by Paul Gallico
Never was a man in such confusion. His honourable scar gleaming white in a face crimson with shame - the cicatrice rather made him attractive looking - M. Fauvel appeared before them stammering: ‘Oh, no - no - Mademoiselle Natasha - you of all people - I cannot permit you to enter - I, who would have given anything to have welcomed - I mean, I have been living alone here for a week - I am disgraced—’
Mrs Harris saw nothing unusual in the condition of the place. If anything, it was comfortably like old times, for it was exactly the same as greeted her in every house, flat, or room when she came to work daily in London.
‘ ’Ere, ’ere, duckie,’ she called out genially. ‘What’s all the fuss about? I’ll ’ave all this put right in a jiffy. Just you show me where the mop cupboard is, and get me a bucket and a brush—’
As for Natasha - she was looking right through and past the dirt and disorder to the solid, bourgeois furniture she saw beneath it, the plush sofa, the what-not cabinet, the huge portrait-size framed photographs of M. Fauvel’s grandfather and mother in stiff, beginning-of-the-century clothes, the harpsichord in one corner, the great tub with the plant in another, the lace on the sofa pillows, the chenille curtains, and the overstuffed chairs - comfort without elegance - and her heart yearned towards it. This was a home, and she had not been in one like it since she had left her own in Lyons.
‘Oh, please,’ she cried, ‘may I remain and help? Would you permit it, monsieur?’
M. Fauvel went into a perfect hysteria of abject apologies - ‘But mademoiselle - you of all people - in this pigsty, for which I could die of shame - to spoil those little hands - never in a thousand years could I permit—’
‘Ow - come off it, dearie,’ ordered Mrs Harris succinctly. ‘Blimey, but all the thick ’eads ain’t on our side of the Channel. Can’t you see the girl WANTS to? Run along now and keep out of the way and let us get at it.’
Dear me, Mrs Harris thought to herself as she and Natasha donned headcloths and aprons and seized upon brooms and dustcloths, French people are just like anyone else, plain and kind, only maybe a little dirtier. Now ’oo would have thought it after all one ’ears?
That particular evening, Natasha had a rendezvous for drinks with a count, an appointment for dinner with a duke, and a late evening date with an important politico. It gave her the most intense pleasure she had known since she came to Paris to leave the count standing and, with the professional and efficient Mrs Harris, make the dirt fly at number 18 Rue Dennequin, as it had never flown before.
It seemed no time at all before everything was in order again. The mantelpieces and furniture gleamed, the plant was watered, the beds stiff with clean sheets and pillow-cases, the ring around the bath tub banished, pots, pans, dishes, glasses, and knives and forks washed-up.
‘Oh, it is good to be inside a home again, where one can be a woman and not just a silly little doll,’ Natasha said to herself as she attacked the dust and cobweb salients in the corners and contemplated the horrors that M. Fauvel, manlike, had brushed under the carpet.
And as she stood there for a moment, reflecting upon the general hopelessness of the male species, she found herself suddenly touched by the plight of M. Fauvel and thought, That must be a fine sister he has, poor boy, and he is so ashamed - and suddenly in her mind’s eye she saw herself holding this blond head with the blushing face and the white scar - surely acquired in some noble manner - to her breast while she murmured, ‘Now, now, my little one, do not take on so. Now that I am here everything will be all right again.’ And this to a perfect stranger she had seen only vaguely before as he appeared occasionally in the background of the establishment for which she worked. She stood stock-still for a moment with astonishment at herself, leaning upon her broom, the very picture of housewifely grace, to be discovered so by the sudden return of the enchanted M. Fauvel himself.
So busy had been the two women that neither had noticed the absence of the accountant until he suddenly re-appeared but half-visible behind the mountain of parcels with which he was laden.
‘I thought that after such exhausting labours you might be hungry—’ he explained. Then, regarding a dishevelled, smudged, but thoroughly contented Natasha, he stammered: ‘Would you - could you - dare I hope that you might remain?’
The count and his date were already dead pigeons. Bang, bang, went both barrels and the duke and the politico joined him. With the utmost simplicity and naturalness, and quite forgetting herself, Natasha, or rather Mme Petitpierre of Lyons, threw her arms about M. Fauvel’s neck and kissed him. ‘But you are an angel to have thought of this, André I am ravenous. First I will allow myself a bath in that wonderful deep old tub upstairs and then we will eat and eat and eat.’
