Mademoiselle Chanel

by C. W. Gortner

  After saying good night to Dmitri, Vera and I made our way to the Hôtel de Paris, where we were staying. She talked breathlessly of how gorgeous the grand duke was, how sublime, causing me to hide my smile, for she was blithely unaware that her bank account, or lack thereof, was not sufficient to win Dmitri’s attention. Then she suddenly said as I unlocked my suite door, “And Bendor was very taken with you, I could tell.”

  “You could?” I pushed the door open. “Surely, he invites many people to his yacht and house in Deauville. It’s not as if it was unique to me or—”

  I came to a halt as Vera gasped behind me. Enormous vases of white roses and floating camellias were set on every available surface.

  Stunned by the display, I couldn’t move. Vera wriggled past me and lunged at the nearest vase, seizing the white card propped against it.

  “ ‘Mademoiselle,’ ” she read aloud. “ ‘The honor was indeed all mine.’ ” She laughed uproariously, with that abandon some Englishwomen have. “See? He is smitten! Oh, Coco, look at this; how much proof do you need? Please tell me you’re not going to make the man beg.”

  “No,” I said, closing the door. “Not beg. But I will make him wait.”

  VIII

  Bendor dubbed his English estate “St. Pancras Station”—a humorous motto for a huge and appropriately Gothic pile straddling acres of hunting land in Cheshire. Eaton Hall, as it was more properly known, even had a suit of medieval armor poised on the landing of its grand staircase, which I greeted every morning when I floated downstairs with his favorite dachshunds dashing in between my feet, eager for whatever activity he had in store.

  I had finally given in to his persistent wooing. He emptied entire gardens of flowers and sent them to my home; he hid insanely expensive jewelry—diamond and ruby bracelets, aquamarine brooches set in platinum, more pearls than I could ever wear in a lifetime—inside boxes of rare orchids. Once, he even dispatched a batch of fresh salmon via airplane from his castle in Scotland. They were still writhing in a tub of water when they arrived.

  “How long are you going to make him wait?” Vera implored. “The more you ignore him, the more he wants you.”

  “Precisely,” I said, but by 1925, I had kept him at bay long enough. He was not dissuaded by my cool demeanor when he came to Paris to view my collection for the l’Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes. There, I debuted a collarless braided cardigan suit, as well as crepella pleated dresses, tweed topcoats, and masculine-cut sailor jackets inspired by the one I’d first seen on him. He took me out to dinner, accepting my chaste good-night kiss when his chauffeur drove me home. He visited my jewelry workshops, which had begun to yield a significant profit, and sniffed the latest perfume developed by Beaux for my new corporation, Parfums Chanel. I invited him to my soirees, where he met the Serts; Diaghilev and his new twenty-year-old paramour, the Ukrainian dancer Serge Lifar; and my dear Cocteau, who emerged from his cure only to suffer the devastating loss of Radiguet to typhoid. I paid for the funeral, of course.

  These informal gatherings at my home proved disastrous. Bendor was too English, too aristocratic, to appreciate our racy repartee. Like Boy before him, he did not find humor in Jojo Sert’s lewd jokes and flatulence; he eyed Lifar’s lithe beauty with open suspicion and ignored Misia’s forbidding appraisal. When Cocteau griped that he might have to hunt down a rich woman, for he didn’t want to turn forty and be known as la pauvre Madame Cocteau, Bendor finally spoke. His command of French was that of every upper-crust Englishman, schooled in the formality but not the nuance, and to everyone’s horror, he said, “If you’re low on funds, monsieur, I could hire you to write a history of my dogs.”

  I saw at once that he did not mean to be rude. Later, after everyone left, he said to me with sincere puzzlement, “Everyone looked as if I’d suggested he clean out my kennels. Our hounds are famous for their breeding; a history of them would sell very well, I should think.”

  He failed to fit in with my circle in Paris, so after several unaccepted invitations to visit England, I relented and braved the stomach-churning voyage across the Channel.

