‘Best place for them, soldier, unless they’re kicking up in the air. What are you doing here?’
‘Looking for somewhere to stay, and looking for Grace Baker – you remember her?’
‘Sure. She was through here a few weeks ago. She was travelling with Albie the tank man. Remember him?’
‘Going where?’
‘I didn’t ask. She had some orphan kid with her, and she was wet-nursing it: ugh!’
‘How old was the kid?’
‘Few weeks, I guess. What’s the matter? She steal it?’
‘No, Lee. Nothing like that. Her family are worried about her, and I’ve been given time off to find her and take her home. Want a drink?’
‘You got absinthe?’
‘Where did you get absinthe?’
That was James England getting into the act.
‘One of my friends over there.’ She nodded back to the other table. ‘He makes it from paintbrush cleaner.’
‘He drink it himself, Miss?’ Les asked her.
Lee laughed. Her laugh was an awful lot like the Major’s, I realized.
‘No. He sticks to wine. He gives the absinthe to women, and undresses them once they’re out of it. He’s a sneaky sort until you get to know him.’
‘I’d like to meet him, Miss.’
‘Come on over. Who are you two?’
‘Ham ’n’ Eggs.’ That was the Major again. He meant to be funny. He actually sounded deranged. She trailed us over to her pals as if we were the train of her wedding dress. We picked up three more glasses of the white stuff en route. I suppose I felt like a tourist before I really knew what one was. Up close I didn’t realize that you could load that much luggage on a jeep without bursting its tyres. It had the word Hussar painted on the bottom frame of its windscreen.
Lee said, ‘Ignore it. Some guy has promised me a Chevy saloon. I plan to get to Greece with it.’ Then she said to us, ‘This is Pablo, and this is Boris,’ and in French to them, ‘This is Charlie, and Ham ’n’ Eggs. I knew Charlie in England: he’s OK. I don’t know the others.’
‘They’re OK, too.’ I switched to their lingo. ‘Only they can’t speak French.’
‘What about their English?’ Boris asked me back in English, extending his hand for a clasp.
‘Clumsy, but adequate,’ I told him back in French.
Les said, ‘What was all that about?’
‘Introductions. They’re cool about you now.’
‘What does cool mean?’
‘It means you’re OK.’
‘Then say OK the next time.’
‘OK,’ I said, and he gave me the look.
‘When you’ve finished? . . .’ Lee said, and raised her glass.
I can’t remember Boris; isn’t that odd? Only that he was something to do with the ballet, and seemed an improbably masculine type for it: you must have heard all of the stories. Pablo was a small, rounded man with short-cut greying hair, and the blackest round eyes you ever saw. He was what the working class would have looked like if they had been designed by Arthur Rackham. He looked rotund and muscular, even though he was probably thin under his clothes. Most Parisians were in 1945. Being fat was like wearing the label collaborator around your neck. Lee pronounced his name in a slurred, Frenchy way: it came out almost as Pavlo.
Pavlo proposed the first toast, which was, ‘Death to the French!’
I asked him, ‘Aren’t you French?’
‘Sometimes. Usually I am Spanish. Sometimes I am Basque. A world citizen.’
‘There are a lot of those, these days. Half of Europe is on its feet and moving around.’
‘I thought all Englishmen said, Death to the French? I thought that would please you.’
‘We haven’t said that since Trafalgar . . . and you don’t have to please me.’
‘Good. I can tell you that you are short and ugly then?’
‘Yes, you can. You are even shorter and uglier than I am; and, what’s more, you’re old.’
‘Ah, but you are English. You still have a lot of catching up to do.’
The Major enmeshed him and Boris in an argument about art, of all things, and soon they were all waving their arms at each other, and shouting insults. Even Les had an opinion.
He told them about an exhibition he’d seen by a man named Harold Larwood, at a place named The Oval. Boris didn’t get it, and argued hotly. Pavlo did. He sat back in his chair and with his feet swinging just above the ground, grinned over his glass. His eyes twinkled wickedly. Lee was sitting next to me. She linked her arm through mine, and raised her glass for a clink. The greeny-tinged fluid in it moved lazily, like uncut disinfectant.
‘Welcome to Paris, Biffo.’
‘That’s what you called me when we met in Bedford,’ I remembered.
‘Suits you, doesn’t it?’
‘We’re looking for somewhere to stay for a couple of days.’
‘When you see the pigs fly over, give me a call: I’d like to get a shot of them. You got contacts?’
‘Tweedledee and Tweedledum thought they had. They were wrong.’
‘Who are they?’
‘Two guys giving me a lift. They’re sort of supplies staff. They estimate how much food we need to lift into an area when we liberate it, if everybody isn’t to starve. The older man is James England, he’s the expert.’
James picked up on his name.
‘Say Hello, James,’ I told him. He waved lazily, and raised his glass. Alcohol gave him a great smile. ‘. . . and the other one’s Raffles, his driver. Only his name’s not Raffles, and I wonder if James’s real name is England, as well. I’m keeping funny company.’
‘Don’t let it worry you, Biffo. Everyone’s got more than one these days. Lee Miller isn’t all my real name, either.’
‘What is?’
‘Lee Penrose, I suppose. Do you like it?’
‘Not as much as Miller. Penrose sounds too English for you.’
Her eyes had a sudden sad cast to them. She looked away and quietly said, ‘Bravo, Charlie.’
‘Sorry. I touched a nerve there.’
‘Not the one you wanted to,
