The Girl Behind The Fan (Hidden Women) (27 page)

As it was, it didn’t look too bad that morning. I woke up in a wide white-sheeted bed to find the summer sunlight pouring in through my window. My sister had texted to remind me that I was getting old. Mum and Dad called shortly afterwards with more traditional, positive best wishes.

Steven had been back in London overnight. He said there were things he had to do there, though he did not elaborate. He told me that he would be back in time to take me for dinner, however. That was something to look forward to. I was glad he did not seem offended by my leaving him on a street corner after our night at the Crazy Horse.

As I dressed for the day, I looked at myself in the mirror. How had the last year changed me? I didn’t think I looked significantly older, though I hoped that my time in Venice and Paris had left me looking a little more sophisticated. I had finished my thesis and got myself a paying job. There were, however, definitely other things I wished I might have achieved.

At seven that evening, Steven arrived. I opened the door. He stood on the doorstep with something hidden behind his back. He looked excited to see me. He gave me a kiss and thrust another bouquet of camellias into my hand. But he was hiding something else as well.

‘You need to sit down first,’ he said. ‘I hope you’ve had a pedicure recently.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘Just sit down and close your eyes.’

I took my place on the sofa and did as I was told. I heard the sound of Steven opening a box. I heard the rustling of tissue paper and started to peep.

‘Keep your eyes shut.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘OK. You can open them now.’

Steven knelt before me like Prince Charming in
Cinderella
. Like Prince Charming, he was holding out a shoe for me to try on. Unlike Prince Charming, he was holding a shoe that looked more like a medieval torture contraption than an elegant glass slipper. Steven flipped the shoe over so that I could see the trademark red sole. It was a Louboutin.

‘After you admired the girls’ shoes at the Crazy Horse the other night, I thought you ought to have a pair of your own.’

‘Gosh. Wow.’

‘Happy birthday.’

He handed me the shoe. It was insanely high. It had a slight platform sole, but what was more striking was the strapping that would bind my foot and half of my leg with it.

‘Let me put them on you,’ he said.

How could I refuse? I stretched out a leg. Steven gently fitted my foot into the body of the shoe and began to wind the straps round my leg.

I was suddenly reminded of the underwear he had once bought me.

‘You look like a goddess,’ he said. But in the sky-high shoes, I felt like a goddess who couldn’t walk. Steven held on to my hands as I wobbled to my feet.

‘Your legs look amazing.’

It was true that the heels had given me muscle tone where previously I’d had none. The height of the shoes forced my feet into the most ridiculous arch. The shoes were cut low at the sides to reveal my suddenly vulnerable instep. I could see that they were beautiful, but there was something a little sinister about the degree to which they changed both my posture and, subsequently, the way that I moved. I had to take small steps. Subservient steps. Like a geisha.

Some might have said they were dominatrix shoes. I certainly couldn’t imagine doing anything more than issuing orders while I was wearing them.

‘I’d say that they’re limo shoes,’ I joked. ‘Except I think I would have to be carried even to the limousine.’

‘You don’t have to wear them anywhere except in bed,’ Steven assured me.

‘I thought we were going to dinner?’

‘Dinner can wait,’ he said. ‘Can’t it?’

Holding me by the wrists, he began to kiss me. It wasn’t long before we were back in the bedroom. He pushed me down onto the bed. I was still wearing the shoes.

He lifted my legs so that my calves were resting on his shoulders. My feet in the air looked like they belonged to someone else. Indeed, Steven seemed to be acting like he was someone else. There was none of the tenderness that had accompanied our reunion after the opera. Instead, he was moving me roughly. It was as though he didn’t like me very much.

I struggled to sit up.

‘I can’t do this,’ I told him.

Steven looked suddenly angry.

‘I don’t understand what the problem is. You were happy enough to go to bed with me when we came back from the opera.’

‘That was different.’

‘How? I thought we had put what happened in London behind us.’

‘It’s just that . . .’ I glanced at the shoes. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think you see me in the same way any more. Since that night at the club. You want me to be someone I’m not. I don’t want you to think about the girls at the Crazy Horse while you fuck me.’

‘Who said I would be?’

‘You bought me the outfit.’ I tried to make a joke of it.

‘It’s just a pair of shoes.’

‘I don’t know. They remind me of the underwear you bought for that night at the sex club. It makes me uncomfortable.’

‘They weren’t meant to be comfortable.’

‘I mean emotionally uncomfortable.’

‘You’re nuts, Sarah. You read too much into things. I thought I was getting you something special. They cost enough.’

‘And I’m very grateful but . . .’

‘Forget it.’ He was already standing up. ‘This isn’t going to work. I’m going home.’

‘Steven.’

I couldn’t hobble after him in the stupid bloody shoes.

What a day, I’d had. I could hardly call it my most successful birthday ever.

Getting ready for bed, I looked at the Louboutins, sitting next to their box in the corner of the bedroom. I walked over to where they lay in their expensively tortuous beauty. Given the choice between the shoes and going barefoot, I knew which one felt more like me. I put them back into their box and put the box in the wardrobe.

But they were only shoes. Designer shoes that any number of women I knew would have gone crazy over. The whole point of Louboutins was their slightly sluttish edge, wasn’t it? The echoes of the dancing girl in Pigalle. Perhaps I did read too much into things. Like I read too much into Marco.

I sent Steven a text message. ‘I’m sorry,’ I wrote. ‘I wish things had gone differently.’

‘Me too,’ Steven responded. ‘Me too.’

