Bad Girls Good Women

‘I’d rather stay here in peace, you know. Fill me up, Mat, will you?’

‘But you belong with us.’ Julia knelt down in front of her, and Jessie saw her feverishly bright eyes.

‘I know I do, duck. And here I am. Now go and have your dinner, and don’t make too much bloody noise when you come back.’

On the way to Dean Street, passing through streets that had become familiar, even homely, Julia felt herself spinning, as if her feet might lose contact with the paving stones. The pressure inside her intensified until she had to run, her arms and legs pumping up and down. Mattie and Felix were breathless behind her, and their feet thudded faster and faster, like drumbeats.

Felix reached out and grabbed her wrist and she swung outwards, her full skirt ballooning up around her legs.

‘What are you running away from?’ he demanded.

‘I’m not running away. Towards something.’

‘What?’

‘Oh, Felix. I don’t know. Freedom.’

‘I’ll drink to that,’ Mattie shouted, catching Julia’s mood.

‘What will you do with it, all this freedom?’

Julia had a momentary sense of space. Dark, windy emptiness, dropping away all around her. She was perched on a tiny foothold, all alone. She reached out and put her arms around Mattie and they swayed together, laughing at Felix.

‘Gobble it all up,’ Julia said triumphantly.

At first Leoni’s seemed forbidding, with its long, white-starched tablecloths and faded decor. It was full of people, all seemingly much older and richer than themselves. But when a table was found for them in the centre of the room, the other diners looked up as they sailed past in the wake of the head waiter. The three of them held their heads up. They knew, somehow, that tonight they were worth looking at. A spark had ignited them.

‘I’ll order for you,’ Felix said. He studied the big white menu, and spoke rapid French to the waiter.

‘How do you know French?’ the girls demanded, impressed in spite of themselves.

‘I only know menu French. And please and thank you. I taught myself.’

‘Teach us,’ Julia demanded. ‘I want to learn everything.’

He smiled at her. ‘I know you do.’ Her eagerness pleased him, and at the same time, in a different recess of himself, it frightened him.

When their plates came, Mattie and Julia stared disbelievingly into the bubbling interiors of the big, amber and gold striped shells nestled in their special dishes.

‘They’re snails,’ Mattie whispered.

‘They certainly are,’ Felix agreed. .’And you will eat them. You can’t let me down now. Look, like this.’ He fitted the little silver clamp around one of his shells and winkled the snail out. It dripped hot, buttery sauce. When the snail was gone Felix tipped the juice out of the shell and mopped it up with bread from the piled-up basket.

‘I’m so hungry’,’ Julia said suddenly. ‘I’ve never been so hungry.’

Copying Felix, she extracted a snail. She opened her mouth and it slid down her throat. She blinked, and realised that it was delicious.

They devoured their snails, and emptied the bread basket. The waiters were fatherly, bringing more bread and beaming their approval, all except one who was young and hovered around Mattie’s chair.

After the escargots – ‘Escargots,’ repeated Julia – came tournedos Rossini. The thick wedges of steak with pâté and toasted bread were rich and utterly satisfying. Wine was brought in a wicker cradle, the neck of the bottle wrapped in a white napkin. Felix tasted the drop that the wine waiter poured into his glass and nodded.

‘This is Beaune,’ he told them.

The pudding was a puff of choux pastry oozing with dark chocolate. Mattie loved all sweet things and she chased the last fragments of hers around her plate, groaning with pleasure.

‘Oh, how I love food and wine.’ Looking across the table at Felix and Julia, she was suddenly struck by their likeness. Julia’s skin was white and Felix’s was milky coffee, but their faces had the same high cheekbones and strong mouths. And their expressions were the same. Appraising. Touched with arrogance, but ready to dissolve into laughter as well. ‘And I love you two,’ she whispered.

They both heard it. You too. Julia’s hand was lying loosely on the white cloth. Felix had raised his own hand, intending to cover her fingers, draw them towards him. Now, he thought. It has to be now.

But he felt the waiter behind him, leaning forwards to murmur in his ear, ‘Excusez-moi, monsieur.’

They heard ice clinking, and a frosty silver bucket materialised beside their table. In the bucket was a bottle of champagne.

Through the droplets misting the clear glass they could see the wine. Pink champagne.

‘I didn’t order …’ Felix murmured, unusually disconcerted. ‘No, monsieur. The gentleman over there ordered it. He asked me to present his compliments.’

They turned their heads, in unison.

‘Who’s that?’ Julia breathed.

Joshua Flood and Harry Gilbert always met for a drink or dinner whenever Josh passed through London. Harry was an ex-RAF pilot, ten years older than Josh. The two men had met when Harry and his air charter company pilots were flying eighteen hours a day, lifting supplies to Berlin, and Josh was a skinny American teenager who was hanging around the airfield looking for work, any work, that had anything to do with flying. Harry had given him a job loading and unloading crates, and Josh stuck to it. Harry Gilbert gave the boy his first flying lesson, and they went out and got drunk together on the day Josh got his pilot’s licence. It was an unlikely relationship, between the upper-class Englishman and the much younger American who, by his own admission, ‘came from Nowhere, Colorado, but was going plenty of places’, but it had persisted. They enjoyed one another’s company, and they were drawn together by their mutual enthusiasm for aircraft, skiing and women.

They had amused themselves over dinner at Leoni’s that evening by speculating on the threesome at the centre table. It was Mattie who had first drawn their attention.

‘Look at that hair.’

‘And the superstructure.’

‘Harry, you’re a dirty old man.’

‘Age has nothing to do with it, my boy.’

‘Anyway, the blonde’s mine. You can have the dark one.’

‘I fancy it’s an academic question. They’re having far too good a time on their own.’

‘With that panty-waist?’ Joshua’s blond eyebrows shot up into his tanned forehead.

Harry laughed. ‘Appearances can be deceptive.’

‘Not that appearance.’ Josh signalled to the waiter. ‘But there’s only one way to find out. Let’s send ’em a drink.’

The bubbles fizzed and burst on Julia’s tongue. The champagne seemed to send currents of elation through her veins. She gripped the edge of the white cloth, to anchor herself in her chair.

I’m still here, she thought. I’m still myself. That’s good. That’s all that matters. She knew that she was hurt, somewhere, but the pain, if there was going to be any, hadn’t bitten into her yet. There was only the strange, tight, bursting feeling, buried inside her. ‘We can’t just drink their champagne,’ she said aloud. ‘We’ll have to invite them to join us.’

A moment later Joshua Flood leaned between Mattie and Julia.