The Ladies' Paradise (BBC tie-in) (Oxford World's Classics) (23 page)

It so happened that the next day she had to smile, to play the part of the well-dressed girl. Some regular customers came into the department, and Madame Aurélie called her several times and used her to show off the new styles of coats. All the time she was stiffly posing in the way prescribed by fashion plates, she was thinking about the forty francs for Pépé’s board and lodging which she had promised to pay that evening. She could very well do without the boots for another month; but even if she added those four francs, saved up centime by centime, to the thirty francs she had left, that would only make thirty-four francs; where could she find the six francs needed to complete the sum? Her heart nearly failed her just to think about it.

‘You will notice that the shoulders are loose,’ Madame Aurélie was saying. ‘It’s very smart and very comfortable … The young lady can fold her arms.’

‘Oh yes, easily!’ Denise added, keeping up a pleasant manner. ‘You hardly feel you’ve got it on … I’m sure madam will be very pleased with it.’

She now blamed herself for having gone to fetch Pépé from Madame Gras’s a few Sundays previously in order to take him for a walk in the Champs-Élysées. The poor child went out with her so rarely! But it had meant buying him some gingerbread and a little spade, and then taking him to see Punch and Judy; and in no time she had spent one franc forty-five. Jean clearly didn’t give his little brother a thought when he was acting stupidly. Afterwards, it was she who had to find the money.

‘Of course, if madam doesn’t care for it…’ the buyer was saying. ‘Here, Mademoiselle Baudu! Put this cloak on, so that madam can judge!’

Denise walked round taking mincing steps with the cloak on her shoulders, saying:

‘This one is warmer … It’s this year’s fashion.’

Beneath her professional good nature she continued to torture herself, racking her brains trying to think where she could get some money. The other girls, who were rushed off their feet, let her make a big sale; but it was only Tuesday; she had to wait for four days before receiving her week’s pay. After dinner she decided to put off her visit to Madame Gras until the next day. She would make an excuse, say that she had been detained; and in the mean time she might perhaps find the six francs.

As Denise avoided spending anything at all, she went to bed early. What could she do in the streets, without a penny, shy as she was, and still frightened by the big city, in which she only knew the streets near the shop? After venturing as far as the Palais-Royal, to get some fresh air, she would hurry back, shut herself in her room, and set about sewing or washing clothes. Along the whole length of the corridor off which the rooms led there was a barrack-like promiscuity; the girls were often very untidy, gossiping over slop buckets and dirty linen, venting their bitterness in continuous bickerings and reconciliations. Moreover, they were forbidden to go upstairs during the daytime; they did not live there, they just slept there at night, going back in the evening at the last minute, and escaping in the morning still only half awake after a rapid wash; and the draught which ceaselessly swept through the corridor, the fatigue of thirteen hours’ work which made them drop exhausted into their beds, changed the attics into an inn traversed by a horde of exhausted,
ill-tempered travellers. Denise had no friends. Of all the girls only one, Pauline Cugnot, showed her any kindness; but, as the ladieswear and lingerie departments, which were next door to each other, were in open warfare, the friendship between the two salesgirls had been limited so far to occasional words exchanged on the run. Pauline occupied the room on the right of Denise’s; but as she disappeared immediately after dinner and did not come back until eleven, Denise only heard her going to bed, and never met her outside working hours.

On that particular night, Denise had resigned herself to playing cobbler again. She was holding her shoes, examining them, wondering how she could make them last until the end of the month. Finally she decided to sew the soles on again with a strong needle, as they were threatening to leave the uppers. In the mean time a collar and a pair of cuffs were soaking in the basin full of soapsuds.

Every evening she heard the same sounds: girls coming in one by one, short whispered conversations, laughter, sometimes a quarrel which they tried to keep quiet. Then the beds creaked, yawns were heard, and deep sleep would descend on the rooms. Her left-hand neighbour often talked in her sleep, which had frightened her at first. Perhaps others, like her, stayed up to mend things, in spite of the rule; but if so they must have taken the same precautions as she did, slowing down her movements and avoiding the slightest noise, for a chilling silence came from the closed doors.

Eleven o’clock had struck ten minutes before when a sound of footsteps made her raise her head. Another girl coming back late! And hearing the door next to hers open, she knew it was Pauline. But she was astonished when the girl quietly re-emerged from her room and knocked on her door.

‘Hurry up, it’s me.’

Since the girls were forbidden to visit each other in their rooms, Denise unlocked the door quickly in case her neighbour was caught by Madame Cabin, who kept watch to see that the rule was strictly observed.

‘Was she there?’ she asked, shutting the door again.

