Till We Meet Again (3 page)

Chantal Coudert, heiress to a large fortune, ran her household with a strict hand. Long before Eve, at fourteen, became the subject of shocked gossip, it had been out of the question for her to go anywhere alone. Since her unthinkable adventure, her governess had not allowed her to so much as drink an unchaperoned cup of afternoon chocolate with a friend, during a visit arranged by their mothers. She was accompanied when she walked with another girl in the Parc de la Colombière, or the gardens of the Arquebuse; she was watched closely as she played a rare game of lawn tennis; she was even chaperoned when she went to confession in the neighboring Cathedral of Saint Bènigne. Eve was considered to be in constant danger from the excesses of her nature.

Like most girls of her class, Eve lived in a world of
women. It was deemed unnecessary for her to study seriously at school. Her teachers came to the house, chief among them a Dominican sister who taught French and a smattering of mathematics, history and geography. She had a dancing teacher, a music teacher and a painting teacher, who all gave her lessons under the eye of Mademoiselle Helene. Only her singing lessons, with venerable Professor Dutour of the Conservatory of Music, took place away from the house on the Rue Buffon.

In the autumn of 1912, Chantal Coudert sat drinking hot chocolate in her luxurious, gaslit boudoir, discussing the always absorbing problem of her daughter, with her sister, the Baronne Marie-France de Courtizot, who was visiting from Paris.

Why was it, Eves mother wondered in familiar vexation, that Marie-France, whose union had not been blessed with a single child, considered herself an authority on the care and upbringing of Eve, whom she referred to as her “favorite niece,” quite as if she had chosen her for this honor out of dozens of contestants? Of course Marie-France gave herself airs—that was normal for a daughter of the wealthy bourgeoisie, who had managed to marry a baron and elevate herself into the aristocracy—airs could be expected of Marie-France, she had, indeed, a perfect right to them, but mere marriage did not entitle her to become an expert on matters only a mother could speak on from experience.

“You worry unnecessarily, my dear Chantal,” the Baronne said, touching a fine linen napkin to her lips and reaching for another tiny cream puff. “Eve is a splendid girl and I trust that she has outgrown those ridiculously high spirits of her childhood.”

“I wish I were as sure as you are, particularly since neither of us really knows what goes on in her head,” Chantal Coudert replied with a sigh. “Did Maman know our thoughts, Marie-France? What a short memory you must possess.”

“Nonsense. Maman was far too strict with us. Naturally we told her nothing—not that there was anything to tell.”

“I have tried to raise Eve as we were brought up. One can’t be too careful.”

“Do you seriously mean, Chantal,” the Baronne exclaimed, “that all you have ever told Eve about her future as a married woman is ‘Do what your husband wishes you to do’?”

“Why should she know more? Was that not sufficient advice? You have become far too much of a Parisian, Marie-France.”

The Baronne raised her cup hastily to her lips. Her prim older sister never failed to delight her with her prudish ways.

“When Eve is eighteen, will you let me give a ball in Paris for her?” she proposed.

“Of course, Marie-France. But not until she has a ball in Dijon or people will be offended. I must consider the Amiots, the Bouchards, the Chauvots, the …”

“The Gauvins, the Clergets, the Courtois, the Morizots—my dear, I know exactly who will be at that ball, indeed I can see each face now. I can visualize all the freshly scrubbed young graduates of the school of St. François de Salles, forming a phalanx of newly mustached masculinity. Then a winter of outrageous gaiety, such as only Dijon can provide, will follow. The Red Cross ball! The Saint-Cyr ball! Such mad abandon! To say nothing of the charity sales, the concerts, and even—since Eve rides so well—an invitation to join the hunt in the forest of Chatillon. How will she be able to survive so much excitement?”

“Laugh all you like, Marie-France. Most girls would give anything for her prospects,” Madame Coudert said, feeling superior. Which of the two of them, after all, possessed a daughter?

“When should the child be home?” the Baronne asked, looking outside at the darkening sky.

“Any minute now. I told Mademoiselle Helene that Professor Dutour must allow them plenty of time to cross the city before nightfall.”

“Does he still maintain that she has a remarkable voice?”

