While behaving outwardly in the relaxed manner of an uncle, he scrutinized her, approved her black lace evening dress and the lack of paint on her face. But then in a low voice he went on to caution her that she was to behave like a lady at all times, for a gentleman of Garcia’s standing would not want anyone to guess he had paid for a companion.
Finally he said that Garcia would be bringing her back here after the theatre, but he would have a fiacre waiting to take her home at twelve-thirty. He kissed her on both cheeks as he was leaving, but whispered a barely veiled threat that if she stepped out of line in any way she would be sorry.
The threat was enough to make Belle nervous. Then, when Bernard Garcia arrived a few minutes later, her heart sank even further, for he was short and fat, with just a few strands of sandy hair trailing across an otherwise bald head. He was at least fifty-five, perhaps older, and even his expensive hand-tailored dinner jacket and gold fob watch peeping from his waistcoat pocket could never make him attractive as a partner.
But he spoke near-perfect English and he looked at Belle as if he was the luckiest man in the world, and that endeared him to her. He made small talk about how cold it was, and said he had come to Paris on the train from Boulogne that afternoon and he’d had to take a hot bath to warm up. Then, when the waiter came with the menus, he asked what she’d like to eat.
‘You choose for me. I’m sure you know what they do best here,’ she said, for a menu in French was far beyond her. She smiled and patted his arm affectionately as if she was utterly delighted to spend the evening with him.
Maybe it was the superb red wine he ordered, or just his courteous manner, but she soon felt relaxed and happy to be Bernard’s companion for the evening. Despite his unprepossessing appearance he had a beautiful deep, melodious voice and a comfortable way about him. They talked mainly about England, which he knew very well. He didn’t tell her about his personal circumstances, and didn’t ask about hers.
The play he took her to after supper was
Madame Sans-Gêne
, by Victorien Sardou. Although he did explain what it was about to Belle, she couldn’t really follow it. But she didn’t mind. It was just wonderful to be sitting on a red plush chair in a box, knowing that many of the elegantly dressed people in the theatre were looking up at her and wondering who she was.
This was so much better than working at Martha’s where she had to accommodate ten or twelve different men in one night. While she was dreading the moment when they got back to the hotel room, because she sensed Bernard had high expectations, the chances were that he’d fall asleep very quickly.
But she was totally wrong about that. Bernard ordered champagne for them when they got back to the hotel, and asked that she sit on the bed to drink it wearing only her stockings and camisole.
Sensing he was the kind who had fantasies about wanton women, she was happy to behave like one. She writhed about on the bed letting him get a good look at her, and when he still remained sitting in an armchair, she went over to him and sat astride his lap, taking one of his hands and placing it on her breast, the other on her vagina. His face was getting more and more flushed, his dark eyes glittered, and he pawed at her frantically but ineffectually, as if he had never touched a woman’s body before.
She unbuttoned his trousers and put her hand in, but to her surprise his penis was terribly small, no bigger than a small boy’s. It wasn’t even hard, and she realized that her plan to stay astride him was never going to work.
‘Come and lie down on the bed with me,’ she suggested, taking him by the hand and drawing him out of the chair.
The most disconcerting thing about Bernard was not his inexperienced fumbling or his tiny penis, but the way he didn’t speak. He’d talked so easily over supper in fluent English, chatted through the interval at the theatre and on the fiacre ride back to the hotel, but since asking her to undress he’d said nothing. This was something she’d never come across before; in fact she’d found men with tiny penises were usually inclined to talk more than other men. Not only did they claim it was small because they’d been drinking, but very often they were the ones who liked to talk dirty too. He remained silent, however, even when she began to undress him.
After an hour Belle seriously considered offering Bernard his hundred francs back, thanking him for the supper and theatre and making a rush for the door. She had tried so hard to get him to ejaculate, but nothing, rubbing him, licking him, worked. His cock remained flaccid, and he was still silent.
The good supper and the wine they’d had with it, then the champagne since they got back to his room were making her sleepy, yet she was cold too from being outside the bedclothes. Finally she felt she had to concede she was never going to make it happen, and sitting up in the bed she drew him to her breasts to cuddle him, with the intention of admitting she was defeated.
But all at once he began sucking at her breast like a hungry baby, and when she slid her hand down the bed towards his penis, she found it had suddenly grown hard. He groaned as she touched it, and sucked harder at her nipple. Belle was so encouraged that she held it more firmly. She thought there was something a bit unhealthy about him responding only to the combination of breast suckling and masturbation, but she was so relieved that she’d finally found the secret to get him going that she didn’t care why that was.
