Flora McIvor Page 10

  ‘What’s your name?

  ‘Flora, Madame –’

  ‘Call me, Francesca, I like to pretend I am Italian. All the best parts are Italian.’

  ‘This is the altered dress. I hope Ma – you will approve.’

  The woman before Flora was swathed in a gorgeously coloured silk robe. It seemed to be an Indian or some kind of Asiatic pattern. The narrow face above was high boned but drawn, an effect heightened by the cropped hair which Flora realised had been deliberately bleached of colour. Oblivious to Flora’s scrutiny, Francesca was shaking out the dress, straightening the ribbons and flounces.

  ‘Hold this,’ she commanded, ‘taking the costume by the shoulder. Then she unwrapped the robe and holding long thin bare arms forward she bent towards the skirts. Flora lifted from the foot and began to pull the lower layers over Francesca’s head, while the actress tunnelled expertly towards the neckline. As the narrow head re-emerged, Flora went round in circles tugging the fabric down.

  ‘Gently woman, I’m not a marionette.’

  But as Flora stepped back the effect was striking. Madame Pélissier seemed to dominate the room. Her presence was physically enlarged but also more regal and remote. She herself edged gingerly forward and then back, side to side, examining the results in an ornately framed full length mirror. As images of the moving costume appeared from different directions, Flora realised that the room was full of mirrors set at different heights and angles.

  ‘Very good, no, excellent, my dear. Could you please arrange the bustle?’

  Flora smoothed the curving silks round the rear hoops and patted the ribbons into place. The colours were deep greens and purples that shimmered in the light.

  ‘What neat, clever little finger you have, Flora. I am sure that this dress is your work. What a success I shall be.’

  Francesca made bolder sweeps to right and left allowing the weight of the skirts to swing behind her body.

  ‘The movement is superb. You, my dear, are an artist. Now, off with it, and we shall take coffee.’

  The duet now went in reverse until the dress was eased back over Madame Pélissier’s head.

  ‘Not on the ground, I insist,’ chided Francesca, in her shift ‘see, here.’

  She pointed Flora to a full height wooden stand with extended arms where the whole assemblage could be hung, and watched closely as Flora shook out the dresses and pulled the garment out to its full dimensions. Francesca was humming with pleasure as she wrapped the robe back round her gaunt frame. She had shrunk back to normal dimension.

  ‘Good. Now, you may pour the coffee.’

  Flora dutifully poured from a metal pot into two china cups, which were already laid out on the marble surface of a high table. She brought one over and handed it to Francesca who had reclined onto a couch. Then she brought over the second cup and was waved into an adjacent chair.

  ‘So, am I an awful fright?’ Flora began to choke on her coffee. ‘No need to answer, or lie. I know I am. But you see, my dear, it’s not the body that counts but its effect. On the stage, at least. I shall be wigged, and painted with high shoes to push the dress up and outwards. It will be Magnifica. They will cheer me to the rafters.’

  ‘I am pleased you like the dress. The fabrics are very fine.’

  ‘Why will they cheer me to the rafters?’

  ‘I don’t know – though no doubt your performance will –’

  ‘You don’t know very much about the theatre, do you?’

  ‘No, I don’t, only some childhood memories from Rome.’

  ‘How sweet. They will cheer, even if I sing badly, because it is my benefit, the retirement of Francesca Pélissier, once the darling of Maestro Rameau. Which is why, dear Flora, I am pleased that even if I sound dreadful I shall look magnificent. I want you to come to the opera and help me dress.’

  ‘Me, to the opera?’

  ‘Who else am I addressing? The clothes horse?’

  ‘I’ll ask Madame Guyon. I would like to come very –’

  ‘Tell old starch face that I need you.’

  ‘What opera will you play?’

  ‘It’s just scenes, with some music and dancing between. A confection between dinner and supper. But I shall reprise my role as Emilie. She is loved by the Grand Vizier Osman. He is a Turk of course but gracious and tender. Yet Emilie is naturally loved by another. It is a scenario of love with seduction and desire. It was my great success when younger.’

  ‘I don’t know that opera.’

