‘Of course you can! All you need to cover is the train fare — Uncle Alden will pay for everything else. He’s loaded, and generous. You’ll like him. He may be my uncle, but he’s actually only ten years older than me, and he acts much younger.’
I had always wanted to travel to Europe, and Paris in particular. Frankly, this might be my best opportunity, especially if I had somewhere to stay for free, and Nathan would be an amusing travelling companion. I would beg or steal the train fare, somehow. ‘All right. Yes. Thanks very much, Nathan.’
Nathan turned to Stephen, who had been watching all this with mild amusement. ‘What about you, Trickett-Smith? Will you come?’ Nathan seemed nervous as he asked the question.
As well he might. Stephen Trickett-Smith was not only one of the wealthiest undergraduates in college, he had also attended the country’s most prestigious public school. He was tall, with floppy fair hair, a long aquiline nose, and wide, thin lips. He had an arrogant, lazy charm, which bewitched women. And men.
He and his set looked down on the likes of middle-American parvenus like Nathan, just as they looked down on boys from northern minor public schools, like me.
‘It’s very kind of you, old man, but I am planning to drive around Italy with Maurice in August. Then off to Salzburg to meet Tutton.’
Maurice Bellincourt was an old school friend of Stephen’s, in fact Stephen’s best friend. Clever, pale, a wicked gossip who revelled in giving and taking offence, he and I did not get on, despite the fact that he was the cause of Stephen and me becoming friends. Or maybe because of it. Dr Tutton was a young Classics tutor of independent means who liked to suck up to the more glamorous undergraduates; Stephen had him under his spell.
The disappointment on Nathan’s face was obvious, and the suspicion germinated in my mind that I myself had only been asked as a way of persuading the more socially impressive Stephen to come too.
Nathan did his best to get Stephen to change his mind over the next couple of weeks, persisting to the point of rudeness, but without success. Until, that is, just before the end of term, when Stephen and Maurice quarrelled. I wasn’t quite sure what was the cause, but it seemed to be something Stephen had said to a cherubic Organ Scholar called Perrin with whom Maurice had developed an obsession. So Stephen was looking for an excuse to avoid spending August with his old school friend and Nathan’s invitation suddenly appeared much more attractive.
So now here we all were, on a train to Paris.
Nathan’s uncle, Alden O. Burns Jr, was waiting for us at the station. Nathan was right: Alden didn’t look much older than him, although he was a couple of inches taller, and glimpses of his forehead could be seen through his brushed-back red hair. But he seemed to have just as much energy as his nephew as he shook Nathan’s hand and clapped him on the back. Nathan introduced Stephen first, and then me. Alden’s smile was all charm and welcome.
‘I’ve got to apologize right away,’ he said. ‘I can’t fit all of you into my apartment. My niece Elaine is staying with us for a month or so. But don’t worry, I’ve gotten you rooms at the little hotel down the street. It’s small, but very comfortable, and they know me there. I’ll take care of the bill.’
‘Thank you, Mr Burns,’ said Stephen. ‘I’m sure we can cover it ourselves.’
I felt a moment of panic as I heard Stephen’s polite offer. Stephen might be able to cover a two-week hotel bill in Paris, but I was quite sure I couldn’t.
To my embarrassment, Alden caught my eye and smiled. ‘Absolutely not. I insist. While you are here, you are my guests. It’s wonderful to have Nathan over in Europe and I want to take as much advantage of it as I can.’
We climbed into Alden’s powerful Hispano-Suiza, parked close to the station, and he guided us through Paris’s jammed streets, with the top down. It was a warm, stuffy afternoon, but as long as the car was moving, the air kept us cool.
I looked around me in wonder. To me, London was glamorous, I had scarcely visited the capital more than three times in my life, but Paris was on a completely different plane: the brightly coloured awnings of the boulangeries and the pâtisseries, the elaborately decorated buildings, the boulevards, the trees and the people — men and women alike, exquisitely dressed, stylish, poised, purposeful. The old Paris clichés had come alive and were promenading in front of me: dachshunds and poodles trotted along next to slender ankles above high heels; street vendors wearing berets and full, dark moustaches pushed handcarts; slim men strolled and strutted, bearing smaller, trimmer moustaches, striped blazers and canes; gendarmes with their white batons and high kepis conducted it all. The sounds of accordion music swirled through the horns, the gear-grinding and the chuntering of the slow-moving traffic. Posters on the newspaper kiosks advertised the latest shows at the Moulin Rouge or the Casino de Paris. And everywhere the elegant swirl of the word ‘Métropolitaine’ promised modernity and style, even underground.
Alden lived on the left bank, so the Hispano-Suiza battled its way around the place de la Concorde and across the Seine, the Eiffel Tower rising on one side and Notre-Dame on the other. Alden’s apartment was in the rue du Bac, an elegant residential street stretching south from the river near the glamorous Gare D’Orsay. The buildings were made of a stone that glimmered yellow in the hazy afternoon sun, each high window skirted by balconies of elaborate iron lace. Alden dropped us at our hotel, with instructions for us to join him at his apartment for cocktails at seven.
At Stephen’s gentle suggestion, we arrived at a quarter past, rather than seven on the dot, which had been Nathan’s initial idea. We passed the concierge at the entrance to the building, climbed a broad stone staircase to the first floor, and were greeted at the door of Alden’s apartment by an English butler. Alden was sitting sipping cocktails with three women and leaped to his feet to welcome his guests.
‘This is my wife, Madeleine, and her sister Sophie, and this is Elaine, whom you know, of course, Nathan.’
‘Enchanté, Madame,’ I said to the stunningly beautiful woman who was Alden’s wife. I was pretty good at French, I could read it well and speak it passably, and I was eager to try it out.
Madame Burns smiled at me, her brown eyes amused. She was dark, with wide cheekbones and full red lips that pouted and pursed. She wore a sleek black dress, which showed off a figure that would excite any red-blooded nineteen-year-old. Her neck was adorned with a thin pearl necklace, and delicate sapphires glinted beneath her ears. A complicated jewel of diamonds and a large emerald drew my attention to her chest, which is where it would have been drawn anyway. A hint of the scent of a warm summer garden drifted around her.
‘And I am very pleased to meet you,’ she said in heavily accented English. ‘It’s OK, I think we will speak English this evening. Elaine is supposed to be learning French, but I am sure she will enjoy the interruption.’
‘I sure will,’ said Elaine, who was a pretty girl of perhaps sixteen or seventeen with a small red mouth, dark curly hair and a pert upturned nose. She smiled at me, looked me up and down, wasn’t impressed, and turned towards Stephen.
The third woman was Sophie de Parzac, Mrs Burns’s younger but taller sister. Her hair was short and fair, her eyes large and blue, with a slightly lost look that I found extremely appealing.
‘Have you ever been to Paris before, Mr Culzie?’ Mrs Burns asked me.
‘Er...’ I said.
Madeleine Burns raised her eyebrows.
I wanted to try to convey how excited I was to be in Paris, how I had dreamed of visiting the city, how different it was to the Dales, how grateful I was that Nathan’s uncle had extended his invitation to his friends. ‘No,’ I said.