Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
‘I will tell it like a story, or fairy tale, if you like,’ Sylvia started.
‘Because that’s what it was like for me.
Ever since I had landed in Paris, I felt as if I was in some magical fantasy.
Paris was so amazing, so beautiful and so big to me, a country girl.
The buildings were so huge and beautiful, all that Haussmann architecture, the wide streets, the beautiful squares were all so overwhelming with its grandeur.
I was employed as an au pair girl with a wealthy family who lived in a huge apartment near the Champs-élysées.
I was in charge of two small girls of nine and seven and I was expected to give them breakfast, take them to school and pick them up and mind them until their parents came home. ’
‘What were their names?’ Naomi wanted to know.
‘Anne-Marie and Clothilde,’ Sylvia replied. ‘Nice girls, if a little spoiled. But this story is not about them. I only stayed with that family for about five months.’
‘Why?’ Sophie asked.
‘Because I found something more exciting to do,’ Sylvia said.
‘I was only twenty years old and minding children soon became a little tedious. I hadn’t planned to leave, but something happened – or I should say someone did.
I met a woman who changed my life forever.
If I had not been at the Irish College in Paris that night, my life might not have taken the direction it did. ’
‘The Irish College?’ Rose asked. ‘What’s that? Some kind of Irish cultural centre?’
‘Something like that,’ Sylvia replied. ‘It was called the Irish College then. In any case, I had been taking Irish dancing lessons there in my free time and our class did a Christmas show. And that night, there was a woman in the audience who offered me a job in her dance troupe. Her name was Margaret Kelly and she was—’
‘I know,’ Vi exclaimed. ‘She started the famous Bluebell Girls dance troupe. I just read an article about her somewhere. She was such an amazing woman.’
‘That’s right,’ Sylvia said. ‘But I had never heard of them, being a country girl just out of Kerry. In any case, she told me about it after the show over a cup of tea. She said she had watched me dance a few times at the college and she was looking for new dancers. I was tall, had good legs and showed talent as a dancer, she said. Then she asked if I’d like to come and audition at the Lido the next day.
I didn’t even know where the Lido was or what kind of dancing they did there, but I soon found out. ’
‘I bet you did,’ Vi said with a wink.
‘Yes,’ Sylvia said, her eyes shining. ‘I entered a world I didn’t know existed.
That theatre was like an Aladdin’s cave of glitz and glamour.
It was all so seductive. I auditioned in front of Margaret Kelly, her assistant and the manager of the Lido.
They asked me to kick as high as I could, to do a twirl and a split and a few other moves and then I was offered a job as a dancer with the Bluebell Girls.
I was over the moon and immediately left the family and moved into a tiny flat with one of the other girls.
Her name was Ciara and she was from Kerry like me.
I started rehearsals the very next day and was fitted for a costume, and then that was it.
I was a Bluebell Girl dancing at the Lido.
’ Sylvia paused and looked around the table, where everyone was silent, staring at her in shock.
‘You were a Bluebell Girl?’ Rose said in a hoarse voice. ‘Dancing nearly naked?’
‘Yes,’ Sylvia said. ‘But not that naked. There were a lot of sequins all over my body. And feathers in my hair.’
‘Wow,’ Vi whispered, her face pale. ‘That is so cool.’
‘Incredible,’ Dominic said.
‘Fabulous,’ Rose agreed. She raised her glass of wine. ‘Here’s to our granny, the Bluebell Girl.’
They all cheered and clinked glasses while Arnaud stood up and kissed Sylvia. ‘My wonderful fiancée.’
‘Did you know, Arnaud?’ Lily asked.
‘Mais oui,’ Arnaud replied. ‘Sylvia told me just before we got engaged. Like you, I thought it was incredible. But I agreed not to tell anyone. It had to be kept a secret until Sylvia chose to tell you. It is, after all, not my story.’
‘I’ve been to the Irish Cultural Centre,’ Noel cut in.
‘It’s in a beautiful eighteenth-century building.
It was a seminary for priests from the sixteen hundreds or so in another place and then they moved to this one, near the Pantheon in the eighteenth century.
I forget the whole story but that’s what I remember. ’
‘Margaret Kelly’s story is also quite amazing,’ Sylvia interjected. ‘She was such an inspiration to all of us girls. And she was very strict with all of us. No drinking, no socialising with male guests. Any girl who broke the rules was fired on the spot.’
‘Strait-laced exotic dancers,’ Dominic said with a laugh. ‘What an oxymoron.’
‘Margaret Kelly was a dancer herself,’ Vi said, looking at her phone.
‘She was in the Folies Bergère and then formed her own dance troupe called Les Blue Belles Paramount Girls, who danced during the intervals at cinemas in the early thirties. And she married a musician who was Jewish and arrested during the Second World War. Her husband was imprisoned in a camp for Jews in the Pyrenees. He escaped and she hid him in a Paris attic until the Occupation ended. She survived interrogation by the Gestapo, a gunfight between black marketeers in a nightclub and a shoot-out between the Resistance and the Germans. Wow.’ Vi drew breath.