M. Fauvel thought too that he had never been so happy in his life. What an astonishing turn things had taken ever since - why, ever since that wonderful little Englishwoman had come to Dior’s to buy herself a dress.
Mrs Harris had never tasted caviar before, a pâté de foie gras fresh from Strasbourg, but she very quickly got used to them both, as well as the lobster from the Pas-de-Calais and the eels from Lorraine in jelly. There was charcuterie from Normandy, a whole cold roast poulet de Bresse along with a crispy skinned duck from Nantes. There was a Chassagne Montrachet with the lobster and hors d’æuvre, champagne with the caviar, and Vosne Romanée with the fowl, while an Yquem decorated the chocolate cake.
Mrs Harris ate for the week before, for this, and the next as well. There had never been a meal like it before and probably never would again. Her eyes gleamed with delight as she crowed: ‘Lumme, if there’s anything I like it’s a good tuck in.’
‘The night without is heavenly,’ said M. Fauvel, his eyes meltingly upon the sweet, well-fed-pussy-cat face of Natasha, ‘perhaps afterwards we will let Paris show herself to us—’
‘Ooof!’ grunted Mrs Harris, stuffed to her wispy eyebrows. ‘You two go. I’ve ’ad a day to end all days. I’ll just stay ’ome ’ere and do the dishes and then get into me bed and try not to wake up back in Battersea.’
But now, a feeling of restraint and embarrassment seemed suddenly to descend upon the two young people and which Mrs Harris in her state of repletion failed to notice. Had his guest consented to go, M. Fauvel was thinking, all would have been different, and the exuberance of the party plus the glorious presence of Natasha might have been maintained. But, of course, without this extraordinary person the thought of his showing Dior’s star model the sights of Paris suddenly seemed utterly ridiculous.
To Natasha, Paris at night was the interior of a series of smoky boîtes, or expensive nightclubs, such as Dinazard, or Shéhérazade, and of which she was heartily sick. She would have given much to have been enabled to stand on the Grand Terrasse of Le Sacré-Cœur, under the starry night, and look out over these stars reflected in the sea of the light of Paris - and in particular with M. Fauvel at her side.
But with Mrs Harris’s plumping for bed there seemed no further excuse for her presence. She had already intruded too much into his privacy. She had shamelessly pried into his quarters with broom and duster, seen the squalor in his sink, permitted herself the almost unthinkable intimacy of washing out his bath tub, and, in her exuberance, the even more unpardonable one of bathing in it herself.
She became suddenly overcome with confusion, and blushing murmured: ‘Oh, no, no, no. I cannot, it is impossible. I am afraid I have an appointment. I must be going.’
M. Fauvel accepted the blow which was expected. ‘Ah, yes ’ he thought, ‘you must return, little butterfly, to the life you love best. Some count, marquis, duke, or even prince will be waiting for you. But at least I have had this one night of bliss and I should be content.’ Aloud he murmurmured ‘Yes, yes, of course, Mademoiselle has been too kind.’
He bowed, they touched hands lightly and their glances met and for a moment lingered. And this time the sharp knowing eyes of Mrs Harris twigged: ‘Oho,’ she said to herself, ‘so that’s ’ow it is. I should have went
with them.’
But it was too late to do anything about it now and the fact was that she really was too stuffed to move. ‘Well, good night, dears,’ she said loudly and pointedly, and tramped up the stairs, hoping that with her presence removed they might still get together on an evening out. But a moment later she heard the front door opened and shut and then the clatter as the motor of Natasha’s Simca came to life. Thus ended Mrs Ada ’Arris’s first day in a foreign land and amidst a foreign people.
The following morning, however, when M. Fauvel proposed that in the evening he show her something of Paris, Mrs Harris lost no time in suggesting that Natasha be included in the party. Flustered, M. Fauvel protested that sightseeing was not for such exalted creatures as Mile Natasha.
‘Garn,’ scoffed Mrs Harris. ‘What makes you think she’s different from any other young girl when there is an ’andsome man about? She’d ’ave gone with you last night if you ’ad ’ad the brains to ask ’er. You just tel ’er I said she was to come.’
