Girl in Bath

by Catherine C. Heywood

  He hadn’t. Whatever he had been to her in the end, Aubrey had always been an adoring lover. Generous and attentive. The perfect gentleman. It had been beautiful and sweet. Exactly what she imagined making love should be.

  Aubrey stopped and faced her. “I would never hurt you. Why do you let him do that to you? Is this what you like now? Help me to understand. Because I can’t. You’ve told me time and again you’re not one of those weak girls who would give herself over to anything a man desires. I just don’t understand it.”

  Monica was torn. Half his questions she had herself. She couldn’t reason it out or explain it away. Not to herself and certainly not to anyone else. The closest she could come to understanding was the raw feeling of it. As if with Aubrey she’d been happily swimming underwater not even realizing she couldn’t breathe. Yet with Jonathan it was cresting the surface with a great gulp of air. He made her feel alive. Made everything seem electric-bright. Did she feel shame? Yes. For it was so good. And no. For the very same reason. Might she have been content in the murky, cradling water? Never to know? Perhaps. But now, could she ever go back?

  “He hasn’t hurt me. Not really. I can’t explain it and I don’t need to. Not to anyone, but certainly not to you.”

  “What does that mean? ‘Certainly not to me.’ You may have stopped loving me, but I never stopped loving you, Monica. Never. If you need to be held down and hurt, I’ll do it. But I don’t think you need those things. I think he’s charismatic. He’s interesting. He gives you fine clothes and nights at the opera. I know it might be hard to resist. I could give you all that. Without hurting you.”

  “I won’t say it again, because I trust I won’t have to.” She gave him a pointed stare. “He doesn’t hurt me. Not in the way you’re imagining. And I don’t even know if I’ll see him again or what I want, but for some time to myself.”

  He nodded and seemed to be thinking. Finally, he said, “He’ll never love you. Not in the way you deserve. And you deserve to be loved, Monica. Though you see it as a weakness. I can’t understand.”

  They stared at each other for a long moment. Aubrey was needy, but he also had an endearing way of laying her bare. And his devotion, but for the wounded man he’d been when she left him, had never been in doubt. He did love her. She was all but certain he would fashion a new heart to love her differently and well, if only she’d give him a chance.

  “Come to Cortot. Just for a visit. When you’re ready.”

  When Monica closed the door on the inside of No. 13, she sank with relief against it. It was Sunday night. Only one week before she had returned from an incredible weekend with Jonathan, bruised and sated and happy. Little did she know that when she woke the next morning she would be put out of a room and position. That she would return to the atelier on Cortot. That she would have to say goodbye forever to her best friend and sister.

  Now she was back to the same house carved into the hill and everything was different. She looked at the stairs with dread. She didn’t want to go up to confront an empty room.

  “Mademoiselle.”

  Madame Pelletier poked her head out tentatively. Then she came into the entryway as if on the balls of her feet. The laundry mistress had never moved so peculiarly. She didn’t tiptoe into a room, but trudged with ham feet as if it were a chore.

  “I was terribly, terribly sorry to hear of Mademoiselle Thomas’s passing.” Her voice was syrupy, her face a picture of doughy sadness. She wrung her hands, shook her head, and tsked. “The poor girl. Fortune smiled upon her to have a friend in you and that’s certain. I’m so glad you’re back.” She patted her hand and went to leave.

  Madame Pelletier seemed to have been taken and replaced with another who resembled her in all but manner.

  “Madame?”

  “Yes, dear?” Still her face was furrowed with compassion.

  “Are you in the drink?”

  The madame went rigid, arched a brow, and pursed her lips. “Oh, well, see if I try a drop of kindness for you again, you ungrateful girl. Monsieur Derassen thinks to tell me to be nice to the girls. If it were up to him, he’d have me tucking you into bed each night with a pot of chocolate and a kiss to the forehead. What does he know? You’d all run to laziness if I gave an inch.

  “You’ve had your week holiday for your friend. That’s more than most.” She turned to leave, mumbling as she went, “And don’t be expecting any more favors. I’m plum out.”

  Monica couldn’t suppress a smile.

  In her room, she half expected to see Jonathan waiting for her and was glad when he wasn’t. He’d arranged her things nicely, but the empty bed on the other wall made the room feel stark. She collapsed onto her bed and heard a crinkle. Sitting up, she found a note:

  Monica,

  Please take care of yourself, sweetheart.

  Your audition is in five days. But if you’re not ready, I’ll understand.

  I should like to see you tomorrow. Or the next day. You need only call.

  As to that, I’ve had a telephone installed.

  My home number is:

  SEG5107

  My office number is:

  GUT6838

  Please don’t hesitate to call me. For anything.

  J—

  She held the note to her tender heart.

  To be continued…

  Also by Catherine C. Heywood

  Drazen World Novella

  The California Limited

  Author’s Note

  Girl in Bath is Part I of my adaptation of CD Reiss’s, The Submission Series. If you enjoyed the characters introduced in this story and are looking for a smart, sexy, contemporary romance, I cannot recommend that series more highly.

  ***

  The Laundry: Alcoholism in the garment trades was rampant. The working conditions were hard—12-18-hour days, daily pick-ups and deliveries with loaded baskets in dark hours, working in abrasive cleaning solutions and boiling water, wielding searing irons. Wine was cheap and plentiful. It was common, therefore, for owners to provide it to boost morale and stave off complaints.

  Throughout the 19th century, there was a concerted effort in Paris to render laundry and laundresses invisible. First women were forbidden from using the river banks of the Seine as had been common throughout France. Then bateaux-lavoirs, or boats moored to riverbanks that acted as laundries, were abolished. Later in the century, the discovery of microbes focused attention on blanchisseries and their ability to transmit disease.

