Belle - Lesley Pearse [111]
Cosette shrugged and sat on the bed, pulling the wrap back over her shoulders.
‘Englishmen strange,’ she said, shaking her head.
Noah laughed. ‘Yes, that is so. Many of us like very young girls. I heard Madame Sondheim gets very young girls sometimes.’
‘Not for young men like you,’ she said incredulously. ‘Only old men.’
Noah came and sat on the bed beside her and took her hand in his. ‘Does she get young English girls?’ he asked.
Cosette nodded. ‘Sometimes. It is bad. We hear them cry. Not good for us, the men who come only want this.’
Noah took that to mean trade was dropping off for her and the other girls because of it.
‘Have you seen any of these young girls?’
‘No, never see. They stay upstair. Not come in parlour.’
‘Locked in?’ Noah mimed the locking process.
She nodded.
‘The men go up there?’
Again a nod. ‘How much?’ he asked.
She made a gesture with her hands which appeared to mean it was a huge amount of money and she pursed her mouth in distaste.
‘Then where do they go?’ Noah asked.
Cosette didn’t seem to understand that question. Noah tried again, changing words, asking how long the girls stayed upstairs, but she still kept shaking her head and saying ‘No understand’. But the strangest thing was that there were tears in her eyes.
He took out his wallet and peeled off some notes. ‘For you,’ he said, folding her hand around the notes. ‘Madame will not know.’ He lifted her chin and very gently wiped her tears away with one finger. ‘Now tell me why the tears?’
A volley of French spewed out, and even though he didn’t understand a word of it, he knew outrage when he heard it, and it wasn’t directed at him. ‘English, please,’ he said. ‘Where do the girls go?’
‘I not know,’ she said. ‘I hear someone say some go to couvent.’
‘Couvent?’ he queried. ‘Is that the same as convent?’
She shrugged, clearly not knowing if it was.
‘Where?’ he said, and seeing a pencil by the bed picked it up and opened his wallet to find a scrap of paper to write it on.
But she pushed his hand and shook her head. ‘I not know where it is. Or what it called. I only hear them say “couvent”.’
He began to ask her if a girl was brought here in January, but she put a finger across his lips. ‘No more. I can say no more. You understand, trouble for me.’
To Noah that meant there was a girl brought here in January and if they could find the convent, they were on their way.
Noah couldn’t bring himself to leave Cosette without making her feel better about herself.
‘You are a sweet girl,’ he said, taking her face between his two hands and kissing her forehead, cheeks and then her lips. ‘If I was not married …’ He paused, hoping she’d draw the right conclusion to that remark. ‘But my wife made me promise to be good in Paris.’
She smiled then, and it was as though the sun had come up, for her face actually became pretty. ‘Your wife lucky to have good husband,’ she said.
‘You talk more,’ she went on, pulling him back to the bed when he walked towards the door. ‘I speak the Engleesh.’
Noah felt it was more that she didn’t want him to go downstairs too quickly for fear of losing face with the other girls than because she wanted to practise her English, but it would have been churlish to refuse.
She said she came from Reims, that she was the eldest of seven daughters, and her father was a farm labourer. She didn’t have to say why she’d come to Paris to become a whore, it was clear it was the only way she could earn enough to send money home for her family. She blushed when she told him she’d learned her English from an English artist who lived in Montmartre. She said she saw him when she had afternoons off. When Noah asked if he would marry her, she laughed lightly and said no, because he was very old. She added that he was kind to her, and it struck Noah that if she smiled more and looked prettier, then more people would be kind to her.
When Noah went back to the parlour, only Sophia was still there. She said something in French which