The Launching of Roger Brook (19 page)

In one corner three fiddlers on a low dais were sawing away at their violins; the other corners and sides of the room were occupied by small tables at most of which sat men with girls in varying states of semi-nudity, while in the centre of the floor, eight or ten others, mostly women, were executing a wild version of a country dance; in which, every time the partners met, instead of simply taking hands they embraced, kissed and mauled each other.

The Chevalier tapped Roger on the arm, drawing his attention back to the fat women and said, ‘This is the Widow Scarron,’ but he did not give Roger’s name, and
added with a sly grin: ‘She is called so, after the puritanical mistress of Louis XIV’s old age, in ironical jest.’

The Madame had little black eyes half hidden in rolls of fat, her cheeks were white sacks heavily daubed with rouge and her fleshy mouth was painted a violent red. She gave a hideous leer at Roger then said to the Chevalier:

‘What a handsome young man! Why, my girls will claw one another’s eyes out to get at him,’ and, as she led them to a corner table, she added,
sotto voce
, some lewd jest that Roger did not catch but which caused De Roubec to burst out laughing.

They were no sooner seated than a hunchbacked waiter hurried over to them bringing an ice bucket in which was thrust a bottle of champagne.

‘ ’Tis indifferent stuff,’ remarked De Roubec, ‘and the price charged for it exorbitant; but custom demands that we should buy it by way of entrance fee to this Temple of Venus.’ As the Chevalier had paid for the drinks at the gaming-house Roger felt that it was up to him to pay for the bottle and with a tip to the waiter it cost him twelve
francs
.

He was already half regretting that he had accepted De Roubec’s suggestion that they should pay ‘their respects to the ladies’; as he had had a vague idea that the Chevalier simply meant to take him to some public assembly rooms where they could join in the dancing, and this water-front brothel was much stronger meat than he had bargained for. The place held for him all the excitement of something, new and wicked but at the same time it was vaguely frightening. It reminded him of some of Mr. Hogarth’s pictures, and might well have been one of them brought to raucous and sordid life.

But he was given little time to decide whether he was glad or sorry that this experience had, willy-nilly, been thrust upon him. Having seen them to their table, Madame had at once left them to whip up the disengaged among her team, and the waiter had scarcely opened the champagne before the table was surrounded by a dozen young women immodestly displaying their charms and loudly vying with one another for the patronage of the newcomers.

They all looked young by candlelight but close inspection showed most of them to have left their teens far behind and all of them had hard, tired eyes. Some wore
voluminous but tatty dresses, from beneath which they skittishly kicked up bare legs to show that they had nothing on underneath, while others wore only draperies of gauze that left nothing whatever to the imagination. All of them were heavily painted and in several cases Roger noticed that the paint had not been laid on quite heavily enough to hide old pock marks on their cheeks and foreheads. But as far as he was concerned the ‘Widow Scarron’ proved a true prophet. In his youth and freshness, even more than his good looks, they all saw something to excite their jaded appetites and entered into a violent contest to secure his favour.

‘
Voilà
!’ said De Roubec, eyeing him quizzically. ‘I’ll wager there’s little to choose for naughtiness between them, but take your pick.’

As Roger hesitated the Chevalier leaned forward and catching a short, dark, plump girl by the wrist drew her towards him. With a laugh she fell into his lap and putting her arms round his neck kissed him, leaving the red imprint of her lower lip just below his mouth.

‘And what is your name, my pretty?’ he asked.

‘Fifi,’ she replied gaily. ‘And yours?’

‘Etienne,’ he smiled. ‘Come now, a glass of wine, and you shall tell me your life’s history. I doubt not that you are the daughter of a Marquis, or a Count at the least, and ran away from home with some handsome young buck who betrayed you?’

Roger still hesitated while the other girls clamoured round him. He did not particularly fancy any of them, but he saw that he must choose one if only to be rid of the rest, so he smiled and beckoned to a slim, fair-haired girl who looked a little more refined than her companions and attracted him on account of her colouring and figure.

She saw at once that he was nervous and so did not embarrass him by kissing him at once, but quietly took the chair next to his and poured herself some wine. The others instantly stopped laughing and posturing before the table and with sullen looks at not having been chosen moved away.

