The Milliner's Secret

by Natalie Meg Evans

  Was she? Not a wholly welcome idea, but perhaps inevitable, considering the long hours Coralie had always worked. She relented. Julie could stay on reduced hours, but could she please not wear those tight little cardigans? And please not speak in that breathy way so the boys had to lean close to hear her. ‘Arkady and Florian have been starved of female company for months. You know the facts of life, Julie.’

  Julie continuted to act as if she knew them all too well and eventually Coralie asked Ramon to find alternative accommodation for the boys.

  ‘It isn’t that easy,’ Ramon retorted. ‘As for Julie, let her have a lover.’

  ‘When she’s under my roof, I’m responsible for her.’

  ‘No – you only think you are.’

  Her anxiety made some impression, however, and Ramon arranged for the boys to audition in nightclubs where he knew the management. Once they got work, they’d be able to get lodgings of their own. From Pigalle to Clichy they played short sets every night for free in the hope of winning a permanent job – and came home with ever longer faces, the evening suits Ramon had acquired for them ever baggier on their frames.

  Arkady explained, ‘When we offer our homeland music, clubs say already they have quota of foreign talent. When we say we can play American swing music, clubs say we are not black enough.’

  ‘Or white enough,’ Florian chipped in.

  ‘Or American enough. But in our own country, we are always too much Gypsy.’

  A month into their stay, Ramon delivered their new identity papers, with sleet on his shoulders. November had arrived, but the coal had not. Ramon explained that it was easier to steal the wheels off trains than coal out of the freight trucks. Depots had armed guards, these days. So, they huddled around a two-bar electric fire and made the acquaintance of two new human beings, Arkady Erdös and Florian Lantos.

  The boys had been reinvented as wild-boar trackers and itinerant musicians, the former to explain their battle scars. Ramon insisted that boar tusks left similar puncture-marks to bullets. They’d elected to keep their given names, taking surnames that would mark them out as ethnic Hungarians, but not Romany. Arkady believed that changing the name your mother gave you brought bad luck – ‘Besides, I could drink one day and forget it.’

  ‘What you need is a gimmick.’ Coralie was combing Noëlle’s curls. Curls black as a beaver’s pelt. The little girl’s eyes had an exotic up-tilt and in them Coralie saw Rishal, her sailor lover. Everybody else saw Ramon. Even those who had known her for a long time assumed that Noëlle was his. As an impatient Noëlle squirmed away, Coralie offered her comb to Arkady, whose corkscrew hair was tangled like a fisherman’s net. ‘You need something to make you stand out.’

  ‘We are not a variety act.’

  ‘You are. As immigrants, you have to play folk music and dress up as a novelty act. It’s the law. I’ll put my mind to it.’

  On 8 November, they all crammed around her small dining table, toasting her birthday. Her official birthday, the one Dietrich had chosen for her. Arkady and Florian, Julie and Ramon, they all sat so close that no one could move unless everybody did. Noëlle was on Ramon’s knee, her cheek flat against his shoulder. Someone had put a spray of pink flowers into a tin mug. Cutting her cake, chasing off thoughts of Dietrich, which always came on this day, she made a wish: ‘Health and happiness to all!’ Then a private one: A bunch of pink roses, from someone who has the guts to stay faithful. Her thoughts veering, she suddenly said, ‘What about the Rose Noire?’

  Everyone looked at her.

  Ramon caught on: ‘The place on boulevard de Clichy? They shooed us out. It’s in chaos. The man who owns it was locked up in La Santé.’

  Coralie nodded. ‘Seven years’ jail for ripping the ear off his American singer. Got carried away making love, m’lud. She says he attacked her when she gave in her notice. But listen . . .’

  Coralie had heard that the Rose Noire needed musicians. Struggling under the management of its elderly sommelier, Félix Peyron, they couldn’t get decent bands to play. ‘They have an outfit called Les Hot Boys, but the trumpeter’s seventy, and it’s never the same line-up two nights running. The club’s desperate for a resident band.’

  ‘But we are not Hot Boys,’ Florian said sadly. ‘We are cold boys, often.’

  ‘Teddy goes there,’ Coralie said, ‘and he told me they’re running an open night. You get up, play a short set, and the band that gets most applause wins a six-week contract.’ The boys were straining to follow her French. ‘You’d have to find a couple of other band members.’

