April In Paris, 1921

by Tessa Lunney

  I stubbed out my cigarette with a smile on my face. I didn’t have to work quite as hard as the street girls but I still had a party to go to. I wished Bertie were coming with me, but I knew he’d be haw-hawing himself hoarse in the Press Club by now. With the way he drank gin, I also knew I wouldn’t hear from him until tomorrow. I rifled through my dresses, heaped at the bottom of my bed – I must get a wardrobe or clothes rack or even just a couple of chairs, the dresses were getting more and more creased and I relied on them to make the right impression at my parties. My Bloody Mary dress saved me. It was deep red velvet, with a tulip skirt that bloomed from a dropped waist. It had a black taffeta border around the hem, the neckline and the back that plunged in a sharp V to the dropped waist. It was one of my favourites as the plunged back prevented me from wearing any underwear. I had to use a roll-garter for my stockings, which I usually hated – far too tight – but they made a nice contrast to the lack of anything else. I pinned a huge silver dagger brooch to the front and put on my starry shoes. But it was the make-up that made this look – blood-red lips and kohl-rimmed eyes and my bob tamed until it was slick. Long black opera gloves and a fur-trimmed hat would help to keep me warm. I wrapped my opera cloak around me and set off.

  8

  Jellybean

  ALL THE RICH PARTIES were on the Right Bank. Bankers and merchants, aristocrats and heirs from America and England gathered there, away from the mad, penniless Left Bank bohemians. More and more Americans came each year, adding to the congregation at the Protestant churches set up last century. That’s how they all knew each other – if they weren’t shaking hands in the factories and boardrooms, they were sharing tea after the Sunday services. It was a wonder that I was invited at all, seeing as I spent the previous Sunday as I spent most Sundays, in bed with a new lover. But I had been included in the first few parties this year and I was now a fixture.

  But parties were not life, and a fixture of my Parisian life was my friendship with Harriet Harker. Tall and statuesque, with a penchant for purple, she was one of the Belle Époque bohemians. She had been sent on a Grand Tour by her hardware-magnate father, packed off to Europe to catch a husband by her society mother, and had never returned to Chicago. She went AWOL in the wilds of Montmartre, she found Natalie Barney and Winnaretta Singer and made herself a home. When she came into her trust fund at thirty, just as the century dawned, she knew that she wouldn’t need to sail the Atlantic for a long time.

  I’d first met her at the Front – the only time I have seen her out of her customary purple. She was one of the corps of volunteer ambulance drivers who worked as tirelessly as any nurse – although they got to wear trousers, drink wine and sleep under the stars in the stifling August nights. She’d cut her hand fixing her engine – a huge gash across the right palm – and we spent a long time on the ward after my shifts, chatting about literature, art, Americans in Paris, the aphrodisiac properties of champagne, the deliciousness of silk against the skin. She gave me the address of her huge Parisian apartment: ‘Stay there whenever you’re in Paris, darling, even if I’m not there – everyone else does, at my invitation! I have to justify the maid somehow.’

  I had contacted her as soon as I arrived in Paris, but she was in Rome, then Barcelona, then London, then ‘too too exhausted, Kiki darling, you know how enervating all these male-dominated dinners can be.’ I hadn’t seen her – until now.

  ‘Darling Kiki.’ She opened her arms and gathered me to her ample bosom. Her strong, dark features made her look like a middle-aged Diana. She kissed me on both cheeks and held me out to look at. ‘So soft and velvety, Kiki. You always did love luxury.’

  ‘Only now I can indulge. Wait until you see my dress, Harry.’

  ‘More velvet?’ she laughed. ‘You’ve become such a Wildean! I always knew you were a secret aesthete. It was only that nurse’s uniform that prevented you from giving your proclivities their full soft-jacket, green-carnation-wearing, sugared-violets-for-dinner expression.’ She kissed me again and took my arm in hers. ‘Oh, Kiki, it’s so good to see you again. Now, before we go to this party, I’m going to buy you a champagne cocktail and you’re going to tell me everything.’

