Chapter 7
It was several weeks after Rosalie’s first performance, and another Saturday night in Paris.
Johnny’s Bar was sizzling. In fact, everywhere was sparking with so much light and laughter that Rosalie was a little nervous.
She felt as if the city might just take off into the air and leave her to be dragged back to her parents’ home.
She glanced around, her eyes darting from one face to another.
Every single night, in the unlikely event that one of her parents’ friends might be out for a good time, she had to establish that no one they knew was in the audience or bar.
Tonight she couldn’t identify anyone and she breathed a sigh of relief.
Buzzing now with delicious energy, she felt as if she could soar above the clouds and float there forever.
She saw Irène shake her head with such a superior – although not unkind – look that Rosalie bumped straight back down to earth.
‘Away with the fairies again?’
‘Was I?’
‘Feet on the ground, girl. Johnny’s Bar is where it’s at.’
She was right. The bar was here. The bar was now. And it was good enough … for the time being.
Irène stubbed out her cigarette. ‘Come on. Time to face the music.’ And she laughed. ‘Honestly, you and your big ideas.’
‘What about you?’
‘Me? No, I just take what I can get.’
As the dancers began their second routine of the evening, the smoke in the room stung the back of Rosalie’s throat.
But she managed to catch her breath and threw herself into twisting her body in rhythm with the music.
Dancing was her love, her life, her passion.
She smiled at Irène and the other three as they spun around, joyfully swinging their arms wide, reaching high then swooping low almost to the ground before rising with fantastically high kicks.
Rosalie was the most balletic of the dancers, a result of a decade of ballet training.
And she loved losing herself to the sound of Saul’s beautiful playing when even the air seemed to be vibrating and you could feel the sound of it in your blood and in your bones.
As the routine ended, she heard raised voices and from Irène’s expression could see that her friend had heard them too.
Unease was sweeping right across the stage.
There had been a feverish air about the night as if the desire for fun had surged; the kind of night when anything might happen.
Rosalie had known something had been building although she hadn’t identified it until now, and she wasn’t surprised when a loud crash followed the shouting.
Then another crash, like a table being tipped over and, in its wake, glass breaking.
Saul stopped playing and signalled to the girls to grab their coats and cover up just as a tangle of men fell into the hall from the bar.
The men picked themselves up and began snatching up chairs, raising them above their heads and hurling them against anyone who got in their way.
Rosalie fled to the changing room to slip on her coat but when she came back out again, she saw one of the young thugs from Jeunesses Patriotes had Saul in a headlock.
Everything was noise, confusion and smoke.
So much smoke, although she couldn’t see where it was coming from.
Her heart thumped against her ribs, instinct telling her to run, but she could not.
She had to do something to help and quickly.
She ran towards Saul to try to release him, but Irène pulled her back, whispering furiously in her ear. ‘It won’t help. Save yourself.’
There was no way out except through the bar where all hell had broken loose.
From among the melange of screaming women, shouting men and weeping girls, more and more people were piling into the little hall to join the fight.
Rosalie shrugged Irène off and ran to Saul, grabbing hold of the other man’s arm and trying to pull him off the musician.
Just then someone’s elbow caught her in the temple.
It sent her reeling and she reached for something to break her fall.
But there was nothing, and when she fell and hit her head on a step, she saw a last sliver of light and then blacked out.
By the time she came round again, dazed and traumatised, a huge number of police had arrived and were busily handcuffing an indignant Saul and several of the right-wing Jeunesses Patriotes who swore and kicked at them.
One of the policemen helped Rosalie to her feet.
She was about to thank him but then he handcuffed her too.
‘But I didn’t do anything,’ she protested.
‘Then how come you have blood pouring down your face?’
Rosalie touched her cheeks and felt the sticky wet surface. She glanced at her hand. ‘Oh God. I’m bleeding.’
He narrowed his eyes. ‘Indeed. So, what’s a nicely brought-up girl like you doing in a place like this? How old are you?’
‘Twenty-one,’ she lied and touched her mouth, worrying that she might have broken a tooth too.
‘Sure you are. And I’m the Lord Mayor of Paris. Come on, off to the station with you.’
She tried to pull the edges of her coat together, do her buttons up, hide her scanty costume.
‘Don’t worry, miss. Already seen what you got. Tasty little piece. Soliciting, were you?’
‘Course not.’
‘Well, you can explain yourself down the station unless you’ve got something else to offer me?’