  Ramon answered for them. ‘You can’t take a piss in Paris but you’re standing next to a refugee with a guitar on his back . . .’ His expression clouded. ‘How would you fix the biggest round of applause?’

  Coralie stood up and demonstrated enthusiastic clapping.

  ‘Very funny, Coralie. There’s only three of us, even assuming we drag Nanny along.’ He winked at Julie, whose chair was so close to Florian’s, their thighs must have been touching.

  Julie said, ‘I’ll come. I like to dance.’

  ‘Well, I was joking,’ Ramon answered. ‘You’re too immature for the Rose Noire – and who’d look after Noëlle?’

  He was trying to sink her idea, Coralie realised. Mentioning Teddy had done it. Her friend’s elitist profession and country château were sandpaper to the eyeballs as far as Ramon was concerned. Well, Ramon could have his politics, but she really wanted her flat back, her life back. Being unable to settle down to work was akin to being in a boat without paddles, drifting ever further from the shore, a feeling that had intensified when she read a piece in Marie Claire praising Henriette Junot’s ‘astonishing and witty line of equestrian-inspired hats’.

  ‘I’m sure Julie’s mother would mind Noëlle. She’s offered before,’ she said, ignoring Ramon’s objection. ‘As for an audience, I’ll rent a rabble and Teddy knows people . . .’ Don’t ever play poker, dear estranged husband, because your face gives you away ‘. . . and I’ll get Una McBride to join us. Some of Henriette’s girls might come, too, if I promise them half-decent men to dance with. You boys,’ she put on a face that drew nervous laughs from Arkady and Florian, ‘must play up the Romany look or it’ll be the same old moan – “Foreign players putting French ones out of work.” That means costumes, untamed hair and eyes a-flashing.’

  Julie giggled.

  ‘We have no costume.’ Arkady plucked at his clothes.

  ‘And I don’t have time to run round finding them.’ Ramon gnawed his thumbnail, meaning he wanted a cigarette. At any moment, he’d lead an exodus to the stairs, where they’d disappear in a fug of Gauloises.

  ‘Costumes are my department.’ Coralie held up ten fingers. ‘These haven’t held a needle for over a month. We’ll have white shirts and red sashes. You and I,’ she turned to Julie, drawing the girl into her excitement, ‘will wear matching hats. Hats for everyone. Why not?’ she demanded, as Ramon scraped his chair back. ‘I could launch you and re-launch myself on the same night.’

  CHAPTER 13

  The streets glittered with freezing frost on the last Saturday of November but the Rose Noire’s dance floor was as hot as a bread oven. Coralie was dismayed – and not just because her dress was sticking to her. Having confidently predicted an easy victory for ‘Arkady and His Vagabonds of Swing’, she was discovering there was stiff competition. Ten bands at least were vying for the chance of a long-term booking. War had hit nightclubs hard. Half the men of dancing age had been mobilised into the armed forces. Clubs had closed their doors rather than struggle on. Singers and jazz musicians were falling out of work. Of the American bandsmen who had once flocked to Paris to feed the passion for jazz, the better-off had sailed home. The rest were saving up to buy third-class or steerage tickets. Meanwhile, they needed to eat and were willing to hustle.

  Una McBride had already sent her Alabama-born maid, Beulah, home and bought passage for a couple of jobless drummers as well. ‘Paris won’t be a
ball for black men and women if the Germans arrive,’ she said, following Coralie’s gaze to the stage, where the first competitors were tuning up. ‘But don’t start feeling sorry for them. You have your boys to look out for.’ Una was scintillating in a backless sequined sheath, her hair styled in a single wave that broke on her forehead in a hundred kiss-curls.

  ‘The Germans won’t come,’ Coralie answered. ‘I know, because you’re still here. If you were afraid, you’d be on your way to London. There are still boats leaving Brittany for southern England.’

  ‘Dear heart, I’m just too lazy to go. I expect I’ll regret it.’

  ‘Don’t! No more war talk. I want to enjoy tonight.’ To do that, she needed to stop worrying about Noëlle, left in the care of Julie’s mother. The child had fallen asleep straight after her tea, so no opportunity to introduce her to Madame Fourcade. Coralie knew she should have insisted on Julie staying home. It was why she paid the girl!