  Harry swept me into the famous Café de la Paix, finding a table right at the back where we had less chance of being found by one of her friends. The café was warmly lit, candles on every table complementing the electric lamps, and soft, plush chairs that you could almost sink into. I’d had interrogations before, from men with pips on their shoulders and hair partings so sharp they seemed cut into their skulls. To them, I gave only the bare facts, but to Harry I could give almost everything. Harry’s face was expressive, stern and kind and disapproving and loving, just as I needed it to be.

  ‘You’re looking very thin. How often do you eat? How much fruit do you eat? I know it’s very American, but orange juice really is the thing for keeping away coughs and colds – why do you think the English are called “limeys”? Because of their love of citrus! Oh yes, stomach pains; those rations were really terrible, we’ve all had a bit of that. But it’s time to get over it. And girlfriends here? Tell me all about Maisie! Excellent. I know you won’t have a problem with lovers, but are you taking care of your health? Hmmm, that Dutch cap will do as a first stop, I suppose. But come over and use my doctor. She – yes, she – is very discreet, no nonsense, we met her in the war, you know, an absolute expert in women’s health, as you can imagine. Most importantly, she doesn’t indulge in all of that nonsense that men do when they don’t understand women – shame, blame and diagnoses of hysteria. No, even if you had syphilis – you don’t, do . . . No, of course not – well, she’d just tell you that you’d had too much fun. And who are you reading? What did Sylvia recommend for you? What do you mean, you haven’t met Sylvia Beach! That must be rectified immediately . . .’

  She set me up with a series of appointments – her doctor, her dentist, her diet guru, Sylvia Beach of Shakespeare and Company, Elsa Maxwell and Natalie Barney, ‘but not Gertrude Stein, darling, you’ll have to conquer her set on your own.’ She insisted I came over for a bath at least once a week, with a pile of laundry and a pile of gossip. I laughed at her industry, but a private part of me cried with relief. It felt so good, so warm, to be wrapped up in Harry’s busybodyness. I was sick of sitting cross-legged on the floor to wash my hair with cold water; it didn’t feel exciting and new when I was shaky and hungry. Besides, Harry knew me and knew what I neglected.

  She sat beside me with a purple velvet coat trimmed with fur hung over her chair. Her dress was more subtle: its black silk was embroidered with crocuses and violets around the wrists and wide neckline, around the waist and all along the hem that fell almost to her ankles. Her shoes were such a dark eggplant that they almost looked black. Her hair was longer than the fashion and she wore it up, white streaks through the brown and twisted in swirls. She had insisted on a plate of fruit, regardless of the waiter’s frown, and waved pieces of melon and apricot about as she spoke.

  ‘But I must tell you about Wendy. From Gwendolyn, which she hates. Yes, I met her in the Ambulance. English, and my age! Which hasn’t happened since I was in my twenties. Somehow I got older while my women remained the same . . . but it is just wonderful to have a peer. A true equal – she’s even tall enough to look me in the eye. I recommend it. No, I insist on it, Kiki. Anything but an equal is merely settling. She’s an artist, she’s so technically skilled but avant-garde too, her eye for colour is like nothing you’ve ever seen, no, not even with Picasso. She even has me painting – yes me, after all these years. Such liberation! And the way she wears a suit! Colette can’t rival her. We have a salon every third Sunday – so make sure some of your baths are on these Sundays, you absolutely must come . . .’

  No wonder Harry has insisted we meet at sundown. By the time we left, the café was full and the street lamps beckoned us out and on into the night. Our chat had taken almost two hours, ‘and we just skimmed the surface, darling! Thank goodness you�
�re here to stay.’

  The uniformed doorman let us in to a wide and winding marble staircase. This was going to be a lavish party, unusual for a Monday night. The marble glowed from the inside and music hummed from the golden handrail.

  ‘Wait a moment, Kiki darling, I need to fix my hair. Why I still keep it long, I don’t know. I must get one of your bobs . . .’

  Mirrors followed us up the staircase, from railing to ceiling and sparklingly clear. Harry looked perfectly turned out as usual, the silk of her dress fluttering around her calves. I always felt small next to her height and solidity, like a fluffy canary that chirps for a feed. She tapped my arm. ‘Stop it, Kiki.’

  ‘Stop what?’

