The policeman answered in English, very slowly and concisely, for my benefit, because everyone knows that the English can’t communicate with foreigners.
‘Someone was shot. With a small automatic weapon.’
‘Who?’
‘A woman.’
‘Fatally?’
The gendarme shrugged.
‘For her pride. A clean and honourable buttock wound. She will tell her grandchildren she received it resisting the Boche, not servicing the British.’
‘Who did it?’
This was wholly Lee’s conversation: I wanted nothing to do with it.
‘The artist. It appears there were two British soldiers staying here last night. When the artist had retired with his woman, one of the soldiers played a childish trick. He tied a bicycle saddle to his head, and a pair of handlebars behind it. In the half-light, once his head was bent forward, he looked like the Minotaur. Delicacy does not permit me to fully describe the moment – but imagine yourself the artist; your woman is above you when the Minotaur looks over her shoulder. He screamed, grabbed at the gun the soldier wore, and in the struggle a round was fired which pierced the backside of a person in the next room. She demanded a judicial investigation.’
‘Where is Picasso?’
‘Fled. That has happened before. He is a bull around women, but not around other bulls.’ Bulls was French police slang for policeman. That wasn’t a bad pun, I decided. I asked about the two Englishmen.
‘Arrested.’
‘Where, Monsieur?’
‘At the Police Office. One of them took my cap, and gave me his own.’ He handed it to me. I recognized James England’s battered headwear. Bollocks.
The Police Office was the size of a small shop. It had three cells. Les was in one, pretending to be asleep. His beret was tipped over his eyes, and the Sten still around his neck: no magazine, though. Major England was in the next cell, cuddled up to the redhead I’d last seen with Les. She was wearing a gendarme’s cap.
From the corridor outside I asked Les, ‘What’s with the bird? Droit de seigneur?’ It was one phrase from French history that English schoolboys remember.
‘She wanted second helpings,’ he told me. Then, ‘You took your time.’
‘What do I need to do to get you out?’
‘Ask the copper?’
The policeman looked uncomfortable when I asked him.
‘You could promise that they will keep better company in future?’
‘I could.’
‘That they will refrain from shooting our citizens in the arse.’
‘That too.’
‘. . . and that the gallant Major returns my hat.’
‘Certainly. Would there be any paperwork? Any embarrassing documentation?’
Only the French understand the word embarrassing better than the English. He shrugged.
He suggested that I move the Humber discreetly round the corner, and wait there. After about ten minutes the Major and Les appeared, the latter clipping the magazine ostentatiously into the Sten, the former under his own battered cap again. I had moved to the passenger seat to give Les his due. The Major settled into the back with a sigh. He said, ‘Impressed, young Charlie. You know Picasso, and Paul Éluard; you spend the night with Lee Miller; you bribe the police to get us out of poky, and apparently they think that you’re a hero of the Resistance.’
‘I deny all that,’ I told him. ‘Where’s the girl?’
‘She’s staying,’ he told me. ‘The gendarmes want to photograph her backside. There’s such a wonderful bullet hole that they’ve all gone home to get their own cameras.’
Les asked, ‘Where to, Guv’nor?’ and it was startling to realize that he had addressed the question to me.
‘Can you find the Grand Central American Red Cross Club?’
Seven
There was a big Snowdrop on the door, whacking his nightstick into the palm of one hand as if looking for someone to practise on.
I said, ‘I’m looking for a Miss Emily Rea.’
He glanced down briefly at me, then looked away with, ‘Officers only. Beat it.’
‘I am one. Pilot Officer. RAF.’
‘An’ I’m Betty Grable’s left tit. Beat it.’ He spat. It hit the driver’s side door of the Humber, and ran down the side. That wasn’t a clever thing to do. Les smiled at him. You may already know that I’m leery of men who smile when something bad has happened.
I tried, ‘It’s all right. I’m on government business. I can identify myself.’
He laid the stick horizontally across my chest.
‘Only one government’s business behind these doors, son, an’ that ain’t yours. Now beat it. New York cops don’t ask no four times.’
I shrugged and walked back to the car, leaning down to speak with Les and the Major.
Les said, ‘I heard him. There’s a cafe across the road, a hundred yards back. See you there.’
He was moving away from the kerb before his lips had stopped moving, pulling a left U-turn in the face of the oncoming traffic.
We sat at a table outside the Café Libération in violation of Les’s rules. I could see that he felt uncomfortable: he was moving about in his seat all the time. Had it been the Café des Allemands until the Germans sloped off?
James said, ‘That wasn’t very helpful of him, was it? Although I suppose all sorts of Allied yeomanry tries to get in there. I’ve heard that they have a free bar. What are we going to do next?’
Les said, ‘Wait here, and shoot the bastard?’
‘That won’t help me.’
‘It isn’t supposed to. It’s supposed to piss him off. With dicks like that representing the occupying powers no wonder the French are still shooting at us.’
A waiter with a narrow, twirled moustache came out to the table. I ordered bread, small pieces of smoked fish, and glasses of wine. The wine here was fifteen cents a glass: I suppose that the owner had bigger overheads.
Les said, ‘Shocking.’ Then, ‘ ’allo, ’allo. Where’s our friend off to?’
The Snowdrop outside the ARC Club had been joined by another: a black man who carried two inverted stripes on his arm. Maybe that’s what had pissed the white one off. They crossed the road, and walked that measured policeman’s walk towards us. They carried their nightsticks, and the
