Mademoiselle Chanel

by C. W. Gortner

“They hate it,” Adrienne said as we reviewed the paltry orders. “It’s too excessive. No one wants to wear black in the day, Gabrielle. I told you, it was too great a risk.”

  My première Madame Aubert was more sanguine. “Let’s wait and see,” she advised when I pondered whether to retire the idea. “It’s too early to tell. We’ve had reactions like this before, and our customers always come around.”

  “Not like this.” I nervously lit a cigarette. “I haven’t heard such a silence since the war.”

  “Wait,” said Madame Aubert.

  The next week, every major fashion gazette in France panned my black day dress. But American Vogue declared it “a frock every woman will wear” and predicted that by breaking with tradition, I had made fashion accessible to those who could afford it. “Chanel’s little black dress,” Vogue reported, “will become standard for the masses, much like Ford’s motorcars.”

  Orders started trickling in, slowly at first, then faster, as my more daring clients—including my beloved Kitty de Rothschild—read the article in Vogue and came in to be fitted, walking out in my black dress, cloche hat, gloves, and pearls. “Women have always thought of every color except its absence,” I said when Vogue interviewed me. “Nothing is more difficult than making a black dress, but when you dress a woman in black, she is the only one you see.”

  Like No. 5 before it, my little black dress became one of my biggest sellers, cementing my reputation. A telegram came from the Hollywood studio of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, offering me a lavish salary to travel to Los Angeles to dress the stars. It was such an exorbitant sum, nearly a million dollars, that Adrienne was dumbfounded.

  Madame Aubert smiled. “See? To the brave, the kingdom, mademoiselle.”

  “You are going to accept?” Misia asked breathlessly. “If so, I’m going with you.” She hankered for America. She had seen all she wanted of Europe and, in her inimitable manner, was bored with it. More to the point, she had discovered Sert was being unfaithful with one of his art students—an exiled Russian princess, no less—and while she did her best to ignore it, her disillusionment with their marriage caused her to cling to me. “You could become a star yourself,” she said. “Think of the press coverage, the contacts: you’ll conquer them like Columbus. They’ll erect statues in your name.”

  “Statues?” I rolled my eyes. “How vulgar.”

  Instead, I returned word that I was far too busy to go to Los Angeles and took the season off to embark on my cruise with Bendor.

  X

  What am I supposed to be looking at?” I inched my sunglasses farther down my nose and peered over the tinted lenses as Bendor told our driver to pull the car to a halt.

  We had spent the season sailing around the Mediterranean, stopping in whatever ports caught his fancy, which, to my discomfort, were very few. He liked being surrounded by aquamarine sea and endless horizon whenever possible—and though I never admitted it aloud, I found sailing a crushing bore.

  When we finally docked in Monte Carlo, my legs were wobbly and I was consistently nauseous. I couldn’t bear the thought of returning to the yacht and cited a dinner of bad clams as my excuse to remain on dry land for a spell. In response, Bendor promptly drove me by car up the steep pine-forested hills to this odd but lovely summit near the village of Roquebrune, with breathtaking views of the Bay of Monaco on one side and the Italian border on the other, the snow-dusted foothills of the Alps rearing behind us.

  “The property, of course,” he said, unlocking an iron gate and leading me into a grove of ancient olive trees that shaded acres of land, with a commodious but outdated villa and two guesthouses. As Bendor took me around the property, pointing out this and that, I began to sense a definite purpose in him and halted in the villa’s marble entry.

  “What are we doing here?” I demanded.

  “Doing?” he echoed. “Why, nothing, Coco. I’m merely showing you this house.” He paused. “Why? Do you like it?”

  I pursed my lips. As I reached for my cigarette case in the pocket of my loose linen trousers, he said, “No smoking inside. The owners don’t like it.”

  “Owners?” I had noticed signs of habitation, of course; the entire house was a rococo-inspired nightmare. “So, why are we here? Are you planning on renting it?”

  “No.” He set his hands on his hips, looking around. “I’m planning on buying it. For you.”