That morning the two of them encountered briefly upon the grey carpeted stairs at Dior. They paused for an instant uncomfortably. M. Fauvel managed to stammer: ‘Tonight I shall be showing Mrs Harris something of Paris. She has begged that you would accompany us.’
‘Oh,’ murmured Natasha, ‘Madame Harris has asked? She wishes it? Only she?’
M. Fauvel could only nod dumbly. How could he in the chill austerity of the grand staircase of the House of Christian Dior cry out ‘Ah, no, it is I who wish it, crave it, desire it, with all my being. It is I who worship the very nap of the carpet on which you stand.’
Natasha finally said: ‘If she desires it then, I will come. She is adorable, that little woman.’
‘At eight then.’
‘I will be there.’
They continued on their routes, he up, she down.
The enchanted night duly took place. It began for the three of them with a ride up the Seine on a bateau-mouche to a riverside restaurant in a tiny suburb. With a wonderful sense of tact and feeling M. Fauvel avoided those places where Mrs Harris might have felt uncomfortable, the expensive luxury and glitter spots, and never knew how happy Natasha herself felt in this more modest environment.
This was a little family restaurant. The tables were of iron, the tablecloths checkered, and the bread wonderfully crisp and fresh. Mrs Harris took it all in, the simple people at neighbouring tables, the glassy, shimmering surface of the river with boating parties gliding about and the strains of accordion music drifting over from the water, with a deep sigh of satisfaction. She said: ‘Lumme, if it ain’t just like ’ome. Sometimes, on a hot night, me friend Mrs Butterfield and I go for a ride up the river and drop in for a pint at a little plyce near the brewery.’
But at the eating of a snail she firmly baulked. She examined them with interest in their steaming fragrant shells. The spirit was willing but her stomach said no.
‘I can’t,’ she finally confessed, ‘not arter seeing them walkin’ about.’
From that time on, unspoken, the nightly gathering of the three for roamings about Paris became taken for granted. In the daytime, while they worked, except for her fittings which took place at eleven-thirty in the mornings, and her tidying of Fauvel’s premises, Mrs Harris was free to explore the city on her own, but the evenings were heralded by the arrival of Natasha in her Simca, and they would be off.
Thus Mrs Harris saw Paris by twilight from the second landing of the Tour Eiffel, by milky moonlight from Le Sacré-Cœur, and waking up in the morning at dawn when the market bustle at Les Halles began, and after a night of visiting this or that part of the city of never-ending wonder, they breakfasted there on eggs and garlic sausages surrounded by workmen, market porters, and lorry drivers.
Once, instigated somewhat in a spirit of mischief by Natasha, they took Mrs Harris to the Revue des Nudes, a cabaret in the Rue Blanche, but she was neither shocked nor impressed. There is a curiously cosy kind of family atmosphere at some of these displays; whole groups, including grandmothers, fathers, mothers, and the young come up from the country for a celebration or anniversary of some kind, bringing along a picnic hamper; they order wine and settle down to enjoy the fun.
Mrs Harris felt right at home in this milieu. She did not consider the parade of stitchless young ladies immoral. Immoral in her code was doing someone the dirty. She peered interestedly at the somewhat beefy naiads and remarked: ‘Coo - some of them don’t arf want a bit o’ slimming, what?’ Later when an artiste adorned with no more than a cache sexe consisting of a silver fig leaf performed rather a strenuous dance, Mrs Harris murmured: ‘Lumme, I don’t see ’ow she does it.’
‘Does which?’ queried M. Fauvel absent-mindedly, for his attention was riveted upon Natasha.
‘Keeps that thing on ’oppin about like that.’
M. Fauvel blushed crimson and Natasha shouted with laughter, but forbore to explain.
And in this manner, Mrs Harris lost all fear of the great foreign capital, for they showed her a life and a city teeming with her own kind of people - simple, rough, realistic, and hard-working, and engaged all of them in the same kind of struggle to get along as she herself back home.
FREE to wander where she would during the day in Paris except for her fittings, Mrs Harris never quite knew where her footsteps would lead her. It was not the glittering shopping sections of the Champs Élysées, the Faubourg St Honoré, and the Place Vendôme that interested her, for there were equally shimmering and expensive shopping sections in London which she never visited. But she loved people and odd quartiers, the beautiful parks, the river, and the manner in which life was lived in the poorer section by the inhabitants of the city.
