Christmas in Paris

by Jackie French

  ‘I stamped hard on his boots with my high heels too . . .’

  Violette was glad the bruises would not show till long after the police had examined him.

  ‘. . . and punched him, hard — my brothers taught me how to box — but of course his body was padded by the costume and he hardly felt it.’

  ‘Your brothers?’ asked Violette quietly.

  ‘George and Harry. They died on the Somme in ’18, two months before the Armistice. I . . . I’m glad they were together, not alone.’

  The brothers Vandendorn would have had the company of several armies of young men when they died, but Violette still understood.

  ‘That cad was still trying to get the pearls but I’d stuffed them down my brassiere. A brassiere is a modern kind of . . .’

  ‘I know what a brassiere is,’ said Violette slowly, still trying to take in the implications of all this.

  ‘And then you came and hit him and we lit out of there like ducks off a pond . . . and here we are.’ Adele patted her fashionably shaped bosom. ‘And Mom’s pearls are safe.’

  And so are you, thought Violette. A man like that would not have liked being bested by a woman. One day, or night, he would have returned for all the valuables in the apartment, with friends, perhaps, to give Miss Adele Vandendorn the beating they believed she deserved, or worse.

  But there was no need to frighten Adele with what might have been. That particular Santa Claus would never return now to hurt her or any other woman.

  But this woman had known too much sadness. So had they all, this ‘lost generation’ who had lived through the war years, the frantic attempts at recovery, this Depression that left survivors starving and with no hope.

  Adele K Vandendorn must have her party. And the children of all those who had been so kind to her, who must also have lost so much, must have Santa Claus as well.

  Chapter 3

  The waiter brought their snails, each in its own shell topped with parsley, a little tarragon and much garlic butter, sizzling on two hot metal platters. Adele stared at them.

  Violette took a tiny two-pronged fork in one hand, a piece of bread in another. ‘You scoop like this, see?’

  She neatly caught the dripping garlic butter on the bread and chewed her snail. Perfect. Far fatter than the ones she’d eaten with Grandmère, gathered from the vineyards in the early morning. Grandmère had let hers simmer by the fire all night, then left them to marinate in their juices before simmering them again with herbs, then browning them in butter . . .

  ‘You are not eating. Try one!’

  Adele cautiously lifted one to her mouth. ‘It doesn’t taste like a snail.’

  ‘How do you know, if you have never eaten one?’

  ‘True.’ Adele took another. Violette was beginning to like this young woman. It surprised her. There had been few people in Violette’s life she had liked, and even fewer whom she’d loved.

  Two hours later the snails had been consumed; Violette had eaten two ices while her companion drank café filtré and smoked a Gauloise or, rather, lit one, then let it burn away in an ashtray. Violette was glad to see that even if Adele followed the fashion of women smoking, she was not fool enough to breathe in the smoke. They had spoken of countries far from Paris, of the vast Australian properties the size of small European nations, of kangaroos, of New York, where everything was taller than any other city in the world. Adele loved her country, thought Violette. But Paris had her heart.

  At last Violette dabbed her lips with her napkin. ‘Does your apartment have the telephone?’

  Adele looked puzzled at the sudden change of subject (they had been discussing the elephants and the zoo at New York’s Central Park). ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘May I stay with you tonight?’

  ‘Of course. But I thought you and your parents were staying at the Ritz?’

  ‘If you have a telephone, I will call the Ritz to tell my maman and papa that I will stay with a friend tonight. I must speak to the concierge at the Ritz too,’ she said airily — she who had never had a new dress till three and a half years before, who had sung and begged in the streets.

  ‘Why?’ Adele asked again.

  ‘To find a suit for Santa Claus, of course,’ said Violette. ‘My Aunt Lily says a good concierge can find anything and at the Ritz they are most good indeed. And then . . .’ she dabbed her lips again.

  ‘And then?’ echoed Adele, fascinated.

  ‘My bon papa will be your Santa Claus.’

  Chapter 4

  It was a most splendid apartment, with an iron-grilled elevator. Violette noticed Adele give a small shiver as they passed the narrow back staircase.

