The buildings made a solid line—I counted seven stories with the ground floor and the garret in the buildings on my left, and those that faced them weren’t much lower. Some were old but all were painted white or freshly plastered, with a scattering of restaurants and small businesses providing bits of upscale color, burgundy or blue or black, and of the cars parked in a tight line further up the narrow street the foremost was a Jaguar. Not the rough street that it had been, then, in Mary’s day.
But still, the older buildings had an inward lean towards the top that made them look Dickensian, and it was not too difficult to stand here and imagine Mary at one of the windows on a winter afternoon like this one, watching the dark windows of the houses that stood opposite…
I fear the man across the street is watching us.
The wind crept cold along my neck. I shivered, and Luc, patient at my shoulder, broke the spell by asking if I was too cold.
I nearly told him no, but it occurred to me he might have asked because he might be starting to feel cold himself, so I gave a safe answer. “I’m nearly done,” I told him. I tried to be quick with my photos, then turned to him. “There, we can go now.”
“Go where?”
“Well, I’m finished. I really just needed to see Mary’s street.”
Luc was smiling again. “But we only just got here. I tell you what, let’s go get something to eat. There’s a good restaurant just round the corner. You’ll love it, I promise.”
I was hungry, but I hadn’t brought my wallet and it didn’t feel right asking him to pay. I’d actually been in this sort of situation once before with colleagues at a former job, and I tried thinking back to what I’d told them then because whatever way I’d phrased it had worked rather well without offending anybody…but I didn’t get the chance to use it now, because Luc said, “Come on, I haven’t eaten lunch. I’m starving.” And I realized that the reason he had missed his lunch was probably because I had descended on his doorstep and insisted that he bring me into Paris.
I could have tea, I decided. That would not be an enormous imposition, and although I’d missed my own lunch I could wait until I got back to Chatou to eat a proper meal.
The restaurant was indeed around the corner, as he’d said, right where the Street of Four Winds emptied into a small square with busy traffic, lots of tourists passing on the pavement, and a tiny island at its center from which a tall bare-branched tree stretched upwards to the sun.
The restaurant’s name, Les Éditeurs, was spelled out in neat letters on its long red awning, but I was distracted by the tree. “Are those books hanging from the branches?” There were several of them, worn and tattered, yellow from the weather, hung like ornaments in clusters.
Luc explained they were a tribute to the fact there had once been so many publishers and bookshops in this area, along with all the authors, French and foreign, who had lived and worked in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. And when we stepped inside the restaurant, it was clear the owners also had a fond spot for this literary history.
There were walls of bookshelves—books above the doorways, next to tables, even stacked over the staircase as the waiter showed us to the upper floor. It was a classy place, made warmly intimate with lamplight and dark wood and little tables meant for two. The waiter led us to the end of the long upstairs room where four such tables had been set close to each other in a line along a red leather banquette, watched over by the oil-painted portrait of a young and pretty woman of another era.
Luc asked for and to my relief received the end table by the window, and before the waiter had a chance to hold the chair for me I’d claimed the banquette seat instead, with bookshelves just behind me and a wall against my shoulder that allowed me to feel safe and not exposed, and space for our motorcycle helmets to rest on my other side, on the banquette, like an extra defense. Besides which, when I looked up now I didn’t really see the room or any of the other people in it; all I saw was Luc, his head bent as he read the menu.
There was no need to read mine. I set it down and to the side. “I’ll have a pot of tea.”
“That’s very English of you. If you’re very hungry there’s a steak with cheese potatoes here that’s excellent.”
“The tea is fine.”
He looked up from the menu then, his eyebrow lifting slightly. “Just the tea?”
“That’s right.” It would have been a lie to say I wasn’t hungry, but it was the truth at least to say, “That’s all I need.”
He studied me and I felt sure his gaze dropped briefly to my scarf before he told me, “Here in France it is a New Year’s custom for a man to take a woman out to lunch. It brings us luck.”
I cast my mind back over all the holiday traditions of my childhood neighbors. “You’ve just made that up. It’s not a custom.”
“Well, it ought to be.” He nudged my menu card towards me. “You can pay for my lunch next time.”
There was no one sitting right beside us but from the tables just behind Luc came a swirl of appetizing smells that weakened my resolve. “Do you promise?”
“Word of honor.”
“You just lied about the New Year’s custom.”
His mouth curved, then straightened. “I swear on the head of my son.” His blue eyes were disarming.
I gave in then and ordered the risotto. The waiter brought us bread and nuts and olives as an appetizer, and Luc nudged them all towards me. “I was worried you had changed your mind about your New Year’s resolution, and were starting on a diet after all.”