Ninette woke to the sounds of voices and footsteps running up the stairs. Normally that would not have woken her, but somewhere in the back of her dreams, she realized that they were speaking a foreign tongue—
Except, somehow, she could understand them. Imperfectly, but…she could understand them. She came a little more awake, clutched the bedclothes with her eyes still closed, and listened to the young women trudge up the stairs to their rooms and chatter about their shop-jobs, the horrid customers. By the voices, there were five, two of whom had French accents, and who seemed to be working for a perfumer and a milliner. How can I understand them? she thought, baffled.
And then she truly woke up. She was in a strange room, in a strange bed—a room and a bed much, much nicer than any she had ever had before. The smells were all wrong; pleasant, but wrong. There was the faint scent of lavender, the fainter scent of the sea, and just a hint of baking bread. The sounds were all wrong; the staircase was solid, not creaky, the voices in the street outside were nothing like as loud as in Montmartre, and were neither raised in argument nor song.
This was not France.
It had not been a fever dream. She was, truly was, in England.
And how was it she could understand those young women?
Because I gave you the language.
The warm place at the small of her back moved, and the cat insinuated himself out from under the bedclothes and sat on the pillow, looking down at her.
“How?” she whispered haltingly.
I put it into your head by magic.
But she didn’t believe in—
You are speaking to a cat. If you do not believe this is magic, what do you think it is? She blinked. And blinked again. She was awake, in England, possessed of two purses of money, and speaking to a cat. There really was no explanation other than madness, and if she was mad…then she wasn’t here at all, and it all certainly felt real.
But the whole situation was so…impossible….
If you get up and get dressed, you will be able to get supper with the rest. Trust me I know what I am doing. I will help you make your fortune.
Her stomach growled, and that decided her. This might be madness, this might be impossible, but there was food down there, and she had missed too many meals already in her life. At the moment, she did not care about fortunes, she cared about a good dinner.
She spent a good long time brushing out her skirt and jacket, then washing up in the basin on the dresser and combing out her hair. Unlike some of the other ballet girls, her hair was not down to her waist; it was only long enough to be put up into the proper, stiff little bun. She pinned it up tidily, donned her clothing, and when she heard a bell ring and the sounds of footsteps and voices in the hall and on the stairs, she joined the others.
The other young women glanced at her curiously, but all were clearly hungry and in a great hurry to get to the table. Nor did she blame them. The savory aromas made her nearly faint. She followed the others to a dining room, in the manner of the rest of the house it was very clean, very neat, but nothing in it was new. A huge, plain table with a white tablecloth could easily seat ten. There were eight plain, ladder-backed chairs around it now. A little maidservant was bringing in the last of a set of platters, this one holding a loaf of bread already sliced. Gaslights illuminated the table in the growing dusk.
It was all she could do to remember her manners, remember that she was not supposed to be a starving little dancer, nor a Montmartre refugee, but a respectable girl visiting her married sister. She waited until the others were seated, then took the only vacant chair. She bowed her head over her clasped hands while Madame spoke a brief blessing. She looked up as Madame finished; despite longing to reach for the nearest plate, she kept her hands in her lap. “This is Miss Ninette Dupond,” Madame said gravely. “She will be staying with us for a few days while she visits her sister, before returning to the Continent. I trust you will make her welcome.”
Madame had a very strong accent, but so far as Ninette could tell, her English was quite correct. The others murmured welcomes, and then the passing of dishes from hand to hand began. The main course was a cassoulet of white beans, with pork and mutton and a bit of bacon. There was of course, far less pork and mutton than there were beans, but this was several steps above what Ninette had been eating of late, and there was plenty to go around. With this were plenty of boiled potatoes and cabbage, and that wonderful, big crusty loaf of bread. Ninette ruled herself at that meal with a will of iron. She did not grab, she did not fill her dish to overflowing. She did not take the last of anything. She ate slowly, with small bites. She did not pour half the sugar in the bowl into her tea.
She knew, as she ate, that she could not possibly be mad. Not even in madness could she have imagined eating enough at a meal that she was actually full. Madame was not stingy with her guests, though it was very clear that she made the most economical meals possible. But she also made them well, and filling.
Mostly the other girls were involved in chatter about each other. Quiet, well- mannered chatter, but nonetheless, it was simple gossip. Madame did not join in, but neither did she make any gestures of disapproval. Now and again, one of the girls remembered her manners and thought to ask Ninette something about the supposed sister. The questions were infrequent enough that Ninette was able to concoct a plausible sounding story by the end of the meal. Her sister had met the man who was to be her husband when he traveled to Paris as a salesman of steel cutlery; she had been working in a shop at the time. They were married in Paris. On becoming a husband and father-to-be he had taken another job with his firm as a clerk, so that he did not have to travel. This was their first child. It had gone well, but Maria needed her sister’s company. The flat was too small for a visitor to stay in.