Fifi was saying to De Roubec: ‘You are wrong,
cheri
, I am just one of the people—the people who will rule France one day. I am a Marseillaise and my father was a fisherman. I was brought up in a hovel and when I was thirteen, times
were so bad that he sold me to a brothel-keeper.’

Roger turned his attention to his own companion and asked her name.

‘They call me Mou-Mou here,’ she replied, ‘and it serves as well as any other. By what name would you like me to call you?’

‘My name is Roger,’ he said at once.

‘
Rojé
,’ she repeated, ‘that is a nice name. Monsieur is a foreigner, is he not?’

‘Yes, English. And you, mam’selle? You are French, of course, but are you a native of these parts?’

She shook her fair head. ‘No, monsieur, I am a Flamande. My husband brought me here from Antwerp in his ship; but he left again without doing me the courtesy of saying good-bye. I had no money and here I am.’

‘What a monstrous thing to do,’ Roger exclaimed in quick sympathy.

The corners of her hard mouth turned down in a cynical little smile. ‘He was not really my husband; but I had had a child by him and hoped that he might make me his wife one day. But why should I bore you with my past misfortunes? Drink up your wine and tell me some naughty stories.’

Roger had never told a dirty story to a woman in his life and he would have felt embarrassed about doing so now, even if his French had been up to it, and he excused himself on that account.

Fifi was continuing her story for De Roubec’s benefit, and both the others turned to listen to her.

‘A young journalist bought me out of the brothel. He gave me a good home and taught me about politics. Ah, he was clever; but too clever for our happiness in the end. He wrote a lampoon on the Queen, and the seventy thousand
louis
of the people’s money that she had frittered away in a single year by gambling. The agents of Monsieur de Crosne seized him and carried him off to one of the dungeons in the Château D’If. Poor wretch, he is there still for all I know. As for myself, I took up with a bos’un in the Navy, and he brought me here as a stowaway; but the officers found us out. They had him tied to a grating and gave him two hundred lashes—the brutes, and put me ashore. Then a pimp got hold of me and sold me to Madame, here, for a hundred
francs
’

‘Perchance someone else may take a fancy to you and buy you out,’ remarked De Roubec.

She shrugged. ‘Who would want me for a keep after five years of this? I’ve little doubt now but that I’ll die as I was born—in a ditch. But the good God may grow tired of Queens so mayhap Marie Antoinette will die in a ditch, too. In the meantime, I have no complaints. Madame is no more greedy and harsh than others of her kind, and I console myself for my lot by enjoying myself when I am fancied by a handsome gentleman like you. Come, Monsieur Etienne, now you have heard my story let us join the dance.’

As they stood up Mou-Mou laid her hand on Roger’s and said: ‘Would you not like to dance, too?’

The big room was stifling hot and heavy with the reek of cheap perfume, mingled with even less pleasant odours. Her fingers were slightly clammy yet he did not like to offend her by disengaging his hand; but he shook his head. The last thing he desired was to enter the bacchanalian mêlée in the middle of the floor and be kissed and mauled by the painted harridans dancing there.

‘What lovely eyes thou bast,
Rojé
,’ she said suddenly, and adopting the
tu-toi
towards him. ‘They would be worth a fortune to any woman.’

He gave an embarrassed grin. ‘You have very nice eyes yourself.’

‘
Merci
’ she smiled. ‘I am so glad thou chosest me. So many of the men who come here are middle-aged and horrid; and a girl can give so much more of herself to a young man like thyself. Tell me, hast thou loved many girls? But no, I do not think thou can’st have, as yet.’

He was spared a reply by the arrival of the hunchbacked waiter at their table. The man picked up the bottle which was now empty and looked at Roger interrogatively: ‘
Encore, Monsieur
?’

Mou-Mou nodded for him and a few minutes later the waiter put a second bottle on the table for which, as De Roubec was still dancing, Roger had to pay.

As it was being opened a little girl aged about twelve came up to them. She was dressed as Cupid and suspended by blue ribbons from her shoulders carried a tray of sweets.

