Miss Baker was astounding. Though not in her first flush of youth, she was as dynamic and as dazzling as ever before, if perhaps slightly less flamboyant. She held the audience in the palm of her hand, her beautiful voice filling the theatre as she sang songs by Cole Porter and Vincent Scotto. Her dress was covered in gems and sparkled under the stage lights.
Fen was transfixed and loved every second of the virtuoso performance. She would have enjoyed it even more if Gervais had stopped trying to talk to her throughout it all.
‘So you’ve known Madame Rose Coillard for many years, you say?’ was one such question.
‘Yes, since I was a girl,’ Fen had turned her face back towards the stage as soon as she’d spoken, hoping that she hadn’t missed a beat of the show. But still Gervais persisted.
‘She is a proper bourgeoisie, you know. Society connections. But even I, Gervais Arnault, have met her a few times.’
Fen had smiled at Gervais, acknowledging his slight brag, and then turned her attention back to the stage, bobbing her head around to try and see past the annoyingly tall man sitting in front of her.
‘A good lady though, you think?’ Gervais had continued.
‘Oh the best, absolutely. Why?’
‘No reason, no reason.’ Gervais had raised his hands off his lap in mock defence. Fen had given him another quick smile and then faced back towards the stage, hoping that would be the last of his chit-chat.
Gervais did indeed stay relatively quiet for the rest of the show, but afterwards as the four of them retired to the bar of Deux Magots, he asked Fen again what she thought of Rose and if she knew Henri Renaud at all. Henri had been a particular hook of Gervais’s to hang his conversation from and Fen had barely sat down at the small round table in the Deux Magots bar that James had found for them all when Gervais enquired all about him.
‘You’d not think that a lowly mechanic like myself would know such grand people, eh?’
‘I thought you said you had a fleet of vehicles?’ Fen had cheekily reminded him.
‘Well, fleet, you know it is a wide definition…’
‘I’m only teasing,’ Fen had unconsciously reached over and touched the mechanic’s arm as she said that, as a way to reassure him, but withdrew it quickly as she saw his cheeks redden. He had carried on talking, though, regardless.
‘Yes, yes, well you see, just like in the old days when everyone needed a farrier or stable boy, well now, you see, everyone needs a mechanic, or driver.’
‘I do see, yes.’
‘So, you see, I get to meet all sorts of important people. Like Petain himself.’
Fen raised her eyebrows at the mention of the Vichy army general and stifled a laugh as James caught her eye. His attention was quickly drawn back by Simone, however, who rose from the table and led James across to the bar, no doubt to find somewhere more private for the two of them to talk.
Gervais continued, unfazed by their leaving and puffing his chest out more as he spoke. ‘And celebrities, you see, I have driven Judy Garland and Clark Gable.’
‘Really?’ Fen wasn’t convinced he was telling the truth.
‘Yes, yes. You don’t believe me, I’m hurt!’
‘It’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s just—’
‘And your friend Henri Renaud, he wouldn’t have been able to save all the artwork without his trusted driver, that’s me.’
‘I’m sure he’s very grateful.’ Fen was unsure where this conversation was going, but she could see that Gervais was keen to keep telling her about his society connections.
‘He is grateful, France is grateful. He is a good man though, you think?’
Fen thought about it for a moment. ‘I don’t have any cause to think otherwise. He seems as straight as anyone I’ve met. And a patriot—’
‘We are all patriots!’ It was on this little outburst that Fen, not unhappily, realised that Gervais was growing tired of their conversation and only a few moments later she had bid him adieu as he’d made an excuse to join some other friends over the other side of the bar.
Fen looked back at her own drink and saw that it was empty. A second wouldn’t hurt and she cast her eyes around to see if James or Simone fancied getting another. At first, she couldn’t see them, and wondered if they’d gone back to the bar already, but she scanned the louche types propping it up and resting their backsides on the fixed-in-place stools – James and Simone, it seemed, weren’t among them. She was just starting to feel like a little bit of a lone poppy in a muddy field when she caught sight of them, having a smooch behind the telephone kiosk at the end of the bar.
‘Looks like James is getting his own round in,’ Fen murmured to herself, as she collected the empty glasses from her table.
Slightly unsteady on her feet, she realised she’d probably had quite enough to drink for one evening, so leaving James and Simone to it, and with a cheery wave over to where Gervais was now standing with a group of men, including his taller, thinner, and balder brother Antoine, she picked up her coat and bag and headed for the door.
Paris nightlife was definitely an experience, she thought to herself as she walked out of the bar. But, she had to admit, maybe it had been a little more thrilling when she’d been seventeen…
Eighteen
Fen wondered when the marching band would stop doing a tattoo on her head and carefully rolled herself over in bed to face the window. She peered through bleary eyes to see the curtains still closed, but a bright chink of light was shining through where they didn’t quite meet in the middle. She closed her eyes again and sank her face into the pillow. What had she drunk last night?
She remembered James and Simone catching up with her outside the bar and James walked
