Part 5 (2/2)

Zut alors.

'So what can I get you?' he says, finally remembering what he's here for.

'Could we just get a bowl of pommes frites, d'you think?'

'Absolument!' says the garcon, and more or less sprints off to the kitchen to commence the preparation of the precious, gold-plated chips.

'How do you know him?' I ask when he's gone.

'Who? The waiter? I don't know him.'

'Oh.'

And there's a silence. I sip my coffee, and rub the cinnamon dust out of my nostrils with the back of my hand.

'So! I wasn't sure if you'd recognise me without my dog collar!'

'You said that already.'

'Did I? I do that sometimes, get muddled up about what I've said or haven't said, or I find myself saying things aloud that I'd only meant to say in my head, if you know what I mean . . .'

'I know exactly what you mean,' she says, grabbing my forearm. 'I'm always getting muddled up, or just blurting things out . . .' It's sweet, what she's doing here; trying to establish common ground between us, though I don't believe her for a second. 'I swear, half the time, I don't know what I'm doing . . .'

The too. Like the dancing last night . . .'

'Ah, yes . . .' she says, pursing her lips '. . . the dancing . . .'

'. . . yes, sorry about that. I was a little bit p.i.s.sed, truth be told.'

'Oh, you were fine. You're a good dancer!'

62.'Hardly!' I say. 'You know, Fm just surprised no one tried to put a pencil between my teeth!'

She looks at me puzzled. 'Why?'

'Well ... to stop me biting my tongue off?' Still nothing. 'You know, like an ... epileptic!'

But she doesn't say anything, just sips her coffee again. Oh, my G.o.d - maybe I've offended her. Maybe she knows an epileptic. Maybe there's epilepsy in her family! Maybe she's an epileptic . . .

'Aren't you hot in that donkey jacket?' she asks, and the garcon returns with the exquisite chips, about six of them, arranged artfully in a large egg-cup, then loiters around, grinning, pleased with himself, trying to strike up another conversation, so I keep talking.

'You know, if life's taught me two things so far, the first is don't dance when you're drunk.'

'And the second?'

'Don't try and put milk through a Soda Stream.'

She laughs, and recognising defeat, the garcon retreats. Keep going, keep it up ...

'. . . I don't know what I was expecting, I just thought I'd get this amazing fizzy, milky drink, but there's a name for fizzy milk . . .' (pause, sip) '. . . it's called yoghurt!'

Sometimes I could make myself throw up, really I could.

So we talk some more and she eats her chips, dipping them into a Pyrex contact-lens of ketchup, and it's a bit like an afternoon spent in that cafe in T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, but with pricier food. 'Do I dare to eat a peach? Not at these prices, no . . .' I find out more about her. She's an only child, like me - something to do with her mum's tubes she thinks, but isn't sure. She doesn't mind being an only child, it just means she has always been a bit bookish, and she went to boarding-school, which is politically not very right-on, she knows, but she loved it anyway, and was Head Girl. She's very close to her dad, who makes arts doc.u.mentaries for the 63.BBC and lets her do work-experience there in the holidays, and she's met Melvyn Bragg on many, many occasions, and apparently he's really, really funny in real life, and actually quite s.e.xy. She loves her mum too, of course, but they argue a lot, probably because they're so similar, and her mum works part-time for TreeTops, a charity that builds tree-houses for deprived kids.

'Wouldn't they be better-off living with their parents?' I say.

'What?'

'Well, you know, kids living on their own up in the trees - that's got to be dangerous, hasn't it?'

'No, no, they don't live in the tree-houses, it's just a summer holiday activity thing.'

'Oh, right. I see . . .'

'Most of these kids from underprivileged homes have only got one parent, and they've never had a family holiday in their whole lives!' Oh my G.o.d, she's talking about me 'It's fantastic really. If you're not doing anything next summer you should come along.' I nod enthusiastically, though I'm not entirely sure whether she's suggesting I help out, or actually offering me a holiday.

Then Alice tells me about her summer break, some of which was spent up in the tree-tops with the deprived, and no doubt anxious, kids. The rest was divided between their houses in London, Suffolk and the Dordogne, then performing with her school drama group at the Edinburgh Festival.