  I had never been to England. I thought it a quaint country—unbelievably verdant and all too damp. The smoke-darkened huddle of London could not compare with Paris’s expansive boulevards, lively cafés, or elegant nightlife; it seemed to me the English preferred to congregate in their ubiquitous pubs to partake of indigestible cuisine.

  But Bendor’s stately town house near Grosvenor Square was well appointed and here he invited Vera and her cadre of illustrious English society ladies for tea. They all begged me to open a London establishment. I also summoned my nephew André from his boarding school to spend a weekend with us touring the sights. I was impressed by André’s excellent manners, his unfailing correctness in addressing Bendor as “Your Grace,” though Bendor told him several times he needn’t be so formal.

  In London, I also succumbed to Bendor’s amorous advances. To my amusement, he’d timidly taken my hand after late-night drinks in his parlor and made a mumbled declaration that he had never met a woman like me, and would I mind terribly if he kissed me?

  “I would mind if you did not,” I replied, and his subsequent kiss, while not exactly electrifying, was interesting enough for me to permit him further exploration. He turned out to be a capable lover, tender and considerate, if not overly inventive. In sum, I found him satisfactory. He had more money than me, which, after Dmitri, was refreshing; and despite Vera’s assertions, he did not act as if he was in any hurry to marry again with his divorce still pending. Most important, he showed a genuine interest in me that was both flattering and reassuring. I sensed potential here, more so than I had since Boy’s death. I could not say I was in love, but then again, I did not expect to be. I had come to understand that the passion I experienced with Boy came along only once in a lifetime, if we were lucky.

  Still, I could not help but marvel as he gave me a tour of his country estate, where entire villages in France might have fit with ease. Bendor’s wealth exceeded any I had seen before. Only royalty or American tycoons could indulge like this, with stables spanning entire city blocks, ornamental gardens the size of hamlets, halls with vaulted ceilings that had seen kings dine, along with hundreds of unoccupied rooms whose linens were changed regardless of the expense.

  Misia (who else?) had warned me that life in English manors was stultifying, arranged around an unvaried schedule of riding, hunting, and high tea, followed by cigars in the library for the gentlemen and conversation in the parlor for the ladies. Bendor eschewed this stereotype. His staff operated like clockwork, but there were no set hours for anything, for he relished spontaneity.

  One morning after we slept in and he got up to dress, I laughed as I watched him put on his shoes.

  “What?” He gave me a perplexed look. My sudden bursts of amusement often came at his expense, as he had learned by now. “What have I done wrong this time?”

  “Your shoes have holes,” I pointed out. “How long have you had them?”

  He frowned, looking at the soles. “I have no idea.”

  “No idea? Well, they must be ten years old at least. Have you ever considered getting the soles replaced, or perhaps buying new ones?”

  “I like these. My socks are thick enough. And I have plenty of those; my butler has a standing order to buy a dozen new pairs every week.”

  “Every week!” I threw off the sheet and padded naked to the door. When I reached for the latch, I paused, glancing slyly over my shoulder at him. “I must see this. Where is the room where you keep your socks? Your butler couldn’t possibly fit that many in a bureau.”

  “Actually,” he replied mildly, “I believe my butler replaces them. Every time a new set arrives, he distributes the older ones among the staff; it’s more economical that way.” He began tying his shoelaces. When I did not speak, he said without looking up, “If you’re going to go out there like Lady Godiva to search for my socks, please d
on’t wait for me. I’d rather you enjoyed the scandal entirely on your own.”

  He had a wit when he cared to use it. It, too, reminded me of Boy, and endeared him to me. I also liked some of his friends—the actual ones, not the hundreds of people who knew him and claimed to be. One in particular became a friend of mine: Sir Winston Churchill, a short, portly man with a severely receding hairline and noticeable raspy lisp, who was nonetheless one of the most eloquent, intelligent persons I had ever met.