  A cholera epidemic had swept through Paris in 1884. Known to be a water-borne illness, lavandières, who worked with water six days a week, were regularly the target of public scorn as disease-carriers. The constant fear of tuberculosis (consumption) and diphtheria epidemics gave the Conseil d’ Hygiène new power to go into private homes and businesses to stamp out these diseases.

  So Monica’s fears and Madame Pelletier’s threats, however callous they may seem, were very real.

  Performers and Sex:

  “…The professional actress…these most lecherous women…can ignite an unchaste flame even in the snow.”

  —Fr. Michael Zampelli, S.J.,

  on the Counter-Reformation view

  The intersection of performance and sex is an age-old one. Long before the #MeToo movement shined a light on it was this idea that a woman who uses her body to arouse emotion was no better than a woman who uses it to enflame the body and should be treated so. For centuries actresses have been considered a threat to society and chaste marriage, even a threat to Christianity itself.

  Further, the idea that any performer was, at base, a transactional being goes back to ancient Rome when they were often slaves and if free, considered no better than slaves. Whether transvestite actors in Protestant countries, or women performing in the public sphere in Catholic countries, performers have been considered provocative. Referred to as “infames” and at times denied legal protections such as full citizenship, the right to marry, claim children of those marriages, or the
right to own property.

  So ingrained were these ideas throughout the ages and the avenues open to women beyond the domestic sphere so limited, that a woman who was charming, clever, beautiful, or talented unashamedly adopted the roles available to her. In France a most prized one was that of the courtesan.

  The term “courtesan” originated around 1540 and literally meant a woman of the court. The European equivalent of a Japanese Geisha, she made her means with her body, but just as important were her wit, charm, and style. Most moved into the profession through performing. She was the bed mate of kings and generals, painters and princes, moving men as she moved society.

  By the 19th century, particularly in France where sex was more liberated, a courtesan was an esteemed woman. No longer persecuted but revered. So when we meet Monica Fauconnier, a young woman who was beautiful, talented, and charming and in dire financial straits besides, the idea that she would want to be a performer simply for performing’s sake was virtually unheard of still in Paris of that era. Expectations, as she said, were changing. But to understand the nature of her dilemma—and, to a degree, Jonathan’s—is to understand that courtesans in that time and place shined brighter than stars.

  “Protest against the Tower of Monsieur Eiffel”: The idea of the Eiffel Tower was conceived in 1884 for the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1889. As a commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, a symbol of royal authority, its significance was akin to a war memorial.

  The controversy surrounding the proposed tower was considerable. In 1887, the newspaper Le Temps published the “Protest against the Tower of Monsieur Eiffel,” signed by influential members of the literary and artistic community:

  “We come, we writers, painters, sculptors, architects, lovers of the beauty of Paris which was until now intact, to protest with all our strength and all our indignation, in the name of the underestimated taste of the French, in the name of French art and history under threat, against the erection in the very heart of our capital, of the useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower, which popular ill-feeling, so often an arbiter of good sense and justice, has already christened the Tower of Babel.”

  The weight of public objection was so considerable, Gustave Eiffel knew he had to develop clear functional capabilities for the tower to survive. He proposed it be used to further scientific study in areas such as meteorology and telecommunications. And in 1899 the first wireless transmitter was installed on the tower.

  It established its permanent place in 1914, when its radiotelegraphic station jammed German radio communications, which contributed to the Allied success during the Battle of the Marne.

  La Semaine Sanglante (The Bloody Week): Radicalized workers, resentful over the famine conditions during the Siege of Paris, then the eventual defeat of France by Prussia, organized into a group called the Commune. For two months in the spring of 1871, they were the radical socialist and revolutionary government of France.

  In May the French regular army marched back into Paris, revitalized after their ranks returned from German prisons. Outnumbering Commune forces five-to-one, they retook the city in only a week. One of the more decisive battles was the Battle for Montmartre, where the Commune uprising began.

  References and further reading:

  Grüring, Jaimee. Dirty Laundry: Public Hygiene and Public Space in Nineteenth-Century Paris, Arizona State University (2011).

  Scott, Virginia. Women on the Stage in Early Modern France: 1540-1750 (2010).

  Hewitt, Catherine. The Mistress of Paris: The 19th-Century Courtesan Who Built an Empire on a Secret (2017).

  du Maurier, George. Trilby (1894).

  Mogador, Céleste. Memoirs of a Courtesan in Nineteenth-Century Paris (1854).

  Zola, Émile; Parmée, Douglas (translator). Nana (1880).

  Proust, Marcel. In Search of Lost Time (1913).

  ***

  To experience more of Girl in Bath, please visit:

  https://www.pinterest.com/katestcroix/girl-in-bath/

  Monica and Jonathan’s story continues in Part II, Girl in Wait.

  About the Author

  CC Heywood is a former political speech writer and communications consultant. At one time she pursued being a stand-up comedienne and a criminal defense attorney before settling on creative writing. Which, let’s face it, was all she wanted to do as a girl.

  Born in Red Wing, MN, she’s lived in Boston, MA and Edinburgh, Scotland. She has degrees in American Politics, Writing, and Political Communication from the University of St. Thomas and Boston College. She’s kind of a nerd for great political speeches.

  Raised in a strict, Catholic family, when asked why she didn’t want to be a nun, the answer she gave still makes her mom blush. The worst job she ever had? Scraping year-old tobacco spit off a shoe factory wall. The best? Doing this.

  She lives in Western WI with her husband and boys and also writes historic fiction as Catherine C. Heywood.

  Follow her:

  Website: www.catherinecheywood.com

  Facebook at: www.facebook.com/authorcatherinecheywood

  Twitter at: www.twitter.com/CCHeywoodauthor