Till We Meet Again by Judith Krantz Page B

Eve never felt solitary. Downstairs lay the world of the Grands Boulevards, where everyone who was important in the world of the music hall lived. She explored the outdoor show of the wide streets, almost dancing along the pavements to the new syncopated rhythms that came from America, the beat of the maxixe, the bunny hug and the turkey trot, which were fast displacing the tango. She didn’t dare to order a coffee on the terrace of a café, although she yearned to, because the sight of a young woman sitting alone in a public place might, Alain warned her, be misunderstood. Nor did she ever venture outside of the neighborhood for a walk on the Rue de la Paix or the Champs Élysées, or any of the other elegant promenades, because of the danger of being seen by Aunt Marie-France. No real woman of fashion ever walked on the Grands Boulevards by daylight, that much she could be sure of.
    Now it was close to noon and Eve stood in front of the armoire that contained her new wardrobe, and tried to decide if today she should wear her best fall costume. So far she had only tried it on in the privacy of the bedroom. She was still not accustomed to the inconvenience of the hobble skirt, narrowed all the way down to her feet. To make it possible towalk, the skirt had been partially slit up the front, showing her new, “tango-laced” shoes. Difficult as this constraint was for a girl who was used to the freer stride of the fuller Edwardian skirts, Eve was wickedly pleased at how grown-up she looked in the skirt and its matching, pleated tunic, which, in turn, was topped by an angular, bolero-style jacket with a vee neckline over her bare neck, the vee that felt so free and playful after growing up in high boned collars.
    She would wear the vivid green costume, no matter how warm the day, she decided, for Vivianne de Biron must be, by Eve’s guess, thirty-five, and she dressed in the height of Parisian elegance. Eve needed all the assurance that her new clothes would give her, for this would be the first time since she ran away from Dijon that she had been alone with anyone but Alain.
    Eve was more excited than she realized by the prospect. Alain gave her money to dress properly in front of his friends, he didn’t ask her to do housework, but when he went off to the theater in the morning for rehearsal of the new show, he forgot her existence. Eve’s unfamiliar and idle life revolved entirely around thoughts of him.
    For his part, Alain Marais was pleased, indeed more than pleased, with Eve, for there was much she still had to learn before she became as accomplished a mistress as he intended her to be. It would only be then, as so often happened, that he would begin to tire of her.
    Vivianne de Biron had been born Jeanne Sans, in a gloomy, lower-middle-class suburb of Nantes. Her superb body had gained her a first audition in a music hall, and although it turned out that she didn’t possess even the ability to keep time to the music of the orchestra, she walked like an empress.
    For twenty years she had carried the heavy, elaborately sequined costumes of the showgirl with magnificent dignity and remote allure. She knew that in the world of the music hall she and her fellow showgirls were like a maharajah’s elephants, majestic, useless but indispensable. She prided herself on the fact that within her appointed role she “sold her salad” as well as any other “Walking Girl” and far better than most.
    Now, honorably retired for five years, Vivianne de Biron had achieved one of the three possible ambitions of any veteran of the métier. Although she had not become a star(not that there had been any question of that), nor had she become the wife of some honest man (which certainly wouldn’t have suited her), she had, however, acquired two middle-aged, not overly demanding yet solid protectors, whose advice had enabled her to make excellent placements of their generous gifts.
    Her income was more than sufficient for a peaceful,