‘Braden,’ Simon echoed. ‘Emily, this is Neil.’
I had to look a long way up. He was older than I was, though I couldn’t have placed his age with any certainty. Thirty-five, perhaps? Forty? I watched his smile cut a cleft in one clean-shaven cheek, and crinkle the corners of his eyes. Black eyes. How odd, I thought. Like his hair, they seemed to glow with some strange inner radiance. I mumbled something banal and shook his outstretched hand.
‘She heard you practising this afternoon,’ Simon went on, conversationally.
‘Did you really? I hope I didn’t disturb you.’
I shook my head. ‘It was lovely, actually. I like Beethoven.’
The crinkles round his eyes deepened, and he took the seat beside me. ‘I’m flattered you could recognise it,’ he said. ‘You’ve just arrived?’
‘This afternoon.’
‘From England, I gather?’
‘Yes.’
It was difficult to carry on small talk with a man who looked at you like that, I thought. This was not the sort of man that one could flirt with. Those eyes were far too level, far too serious, and because of that they made me feel uneasy. I smiled at him even as my own defences slammed down stoutly into place, and to my relief Neil Grantham didn’t try to bridge the distance. He rubbed an absent hand along his outstretched thigh and shifted his gaze to a thick paperback novel sitting on the table next to Simon. I’d noticed it earlier myself, and smiled at the title: Ulysses. The sort of book, I thought, that young men like Simon Lazarus went in for – the sort of book that thumbed its nose at polite convention. Which is why I was surprised when Neil addressed his question, not to Simon, but to Paul. ‘Haven’t you finished that, yet?’
Paul smiled lazily, but it was once again big brother Simon who answered for him. ‘Give him a chance.’ Simon’s grin was broad. ‘He’s only been reading it for two years.’
‘Experiencing it,’ said Paul. ‘I’m experiencing it. You don’t just read James Joyce, you know.’
Simon seemed ready to make some argumentative reply, but something he saw over my shoulder distracted him. ‘Damn.’ He glowered into his wine glass. ‘Don’t look now,’ he muttered, ‘but we’re about to be invaded.’
It must be the couple from the bar, I thought – the couple from America. Either that, or Scarlett O’Hara herself had just snuck up behind my back. ‘Hel-lo,’ drawled the feminine voice at my shoulder. ‘Is it all right if we join your little party? I was just saying to Jim how tiring it is to have to speak in French all the time. Boys, you don’t mind, do you? Hello, Neil. I heard you playing this afternoon and I said to Jim it’s just like being in Carnegie Hall – no, really, it is. Hello, I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Garland Whitaker.’
‘Emily Braden.’ I briefly clasped the ring-encrusted hand, feeling somewhat dizzy after that introductory speech. Jim Whitaker shook my hand firmly and sat down beside his wife, facing the window to the street. His solid, almost stoic figure made an intriguing contrast to his wife’s gushing mannerisms. They were both in their mid-forties, I decided, although Garland fancied herself younger.
‘The boys have picked you up, I see,’ she said to me. ‘You have to be careful with these two, you know. They look harmless, but they’re really not. Oh, Paul,’ she shifted in her seat, ‘do you think you could be a dear and make that Thierry understand that the heater in our room is just too hot for us? I tried to explain it to him, but I don’t think he knew what I was saying and his English is really so awful …’
It hadn’t sounded awful to me, but then the French did have a mischievous tendency not to speak well when it suited them. I’d watched many a Parisian waiter play the game with unsuspecting tourists, particularly tourists who were difficult to deal with. Garland Whitaker, I thought, might just qualify for that distinction.
Her husband, on the other hand, appeared to be a different sort of person entirely. He had kind eyes. ‘Thierry speaks English perfectly well,’ Jim Whitaker informed his wife in a calm voice. ‘If you’d stop talking to him like he was a two-year-old with a hearing problem, you’d find that out.’
Garland Whitaker ignored the rebuke and smiled brightly at all of us. ‘Jim’s mother was French, you know. Or so he says.’ She cast a teasing eye upon her husband. ‘I never met your parents, darling, so I have to take your word. But really,’ she told Paul, ‘Jim can only speak a little French, and you get along so well with Thierry, I’m sure you’d have no problem …’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Paul promised.
‘Oh, wonderful. Now, listen,’ she continued, leaning forward in her seat, ‘while everyone’s here … I’m thinking we should all take Christian out to dinner tonight. You know, a sort of going away party.’
Paul looked surprised. ‘Christian’s going away?’
Neil Grantham smiled, and answered, ‘Not exactly. He’s moving out of the hotel, though, into a house.’
‘The house her husband used to live in.’ Garland flashed a gossip’s eyes. ‘Can you believe it? Apparently she owns it, though she hasn’t lived in it herself for ages. She let him use it, instead.’
I didn’t know who ‘him’ was – ‘her’ husband, obviously, but that hardly helped. Still, I didn’t think it polite to ask.