Paris, 1912
‘Mademoiselle!’
I glanced up from the display of gloves, and
closed the glass case over them, the sound swallowed by the huge atrium that made up La
Femme Marché’s central shopping area.
‘Mademoiselle! Here! Can you help
me?’
I would have noticed him even if he
hadn’t been shouting. He was tall and heavy set, with wavy hair that fell around
his ears, at odds with the clipped styles of most of the gentlemen who came through our
doors. His features were thick and generous, the kind my father would have dismissed as
paysan
. The man looked, I thought, like a cross between a Roman emperor and
a Russian bear.
As I walked over to him, he gestured towards
the scarves. But his eyes remained on me. In fact, they stayed on me so long that I
glanced behind me, concerned that Madame Bourdain, my supervisor, might have noticed.
‘I need you to choose me a scarf,’ he said.
‘What kind of scarf,
Monsieur?’
‘A woman’s scarf.’
‘May I ask her colouring? Or whether
she prefers a particular fabric?’
He was still staring. Madame Bourdain was
busy serving a woman in a peacock-feather hat. If she had looked up from her position at
the face creams, she would have noticed that my ears had turned pink. ‘Whatever
suits you,’ he said, adding, ‘She has your colouring.’
I sorted carefully through the silk scarves,
my skin growing ever warmer, and freed one of my favourites: a fine, feather-light
length of fabric in a deep opalescent blue. ‘This colour suits nearly
everybody,’ I said.
‘Yes … yes. Hold it
up,’ he demanded. ‘Against you. Here.’ He gestured towards his
collarbone. I glanced at Madame Bourdain. There were strict guidelines as to the level
of familiarity for such exchanges, and I wasn’t sure whether holding a scarf to my
exposed neck fell within them. But the man was waiting. I hesitated, then brought it up
to my cheek. He studied me for so long that the whole of the ground floor seemed to
disappear.
‘That’s the one. Beautiful.
There!’ he exclaimed, reaching into his coat for his wallet. ‘You have made
my purchase easy.’
He grinned, and I found myself smiling back.
Perhaps it was simply relief that he had stopped staring at me.
‘I’m not sure I –’ I was
folding the scarf in tissue paper, then ducked my head as my supervisor approached.
‘Your assistant has done sterling
work, Madame,’ he boomed. I glanced sideways at her, watching as she tried to
reconcile this man’s rather scruffy exterior with the command of language that
usually came with extreme wealth. ‘You should promote her. She has an
eye!’
‘We try to ensure that our assistants
always offer professional satisfaction, Monsieur,’ she said smoothly. ‘But
we hope that the quality of our goods makes every purchase
satisfactory. That will be two francs forty.’
I handed him his parcel, then watched him
make his way slowly across the packed floor of Paris’s greatest department store.
He sniffed the bottled scents, surveyed the brightly coloured hats, commented to those
serving or even just passing. What would it be like to be married to such a man, I
thought absently, someone for whom every moment apparently contained some sensory
pleasure? But – I reminded myself – a man who also felt at liberty to stare at shop
girls until they blushed. When he reached the great glass doors, he turned and looked
directly at me. He lifted his hat for a full three seconds, then disappeared into the
Paris morning.
I had come to Paris in the summer of 1910,
a year after the death of my mother and a month after my sister had married Jean-Michel
Montpellier, a book-keeper from the neighbouring village. I had taken a job at La Femme
Marché, Paris’s largest department store, and had worked my way up from
storeroom assistant to shop-floor assistant, lodging within the store’s own large
boarding house.
I was content in Paris, once I had recovered
from my initial loneliness, and earned enough money to wear shoes other than the clogs
that marked me out as provincial. I loved the business of it, being there at eight
forty-five a.m. as the doors opened and the fine Parisian women strolled in, their hats
high, their waists painfully narrow, their faces framed by fur or feathers. I loved
being free of the shadow my father’s temper had cast over my whole childhood. The
drunks and reprobates of the 9th
arrondissement
held no
fears for me. And I loved the store: a vast, teeming cornucopia of beautiful things.
