Le Temps des Cerises by Zillah Bethel Page A

antiquity… we had better get on with starvation and reality as best we can!’
    The relief was palpable. Nerves strung up like violins were let down and subsided into laughter. The Marseillaise struck up again and everyone broke into song.
    â€˜Well done!’ Laurie congratulated his friend, his eyes full of admiration. ‘That was grand, really grand. You had them in the palm of your hand.’
    Alphonse shrugged. ‘Could have been better – but I got a little distracted by one or two members of the audience!’ He patted Tessier on the back and grinned at Eveline. ‘Don’t have apoplexy over it old man. It doesn’t really matter.’
    Eveline stood weak kneed with the fiery drink and the thoughts his words provoked in her; and she watched him disappear into an admiring throng.
    The mood in the church seemed quite changed after that. What had started off as a sombre, almost pessimistic little affair had turned into a festival, a free for all. Képis were flung in the air, eloquent gestures bandied about. A group of National Guardsmen made a ridiculous spectacle of themselves by doing the can-can down the nave and around the altar table though nobody seemed to care. Friends swore loyalty through thick and thin; enemies shed tears, embraced, broke up again all in a matter of minutes while sweethearts promised love and favours for an eternity. After the fiery drink and fiery words, any obstacle seemed surmountable. In the warmth of the candlelight, every battle won.

    Laurie and Eveline decided to make their escape before the mob turned into a frenzy and before they could be roped into helping to clear away; and they bolted up the aisle like a runaway bride and groom.

Chapter seven

    They raced past the concierge who was always asleep and up to Laurie’s rooms. How she loved Laurie’s rooms – so quiet, so peaceful. She liked to poke her nose through the small round window and gaze down on the higgledy-piggledy back streets behind the Rue d’Enfer with their overgrown gardens, crazy washing lines and filthy latrines. She tried to imagine the lives that went on behind the finger-smudged panes and patched-up curtains, developing all sorts of strange theories and complex interrelationships between the houses that fell within the parameters of Laurie’s window.
    â€˜Mr 50 is in love with Miss 49,’ she would announce solemnly after a few moments’ speculation. ‘They are going to elope. Mr 43 beats his wife!’ These deductions were based on such trivial points as the fact that Mr 43 possessed a walking stick and Mr 50 had once hung his hand mirror out of the window at the same time that Miss 49 put her petticoat out to air. Singularly strange coincidences according to Eveline. She would have been most disappointed to discover that Mr 43 was a widower and had no wife to beat though he did have a carpet; that Miss 49 took in ironing and hung her petticoat out to signal her availability as a washerwoman, not as an ahoy to Mr 50 who, poor man, was up to his ears in debt and no more dreamed of eloping with Miss 49 than with the taxman.
    â€˜Up to your old tricks again?’ Laurie demanded, taking her arm and pulling her gently away from the window.
    â€˜I am not up to my old tricks as you put it,’ Eveline replied, flopping down on the cane chair beside the bed and grinning wickedly. ‘I am simply an observer of humanity.’ It was one of Laurie’s own phrases and she brought it out deliberately to show him that she did listen to him. Sometimes.
    Laurie smiled. ‘And what did you observe tonight? That everyone was fast asleep in their own beds, even Mr 50 and Miss 49, and that nobody, not even a mouse, was stirring.’
    Eveline pouted. ‘One day you will see that a woman’s instincts are a great deal sharper than a man’s… a man’s… silliness,’ she finished at last, feeling quite aggrieved that she