  He was a guest at Eaton Hall one weekend for a foxhunt. I’d never witnessed this quintessential English tradition and was taken aback by its ritual, the gathering in smart red riding coats and white jodhpurs, the delegation of seniority as to who would ride where, the ceremonial release of the terrified fox from its cage, and the almost reverential unleashing of the hounds. It seemed to me ridiculous. After all, it was a given that the fox would be tracked and killed, but everyone rode off in a clamor of excitement, as though it was their first time. Only Churchill, stuffed uncomfortably into his riding costume, muttered to me in perfect French, “Mon brave, now you will see how foolish we English can be when we’ve nothing better to do.”

  That day, I missed the slaughter; my horse ducked a branch halfway into the hunt and tumbled me from the saddle; I cut my lip and twisted my ankle. Bendor was far ahead—when it came to hunting, I could have been mauled by wolves and he wouldn’t have noticed—but Churchill, perspiring and bouncing on his enormous black horse, pulled to a halt to assist me. As I leaned on his shoulder, grimacing at the pain and my own clumsiness, he said, “Just as well. I had no interest chasing after a defenseless animal. Now, we can pass our afternoon instead icing that ankle and talking. I’d like to hear all about the famous Mademoiselle Chanel.”

  He was the only one who called me that. To everyone else, I was Coco, mademoiselle, or simply Chanel, but Winston Churchill never assumed familiarity until it was earned. I thought I could easily have become his lover, had he asked, no matter that he was married, as homely as a frog, and still grieving over his beloved eldest daughter’s recent death.

  “Oh, it was dreadful,” he said, as I rested on the red sofa in the library, an ice pack on my swollen ankle and ointment dabbed on my lip. He reclined in one of the armchairs and smoked a cigar. “Devastating, in truth. We were here for a weekend of tennis with Bendor when we received an urgent call from our governess. Marigold had had a cold, but we’d been assured she was on the mend. By the time we arrived, our darling girl was dying.” He paused, his eyes misting. “Have you ever lost someone you loved more than yourself, mademoiselle, something so precious, so irreplaceable, you’d have given your life to save theirs?”

  “Yes,” I said, fighting back sudden tears. “I did, once.”

  He smiled sadly. “I rather thought you had. Nothing is the same afterward, is it? We carry on, as indeed we must, but we are never who we were.”

  He must have known about Boy and me. Our affair had hardly been secret, and Churchill, like Bendor, was familiar with the scandals of his privileged circle, of which Boy’s widow was a member. Yet he did not mention Boy’s name or allude to the fact that he was aware of whom I spoke. He was too much the gentleman for that.

  We spoke of many things. A career politician and currently chancellor of the exchequer, he had served in Cuba, India, the Sudan, and Egypt, and led a battalion on the Western Front. “I hope never to see such horrors again,” he said. “Sometimes, it is not enough to do our best, but rather to do what is required. And fighting Germany was required, though it cost us thousands of our best young men.”

  He told me he loved pigs, making me laugh. “Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.” He said he was attracted to those who never let obstacles impede them.

  “I have the sense you are one of those people, mademoiselle. You have fearlessness in your eyes,” he said, and I sensed an unspoken sadness in him, an invisible burden that weighed on him. “My mother had it, and she was American. Are you quite sure you’re only French?”

  I assured him I was, and in that long afternoon as we waited for the hunters to return, I shared with him, as I had not shared with anyone since Boy, the full tale of my ambitions to overcome that forgotten girl from Aubazine. I had the sense as I spoke that everything I told him would stay between us, that for him, a confidence was sacred.

  After I finished, he nodded, contemplative. “Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference,” he said at length. “I admire you. You have learned to rise with the wind, rather than fight it. Too many people struggle to become what is expected of them, when, as we both know, what is expected of us is rarely what we desire.”

  When Bendor eventually arrived, chagrined by my absence, Churchill rose and waddled out, patting Bendor’s arm as he said, “She’s quite a prize, your mademoiselle. See that you act accordingly.”

  “Coco,” I said, and Churchill paused at the door. “Call me Coco,” I told him.

  He smiled, inclining his head. “Coco it is.”

  Bendor tugged at his lip. “I say, did that scoundrel just charm you out of my arms?”

  “Almost,” I replied. “You’re fortunate that he is married and you are not.”