  I stared at him, my mouth agape. He chuckled. “Ah, I see I’ve managed the impossible at last: I’ve rendered Coco Chanel speechless.”

  As I started to say that I certainly did not need a property here, in the middle of nowhere, as beautiful as it might be, and if I ever did, I could buy it myself, I heard Boy’s voice in my head: Pride will make you suffer. I bit back my retort. I allowed him to continue the tour, and when we returned hours later to his car, I smiled as he lit my much-needed cigarette and said, “Many of my friends are buying properties here, as the popular resorts have become so crowded. I know of a local architect named Robert Streitz, who renovated a villa nearby. I’ve invited him to cocktails on the yacht next week, if you don’t mind?”

  “Why would I mind?” I replied. “It’s your yacht and your house.”

  He suddenly reached over to take my hand. The gesture was so abrupt and unusual for him (his reticence in public was a running joke between us) that I froze.

  “For us, Coco. The house is for us. I want it to be our special place, our retreat from the world. We need a refuge, something that is ours. Don’t think I haven’t noticed how restless you get when we are at sea,” he added. “You need company about you. Well, if we have a house here, you can entertain. And I’ll still have plenty of room to myself.”

  It wasn’t a proposal of marriage, but I saw a gravity in his expression that I could not make light of. While I also did not fail to think of how rich men often put up their lovers in style, I kissed him on the lips.

  “Fine, I agree. But if it’s to be our house, you must let me pay for it.”

  THE OWNERS SOLD THE PROPERTY to me for 1.8 million francs, more than I had paid for anything in my life. When we met with the architect Streitz, I liked him immediately; he was diffident and young, only twenty-eight, but he came highly recommended and, as his portfolio demonstrated, had the talent to back it up. He was willing to oversee the demolition of the main property and redesign it to my specifications, which included terracing the lower hillside to make space for a swimming pool. “I want the best materials,” I informed him. “White stucco walls, local hand-baked tiles, and a grand staircase.” As Streitz made these annotations, he glanced at me. “Does mademoiselle have a certain type of staircase in mind?”

  Bendor lounged nearby on the deck, admiring the view. He’d done his part; he had introduced me to the property and the concept of sharing a house together, far from the exigencies of our lives. The details he now left to me. Still, I hesitated for a moment, looking toward him as the architect waited. “Give me your pen,” I told Streitz, and when he did, I took his pad of paper and wrote on it. I slid the pad back to him.

  “This must stay strictly between us,” I said. “If you say a word of it to anyone, I will dismiss you at once and make sure you never work again. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Mademoiselle, you are a client. I am bound to confidentiality, like a lawyer or a doctor.”

  I laughed to dispel the tension. “I hope not like a lawyer. I never trust them.”

  After Streitz left, Bendor looked over at me. “Everything went as you hoped?”

  “Yes.” I closed my eyes, enjoying the sway of the yacht in the harbor as the sun caressed my skin. “I think it will be a lovely house.”

  I did not tell him that I had sent Streitz on a confidential pilgrimage to my forsaken past, to the mountains of my childhood and the convent of Aubazine, where a certain stone staircase with all its embedded symbolism and mystery had been my passage from the life I had to the one awaiting me. I wanted that staircase for my new home, re-created in every deta
il—an unspoken tribute to the industrious nuns who had unknowingly prepared me for my future.

  “I’ve heard a legend that Mary Magdalene took rest in the chapel near here after she fled the Holy Land upon Christ’s crucifixion,” I said at length. “The chapel is called La Pausa. What do you think if we call the house that?”

  Bendor gave a lazy chuckle. “Restful pause. Yes, I think I like it very much, Coco.”

  I sighed. “Me, too.”

  I TRAVELED TO AND FROM PARIS on the express Blue Train, taking time between my collections to supervise the construction. Streitz had visited the convent and told me the Reverend Mother, now aged and infirm, still remembered me, which touched my heart. He had made detailed sketches of the staircase based on his photographs, which I approved.

  “I want the steps to look aged,” I told him. “Everything except the furnishings should look lived in. The house must not appear like a hideaway for the nouveaux riches. It must look as if it has stood here all along, blended in with its surroundings. No central heat; I detest it. Instead, put fireplaces in every room. And the gardens: I want more olive trees, lavender, roses, and iris. Nothing manicured or showy; everything should look natural.”

