Mademoiselle Chanel (10 page)

Her enthusiasm was sincere; Adrienne wanted everyone to be content, even when she was not, and I decided as we said our good-byes that when the day came, I would send for her. I had the feeling my dream of opening a shop was more likely to come true than marriage to her baron.

As I returned to the grandstands to find Balsan, who’d stayed behind to yell encouragement at his jockey, I felt lighter somehow. There might be many things I wanted to change, but I wouldn’t have traded my life for Adrienne’s. At least I still had aspirations.

Balsan was at the bar, sharing a drink with his friends and gesticulating with that rare passion he reserved for anything concerning his horses. I recognized two of his companions, Comte Léon de Laborde and Miguel Yuribe, wealthy associates who visited Royallieu regularly. As I approached, they turned to welcome me; I had become an honorary member of their club, my ability to ride astride and hunt with them, coupled with my flair in attire, having endeared me to them. They all called me “
la petite
Coco” and I now laughingly returned their greetings while Balsan beckoned me with a dejected, “We came in fourth. That jockey made Troika run too fast at the start, and lost momentum toward the finish, the stupid gnome.” It was then that I noticed a striking man with them, someone I had not seen before.

He was almost swarthy, thick black hair slicked back from his brow with pomade, though a few strands fell in disarray over his forehead. He had smoky green eyes, deep set and solemn—eyes that captured my attention even as I took note of his impeccable suit of tobacco-colored tweed
that looked soft to the touch. His trim figure filled out its expensive cut. He extended his square hand to me. I shook it, thinking he greeted me as he would a man, and felt a hint of callus on his palm. Compared with Balsan’s pampered manicure, this was the clasp of a workingman, only no workingman could have afforded that suit.

“Have you not met?” said Balsan, and when the man replied in a low voice, “I don’t think we have,” Balsan frowned. “But I could have sworn . . . you have been to Royallieu since Coco arrived, haven’t you? No? Oh, well. Arthur Capel, this is Gabrielle Chanel. Gabrielle, may I present Monsieur Arthur Capel, an English friend of mine with eccentric taste in transportation.”

“Coco, to my friends,” I said, forcing out a smile, for he still held my hand.

“Boy to mine,” he replied, with a slight upturn of his mustached mouth. “It’s an honor to meet you, Coco Chanel.” He spoke perfect French, without a hint of an accent.

I found myself wondering what Balsan had told Capel about me. Our situation was
irrégulière;
apart from the gatherings at the château, Balsan had made no effort to integrate me into his wider social circle. Yet he must have had questions asked about me. Had he boasted to his friends that he had saved a waif from the streets and made her his mistress?

Capel’s handsome features were unreadable, even as his stare seemed to look right through me. Or not through me, I thought with a jolt, but
at
me. He regarded me as if I was someone he actually saw, removed from my role in Balsan’s life or whatever else he’d been told.

It disconcerted me. I might have thought he was assessing me, seeing a loose woman for the taking, only I could not tell if he was.

I withdrew my hand. His palm was dry. He didn’t leave a drop of his sweat on my fingers, though it was sweltering outside. The man was as cool as a glass of ice.

“Show her your motorcar,” Balsan urged. “As you can see by her clothes, she delights in breaking tradition, and that claptrap machine of yours is
about as nontraditional as one can get. Go on, we’ve another race to watch. Coco doesn’t really care about the races, do you,
chérie
?”

So riveted was I by Capel that even Balsan’s use of an endearment failed to stir me. He never showed affection in public yet I almost expected a possessive pat on my rump as I followed Capel’s broad-shouldered walk around the stands. We moved past parasol-shaded tables where ladies sat with their children, waving fans and sipping lemonade, to the area where horses and carriages were stationed.

“Have you ever seen a motorcar?” he asked, pausing so I could step next to him. In the full sunlight, his eyes had flecks of amber in their verdant hue and I saw he was not swarthy naturally but rather disdained a hat and had been bronzed by the sun—another trait that set me to wondering about his provenance. If he had one of the new motorized vehicles that were only just becoming available, he must have means. Yet he had a certain air about him that reminded me of the peasants I’d known in my childhood. He seemed almost taciturn, as if he preferred silence because to reveal his inner thoughts always came with a price.

“Only in newspapers,” I told him. “But I’m curious.”

“Are you?” His expression softened, turning his somber demeanor into one of undeniable appeal. “That’s not a quality you find often.” He didn’t add “among women” but the words hung unspoken between us as he took me before a blazingly red coupe with metallic fenders so polished I could see my own distorted image in them. It was open topped and ungainly, with large spindle wheels, like a water beetle on stilts.

