Le Temps des Cerises (10 page)

Truffles à la Gazelle

Skate in black butter

Sardines with lemon

Tenderloin of turnip

Corned beef with tomatoes and cranberries

Preserved green corn

Roast chicken and peas

Salad

Peaches in syrup

Pumpkin pie

Macaroons

Nougat cherries

Chocolate plums

Café noir

Below the menu, a yellowing cutting from a newspaper recommended Brébant's as a first-class restaurant offering great wines, prime meat, early vegetables and delicate fish. And a satisfied customer had written: ‘I defy any customer to try the “purée Brébant” without thinking they've died and gone to heaven.'

She was just wondering if the corned beef and pumpkin pie were destined for the American contingent of the city when she heard the proprietor's voice close at hand.

‘What the hell was it? The Marquis can crack a peach stone with those teeth of his but that rubbish you brought yesterday was even too tough for him.'

‘Can he now?' came Alphonse's dry response.

Eveline's heart jumped.

‘Well, what was it for God's sake?'

‘Dog.'

‘Dog?'

‘Yes dog. A big, fat mongrel to be precise.'

She didn't wait to hear any more. She slipped down the steps and through the cobbled arch and into the yard where the carriages were kept. A group of children like a bunch of noisy pilfering sparrows were hanging about by the bins, chuckling over one or two nuggets they'd discovered. They were dressed in rags, little more than skin and bone and her heart went out to them. She stepped back, letting them take their share. One bent a curious watchful eye on her then, deciding she was friendly, went back to its bin picking. A moment later Alphonse came round the corner with a pan of scraps – scraps left, no doubt, on the plates of the upper echel­ons. At the sight of him the sparrows rushed over, whooping and crying out in delight; and he placed the huge pan on the ground for them, laugh­ing as their hands, faces and then practically their bodies disappeared into it.

‘They know you,' Eveline said by way of greeting, stepping out of the shadows of the yard.

‘Mouse!' smiled Alphonse looking quite unsurprised to see her there. ‘How are you today?'

She suddenly felt close to bursting into tears, seeing him there in front of her; and she thought the argument with Laurie must have upset her more than she had realised.

‘You look quite white.'

‘I'm alright,' she stammered and then by way of distraction, before she could stop herself, she brought out the card and held it up to him. ‘I'm thinking of joining a women's battalion.'

‘Why ever not?' he responded after looking at it thoughtfully. ‘Eveline brave and beautiful, a modern day Joan of Arc. We should all admire you. You would be decorated no doubt. Laurie would write a sonnet for you!'

‘Oh Laurie!' She coloured furiously. ‘He's against it. My role is to look after Papa and Jacques apparently. For the rest of my life.'

‘Your father!' exclaimed Alphonse. ‘That drunken sot! He's old and ugly enough to look after himself. As for Jacques, the more scrapes the merrier at his age. You're a slave in that place. Break free while you've got the chance. Else you'll be a little mouse forever,' he teased, his eyes twinkling.

Eveline stamped her foot and her hair fell out of her blue chenille all over her shoulders. ‘I hate it! D'you know what I saw Papa doing the other day,' she confided suddenly, pink with embarrassment. ‘He was going up and down the Rue de Rivoli begging for money with a bandage around his head and a pair of ears in a jar of wine. He kept saying the “barbarous Prussians” had sliced them off. It's shameful!'

‘No it's not,' Alphonse grinned. ‘It's ingenious! It's good to see he's still got a spark in that befuddled head of his!'

She smiled weakly up at him. His face was in shadow but she thought that he was staring at her, as she in fact was staring at him. Staring at him and wishing (as she realised with a jolt she often wished) that she could take Laurie's heart and soul and place them inside Alphonse's muscular torso.

‘Does he still write you those poems?' he asked a little gruffly then, meaning Laurie.

‘Sometimes. Why?'

‘I'd give you more than poems,' he replied, bending down and kissing her on the cheek, then standing back and laughing as if he'd gone too far.

Eveline laughed too, and blushed, not knowing if he was joking because he was a friend of Laurie's and besides which, you just couldn't tell with Alphonse. Eveybody loved him but nobody knew him. Not really. That was half the attraction she supposed. Everybody wanted to know him.

‘Will you come to watch Jacques?' she cried impulsively, deciding then and there that she didn't want to be alone with Laurie that day. ‘We're going to see him balloon training!'

Alphonse nodded. ‘Of course. I had better see him once more before we lose him to the moon!' He turned to go and then stopped as if a thought had suddenly occurred to him. ‘By the way, where did he get the ears? They're not his own I take it?'

Eveline giggled. ‘Oh no, his own are still on his head!'

And they burst out laughing together in the sunlight of the dirty back yard for the sheer joy of laughing, the noisy sparrows still pilfering at their feet.

Chapter ten

‘Passengers for the two-fifteen to Moon City,' sang a dapper little man in a station master's cap, a whistle round his neck and ticket-collecting bag on his arm. ‘The two-fifteen to Moon City departing from Platform Six and calling at Cloud Nine, Freeze Your Toes Off, Heaven's Gate and Rainbow's End!'

Laurie looked at Eveline who looked at Alphonse who laughed. Was the man an escaped lunatic? No trains ran any more from the Gare du Nord. The city was sealed off so even if they
had
left the station they'd have just gone chugging around in circles. Besides which, the rails were rusted over, with grass and weeds growing merrily in between.