“Yes indeed, but since she will never use it except at a musical evening, or to entertain herself at the piano, I wonder if these lessons aren’t just a waste of time. However, Didier insisted.” Madame Coudert spoke in the tone of voice of a woman married to a despot, one which both sisters enjoyed using when talking about their well-disciplined husbands.

“Aunt Marie-France!” Eve cried happily as she burst into the room. As she gave her aunt a series of enthusiastic kisses, the Parisian noted that her niece’s natural coloring was as high as that of any fashionable cocotte’s; that her thick curly hair, that still hung down her back, was an inimitable color of
valuable color that would not fade like that of most redheads or grow dull like a brunette’s; the hair of a strawberry blond; lustrous, naturally burnished, hair that would make even a plain girl fascinating. And her eyes! Their darkness was like charcoal on fire.

Eve had grown so rapidly that she was now a full head taller than her mother, Marie-France de Courtizot saw as she continued her observation. There was an intriguing immoderation, an unmistakable extravagance in the girl’s sense of self. Eve carried her ankle-length skirt and simple shirtwaist with such natural assurance and style that she might have been a very young duchess rather than a child of sixteen. She simply
must
get Eve to Paris before she reached eighteen. Paquin should dress her with the wit and fancifulness she merited, and Worth should make her ball gown. Why should not Eve make a splendid marriage? Yes, one even better than her own. Decidedly she would be wasted in the claustrophobic, conservative society of old Dijon.

“My treasure,” she murmured, returning the kisses. “You are such a pleasure to look at.”

“Don’t spoil her, Marie-France,” her sister said warningly. “Eve, you may join us for dinner tonight since your aunt is here, but only this one time.”

“Thank you, Maman,” Eve said demurely.

“Now, Eve, you may sing something for us,” Madame Coudert added, delighted to show off before her irritating sister.

Eve went to the little upright piano that her mother kept in the corner, sat down, thought for a minute, and then began to play and sing with a tiny, mischievous smile that she could not repress:

“Return to your Argentinian sky
Where all the women are divine
To the sound of your music so sly
Go, go dance your tango!”

“Eve! Is that what you learn from the Professor Dutour?” her aunt cried, as shocked at the throbbing, sensuous rhythm of Eve’s husky voice, a voice of raw silk and dark honey, as by the words themselves.

“Of course not. He wants me to sing arias from
La Bohème
. But this is so much more droll. I heard it in the street, coming home. Don’t you like it, Aunt?”

“No, not at all,” the Baronne answered. She hated to admit it but perhaps Chantal was not wrong to be concerned about Eve. For a virgin to hear a tango was bad enough, but to sing it! And in such a voice, such an … 
insinuating …
voice!

“And a dozen
dozen
handkerchiefs in the finest linen, embroidered with her future initials,” Louise, the Couderts’ parlor maid, enumerated, gloating, as she and Eve walked in the old botanical garden behind the Cathedral on a Saturday afternoon early in the spring of 1913.

“What if she never sneezes?” Eve asked to interrupt the recital of the details of the trousseau of linen that had just been ordered for the soon-to-be-bride, Diane Gauvin, daughter of the Couderts’ neighbors.

Louise ignored her. She had been promoted to the post of Eve’s chaperone when Mademoiselle Helene had left the household four months earlier, to everyone’s surprise, in order to marry a widowed salesman from the Pauvre Diable, the largest department store in town.

“Six dozen dish towels, six dozen towels just for drying crystal, four dozen aprons for the servants, and as for the tablecloths, you can’t begin to imagine …”

“I promise you I can,” Eve said patiently. Louise had been her favorite person in the household ever since she had arrived ten years before. At that time Louise had been as old as Eve was now, almost seventeen, but she had lied and said she was twenty-four in order to get the job. She had a weathered complexion, a sturdy body capable of working a sixteen-hour day without tiring, and a round face with a severe underbite.

Eve had immediately recognized the soft heart and warm nature of the new addition to the staff, and from Louise’s first days the two of them had fallen into the kind of friendship which was far from uncommon in a world in which children spent most of their time at home and saw little of their parents. They had become allies against the all-powerful Mademoiselle Helene, they had become confidantes in a house in which they were both constantly told what to do, and they had become intimate friends over the years, for each of them needed someone to whom she could speak her heart freely.