  The first band took to the stage to the sound of applause. When Julie started clapping. Coralie shushed her crossly. ‘Remember whose side you’re on.’ But Julie just smiled. She looked lovely, Coralie admitted, a spray of silk flowers in her brown hair, a butterfly perched over the largest bloom. Coralie had made the decoration for her, shamelessly stealing Henriette Junot’s wiring technique. Una had lent Julie a peach-pink dress, one of the coloured ones she bought each season and never wore.

  When Coralie asked why she did that, Una had given a genuinely bemused shrug. ‘You know how some people steal from stores and can’t stop themselves? I love every dress I see and I have to have it. Oh, I pay. Or, rather, Mr Kilpin, from whom I wrestle a monthly dress allowance, pays, but the moment colour touches my skin, I feel I’ve rubbed myself with poison ivy. If you can explain my neurosis, you’re worth a hundred dollars an hour.’

  Coralie wasn’t sure how much she was worth. She’d been cutting silk all week, and stitching till her eyes crossed. The eight other girls in her party, midinettes from Henriette Junot, all wore a ‘cache-misère’ – a silk turban drizzled with tassels, beads and feathers. Seated across three tables, sipping champagne provided by the elderly gallants Teddy Clisson had brought along, they looked like so many Queens of Sheba. Or perhaps Princesses was nearer the mark. Coralie fully intended to be the queen of the evening.

  Her own evening dress of ivory bias-cut silk was one that Dietrich had bought her. A little old-fashioned now, she’d added gold vermicelli to the hips, giving it a touch of Mata Hari. And she’d made herself a hat, a real stunner.

  Before Henriette sacked her, she’d taken home a couple of top-hat and brim blocks to practise on. Handcrafted from poplar wood, they went some way to make up for the commission Henriette had cheated from her. She’d made herself a top hat for tonight. Silk plush being beyond her skills and her purse, she’d used buckram, a linen cloth impregnated with starch. Once blocked and dry, it kept its shape and she’d reinforced it with cotton-covered wire. She’d painted the hat with rabbit glue and, finally, gold leaf. Burnished with a squirrel-tail brush, peppered with gold lamé roses and butterflies, it shone like a Byzantine crown. If gold leaf brought a blast of her father back to her, she could ignore that. And with her hair a cascade of fat curls, Coralie reckoned she looked all right.

  Una certainly thought so. ‘I’m going to buy that hat right now,’ she said, opening her purse.

  ‘It won’t fit you and, anyway, this is my calling card and I want people to look at my head, not yours.’ Leaning close to Una, Coralie shared her long-held hopes of acquiring La Passerinette.

  Una made a face. ‘Don’t. It’s not worth anything. Sure, take on the lease and buy the stock, but there’s no goodwill left there. That awful girl has seen everybody off.’

  ‘Violaine? It’s not her fault.’

  ‘Lorienne. Last time I was there, she snicked me with her nails. And all those peach hats in the window. Would she sell me one?’

  ‘You don’t wear peach.’

  ‘That’s not the point. And it’s not fair that you didn’t make me a hat for tonight.’

  ‘It’s a punishment because you still buy from Henriette.’

  ‘I’ll defect, I promise. Give me yours.’

  ‘Gold isn’t your colour.’

  ‘Sure it’s my colour. Gold is only beige with ambition. Oh, you’re too mean.’

  A new band was on the stage, their matching white suits complementing Mediterranean complexions. ‘Come on, let’s shake a leg,’ Coralie said. ‘I didn’t come here to sit on a chair all night.’

  ‘Won’t your husband dance with you?’ Una injected a shot of malice.

  ‘Ramon’s keeping an eye on Julie. The boys are fearful she’ll get corrupted. Haven’t you noticed Florian’s sweet on her?’

  ‘And he trusts Ramon?’

  Going up to Teddy, Coralie held out her hand. ‘Ladies’ excuse me. If you don’t dance, your legs will go to sleep.’

  Teddy cocked an ear. ‘I hear no music.’

  ‘I know. If those boys don’t blow one end of their instruments soon, they’ll be thrown out and the next lot put up. All the better for our Vagabonds, eh?’

