In Paris, she had shown him the things a man might need to know about women’s fashion, and dropped gentle hints—about what made a man attractive to women, and what they liked—that might be useful to him in life. He learned these lessons quickly. He was seen with beautiful women on his arm at the fashionable race meetings at Longchamp and Deauville. He went to shoot on the estates of rich men and nobles. He was everything a young aristocrat should be. His father was proud of him, and it gave Marie pleasure to see her husband so happy.

She was also there to observe him acquire a new passion.

His father had always been partial to musical entertainment. From the Folies-Bergère of his youth to the Casino de Paris in the years after the war, he’d always gone to revues. “I wish I could take you to see Maurice Chevalier and Mistinguett performing together,” he told Charlie, “but Chevalier’s gone to Hollywood now, and I doubt that he’ll come back.”

But Charlie had discovered jazz.

They called it rag at first. The earliest performers had started to trickle across the Atlantic when Charlie was still a boy, but during the twenties, a stream of black performers had come to Paris. To their amazement they found that the French made little distinction over race. The segregation they were used to in New York, even in places like the Cotton Club, was unknown in Paris. Soon Montmartre became known as a second Harlem. Charlie became an habitué of the area. Since the jazz scene would go on into the early hours, there were cafés up there which served breakfast twenty-four hours a day, and Charlie would often be out until dawn.

And supreme above all the black entertainers was Josephine Baker. She danced almost nude. She sang—so well that with training she could even triumph in light opera. In America she was a black performer, who could be refused entry to a hotel or restaurant. In Paris she was a diva, welcomed as a star wherever she went. Charlie went to see her perform in nightclubs. Marie was taken by Roland to her more sedate performances. Charlie had even gotten to meet her, given her flowers and received a photograph.

There was only one thing missing from Charlie’s life. Something that would be even more glamorous than his car: he wanted to fly an airplane.

And his father refused to buy him one.

“I have to refuse Charlie something,” he told Marie, “or he’ll end up spoiled.”

Marie stared at her husband. Surely he must be joking. His son was already spoiled—charmingly, but massively.

Yet Roland wasn’t joking at all. And this reminded Marie of a very great difference between her and her husband.