Hello readers! This is my newest work, based on My Fair Lady. It loosely follows the plot of My Fair Lady, but all with characters in Leroux's Phantom. You don't have to watch the movie/ see the play to understand the plot. Happy reading.
Christine waved the bunches of violets above her head, leaning on a pillar.
"Flowers! Flowers! Bunches a violets! One franc only." She shouted into the bustling street corner. Women and men wore their brightly colored clothing- complementing the brightly colored backdrop of autumn and the changing leaves.
Though many passed her, not one bought flowers. One lady's stare lingered in a pitying glance toward her grime-encrusted face and clothes. She wiped the dirt with her equally dirty sleeve, only succeeding in smearing more grime on her face.
"Daisies! Violets! Two francs, I tell ya. The best deal in Paris!" Still, no one offered up coins. It seemed that the crowd wasn't jumping at the chance to buy flowers. She glared in the general direction of the flower shop that she knew to be a block away, and gathered her basket.
Trodding in the middle of the foot traffic, she hollered louder.
"Flowers! Buy 'um! Best deal in this fine town!" That got her a few looks of distaste. She weaved in and out of the crowd, dodging the plethora of people.
The crowd thundered by, almost drowning out her efforts. Surely there was someone in the crowd interested in flowers.
"Two francs! Vio- 'ey!" A lady walked right into her, causing her to stumble in her step. She kept walking, smoothing her pleated skirts and looking at Christine snidely.
"I was walking 'ere!" She yelled after her half-heartedly. Christine walked back to the step and sat down, watching the people go by. She looked miserably into her wicker-woven basket and rubbed her ankle. Three francs and bunches of wilted flowers.
She desperately needed the money flower selling could bring, without a second job or income. No one wanted to hire a Swedish girl whose only French vocabulary was centered around plants. Her accent diverged far too much from the norm. She had no money for lessons that could teach her the proper way to form her vowels.
Christine tried to find a job as a clerk, then a job to stock the stores. When that failed, she attempted to find a job that would be well within her area of expertise- cleaning. That didn't work either.
Her father, Gustave, was sick. Too sick to work, or to enjoy life in any capacity. He took up the only bed, a small thing made of scraps of cloth, and she took the floor. Every day, she woke, gaining less sleep than she had the previous night.
She didn't want to think of her poor, dear old father as a burden, not at all. He had single-handedly raised her until she was just out of her teens. That was until his health began to decline, so she moved the two of them to Paris.
It seemed like the best thing to do at the time.
Christine had planned on getting them a job and setting up a flat. Now, she only had coins and cloth. So far, her plan was not going all that well. She considered herself an optimist, but even that light was dimming inside of her.
Even then, she held a secret hope that one day her father might get better, and things would go back to the way they were. Things would only fail. She thought plaintively back to the labored breathing, and his shallowly rising chest. Christine was up late last night with worry.
If she continued down this path, well, many children and a neglectful husband were imminent. Just thinking about future desperation was draining. Besides, everything was fine. She wasn't alone, and she could always nab beans from the ladies shucking in the stalls.
They let her do it now, anyway.
Her bleary eyes and exhaustion were no excuse to quit her efforts though. She pressed a hand to her wide-brimmed hat.
On the good days, her flower basket was empty, and she had enough to spoil herself on a small bit of chocolate. Chocolate… she sighed dreamily but roused herself out of her short-but-sweet imaginings. She was working, for the lord's sake!
Since every snotty, patronizing, upper-crust do-gooder didn't care to pay her attention, it seemed like she had to become the center of attention.
As much as it pained her to do it, she began to sing a jingle about flowers.
"FLOwers!" It came out more of a howel than she intended. "Buy um toDAYY-y," her voice cracked.
"Shut your yapping, woman! No one wants your flowers!" A gruff voice yelled from the crowd. Some chuckles arose.
Christine pressed her lips together. Well then. She took a shaky breath in. She really didn't have the guts to demand money in this way.
When all else fails… she thought resignedly. Her last resort plan was not a pretty one.
Christine marched right up to the nearest group of people and pushed right into the center of their conversation.
"Buy a violet, sir?" She waved the bushel in his face. "Yer wife will like it." She addressed the lady closest to him.
He mumbled his dissent, turning away from Christine.
"The lady 'ill be mad if ya don't. Isn't that right, madam?" The woman's handsome face paled. Christine resumed her hollering, knowing that they would soon pay her any reasonable amount she demanded in exchange for silence.
"Get yer lady a violet!" She yelled.
"It's two francs! Cheapest in Paris." She kept waving her basket. The man reached into his pocket for change, grumbling. He threw the coins in her basket.
"Take it and leave." She was more than happy to oblige, running back to her post by the curb. She said a quiet thanks to the man.