  The music did start eventually, like a locomotive grinding out of a station. Performing a sedate two-step with Teddy, Coralie shared with him her conviction that the musicians were a bunch of Corsican bandits.

  ‘Indeed they are.’ Teddy indicated a second group of swarthy men lined up in front of the baize curtains that stopped light seeping up the stairs and violating the blackout. Wide-shouldered and wide-trousered, they were staring hard at the stage. ‘Black-marketeers from Marseille,’ Teddy whispered into her ear. ‘A turf war’s broken out and they’re trying to take over here. No, don’t stare. They’re shy and have guns in their pockets. The band are their creatures. They will win, by the way.’

  Coralie wailed, ‘Our boys don’t have a chance?’

  ‘About as much chance as me throwing you over my shoulder while performing a knees-bent shimmy.’

  ‘I was up three nights sewing their costumes.’

  ‘The world never was fair, my dear, and now it’s less fair.’

  Arkady’s Vagabonds of Swing were the last on the bill, and by the time they stepped up to play, people were leaving, including performers and their supporters, as if they’d also heard the game was up. Arkady threw a fatalistic glance and Coralie sent an encouraging one back. The club wasn’t empty by any means. People had walked a long way in the dark to hear music and dance. They would dance.

  Arkady’s boys – Florian and two recruits, a Spaniard and a Portuguese – had rehearsed a set designed to get people on their feet. They were worth a second look too, in their red and white costumes. ‘Come on, girls.’ Coralie beckoned to her crowd. ‘Grab a partner and get ready to shout.’

  The first song was a slow lament for lost love: ‘Vous Qui Passez Sans Me Voir’. Arkady and Florian hadn’t wanted to play popular tunes but Coralie had been blunt. ‘Gather together everyone in Paris who wants to hear Hungarian mazurkas all evening, and you’ll be playing to fresh air. People want the music they hear at the films, on the radio, at the Casino de Paris. Give it a Romany twist and you’ve got something different.’

  The Spanish guitarist provided the melody. The dulcimer added a silvery resonance, the Portuguese double-bass player gave the rhythm, while Arkady’s violin swooped and sobbed. At the end, there was strong applause. Then the Corsicans moved forward. ‘Keep playing!’ Coralie shouted, through cupped hands, and Arkady swung into Fats Waller’s ‘This Joint Is Jumping’. There was a rush for the dance floor. Dezi Rice, with whom Coralie had Lindyhopped all that time ago, grabbed her hand. ‘Does that hat stay on?’

  ‘If it doesn’t, don’t you stand on it!’ She and Dezi danced directly beneath the main light, an art-deco extravaganza of pink glass that had been the proprietor, Serge Martel’s, parting touch before a police wagon had taken him away. A rose motif shone down on them and as they danced in and out of its shadow, their shap
es flickered like a speeded-up film.

  Coralie was back in the canteen at Pettrew’s, kicking up her feet. She danced on after Dezi stopped – until she saw what was troubling him. The Corsican musicians were trying to get back onstage. Their gangster friends, family, whatever they were, had formed a line behind them. Arkady was oblivious, as he always was when he was playing. Florian had seen the danger, though, and so had the guitarist. The bass-player had also stopped, but his gaze was on the stairs.

  What the devil? The baize curtains were bulging open to admit a platoon of soldiers. Moss-green uniforms, patch pockets, black berets.

  ‘English Tommies!’ Dezi whistled through his fingers to attract their attention.

  Twenty or so Tommies stared around as if they’d stumbled into Fairyland. ‘Have the British invaded?’ Coralie asked.

  ‘They’re stationed in Normandy, along the Belgian border, but they’re let out occasionally. They’ll be on a three-day pass. Lock up your daughters.’ Dezi laughed.

  Félix Peyron was greeting the newcomers cautiously. Working out how much champagne they’d drink, Coralie reckoned, and getting his disappointment over with early. The girls in the club were more enthusiastic. They peeled away from the sides, heading for the boys. As Félix and his staff set up new tables, Coralie noticed a smattering of slate-blue uniforms among the green.

  ‘Royal Air Force,’ Dezi told her. ‘No. 1 Group, stationed near Reims.’