Caught in His Gilded World

He drew closer to a twelve-by-twelve photographic portrait framed on the wall. For a moment he thought it was Gigi. The same sharp angular cheekbones were catching the light, the point of her chin, but the eyes were dark and sloe-shaped, the nose small. The face was more conventionally attractive, but lacking the energy which animated Gigi’s striking features. Struck by the similarity to the woman with him, the last thing he noticed was that she appeared to be naked. Except for an ostrich feather fan.

‘This is your mother?’ he said.

Gigi put down the cups she was setting out and came over, settling her gaze on the picture with an oddly protective look on her face.

‘That’s right. Her name was Emily Fitzgerald. She danced at L’Oiseau Bleu for five years—same as me.’

‘Your mother was a showgirl?’ Khaled gave a soft laugh. ‘Well, well...’

‘She was amazing. A much better dancer than me. She had real presence. Those fans she’s holding she had made for her. They were her signature. They weigh a ton. I know, because they were the only thing she took back to Dublin, the fans—oh, and her shoes. I used to waddle around in her shoes, trying to carry one of the fans. I couldn’t have been more than five or six. She said if I practised I could grow up to be another Sally Rand.’

‘Who was Sally Rand?’

‘An American burlesque star—famous for dancing naked behind an ostrich feather fan. She started out in the circus too.’

She spoke so matter-of-factly that Khaled decided not to raise the subject of all this pointing towards a rather unusual upbringing.

‘I gather your mother gave up the stage to have a family?’

Gigi’s mouth tightened. ‘You could say that. She fell pregnant to my father. Not the most reliable man in the world,’ she added.

Khaled thought of the marks on her feet and decided this was Gigi’s version of understatement.

‘She decided to go home to her parents and I was born in Dublin. I didn’t know my dad until I was eight or nine.’ She reached out and straightened the picture, although it was already dead on. ‘This photo was taken when she was pregnant with me. She had it done knowing her time was running out. She kept dancing right up until she started to show.’

‘Do showgirls come back to work after pregnancy?’ He had no real interest, but he wanted to hear her story—because it was clear that here on this wall was the reason Gigi was so anxious to protect the cabaret.

‘If your body snaps back. A couple of the dancers have kids. The Dantons aren’t great about childcare.’ She folded her arms. ‘That’s something else you might want to look into.’

In truth Khaled had forgotten this was the bone of contention between them. He’d been enjoying watching all the emotions crossing Gigi’s face, like sunlight and cloud and little storms. She was so passionate.

He looked again at the photograph. Emily Fitzgerald looked serene as a sunset.

‘She must be proud of you.’

‘She doesn’t know. She died.’ A muscle jumped in Gigi’s throat. ‘She went into hospital for a day procedure, to fix some nodules that had formed on her larynx, and she never came out from under the anaesthetic. It was her heart—it was weak and no one knew, and it just gave up. It was sixteen years ago, but it’s still hard to grapple with.’

She’d been just a child.

Khaled straightened. His voice was gravel. ‘I’m sorry, Gigi.’

He had the unfamiliar sensation of not quite knowing his footing here. But this girl did that to him.

His own parents had been gone by the time he was thirteen, and it had given him a terrible freedom.

He frowned. ‘What happened to you?’

‘My dad turned up to collect me.’ She put her hands on her hips, as if to counteract the wealth unsaid in that statement. ‘That’s when I went on the road with Valente’s International Circus.’

‘An itinerant life for a kid... Did you enjoy it?’

She shrugged. ‘It was different. I threw myself into learning the life. I so wanted to please my dad, and it taught me lessons in discipline and the importance of practice.’

Khaled had a visual of the marks on her feet, and those words assumed a darker significance.

It wasn’t hard to picture Gigi all those years ago, skinny instead of shapely, all freckles and bereft. They weren’t so different. He knew all about trying to please the only person you had left. In Gigi’s case it had involved climbing those ropes, her feet bearing the scars to this day.