‘Wouldn’t it be a blast to get to play her in a movie?
’ She turned to her husband. ‘Hey, Jack, how about writing a screenplay about this woman?’
‘I’d rather write a screenplay about Sylvia,’ Jack replied. He turned to Sylvia, who was still standing, waiting for the excitement to die down. ‘Let’s hear the rest of the story. I have a feeling there’s more.’
Sylvi a nodded. ‘Yes, a little more.’
‘It’s about Granddad, isn’t it?’ Lily asked.
Sylvia smiled wistfully. ‘Yes. It’s about how I met him.’
‘On a train,’ Rose said. ‘I always thought that was so romantic.’
Sylvia nodded and took a sip of wine. Then she sat down. ‘It was romantic and sweet and it felt so right.’
‘But why were you on a train?’ Lily asked. ‘And where was it going?’
‘The dance troupe had performed in Nice and we were all on the way back to Paris,’ Sylvia said.
‘We sat in the bar of the train while our beds were being organised in the couchettes. Those are the cheapest form of sleeping compartments on French trains. You sleep on a kind of shelf, six in each compartment. Not very comfortable but better than sitting up all night. While we were waiting, I started to talk to a young man sitting beside me in the bar who told me he was from Ireland. He was tall with reddish-blond hair and sparkling green eyes. When we started chatting, I discovered that he was from Kerry like me, but from the other side of Dingle. I grew up in a little village called Camp overlooking Tralee Bay. Of course, when he introduced himself I realised that he was one of the famous Fleurys from Magnolia Manor that I had heard so much about.’
‘But why was he on a train from Nice to Paris?’ Lily asked.
‘He was on holiday. He said he always wanted to see the French Riviera, so he had gone there early in the summer when he had just finished college. And now he was on his way to Paris to see the sights and then he would go home to Kerry to take up his duties running the family business. His father, Cornelius, was not well and his mother had died two years earlier, so he was needed at home. “Just a few days in Paris,” he said. And then he asked what I was doing on a train to Paris from Nice. I said I was a dancer with the Bluebell Girls at the Lido, which he thought was fascinating.’
‘Was he a little shocked to hear where you worked?’ Rose asked.
‘No. Funny,’ Sylvia said, ‘when I think about it, his reaction to what I told him was so calm. There was no shock-horror, winking or suggestion that there was anything wrong with what I did, or that the girls I was with were in anyway sleazy. He asked me about my work and I told him about the long, hard rehearsals for many hours each day. I also told him about Margaret Kelly and her story and he was so impressed with her courage. The we talked about growing up in Kerry and where we went to school.’ Sylvia stared into the near distance, her eyes misty.
‘We sat down on a window seat and stayed there all night while everyone went to the sleeping compartments. I think I went to sleep for a while with my head on Liam’s shoulder.
I woke up when the train rolled into Gare St-Lazare and our eyes met.
Liam took my hand and said he wanted to see me again.
So I asked him to come to the Lido to watch me dance and then we could go to dinner afterwards at an all-night restaurant. ’
‘And then what happened?’ Naomi piped up. ‘Did Granddad Liam come to see you dance and take you to dinner?’
Sylvia smiled and nodded. ‘Yes, he did. All of that. And then he had to go back to Ireland and I had to stay and work out my contract. He asked me to marry him just before he left. We had only known each other a few days, but I knew that we were meant to be together for good.’
‘You must have felt so sad to have to part,’ Vi said, looking very moved by Sylvia’s story.
‘I was heartbroken,’ Sylvia replied. ‘But after he had left, I talked to Margaret Kelly and she agreed to release me. She said that when you meet the love of your life, you have to follow him and not let him get away.’
‘A very wise woman,’ Theo said with a knowing look at Marian, who blushed.
‘She was right,’ Sylvia said. ‘I knew that as soon as she said it. If I didn’t go back to Ireland, I would lose the man I knew I would love all my life.
So I got on the first plane to Dublin and then took the bus to Dingle and phoned him at Magnolia Manor.
The old butler who was still there answered the phone.
He was an awful snob and didn’t approve of girls asking to talk to the young master late at night.
But he did finally agree to deliver a message and then Liam called me back at the guesthouse where I was staying.
And then the next morning, he arrived in his little sports car and took me to Magnolia Manor and introduced me to his father.
We got on like a house on fire straight away.
And to cut a long story short, we were married as soon as it could be arranged.
Of course everyone thought there was a baby on the way, but that was not the reason we got married so soon.
’ Sylvia drew breath and looked around the table.
‘So that’s the real, true story. I don’t know what’s in that book, but I’m sure Marian can tell us. ’
Marian looked at Sylvia, trying to think of an answer.