But I think we both knew that we would never be able to put ourselves back together again.

Chapter 39

Paris, 1846

My life with the Duc continued in the same vein for about four years. I was his most precious creature and he guarded me jealously.

One thing had changed, however. I did my best to please him because I had one eye on the future now. I knew it would not be very long before another, younger woman caught the Duc’s eye. In the meantime, I must gather all the wealth that I could. When I first became the Duc’s plaything, I had not asked him for anything at all, but let him choose what he wanted to give me. As the years passed, I was no longer so coy. Each time he visited, I prattled about the latest fashion in hats or dresses. More often than not, he would insist that I have whatever I needed to make me look acceptably chic. He would give me the money to pay a dressmaker. I would salt the money away and hope that he never asked to see the bonnet shaped like a church bell or the dress with the Ottoman sleeves. Whenever he gave me a piece of jewellery, I would appraise it with a usurer’s eye. One pair of pearl earrings equalled three years in a small house near the Bois de Boulogne.

Arlette laughed when I told her what I was doing.

‘I thought I would do the same,’ she said. ‘Just a couple of years with the Duc and I would be set up for the rest of my life. I’d never have to work again. But you’ll get used to it, you wait and see. After the Duc has gone, you’ll still want new Indian shawls. You’ll still want to go to the opera. Take all that you can, but don’t think you’re saving for retirement. After the Duc there will be someone else. If I were you, I’d start flirting with the next poor fellow.’

That was far more distasteful to me than the idea of a life of poverty. After my time with the Duc and our visits to his horrible friends, I would sooner have spent the rest of my life in a convent than with another man. Except perhaps one.

What about Remi? He still haunted me. After I saw him at the Opéra Comique, on the evening that had changed the course of my life for ever, I had tried my hardest to put him from my mind. But of course it was impossible. Not least because the Duc insisted that the painting Remi had made of me – the one that had inspired his desire – took pride of place in the salon. He had replaced the simple frame with another, altogether more ornate frame that made the work inside look even more humble.

I hated that painting. When the Duc looked at it, he saw a naked body to which he had access day and night. When I looked at it, I remembered the long hours it had taken to create the painting. I remembered Remi’s soft eyes when he gazed at me. I remembered how proud he had been to capture my likeness so well. But he had captured more than my likeness. He had captured my love for him too.

But what use was that love now? Arlette had informed me that Remi was engaged to be married. She had heard it from Charles the poet, who had begun to visit her again now that his own marriage was growing stale. I decided the painting had to go.

‘I dislike that painting,’ I told the Duc one afternoon, when he had had his pleasure and I knew he would grant me whatever I wished for just a little while. ‘I know you are fond of it because it resembles me and you credit it with in some way bringing us together, but I have grown tired of looking at that woman. I worry that people think she is me and thus anyone coming into this house may think he knows what I look like naked.’

‘I like to make them jealous,’ said the Duc.

‘I don’t want just any man to know what I have under my clothes. Or even to speculate.’

I was surprised to see the Duc nod to himself then.

‘Perhaps you’re right, my little flower.’

‘I’m glad you think so.’

‘You should have a portrait of your own and you shall wear the best clothes when you pose for it. But whom shall I choose to paint it? He must be the very best.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Everything in my life must be the very best,’ the Duc continued. ‘That is why I chose you.’

‘May I have the painting taken down?’ I asked.

‘Best wait until we have something to replace it.’

The Duc seemed very pleased with himself when he returned the following evening. He told me he had spoken to his most cultured friends and they had helped him to choose the artist who would best do justice to my many assets. He was especially excited, he said, to hear that this new artist’s work was very similar to that of the painter who had captured me in my youthful nudity.

I should have realised when he said that what was going to happen next.

‘The artist I have chosen is Remi Sauvageon.’

I felt myself grow pale.

‘You do not look pleased, my darling.’

‘Oh, but I am,’ I half-choked on the words.

‘I should hope so. I hear great things about him. He is quite the most sought-after artist in Paris these days. I had to offer to pay him three times what he is worth in order to secure his services as quickly as possible.’

‘Does he know who he will be painting?’ I asked.

‘I told him to show up here at the house tomorrow. I also told him not to tell anyone he’s coming here. I want your portrait to be a huge surprise.’

I could imagine how awful a surprise it would be for Remi. As awful as it had been for me, I hoped.

‘Look happy, dearest,’ the Duc exhorted me. ‘Let’s go upstairs and you can practise some poses. I thought perhaps I would tell him to paint you as a goddess, but which goddess shall you be? Diana? No, you are not so warlike. You are not round enough to be Ceres.’

It was not long before the Duc ran out of goddesses. None of them, it seemed, would properly suit me. Still, the Duc chose my clothes and he chose my pose. The following morning, I dressed in red silk and awaited my beloved’s arrival.

Pierre, my manservant, announced Remi shortly after ten o’clock. I composed myself and maintained my composure by balling my hands into fists so tight that my fingernails cut into my palms. With the Duc beside me, I must not betray the slightest emotion at the sight of my lost love. It must be as though Remi and I had never set eyes on each other before. I could only pray that my first and only true love would be so discreet.

Chapter 40

When Pierre opened the door, Remi bounded in with the energy that I remembered so well. He made straight for the Duc, hand outstretched in greeting, a slight duck of his head to show his deference. He didn’t even glance in my direction at first. He was the perfect serf, wanting to show his respects to the master. I might as well have been a prized greyhound. Until the Duc gently directed Remi’s attention towards me and I lifted my face.