Coco at the Ritz, page 4
“Those two would never leave.”
“I hope you’ll introduce me to them sometime.” Spatz sighed heavily and closed the scrapbook. “I’m so happy to be back in Paris. Except for the past two years, I’ve lived here for most of my adult life. I was sent here as an embassy attaché in 1927 when I was just thirty years old. I’m almost as much of a Parisian as you.”
He opened another scrapbook, this one filled with photographs of Coco with Boy Capel, her British love, who’d set her up in the hat shop on rue Cambon that launched her fashion career. Boy had run a thriving shipbuilding business but still found time to write books on political history and collect art. Coco revered his brilliance and success and adored him for his belief in her. She thought she’d be with him forever, but he was killed in a car crash in 1919. Spatz paused over a picture of the couple lounging on the beach at Deauville.
“Who’s this?” asked Spatz.
“My fiancé,” she said slowly. “He died soon after that picture was taken.”
“I’m sorry—you look very happy with him.”
“I was.”
Spatz nodded toward a picture of Coco in a long white skirt and a bulky cardigan standing in front of a beach cabana at the Grand Hotel in Deauville with the wind blowing through her hair. “Catsy and I stayed at the Grand Hotel once. I would have had more fun if I’d been there with you,” he said, shaking his head.
“Didn’t you love her?” Coco asked.
“I thought I did. But we were completely unsuited. Catsy didn’t like living in Paris and complained about it constantly. Part of it was, she never spoke good French.”
Coco recalled Madame von Dincklage from the few times she’d seen her at parties between the wars. Catsy was a pleasant-looking large-boned blonde. “Is that why you divorced, because of her bad French?” Coco said dryly.
Spatz’s expression darkened. “She couldn’t have children. At the time, I thought it was important to have an heir, to keep the von Dincklage name going. Now that the world’s gone to hell, it doesn’t matter.”
“What’s happened to Catsy?” Coco asked.
Spatz shook his head. “I’m not sure. I haven’t been in touch with her recently.”
“Did she give you your nickname?”
Spatz explained that it had come from his childhood. “What about you? How did you get the name Coco?”
“My aunts. I lived with them after my mother died. They raised horses in the Auvergne,” Coco lied.
Spatz held up a small photograph that had been tucked into the pages of the scrapbook. It showed Coco as a young woman standing in front of a tailoring shop. She wore a dark skirt, a white blouse, and a tailor’s smock. Her heavy dark hair was piled on her head in a topknot. “What’s this?” asked Spatz.
Coco grabbed the photo from him and shoved it back between the pages. “Nothing.”
“I grew up with horses, too,” he said. “I’ll take you riding in the Bois this fall.”
How many other women had he offered to take riding? Coco recalled seeing Spatz at parties dancing with the prettiest women, ignoring his wife. She’d heard gossip about him, that he was an aggressive seducer. One of her clients had had an affair with him and bragged about Spatz’s extraordinary prowess in bed.
Spatz looked at his watch and stood. “I’d like to hear more about your girlhood. But I have an appointment. Dinner tonight at eight?”
“That would be lovely,” Coco said. It’s only dinner, after all.
Spatz gave her a warm, knowing look. “This time, I hope you answer the door.”
* * *
Coco never told anyone the truth about her life, not Pierre Reverdy nor any of her closest friends. She’d lied so much about her origins, she’d started to believe the made-up stories herself. Looking through the scrapbooks with Spatz, however, shook her hard wall of defense. She tried to nap but couldn’t fall asleep. She felt herself catapulted down a long tunnel of memory she couldn’t escape. Hours later, as she sat at her dressing table redoing her makeup, she was still thinking about her past. She’d had the harshest of childhoods, traveling from village to village in the Auvergne as her asthmatic, constantly pregnant mother trailed after her father. Albert Chanel had been a hard-drinking, barely literate itinerant peddler with no trade or skills except in the art of womanizing, a pursuit enhanced by his exceptional good looks. He had the same thick dark hair and chiseled bone structure as his daughter Gabrielle. Albert scratched out a living selling vegetables, pots, pans, cloth, and underwear to housewives in village squares on market days. He disappeared for weeks at a time and then would reappear, flashing his dazzling smile, to eat a meal and have his laundry washed, sometimes impregnating his sickly wife, only to disappear again.