He came within a few minutes, and it was only then that he found his voice and called her ‘nurse’. When she looked down at him he had tears in his eyes.
Within ten minutes he was sound asleep, still with his face pressed to her breast. She wondered who the nurse was, and how old he was when he’d had a similar experience with her. Belle had a strong feeling he’d never had ordinary sex with a woman. She wished then that she had asked him earlier if he was married and had children. She knew nothing personal about him.
She waited until quarter past twelve, then wriggled away from him, got up and dressed herself. She scribbled a little note for him, thanking him for a lovely evening, and left it on the pillow, then silently let herself out of the room.
The doorman on duty was not the one who’d directed her to the dining room earlier that evening or opened the door when they came back from the theatre, and if he thought it odd that a woman was leaving to go home alone so late at night, he didn’t show it. He helped her into the fiacre, smiled warmly when she tipped him, and so Belle thought that maybe it was commonplace to him.
But as the fiacre rumbled along the deserted streets Belle felt happy. In one night she’d earned far more than most women earned in a month, she’d had a lovely supper and been to the theatre too, plus she’d managed to give Bernard what he wanted. Respectable people might consider that distasteful and sinful, but she didn’t care what they thought. As far as she was concerned, helping an inadequate man with sexual problems to find some release was a good and kind thing.
Chapter Twenty-eight
January slipped into February, then on into March, and Belle was still at the Hôtel Mirabeau, and still earning a hundred francs each time Pascal arranged for her to meet a gentleman.
She had moved into a bigger and sunnier room on the first floor which had a tiny wrought-iron balcony overlooking the back yards and gardens. She had bought more clothes, shoes and hats, learned enough French to be able to hold a simple conversation, and she could find her way around Paris like a native.
If Gabrielle Herrison had worked out for herself what her English guest did for a living, it didn’t seem to trouble her. If she was up when Belle returned in the early morning, she always got her some coffee and a couple of croissants, even if it was too early for breakfast. She offered to wash her clothes too, and Belle in turn bought Gabrielle flowers each week as a token of her appreciation. Gabrielle wasn’t one for conversation, just a smile and a few words now and then, but in those few words Belle sensed the woman liked her and cared about her.
Belle was very curious about her landlady. She felt there was a good story there, as Gabrielle had told her the pictures in the hall had been painted by a man friend who had died. Belle felt certain he had been Gabrielle’s lover, for her eyes grew misty when she looked at the pictures. She hoped one day Gabrielle would tell her about him.
Belle went out with gentlemen three or four nights a week. It was rarely with someone staying at the Ritz; Pascal had connections in many different areas. But whether the arrangement was to meet up in another hotel, a restaurant or even the gentleman’s own home, they were always very rich and possibly influential men.
Belle had assumed that Bernard, her first client, was an oddity, but in fact most of the men she met through Pascal had some kind of quirk, and they were often much stranger than Bernard. She had one who asked her to walk around naked in the moonlight while he masturbated, and another who wanted to be spanked with a slipper. She’d had a couple of men who had wanted to play rough with her too, but fortunately she’d been able to extricate herself quickly before any real harm was done. One man wanted her to order him around and liked her to swear at him if he disobeyed her. There had even been one man who liked to play horses. He crawled on his hands and knees and she had to ride naked on his back. At least half of her gentlemen didn’t seem to be able to manage penetrative sex.
She remembered how Etienne had told her she should try to love her clients. That was a tall order, but she did genuinely find plenty to like about most of them, for so far they had all been intelligent and usually interesting. She never failed to act as if each of them was very special to her. And she knew she was successful at this as many of her gentlemen had asked to see her again and made further arrangements with Pascal.
Almost daily she counted up the money she’d made. Although she had enough to get home now, she felt she must earn more so that she could return in triumph, a proud survivor with a nest egg to start her hat shop. She didn’t want to be dependent on her mother and Mog.
She daydreamed constantly of walking into the kitchen back home and surprising Mog. She could almost hear her shrieks of delight and imagine being enfolded in her arms. It was harder to imagine her mother’s reaction: she would of course be thrilled to have her daughter home, but Annie had never been one for showing her feelings or demonstrating affection.
Then there was Jimmy. He might be married now of course, or at least have a young lady, but Belle was sure he would want to see her, if only for old times’ sake, and she so looked forward to seeing him again.
