Paris Savages

Green summer leaves are whipping the windows of my hotel room. I imagine the weight of them on my skin, relieving the heavy burden of being bed bound in this stifling room, confined with only my own uneasy thoughts for company. At Papa’s insistence, I am resting to recover from what I am sure is only a day fever, while Dorondera and Bonny are enjoying an outing to museums and galleries with Monsieur Perouse.

As has become our habit, Dorondera and I are sharing a room. Dorondera spread her new fur over her bed and plumped her pillow before she left this morning. She placed her spare pair of boots neatly under the bed, and her hairbrush and chignon pin on the table between us. After much deliberation, she decided to wear her hair loose on her shoulders the way Monsieur Perouse has said looks beautiful. I am starting to wonder if I am not attractive at all. Few men have paid me much notice here; indeed, they almost seem afraid of me. I regret now making the scars on my chest before leaving. I hid them well until last night, when Dorondera caught sight of them. ‘Why did you do that?’ she asked, clearly baffled, and I felt ashamed, as if I had trespassed into a bora ring or other sacred place. ‘Who helped you? You are not Badtjala.’ What would Bonny think of them, and of me, if he saw them? I fear I have been naïve in more ways than this.

When Dorondera returned from her outing, she was smiling broadly, her dark eyes sparkling and her skin aglow.

Hilda pulled herself upright, taking a handkerchief from under her pillow and holding it against her nose to stem the sudden run of clear fluid.

‘Bonny?’ Hilda’s heart was racing. She couldn’t make sense of it. Didn’t Bonny care for her? Wasn’t he the wrong skin group for Dorondera?

Dorondera shook her head. ‘No! Eric,’ she said, as if it were the most normal of occurrences.

Hilda breathed out, thinking there must have been a misunderstanding. She wondered how to break the news without breaking Dorondera’s heart.

Dorondera thrust out her hand, and Hilda stared at the evidence she was being so proudly shown. A modest diamond ring sparkled on Dorondera’s perfectly manicured hand. Hilda struggled to comprehend how Monsieur Perouse could do this. She had trusted him and now he had taken advantage of Dorondera, just like all the other men they had met.

‘Eric will take me back there one day. He wants to see it, too.’ Dorondera paused. ‘Your father will never take me back.’

‘We went to the Gare de l’Est afterwards,’ she said in a mixture of Badtjala and French, which Monsieur Perouse was teaching her. ‘To see the Orient Express leave.’

The line had been open for barely a week, Hilda thought. It was a romantic idea to go there.

Later, over dinner in the hotel restaurant, Hilda caught the Frenchman’s eye in a rare moment that he was not looking at Dorondera. Hilda had already spoken to her father, who had indicated that he had had no part in the matter, apart from giving his blessing. ‘It is what Dorondera wants,’ Louis told her.

‘I don’t understand how you can have betrayed us in this way,’ Hilda whispered to Monsieur Perouse in French.

He paused and appeared disappointed. He set down his knife and fork.

‘I love Dorondera,’ he answered in the same language. ‘How is that a betrayal? Does the idea offend you?’

Hilda felt Bonny looking at her. ‘No,’ she said. ‘But …’ Of course there was Catherine and Chang, and she had heard of several marriages occurring between female performers and European men, but this was Dorondera, her friend, who had wanted to return home to her sister. And if it was acceptable for Dorondera to marry a Frenchman, why was it not acceptable, as Hilda knew it was not, for her to entertain the idea of ever marrying Bonny?

‘I have offered your father a generous amount to compensate for any lost earnings,’ Eric Perouse said, and Hilda wondered if this was why her father had agreed. ‘You might have gathered I am not a fan of Dorondera continuing in these shows –’

‘You accompanied us here. You said the large audiences would be a good thing!’

‘So that it was over more quickly, that is all. And, while I suspect Bonny wants to continue with the performances for a short while if it means journeying to England, Dorondera would like to cease her involvement immediately. She has told me this.’

Hilda looked at her friend, who was delicately spearing green beans with her fork and eating them one at a time. ‘You never told me, Dorondera,’ Hilda said in Badtjala.

‘You are my friend,’ Dorondera answered. ‘You must have known.’ She paused. ‘I am happy. I thought you would have been pleased for me.’