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Chapter 4
…let the past be past; let be…
The restaurant was packed to the rafters with the Friday night supper crowd, but I didn’t mind waiting for a table. It was a cozy sort of restaurant—small and warm, filled with glorious smells and furnished with a tasteful eye for detail. Besides, I thought, one had to like the name: Le Coeur de Lion. In honor of Richard the Lionheart, I presumed. Plantagenets again. Harry, when he stayed in Chinon, probably ate here every night.
While the seven of us waited, packed like sardines by the door, I introduced myself to the shy young German. His name was Christian Rand, he told me, above a firm but fleeting handshake.
“Christian’s an artist,” said Simon, who had dressed up a bit for dinner, topping his T-shirt with a thick black jumper and smoothing back his hair into a sailor’s pigtail. “He’s not a tourist, not like us. He’s lived in Chinon for… how long, Christian? Five years?”
“Six.”
“Really?” I looked at Christian Rand with interest. “At the Hotel de France?” I’d read of all those great composers, poets, writers, who had lived in hotel rooms, of course, but I’d never actually met someone who…
“No.” He shook his tousled head and smiled. “For these past two months only. I had until July a small house, not too far from Chinon, but my neighbors they were not so good. And so my friends the Chamonds said that I could stay at their hotel while I am looking for another house.”
It was the longest speech I’d heard him make, and the effort appeared to leave him exhausted.
“And now you’ve found one,” Garland piped up, her tone bright.
“Yes.” Christian looked down silently. He wasn’t as slow as he looked, I thought. He knew quite well that Garland Whitaker was dying to draw him into conversation, to learn as much as she could about his dealings with this Martine woman, whoever she was. But Christian Rand was not prepared to play.
The waiter finally managed to find us a table tucked well away from the other patrons, where we wouldn’t disturb the quieter, more reticent French at their evening meal.
Garland Whitaker perused the menu with an expression of vague distrust. “Maybe a pizza,” she decided. “Though they’re not real pizzas here, you know. Not like we get back home. Jim ordered a pizza here a couple of nights ago and when it came to the table it had an egg in the middle of it. Can you imagine? A runny egg. I tell you, I nearly died…”
“Sounds kind of good, actually,” Simon mused, leaning forward. “Which one was that, Jim?”
Garland was mortified. “Oh, Simon, don’t. If there’s anything I can’t stand, it’s the sight of a runny egg.” She looked away, missing Simon’s smirk, and turned inquiring eyes on Christian Rand. “You’ll be moving into your new house tomorrow, I take it?”
“Yes.”
Garland turned to Neil and smiled sweetly. “Then I guess you’ll be our only artist left in residence, darling.”
I’d been trying, since we left the hotel, not to notice Neil at all. For reasons I chose not to explore, I found it easier to talk to Simon or to Paul—or even to the taciturn Christian—than to meet those quietly intense dark eyes. But I couldn’t keep it up forever, especially not since he’d taken the chair directly opposite mine. I glanced up, in time to see him shrug off Garland’s comment with a small, indulgent smile. “I’m hardly in Christian’s league.”
“Nonsense,” Simon said. “You had Paul reciting poetry today, in the stairwell.”
Neil’s eyebrows lifted. “Poetry?”
“Yeah. In French, of course, so I didn’t understand it. What was it you said, Paul?”
Paul lifted his head, looking faintly embarrassed, and shrugged. “Just a quotation I remembered. Not poetry. Just something George Sand wrote in her diary about Liszt.”
“What was it?” I asked him, curious myself now. He sent me such a look as Caesar must have given Brutus, and repeated the quotation out loud. It was a lovely phrase, almost lyrical in its sentiment, and it told me rather more about the boy Paul Lazarus than it did about Neil’s violin playing.
“Are you going to share it with the rest of us?” Garland Whitaker prompted, a trifle impatiently.
It was only when I looked up, into Neil Grantham’s blank expectant face, that I suddenly realized Paul and I must be the only ones who understood the French language on that level.
“Sorry,” I apologized. “It means: ‘My griefs are etherealized, and my instincts are…’” I faltered, and looked to Paul. “How would you translate that last word?”
“Exalted?”
“That’s it.” I nodded. “‘My instincts are exalted.’”
“How pretty.” Garland eased back in her chair, satisfied.
“Indeed.” Neil looked sideways at Paul. “Thank you.”
