hung in a thick plait down her back.
He guessed her age at nineteen.
You speak English? he asked through the window.
The cold was making her nipples stand out like marbles through the thin
fabric of her shirt.
No, she said. But I speak American, will that do? 'Right on! David
opened the passenger door, and she threw her pack and rolled sleeping
bag into the back seat.
I'm Philly, she said.
David. You in show biz? God, no, what makes you ask?
The car, the face, the clothes. The car is hired, the clothes are
stolen and I'm wearing a mask. Funny man, she said and curled up on the
seat like a kitten and went to sleep.
He stopped in a village where the forests of the Ardennes begin and
bought a long roll of crisp bread, a slab of smoked wild boar meat and a
bottle of Wet Chandon.
When he got back to the car Philly was awake. You hungry? he asked.
Sure. She stretched and yawned.
He found a loggers, track going off into the forest and they followed it
to a clearing where a long golden shaft of sunlight penetrated the green
cathedral gloom.
Philly climbed out and looked around her. Keen, Davey, keen! she said.
David poured the champagne into paper cups and sliced the meat with a
penknife while Philly broke the bread into hunks. They sat side by side
on a fallen log and ate.
It's so quiet and peaceful, not at all like a killing ground. This is
where the Germans made their last big effort, did you know that?
Philly's mouth was full of bread and meat which didn't stop her reply. I
saw the movie, Henry Fonda, Robert Ryan, it was a complete crock. All
that death and ugliness, we should do something beautiful in this place,
David said dreamily, and she swallowed the bread, took a sip of the
wine, before she stood up languidly and went to the Mustang. She
fetched her sleeping bag and spread it on the soft bed of leaf mould.
Some things are for talking about, others are for doing, she told him.
For a while in Paris it looked as though it might be significant, as
though they might have something for each other of importance. They
found a room with a shower in a clean and pleasant little pension near
the Gore St Lazare, and they walked through the streets all that day,
from Concorde to Etoile, then across to the Eiffel Tower and back to
Notre Dame. They ate supper at a sidewalk cafe on the Boule Mich, but
half-way through the meal they reached an emotional dead end.
Suddenly they ran out of conversation, they sensed it at the same time,
each aware that they were strangers in all but the flesh and the
knowledge chilled them both.
Still they stayed together that night, even going through the mechanical
and empty motions of love, but in the morning, when David came out of
the shower, she sat up in the bed and said, You are splitting. It was a
statement and not a question, and it needed no reply.
Are you all right for bread? he asked, and she shook her head. He
