Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances (36 page)

He was tall, taller than she by a good bit, whereas height was generally not an attribute of the French. He was dressed casually, in a striped shirt that was open at the neck, cocoa-colored pants that were snug and a bit faded, and there was a very large watch on his left wrist.

She judged him to be in his early thirties.

“Thanks,” she said, and took the brochure from his outstretched hand.
“Merci beaucoup.”

“
Rien.
You speak French very well.”

She had to smile at that. She had spoken only two words of French. He was making quite a try, this young boulevardier.

She didn’t answer, simply nodded, and headed once more for the table where her aunt was sitting and watching the little confrontation.

She didn’t get very far. A hand was again on her arm.

“You could have told me that I speak English well,” he said with mock reproach.

“You speak English well,” she answered obligingly, and looked pointedly down at the hand on her arm, a tanned hand with a soft stroking of dark hair at the wrist.

“I like very much to keep in practice,” he told her. “To converse with Americans.”

“Americans speak a different kind of English,” she said. “Better practice with English girls.”

“American is just as important as English,” he assured her.

This time she shook herself free. “Thanks again,” she said firmly, and walked away.

She reached their outside table and grinned at her aunt as she sat down. “My first pickup,” she murmured. “He tried his best, I will say that for him.”

She waited for her aunt’s giggle. Instead, there was a frown on Louisa’s face, and a kind of displeased expression.

“Oh, don’t worry, things like that don’t bother me, Auntie. Imagine it, he must have pulled this right out of my bag. Said I’d lost it.”

She stuffed the brochure back where it belonged. She resisted an impulse to look back and see if the man was still around, and then was annoyed at herself for giving him a second thought.

“You didn’t have to be so distant,” her aunt said quietly.

“Distant?” She was honestly surprised.

“Unfriendly. Remember, we’re foreigners here. When someone whose country this is makes a cordial overture the least you can do is meet him half way.”

“Half
way?
Why, Aunt Louisa, it was nothing but a try for a pickup! He just wanted to — ”

“Would you have been so aloof if it had been some young girl who’d spoken to you?”

“Why, I — ”

“Look at him. A perfectly nice young man, casually but decently dressed. Just because he liked what he saw … and wanted to exchange a few words with you …”

Iris followed her aunt’s gaze, and there he was, leaning against the doorway of the restaurant, looking over at them. When he saw their eyes on him he straightened up, looked expectant, and his lips curved up again.

When he smiled like that he was undeniably attractive. In fact, Iris thought, he was dazzling.

“I’m not in the habit of picking up gents in bars,” Iris said stubbornly, and turned away. She was certainly astonished at her aunt’s reaction. Of course she had brushed him off because he was a man! As he had singled her out because she was a girl. French, Italian, Spanish … you name it. Men were all the same. Always looking for a good thing.

“He … uh, doesn’t give up easily,” Louisa murmured. “Now he’s come over and sat down. Two tables away from us.”

“What should I do now, darling? Go over and throw my arms around him?”

This time a reproachful look came from her aunt. “Are we going to have a little spat just because, on our second day in Paris, my pretty niece made a conquest?”

“Certainly not, so forget about yon pushy gentleman and finish your coffee.”

“I shall have
another
coffee,” Louisa announced. “And so will you.”

She looked about for the waiter, was unable to attract his attention, and in the next moment the persistent man a couple of tables away got up, strolled over to the white-jacketed waiter and pointed to the table where the two women sat.

“Ah, oui,”
the waiter said briskly, and hurried over.

Then the man sat down again at his own table.

“Oui, Madame?”
the waiter said to Louisa.

“Two more coffees, please.”

“Oui, oui, tout de suite,”
the waiter said, and rushed away.

“Thank you,” Louisa called over to the other table.

“Not at all, Madame.”

“If you’re not expecting someone, would you care to join us?”

Without hesitation he rose, strolled over, and stood looking down at them. Then he pulled out a chair, said, “Madame, Mademoiselle,” and sat down between them.

“It was kind of you to return my niece’s travel folder,” Louisa said.

“Not at all,” he said again.

The waiter came back with their coffee.

