picked it up as though it was a gun that might explode by accident. ‘Yes,’ she said suspiciously. ‘He’s here.’ She listened, nodding, and saying ‘yes’. ‘The walk will do him good,’ she said. ‘We’ll be there in about an hour.’ She pulled an agonized face at me. ‘Yes,’ she said to the phone again. ‘Well you must just whisper to him and then I won’t hear your little secrets, will I?’ There was a little gabble of electronic indignation, then Maria said, ‘We’ll get ready now or we’ll be late,’ and firmly replaced the receiver. ‘Byrd,’ she said. ‘Your countryman Mr Martin Langley Byrd craves a word with you at the Café Blanc.’ The noise of rain was like a vast crowd applauding frantically.
‘Byrd,’ I explained, ‘is the man who was with me at the art gallery. The art people think a lot of him.’
‘So he was telling me,’ said Maria.
‘Oh, he’s all right,’ I said. ‘An ex-naval officer who becomes a bohemian is bound to be a little odd.’
‘Jean-Paul likes him,’ said Maria, as though it was the epitome of accolades. I climbed into my newly washed underwear and wrinkled suit. Maria discovered a tiny mauve razor and I shaved millimetre by millimetre and swamped the cuts with cologne. We left Maria’s just as the rain shower ended. The concierge was picking up the potted plants that had been standing on the pavement.
‘You are not taking a raincoat?’ she asked Maria.
‘No,’ said Maria.
‘Perhaps you’ll only be out for a few minutes,’ said the concierge. She pushed her glasses against the bridge of her nose and peered at me.
‘Perhaps,’ said Maria, and took my arm to walk away.
‘It will rain again,’ called the concierge.
‘Yes,’ said Maria.
‘Heavily,’ called the concierge. She picked up another pot and prodded the earth in it.
Summer rain is cleaner than winter rain. Winter rain strikes hard upon the granite, but summer rain is sibilant soft upon the leaves. This rainstorm pounced hastily like an inexperienced lover, and then as suddenly was gone. The leaves drooped wistfully and the air gleamed with green reflections. It’s easy to forgive the summer rain; like first love, white lies or blarney, there’s no malignity in it.
Byrd and Jean-Paul were already seated at the café. Jean-Paul was as immaculate as a shop-window dummy but Byrd was excited and dishevelled. His hair was awry and his eyebrows almost non-existent, as though he’d been too near a water-heater blow-back. They had chosen a seat near the side screens and Byrd was wagging a finger and talking excitedly. Jean-Paul waved to us and folded his ear with his fingers. Maria laughed. Byrd was wondering if Jean-Paul was making a joke against him, but deciding he wasn’t, continued to speak.
‘Simplicity annoys them,’ Byrd said. ‘It’s just a rectangle, one of them complained, as though that was a criterion of art. Success annoys them. Even though I make almost no money out of my painting, that doesn’t prevent the critics who feel my work is bad from treating it like an indecent assault, as though I have deliberately chosen to do bad work in order to be obnoxious. They have no kindness, no compassion, you see, that’s why they call them critics – originally the word meant a captious fool; if they had compassion they would show it.’
‘How?’ asked Maria.
‘By painting. That’s what a painting is, a statement of love. Art is love, stricture is hate. It’s obvious, surely. You see, a critic is a man who admires painters (he wants to be one) but cares little for paintings (which is why he isn’t one). A painter, on the other hand, admires paintings, but doesn’t like painters.’ Byrd, having settled that problem, waved to a waiter. ‘Four grands crèmes and some matches,’ he ordered.
‘I want black coffee,’ said Maria.
‘I prefer black too,’ said Jean-Paul.
Byrd looked at me and made a little noise with his lips. ‘You want black coffee?’
‘White will suit me,’ I said. He nodded an appreciation of a fellow countryman’s loyalty. ‘Two crèmes – grands crèmes – and two small blacks,’ he ordered. The waiter arranged the beer mats, picked up some ancient checks and tore them in half. When he had gone Byrd leaned towards me. ‘I’m glad,’ he said – he looked around to see that the other two did not hear. They were talking to each other – ‘I’m glad you drink white coffee. It’s not good for the nerves, too much of this very strong stuff.’ He lowered his voice still more. ‘That’s why they are all so argumentative,’ he said in a whisper. When the coffees came Byrd arranged them on the table, apportioned the sugar, then took the check.
‘Let me pay,’ said Jean-Paul. ‘It was my invitation.’
‘Not on your life,’ said Byrd. ‘Leave this to me, Jean-Paul. I know how to handle this sort of thing, it’s my part of the ship.’
Maria and I looked at each other without expression. Jean-Paul was watching closely to discover our relationship.
Byrd relished the snobbery of certain French phrases. Whenever he changed from speaking French into English I knew it was solely because he intended to introduce a long slab of French into his speech and give a knowing nod and slant his face significantly, as if we two were the only people in the world who understood the French language.
‘Your inquiries about this house,’ said Byrd. He raised his forefinger. ‘Jean-Paul has remarkable news.’
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
‘Seems, my dear fellow, that there’s something of a mystery about your friend Datt and that house.’
‘He’s not a friend of mine,’ I said.
‘Quite quite,’ said Byrd testily. ‘The damned place is a brothel, what’s more …’
‘It’s not a brothel,’ said Jean-Paul as though he had explained this before. ‘It’s a maison de passe. It’s a house that people go to when they already have a girl with them.’
‘Orgies,’ said Byrd. ‘They have orgies there. Frightful goings on Jean-Paul tells me, drugs called LSD, pornographic films, sexual displays …’
Jean-Paul took over the narrative. ‘There are facilities for every manner of perversion. They have hidden cameras there and even a great mock torture-chamber where they put on shows …’
‘For masochists,’ said Byrd. ‘Chaps who are abnormal, you see.’
‘Of course he sees,’ said Jean-Paul. ‘Anyone who lives in Paris knows how widespread are such parties and exhibitions.’
‘I didn’t know,’ said Byrd. Jean-Paul said nothing. Maria offered her cigarettes around and said to Jean-Paul, ‘Where did Pierre’s horse come in yesterday?’
‘A friend of theirs with a horse,’ Byrd said to me.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Nowhere,’ said Jean-Paul.
‘Then I lost my hundred nouveaux,’ said Maria.
‘Foolish,’ said Byrd to me. He nodded.
‘My fault,’ said Jean-Paul.
‘That’s right,’ said Maria. ‘I didn’t give it a second look until you said it was a certainty.’
Byrd gave another of his conspiratorial glances over the shoulder.
‘You,’ he pointed to me as though he had just met me on a footpath in the jungle, ‘work for the German magazine Stern.’
‘I work for several German magazines,’ I admitted. ‘But not so loud, I don’t declare all of it for tax.’
‘You can rely upon me,’ said Byrd. ‘Mum’s the word.’
‘Mum’s