  Truthfully, she had decided to stay with Adele mostly from curiosity, for to be a single woman living alone and in luxury seemed an admirable fate. But it was also true that despite the good company and the meal and laughter, Adele had gone through terror tonight. She had most carefully not glanced at the alleyway where, hopefully, the body no longer lay, but her face had grown pale again and her hand trembled as she reached for her keys.

  Violette made her phone calls. Her parents had still not returned, but the concierge promised that the detailed message with Violette’s explanations and instructions would be given to them as soon as they arrived back at the hotel. She then asked him if he would be able to find her a Santa Claus outfit in the morning.

  Aunt Lily was correct, it seemed. The Hotel Ritz concierge could manage anything, even a Santa Claus costume for tomorrow morning that would fit her papa.

  The call finished, she prowled while Adele soaked away the terror in a bath most beautiful — pale green marble and carved swans. It was a most gorgeous apartment. The living room was high ceilinged and papered in embossed cream silk that was barely visible behind paintings of women with few clothes on, or none, some of whom might possibly have been her hostess.

  Other paintings were of women too, but made up of squares and blocks of colour so they looked more like something a child might make out of coloured blocks of wood. Violette peered at the signature. Picasso. He must have given these to Adele, for surely no one would ever buy paintings as bad as his.

  A dining room, papered in pale mauve silk embossed with orchids, containing a long table and twelve chairs and a sideboard; there were three bedrooms and a dressing room as big as two of the bedrooms put together, with rack after rack of clothes, and furs carefully stored in linen bags, all scented with lavender and Arpège.

  An excellent arrangement.

  The kitchen was small but the refrigerator was well stocked. There was no cocoa — a despicable English invention — but Violette found the makings of hot chocolate, grated the chocolate into a saucepan with milk and sugar and began to whisk on a low heat.

  Half an hour of whisking and the milk was dark and sweet and frothy as Adele emerged, still rubbing her short hair dry, and dressed in green silk lounging pyjamas edged with satin and embroidered with swans at the cuffs and sleeves and collar and a matching chiffon coat, so thin it was almost transparent, floating behind her.

  ‘Hot chocolate! How did you know it’s just what I need?’

  Because I spent most of my life seeing women cope with horrors greater than yours, thought Violette, and then taking revenge on the perpetrators. But she simply smiled. ‘You have a bearskin rug by the fire! I have always wanted to sit on a bearskin rug and drink hot chocolate. We will drink and then you must sleep, if you are to enjoy the party tomorrow.’

  ‘You think . . . think it is still possible?’

  ‘Of course! The concierge has promised us a costume tomorrow morning and my papa will wear it.’

  Papa would do anything for the daughter he had lost for so long. Violette thought he might also enjoy playing Santa Claus.

  Adele leaned back against the sofa, the firelight flickering shadows across her face. She looked desperately tired.

  ‘Mademoiselle, will you stay here?’ asked Violette softly.

  ‘In this apartment? Or i
n Paris?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘I’m staying. It would take more than an evil little rotter to make me leave. This is my home now.’

  ‘Good.’

  Adele stood. ‘You’re right. I need some sleep if I’m to be worth anything tomorrow morning. The other bedroom is made up. Please help yourself to pyjamas and whatever clothes you may need tomorrow.’ She smiled tiredly. ‘Or any clothes at all. I owe you more than I can say.’

  ‘Then there is no need to say it,’ said Violette.

  Chapter 5

  The bed was as comfortable as her own at the Ritz, or at Shillings or Thuringa back in Australia. It was good to feel the lightness of a duvet instead of blankets and a heavy quilt. She slept well, then lay there on the soft linen pillows enjoying the sounds of Paris outside, the honk of horns of motorcars, the chatter of schoolchildren, wheels on cobblestones, until the door opened.

  A maid — middle aged, in black with a white cap — entered carrying a tray. A properly vast cup of black coffee, a silver jug of hot frothy milk, a sugar basin and two croissants still warm, with apricot preserve.

  ‘I am Jeanette, mademoiselle.’ She arranged the tray next to the bed.