“What will you have?” Louisa asked the newcomer.

“Thank you.” He looked up at the waiter.
“Comme habitude,
Raoul,” he said.

“Bon.”

“What is that you asked for?” Louisa asked interestedly.

The man looked puzzled, then said, “Ah, I ordered coffee, but as I come here quite often for coffee I simply said, ‘the usual,’ and Raoul will bring me coffee.”

“I must remember that idiom,” Louisa said.
“Comme …?”

“Comme habitude.
Literally, ‘as always.’“

When the coffee came he raised his cup and said, his glance encompassing them both,
“A votre santé.”

“You know that idiom,” he commented, when Louisa, raising her own cup, answered him with,
“A le votre.”

And then, with a little bow, he added, “I am Paul Chandon.”

“I’m Louisa Collinge and this is my niece Iris Easton.”

He bowed again. “Madame … Mademoiselle.
Echanté.”

So be it, Iris thought. After all, Aunt Louisa was the boss. And anyway, there was no harm in spending a few minutes with this young Frenchman. Perhaps her aunt was right. Maybe she had been a little brusque. Anyway, she was not alone, and if her aunt wished to palaver with the natives, it was her business.

“Monsieur Chandon told me he wants to improve his English,” she told Louisa. “I can’t imagine why. He speaks perfectly.”

“Oh, no, many Gallicisms,” Paul Chandon protested.

“I’m the one who should improve my French,” Louisa said ruefully. “But like most Americans I’m a poor linguist. Henry spoke French very well.”

“I see.”

For a second Louisa looked a bit flustered. “My late husband,” she explained hastily.

He turned to Iris. “When you spoke French to me, I admired very much your accent. You know how to say the R’s.”

“Il fait beau aujourd’hui.”

“Remarkable,” he said politely. “What else besides the weather, Mademoiselle?”

Now,
that
sounds patronizing, Iris decided, annoyed, and gave him a level look. She would show this young boulevardier, this man who had nothing better to do with his time than loll about coffeehouses and try to pick up girls.

He sat waiting, his smile once again faintly amused, and Iris, stung, recited:

There was a charged silence, then he burst into laughter. Louisa looked mystified.

“What did you say?” she asked her niece. “It wasn’t something off-color, was it?”

“Not off-color,” Paul Chandon said, still laughing. “A bit impertinent, however.”

“Well, what
was
it?”

“Your niece was quoting from Verlaine, the poet. She asked me, substantially, what have I done with my youth.”

Louisa, looking disconcerted, gave Iris a questioning look, “I don’t understand, what did you say to him?”

“It was just something from a famous poem,” Iris murmured. “A random choice.”

“Just the same,” Paul Chandon remarked, “I will think twice before I ask you to speak French to me again.”

“Why?”
Louisa demanded, her eyes narrowing.

Her aunt looked really disturbed, Iris thought, and now rued her “random choice”. She had more or less, in quoting that poem of a wastrel’s despair, indicated that she thought
him
a prodigal and she saw that she would have to justify herself in her aunt’s eyes.

“You see,” she said, gesturing helplessly, “it’s just so embarrassing when someone asks for an impromptu chat in a foreign language. So I just fell back on … on poetry.”

She was talking fast now, and only for her aunt’s benefit. She didn’t give a hoot what this bon vivant thought about her, and if he was insulted, so much the better.

“I
love
Verlaine,” she said vehemently. “And everyone knows that verse.”

“
I
don’t,” Louisa said pointedly.

“Then I must give you a book of Verlaine’s poems for your birthday.”

“I can’t read French, not any longer. So don’t waste your money. It’s just that I don’t understand about this “youth” business. What was it you said? Only tell me in English.”

“I will,” Paul said, seeming not at all put out but instead highly entertained. “It goes like this: ‘You there … what have you done with your young days?’“

A little puzzled, as if the whole thing was over her head, Louisa finally shrugged. “Since you’re just a young man, Paul, the poem can’t apply in any way to you.”

She sipped her coffee.

“Then why did it strike you that way?” she demanded.

He visibly controlled a smile. For a second his eyes met Iris’s. Then he said, very seriously, “Perhaps it does apply to me … in a way.”