Yet much as she dreamed of home, and longed to be there, she also knew she would never be able to enjoy the freedom there that she had here in Paris. She sometimes chatted to English people she met in the cafés of Montmartre and St-Germain and they all said that what they loved most about Paris was its lack of prudishness, its gaiety and sense of fun. She had noticed herself that Parisians didn’t seem to care much about class; they embraced artists, poets, writers and musicians as being just as vital as doctors, lawyers or any other professionals. She had never once been asked how she made a living, and though she suspected most people she’d met assumed she had private means because of how she dressed, she felt certain that if she was to say she was a dancer or an actress they wouldn’t think any less of her. Back home that wouldn’t be so.
She rarely felt lonely here either. She had little chats with other guests, though mostly they were only in Paris for a few days at most, and she had got to know people in the cafés she regularly ate or had coffee in. On top of that she had wonderful nights out with her gentlemen, seeing shows at the Moulin Rouge and other cabaret clubs, plays and operas. She had eaten in most of Paris’s finest restaurants, danced in night clubs and spent nights in luxurious hotels and splendid houses and apartments. It was going to be difficult to fit back into her old life, being told what to do and being looked on as a curiosity by everyone in Seven Dials because she’d been gone for so long.
That was why it was so important she went home with money so she could get her hat shop. She visited all the Paris milliners to see the latest fashions. She bought millinery magazines to study them, and on nights when she was alone in her room she was always sketching and working out how each design could be made. She had even considered finding a small apartment so she would have room to buy the necessary equipment and materials to make up her designs and sell them. That way she could go home with her head held high and announce she had become a milliner.
Happy as she was in Paris, there was one niggling problem, and that was Pascal. She had been wary of him at the start, because she sensed he wanted her, but she had come to think she was mistaken about that, because once he’d learned to trust her, she had very little direct contact with him.
Her instructions about who her client was, and where and what time he wanted her to meet him, came by messenger. Paris was full of young boys happy to deliver a letter for a few centimes. Then her client would hand her a sealed envelope containing her fee. It was only when she had to meet a gentleman at the Ritz that she saw Pascal, and even then they rarely went beyond a nod to each other.
But at the beginning of March he’d sent her a note asking her to meet him in a café in Montmartre. As he’d never asked to meet her anywhere before, she thought perhaps he wanted to stop their arrangement because he was afraid of his employer finding out, or that one of her clients had made a complaint about her.
Pascal was already in Le Moulin à Vent, which was close to the still to be completed Sacré-Coeur basilica on La Butte, drinking a glass of absinthe. Just the way he sat hunched over his drink suggested it was not his first, and he had such a sour expression she expected trouble.
‘Ah, Belle,’ he exclaimed as he saw her, and got somewhat unsteadily to his feet. He called the waiter and asked for another glass of absinthe for her, but Belle refused it and asked for a glass of wine. He spent some time trying to convince her absinthe was the only thing to drink in Paris, but Belle had tried it before and didn’t like it. Since then she’d noted that most of the habitual drunks never drank anything else.
‘So why did you want to meet me?’ she asked, once she’d got her glass of wine. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘Must there be something wrong for me to ask you to have a drink with me?’ he said.
‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘But it is unusual, so I thought you had a problem.’
‘I do,’ he said, then downed his glass in one and called rather loudly for another. ‘My problem is that you spend the night with many other men, but not me.’
Belle’s heart sank because she knew he wasn’t a man to be flirtatious. He meant it.
‘We have a business arrangement. It wouldn’t do to mix business with pleasure,’ she replied, smiling in the hope that he wouldn’t take offence.
‘I would pay you,’ he said.
Belle cringed inwardly. The truth was that she found Pascal repellent. He was so slimy. She had watched him talking to the guests at the Ritz and he all but licked their backsides. He put oil on his hair which smelled sickeningly like violets, and his hands were too white and smooth for a man. But it was the way he looked at her which made her flesh crawl, so intense, so calculating. His eyes were almost reptilian, with no expression in them. He had no joy or warmth in him. It seemed strange that such a man would want a woman at all.
‘No, Monsieur Pascal, I am very happy with how our arrangement has been, and I do not wish it to change.’
She didn’t mind that his cut from what she earned was probably far bigger than hers. She understood too that to keep his job he had to be obsequious to important guests and the owners and managers of the hotel. But there was something more about him which she couldn’t quite put her finger on, something dark and perhaps dangerous.
‘You must call me Edouard,’ he said, putting one of his soft white hands over hers and leaning so close to her she could smell garlic on his breath. ‘I could give you so much more than you have now.’
Belle felt the only way out of the situation was to make light of it.
