‘Hit it, Artie,’ she shouted, and he did.
There were a few cymbal crashes and trumpet blasts on the soundtrack, which made all the people at the bar who were a bit disconnected start with surprise, and then, eyes firmly fixed on the back of the room, we launched into it.
‘Allons enfants de la Patrie,
La jour de gloire est arrivé!’
Yes, Anna’s brilliant idea was that we should sing ‘La Marseillaise’. As she had said, we had all learned it at school during our French lessons.
‘Yes, about fifty years ago,’ I’d said the previous evening.
‘We can’t sing that!’ Harriet had stuttered.
‘Why ever not? A good tune never goes out of fashion,’ Anna had insisted, ‘and they are hardly going to boo us off the stage if we are singing their national anthem, are they?’
That night by the time we got to:
Contre nous de la tyrannie
‘l’étendard sanglant est levé
we had gained everyone’s attention.
Not sure if it was a good thing or not, we pressed on.
And when we got to:
Aux armes, citoyens!
Formez vos bataillons!
it was clear that Anna’s hunch had been right. People were already standing on their chairs, singing along, some with their clenched fists in the air. A few had their arms around each other’s shoulders and were almost shouting the words.
At last we got to the rousing finale.
Marchons! Marchons!
The noise in the room was incredible and when we finished, there was an absolute roar of approval.
The three of us took off our French flag neckerchiefs and waved them above our heads to another huge cheer from the audience and then there was a flash from a camera somewhere near the back of the bar which caught my attention.
And over the tops of people’s heads and waving arms, I saw him. And despite the heat from the room and the warmth of our reception, I felt quite cold with shock.
It was him. It was the man I had seen earlier. The same man from the train. How on earth could he be here? What was going on?
I wiped the perspiration from my face and looked again.
Yes, it was definitely him. He was looking down at his camera, adjusting something and then taking some more pictures.
Was he after all actually stalking us? But why? Surely not? We weren’t worth stalking; we weren’t famous or even the mothers of famous people.
He looked up and grinned across the crowd at me and then he gave me a little salute and disappeared out into the street.
Meanwhile the three of us were being helped down off the stage and Arturo was trying to restore some sort of order.
‘I think I need a drink,’ I gasped, ‘and I don’t mean Pellegrino.’
Someone from the audience had bought us three brandies, someone else three Cointreaus, and they were plonked on our table in front of us like some sort of miniature beer pong experiment.
