There was no way out except through the bar where all hell had broken loose. From among the melange of screaming women, shouting men and weeping girls, more and more people were piling into the little hall to join the fight. Rosalie shrugged Irène off and ran to Saul, grabbing hold of the other man’s arm and trying to pull him off the musician. Just then someone’s elbow caught her in the temple. It sent her reeling and she reached for something to break her fall. But there was nothing, and when she fell and hit her head on a step, she saw a last sliver of light and then blacked out.
By the time she came round again, dazed and traumatised, a huge number of police had arrived and were busily handcuffing an indignant Saul and several of the right-wingJeunesses Patriotes who swore and kicked at them. One of the policemen helped Rosalie to her feet. She was about to thank him but then he handcuffed her too.
‘But I didn’t do anything,’ she protested.
‘Then how come you have blood pouring down your face?’
Rosalie touched her cheeks and felt the sticky wet surface. She glanced at her hand. ‘Oh God. I’m bleeding.’
He narrowed his eyes. ‘Indeed. So, what’s a nicely brought-up girl like you doing in a place like this? How old are you?’
‘Twenty-one,’ she lied and touched her mouth, worrying that she might have broken a tooth too.
‘Sure you are. And I’m the Lord Mayor of Paris. Come on, off to the station with you.’
She tried to pull the edges of her coat together, do her buttons up, hide her scanty costume.
‘Don’t worry, miss. Already seen what you got. Tasty little piece. Soliciting, were you?’
‘Course not.’
‘Well, you can explain yourself down the station unless you’ve got something else to offer me?’
He laughed and she kicked him in the shin. Another policeman took hold of her arm and dragged her outside to a waiting police van. And although she protested loudly, she was bundled into the back of the van, her objections unheeded.
At dawn the next morning, the door to the cell Rosalie shared with two other women – both of whom hadpainful-looking bruised eyes – swung open and a policeman entered. She had used her coat to rub the blood and as much of her make-up as she could from her face. Certainly, the scarlet lipstick was gone, the rouge too, she hoped, but the eye make-up … well, she wasn’t so sure. She had no mirror to check but she didn’t want her parents seeing her ‘done up like a tart’ – her mother’s habitual reaction at the sight of a vulgar ‘fancy’ woman. The policeman pushed Rosalie through a long, rank corridor smelling of stale sweat and tobacco, and then up some stairs which led to a small room at the back of the station. There her father stood, rigid with anger.
‘Thank you, Officer,’ he said, so tight-lipped his voice was almost a hiss. ‘I can assure you this will never happen again.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘And I can trust you to keep this quiet?’
The man nodded and patted his pocket. Her father had clearly paid him off.
Rosalie opened her mouth to speak.
Her father held up a hand. ‘Not … one … word.’ He thrust her out through the door and followed behind.
She spent the silent car journey home trying to figure out what to say. Her coat was tightly buttoned, and her father hadn’t seen what she was wearing beneath it, so maybe she could say a friend had taken her to the bar for a drink. It wasn’t the best excuse, and they wouldn’t like it, but it was better than admitting she worked as a dancer there. Her authoritarian father would have a fit. And as for her mother, there was no way of guessing what shemight do, but it would certainly involve hysterics. Neither of them had the first idea about having fun.
Papa was a senior civil servant in the Ministry of Public Works. He was proud that during the turmoil between ministers he had been the spokesman on anything to do with the reconstruction of France. His career meant everything to him, and his wife and children only seemed to cause him barely concealed indifference.
Rosalie had only told her sister about her secret dancing job. Claudette was nine years older and promised not to say a word but had strongly advised against continuing with it. She had three children: Hélène, Élise, and little Florence, and they all lived in England. Her husband was half French, half English. She regularly came back to Paris to see her parents, and in between visits Rosalie missed her big sister terribly. For theirs was a home of little warmth, where keeping up appearances was everything, emotions were repressed, and it was Rosalie’s duty to become a good wife and mother. Claudette was the only one Rosalie loved.
Back at home, her parents gave her a horrendously hard time, but she stuck to her story that she had been taken to Johnny’s Bar for a drink by a friend who had led her astray.
‘What is that black stuff round your eyes?’ her mother demanded.
‘I—’
‘Who was the friend?’ she interjected, not waiting for an answer. Her father, who was less interested in that, spoke up now.
‘I’ll not have you involved with the communists,’ he said, true to form.
‘I’m not,’ Rosalie insisted. It was true, after all. She wasn’t involved with communists.
Her father supported the Action française which was said to be financially underwritten by perfumier, businessman, and newspaper publisher, François Coty. The rumours spoke of his many mistresses and multiple illegitimate children, but her father turned a blind eye to that. What he cared about was that Coty had grown to become one of the wealthiest men in France during the war and had backed several of her father’s reconstruction projects. Whatever was true about Coty or not, it was clear he and the rest of the right wing aimed to prevent the growth of French socialism by fanning the populist fear of communism.