‘Who? Madame Cabin?’ replied Pauline. ‘It’s not her I’m afraid of… As long as I’ve got a franc to keep her quiet!’

Then she added:

‘I’ve wanted to have a chat with you for a long time. It’s impossible downstairs … And you looked so miserable at dinner this evening!’

Denise thanked her, and asked her to sit down, touched by her good-natured manner. But she was so confused by this unexpected visit that she was still holding the shoe she was sewing together, and Pauline’s eyes fell on it. She shook her head, looked round and noticed the collar and cuffs in the basin.

‘You poor thing, I thought as much,’ she went on. ‘Don’t worry! I know what it’s like. When I first came here, from Chartres, and my father didn’t send me a penny, I washed a good few night-dresses, I can tell you. Yes, yes, my night-dresses even! I had two of them, and one of them was always soaking.’

She had sat down, still out of breath from running. Her broad face, with small bright eyes and a big, kindly mouth, had a certain charm, in spite of her rather coarse features. Suddenly, without any transition, she told Denise all about herself; her childhood spent at the mill, her father’s ruin by a lawsuit, her dispatch to Paris to make her fortune with twenty francs in her pocket, how she had started as a salesgirl, first in a shop in the Batignolles district, then at the Ladies’ Paradise, how terrible it had been to begin with, all the sufferings and privations she had had to endure; and finally she told about the life she was leading at the moment, how she earned two hundred francs a month, what her pleasures were, how she let her days slip by without heed to the future. Some jewellery—a brooch and a watch-chain—shone on her dark blue cloth dress, drawn in attractively at the waist; beneath her velvet toque, adorned with a big grey feather, she was still smiling.

Denise, shoe in hand, had turned very red. She tried to stammer out an explanation.

‘I’ve been through it all too …!’ repeated Pauline. ‘Look, I’m older than you, I’m twenty-six, though I don’t look it… Tell me all about your little troubles.’

In the face of this friendship so candidly offered, Denise gave in. In her petticoat, with an old shawl over her shoulders, she sat down next to Pauline, who was still all dressed up, and they
launched into a heart-to-heart talk. It was freezing in the room, the cold seemed to seep into it through the bare prison-like walls; but they did not notice that their fingers were numb, they were absorbed in their confidences. Little by little, Denise opened her heart, talked about Jean and Pépé, said how much the question of money tormented her; and this led them both to attack the girls in the ladieswear department. Pauline was thus able to relieve her feelings.

‘Oh! How nasty they are! If only they behaved in a reasonable, friendly way you could make over a hundred francs for yourself.’

‘Everyone has a grudge against me, and I don’t know why,’ Denise said, beginning to cry. ‘Monsieur Bourdoncle, for example, he’s always watching me so that he can catch me doing something wrong, as if I was a bother to him somehow. Old Jouve is the only one …’

‘What, that awful old shopwalker? Don’t you trust him, my dear … You want to be careful of men with big noses like that! It’s all very well for him to show off his medal; there’s a story about something that happened in our department, in the lingerie … But what a child you are to take it all to heart! How terrible it is to be so sensitive! You must realize what’s happening to you happens to everyone: you’re just being given the usual welcome!’

She seized her hands and kissed her, carried away by her kind heart. The money question, however, was more serious. Certainly a poor girl couldn’t support her two brothers, pay for the little one’s board and lodging and buy treats for the big one’s mistresses, out of the few left-over francs picked up from the other girls’ cast-off customers; for it was to be feared that she wouldn’t be given a salary before business picked up in March.

‘Listen, you can’t go on living like this much longer …’ said Pauline. ‘If I was you …’

But a noise in the corridor silenced her. Perhaps it was Marguerite, who was suspected of prowling about in her night-dress to spy on the others. Pauline, still clasping her friend’s hands, looked at her for a moment in silence, listening attentively. Then she began again in a very low voice, with an air of gentle conviction.

‘If I was you I’d get someone.’

‘What do you mean, get someone?’ murmured Denise, not understanding at first.

When she understood what Pauline meant, she took her hands away, quite stupefied. This advice embarrassed her, for it was an idea which had never occurred to her, and she could see no advantage in it.

‘Oh! no!’ she replied simply.

‘In that case,’ Pauline continued, ‘you’ll never manage, I can tell you! The figures just don’t add up—forty francs for the little one, five francs every now and then for the big one; and then there’s you, you really can’t always go about like a pauper, with shoes the girls laugh at; yes, really, your shoes don’t help you. Take someone, it would be much better.’

‘No,’ repeated Denise.