She explored thus the Left Bank and the Right and eventually through accident stumbled upon a certain paradise in the Middle, the Flower Market located by the Quai de la Corse on the Île de la Cité.
Often back home Mrs Harris had peered longingly into the windows of flower shops, at the display of hot-house blooms, orchids, roses, gardenias, etc., on her way to and from her labours, but never in her life had she found herself in the midst of such an intoxicating profusion of blossoms of every kind, colour, and shape, ranged upon the footpaths and filling stalls and stands of the Flower Market within sight of the twin towers of Notre-Dame.
Here were streets that were nothing but a mass of azaleas in pots, plants in pink, white, red, purple, mingling with huge bunches of cream, crimson, and yellow carnations. There seemed to be acres of boxes of pansies smiling up into the sun, blue irises, red roses, and huge fronds of gladioli forced into early bud in hot-houses.
There were many plants and flowers Mrs Harris did not even know the name of, small rubbery-looking pink blooms, or flowers with yellow centres and deep blue petals, every conceivable kind of daisy and marguerite, bushy-headed peonies and, of course, row upon row of Mrs Harris’s own very dearest potted geraniums.
But not only were her visual senses enthralled and overwhelmed by the masses of shapes and colours, but on the soft breeze that blew from the Seine came as well the intoxication of scent to transport the true lover of flowers into his or her particular heaven, and such a one was Mrs Harris. All the beauty that she had ever really known in her life until she saw the Dior dress had been flowers. Now, her nostrils were filled with the scent of lilies and tuberoses. From every quarter came beautiful scents, and through this profusion of colour and scent Mrs Harris wandered as if in a dream.
Yet another familiar figure was promenading in that same dream, none other than the fierce old gentleman who had been Mrs Harris’s neighbour at the Dior show and whose name was the Marquis de Chassagne, of an ancient family. He was wearing a light brown spring coat, a brown homburg, and fawn-coloured gloves. There was no fierceness in his face now and even his tufted wild-flung eyebrows seemed at peace as he strolled through the lanes of fresh, dewy blossoms and breathed deeply and with satisfaction of the perfumes that mounted from them.
His path crossed that of t
he charwoman, a smile broke out over his countenance, and he raised his homburg with the same gesture he would have employed doffing it to a queen. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘our neighbour from London who likes flowers. So you have found your way here.’
Mrs Harris said: ‘It’s like a bit of ’eaven, ain’t it? I wouldn’t have believed it if I ’adn’t seen it with me own eyes.’ She looked down at a huge jar bulging with crisp white lilies and another with firm, smooth, yet unopened gladioli with but a gleam of mauve, crimson, lemon, or pink showing at the stalks to indicate what colours they would be. Drops of fresh water glistened on them. ‘Oh, Lor’!’ murmured Mrs Harris, ‘I do ’ope Mrs Butterfield won’t forget to water me geraniums.’
‘Ah, madame, you cultivate geraniums?’ the marquis inquired politely.
‘Two window boxes full and a dozen or so pots wherever I can find a place to put one. You might say as it was me ’obby.’
‘Épatant!’ the marquis murmured to himself and then inquired: ‘And the dress you came here to seek. Did you find it?’
Mrs Harris grinned like a little imp. ‘Didn’t I just! It’s the one called “Temptytion”, remember? It’s black velvet trimmed wiv black bugle beads and the top is some sort of pink soft stuff.’
The marquis reflected for a moment and then nodded: ‘Ah, yes, I do remember. It was worn by that exquisite young creature— ’
‘Natasha,’ Mrs Harris concluded for him. ‘She’s me friend. It’s being myde for me, I’ve got three more days to wait.’
‘And so, with infinite good sense, you acquaint yourself with the genuine attractions of our city.’
‘And you— ’ Mrs Harris began and broke off in the middle of her sentence, for intuitively she knew the answer to the question she had been about to ask.
But the Marquis de Chassagne was not at all put out, and only remarked gravely: ‘You have guessed it. There is so little time left for me to enjoy the beauties of the earth. Come, let us sit on this seat in the sun, a little, you and I, and talk.’