  ‘The Amorous Indies of Rameau, a very popular piece. But that is beside the point. How shall I play it in my mature years?’

  Madame Pélissier, then Francesca, now Emilie, fixed her expressive dark eyes on Flora and waited.

  ‘I suppose, Madame, might suggest with gestures,’ and she moved her own hands tentatively, ‘and of course with the beauty of her voice.’

  ‘Well, the voice, let me tell you, my dear, is a fragile reed. These days I pipe to only a single tune but Emilie is exactly my range. Is that not remarkable? I can be a younger woman in effect – through my sound and my costume. I am reborn in their emotions. And perhaps in a few memories. Of the most respectable sort, naturally. It is the magic of art. Of course there is the ballet too, which provides young bodies for the vulgar taste.’

  ‘It will be a triumph, I am sure,’ affirmed Flora tuning in to her expected chord.

  The pale, worn face broke into a lovely smile. ‘You are the wise one, are you not, my dear. And very pretty with it, in a kind of saturnine manner. Well, enough time wasted. I have my perfumier and wig dresser coming, and you are wanted back at the dragon Guyon’s. I expect you at the theatre for 3.00Pm exactly. Just ask for me and don’t be late.’

  With that dismissal, Flora let herself out and hurried down the stairs, relieved but excited. Walking back to the shop, she rehearsed how best to relay Francesca’s peremptory orders to her own Madame. But Madame Guyon was unexpectedly complacent.

  ‘Of course, Miss Flora, you will go to the theatre and dress Pélissier. She is an old client and a very great artist. There you will learn another side of my business.’

  Looking back, Flora wondered if her visit to Marie Pélissier had been another test. At the time she was too caught up in the immediate task to have second thoughts. Reporting to the side door at the theatre, she was sent along dark passages and up narrow steps till she found the cramped side gallery in which the singers were being dressed. Little of that business of tucking and pinning remained in Flora’s mind; her hands worked deftly without supervision. It was waiting in the wings to propel the elegant clothes-horse of Francesca onto the stage that captured her senses. She had never seen a theatre from this side. Here was the machinery of scenic movement, the marshalling of dancers to match cues from the pit, effects of light or dark, and the visual play of costume against animating flesh. Extraordinarily, spectators mingled with mechanics in the wings enjoying the spectacles of illusion and artifice.

  Flora felt that Francesca had given a good account of herself before a thin house. At any rate some venerable admirers waited for her with flowers and champagne wines, sweeping her away in full regalia to celebrate. But Pélissier was only the first of many singers, male and female, to whom Flora was assigned for personal attentions, both in their home and at the theatre as performances loomed. Leading performers were expected to provide and maintain their own costumes, so possessing the best wardrobe was a cause of rivalry and of artistic prowess.

  Madame Guyon was very satisfied with her investment in Flora who combined superb needlework, with colour sense, and a sympathy for the artistic temperament which she herself found impossible to muster. A few months after Flora had started to concentrate on the theatre clients, Madame Guyon summoned her upstairs to the private apartment and poured tea.

  ‘You are happy here, Miss Flora?’

  ‘Yes, Madame, I enjoy the work.’

  ‘You take pleasure mostly in the theatre work.’

  ‘Yes, I do
, but I am willing to do all the jobs.’

  ‘Thank God. These actors are sent by Him to try us. But never mind of that. I want you to be happy and stay here, not in another apartment.’

  ‘Yes, Madame Guyon, I am very grateful for your accommodation though sometimes I am –’

  ‘I want you to have my upper apartment to live in for yourself.’ Flora looked round in puzzlement. ‘Above, in the eaves. Would you like that?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘It will only mean a small deduction from the wages which I must increase soon for your skill, more than the others.’

  Flora was shown up to the attic floor by way of a wooden ladder which stood just outside Madame’s front door. Beneath the sloping roof there was a little window onto the sky, a tiny dresser, a rolled up mattress and a washstand. There was a small fireplace with brick chimney. It was a completely private space. She moved her bundle of surviving possessions up on the same day.