  ‘Thank you, Jeanette.’ A femme domestique who did not live in. Violette approved more and more of the life Adele had chosen.

  ‘Mademoiselle will join you in the dressing room when you are ready.’

  Excellent indeed. Violette looked down at the silk pyjamas she had appropriated the previous night: far more interesting than anything her mother would approve of.

  The croissants eaten, the coffee drunk, the bath with gardenia salts taken and, wrapped in a mauve velvet house coat trimmed with purple fur, Violette emerged to find Adele waiting for her in a peach-coloured silk dress to just below the knee, high waisted with a matching scarf about her neck and a darker bolero jacket embroidered with holly. Her hat was a scrap of folded silk, with a small tuft of peach feathers. The precious pearls hung from her neck, looped three times rather than the single long strand that had been so à la mode a few years before.

  ‘You slept well, mademoiselle?’ Violette asked anxiously.

  ‘Yes.’ Adele seemed surprised.

  ‘And no nightmares.’ Violette guessed. ‘That is good.’ She glanced at her wristwatch, a gift from her parents. ‘We have two hours then to dress, and to go to your Christmas party. Must any more be done?’

  Adele shook her head. ‘It’s all in hand. The caterers have their orders, as have the rest of the staff, and the gifts are there already. Now we only need . . .’ her voice lost its steadiness ‘. . . Santa Claus.’

  ‘Who will be a most fine Santa Claus,’ said Violette firmly. ‘For my papa is excellent at all things. And now, perhaps, the clothes?’

  Half an hour later Violette was in paradise. She had tried on fifty evening gowns — not suitable for this morning, alas, and far too long for her, but magical after a life of darned rags then suitable serge and woollen tweeds. Evening trousers in silks and chiffons, low-necked silk dresses that were so thin it would have been a crime to spoil the line of the dress with underwear, a swan’s down cloak in white . . .

  Then it was ten o’clock and she had not even chosen what to wear to the party.

  ‘It is all . . . magnificent!’ she whispered, trailing her hand over wall after wall of dresses, wraps, even trousers . . . She had grown used to wardrobes of beautiful garments in the years since she had joined her parents, but even Miss Lily regarded clothes as a tool for beauty, elegance, seduction and other purposes, not for themselves alone. And seeing dress after dress on models at the great fashion houses was far different from seeing a vast room of them like this.

  ‘I like fashion,’ said Adele, slightly apologetically.

  ‘So do I,’ said Violette reverently.

  Adele laughed. ‘It’s so good to find someone who takes clothes seriously. Most of the people I know are more interested in taking them off.’

  Violette thought of the paintings of unclothed women in the living room and nodded. The human form was admirable and she often admired it too. But a dress of a hundred panels of almost transparent silk, each of a shade subtly different from all the others, fastened so they flowed down the female form like a multi-coloured waterfall . . . that was irresistible.

  Violette sighed. It was also entirely unsuitable for eleven o’clock in the morning and even more unsuitable when one’s maman would be there, watching her husband play Santa Claus.

  At last Violette chose a high-necked dress of rich blue tapestry that flared from a high waist, with panels of a lighter blue sewn across the skirt so it draped in a handkerchief style at the hem. It was very different from any dress Maman would have chosen for her, but not so outrageous that Maman would not let her keep it.

  It was also at least a foot too long.

  Adele looked at it in dismay. ‘I’d forgotten I’m so much taller than you. Perhaps if we pin up the skirt?’

  ‘And spoil the hemline?’ replied Violette, shocked. ‘No, mademoiselle, if you find me pins I will lift the waist. And a jacket like yours, perhaps, to hide the pinning?’

  A darker blue bolero, but embroidered with a thousand tiny beads of red and green, the Christmas colours. Violette considered asking Adele if she might also use her lipstick, and a touch of powder. But no, not when Maman would be there . . .

  The car waited for them below. ‘I don’t bother with a car and chauffeur usually,’ confided Adele. ‘It is better to be independent. Jeanette comes in each day except for Sunday to cook and tend my clothes, and Madame Viot does the heavier housework twice a week.’