And before Louisa could say anything more on the subject, he drained his coffee cup and made a suggestion.

“There’s a slight chill in the air today. Shall we have a cognac?”

“Not for me,” Iris said.

“Oh, do have one, I’m going to,” Louisa urged.

Now it was Iris who looked at her watch. “Don’t you think we had better be going, Auntie? We can’t waste too much time, and besides going to Notre Dame, you said we’d have lunch on the Ile St. Louis.”

“Lunch on the Ile? That’s a splendid idea,” Paul said. “I know a restaurant … a bistro, on the Ile St. Louis which I think you would like. Very Parisian, not fancy, you understand, and not generally known to Americans, who generally seek out more elegant surroundings.”

“Not these Americans,” Iris retorted, nettled. “That’s why we’re staying at the Vendôme, whereas the kind of Americans you’re speaking of gravitate to the Ritz or the Crillon.”

“I see,” he answered.

She gave him a sidelong glance. Did his eyes look amused? Was he laughing at her?

“It does occur to me,” he said gravely, “that the Hotel Vendôme is considered — certainly by me and my friends — to have its own quiet distinction.”

He called over the man who had been waiting on them. “Raoul?”

The man came over. “Will it be three cognacs?” Paul asked Iris.

“None for me, thanks,” she said.

“Deux cognacs,
then, Raoul.”

“Merci mon vieux.”

When the liqueurs came, there was a repetition of the “to your health” toast and then Paul held the small glass to his nose for a second or two.

Finally he drained it all in one gulp.

Good, now we can go, Iris thought, itching to get on with the day’s sightseeing. But her aunt, leaning back comfortably in her chair, sipped her drink slowly and pulled a cigarette out of her purse.

Paul flicked a lighter for her and then said, “You won’t mind if I smoke, then?”

“Good heavens, why should I? Have you been refraining out of politeness?”

“Certainly. It’s very little to ask.”

“That’s what I most admire about you Europeans, you young ones. Respect and courtesy are sadly lacking in America. Young people there are too often rude, crude and uncouth.”

She cast a fond glance at her niece. “But not Iris,” she said, with pride. “It’s not often I find fault with her behavior.”

“And when you do you tell me so in no uncertain terms,” Iris remarked.

“Of course. I want you to be perfect.”

“One can see that this young lady is, as you say in your country, the apple of your eye, Madame,” Paul murmured and, with a little bow to Iris, said something in French.

“What does it mean?” Louisa asked. “Do you know what it means, Iris?”

Flushed, Iris looked away. What Paul Chandon had said was easily translated. And he had paid her back. In the same way she had rebuffed him, he had rebuffed her.

Very cleverly, too. Paul Chandon had retaliated in kind: he had quoted the same poet, Verlaine.

Flushing, furious, the words he had said rang in her mind.

So he thought her an ingenue, did he? “Oh, do tell me,” Louisa cried. “What did he
say?”

“Something about young blue-eyed girls,” Iris said stiffly.

“So you see, Mademoiselle,” Paul murmured, “it doesn’t apply to you, and was simply a random choice.”

She looked directly at him, her eyes hot and angry. “I understand,” she said slowly. “And now that we’re even, we really must go, I’m afraid. That is, if you’re quite ready, Aunt Louisa.”

Paul held up a hand for their waiter, who came over.

“L’addition, s’il vous plait.”

When the man had scribbled some hen tracks on his pad, he tore the sheet off and handed it to Paul. But Louisa calmly pulled the check out of his hand.

“Madame, if you please,” Paul protested.

Louisa just smiled, pulled out some paper money from her alligator handbag and put it on the little tray. Then she fished for some coins and threw them carelessly on the small heap.

Paul chuckled, stayed the waiter’s eager hand, and scraped up two of the coins, pushing them back toward Louisa.

“Better luck next time, Raoul,” he said to the waiter, who shrugged, grinned and picked up the rest of the money.

“You left too much for the service,” Paul said chidingly. “You will spoil them for us Parisians. Americans are very generous, but the French will not thank you for overtipping.”