Capel ran his hand over the bonnet. “She overheats; the radiators are a problem in these models, but the American Henry Ford is devising a better one. This is the future, mademoiselle. In five years at most, the horse and buggy will be a thing of the past and even trains will see a loss of revenue and passengers.”

I was fascinated, rounding the vehicle as though it might roar to life at any moment. “Can it go fast?” I asked, lifting my gaze to his.

“Do you want to see?” he replied, and I heard a nearly imperceptible
trace of Émilienne in his voice—an invitation I should rebuke. He
was
flirting and it was presumptuous. Just because I was an unwed woman who slept with Balsan, he shouldn’t assume I was available to any
gentilhomme
with a fancy suit and an expensive toy. But I nodded anyway, allowing him to open the little side door and see me settled on the quilted leather seat.

After he turned a crank at the front, the motor sputtered and caught with a loud thrumming that vibrated through me. Taking his place before the high steering wheel, he pressed down with his leg on a pedal and the car shot forward, not as fast as a horse at full gallop, but with startling force nevertheless.

The speed as he drove me down the road surrounding the racetrack, avoiding horse-drawn carts and carriages, zipping past amazed bystanders, was intoxicating. It was what I imagined sex should be yet never was—breathless and exhilarating, making me want to cry out from the sheer joy and throw up my arms to let the wind tear back my sleeves.

Then the car coughed, jolted, and rolled to a stop. Smoke billowed from the hood. “See?” he said, leaping over his door to fling open the side of the bonnet and wave away the smoke with his hands. “She overheats. It takes a few minutes to cool her down.”

I retrieved my blown-off fedora from the tiny compartment behind my seat (how ingenious, I thought, finding another fold-up seat like a little sofa back there) and handed it to him. “Use this,” I suggested, and his face broke into the first smile he’d given me, revealing teeth as strong and square as his hands.

The car took more than a few minutes to cool down. He had a stoppered bottle of water under his driver’s seat that he had to pour into the engine. As the smoke faded, he lit a cigarette and extended his gold-plated case to me. He didn’t ask if I smoked, though it wasn’t something a lady did in public. Raking back my disheveled chignon, I accepted and we leaned against his car, not touching, smoking as we looked upon the landscape. Behind us, faint shouting from the racecourse indicated Balsan had either lost or won his wager. Crushing the butt of his cigarette under his heel, Capel said, “Let’s see if she starts.”

For a telling moment, I hesitated. I did not want to see Balsan. The realization speared me where I stood. I felt heat creep into my cheeks and nodded, returning to the car. He cranked it back to life and drove us more sedately back to the racecourse.

Balsan and his friends were in the lot with the others, the races finished for the day. He waved as we drove in and Capel opened the door for me. I slipped out past him, tugging at my skirt, thinking I must look a fright yet not caring if I did.

“I would like to see you again,” he said quietly.

I half-turned to meet his penetrating gaze. “He’s going to Pau next,” I heard myself say, in a husky voice I scarcely recognized as my own. “He has a hunting lodge there. I was going to return to Royallieu, but . . .”

Capel did not reply. I went to Balsan, who guffawed that I resembled a scarecrow and wasn’t this fad for motorcars an obnoxious waste. I smiled and replied—well, I don’t remember what I said. Whatever it was, it no longer mattered.

How could I have explained that nothing between us mattered anymore?

B
oy caught me by surprise.

There was no other explanation for it. I had denied my heart to every man after my father ravaged it. I had defied expectations, living with a wealthy aristocrat I didn’t love, but I now found myself brimming with an inchoate longing that would have been ludicrous had it not been mine.

He came with us to Pau. In Balsan’s rustic château surrounded by dense forests, I came to know Capel as I had known no one else—though not physically. He was a perfect gentleman in this regard, though his sultry eyes would gleam as the nights turned long and the Jurançon wine flowed. Then the men staggered off drunk to bed, leaving us alone with Balsan, who always drank more than his share but never seemed to tip over from it.

I was amazed that Balsan failed to sense the current in the air, ambling about, sharing anecdotes, while Boy nodded and left his own glass untouched and I smoked cigarette after cigarette until my mouth went as dry as paste. Was he so blind that he couldn’t tell I ached to see him gone so Boy and I could sit together instead of apart like suitors at a chaperoned ball? Did he not see the very ties that bound us were stretched to their limits, worn seams on a coat that no longer fit?