‘Well, you’re very silly … You have to, my dear, and it’s so natural! We’ve all been through it. Take me, I was on probation like you, without a cent. Of course, we get lodged and fed, but we need clothes too, and that means money; you just can’t stay shut up in your room counting the flies on the window. You have to let yourself go in the end …’

She told Denise about her first lover, a solicitor’s clerk she had met during an outing to Meudon. After him, she had taken up with a post office employee. And now, since the autumn, she had been keeping company with a salesman at the Bon Marché, a very nice tall young man, at whose place she spent all her free time. She never had more than one lover at a time, however. She was a decent girl, and became indignant at the mention of the sort of girls who gave themselves to the first young man they met.

‘I’m not telling you to misbehave, after all,’ she said. ‘For example, I wouldn’t like to be seen with that Clara of yours, for fear people might accuse me of being as bad as her. But when you live quietly with someone, and have nothing to reproach yourself for … Is there anything wicked in that?’

‘No,’ replied Denise. ‘I just don’t care for it, that’s all.’

There was a fresh silence. They were smiling at each other, both moved by this whispered conversation in the icy little room.

‘Besides, you’d have to like someone first,’ she went on, her cheeks pink.

Pauline was very surprised, but after a pause she laughed and kissed Denise again, saying: ‘But, my dear, people meet and take to each other! You are funny! No one’s going to force you … Look, would you like Baugé to take us somewhere in the country on Sunday? He’ll bring one of his friends.’

‘No,’ Denise repeated, gently obstinate.

Pauline did not insist any further. Every girl was free to do as she wished. She had said what she had said out of pure kindness of heart, for it made her really sad to see a friend so unhappy. And as it was nearly midnight, she stood up to leave. But before doing so she forced Denise to accept the six francs she needed, begging her not to worry about it, but to repay her when she earned more.

‘Now,’ she added, ‘blow your candle out, so that they can’t see which door is opening … You can light it again afterwards.’

When the candle was out they shook hands once more; and Pauline slipped out quietly and went back to her room, leaving no sound behind her in the darkness but the rustle of her skirt, as the other little rooms slept on.

Before going to bed Denise wanted to finish mending her shoe and do her washing. The cold was becoming more intense as the night wore on. But she did not feel it; her conversation with Pauline had stirred up her blood. She was not shocked; she felt that people were entitled to arrange their lives as they thought fit when they were alone and free in the world. She had never been a slave to ideas, it was simply her common sense and healthy nature which made her live the clean life she led. Finally, at about one o’clock, she went to bed. No, there was no one she loved, so what would be the point of upsetting her life, spoiling the maternal devotion she had sworn to her two brothers? And yet she did not fall asleep; warm shivers were running up and down her spine, insomnia was making indistinct forms pass before her closed eyes, forms which vanished in the night.

From this time on, Denise took an interest in the love-affairs in her department. Except during the really busy rush-hours, the girls talked about men all the time. Gossip circulated constantly; stories of adventures would keep them amused for a whole week.
Clara was a scandal, for she was kept by three men, so it was said, not to mention the queue of casual lovers she trailed behind her; she only stayed on at the shop (where she worked as little as possible, as she was contemptuous of money she could earn more agreeably elsewhere) in order to cover herself in the eyes of her family; for she lived in perpetual terror of old Monsieur Prunaire, who would threaten to turn up in Paris and give her a good beating with a clog. Marguerite, on the other hand, behaved well, and was not known to have a lover; this caused some surprise, for everyone knew about the trouble she had got into, how she had come to Paris to have a baby in secret; how had she managed to have this child if she was so virtuous? Some said it was just an accident, adding that now she was keeping herself for her cousin in Grenoble. The girls also made fun of Madame Frédéric, saying that she maintained discreet relationships with various important personages; the truth was that they knew nothing about her love-affairs; she would disappear every evening, as stiff as starch and looking as sullen as a widow, seeming to be in a hurry, though no one knew where she was rushing off to. As for Madame Aurélie’s passions, the cravings she was alleged to have for submissive young men were certainly an invention; discontented salesgirls made up stories like that for a laugh. Perhaps, in the past, the chief buyer had shown too much maternal affection for one of her son’s friends, but she now occupied too responsible a position in the drapery business to allow her to amuse herself in such childish pursuits. Then there was the stampede in the evening, when the girls left, nine out of ten of them having lovers waiting at the door; in the Place Gaillon, all along the Rue de la Michodière and the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin, there were whole platoons of men standing motionless, watching out of the corner of their eyes; and, when the girls came out, each one would hold out his arm and lead his girl away, and they would go off, chatting with truly marital equanimity.