‘I have everything I want,’ she said, removing her hand from his. ‘And I think, sir, that you are a little drunk and might regret saying such foolish things tomorrow.’
She left the café soon afterwards but with a heavy heart because she sensed that was not the end of it.
Everyone said Paris in the spring was not to be missed. There were already daffodils in window boxes, green shoots on trees, and the days were getting warmer. Belle resolved that night that the incident with Pascal was a timely reminder she must go home. She decided she would just stay another couple of weeks, until after Easter which fell at the end of the first week in April, then slip off without telling him she was going.
On the Tuesday morning after Easter young Henri brought her up a note which Pascal had sent round. It said that she was to be ready at seven that evening when a fiacre would pick her up to take her to meet Philippe Le Brun in Montmartre. Belle was delighted as she’d already had three nights with Philippe and liked the big, jovial man who had vineyards in Bordeaux and owned two large restaurants in Paris. She had bought a beautiful second-hand silver evening dress with matching shoes from Chantal’s just the week before, which she’d been waiting for the right opportunity to wear. Philippe was the kind of man who liked to be seen in public with a pretty girl, so she knew he’d take her to a cabaret show, and the evening would be about eating, drinking, dancing and having fun, not just sex in a hotel room.
She went straight out and got her hair washed and put up at the hairdresser’s near the Mirabeau, then during the afternoon had a leisurely bath as for once the water was hot.
Belle went downstairs to wait for the cab just before seven. Gabrielle was writing something at her desk and looked up and smiled as she saw Belle. ‘
Vous êtes belle
,’ she said.
Belle blushed at being told she looked beautiful – it was the first time Gabrielle had made any kind of personal comment. She thanked her and said she was being taken out for dinner.
Gabrielle looked at her so long and hard that Belle felt a shiver of fear go down her spine. ‘Be careful,’ the older woman said softly, this time speaking in English. ‘I fear you are playing with fire.’
There was something in the woman’s eyes that told Belle she not only knew what Belle was doing, but had been on that road herself.
‘I shall be going back home soon,’ Belle replied.
At that she heard the clatter of the cab outside on the street and moved towards the door. Gabrielle got up from her desk and caught hold of Belle’s arm. ‘If you get in trouble is there anyone you trust that I can contact for you?’ she asked.
The question chilled Belle still further, for she couldn’t think of anyone. She shook her head, but a second later thought of Etienne. ‘I once knew a man called Etienne Carrera,’ she said, but made a helpless gesture with her hands. ‘But he came from Marseille and I have no address for him.’
‘Then you must keep safe and go home soon,’ Gabrielle said. ‘Tonight last time?’
Belle sensed her landlady really did care about her and nodded agreement to her wish. ‘Last time.’
Gabrielle took her hand and squeezed it. Belle smiled weakly and broke away to go out to the cab.
Gabrielle’s words and her manner had stripped away the happy anticipation Belle had felt earlier. It had been a very mild day, and although it was growing dark now the streets were still very busy with both traffic and people. As the fiacre made its way to Montmartre all the sounds and smells unexpectedly reminded her of the day she was bundled into a carriage in Seven Dials. It wasn’t something she was in the habit of remembering – so much had happened since then that she tended only to look ahead, never glancing back over her shoulder. But now she had a queasy feeling in her belly, suddenly aware she had in fact been at risk each night she went out to meet a new man. She had trusted Pascal’s judgement about all of them, yet in reality any one of them could have been another Mr Kent.
She reasoned with herself that she’d be quite safe tonight; after all, she knew Philippe Le Brun. But she decided she would keep her word to Gabrielle and tonight would be the end of it. Tomorrow she’d pack her bag and go.
Montmartre, or La Butte as many people called it, was Belle’s favourite part of Paris. She loved the spectacular views of the city, the narrow, winding cobbled streets and the many cafés and restaurants frequented by free-thinking bohemians. She had been told that it had once been a very bad area full of thieves, prostitutes and anarchists, the sort of dangerous place upright Parisians steered clear of. But as artists, poets, writers and musicians moved in because of the cheap rents, it gradually became fashionable to be seen there. As a result rents went up, and many of the struggling artists moved to Montparnasse and St-Germain on the Left Bank. Now, with the beautiful Sacré-Coeur basilica near completion, and new houses replacing the earlier hovels, it was clear that a renaissance was on its way. Belle had told Philippe at their last meeting how much she liked Montmartre, and as one of his restaurants was just at the bottom of the hill in the Pigalle, she assumed this was why he’d asked her to meet him here.