When Coco was twelve, she saw her mother die in the flophouse where Albert had settled his family in two cramped rooms infested with vermin. Coco, her brothers Alphonse and Lucien, and her sisters Julie and Antoinette gathered around the narrow iron bed where their mother lay, while their father was God knew where. Jeanne Chanel had been suffering from asthma for years, but it had grown worse in the past month, after the death of her newborn son, her sixth child. The previous night, Jeanne had slipped into a coma. Coco held her mother’s hand, listening to her agonized gasps for air. There was a demon inside her mother. “Wake up, Mama!” Coco cried. But Jeanne’s eyes stayed closed. She wasn’t moving except for the horrible gasps. Finally, at five in the afternoon, they stopped. Jeanne’s hand grew cold in Coco’s own, but still the child clutched it. Her mother had been taken from her, and she felt as though she herself had died. She stood for what seemed like hours by her mother’s bed. Then, a harsh voice came from the doorway. “Come along, come along now.” Her father.
He loaded Coco and her siblings into his peddler’s cart. Stale apples, rags, newspapers, and metal cutlery knocked around the children’s feet as an old black horse hauled the clattering cart along the country roads. They left Alphonse and Lucien at a farm as laborers in exchange for room and board. The next stop was Aubazine, an orphanage run by the sisters of the Congregation of the Sacred Heart of Mary. A stark fortress on a high ridge, the orphanage sat in a dark pine forest.
Coco and her sisters slept in an attic dormitory in simple cots pushed up against whitewashed walls hung with wooden crucifixes. They rose at dawn, splashed cold water on their faces, and marched to chapel. If Coco sang “Ave Maria” too loudly, a nun would poke her in the side with a stick. Once she noticed an old hunchback man who’d wandered in from town sitting in a pew opposite her. She felt a surge of pity for him and yearned to sit beside him, to pat his hump and tell him it didn’t matter, that he could still be loved. But she dared not move from her place beside a nun. She remained in her seat, feeling utterly alone and unloved herself.
Another time, after a day of lessons in the drafty classroom with the chipped plaster, tasteless meals in the dark-paneled dining room that smelled of boiled cabbage, and brief recreation in the fading light of the walled garden, she lay awake in her cot. After the lights had been turned off, Coco began rubbing her nose violently until she felt blood dripping onto her nightgown. “Help!” she cried. She heard steps on the stone floor and the clicking of rosary beads, which the nuns kept attached to their belts. “There, there, child,” said the nun who’d rushed to Coco’s side. The nun stopped the bleeding with her handkerchief, then hugged Coco tightly. That was all the little girl had wanted—someone to hold her close.
Coco never saw her father again, though he was out there somewhere in the world. She couldn’t bear to be called an “orphan.” She couldn’t bear to be pitied. So she began to invent stories about three well-to-do maiden aunts who supported themselves by raising Arabian horses that they sold to the military. They lived in a fine house filled with antiques and art and served lavish meals of ham, chicken, eggs, cakes, and chocolate milk whenever she, their favorite niece, visited. She took many of these details from the sentimental novels she borrowed from another girl and read in the bathroom late at night after the nuns had gone to sleep.
The novels helped Coco fight her way out of the black depths by showing her the possibility of reinvention. Later, she beat back the gloom with work. In many ways, the style she created—clean, elegant, pure—was a defense against death, against loss, loneliness, poverty, and sorrow. She had learned from her father to ignore emotional distress, to stomp on it as something unworthy of her attention. Her mother’s supplication had brought Jeanne Chanel nothing but misery and death, while her father, the inflictor of this pain, had survived. Coco admired his survival, and it became the driving force in her own life. What mattered was to keep going, to endure.
* * *
She applied one more coat of lipstick and inspected her face in the mirror. She liked what she saw. She was no longer a forlorn little girl. She was Coco Chanel, and she was about to dine with the most dashing man at the Ritz.