‘He obviously has too much time on his hands!' smiled Alphonse as they stepped into the waiting room then almost stepped out again in astonishment. Had they got the wrong place? This wasn't a waiting room. It looked more like a shipbuilding yard with a horde of brawny sailors heave-ho'ing over nets and ropes, sandbags and calicoes, their bulging forearms glistening with tattoos and sweat. It was very hot and full of a hammering din and the stink of varnish. The little café where passengers had once sat idly drinking tea and tasting dainties had been converted into a paint shop with pots and pots of glues and varnishes lined up on the shelves where the pastries had lived. A woman still sat behind the counter however, pencil and paper in her hand as if waiting to take an order for a pot of mocha and toasted scone. A group of sailors on the floor in front of her were in the middle of constructing a wicker basket like a giant picnic hamper and she stared at them sullenly now and then as if she held them personally responsible for the dreadful transformation.

It was all so extraordinary that Eveline found herself wanting to giggle and she turned away from Alphonse and Laurie lest they see her. It was a serious matter after all – the balloon factory – yet how could you not see the funny side. Outside was a man selling tickets for the moon, inside a group of sailors in a picnic basket and a woman in a café of glue! No wonder Jacques loved it. It was just like one of those fairy tales she'd read to him when he was younger with their giants and spells, witches and magic potions. She half expected him to appear in a puff of smoke and he obliged her suddenly, on cue as usual, though without the puff of smoke.

‘Hi, you three,' he grinned, his red hair standing up from his impish face. ‘Ready for the big tour?'

Alphonse patted him on the head, Laurie said ‘lead on' and Eveline took his hand a little protectively. She couldn't believe he didn't get lost in such a place though he'd been coming here for as long as she could remember (when the Gare du Nord really was the Gare du Nord), obsessed with trains, wheels and anything that went fast, now obsessed with anything that flew. He stood there grinning, pleased as punch to have the adults under his command so to speak, especially Alphonse, and began in a grown-up, almost earnest little voice.

‘I see you have met Mathilde.' He indicated the woman behind the counter. ‘She takes the orders for the pots of glues and paints that are used to repair and varnish the balloons. She is very metikluss about the orders; and she knows how much each balloon soaks up – some are tougher skinned than others she says.'

They all looked at the woman who stared back at them sullenly.

‘And you must have met the flight master at the front.'

So that was the little man who sang about the moon.

‘He produces the flight timetables and checks the meter-logical readings every week… sailors are often used,' he whispered as they went past a bunch of sea-creased faces bent over a net big enough to catch a whale, ‘because they don't suffer from air sickness and the high attitudes! Hi Pipington,' he called out to one of the sailors who was tying a bit of rope to the net.

‘Hi Renan!' The grey-haired old man winked at him. ‘How are your air legs coming along?'

‘Not too bad,' Jacques replied with an air of importance. ‘Not too bad at all.'

Eveline caught Laurie's eye, trying not to giggle but Alphonse frowned at them both and remarked that it was all very interesting, very interesting indeed.

They followed Jacques into the ticket office which was now a temporary post office. Laurie took an especial interest in this for it was here that the letters to his mother began their strange and perilous journey. Women in blue uniforms were charging about with stacks and stacks of letters and postcards, parcels and packages: sorting, stamping, filing, coding… they all seemed to know Jacques, greeting him with pats, nods, pinches and smiles, treating him like a little pet dog. One of them even
offered him a cookie which, to Eveline's surprise, he declined with a solemn shake of the head. He was full of facts and figures about the whole process.

‘One balloon can carry four people and twelve hundred pounds of mail,' he told them, ‘which is equivalent to one hundred thousand letters.'

Eveline wondered if he were making the figures up as he made up excuses to evade the washing up or making his bed and she stared at him suspiciously, on the look out for the telltale twitch of the left eye; but he seemed innocent enough, his pupils bright and steady.

‘The guvverment pays four thousand francs to the factory for every delivery and three hundred of that goes to the pilot of the balloon.'

‘Blimey!' cried Alphonse, scratching his head and ignoring the interested glances of the more youthful postmistresses. ‘I'm in the wrong job!'

Jacques grinned and suddenly put a finger to his lips. ‘Can you hear that?' he demanded, pointing to the small blue door at the back of the room.

What?
They all strained their ears but nobody could hear anything except the hustle and bustle of the women.

Jacques gestured for them to come closer and they followed him to the door and pressed their ears against it. ‘Can you hear it?'

What?

‘That!'

Then they heard it – a soft gentle cooing sound like the babbling of brooks or faraway lullabies.

‘Those are the pigeons that will go tonight,' he explained in an excited murmur. ‘They come from the Jardin des Plantes and wait here for the midnight flight. I will ask Monsieur Pagini if we may see them. He doesn't usually like them to be disturbed before an important mission.' He knocked softly on the little blue door then disappeared inside. They heard muffled voices for a moment and then he came out again. ‘You may come in but you must take your shoes off.'

It was like entering an Indian temple where the laws and customs were very different from their own. What would Monsieur Pagini have them do next? They slipped off their boots and shoes, Eveline hoping desperately there weren't any visible holes in her stockings; and crept in through the small blue door. It took a while for their eyes to get accustomed to the light because the manager's office (for that was what it was) had been blackened out with crêpe paper and only a tiny portion of light trickled through a gap in the window. It was warm and stuffy with a faint musty odour; but quiet and strangely peaceful as the birds cooed and rustled in their straw-filled boxes. The figure of a man could just be seen perched on a stool in front of the window.

‘Monsieur Pagini,' Jacques began, ‘these are my friends Alphonse and Laurie and my sister, Eveline.'

‘Good day.' Monsieur Pagini greeted them in a low, gravelly voice. ‘May I ask first of all if any one of you has a cat, mouse, lettuce leaf or bar of chocolate upon you. Any or all of these will send Alice into a flap.'

No one wanted Alice (whoever she was) to go into a flap and they all vehem­ently denied having any such thing in their pocket; though Alphonse joked he'd give anything to have a bar of chocolate in his. A burst of nervous laughter greeted this, followed by a slightly embarrassed silence.