  Flora had a profession and her own place to live; she thought less about the past and enjoyed accumulating some things to make the attic more comfortable. She bought a small mirror with a painted frame, a brush with a back made of shell, a kettle, some earthenware bowls and two china cups and saucers. It could be very hot in the eaves or very cold, but she was allowed a fire in winter, while in summer she bought food daily from the market and stored it on a stone shelf downstairs. Living simply she gradually accumulated a supply of money from Madame Guyon’s wages supplemented by occasional tips from satisfied customers. It was some form of security.

  Flora’s reputation spread in the tightly knit gossipy world of theatre. Most of Madame Guyon’s business was with the opera performers at the Palais Royal round the corner from Jean St Denis. But there was also the French theatre company on the other bank of the Seine, and various Italian troupes operating in the city. Though all of these companies carried a stock of costumes for minor roles and choruses, the main players were expected to supply their own. Competition was keen and Flora was kept constantly busy with making and altering for stage display the kind of garments which her royal mistress had once worn as a daily routine.

  Her favourite moments were in the Opera House when, after applying some final costume adjustments, she could watch a performance from the side of the stage. What fascinated her was the accumulation of skills required to sustain the appearance of the action –carpenters, painters, costumiers, musicians, librettists and of course the composer. Having only experienced things from the auditorium, Flora could not understand why spectators were permitted to mill about on stage between scenes and watch from the wings. It seemed to destroy the artistic illusion. More so, since a kind of chaos prevailed back stage. There was a supervisor supposedly directing proceedings, but the scenic designer might also be there insisting on some changed angle, while individual performers manoeuvred to secure the best positions. Timings suffered in consequence but audiences seemed inured to gaps in the action, gossiping and commenting loudly on the performers and sets. They considered themselves to be the main performance; the stage action was an entertaining distraction.

  Flora also gleaned from the never ending complaints of her customers that the overall organisation of the opera was equally chaotic. Everything ran on debt so that constant pressure was required for anyone to secure payment. The leading singers were in a strong position in this game of beggar-my-neighbour. They demanded their fees before consenting to a run of successful performances, while also receiving gratuities from admirers of both sexes. Dancers by contrast were often left in direst need since replacements could usually be found. Fortunately Madame Guyon’s trade was with the lead performers, and she extracted payment mercilessly before delivering work for fitting and final adjustments. Hence her nickname, ‘the Dragon’.

  Flora dressed herself plainly but neatly in garments of her own making to avoid notice. Her only indulgence was a light tartan shawl that she found in a street market and wore pinned round her shoulders in all outside weathers. Accepted as a familiar presence she was able to move freely around the Palais. Because she sought no attention for herself, she became the recipient of many grumbles, confidences and gossip. Listeners in the world of theatre were a much scarcer commodity than talkers. In that way it was very like court life, but here there was an easy familiarity between the sexes. Also, unlike the audience which was wealthy and aristocratic, the back stage community included people of all classes and many nationalities. Speaking Italian and English, as well as French and a smattering of Spanish, Flora felt at home in this cosmopolitan world. Only her childhood Gaelic again lay fallow.

  Flora would rise early, boil a kettle on her little hob, and enjoy coffee and a roll in her attic refuge. Then it was down to the work room where she was already through her first jobs when Jeanne and Adrienne arrived, and the morning banter began. The two other women accepted Flora without resentment because they recognised her skills as a dressmaker. But they were also avid for theatre gossip, and teased Flora mercilessly about ‘relations with the actors’, and ‘the temptations of that wicked place’.

  After an early lunch of bread and cheese, Flora would set out on her theatre rounds. With Madame Guyon’s approval this now involved visiting the theatre and adjacent apartments to solicit work, as well as delivering completed costumes for fitting. If she could manage it, Flora liked to watch the beginning of the late afternoon performance before returning to the shop to work on into the evening.

  One afternoon, coming through the auditorium, Michel Arres, the librettist, whom she knew by name, stopped to speak to her, perhaps for lack of someone more important to harangue.

  ‘Would you believe it! That old fart Fuselier is agitating in his rag for a revival. Journal of the arts classical, he calls it. A bundle of tittle-tattle completely out of date and bereft of artistic distinction, of art in fact.’