She quickly dumped the change into her hand. Christine counted out seven coins. In the mix, there was one ten-franc piece. The rest had been single value. She clutched the basket close to her chest and smiled brightly. Her mind was aflutter with possibility, mostly with all the chocolates she could buy.
But, no. She had to think practically. Winter was nearing, and she knew just how cold and unforgiving it could be. Christine already had a coat from her days back in Sweden… but a pair of gloves would be the perfect thing. A tarp of cloth to insulate their tiny lean-to. It wouldn't be drafty like in previous bouts of cold weather. She felt her appendages warm just thinking about it.
She decided that it would be best to set up in the square by the Opera. It felt like the crow was becoming less responsive to her selling tactics. If she could remember correctly, they were putting on their first performance of Faust. Surely it would draw crowds that would buy her flowers. Young lovers couldn't contain themselves at the prospect of buying flowers.
Her father would be fine without her for a few more hours. A kindly woman, Madame Valerius, had a penchant for looking out for the Daaes.
Christine gripped her basket tightly and pulled her coat nearer to her body, keeping her head down. Her thin-soled shoes could feel every bump, rock, and dip in the pavement below. She had sewn the pair so many times that they might as well be completely different shoes.
The cobblestones led her to the gorgeous and downright garishly decorated Paris Opera house. Looking up at it, she could almost imagine she was on her way to the newest performance of Faust. Her beau fetching her coat from their carriage pulled by fine, white horses. They would sit in a box overlooking the stage and almost go deaf from the intensity of the orchestrations.
She would be on the edge of her seat, tightly gripping her darling's wool-coated arm. Then they would return home to their warm...spacious manor.
Christine looked at the building dreamily. If only…
Even without her beau, a carriage, or a wool coat, the Opera would be just as nice.
The steps going towards it were deserted, only the footprints of the audience remained. The plaza, this late at night, only had a few people. Some valets and carriages were waiting outside, the coachmen stirring up some hushed conversation. Vendors had shut their carts, restaurants, and cafes were closed. Advertisements were plastered on the alley walls, some peeling, some newly applied.
It was an odd, haunting feeling that came with seeing a place so bursting with life in the daytime, so desolate and abandoned at night. Christine shuddered and crossed her arms. She swore she almost fell asleep a number of times. The waiting was bordering on tedious.
All of a sudden, or it seemed sudden to her, the floodgates burst open. People were in a rush to get to their warm houses, away from the cold night air. Her eyes snapped open, and she ran full speed into the bustle, and towards the pillars where the people were congregating.
"Flowers! Get yer flowers!" her voice sounded terribly dry, even to herself. The upper-class ladies and gentlemen slowly cleared out from where she was hollering.
Christine picked a target to pester, a greying olive-skinned man, dressed in his finest opera attire, standing in front of a large pillar.
"Would you buy a flower off a poor flower girl, good sir?" he looked minorly startled by her forwardness.
"I'm sorry, I don't have any change. " He really did look disappointed that he couldn't buy a flower.
"I can change you for a ten-piece, I can." She held up a coin.
"Again, I'm awfully sorry, but I do not have- wait a moment." he dug around in his pocket, "I have three francs if it's any use." he set the coins in her hand and walked behind the pillar. Christine began to pester someone else.
.
.
.
"What was that about, Daroga?" Erik said, only vaguely interested in what his small-brained…. acquaintance had stirred up. The only thing he could hear was the te
"Well, Erik, it was a flower girl" He continued to stare. "You know, the ones who sell flowers. And I don't know why you insist to keep referring to me by my old title. It's simply uncalled for."
"Well, you idiot, did you buy any?" he looked at the Daroga's empty hands.
"No, but I did give her some coins. Poor thing looked close to death."
"An act of charity, then."
"Well, yes."
"I suppose if someone spoke like that, anything you gave to them would be an act of charity." Amin glared at him. Erik supposed he deserved it.
"That's a terrible thing to say. If I were crueler, I would force you to buy flowers in front of all those people."Just the thought scared him.
"You wouldn't dare!" He said, affronted.
"I would if I knew you to be less violent." Erik sniffed, then turn away. "Don't act like it isn't true."
"Fine, then."
"-oWers! BUY Um!" He cringed at the sound of the urchin's yelling.
"And I thought that Carlotta's voice was worse." Amin didn't have the heart to disagree.
"It really is...stupendous."
"Stupendously terrible, more like it. I swear if this continues on, I will have to shave my ears off." he continued, "Imagine how that girl's poor family must suffer. They must all suffer If each one speaks like that."
.
.
.
Meanwhile, Christine could hear absolutely everything those two abysmal, instituting cowards had to say. They slunk to behind that pillar to discuss her language. No one else seemed to have quite the problem with it when buying flowers.
Their brainless chatter was becoming too much for her sensibilities.
"- I must say, it isn't the rags she wears that keep her in place, it's her manner of speech!" Her eyes began to water ever so slightly.
