Elliot grunts and ponders the proposal. ‘We’re gonna cross the Rubicon,’ he sings:
‘We’re going to be free
We’re gonna cross the Rubicon
And choose democracy.’
‘How about that?’ cries John, hammering his fist on the steering wheel. ‘That’ll drive the Czech kids wild.’
‘Or maybe,’ Elliot adds vaguely, ‘the other way round.’
Ellie has moved away from him and closer to James. She holds his hand in a rare demonstration of affection. ‘You OK?’
He shakes his head. The whole world moves.
‘It’ll soon wear off.’
They come to the outskirts of Strasbourg, the supermarkets, filling stations, small factories and warehouses, a brewery, all the detritus deposited by a modern town around itself, like an animal shitting round its own nest. Then the buildings crowd in and the road dives beneath railway lines and over water and reaches the centre, part timber-framed, part a local sandstone the colour of bruised flesh. The timber is painted in a variety of colours, like an old lady tarted up with eyeshadow on her eyelids, lipstick on her impoverished lips, rouge on her cheeks.
‘Looks a real cool place,’ John the driver decides, peering through the windscreen.
‘Yeah,’ agrees Archer. ‘Old.’
‘Cute,’ Ellie offers.
‘Yeah, cute.’
‘Look, you can put us down anywhere. Just here’ll be fine.’
They pull over at the edge of a square. A sign points towards Le Rhin, République Fédérale d’Allemagne. John turns round. ‘Hey, guys, you sure you don’t want to come on with us?’
‘Go on, man,’ says Elliot. He grins at Ellie and mouths the word Rubicon.
‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ she replies. ‘We’ll get off here. Going south, you see.’
Elliot leers and points. ‘Down south?’
‘Italy.’
‘Right, Italy.’ He nods vaguely. There are plenty more Rubicons in the lives of men. Ellie slides the door open and leaps out, dragging her rucksack after her. Dutifully, a little unsteadily, James follows, pursued by cheers from inside the dark cave. Archer, the drummer, leans out of the front window and beats a paradiddle on the side door. There are whoops and yells as the van pulls away in a squeal of tyres. Pedestrians stare.
James feels relief, as though some kind of danger has been overcome. ‘Let’s find somewhere to stay,’ Ellie says. ‘We passed a pension a couple of streets back.’
‘We can’t afford a pension.’
‘We’re not going to pitch your bloody tent in the middle of the town, are we? Anyway, Elliot’s paying.’
‘Elliot?’
‘I sold him the grass.’
‘The grass? For God’s sake, why?’
‘Don’t want you turning into a pothead, that’s why.’ There’s something approaching affection in her expression.
‘Why should I?’
‘I could see it in your eyes. My advice? Stay clear. Keep clean and simple like you were. It suits you. You don’t want to end up like that cretin.’ Which is something of a relief, because, in his befuddled state, he almost fancied Ellie and Elliot as intertwined as their names, crossing and recrossing each other’s Rubicons. Now she marches on alone, slight and indomitable, down a narrow street where an ancient sign announces Pension Alsace.
The hallway of the pension is narrow and dark brown and smells of mould and vinegar. A framed print of women in traditional costume hangs on the wall nearby but the Madame in charge of the place has long ago abandoned any decorative dress in favour of what appears to be a nut-brown sack. At Ellie’s peremptory ringing of the reception bell, she emerges from somewhere in the back and regards the two new customers with a mixture of contempt and suspicion. ‘Oui?’
Ellie smiles. She can do that, smile warmly to disperse all doubts. She is small and sharp and able, while James feels large and clumsy and incompetent. Her language helps, the French she learned at school, polished on holidays in France and finally, James has subsequently discovered, buffed up with a six-month exchange with a family in Bordeaux. So the two ladies smile at each other and trade polite greetings and icy compliments while the visitors’ passports are examined as thoroughly as by any border policeman. The woman looks up and says something to Ellie in which the words mariés and épouse seem to feature, along with the word catholique. Ellie’s smile is like a razor cut. Bien sûr, she replies. Notre lune de miel, she insists. Étudiants, she explains. The woman ponders the matter for a while before squirrelling the passports away in exchange for two forms to be filled in with enough details for a job application. ‘Ça va,’ she agrees grudgingly once the forms are completed, and hands over a key with a brass label inscribed with 301. ‘Seulement une nuit.’ As though more than one night might lead to moral complications she can hardly tolerate.
‘What was that all about?’ James asks as they climb the stairs – there is, of course, no lift. ‘Are we—’
‘Married, yes.’
‘Married? What the—?’
‘If we weren’t married, there wouldn’t have been a deal at all. Madame is a very devout Catholic. At least that’s what she claims. So if we weren’t a newly-wed couple she’d have insisted on separate rooms. And I wasn’t going to pay for two.’
The room is on the top floor, crouching beneath the eaves. It’s halfway between an abandoned attic and a dormitory, a twisted, asymmetrical space divided with wooden beams and posts, with a double bed at one end and two single beds halfway down. There’s a washbasin but no bathroom. The bathroom is off the landing, shared with whoever occupies the other room up there under the roof tiles.
‘So here we are,’ Ellie says, contemplating their little retreat. She seems awkward, as though she hasn’t really been expecting this. Somehow a shared room is more intimate than a shared tent. ‘I’m going to have a shower, and then we’d better get something to eat.’
Which is putting off all the awkward implications. Married, even. And a shared bed will be necessary evidence. James the scientist thinks these thoughts amongst many others as she darts off to the bathroom and comes back with hair somehow more ordered – that vivacious cloud of pale gold – and T-shirt changed (the old one washed and laid out on the tiles outside one of the dormer windows) and even – is this possible? – a dash of lipstick on those eloquent lips. They go out, taking Madame’s recommendation, to a small bistro round the corner that serves local food at a good price, where they share a pichet of Alsatian wine, and then another when the first – faintly sweet and scented – disappears with silken ease. Ellie laughs, relaxes, smokes, seems altogether different from the sharp and prickly woman she can be. Her eyes glisten. Her lips shine. Or is it the other way round? She even bums a cigarette off the men – a trio of builders – at the next table. Does she want to join them for a beer? No, she doesn’t, although it was kind of them to ask. She is with her fiancé, thank you.
He can come too, if he wants.
Actually, they are on their honeymoon. Lune de miel.
Much ribald laughter and understanding.
Back in their room – their room; the sexual thrill of that collective pronoun – she stands beside the bed, looking at him with that strange, out-of-focus look she has. The only illumination is a single bedside light – the other one doesn’t work and the ceiling light is a harsh, bare bulb that she turned off with a shriek of horror as soon as it came on – so her figure is blurred, like something sketched in charcoal, thrown into relief and shadowed with grey. ‘So,’ she says, giving a little smile and pulling her T-shirt over her head. She has nothing on underneath. He knows that, of course. He has watched her at length, already observed the fluid shifting of things beneath the cotton, but despite the strange intimacies they have already shared, this is the first time he has seen her breasts. When she shakes her hair out they move loosely, pale in the half-light. He tries, and fails, to avert his eyes, but why should he bother? She appears heedless of his gaze, dropping her jeans round her ankles, kicking them away and slipping under the bedclothes with blithe indifference. He sits on his side of the bed to try and keep things to himself.