  BENDOR’S DIVORCE BECAME FINAL THAT YEAR. His liaison with me had made the news, naturally; before I even set foot on English soil, the papers were calling me the next Duchess of Westminster. Bendor seemed nonplussed. I, on the other hand, disconcertedly found myself wondering what it might be like to settle down with him.

  In those weeks we spent together, traveling from Eaton Hall to his castle in Caithness in the Scottish Highlands, I realized I could enjoy a life like his—freed of the harassment of work and the foibles of my celebrity, exchanging couture and perfume for titled dignity and insular comfort. It frightened me, my sudden hankering for commitment, after having rejected the notion for so long. I had never wanted it before, not even with Boy, or at least not until he married someone else. Was that what concerned me, that if Bendor did not propose to me, he would find another woman? Did I want to merely dally with him, knowing that in time I would be passed over for one of the proper ladies of means with three names and a readily available womb?

  This turmoil only led to more disquieting questions. I had never become pregnant, though there had been opportunity. In Venice, Misia had maliciously remarked she hoped I took precautions. In truth, I did not. Boy had, with his prophylactics, but we’d had our accidents when his condoms leaked or broke; and since him, I never thought of it. I told myself that I had trained my body—I believed the mind capable of it—and had not become pregnant because I did not want it. Dmitri and I had been reckless and I could count myself fortunate; with Bendor, we had an unspoken but implied agreement: he either used a condom or pulled out before his seed spilled, as Balsan had done before him.

  Now I began to fret. I neared my forty-first birthday; if I was capable of it, I should become a mother soon. Yet even as I considered it, something recoiled inside me. I had André, whom I treated as if he were my child, and he lived far away at school, his day-to-day existence overseen by others. I knew, all too well, how it felt to lack parents and grow up far from a place to call home. I did my best to ensure André’s upkeep but I could hardly deem such attentions maternal. I behaved like what I was—a conscientious yet distant aunt.

  To be a true mother meant sacrificing my needs. Far more pressing than the physical challenges of pregnancy, in itself daunting enough, was I prepared to give up the life I had fought so hard to achieve? I knew that I was not, that I would resent it, perhaps in time even blame the child for it. Again, that specter of my youth rose to haunt me:

  What was wrong with me?

  I did not confide my concerns to Bendor. I simply ended our sojourn with the announcement that I had to return to Paris to attend to my atelier, which I had neglected for too long.

  He accompanied me to London to embark on my voyage home. “Don’t forget,” he said, standing there awkward
ly in his long overcoat and hat. “We’re taking a cruise this summer on my yacht to the Riviera. You promised you would find the time.”

  I smiled, nodding. “I won’t forget. And I’ll see you in Paris soon?”

  “Naturally.” With a tug on his hat, he returned to his car. No kiss good-bye, no public display of affection; reporters lurked everywhere.

  On the train back to Paris, I felt relieved. It struck me in the moment that for me, Paris had become home, with all its memories and tragedies. Paris was where I belonged.

  I doubted the next Duchess of Westminster would enjoy such liberty.

  IX

  Nineteen twenty-six became known as the year of my little black dress. I presented it in my spring collection after having debated it for months. Black was now a staple in my evening collections, but well into the new century, to wear black in daytime was deemed suitable only for school uniforms, mourning, or nuns. I decided to take the risk anyway, spending months on a new silhouette—a sheath of Moroccan crepe with slim sleeves, their cuffs embroidered in zigzag gold thread, the neckline square, and a simple skirt reaching to just below the knee, with inverted V pleating to accentuate the dropped waist. I accessorized the dress with a cloche hat in banded satin, its soft brim almost hiding the eyes and dubbed a “tea strainer,” along with black pearls and gloves. Stockings were, of course, required; I believed in wearing stockings at all times.

  My black dress caused a sensation, if not the one I’d initially hoped for. As my models paraded up and down the floor of my salon, carrying the numbered placards for each ensemble, the silence was palpable. From my perch above my staircase, which I had had mirrored so I could observe the presentation without being seen, I spied shock, dismay, even disapproval on my clients’ faces and the majority of the attending fashion journalists. I had gone far before, but never as far as this.