  ‘Stop judging yourself. You’re incomparable. We all are. Now, come along. I heard there might be some interesting people we can recruit for the salon and I want to speak to them before they drink too much.’

  We climbed up the stairs, slowly and elegantly, arm in arm.

  ‘Kiki Button,’ I said as the door opened. I always introduced myself first, just in case the host didn’t know who I was.

  ‘Of course, blonde Kiki, the society reporter.’ A slender young American held out his hand. He had nice hazel eyes above his tuxedo, but alas, his handshake was weak.

  ‘Indeed. And this is—’

  ‘Miss Harker.’ He opened his arms. ‘Such a pleasure to see you again.’

  ‘I warned you, Joseph, call me Harriet or Harry, or I’ll call your mother and tell her what you’re really up to.’

  ‘You wouldn’t dare!’ he said with a smile.

  ‘Don’t try me. Now, where is our host, young Margaret?’

  ‘She’s over by the window.’ He pointed to a round brunette who looked for all the world like a plump fairy. She was swathed in soft pink chiffon that seemed a little too tight around her arms and waist. She even wore pink shoes and a little pink bow in her hair.

  She saw us and waved. ‘Oh, Harry! You came!’

  ‘Of course, little one.’ Harry greeted her with kisses, but the pink fairy embraced her without restraint.

  ‘And you brought the gossip columnist!’ she exclaimed, her American vowels wrapping around the words. ‘Oh, I’m just so excited to have you here! It means this is a real Parisian party.’

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes, now look, let me give you a few tidbits for you to write up. Joey, he let you in, he’s a Vanderbilt on his mother’s side a couple of generations back—’

  ‘Three, but who’s counting these days?’ said Harry with a smirk.

  ‘My mother,’ said Margaret, and Harry laughed.

  Harry was greeted by a tall woman in trousers and an American accent.

  Margaret leant in and looped her arm in mine. ‘I wanted Harry to come, so I made sure I invited all her wartime pals. Besides, they seem like a fun bunch. Anyway, Joey’s been having an assignation with that other Kiki, you know, the dark one? Those three over there are poor British aristocrats who want to latch on to Father’s money – and those two are French aristocrats, here for the same reason. I’m trying to make the French duc fall for the British baroness, but I think the duc would rather have Joey, if you know what I mean—’

  Even if her dress sense was maximum frou-frou, her sense of gossip was sharp as a scalpel. The pink puffery must be a disguise and she was really a black-clad bohemian or a purple-clad Sapphic. Maybe I was just a little too prejudiced against these rich Right Bankers.

  ‘—and I just love it when you put in all those veiled barbs about us—’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t know—’

  ‘Oh, don’t be coy – how boring! You know you do. Everyone thought that La Bohème recital last week was just dreadful, and your praise was so lavish that it had to be satire. Brilliant! And there are so many odd bods here; I mean, only those who have nothing better to do can celebrate a twenty-third birthday on a Monday night, right? So it should be an interesting party. Joey!’ she called and waved her hand in the air. ‘It’s so dull in here! Let’s have some music.’

  ‘On your new gramophone?’ he said on cue.

  ‘Why, of course!’

  Joey unveiled the gramophone, a beautiful object with flowers engraved on its enormous brass horn. Margaret and Joey pretended to argue about which recording to play, but in the end they remembered that they were young Americans and put on jazz. Racy, jagged ragtime filled the room and people pretended to look horrified or delighted or licentious, as they thought the music demanded. Margaret picked up a French aristocrat and started to teach him to jigwalk.

  ‘She makes him look ridiculous, doesn’t she?’ Joey loped over to me, slicking his hair back where it refused to stay in its pomade. ‘Do you dance, Kiki Button, society reporter?’

  ‘Everything but ballet.’

  I looked him over. He was tall and gangly, his tuxedo seemed at times too short in the arms and legs, and too broad in the chest, his smile fraught with innocence.

  ‘I’ll have to find another way to see up your skirts then.’ He put his arms around me and lifted me so that I almost left the ground. He danced an odd jigwalk that I could barely follow and his poker face made me laugh. He clenched his lips together, determined to be serious, but his eyes gave him away.

  ‘Is the expression part of the dance?’