This was all accepted without anything other than a nod or two. Madame enquired as to whether she would be taking luncheon at the house. Ninette told her ‘yes.’ “I do not want to be a burden on them,” she said, in her new, broken English. “They must watch their pennies.” Madame nodded with approval and attention moved on to the new playbill at the Alhambra music hall, which seemed, from what Ninette could gather, to be pretty much like the old playbill. The comedian was said to be a little funnier, the magician not so good as the last. There were ragtime singers from America in place of Rose and Violet and Three Young Men. There were jugglers instead of acrobats, and dogs instead of the sketch-comic. The young ladies voiced their discontent.
Ninette concentrated on her dinner. But it occurred to her at that moment that she might, just might, be able to leverage her cachet as a French dancer into a position at one of these music halls. Respectable shop girls and respectable boarding house owners went to these performances; while not the Paris Opera in terms of artistic quality, these places were at least attracting something other than the bohemians, the grisettes, the whores and apaches. They might even have their own versions of the old men in fur coats, who liked to make the lives of little ballet girls more comfortable.
She could not continue to live here, of course. She was rather sure that the salary of a dancer would not extend to a place like this, and even if it would, she doubted that Madame would permit someone like a dancer to live among her shop girls. But perhaps the cat could find her a place that catered to entertainers.
Not an impossible idea….
Dinner ended with something that Madame called “treacle pudding,” which Ninette regarded with a dubious expression, and which was rather more sticky sweet than she was used to. Still, it was a luxury. The last day had been full of luxuries. She had actually had enough to eat for the first time in…well, certainly since Maman had died. She had sat in a railway carriage and then in a ferry, she had slept in a bed between sheets that were not tearing apart with age and gray with washings, beneath warm, whole blankets. It was like a miracle.
But it was not, thank le bon Dieu, perfection. She would have suspected perfection immediately. Perfection would have meant that she was lying delirious in a ditch somewhere, or mad, or even dead or at least dying. But no, this was reality. The cassoulette was just a bit scorched on the bottom, the mutton and pork in it were thrifty re-use of leftovers, for she tasted a memory of mint on the mutton and of rosemary on the pork. The treacle pudding was something she had never tasted or even heard of before, and surely she could not have invented anything like it in her own mind.
So once again this was brought home to her: she was in England, and a talking cat had brought her here. She had paid for lodgings for a week. So, for a week at least, she would live like a decently paid shop girl.
At the moment, that was more than enough.
The other girls began to push away from the table, thanking Madame, as the little maidservant came to clear away the last of the plates. Some went into the drawing room; pleading the long journey, Ninette excused herself and went back up to her room. When she entered the room, it was empty. When she turned back from closing the door behind herself, the cat was on her bed. Turn out the purse, he said, imperiously. The English one, not the French one.
Obediently, she did so. The cat delicately separated the coins into neat little piles.
This is a sovereign, he said, pointing to the pile of the largest of the coins. These are worth the most. They are also called pounds. You had two, you gave Madam one, and she returned you the change. These are shillings. Twenty of these make a pound. You have seven now. These pennies, or pence. There are twelve of them in a shilling you have fifteen. These two here are three penny pieces, and you have two, they are also called thruppence. These four are six penny pieces, called sixpence. You have eleven of these half-penny pieces, called ha’pence, and eighteen of these little fellows, each worth one fourth of a penny, called farthings. Your rent and meals, with the maid to do your laundry, for one week, came to fifteen shillings. So, I am going to drill you in this money, and then I am going to drill you in how much is reasonable to pay for something.
“But why—“ she began.
Because you need a few more items of clothing right now, and because I am going to make it possible for you to live here and live well, and I should be very much obliged if you didn’t allow yourself to be cheated. Now. What is this? An imperious paw tapped one of the piles of coins.
It was a very good thing that she had gotten that sleep, because her eyes were weary and sore by the time the cat allowed her to scoop the coins back into the purse, change into her threadbare little spare shift, blow out her candle and go back to sleep. By this time, she was well aware that she was possessed of more money than she’d ever had in her life. She knew exactly how much she should expect to pay for the pieces of clothing the cat insisted she get tomorrow. But one of the expected purchases very much puzzled her. She understood going to a second-hand shop for most of it….
But why would she be going to a ragman for a dress?