  It would take a year before the villa was finished in 1929 and it cost me a fortune. But when it was done, La Pausa was everything I’d envisioned—a serene estate, smaller than many of its neighbors, but all the more intimate because of it, decorated in my preferred neutral palette of cream, coral, and beige, with a large tiled bathroom separating Bendor’s suite and my own, and seven ample guest rooms for our friends. The central stone staircase dominated the entryway with its artificially aged treads—austere and entrancing, the subject of much speculation.

  I believed that here, at long last, I could settle in with Bendor.

  Instead, fate decided to set me on a different course.

  XI

  It was Misia, as usual, who brought me the news.

  We were at La Pausa, where I had brought her to spend the summer of 1929 with me, far from Paris and the torment of her collapsing marriage to Sert. His affair with the Russian princess, which had begun as another in a series of infidelities Misia tolerated and at times even encouraged, had turned serious, she told me in tears over lunch at the Ritz. He had asked for a divorce. Her anguished paroxysms so disturbed me, as did her opiate-induced pallor and general dishevelment, that I bundled her up and ordered her to go to La Pausa at once, assuring her that I’d meet her there as soon as I could and sending word to my resident staff to receive her.

  When Bendor telephoned to say he was delayed due to some business affair, I scarcely paid heed, telling him I would be at La Pausa. As always, the fresh pine-scented air and silence restored me. I slept, as was my habit, until noon, and then went to take a dip in the pool.

  Misia accosted me as I toweled myself dry, barely getting my robe on before she slapped a newspaper on the glass table between us, making the ashtray shudder.

  “He’s seeing someone else.”

  “He is?” I did not glance at the paper. “Well, that’s good news, isn’t it? Now he might not want a divorce, especially if he plans to go through lovers like he does paint.”

  She scowled. “Not Jojo. Your duke. Bendor. He’s been seen escorting a proper lady with three names. Isn’t that what you call them?”

  For a moment, I found it impossible to move. She stood before me in a shapeless dress, a ragged straw hat on her head, her avid flushed face seemingly recovered from her tragedy. I abruptly regretted having invited her; she was due to join Bendor and me on the Silver Cloud when he arrived and already I envisioned the mayhem that would ensue. Misia was never content unless someone else was miserable.

  Tossing my towel aside, I picked up the paper, not caring that my hands were still wet and smeared the ink. After I read the item in the society column she had circled, I dropped the paper back onto the table with indifference, even as I felt a chasm crack open inside me.

  “It’s nothing. It doesn’t even warrant a headline. He was escorting this whoever she is to a social engagement, which is ordinary enough—”

  “Her name is Loelia Mary Ponsonby, daughter of Lord Sisonby,” interjected Misia, “and he escorted her to a dinner attended by King George himself. I would not call that ordinary.”

  “To him, it is,” I snapped, and then, when I saw the excitement on her face, I made myself add, somewhat defensively, “We are not exclusive. If he wants to escort this Loelia Mary Ponsonby, or whomever else he cares to, to dinner, he is free to do so.”

  Misia gave me one of her penetrating looks. I despised how well she could read me, as if I were a book she had perused many times. “Coco, darling. I know how much you hoped he might marry you. Why go through the expense of all this homemaking”—she flung out her arms, encompassing my estate—“if not to become his wife?”

  I stared at her, horrified by her uncanny ability to voice what I myself would never openly admit. She went on, relentless as only she could be, when she sensed capitulation within her grasp. “Don’t think we haven’t all noticed. Before he and Diag left for Venice, Lifar commented that you were so secretive these days, he hardly knew what to ask you. ‘When Coco gets quiet,’ I told him, ‘it means she’s planning something.’ What else could it be but the capture of your English prince?”

  “You—you know nothing,” I whispered. Seizing the towel and newspaper, I stormed back to the house, flinging over my shoulder as I did, “Lunch will be served in an hour. Do take a swim or a bath, darling. You reek of intrigue.”