  ‘What revival?’

  Arres was a tall grandiloquent youth with long fair hair, all his own, which he swept back periodically. His overweening confidence had, to Flora’s eye, an uncomfortable air of Glengarry. He claimed to be a Lorrainer but sounded Flemish.

  ‘Amorous Indies of course. Do you not know it? He wrote the original libretto and wants it revived.’

  ‘I thought it was always being revived. I made some costumes –’

  ‘Only in scenes,’ corrected Arres impatiently. ‘It’s not been done as a whole opera for years, decades even. And no wonder. The plot’s all over the place. There isn’t a plot, just disconnected stories. Rameau could never bear a plot obscuring his music. “You’re going too fast” the singers would say, “No-one can make out the words”. “Excellent,” pronounces the Master, “Faster!”’

  ‘Can you not revise the text?’ queried Flora.

  ‘With Fuselier breathing over every line in his filthy Journal? It’s insupportable. How can audiences used to Voltaire’s plays bear such pap?’

  ‘What is your opera’s theme? I thought Monsieur Voltaire’s plays were very controversial with the public.’

  ‘Controversial, my dear woman, is what the public crave. These exotic gallants are old-fashioned lovers, served up as soufflé for starters and every course thereafter. The old fool exudes sentimental virtue in every pore, while over the river at the Comedy they gorge on illicit passions. How can I compete with that? My reputation is in tatters working in this house.’

  ‘Surely some changes must be possible?’, suggested Flora wondering in which other house Arres had flourished or even featured.

  ‘There, there, read it for yourself. I am expected at Cafe Procope.’

  With that, Michel shook his mane once more and rushed off to hang out at the most fashionable artistic cafe in town. Flora was left holding a batch of ruffled papers. She had never seen a complete libretto before as the performers with whom she worked only had copies of their own parts, adorned with scribbled cues. Madame Pélissier had performed in the premiere of Amorous Indies and made its scenes her swan song. Flora wondered what ha
d become of the veteran singer, whose custom at Madame Guyon’s had dried up after her retirement. She tucked the script down the side of a roomy canvas bag which carried the costumes.

  That evening Flora finished early in the workroom and, foregoing supper in favour of some scraps of dried meat and bread, she retreated to her eyrie to read. There were four acts but each told a different tale, as Arres had complained. Yet there was a connecting thread in which two men competed for the love of a woman. The exception was Act Three in which the love tangle involved two women and one man. In every Act however the difficulties were resolved through devices ranging from a volcanic eruption to union of the right lovers – or rejection of both suitors.

  Flora could see that these happy resolutions could not please an appetite for social transgression and tragic denouements in the style of Voltaire. Yet could audiences not enjoy more than one kind of theatre? The main interest for Flora was the different settings of Fuselier’s stories. The first act was Turkish, the second set in Peru amongst the Incas, the third in Persia, and the fourth in the Americas amongst native tribes. Here surely was the point of the piece, enabling Rameau to reflect encounters with these exotic cultures through his music, playing at once upon the ear and the feelings. But what of the eye? How could such variety be costumed or painted?

  In an instant, Flora was in the hall of Castle McIvor, each Highlander festooned in the folds of his checked plaid, held with a deerhide belt from which jutted pistol butts or the carved bone of a dagger hilt. Eagle’s feathers swept up from their bonnets. Hung on the walls were studded leather bound shields, and the basket guards of claymores. So each people showed their character in colour and pattern.

  She pulled herself back to the opera.

  It was true that the relationships as described in the libretto were touching rather than moving. Yet Madame Pélissier’s last performance as Emilie in Act One, released by the Grand Vizier to be reunited with her true love Valère, had been effective. When the music, costume and movement were brought together deep emotion might be evoked. But were Voltaire’s betrayals and tragedies not more true to life than Rameau’s melodious couplings? The Amorous Indies depended for its success on everyone’s innate capacity to feel and love – audience and performers. What if someone were born cold, calculating and heartless? With at the same time the ability to charm and convince.