Kathleen Tessaro 3-Book Collection: The Flirt, The Debutante, The Perfume Collector. Kathleen Tessaro

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       A Brief History of the Professional Flirt

       (A Small Digression)

      Now, you are probably wondering why you’ve never heard of a professional flirt before and some of you, the more jaded and pessimistic, might even imagine I’ve made up the entire occupation, that no such position exists.

      Well, you’re wrong.

      It was during the famously hot summer of 1911, when Valentine Charles’s own great-grandmother, Mrs Rowland Vincent (Celia to her friends), found herself recently widowed and struggling to save the rather dreary ladies’ hairdressing shop in St James that she and her first husband had established with their life’s savings. Poor old Rowland Vincent had died of a sudden diabetic attack brought on by eating too many rose crèmes. (What the crèmes were doing in the house, considering his condition and extreme partiality to them, remains a mystery.)

      The fortunes of the Vincents’ small shop were floundering, headed for disaster, when Celia had the good luck to meet Valentine’s grandfather – the very tall, wickedly handsome Nicholas Charles.

      Twelve years her junior with no hairdressing experience (in fact, at twenty-six he’d already had a suspiciously long and varied career in domestic service that spanned stable boy to gentleman’s valet), he was nevertheless remarkably popular with her clients, creating hairstyles based on the long plaits fashionable for horses in dressage. (Luckily for him, the Russian ballet was in town that summer performing The Firebird and the Russian peasant look, along with thick braids, was all the rage.)

      Seizing upon the fervour for all things foreign, Nicholas took to calling himself Nicolai and then the Baron Carvolski which was, in the autumn of 1912, shortened to the Baron. His accent was a beguiling if challenging mixture of cockney, Prussian and a bit of Franglais thrown in for colour. His signature style was La Vie en Rose: long plaits woven into a kind of basket on top of the head, then filled with a combination of real and silk roses. A client had to keep her head very still. In spite of, or perhaps, because of the fact that very few ladies could pull off such a feat, the style became legendary.

      However, the trait that rescued the tiny shop from ruin, raising it to the enviable position of the most exclusive in town, was his remarkable, even heroic ability to flirt with absolutely anyone. Celia Vincent watched in fascination (and no small amount of jealousy) as day after day, he wove a spell around each woman, practically hypnotizing them with compliments and subtle sexual innuendoes, tailoring his words precisely. He’d flash his perfect teeth and had mastered the daring, direct stare that was to become the trademark of the screen idol Valentino (many say he stole it from the Baron).

      But it wasn’t until the Baron was approached by a distraught duke that the professional flirt as we know it today was born. The hapless peer had been caught in flagrante with his mistress behind the library sofa at a country-house party. His wife, a sadly plain and introverted woman, was, he felt, taking it all a bit badly. The Baron’s reputation to lift a woman’s spirits was well established and the duke wondered if, for an additional fee, he might not lay it on a bit thick.

      Nicolai kept his side of the bargain, not only flirting the depressed duchess into a much better humour but also managing to give her a genuinely flattering hairstyle at the same time. The couple reached a reconciliation and soon word spread of the Baron’s amazing abilities. Shortly after, he was inundated by wealthy husbands of a certain class with ‘special requests.’

      The enterprising couple set about expanding their business. They were quick to realize they’d stumbled upon a previously untapped service industry. An ad was placed at the back of The Times, not dissimilar to the one that Hughie answered in the Stage, and two more gentlemen were hired and trained in the Baron’s methods.

      And so the business flourished.

      During the Second World War, the shop was badly bombed and Valentine’s grandparents were surprised that even without the shop front, clients still came flooding in – many of them anxious soldiers posted overseas, desperate to be assured that their wives and girlfriends remained faithful. (This was when the Cyrano was born, but more about that later.)

      Thus the business quietly thrived and was handed down from one generation to another, mutating as such things do to keep up with the times.

      There has always been a Charles presiding over England’s oldest, and for all I know, only established agency of flirts.

      But now our digression is over. Those of you who still doubt the existence of the professional flirt and accuse me of writing fiction are gently reminded to keep an open mind. After all, can you really be certain you’ve never been on the receiving end of their services yourself?