When I looked up Les was looking at me. He hadn’t missed a word of any of the conversations. He nodded almost imperceptibly. I said, ‘Yes please. That would be lovely.’
If you ever asked me what an artist’s studio looked like I would tell you that it was several rooms so filled with people and booze and tobacco smoke that you couldn’t see the walls. There was a small kitchen with a chipped square sink. I got stuck with my backside against it, and people looking for water had to wriggle past me all afternoon. One thin girl in a summer frock – her eye make-up made her look like a vampire – stood with her right hand, with its cigarette, on my shoulder, and her legs astride mine as we talked. She used the press of the crowd against me. I lasted a delicious five minutes or so. She studied my eyes all the time. Immediately afterwards she said, ‘I was watching for the moment. I love men’s faces at that moment.’
I said, ‘You’re another American. You must be an artist.’
‘No. Pavlo’s the artist, and so is Paul. I’m not an artist.’
‘You’re an artist.’
‘No. You need a cock to be an artist. All great artists paint with their cocks.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Some artist.’
I could have said See, but it wouldn’t have made any difference. Lee must have noticed. She moved in on me, and said, ‘I see you met Mariel. She was a friend to Papa once.’
‘You mean your father?’
‘No; Hemingway, stupid. He lived here in the Twenties.’
‘You knew him, of course?’
‘Not in the way you’ve just known Mariel.’
I looked down for the damp patch, and must have blushed. It wasn’t there. She laughed. I laughed. I heard James’s laugh over the buzz of the crowd somewhere. Part of my mind said, So this is what peace is like. I could live with that. England muscled over with Les not far astern. Les had a girl on his arm: a drunken redhead with a wicked great mouth. James said, ‘Do you want the good news or the bad news?’
‘Try good news first,’ I shouted at him.
‘I’ve done a deal with the artist. We can sleep in his studio after the party’s finished.’
‘. . . and the bad news?’
‘It may not finish.’ He shouted that back. I could live with that too. I wished that Les would put the Sten away. Lee Miller hadn’t drifted off. I asked her, ‘Where do you stay when you’re in Paris?’
‘Sometimes with a pal. But if I’m working it’s usually the Hotel Scribe. Room 412 is Lee Miller’s room.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Near the Opera. Near the Place de la Concorde. One Rue Scribe.’
‘Naturally.’
‘You’re making fun of an old lady, Charlie Bassett. That isn’t fair.’
‘I know. I’ll do whatever you like to make it up.’
‘Drive me home.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Drive me home seriously. I’m too crocked to do it by myself. My time fuse tells me I’ll pass out in about thirty minutes.’
She leaned very close, and blinked her eyes slowly at me several times. It wasn’t a come-on: it was to show me that there was nothing much going on behind them. I believed her.
A jeep isn’t as easy to drive as it looks. God knows how she managed it. Carrying about six cwt of kit up to room 412 of the Hotel Scribe when you’re a drunk was even harder. Her room was a tip; like the inside of a junk shop. Old clothes everywhere, old food, weapons, a million cameras, and a strong smell of developer solutions and booze. She was flying straight again: more or less. We said a bit of this and a bit of that, probably wondering how to get away from one another, when she blurted out, ‘I don’t want to fuck you, Charlie.’ She sounded more like one of my aunts.
I said, ‘Good. I don’t want to fuck you either.’
‘In that case you can stay. You can wrap in a blanket and sleep on the other side of the bed. In the morning you can tell people that you spent the night with the famous Lee Miller.’
After a couple of glasses of something that came out of a battered jerrycan we turned in. I wrapped myself in a rough horse blanket I found on the floor, and lay alongside her. She turned towards me, and tucked her head over the arm I offered. But that was all. When I awoke during the night, she murmured, ‘I met your Grace in England, didn’t I? What’s the matter with her?’
I said, ‘I think her stepfather shagged her a lot.’
‘Oh, that,’ Lee said. Almost a whisper. She didn’t speak again until the morning.
You’ll remember that I wondered how Lee ever managed to drive a jeep. The answer was well. The next morning she piloted it like a racing driver, her elbows high and wide and moving like wings, her every movement smooth and coordinated. Back in Pavlo’s studio it looked as if the night had ended in a fight. Everything was broken. I said, ‘Cripes!’ and Lee said, ‘Don’t worry. It looked like this before we started.’
There was a gendarme in the kitchen, asleep on an overstuffed armchair; a half-filled wineglass by his side and an empty bottle on the floor between his feet. He had probably arrived wearing a cap, but there was no sign of it now. He stirred, and said, ‘ ’allo, ’allo’, to me. He had a lisp, and a very odd accent. He asked me my name, and produced a notebook for it.
I said, ‘Bassett. Charles Bassett. Royal Air Force.’
‘Ah, oui. English?’
‘Yes.’
‘Rank?’
‘Wing Commander,’ Lee said.
The policeman gave my ragbag of uniform parts a sceptical once-over: Lee added, ‘with the Resistance.’
‘Ah.’ He made a great show of scribbling over what he had written, and