  Violette leaned back on the butter-soft leather seats. The car even had a small nosegay of hothouse orchids set in a silver filigree vase. She gazed out at Paris, the young people drinking coffee and arguing at cafés; the older ones reading newspapers or novels with yellow covers or dipping biscuits in their coffee; the men sitting back admiring the women who walked past their tables; and women sitting back admiring the men who passed as well. Here and there a dog sat under a table for in Paris a dog was, of course, a customer too, with meals prepared by the assistant chef, who also cleaned out any mess left behind.

  A civilised place, her Paris . . .

  Violette blinked. Her Paris? She had been born in Belgium, lived in England and Australia. And, yet, in some way she could not define, Paris felt like home.

  The motorcar pulled up outside the Hôtel Rue Sylvestre. The chauffeur opened the door first for Adele and then for Violette. Already Violette could hear the orchestra: American tunes she had heard on the Thuringa wireless. ‘Happy Days are Here Again’, ‘Tiptoe Through the Tulips’ and then ‘Away in a Manger’ . . .

  ‘Come on,’ said Adele, her face eager, all terror forgotten. She smiled at the manager as they entered, then turned to the left to the vast ballroom, now decorated with red and green streamers, a Christmas tree almost as high as the ceiling and topped with a golden angel, with more gold angels on each branch as well as silver balls and tinsel. A crèche sat below its branches, the Christ Child in His cradle, among the adoring shepherds — far more cleanly shaven shepherds than any Violette had met in Australia.

  Guests were already joyously sampling treats from the vast buffet along the wall, a few American women in silk Chanel outnumbered by French women in dresses clearly home-made or remodelled with careful flair to fit the current fashion, men in anything from plus fours with their club tie to carefully darned flannel jackets or paint-daubed dungarees and berets. Even the children were impeccably neat, as somehow all Parisian children seemed to be, no matter how bohemian or poor their parents: the girls in navy blue and white, their plaits tied with ribbons, the boys in shirts with collars turned to hide their frayed edges, woollen jumpers knitted from older garments carefully unravelled, flannel trousers with their hems let down. Their shoes might be battered but were invariably well polished.

  Violette gazed at the crowd: Adele’s American adults with shado
wed eyes smiling today, at least; children who would normally have only rarely found a shred of meat in their potage, who would gaze with hopeless longing at the cakes in the patisserie that they would never taste; this party was for them.

  The French adults and children exclaimed at the hot dogs, the hamburgers, the fried chicken pieces looking only slightly odd in the hotel’s heated silver salvers, along with pumpkin pies, apple pies, blueberry shortcake, the angel cake with its six white layers filled with cream, the chocolate cake cooked long and flat and cut into rectangular slices, quite unlike a ‘proper’ tall and round one. The more conservative French adults stuck to roast turkey with oyster stuffing, crab cakes, baked oysters on the shell, the jellied salads in many colours and the hot cornbread. The French children simply ate, then ate some more.

  ‘There will be a basket of food for every family to take away,’ whispered Adele. Violette nodded. She was making a good Noël for so many families, this young American. Violette remembered the meagre celebrations of her childhood, and approved.

  At the other end of the room the orchestra — three men and three women, three dark-skinned and three white, a combination Violette had never seen before — played Christmas carols (it seemed that American ones were much the same as Australian carols) interspersed with jazz, the trombone wailing, piano jiggling and the dancers seeming not to care what the music was, for they could match their steps equally well to ‘Baby I’m Blue’ and ‘Jingle Bells’.

  Violette looked at her watch. ‘It is almost time for Santa Claus.’

  Adele beckoned a waiter. ‘Could you let me know when Santa Claus arrives?’

  The waiter looked surprised. ‘But he is here already, in the next room,’ he said, just as a young man in velvet trousers and a white linen shirt tapped Violette on the shoulder. ‘Hot to trot, baby?’ he asked.

  He was evidently asking her to dance. Violette shook her head reluctantly. She would love to dance, but if Papa was there already, Maman would be about somewhere too. It would be best to greet her like a demure and proper daughter, one who would never dream of crashing a dustbin lid on the head of Father Christmas.