#
She went out early the next day, ostensibly to visit her mythical sister. She headed purposefully down the street, her shawl about her shoulders, her hat pinned firmly on her head and her hair in the same tight little bun she wore when performing. She looked as if she knew exactly where she was going. In fact, she was following the cat.
Tall, narrow houses mixed with shops along a street heavy with traffic. Horse cabs, omnibuses, wagons, the occasional motor truck or motor car moved along slowly but steadily; this was nothing like her street in the Montmartre. There, little cafes put their tables out on the sidewalk, produce shops racked their wares in front to entice buyers, street peddlers bawled out encouragement to buy from their carts, and everywhere there were the bohemians, sitting on steps, on balconies, hanging out of the windows. Dancing to a street organ, making music of their own.
Arguing, brawling, making love in public. Here, there was none of that, only the stiff rows of houses and shops, and the stiff people moving purposefully to their destinations.
It will change with the holiday season. Then, you will see. This is the off-season, when it is hard to let rooms and hard to fill theater seats.
The cat turned down a side street. Then another. And another. They grew progressively narrower with less traffic, until at last, at long last, she found herself in a neighborhood that did remind her of home.
Not that there were artists and musicians thronging the place. But this was not a place where those good little shop girls would come to buy. Safe enough now, it was not a place where she would care to be after dark. There were no homes here, only buildings full of cheap flats that must have been home to enormous families. There was another accent in these streets; not being a native speaker, she couldn’t place it, but there was a veritable horde of red-haired children running about. And though there may not have been artists and musicians, there was music, of drum and fiddle and tin whistle, coming from a public house that was already open.
But the cat paused at a doorway, and twitched his tail at her. She pulled the door open to the ringing of a little bell, and the cat slipped inside, under her skirt.
It was a used clothing shop. But the clothing here was more than a mere cut above the neighborhood, it was remarkably good. Some of the gowns she sorted through were several social strata above the shop girls at the boarding house.
She confined herself at first, however, to the merely “good” clothing, buying a skirt and jacket that were identical in color and style to her own but of much better materials and repair, and three shirtwaists. But then, at the cat’s urging, she bought beautiful under-things of the sort she had only seen on the kept etoiles. She asked for, and got, permission to change into these things in a stall at the back of the shop, discarding her old clothing. She scarcely felt like herself in the soft, delicate bloomers, the finely crafted corset, the dainty corset-cover and petticoat, the silk stockings that were tea-stained, but not where anyone would see them. And the new outer-clothing…it was strange, very strange, because it looked the same but—it was unmended, only a little worn and not worn threadbare. It felt more substantial.
Finally, as a girl came in with a bundle as she was looking at cloaks, it dawned on her what this was. Often part of a maidservant’s wages was the cast-off clothing of her mistress. This was where the superior maidservants came to sell their windfalls.
So it was with a little surprise, as she waited for the shopkeeper to bundle up the items she wasn’t wearing, that she heard the cat say from under her skirt, Ask about the cut-up dress! Too surprised, in fact, to do anything other than stammer, “And would you have a ruined day gown, velvet perhaps, or silk twill, that has been cut up badly?”
The shopkeeper looked at her in astonishment, pausing for a moment, before answering, “Why…as a matter of fact…I do. But why do you need such a thing?”
Fancywork, hissed the cat. Shoes. You are covering shoes.
“I am re-covering dancing slippers,” she said, and the man nodded with understanding, and pulled a basket from beneath the counter.
There were three gowns in there, but the cat was only interested in the blue velvet one. They were all in rags; it looked as if someone had taken a knife to them and slashed them up.
“The girl works for the most mean-spirited woman I have ever heard of,” the shopkeeper said, shaking his head over the ruins of what had once been a magnificent gown. “Rather than let her maids have her old clothes, because she can’t bear the idea of someone of lower rank than she wearing what she once wore, she slashes the things to rags before throwing them out. The girl brings them here anyway; I generally sell them to the rag and bone man—“
“My great fortune then, that you had not yet,” smiled Ninette as he added that to her purchases. He did them all up in a brown paper parcel, which she carried out, wearing her new clothing and new cloak. The cat led her onwards, back to better neighborhoods, where he directed her purchases of other small items, and then it was time to return to the boarding house for luncheon.