  ‘It’s a game I play with Margaret. This is the face her mother wears when she waltzes, so we use it for every dance, regardless of tone. We’re second or third cousins or some such. Our mothers are great friends back in New York. I think we were planned for each other but we’re not each other’s type.’ He sentences came out in little puffs of ragtime.

  ‘And your types?’

  ‘She prefers girls. I prefer anyone who’s not American.’

  ‘Like Kiki de Montparnasse?’

  He blushed. ‘Oh, that. It’s not serious. I’m not bohemian enough for her. She just likes to be fed properly every so often and I fill her with imported American meat.’

  ‘I’m sure you do.’

  He blushed again, more violently this time, but kept his poker face. Despite his weak handshake, he might be a good ally.

  ‘How well do you know the other guests?’

  ‘Oh, not well at all!’

  ‘So you wouldn’t know if any of them were friends with Picasso?’

  ‘Oh, yeah, I know that! Anyone who knows Picasso talks about it, especially if it’s their only fortune left.’

  The song finished. I saw Margaret reach over to change the disc, lock eyes with a young American girl at the gramophone, another plump brunette with a razor-wire voice. Harry raised her eyebrows at me. It seemed that our host was set for the time being.

  Joey led me over to the drinks table, crammed with bottles and jugs of orange, red and purple, and manned by a dour Frenchman in uniform.

  ‘Two glasses of punch, Pierre.’

  Pierre nodded, but I couldn’t help but notice his twinkle as he looked at me.

  Joey handed me the punch. ‘Pink and fruity, just like our host.’

  ‘To Paris,’ I toasted.

  ‘To Paris!’ He took a swig. ‘So, Picasso – Violet knows him, or at least went to his house last week sometime; she can’t stop talking about it. And I think the Duck Orange knows him too, or knows his wife, or something.’

  ‘Who’s the Duck Orange?’

  ‘Some French duke. One of his many names is Orange, so we call him the Duck Orange. He’s that one, and Violet’s two along on the couch.’ He nodded at a middle-aged man, slender to the point of skinny, who stroked his lapel with long fingers. The man leant against the couch and had his listening face on, but there was no one speaking to him. Next to him was a woman in impeccable modern dress, waved hair, skirt to the knee, all in black. Next to her was a man with a fierce face, who looked directly at me in a way that sent a shiver through me. Violet was talking to the fierce-faced man even as he stared at me.

  Joey had begun to dance with another guest; Pierre managed t
o soften his features as he handed me two glasses of champagne, ‘Excellent choice, mademoiselle.’ I took them over to the Duck Orange; I needed to build up to that fierce-faced stare.

  ‘This will soothe your jazzed-up nerves,’ I said to him in French. I loved the music, but I stopped my foot from tapping and left the shock to the Americans.

  The Duck Orange thanked me graciously and sipped. ‘Ah yes, it takes me back. To more civilised times, before the war.’

  ‘Before the Americans.’

  ‘The Americans have been here all through my lifetime,’ he spoke in a soft murmur, ‘but usually they were more grateful for French culture. Now all they enjoy is the absence of their Puritan American mothers.’

  I took a sip to stop myself laughing at him, as it was those ‘Puritan mothers’ whose money he clearly needed. He’d worn his tails, his shirt front so white it glowed, but the jacket and trousers were frayed at the cuffs. His shoes shone with a recent polish but I could see the leather worn down at the sides. His hair was streaked, grey, white and deepest black, and held down in perfect waves. But a tiny muscle at the side of his eye twitched; he was so thin, and he stroked his clothes nervously.

  ‘Were you a soldier, during the war?’

  He looked at me sharply, almost frightened.

  ‘I was a nurse.’

  ‘Ah.’ He relaxed. ‘Yes, these ones,’ he waved a hand over the host and her friends, ‘they say they want to know, but what can we say . . .’ He looked at me properly, over my blonde bob and skinny shoulders and the nicotine stains that marked my fingers. He smiled sadly and it made me aware of what the war had cost me, how I could be known, even by a stranger, as a survivor.

  ‘Much better to reminisce, is it not?’ he said.

  ‘I prefer jazz to memory, but to each their own.’