"Flowers, buy um" she said, pathetically, to the unlistening crowd.
"How ironic of you to say that, Erik."
"I could throttle you, and no one would know."
"But you care about me too much, that's why you keep me around."
I would have gotten rid of you much sooner if you sounded like that." Christine marched straight around the pillar.
"- and I say her only emotion is yell-" They wanted yelling?
"I 'ave listed to ya, for a good, long time I 'ave. it's downrig't insultin'."
"So the flower girl speaks." a voice came from the shadows, and she looked around, squinting finally at the man that gave her the three francs.
"W'at game ya playing at, sir?"
"If you would forgive my friend, Monsieur Erik Laurent, he is terribly shy around others."
"Terribly 'fraid of gettin' walloped, in't he?" The man didn't answer.
"Coward!"
"That is enough, guttersnipe." she let out an affronted noise.
"It is in noises like that that make others not want to associate with you." said the mysterious voice, Erik. She scowled at nothing.
"Well then, sir, tell ya friend he In't so friendly."
"He's well aware of that." She scowled deeper. Boorish, contemptible men.
"Brutes, the lot of ya."
"It still is true that your voice sounds like the carping of a fork against a plate," said Erik.
"Ahy!"
"Terrible. It would be best for you to leave without rupturing someone's inner ear."
"I think that enough of insulting the girl, wouldn't you think." at least the shadow voice's companion had some sense.
"I won't leave 'till I know why ya think ya better than me."
"You see, guttersnipe, I am a talented musician. A genius, really. I am perfectly adept at making pleasant linguistic patterns, and yours are not it."
"Hay!"
"Cease at once!" Erik spoke more quietly, "I'm sure, Daroga given the time and the effort, I could put an end to this detestable squawking once and for all. I could teach you to speak so well, I would pass you off as a great duchess, a queen even. Or more likely, if you had any semblance of talent, a great opera diva. At least a better one than that even more terrible Carlotta." Now, Christine was really intrigued. Was the man offering up lessons?
"'Ere what you say?"
"You unpruned bush, and absolute disgrace to these marvelous halls, I could turn you into the Queen of Shiba! I am positively sure I could." he was all pride, and no substance, it seemed. It was too good to be true.
"Now, Daroga, we must go. Our blasted carriage won't wait for us any longer." Two sets of footsteps echoed on the street.
"To 27A Wimpole Street, my good man." said the Daroga. The conversation she had was one of the most bewildering things she had witnessed to date. She was not used to being berated, then told she could become the queen of Sheba.
"Good sir," she addressed the nearest carriage driver, "would ya tell me who those men were?" They jus' drove off in a carriage o'er there."
"That was M. Amir Ahmadi. He is the patron who most often sits in Box five." he leaned in conspiratorially, "It is said to be haunted."
"Ah!" Thank ya, sir." she walked away happily. Christine bit her lip in thought. Could it have been that M. Ahmadi's companion was a ghost? She dismissed the thought quickly. She hadn't believed in superstition for a long time now. It wasn't the time to become interested in the supernatural.
The other more reasonable and plausible explanation was that M. Laurent really was shy, or a coward, and did not want her to see his face. Christine huffed, her thoughts bitter.
He only spoke to her because of her "stupendously terrible" voice. She really hoped he was being sincere about his offer to help her learn, but his treatment of her was suggesting otherwise. Though she wasn't a fine lady, it didn't mean he could treat her like a flower girl.
Christine mulled over what to do. If to seek him out, or to live the rest of her life tossing flowers at innocent bystanders. The choice was clear, if only for her father, she couldn't leave him alone.
Her father! She had to get home. Christine rushed through the neighborhood, as it became increasingly more dingy and soot-stained shelters. Finally, she found her own tin shack.
"Aye, Chris!" Yelled Mrs. Dupont, a woman Christine would consider a friend.
"Aye, Claudie!"
"How's the hull?"
"Goin' great, it is. Just short of thirty francs."
"Thir'y francs! Whatcha goin' do, open a castle in Capri?" Christine smiled and laughed slightly.
"No, I'll just take a summer by the sea." Claudie's face broke out in a grin.
"Good ol Chrissy, well you mind yourself, now."
"Will, do," she went into her little lodging. "And you too!" Christine struck a match and lit the lumpy candle. It illuminated her father's sleeping form.
"Papa?" she whispered. "How ya doin'?" he stirred but did not awake. She signed and sunk to the hay-floor. She gathered a bag full of her savings, and put the money in. the warm conversations and the boisterous laughter of the others in her neighborhood slowly dwindled away, leaving the beating of wind against the shack.
Christine ate a bowl of gruel she left out a bit earlier. She noticed forlornly that her Father's was only half gone.
After a bit of worrying, she gathered up the hole-filled blanket and fell asleep, her back against the wooden wall.
Don't forget to review! I love constructive criticism.