Spatz called for Coco promptly at eight. Downstairs, when the maître d’ beckoned the couple to the left side of the dining room, the German side, Spatz nodded to the right. “Over there, please,” he said.
The maître d’ led them to a small table in the back right corner. “I thought you’d be more comfortable on this side,” said Spatz. Speaking perfect French and dressed in an elegant navy pin-striped suit, Spatz fit nicely with the Faubourg aristocrats who dined frequently on the French side of the restaurant with their bejeweled, over-groomed wives. He ordered a bottle of champagne, which a waiter poured into two baccarat flutes. “I saw in one of those articles about you that after six you only drink champagne and eat steak,” said Spatz.
“Don’t believe everything you read,” said Coco. “But I will have a steak, medium rare.”
“Two steaks, medium rare.” Spatz handed the menus to the waiter.
“It’s all right if you sit on this side of the room?” Coco asked.
“Remember, I’m almost as French as you are.” He gave a short laugh. “And my mother is British, from London, an old family with land in Coventry. I grew up speaking English to her. She was supposed to marry the Earl of Derbyshire, but she met my father on a hunting trip in the Black Forest and that was that. I come from a long line of professional soldiers, stretching back to my grandfather Lieutenant-General Georg Karl von Dincklage, who fought in the Franco-Prussian conflict of 1870, when Germany vanquished the armies of Napoleon II.”
“You’ve got war in your blood.”
“But I’m not a warrior, though I did fight in World War I, side by side with my father, who was a cavalry major. I had no taste for it. I got out of it as soon as I could and married Catsy. I was just twenty-five.”
Spatz paused as the waiter poured each of them another glass of champagne. When the waiter left, Spatz said, “I wanted to clarify something about my wife—my ex-wife. In case you hear rumors, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. Catsy’s mother was Jewish. But it was only a coincidence that I divorced her three months before Germany passed the Nuremberg laws prohibiting marriage between Aryans and Jews.”
Coco frowned. “A coincidence?”
“Catsy would tell you the same thing. She bears me no ill will.”
Still, marriage to a half-Jewish woman no doubt would have ruined Spatz’s career. Perhaps opportunism had played as much of a role as love in his divorce. Coco didn’t care. No one understood the pressures of expediency more than she.
After Coco and Spatz finished their steaks, they lingered over coffee and caramel flan. Coco took just a bite of hers. Spatz consumed his in four spoonfuls. Afterward, he escorted Coco to her suite. At the door, he bowed and brushed the back of her hand with his lips. She was disappointed he didn’t kiss her on the mouth. She felt herself attracted to him in a way she had not been drawn to a man in a long time. He bolstered her confidence. He made her feel young and attractive.
Sitting at her dressing table, she removed her makeup with a washcloth dipped in cold cream. She was ready for a romantic adventure. She winced when she thought of Pierre Reverdy. He would be shocked to find her in the company of a German. And she had to admit it looked bad for a woman who thought of herself as the pride of France to be involved with one of the Occupiers. But Coco didn’t think of Spatz as German, with his British mother and English as the language of his childhood. That was where he got his polish. Englishmen were gentlemen.
She washed her face, brushed her teeth, and got into bed. Her heart felt lighter than it had in months. She would not need morphine to fall asleep tonight.
* * *
Spatz began visiting Coco every afternoon. He’d call to see if she was in and ask if he could come up. The pretext was to bring her things she might have trouble getting, even on the black market: fine soap, silk stockings, chocolate, flowers, more cigarettes. It was flattering. Spatz seemed so eager to do whatever he could for her that after knowing him for only a week, she broached the subject of her nephew. Could Spatz do anything about freeing André? So far, she’d had no luck enlisting anyone’s help in the matter. She tried contacting Pierre Laval, the second-in-command at Vichy, whom she’d known socially in Paris, but she couldn’t get through to him.
As Coco explained to Spatz, “André is suffering from tuberculosis, and he won’t survive if he doesn’t get medical care.” They were sitting on the sofa in her salon sharing a bottle of red wine. Outside the light was changing. The beauty in the fading sky comforted Coco, the pink sunset matching the roses Spatz had brought, which she placed in a porcelain vase on the coffee table. Soon, the days would shorten, signaling the end of summer, and roses would be impossible to get.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Spatz said.