  By the time I reached my cream-and-coral suite upstairs, I could barely draw a full breath. The newspaper was bunched in my fist, the damp paper shredding as I again read the item, which was in truth nothing, really, only five or six lines announcing that His Grace the Duke of Westminster had been seen escorting Lady Ponsonby to—

  With a guttural cry, I flung the paper across the room. As it thumped upon my dressing table, upending hairbrushes and vials of creams and unguents, I could hear my own breathing, labored, almost panting. I clutched my towel to my chest, my clammy bathing suit clinging to my skin under my robe.

  In the large Venetian mirror above my dressing table, I caught my reflection—a hunched figure, distorted somehow in the glass. Casting aside the towel, I moved toward it slowly, as if my reflection might flee or dissolve. When I was close enough to take a full, unflattering view, I shut my eyes, inhaled deeply, and then forced myself to look.

  How many times had I gazed into a mirror? Thousands? Tens of thousands? It was the timeless ritual of every woman as we clasped earrings or necklaces and adjusted an errant curl, applied eyeliner, a last-minute touch of powder or a spritz of perfume. I had seen my face every day for most of my life; I thought I knew it as intimately as I knew anything. But the woman I now beheld seemed different, every one of my forty-six years showing, from the lines of tension bracketing my mouth to the visible webs at the corners of my eyes.

  I recalled a novel I had once read, in which an aging courtesan ordered all of the mirrors in her house broken because she could not abide the sight of her impending decrepitude. I had thought it ludicrous, a self-indulgent vanity, for age is the price we pay for longevity and there is no shame in it. I had never considered myself so beautiful in any event that I would ever turn away from a mirror—and I did not do so now. I gazed intently, reaching up to touch the curve under my chin, the slight loss of tautness below my cheeks. Spreading my arms wide, I examined the toned skin of my lean arms, and then posed, like a mannequin in my salon, extending my legs this way and that, tightening slim muscles I strived to maintain with dance classes, swimming, and a frenetic lifestyle. I turned to look at my behind, snug and small, not plump, in my bathing costume, and the etched blades of my shoulders.

  No, I was not a girl anymore. No longer the gamine creature who’d entranced Balsan and enraptured Boy. I was a mature woman—incredibly wealthy and successful, with the world at my feet, surrounded by everything
I could possibly desire, and more, if I cared to take it.

  Yet as my questing hands lowered to my flaccid abdomen, where more than any other place my age showed, I felt the hollow within like a palpable vacancy.

  Did nothing else matter if I failed to accomplish the one feat that defined women? Was my lack of a husband and child to become the seed of my discontent, as it was with my aunt Adrienne, bound to Nexon but without the ring or child in the nursery to show for her resolve?

  With trembling fingers, I reached for my cigarettes. Lighting one, I took up the rumpled newspaper once more. I tried to find reassurance in its banality, a pompous announcement without any pomp, but the words turned unintelligible and I let the paper slip from my hand.

  Crushing out my cigarette, I stepped over the newspaper strewn on the floor and padded to my bathroom for a hot shower before lunch.

  Though I could not yet admit it, I sensed my affair with Bendor was fast approaching its finale.

  OUR TIME ON THE YACHT proved as uncomfortable as I supposed it would be. While Misia alternated between woeful sighs and ruminations over her future without Sert, I evaded Bendor with an efficiency I myself did not recognize until he cornered me in our stateroom after we’d seen Misia tottering off to hers, drunk on champagne, and he said brusquely, for him, “May I ask what in hell is the matter? You’ve barely said three words to me since we left Monte Carlo.”

  “Really?” I turned to him, and as I did, I found myself longing to find something in his appearance to displease me, a new hint of silver in his receding hairline, an overt wrinkle or sagging under his chin. “Misia is here. She’s a full-time occupation, as you have seen.”

  “Yes, and we have plenty of staff to attend to her.” He squared his shoulders. “Coco, what is it? You are not telling me something. I do not like it.”

  “No,” I heard myself laugh. “I didn’t like it, either, when I first heard. So, as you English are fond of saying, there we have it.”