Léon and Louise by Alex Capus, John Brownjohn

carrying no luggage, so she couldn’t be going away for long. All that annoyed him was that she waved to him just as he, for his part, had to wave his red flag at the incoming locomotive.
    â€˜ Salut, Léon!’ she called as she trotted along beside the train and opened the door of a third-class carriage. Oh, he thought, so she knows my first name. Had he introduced himself last night at the Café du Commerce ? No, he hadn’t. He ought to have, of course. It would have been only polite, but he hadn’t, so she must have learned his name some other way – possibly even have made a point of finding it out? Oh-oh. And she hadn’t forgotten his name overnight; on the contrary, she had memorized it. And now she had uttered his name with her mouth, lips and little white teeth – with the breath of her body. Oh-oh-oh.
    â€˜ Salut, Louise!’ he called when he’d recovered his composure and she was about to jump aboard the still moving train. He stood enshrouded in the locomotive’s hissing spurts of steam and waited the regulation minute after which, pursuant to the timetable, he had to signal the driver to continue on his way. The train moved off and Léon, craning his neck, ran to the door behind which Louise had disappeared. But because the platform was too low and the windows were too high, he couldn’t see the passengers sitting on the far side of the compartment. Then the train pulled out and Louise was gone.
    Léon stared after the red rear light until it was out of sight beyond the brick works, and he kept a lingering eye on the locomotive’s plume of smoke. Then he repaired with his red flag to the office, where Madame Josianne had left him some coffee and two tartines.
    When he went out into the forecourt at lunchtime his eye lighted on Louise’s bicycle in the shelter. Looking around to make sure he was unobserved, he went over and examined it. An ordinary old gentleman’s bike that had once been black, it had rusty gear sprockets, a worn-out chain and solid tyres with no tread left on them. The gear change was broken and the chain guard bent. Gingerly, he rested his hands on the cracked, bleached leather grips on the handlebars, squeezed them hard and then held both palms to his nose to catch a whiff of Louise’s scent, but all he could smell was leather and his own hands.
    Crouching down, he examined the chain guard and discovered that it really was the cause of the squeak. He tried to straighten the bent section with both thumbs, but failed because of the sprocket behind it. He fetched two screwdrivers and a hammer from the workshop, removed the metal guard, and hammered it flat against the goods shed’s timber wall. Then he oiled the rusty chain, screwed the guard on again, and made one experimental circuit of the station yard.

    When Léon embarked on his usual after-supper bike ride into town, he was wearing his slacks, his white shirt, and the grey cardigan his mother had knitted him during her sleepless nights before his departure. Having ridden across the station yard in the afterglow of the sunny day, he set off up the avenue – and saw someone standing beside the fifth plane tree along on the right-hand side of the road.
    She was leaning against the tree in her blue school skirt and her red and white polka-dot blouse. Her left hand was imprisoned in the crook of her arm, her right hand held a lighted cigarette. She had raised her right eyebrow far enough to furrow her smooth forehead; the other loomed low over her left eye. Could this piercing stare really be meant for him?
    â€˜Evening, Louise. Waiting for me, were you?’
    â€˜I never wait for anyone, let alone your kind.’ She took a long pull at her cigarette. ‘Any of my precious time you steal will be deducted from the end of your life.’
    â€˜I can spare a minute or two,’ said Léon.
    â€˜My bike doesn’t squeak any more,’ she