“I don’t understand why Diane is getting married,” Eve said, gently touching a switch of forsythia, which was the only bloom yet to be seen. “Her fiancé is so ugly.”

“She’s a sensible girl, Mademoiselle Diane, and she knows that the important thing is finding the right husband, not a handsome one.”

“You too! I can’t believe you said that, Louise. What makes him right except the size of his father’s fortune? Are you going to tell me that any man with both legs, both arms, no big warts, and wealth to come is a desirable husband?”

“I wish I’d found someone, even with warts,” Louise said, with a comic grimace, resigned to the fact that a poor parlor maid of twenty-seven had no possibility of marriage.

“I’m not interested in a husband. I want to be a nun, a nurse, a missionary, a suffragette, a … a … oh, I don’t know!” Eve said violently.

“You’ll get a husband whether you want one or not, because your mother will have you married before you’re nineteen, and if she doesn’t, your aunt will, so you might as well make up your mind to it, my poor Mademoiselle.”

“Why? Why?” Eve cried, tearing the branch of frail yellow from the bush with a gesture that alarmed Louise by its ferocity. “If I don’t want to be married, why should I? Why can’t they leave me alone?”

“If you were one of a family of five or six, perhaps you could be allowed to do as you wished—every family needs an old maid aunt to attend to all the things no one else has time for—but you’re the only child and your parents won’t have grandchildren unless you marry, so why try to fight something that is bound to be?”

“Oh, Louise, I dread the thought of a life like my mother’s—nothing but visiting and being visited, nothing changing except the style of my shoe. It simply isn’t bearable, a future with nothing to hope for but making my parents happy by having children—is that why I was born?”

“When it happens you’ll forget everything you’re saying now and become a mother, just like most women, and more than content,” Louise replied. “If I remind you, in three years, of what you’ve just said, you’ll refuse to believe me, and, in truth, you’ll have completely forgotten it.”

“It’s not fair! If time makes you happy with the things you hate—then I say it’s a
bad
thing to grow up! I must do something wonderful—something big and brave and exciting—something
wild
, Louise, wilder than I can even imagine!”

“I sometimes feel that way too, Mademoiselle Eve—but I know it’s just because spring is in the air and there’s probably
a full moon tonight, and if we don’t go home soon your mother will begin to worry.”

“At least run back with me, let’s race and see who gets there first … I’ll
die
if I don’t run,” Eve cried.

“Can’t … Madame Blanche and her husband just turned the corner behind us.” Louise gave her warning to the air, for Eve had already flashed away, too far ahead on the path to hear her.

Eve’s imagination was starved by the suitable books her mother gave her to read. The fashion magazine
La Gazette du Bon Ton
, which Madame Coudert permitted her to study, dealt with women from another planet, women as decorative and unreal as exotic birds in their soft Poiret and Doucet costumes of fantastic colors, which fell softly, with infinite charm, from high waists and tunics to feet that looked like those of harem girls.

However, she discovered that her father’s copy of the leading Dijon newspaper,
Le Bien Public
, was always left carelessly in his study after he glanced at it each morning. This newspaper became her window into the world and she perfected a technique that enabled her to whisk it away every morning before his study was dusted, and to take it to her room to read whenever she had a few minutes of privacy.

In the high summer of 1913, Dijon was a merry, hospitable and prosperous place indeed, as it prepared for the celebration of Bastille Day on the fourteenth of July. The city resonated like one vast music box. Melodies sounded from all sides; from every street corner; from the singers and piano players inside the many dozens of cafés; from the restaurants; from the bandstands in the squares; from the racecourse called the
vélodrome;
from the permanent circus of Tivoli; and most stirring of all, from the public performances of the band of the 27th Infantry of the French Army, which was stationed at the Caserne Vaillant.

As Eve and Louise walked back and forth three times a week from the Coudert house to Professor Dutour’s, they passed through zones of different music, and Eve’s pace changed without her realization. Now she walked to a waltz, now to a martial beat, now to the rhythm of one of the songs that escaped from the terrace of a café, a song that, like all the others, had been born in Paris. She hummed as she
walked, and only Louise’s sternest efforts kept her from singing out loud the words she picked up so quickly.