I’d been correct in assuming that Boy was like a peasant in his attitude
toward self-confession. Yet in those weeks at Pau, I learned that he was two years older than I, the only son, with three sisters, born to a humble Catholic family, half French through his late mother, his father an enterprising Irish businessman who’d scaled the rungs of employment until making his fortune as an agent for railway and shipping companies. Boy had spent his childhood in Paris, where his father moved the family upon his success. Educated according to exalted standards—the best private boarding school in England, trips throughout Europe and the Middle East, even to America as he grew older—he mingled with the new bourgeoisie and the haut monde of old society, as antiquated rules began to disintegrate and money, no matter how it was gained, became society’s sole calling card. As much as he loved motorcars, Boy also loved polo, an affinity he shared with Balsan. More important to me, and most unusual for a man of his means, he loved to work.

That made him magnificent in my eyes. Though groomed for a life of privilege, Boy wanted to earn his own way. He had assumed various positions in his father’s firm until he garnered enough experience to strike out on his own, investing in coal, improved engines for trains, railroad expansions, elite polo clubs, and anything else that caught his eye and promised a return on his money.

“I don’t want to be one of these men,” he said as we sat before the ebbing fire after Balsan finally made his exit, “who indulge in leisure for leisure’s sake. It’s all fine to frolic and ride horses all day, to take life as it comes because, eh”—he shrugged with mocking nonchalance—“why worry? But I need to work. I must own something that is mine.” He turned his arresting eyes to me. “You understand? You know that I am not like Balsan.”

He needn’t have asked. They couldn’t have been more different, Balsan’s laissez-faire attitude seeming trivial, the workings of an outdated automaton, compared with Boy’s modernized purpose. “What we do not earn ourselves,” he said, “is never truly ours. It can always be taken away. But even if we lose everything we work for, the achievement is ours forever.”

How could I not be infatuated? He was the great stroke of fortune
I’d awaited without knowing it existed—someone I couldn’t have possibly dreamed of because there was no one like him to model my fantasies on. In those long autumn nights and prematurely crisp days, he filled me with stories I’d always wanted to hear, even if I had not known how to find them. Yet not once did he indicate he was interested in anything more than friendship, except to occasionally take my hand and squeeze it when he became overly impassioned during our talks.

In turn, I shared the story of my deprived childhood, of the brimstone of Aubazine, the garret in Moulins, and the humiliation of Vichy, and of my yearning for something more, always more, until I finally confessed my dream of one day opening my own shop. I spoke tentatively, as cautious as if I was unwrapping a fragile heirloom. I had lied to Balsan about my origins; now, for the first time, I told someone else the unvarnished truth and though it felt awkward, too revealing, it relieved me of a secret burden I had not realized I carried.

He smiled. “I think you’ll do very well. It requires a lot of capital and you’ll lose far more than you make at first, but the important thing is that you’re happy doing what you love.”

No one had ever said such words to me. In Aubazine, the nuns had extolled the need for a life without expectations, as if happiness was not something we created. If I didn’t know I loved Boy before, I knew it then, with every fiber of my being. Had he asked me to go to his bed that night, I’d have done so willingly, no matter that the château of Pau was crammed to its eaves with snoring drunkards who might overhear us.

But he did not ask, and I might have worried that he didn’t find me attractive or he loved another. If he was irresistible to me, how could he not be to every other woman who crossed his path? Indeed, even Balsan eventually took note of our intimacy, for after Boy departed in his car for Paris, Balsan said, “He’s a cad. A mistress in every port. He might be half English by birth but in his groin he’s more French than any other man I know.”

Had I been more attuned to Balsan’s sensibilities, I might have realized that was a warning: don’t get entangled with Capel. But he could have hurled lightning and threatened eviction, and nothing would have stopped
me. Boy might have a hundred conquests and I might be the latest on his extended list, and still it was, as they say, inevitable.

We were meant for each other.

So I didn’t worry that he found me unappealing. I didn’t fret that he’d not acted on the communion between us. I knew that in time he would. He must.
We
must.

All I needed to do was free myself.

Still, I hesitated. We celebrated the new year of 1909 in an epic bacchanal at Royallieu, with a masked ball attended by Balsan’s friends, including Émilienne and her acquaintances. Only Boy stayed away, having gone to England to see his family. But that wasn’t why I delayed. I didn’t know the reason myself. Only that I feared the final step, feared plunging into the unknown pool where Adrienne and so many others trod water and hoped for relief.

Surrender had never been part of my plan, especially not to a man.

Émilienne noted the change in me. The house was too crowded for our illicit afternoons, but on the day she left, she whispered in my ear, “I think someone else has taken my place,
ma chérie,
” and when I started to protest, she shushed me. “No need for explanations. Choices, remember? We all must have them.”