Its scents and sights were intoxicating, its ever-changing stock bringing new and
beautiful things from the four corners of the world: Italian shoes, English tweeds,
Scottish cashmeres, Chinese silks, fashions from America and London. Downstairs, its new
food halls offered chocolates from Switzerland, glistening smoked fish, robust, creamy
cheeses. A day spent within La Femme Marché’s bustling walls meant being
privy to a daily glimpse of a wider, more exotic world.
I had no wish to marry (I did not want to
end up like my mother) and the thought of remaining where I was, like Madame Arteuil,
the seamstress, or my supervisor, Madame Bourdain, suited me very well indeed.
Two days later, I heard his voice again:
‘Shop girl! Mademoiselle!’
I was serving a young woman with a pair of
fine kid gloves. I nodded at him, and continued my careful wrapping of her purchase.
But he didn’t wait. ‘I have
urgent need of another scarf,’ he announced. The woman took her gloves from me
with an audible
tut
. If he heard he didn’t show it. ‘I thought
something red. Something vibrant, fiery. What have you got?’
I was a little annoyed. Madame Bourdain had
impressed on me that this store was a little piece of paradise: the customer must always
leave feeling they had found a haven of respite from the busy streets (if one that had
elegantly stripped them of their money). I was afraid my lady customer might complain.
She swept away with her chin raised.
‘No no no, not those,’ he said,
as I began sorting
through my display. ‘Those.’ He
pointed down, within the glass cabinet, to where the expensive ones lay. ‘That
one.’
I brought out the scarf. The deep ruby red
of fresh blood, it glowed against my pale hands, like a wound.
He smiled to see it. ‘Your neck,
Mademoiselle. Lift your head a little. Yes. Like that.’
I felt self-conscious holding up the scarf
this time. I knew my supervisor was watching me. ‘You have beautiful
colouring,’ he murmured, reaching into his pockets for the money as I swiftly
removed the scarf and began wrapping it in tissue.
‘I’m sure your wife will be
delighted with her gifts,’ I said. My skin burned where his gaze had landed.
He looked at me then, the skin around his
eyes crinkling. ‘Where are your family from, you with that skin? The north? Lille?
Belgium?’
I pretended I hadn’t heard him. We
were not allowed to discuss personal matters with customers, especially male
customers.
‘You know my favourite meal?
Moules marinière
with Normandy cream. Some onions. A little
pastis
. Mmm.’ He pressed his lips to his fingers, and held up the
parcel that I handed him. ‘
À bientôt
, Mademoiselle!’
This time I dared not watch his progress
through the store. But from the flush at the back of my neck, I knew he had stopped
again to look at me. I felt briefly infuriated. In St Péronne, such behaviour would
have been unthinkable. In Paris, some days, I felt as if I were walking the streets in
my undergarments, given how Parisian men felt at liberty to stare.
Two weeks before Bastille Day there was
great excitement in the store; the chanteuse Mistinguett had entered the ground floor.
Surrounded by a coterie of acolytes and assistants, she stood out with her dazzling
smile and rose-covered headdress, as if she had been more brilliantly drawn than anyone
else. She bought things without caring to examine them, pointing gaily at the displays
and leaving assistants to gather items in her wake. We gazed at her from the sidelines
as if she were an exotic bird, and we merely grey Parisian pigeons. I sold her two
scarves: one of cream silk, the other a plush thing from dyed blue feathers. I could see
it draped around her neck, and felt as if I had been dusted with a little of her
glamour.
For days afterwards I felt a little
unbalanced, as if the excess of her beauty, her style, had made me aware of its lack in
myself.
Bear Man, meanwhile, came in three more
times. Each time he bought a scarf, each time somehow ensuring that it was I who served
him.
‘You have an admirer,’ remarked
Paulette (Perfumes).
‘Monsieur Lefèvre? Be
careful,’ sniffed Loulou (Bags and Wallets). ‘Marcel in the post room has
seen him in Pigalle, chatting to street girls. Hmph. Talk of the devil.’ She
turned back to her counter.
‘Mademoiselle.’
I flinched, and spun around.
‘I’m sorry.’ He leaned
over the counter, his big hands spanning the glass. ‘I didn’t mean to
frighten you.’
‘I am far from frightened,
Monsieur.’
His brown eyes scanned my face with such
intensity –
he seemed to be having an internal conversation to which
I could not be privy.
