle perfectly; they had a small heel and looked very elegant.

  Next the woman pulled out a light grey wool dress. The bodice was buttoned down the front and it had appliquéd darker grey flowers on one side. Belle liked it because it would be warm, and suitable for almost any occasion. She indicated she would like to try it on. At that the woman went to a basket and brought out some petticoats, drawers and camisoles, which she shoved at Belle, as if saying she was to sort through them and pick what she wanted.

  It was nearly an hour later when Belle walked gleefully out of the shop in the grey dress and her new shoes. The underwear she’d selected, the red costume and her evening dress and shoes were tied up in brown paper. She had got everything for twenty-five francs, but she felt a little guilty about the poor shopkeeper.

  Further down the same street she noticed a shop selling feathers, beads, veiling and flowers for hats. She stood for some time looking at the window display and reminded herself that she was going to be a milliner when she got back to England. Focusing on that made her feel stronger and more determined. She wasn’t just going to make enough money to get back to England, but a nest egg too, so she could hold up her head when she got home.

  Along with a toothbrush and a tiny pot of face cream, Belle also bought a second-hand hat, a black fur one which was as close as she could get to the one that had matched her coat which she’d had to leave in Marseille. The previous day she’d felt only half dressed without a hat, but now once again she felt complete.