Wild Lavender by Belinda Alexandra Page B

ungrateful little hussy!’ she screamed. ‘Have you got yourself pregnant?’
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ve got another job.’
    Aunt Augustine was stunned for a moment but quickly recovered. ‘Where?’ she asked, then her eyes fell to Bonbon who was sitting by my bundle. ‘So you’ve joined with that slut upstairs, have you?’ she spat. ‘Well, let me tell you this. She’ll have work as long as she is young and pretty but then she’ll end up like those women next door.’ She nodded in the direction of our neighbours. ‘But you,’ she laughed, ‘you’re not even pretty enough for that now.’
    Her insult stung because there was truth in it: I was not as pretty as Camille. I would have done anything to have her hypnotic, catlike blondeness, but I was a black-eyed giraffe. Before Aunt Augustine could say anything else todiscourage me, I swept up Bonbon and my baggage and walked out the door. In the end, what kind of looks did a seamstress need?
    Aunt Augustine rushed to the doorstep after me and the women next door stepped out onto their balcony to see what the commotion was about.
    ‘Simone!’ Aunt Augustine shouted. I turned to see her pointing at the prostitutes. ‘That’s what happens to plain girls without talent who try their luck in the music hall. Look, Simone! That’s your future staring back at you!’
    I tucked Bonbon under my arm, slung my bundle of clothes over my shoulder and fixed my eyes firmly in the direction of Le Chat Espiègle.
    A few weeks after I started work in the wardrobe department at Le Chat Espiègle, a neighbouring music hall called The One-Eyed Sailor closed down and Monsieur Dargent bought some of the sets and costumes from the debt collectors. He created a new show titled ‘On the Seas’. The first act was a sketch about three sailors who find themselves shipwrecked on an island of Hawaiian beauties.
    Because the costumes were simpler than those of the previous show, I could sometimes snatch a moment to watch the act from the wings. I began to understand the difference between the chorus girls and Camille. The chorus girls sang and shook their legs because they didn’t want to starve. Dancing in a music hall was better than working on the streets and the audience paid them more respect, if only slightly. It was a cut above working in a laundry or a bakery or in domestic service where the burden of their labours would soon wear out their greatest asset: their youthful prettiness. In the theatre they could hold out a little longer, hoping that some night there would be a rich suitor among the men hanging around the stage door after the show. It was well known among the chorus girls that Madeleine, after a liaison with the heir to a shipping fortune, had beenforced by the young man’s father to have an abortion and that the previous year two girls had to leave the theatre after contracting venereal diseases. It was not an aspect of theatrical life that I had anticipated and it shocked me. I had not heard of La Belle Otero, Liane de Pougy or Gaby Deslys—women of the stage who were mistresses to kings and princes. Although the chorus girls did sometimes receive jewels and clothes for their favours, Madame Tarasova was quick to point out that no one at Le Chat Espiègle had ever been whisked away to matrimonial heaven by a prince, or even the manager of an olive oil company, and did her best to educate everyone on the benefits of les capotes anglaises , rubber sheaths that men wore over their penises to prevent conception and disease. But her advice fell on deaf ears; getting pregnant was still seen as a viable way of trapping a husband.
    But Camille was different. From her eyes down to the sway of her hips, she cast out magic over the floodlights and towards the hungry crowd. The audience clamoured and clapped for her, as if trying to grab hold of prime produce at the markets, while she stood remote in her mysterious beauty. When Camille exited the stage, she took the