“It means everything to me that André comes home.” Looking out the window to the Ritz garden below, Coco took in the sweet fullness of the flowers, watching their colors fade in the evening light. The following morning the sun would restore the garden to its full glory. This was the point of beauty—to beat back the sadness of the world.
She thought about the first time she’d seen André, when he was just a few hours old, a mewling, wrinkled thing with a head of fine brown hair. He had reminded her of a muskrat. She’d never liked babies, and she resented this one, in particular, as if Julie’s love for her infant would dilute her love for Coco. The sisters were just a year apart and exceptionally close. Growing up, Coco had loved Julie more than anyone, more even than their parents. Julie had been her one solace through their grim years together in the convent orphanage after their mother died.
But after the sisters moved to Moulins to take jobs arranged by the nuns, Julie became pregnant by a peddler. He abandoned Julie even before André was born, and over the next several years, as Coco moved to Paris and became a designer, Julie fell in love with a series of men. After the last one, a soldier stationed in town, left her, she grew despondent. One day she deposited six-year-old André on the doorstep of the Catholic church and went home to kill herself by swallowing poison. Coco remembered getting the call from the priest and crumbling at the news. She remembered her despair on the train ride to Moulins from Paris and how her despair began to lift when she saw André sitting on a wood bench in the rectory office, hugging a toy bear. Her heart swelled with a love that surprised her with its intensity. She took immediate charge of the child and vowed to keep him safe. He was a link—the only one she had—to her lost sister.
No matter how intolerable her own life became, she would never consider ending it while André was alive. She couldn’t do that to him again. She was glad she and Spatz were becoming close. He was her best hope to bring the young man home. But if anything happens to André, I will kill myself, she thought.
Spatz seemed moved by the depth of Coco’s distress. He took her hand and squeezed it gently. “I promise I’ll do everything I can to free your nephew.”
He left the next morning for Lyon and was gone four days. Spatz didn’t tell Coco the purpose of his trip. When he returned, he showed up at the Ritz in a new beige linen suit, carrying a large oblong package wrapped in brown paper. “I hope to have good news about your nephew soon,” he said. “In the meantime, I brought you something.” He handed Coco the package.
She tore off the paper to find a bolt of dark blue silk chiffon, hand-embroidered in a subtle pattern of gold camellias, Coco’s signature flower. “Where did you get this?” she asked, running her hands over the luxurious fabric.
“I have my ways.” He stood with his hands in his pockets and shrugged his shoulders. “Why don’t you make it into a dress?”
Coco unfurled the fabric and wrapped it around her body. She hadn’t designed a dress in more than a year, since she shuttered her workrooms and dismissed all three thousand of her employees, except the vendeuse Veronique, who manned the counter where Coco’s perfume was sold; the manager of the boutique; an older woman who did the books; and a seamstress whom Coco kept on to make alterations for her former clients.
Coco missed the buzz of the atelier, the mannequins gathered in their little white robes waiting their turn in front of the triple mirrors as Coco sculpted fabulous couture on their slender bodies. She missed the cold bite of straight pins between her teeth, the solid weight of her scissors on a ribbon around her neck. Work was what she had lived for. And now she was idle. It had been a mistake to close her house, though at the time it had seemed the right thing to do. War was coming, and the world of society, of balls and dinners and parties and luxury that had supported her was coming to an end. No one would have money for couture or anyplace to wear it. Or so she had thought.
“The color suits you,” said Spatz.
Dark blue was a nice change from black, the color of mourning. Coco had largely been responsible for making black the standard of chic. After the first Great War, she created the little black dress and had women everywhere clamoring to put one in their closets.
As she draped the fabric around her chest and torso, Coco envisioned a gown with soft tiers of fabric in graceful flounces floating from the waistline to the floor. Each ruffle would be finished with picot edging. “I’ll have my seamstress make up a dress,” she said. She tried to release herself from the fabric but found she was only getting more tangled up in it.