She slipped carefully up the stairs, keeping her parcel hidden as best she could in her cloak. It wouldn’t do for Madame to suspect she had been doing anything other than dutifully visiting the supposed sister. She quickly unwrapped her new things and put them away in her bag, putting the brown paper into the fireplace where it burned nicely. She made very certain that the ruined dress was hidden under the rest of her clothing, and sat for a moment in quiet contemplation of her new “wealth.” Not since she was a little girl had she had a nightdress; she and her mother and simply gone to sleep in their under-things in summer, or fully clothed in the winter when you needed everything to keep warm. She touched the soft linen, the bit of lace with wondering fingers. And as for the dress and jacket she was wearing, perhaps they were plain by the standards of the woman who had discarded them, but…they were scarcely worn. The skirt had never been turned. The hems had not been taken up or let down. There were no patches, no darns, no mended seams. For the very first time in her life, she had an almost-new gown. To be sure, she was very glad it had been night when she went down to dinner; those girls would have known her for an imposter if they had clearly seen her clothing.
Finally, she closed the bag and left the window open for the cat to come in. Then she went down to the much-diminished group for luncheon.
When she arrived at the table, there were only three other girls here. One of them was a dark-haired, studious looking girl with very short hair and gold-rimmed spectacles. Madame was not in evidence, but luncheon was. Tea, bread and butter, currant jam, cucumber sandwiches. Clearly there was only one sandwich apiece, but as much bread and butter as a girl would want. The two who were sitting together, still wearing shop-girl’s aprons, gave Ninette a friendly nod, but did not stop their gossip, which was entirely in French. They must have known she could understand them, but since it was inconsequential stuff about other girls in the shop, she ignored them. The dark-haired one was engrossed in a book that did not look at all like a novel; that left Ninette alone with her meal. This, she did not at all mind. Plain as it might be, she savored it, at the same time trying not to let on she was very nearly in transports of joy over the fact that she was eating real butter and a piece of fresh bread she had herself just cut from the loaf, and not salted lard or the grease carefully saved from cooking scraped thin over the top of old, stale bread sold cheap at the corner bakery.
The two girls together—Marie and Jeanne—ate quickly and were quickly gone; likely their time for luncheon was very short, and allowed only because the English tended to scant luncheon and eat a large tea, which meant they would be there to serve customers at an hour when the other girls would be gone. The bookish girl ate slowly, absently, and methodically, as if she was a steam engine and food was only fuel. Ninette was done before she was, took her plates to the serving hatch as the others had, and left them there.
Then, because she was supposed to be going back to this nonexistent sister, she went out again. The cat went with her, of course. She felt far less conspicuous in her “new” clothing; she no longer looked like the scullery maid, but as if she belonged on this street. Frankly, she had to wonder if Madame would have turned her away if she had spoken English instead of French. But perhaps the gold sovereign had done the speaking for her.
For some time, she just followed where the cat led. Finally he turned around and looked at her over his shoulder. Where do you want to go? he asked, sounding a bit baffled.
She thought about that. Finally, after making sure there was no one near enough to hear her talking to a cat, she replied. “Actually, just somewhere we can talk. I want to know just what you plan. I know you are planning something, but I can’t keep living at that house, pretending to visit a sister that does not exist. And are you going to keep stealing purses?”
She stopped then, because someone opened the shop door just behind her. The cat flicked his tail and moved off.
Follow me, was all he said, and so she did.
He led her to a pretty little park, where there were young mothers with toddlers and babies in prams. That is, she assumed that the women were the children’s actual mothers. This neighborhood did not look as if the people living here could afford nursemaids for their children. Like Madame, they probably had a cook and a maid-of-all-work, but looked after their children themselves.
The grisettes of Bohemia and the Left Bank, of Montmartre and garret or basement flats did not have servants at all, and were unburdened with children. Or if they had children, they had been left at the door of an orphanage, or the grisette abandoned her Bohemian life to find some way to keep it.
Little ballet girls did not have children either. But that was because, illegal as it was, there were still ways to be rid of a child before it interfered with one’s dancing.
Perhaps that was why the artists had all made a pet of her. She was a rare thing in their lives. They would probably have made even more of a pet of her if she had ever been able to sit still long enough for them to paint her.
The cat found her a relatively secluded bench. There he sat down at her feet—on her feet, actually, and regarded the pigeons with a meditative expression.
I intend to make you an etoile, he said. Here. In the music halls. It will not be like the ballet; they are more like the Follies.
“I should not mind that at all,” she said instantly. “But I don’t see how you are to do that. If they have a steady chorus of dancers, I might rise to be the soloist, but I would never be an etoile In a place like that, one must have an act, costumes, even scenery sometimes. I have one pair of shoes and one rehearsal dress. And no act.”
Or, he replied, One must have a Name. A Reputation.
She rolled her eyes. “Which I also do not have. As I was told many times, one good review in La Figaro does not a reputation make.”
I did not say we would use your name.
She stared down at him, but he did not meet her eyes. His were fixed on the pigeons. “Whose name, precisely, did you intend to use? And how do you expect me to get away with this impersonation?”