He laughed and she kicked him in the shin. Another policeman took hold of her arm and dragged her outside to a waiting police van. And although she protested loudly, she was bundled into the back of the van, her objections unheeded.
At dawn the next morning, the door to the cell Rosalie shared with two other women – both of whom had painful-looking bruised eyes – swung open and a policeman entered.
She had used her coat to rub the blood and as much of her make-up as she could from her face.
Certainly, the scarlet lipstick was gone, the rouge too, she hoped, but the eye make-up …
well, she wasn’t so sure. She had no mirror to check but she didn’t want her parents seeing her ‘done up like a tart’ – her mother’s habitual reaction at the sight of a vulgar ‘fancy’ woman.
The policeman pushed Rosalie through a long, rank corridor smelling of stale sweat and tobacco, and then up some stairs which led to a small room at the back of the station.
There her father stood, rigid with anger.
‘Thank you, Officer,’ he said, so tight-lipped his voice was almost a hiss. ‘I can assure you this will never happen again.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘And I can trust you to keep this quiet?’
The man nodded and patted his pocket. Her father had clearly paid him off.
Rosalie opened her mouth to speak.
Her father held up a hand. ‘Not … one … word.’ He thrust her out through the door and followed behind.
She spent the silent car journey home trying to figure out what to say.
Her coat was tightly buttoned, and her father hadn’t seen what she was wearing beneath it, so maybe she could say a friend had taken her to the bar for a drink.
It wasn’t the best excuse, and they wouldn’t like it, but it was better than admitting she worked as a dancer there.
Her authoritarian father would have a fit.
And as for her mother, there was no way of guessing what she might do, but it would certainly involve hysterics.
Neither of them had the first idea about having fun.
Papa was a senior civil servant in the Ministry of Public Works.
He was proud that during the turmoil between ministers he had been the spokesman on anything to do with the reconstruction of France.
His career meant everything to him, and his wife and children only seemed to cause him barely concealed indifference.
Rosalie had only told her sister about her secret dancing job.
Claudette was nine years older and promised not to say a word but had strongly advised against continuing with it.
She had three children: Hélène, élise, and little Florence, and they all lived in England.
Her husband was half French, half English.
She regularly came back to Paris to see her parents, and in between visits Rosalie missed her big sister terribly.
For theirs was a home of little warmth, where keeping up appearances was everything, emotions were repressed, and it was Rosalie’s duty to become a good wife and mother.
Claudette was the only one Rosalie loved.
Back at home, her parents gave her a horrendously hard time, but she stuck to her story that she had been taken to Johnny’s Bar for a drink by a friend who had led her astray.
‘What is that black stuff round your eyes?’ her mother demanded.
‘I—’
‘Who was the friend?’ she interjected, not waiting for an answer. Her father, who was less interested in that, spoke up now.
‘I’ll not have you involved with the communists,’ he said, true to form.
‘I’m not,’ Rosalie insisted. It was true, after all. She wasn’t involved with communists.
Her father supported the Action francaise which was said to be financially underwritten by perfumier, businessman, and newspaper publisher, Francois Coty.
The rumours spoke of his many mistresses and multiple illegitimate children, but her father turned a blind eye to that.
What he cared about was that Coty had grown to become one of the wealthiest men in France during the war and had backed several of her father’s reconstruction projects.
Whatever was true about Coty or not, it was clear he and the rest of the right wing aimed to prevent the growth of French socialism by fanning the populist fear of communism.
Her mother was still demanding to know the name of the friend who’d led her astray.
‘Just someone I met at ballet class,’ Rosalie lied. ‘Anyway, she’s left now.’
‘Well, you are never to see her again,’ her mother replied. ‘In fact, it’s high time you stopped ballet. I will cancel your lessons and increase your typing classes.’
Rosalie quietly groaned.
‘You’re too tall to ever be a ballet dancer and far too …’
And there she stopped, but Rosalie knew what she meant. Rosalie was extremely curvaceous, which of course had been one of the reasons Johnny had been keen to take her on. The Americans enjoyed a woman with something they could grab hold of and were not interested in half-starved Parisian waifs.
‘Time to find you a suitable husband,’ her mother continued. ‘Or you’ll be left on the shelf. You can’t remain under our roof for ever, doing just whatever you please.’
Rosalie turned away. When she found the man for her, she’d know it. Her heart would sing, and she’d feel such passion it would bowl her over. None of her mother’s choices had caused even the slightest wobble.