‘Would you like to look at some more
scarves?’
‘Not today. I wanted … to
ask you something.’
My hand went to my collar.
‘I would like to paint you.’
‘What?’
‘My name is Édouard Lefèvre.
I am an artist. I would very much like to paint you, if you could spare me an hour or
two.’
I thought he was teasing me. I glanced to
where Loulou and Paulette were serving, wondering if they were listening.
‘Why … why would you want to paint
me
?’
It was the first time I ever saw him look
even mildly disconcerted. ‘You really want me to answer that?’
I had sounded, I realized, as if I were
hoping for compliments.
‘Mademoiselle, there is nothing
untoward in what I ask of you. You may bring a chaperone if you choose. I merely
want … Your face fascinates me. It remains in my mind long after I leave La
Femme Marché. I wish to commit it to paper.’
I fought the urge to touch my chin.
My
face? Fascinating?
‘Will … will your wife be there?’
‘I have no wife.’ He reached
into a pocket, and scribbled on a piece of paper. ‘But I do have a lot of
scarves.’ He held it out to me, and I found myself glancing sideways, like a
felon, before I accepted it.
I didn’t tell anybody. I wasn’t
even sure what I would have said. I put on my best gown and took it off again. Twice. I
spent an unusual amount of time pinning my hair. I sat by my
bedroom door for twenty minutes and recited all the reasons why I should not go.
The landlady raised an eyebrow as I finally
left. I had shed my good shoes and slipped my clogs back on to allay her suspicions. As
I walked, I debated with myself.
If your supervisors hear that you modelled for an artist, they will cast doubt on
your morality. You could lose your job!
He wants to paint me! Me, Sophie from St Péronne. The plain foil to
Hélène’s beauty.
Perhaps there is something cheap in my appearance that made him confident I could
not refuse. He consorts with girls in Pigalle …
But what is there in my life other than work and sleep? Would it be so bad to allow
myself this one experience?
The address he had given me was two streets
from the Panthéon. I walked along the narrow cobbled lane, paused at the doorway,
checked the number and knocked. Nobody answered. From above I could hear music. The door
was slightly ajar, so I pushed it open and went in. I made my way quietly up the narrow
staircase until I reached a door. From behind it I could hear a gramophone, a woman
singing of love and despair, a man singing over her, the rich, rasping bass unmistakably
his. I stood for a moment, listening, smiling despite myself. I pushed open the
door.
A vast room was flooded with light. One wall
was bare brick, another almost entirely of glass, its windows running shoulder to
shoulder along its length. The first thing that struck me was the astonishing chaos.
Canvases lay stacked against each wall; jars of congealing paintbrushes stood on every
surface, fighting for space with boxes of charcoal and easels, with hardening blobs of
glowing colour. There were
canvas sheets, pencils, a ladder, plates
of half-finished food. And everywhere the pervasive smell of turpentine, mixed with oil
paint, echoes of tobacco and the vinegary whisper of old wine; dark green bottles stood
in every corner, some stuffed with candles, others clearly the detritus of some
celebration. A great pile of money lay on a wooden stool, the coins and notes in a
chaotic heap. And there, in the centre of it all, walking slowly backwards and forwards
with a jar of brushes, lost in thought, was Monsieur Lefèvre, dressed in a smock
and peasant trousers, as if he were a hundred miles from the centre of Paris.
‘Monsieur?’
He blinked at me twice, as if trying to
recall who I was, then put his jar of brushes slowly on a table beside him.
‘It’s you!’
‘Well. Yes.’
‘Marvellous!’ He shook his head,
as if he were still having trouble registering my presence. ‘Marvellous. Come in,
come in. Let me find you somewhere to sit.’
He seemed bigger, his body clearly visible
through the fine fabric of his shirt. I stood clutching my bag awkwardly as he began
clearing piles of newspapers from an old
chaise longue
until there was a
space.
‘Please, sit. Would you like a
drink?’
‘Just some water, thank
you.’
I had not felt uncomfortable on the way
there, despite the precariousness of my position. I hadn’t minded the dinginess of
the area, the strange studio. But now I felt slighted, and a little foolish, and this
made me stiff and awkward. ‘You were not expecting me, Monsieur.’