How far from their Companies do most dancers ever travel? He countered with a question. Ballet dancers, I mean, and not the sort that have no company, like Isadora and Loie Fuller. You do not want that sort of life. You will need a setting, a theater where you are the resident etoile. Not your own theater, having one’s own theater is foolishness and a waste of money. You need an impresario who will set productions around you, so that you are the etoile of that Company. And—more than just ordinary dancers, how many etoiles ever travel?
“None at all, really,” she replied after a moment. “Unless the Company goes on tour. But that is very expensive to mount, and unless the Company has a sensational reputation, like Ballet Russe, it is really folly to go on tour. And the etoiles are almost never allowed to dance for other Companies.”
So, we will borrow the name of someone unlikely to ever hear about your impersonation, the cat said calmly.
“So I am to walk up to an impresario, and without any way of proving it, nor worldly goods to back my claim, tell him I am a great etoile from some far away place and expect him to believe me!” She laughed. “You are a very clever cat, but you have a woeful understanding of humans.” I have a rather better idea than that, the cat replied. But for now, I should like you to go to the Alhambra and see what it is you are going to be joining.
Once again, the cat led the way. It was not a long walk, as Ninette was used to. The Alhambra Music Hall was right on the seaside, and it offered a “continuous” show of the sort where one could purchase a ticket, walk in at any point, and leave when the act you had first seen came on again. The cat hid himself under her skirt, Ninette purchased the cheapest possible ticket, and both of them ascended to the fourth balcony.
The place was…rather fantastic. She was used to the grandness of the theater, but the Paris Opera, though grand, was old, and showing its age a bit. This was new, and opulent. Even the least expensive balcony was lush with velvet and gilding. At this hour, it was mostly empty and she had her choice of seats. Not at all averse to heights—after all she had spent a good many hours of her young life suspended by wires above the stage of the Paris Opera—she took a seat near the middle of the first row and leaned over the railing.
The act at the moment was a tableaux vivants, which at the Follies would have consisted of several young ladies clothed in not very much at all posing as a classical painting. Botticelli’s Venus was always a favorite. In this case, however, the tableaux consisted of a herd of wretched little children in costume posing as a classical painting. The ones at the back fidgeted. The ones at the front seemed frozen with boredom rather than discipline. The orchestra played, the audience was supposed to note how perfect the imitation was, and then the lights came down, only to come up again on another tableaux. Needless to say, none of these were Botticelli’s Venus.
Three of these, and the way was cleared for the next act, performing dogs, with one poor monkey in a jockey uniform.
After that, a young lady in a man’s suit sang a song. The audience seemed to know most of the words and sang along; Ninette got the impression it was called “Champagne Charlie.” She sang two more, then made way for the “ballet.”
This at least was interesting for Ninette, although even the soloist would have been relegated to the front of the coryphées at the Paris Opera Ballet. It was definitely true that she could out-dance these girls. The question was if she would be allowed to prove it. And how was she to become an etoile in such a place as this? There was no underlying story to these performances, no unifying whole. There was no single principle performer who was brought out again and again to show some new variation on her skill. This was something like the Moulin Rouge or the Follies; a variety performance. And yes, Loie Fuller performed at such places and only needed to do her “act” once at each performance, but that was not the sort of thing that Ninette was good at. La Loie had novelty and effect; Ninette had skill and grace and two feet. Nor, did she think, something like the can-can would make an etoile of her.
Still, the cat had said to study the acts and the theater, so study them she did.
She spent the rest of the afternoon there in the balcony, watching, studying. This was where she supposed aspired to be, this stage or one like it.
The only question was, how was she to get there?
You must listen to me and do exactly as I say, with no questions, the cat said from his place under her skirt, curled warmly around her ankles. Have I not brought you this far? It will be hard, it will take all your wits, and the beginning of it, at least, will be very uncomfortable for you. Can you do that?
“I don’t see that I have a choice,” she whispered under cover of the orchestra playing. You could go and be a shop-girl.
“I don’t know how to be a shop-girl. And someone would find out that I don’t belong here.” She thought a moment, and firmed her chin, stubbornly. “And besides, I want to be an etoile. I want to be made much of. I want my own dressing room, and flowers and champagne and chocolates in it. I want young men to send me flowers and old men to send me jewelry. I want a dresser and an apartment and a maid. I want to find a wealthy man who will—“
Then listen to me and you will have all those things, the cat said, interrupting her. Now, study this place. A hall like this will soon be the place of your triumph; study it, study the acts, and above all, study the audience. It is, after all, they you must win.