Roger was shocked by the sight of a child in such surroundings and repelled by the wicked knowing look in her
prematurely aged face, but Mou-Mou said at once: ‘Please,
Rojé
, buy me some bon-bons.’

He obliged and bought her a box for the outrageous price of five
francs
; upon which she put her arm round his neck and kissed him on his cheek. Her breath smelt faintly of garlic, but he did not like to draw away from her.

After a moment, she said: ‘Thou do’st not like it here? Am I not right? Come up to my room with me; or if thou preferrest we will command a
salon privé
where we can sup together.’

‘No, not—not yet,’ he stammered. ‘Let us wait until my friend comes back.’ But when he looked again at the dancers he saw that De Roubec and Fifi had already left the room.

Mou-Mou had also noticed that De Roubec was no longer among the whirling, stamping crowd, and she said: ‘Thy friend has gone upstairs with Fifi. Come,
Rojé
, or Madame will give me a beating for wasting my time. Which would’st thou prefer, my room or supper first in a
salon privé
?’

Roger felt desperately ill at ease. He thought Mou-Mou a kind girl and was deeply sorry for her. The last thing he wished to do was to put a slight upon her and get her into trouble with Madame, yet he had no inclination to make love to her. In other surroundings and less heavily painted she might have passed in a crowd as quite attractive. But closer inspection showed that her fair hair was coarse and brittle; it was really mousey, as showed near the roots where it had grown since she had last dyed it. Her hands, though small, were fat and the nails had been bitten down. The garlic on her breath seemed to increase in pungency each time she leaned towards him. There were deep shadows under her eyes and her cheeks had a flaccid, unhealthy
look. Her pleasant manner, soft voice and youth saved her from being actually repugnant to him but she was a little moulting water-hen compared to a beautiful white swan by contrast with Georgina, and the whole business seemed to him forced and sordid.

He wished now that he had pleaded tiredness and said that he wanted to go home, while De Roubec was still with them, but now that he had gone off with Fifi he might be away for an hour, and Roger had not the courage to walk out on his own from fear of precipitating a row. Seeking to put off the unpleasant decision that he knew he would soon be forced to take, he said:

‘Before we go let’s finish our wine.’

Mou-Mou shrugged and poured him another glass. ‘As thou wilst. ’Tis not very good, though, and too much of it is apt to give one the wind, so I beg thee to excuse me.’

They sat silent for a few moments, then she said quietly:

‘At least,
Rojé
, thou mightest make up thy mind if thou would’st sup or no, as if so I will order it.’

It was on the tip of his tongue to say ‘Yes,’ as supping with her would gain him another postponement, but he remembered in time that the cost of the meal would prove too severe a strain on his slender resources. If a box of bonbons cost five
francs
supper might easily run him into a couple of
louis
.

‘No,’ he blurted out. ‘Thank you, but I’m not hungry. I’d rather go up to your room.’

Now that the decision was taken he felt somewhat better about it, and endeavoured to get as much enjoyment as possible out of his wine which, although sweet and insipid, he did not find unpalatable. But directly he set down his glass she stood up and, instinctively, he stood up with her.

Having skirted the dancers they went out into the passage and she led the way upstairs. The salon had been shoddy enough but the upper part of the house seemed like a decayed tenement. Above the first floor the staircase was not carpeted and each of the three flights they ascended grew narrower and more rickety. As he followed her up he saw by the faint light coming from under the ill-fitting doors of the rooms they passed that her shoes were worn down and turned over, and he caught glimpses of rat-holes in the bottom of the wainscoting.

At last, as he paused breathless behind her on a dark and
narrow landing, she threw open a door, fumbled for a tinder box, lit two candles and called over her shoulder: ‘Come in,
cheri
.’

On entering he saw that her bedroom was an attic in a state of repellent filth and disorder. The shaded candles which were on a small dressing-table before a low window, shone on a jumble of rouge pots, hares’ feet and soiled face-cloths. The bed was a divan on which the coverings were already rumpled and a half-filled chamber-pot stood unconcealed in one corner. The room looked larger than it actually was owing to a huge mirror that occupied the whole of its one unbroken wall, but it smelt abominably of stale scent and seemed the very antithesis of the sort of place that anyone would have chosen in which to make love.