'What did you do?'

'Bertolt Brecht's Good Woman ofSchezuan.' Of course, it's clear what she's done here, isn't it? It's a cla.s.sic opportunity to use the word 'eponymous'.

'And who played the eponymous . . . ?'

'Oh, I did,' she says. Yes, yes, of course you did.

'And were you?' I ask.

'What?'

64.'Good?'

'Oh, not really. Though The Scotsman seemed to think so. Do you know the play at all?'

'Very well,' I lie. 'Actually we did Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle at our college last term' - pause, sip cappuccino - 'I played the chalk.'

G.o.d, I think I am going to throw up.

But she laughs, and starts talking about the demands of playing Brecht's eponymous Good Woman, and I take the opportunity to get my first proper look at her sober, and without perspiration on my spectacles, and she really is beautiful. Definitely the first truly beautiful woman I've ever seen, other than in Renaissance art or on the telly. At school people used to say Liza Chambers was beautiful, when what they really meant was 'h.o.r.n.y', but Alice is the real thing; creamy skin that seems to be entirely without pores, and is lit from within by some organic under-skin luminescence. Or do I mean 'phosph.o.r.escence'? Or 'fluorescence'? What's the difference? Look it up later. Anyway, she's either wearing no makeup, or, more likely, make-up that's artfully contrived to seem as if it's not there, except around the eyes possibly, because surely no one has eyelashes like that in real life, do they? And then there are the eyes; brown's not really the word, it's too dull and dun, and I can't think of a better one, but they're bright and healthy, and so wide that you can see the whole of the iris, which is speckled with green. Her mouth is full and strawberry-coloured, like Tess Derbyfield, but a happy, well-balanced, fulfilled Tess who's found out that, thank G.o.d, she actually is a D'Urberville after all. Best of all there's a tiny raised white scar on her lower lip, which I imagine she probably got in some harrowing childhood blackberrying incident. Her hair is honey-coloured and slightly curly, and pulled back from her forehead, in a style that I imagine is called 'a Pre-Raphaelite'. She looks - what's that word in T.S. Eliot? Quattrocento. Or is it Yeats? And does it mean fourteenth 65.century or fifteenth century? I'll look that up too when I get back. Note to self; look up 'Quattrocento', 'Damask', 'Dun', 'Luminescence', 'Phosph.o.r.escence', and 'Fluorescence'.

And now she's talking about the party last night, how awful it was, and about the terrible men she met, lots of awful, naff, no-neck rugger-b.u.g.g.e.rs. She leans forward from her chair when she talks, long legs coiled around the chair-legs beneath her, and touches my forearm to emphasise a point, and looks me in the eye as if daring me to look away, and she also has this trick of tugging on her tiny silver-stud earrings while she talks, which is indicative of a subconscious attraction towards me, or a mildly infected piercing. For my own part, I'm trying out some new facial expressions and postures too, one of which involves leaning forward and resting my hand on my chin with my fingers splayed over my mouth, occasionally rubbing my chin sagely. This serves several purposes; 1) it looks as if I'm lost in deep thought, 2) it's sensual - the fingers on the lips, a cla.s.sic s.e.xual signifier - and 3) it also covers up the worst of the spots, the raised red cl.u.s.ters round the corners of my mouth that make it look as if I've been dribbling soup.

She orders another cappuccino. Will I have to pay for that too I wonder? Doesn't matter. The Stephane Grappelli/Django Reinhardt ca.s.sette is on a permanent loop in the background, buzzing away like a bluebottle against a window, and I'm pretty happy to just sit and listen. If she does have a failing, and it's obviously only a tiny one, it's that she doesn't seem particularly curious about other people, or me anyway. She doesn't know where I'm from, she doesn't ask about Mum, or my Dad, she doesn't know my surname, I'm not entirely convinced that she still doesn't think I'm called Gary. In fact, since we've been here she's asked me only two questions - 'Aren't you hot in that donkey jacket?' and 'You do know that's cinnamon, don't you?'

Suddenly, as if she's read my mind, she says, 'I'm sorry, I seem to be doing all the talking. You don't mind do you?'

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