Chapter 6
Rosalie
Rosalie Delacroix hurried south-west of the Jardin du Luxembourg and down the shabby darkening streets of Montparnasse, glancing in at the bright windows of the Café du D?me, as she passed.
The glittering café, recently renovated with mirrored walls and accents of scarlet and gold, was the place where people went to see and be seen.
She could smell the Gitanes cigarette smoke mixed with drains, gas from the few remaining gaslights, and hints of the animalistic scent of Shalimar drifting from the café.
She loved bohemian Montparnasse where the sound of jazz came flooding from the dark cafés and bars. Le jazz-hot, they called it. Raw, passionate, earthy; to Rosalie it spelt liberty.
When she arrived at her destination, she pushed open the smoked glass door and was met by the owner, Johnny Cooper.
‘Okay,’ he said in a bad American accent and grinned at her.
With awful teeth he didn’t look a bit American, and she was sure his name was an affectation aimed at pulling in more American tourists in the fabulous ‘City of Light’.
Johnny was even serving a ‘hamburger steak’, something Americans were fond of apparently, and he had a waiter from London called Norman with whom Rosalie was planning to practise her English.
‘Fine,’ she replied to Johnny as she heard a girl calling her name.
‘Took your time,’ the girl said and took a last drag of a Gauloise before stubbing it out on the tiled floor. ‘Come on.’
‘Couldn’t leave until they went to bed,’ Rosalie said.
The other girl was dark-haired, dark-eyed Irène, who lived in one of the slums where there had been a flood of wartime refugees. ‘You think it’s hard for you, you should try my life,’ she said.
Rosalie knew poorer Parisians were crowding into ever smaller living spaces, and while she longed to escape the constraints of her bourgeois background, Irène wanted to escape a harder one.
Irène was one of the small troupe of young cabaret dancers whom Rosalie would be joining in the back room tonight, wearing a puff of pink flamingo feathers and not much else.
‘You okay?’ Irène asked. ‘Your first time and all.’
Rosalie nodded, but in truth she felt almost delirious with nerves.
In the dim light of the tiny changing room, she revealed the golden costume she’d secretly made herself, copied from an outfit she’d spotted worn by movie star Marion Davies in her mother’s latest Vogue magazine.
‘Pretty good,’ Irène said as she looked her up and down with narrowed eyes, ‘but you need more make-up.’
Rosalie frowned but Irène pointed at a chair. ‘Sit.’ And she opened the box of communal make-up resting on a small table. ‘Scarlet lipstick, chérie. And lots of it, with a perfect bow. Sensational with your red hair. And I’m giving you smoky eyes. You know you have amazing eyes, right?’
‘Do I?’
‘You know you do. Such a deep blue. Different colouring but you do look like Leila Hyams.’
‘Who?’
‘Movie actress. Incredibly pretty. Heart-shaped face and the cutest mouth. Just like you. You should cut your hair, like hers.’ Irène rummaged in a pile of magazines on the floor and held one up to show her. ‘Here. She’s not that well-known yet, but she will be.’
Rosalie scrutinised the photograph of a woman with arresting eyes, her hair curly and cut short in a stylish bob.
‘Glad to see you’ve plucked your brows. I’m going to make them darker though.’
‘I don’t want to look like a clown.’
Irène stared at her, hands on hips in mock offence. ‘As if.’
Many others, older than her, had danced and had fun since the end of the war in 1918.
Now, Rosalie, at just nineteen, longed to let off steam too.
Paris felt wild with the chance of frivolity and it was her turn, even if she had to keep it a secret.
On her way here she’d hidden her skimpy golden costume beneath her father’s old flapping greatcoat.
Paris adored the African American jazz musicians and a lovely man called Saul from New York would be playing for them tonight.
He didn’t say much but he was beautiful, with melancholy eyes and an engaging smile.
From the changing room, Rosalie could hear him warming up, his sensual floating notes sending her spirits sky-high.
He nodded at her as she hurried after Irène, make-up finished, into the wings behind the curtain that hung across the tiny stage.
But despite the fun, there was also danger. Alongside this feeling of liberation and surging optimism – this feeling that anything was possible – a new right-wing movement had formed.
‘Watch out for them,’ Irène had warned just before they went on. ‘And scarper if any come in.’
‘How will I know?’
‘Oh, you’ll know the bastards.’
Inspired by Mussolini’s fascism, the ‘bastards’ called themselves Jeunesses Patriotes and hated communists.
Most of the aspiring writers and painters who patronised Johnny’s place were not communists but merely drinkers.
They talked about writing and painting and devoured cheap plates of saucisse de Toulouse with mashed potatoes, but there was a bold and growing Communist Party too.
There had been clashes on the streets of Paris and Rosalie didn’t want to be caught in the middle of one in a bar.
She was taking enough risks without being arrested.
Her strictly conventional family lived in the residential 16th arrondissement, close to the parks.
Their high-ceilinged seventeenth-century apartment with two wrought-iron balconies had a wonderful view of the Seine, but back there, where everything and everyone was sleepy, Rosalie felt trapped by her parents’ expectations and false hopes.
Here was buzz and colour and life to be lived. And she was determined to live it.
She listened for the music that would be their cue to begin.
‘Not yet,’ Irène whispered and gripped her elbow. ‘Wait until I push you, then go.’
Tonight Rosalie was about to fulfil her destiny by finally becoming the rebellious daughter they’d always accused her of being.
She’d learnt long ago that as much as she had disappointed her parents, they had disappointed her too.
So now, full of nerves but also brimming with excitement, she was doing what she wanted to do.
She wanted to be somebody, whatever it took. She wanted to be different. She wanted to reach for a bigger, more exciting world. A vivid, electric world where dreams might come true.
Then, suddenly, Rosalie’s heart raced as the music changed. This was it. Their cue to get on stage and begin the dance.
Irène nudged her. ‘Go on,’ she whispered.