AllFreeNovel
Share Us
This wasn’t going so well.
‘I’ll have the special.’
‘Bien sûr, monsieur,’ she said, stony-faced. ‘Les plats du jour. Et du vin?’
He ordered a carafe of Merlot, then sat back and opened the book he’d bought from the lovestruck Bostonian. There was anAuthor’s Introduction, aCast of Characterseight pages long, aMap of Revolutionary Paris, then, at last, Chapter One:Life as a Battlefield.
I’d never get away with such a slow opening,thought Harry.
A platter of periwinkles appeared on the table, along with a diminutive fork especially designed for the extrication of tiny creatures from their shells, and a dish of soft, garlicky butter in which to dip them. He avoided studying the first periwinkle too closely before dousing it in butter and sucking it off the fork. It had a satisfying bite to it, and a strange metallic aftertaste that he found disturbing but best cured by eating another.
At the door, Noémie Gabrielle Fournier-Laurent was doing her best to discourage more customers.
‘Vous n’avez pas de réservation?’ she was saying to a tall, broad man with a shock of red hair, whose arm was wrapped around a leggy blonde. Surely that was the couple whose photo he’d taken outside the bookshop. They still had that same lost look about them.
‘Oui,’ the woman, presumably his wife, cut in, ‘au nom deMacNamara.’
‘Macna .?.?.?’
‘MacNamarrrra,’ said the man, making a great show of rolling his r’s.
His wife smiled at that, nudged him with her shoulder.
Noémie – Harry couldn’t keep using her full name, even in his head – checked a book on the bar. She clucked her tongue and directed them to the last of the three window tables. They hadn’t noticed him. Harry propped his book against the breadbasket, at an angle that allowed him to keep watch on the room.
Noémie deposited a wide bowl in front of him. It contained an artful arrangement of chestnuts and cubes of foie gras. Just as he moved to pick up a fork, she raised a hand to indicate he should wait.
‘Attention, monsieur.’ She pointed to a steaming jug and mimed the act of pouring.
‘Ah.’ He couldn’t help smiling in the face of her deadly serious attitude. With a show of great care, Harry poured creamy, frothy broth over the dainty morsels, while Noémie watched, making certain he was doing it right.
‘Hmm,’ he said, enthusiastically, thinking how far you could get with so few words.
The soup was delicious, with the bonus of being easy to eat with one hand while he turned pages with the other. Mantel’s words set him thinking about how a life is valued, and how success is measured. Financially, Harry’s personal valuation was a matter of public record, and it was plenty high. But he knew that wasn’t the point. He’d have liked to have garnered a little more respect, respect for something more than his gross income. Look at Noémie, he thought. At that moment, she was delivering three plates and a bottle to the table beside him. There was a woman who commanded respect, who valued herself highly.
As he watched, she spun towards him. The third plate, it turned out, was for him.
‘Kig ha farz, monsieur.’
He raised a questioning eyebrow.
‘C’est un pot-au-feu breton.’
He looked with relish at three types of meat and some sort of dumpling and decided he wouldn’t be telling his doctor about Chez Michel.
Catching Noémie’s eye, he dipped his head in a gesture of sincere thanks. ‘Merci beaucoup.’
Noémie tipped her head to one side, approving his gratitude. Harry closed his book. The noise level had mellowed out. The six Parisians were deeply concerned with a comparison of Cognac and Armagnac, two well-aged bottles being passed reverentially around the table. The young girl seemed to be dictating dates from her phone, which the elderly man was carefully noting in a leather-bound diary. The English couple were sipping coffee in silence. The red-haired man was offering a spoonful of soup to his wife. She leaned forwards, let him feed her, licked her lips and leaned back in her seat with her eyes closed.
Harry missed that, the intimacy of eating with a woman. He missed marriage.
He pulled out his phone and scrolled through the list of contacts. He paused at Rita’s name, swiped left and presseddelete.Was he sure?asked the phone. You bet. He didn’t miss Rita.Delete.
He scrolled on, to Nancy. He laid down the phone at the side of his plate, mopped up some sauce with a piece of bread, drained the last of the wine from his glass and picked up the phone again. Quickly now, before doubt could win out, he clicked Nancy’s name, inhaled deeply, tapped out a message, deleted a line, retyped the same words and hit send.
Remember our first date, when you wore your blue dress with the slit in it, and we had meatballs at that Italian place you loved?
Exhaling, he put the phone down again, sat back in his seat. Noémie returned, looking, if not exactly friendly, certainly less hostile.
