Downstairs, I found the hotel bar no longer empty. A handful of people were taking advantage of the invitingly intimate modern decor – sectioned seats and ottomans arranged round tables of pale laminate, the rich terracotta tones of the upholstery glowing against grey linen walls and charcoal carpet. Enormous plants and artwork softened the modular angles, and the late afternoon light poured slanting through the floor to ceiling windows facing out upon the fountain square.
The conversation dipped, paused, and began again when I walked in, and I found myself facing the not unfriendly stares of two young men who sat together by the nearest window. One of them, a black-haired lad with gentle eyes, smiled cautiously and greeted me in French.
‘Would you care to join us?’ he ventured. ‘There’s plenty of room.’ At my hesitation his smile grew charming. ‘We’re quite well-behaved, I promise. It’s only that we’ve been travelling together for four months, now, and we’re tired of hearing each other talk. Please,’ he urged me, indicating the vacant seat across from him. ‘Let us buy you a drink.’
His companion sent me a vague but pleasant smile as I took the offered seat, reminding me a little of a chap I’d known at school – he, too, had worn tie-dyed shirts and let his hair grow straggling to his shoulders, and he’d carried with him something of the same distracted aura of a young man who has chosen to remain young, like the hippies of the sixties. The dark-haired lad, by contrast, was cleaner-cut, conservative, and better-schooled in manners. He raised his hand to get the bartender’s attention. ‘You’re new at the hotel, aren’t you?’ he asked me. ‘I haven’t seen you before.’
I nodded, trying without success to place his accent. Not Provençal, I thought – it was lighter than that. Not Breton, either, but something decidedly rustic, rather loose about the vowel sounds …
‘I’ve only just arrived,’ I said, ‘this afternoon. From England.’
He lowered his hand and grinned. ‘You’re English?’ he said, in my own language. ‘I should have known. Every time I try to start up a conversation with someone—’
‘Good heavens,’ I cut him off, astonished. ‘You’re American.’
The long-haired youth winced visibly. ‘Canadian, actually,’ he corrected me. It was the sort of stubborn, pained response that Hercule Poirot made in the detective books, when someone called him French instead of Belgian.
His friend forgave me my mistake. ‘The accent sounds the same, I know.’
‘The hell it does.’ The hippie grinned. ‘We don’t sound like the Whitakers.’
‘Well, true. But then, they’re from the deep South, so that’s hardly surprising.’ The dark young man glanced over at the gleaming oak-topped bar, where a middle-aged couple sat in conversation with the young bartender.
Middle-aged, I decided upon closer examination, was perhaps the wrong label for them. The woman would certainly have resisted it. She was quite pretty, in a brittle sort of way, with artfully arranged auburn curls and fluttering hands that glittered with rings. At first her husband looked much older, until one noticed that his silver hair was not matched by his tanned and vital face.
‘I’m sure you’ll meet them,’ the long-haired youth assured me. ‘Garland likes to keep up to date on new arrivals. She’s kind of … well, kind of unique.’
‘Her husband’s really nice,’ the dark one added. ‘His name’s Jim.’ Which reminded him he hadn’t yet introduced himself. ‘I’m Paul, by the way. Paul Lazarus. And this is my brother Simon.’
‘Emily Braden.’ I shook hands with each of them in turn, relaxing back into the thick cushioned seat. Dark-haired Paul, I decided, was the younger of the two, despite appearances. I’d found that between siblings there was always a clear pattern of interaction, of deference and command, that set the first-born apart. Simon Lazarus might look the less mature but he was restless, more aggressive, and now that our conversation had switched to English he assumed the role of spokesman for both of them – assumed it with a natural ease born of long familiarity and habit.
He sent me a friendly grin. ‘We’re doing the Europe thing. Paul finished university last spring and neither one of us could find a job, so we decided to squander our savings instead. We’re planning to go all the way around the world, if the money holds out. And if I can ever get Paul away from this place.’ Simon grinned wider. ‘I had a hard enough time dragging him out of Holland, and now here we are,’ he told me, ‘stuck again.’
Paul smiled and would have said something, but he wasn’t given the chance. The bartender, having excused himself from the American couple, descended upon us in a whirl of youthful vigour.
Seen at close range, the bartender appeared even younger than I’d first suspected. He couldn’t have been above twenty, but it was easy to see how I’d been deceived. Only in France, I thought, could a teenager look suave, even worldly. He would break a lot of hearts, this one. He probably had already.
I watched in open admiration as he exhaled the expressive ‘pouf’ of breath that was so undeniably French, muttered some brief comment about les américains, and winked conspiratorially at Paul Lazarus. ‘What can I bring you?’ he asked, in flowing English.
‘Thierry will tell you,’ Simon said positively, his accent anglicising the bartender’s name so that it came out sounding like ‘Terry’. ‘Thierry, tell Miss …’