But those very choices paralyzed me. I couldn’t work, wandering my workroom with my hats ready for my scissors and my mind in another place, wondering where Boy was now, what he was doing, if he thought of me. When I envisioned him laughing in a Parisian café with a
cocotte
or strolling along the Seine with one of his many conquests, the sharp pangs I felt bewildered me, until I realized these must be jealousy. It enraged me, that helplessness, the abandon that overcame me; but for once, my anger had no fuel to feed on.

Everything inside me had become kindling for Boy’s touch.

HE CAME IN THE SPRING,
as the snow melted on the grounds and the chestnuts budded with tight-furled leaves. I heard the bronchial wheeze of
his overheated car pulling into the driveway before the château and I threw my scissors aside, racing from my room in my bare feet to hurtle down the staircase. Before he had even stepped into the foyer to unbutton his coat, before he could pass a hand through his mop of windblown hair, I flung myself into his arms.

He kissed me then. A hard, breath-quenching kiss that flattened me against his body, unraveling and rearranging me, ripping out the lining of my tired self to create a new garment of my skin, made of pliant silk without buttonholes or stays.

“I missed you,” he whispered. As he let me down, the soles of my feet not feeling the icy chill of the floor, the sound of slow applause reached me.

I whirled around. Balsan stood in the doorway to the library. With a grimace, he raised his hands again and clapped. “Bravo. At last, someone has thawed my petite Coco’s heart.”

He turned on his heel, going back into the library. He’d been packing for a trip to Argentina, where horse breeding was the rage and he had heard there was excellent stock to be found. When he failed to reemerge, I whispered to Boy, “What do we do now?”

“Tell him the truth. You’re coming with me to Paris. I want to finance your shop.” As I gaped at him, he added, “Émilienne visited me after she left here. She believes you are destined for success. I believe it, too. I want to be part of it, if you’ll let me.”

I would have kissed him again, but he led me into the library, where we found Balsan at his desk, a tumbler of cognac at his side. “Drink?” he asked without looking up.

“Étienne,
mon ami,
” began Boy, and Balsan glanced up with a droll smile. “Careful, Englishman. In France, friends do not steal their friends’ lovers.”

“You know I never intended to—,” said Boy, but I interrupted him, unwinding my fingers from his to step to Balsan. “Blame me if you must blame someone.”

His mouth twitched. “You do not know anything. You’re as naive as the day I fetched you out of that hovel in Vichy.”

“Perhaps,” I said, feeling Boy stiffen behind me. “But this is what I want.”

“Do you?” Balsan smiled. “Are you quite certain? Because once you leave here, you cannot think to come back. I’ll not be so generous, no matter how much I care for you.”

“Yes,” I said. “I know.”

He lifted his gaze over my head to Boy. “Will you take care of her?”

Though I didn’t look around, I knew Boy nodded.

“Then it’s settled,” said Balsan. “She goes to you.”

“Not to me,” corrected Boy. “She goes
with
me. There is a difference.” Before Balsan could react, I added, “He’s going to help me open my shop. I’ll not be kept by anyone anymore.”

Balsan rolled his eyes, emptying his glass. “Again with the shop! God save us, she’s stubborn as a mule.” He crossed the library to the tray with his cut-glass decanters. Pouring himself another measure of cognac, he said to Boy, “She’ll ruin you if you indulge this fantasy of hers. She’ll take every centime you have.”

“I’m prepared for it,” Boy replied. “You may think her ambition frivolous but I do not. I’m extending her a loan, to be repaid with interest whenever she can.”

“Is that so? Well, well.” Balsan emptied his glass once more. Though he didn’t display it in his speech, I saw he was trembling and felt pity for him, for that shuttered mind I had once believed so open, and his clinging to a world that faded all around him. “A loan with interest,” he mocked. “How generous, seeing that it’ll take her years, if ever, to repay it.”

“We’ll see about that.” Boy motioned to me. “Come, Coco.”

“I won’t take anything from here that isn’t mine,” I told Balsan. “I promise.”

“Then you might as well go in the clothes you wear, for nothing else is yours.”

“That is why I must go.” I returned to Boy’s side with as much pride as I could muster.

At the doorway, I looked over my shoulder, though I didn’t know what I hoped to see. He sipped his cognac, contemplating something far away. I was about to leave him with only a suitcase filled with my hats and the
few clothes I had made; he had rescued me, safeguarded me, yet I felt only vague regret for hurting him. Already this house that had been my home for nearly four years seemed as remote as his distant gaze, a ruined pile of stone that would not remember me after I had gone.

Just as I turned back to Boy, I heard Balsan sigh. “I unlocked her cage, but you, my thieving friend, aim to set her free. Be careful with what you do. Wild things are never tamed.”

Boy’s answer was to enclose my hand in his and take me away.