Alphabet Weekends - Elizabeth Noble [89]
‘Do you know where we’re meant to be having supper?’ Tom asked.
‘Not exactly, but I’m sure we can find it. It’s called something like the Tavern of the Recruiting Sergeant.’
‘Sounds dreadful.’
‘No – it’s meant to be great fun. Suze says it’s very atmospheric. The sort of place where you can only eat steak and frites, and there’s only one house white and one house red, and they come in jugs.’
‘Come on, then. We’ve got to be back at the Gare du Nord in—’
‘Two and a half hours!’ Natalie had read the face of her new watch exultantly.
For atmospheric, read incredibly noisy and Gallic, but the steak was thick and juicy, and the jugs flowed – okay, they sort of sloshed. Tom wondered if Natalie’s brief to Susannah had been to find the least romantic restaurant in the capital of romance, but dismissed the thought as paranoia.
He didn’t know if they’d ever be more than they were now, but if they were, he already knew that they wouldn’t be your conventional romantics. He might have liked to be. He could see himself buying flowers, leaving notes under pillows and all that stuff. He just wasn’t sure he could see Natalie accepting them. She was seriously out of the habit, if she’d ever been in it. He might have to see what he could do about it.
It was dark when they came out, somewhat gratefully, into the quiet street, which was practically deserted. Natalie linked arms with him and they started in vaguely the right direction for a cab. Five minutes later, they hadn’t reached the place she had thought they would. ‘Better have a look at the map. We’re pushing it for time.’
They headed for a doorway with a soft yellow light above it, and Natalie pulled out the map. She started tracing lines with her finger to orient herself.
In another doorway across the road, a couple were kissing passionately, oblivious of their presence. It was a full-on, Robert Doisneau, filmic snog – his hands in her hair, her arms flung round his neck, their eyes closed, bodies locked from lip to knee.
Tom looked down at Natalie as she studied the map. They were very close under the lamp. He could see the gentle rise and fall of her pale chest, and the almost imperceptible throb of the pulse in her neck. Then she glanced up and saw the other couple, watched them for a second, then raised her face to him. The shadows accentuated the dip between her nose and mouth, and her lips glistened where the light caught them. Her pupils were huge and black – he could almost see himself reflected in them.
Natalie’s head was asking her: Is this the man?
He wanted to kiss her so much right then that it hurt in the pit of his stomach, just under the steak and frites. She didn’t move her face. It would have taken only the slightest movement from either of them to bring their mouths together, but they were still. It seemed like they hadn’t even blinked. And everything was in that look. Everything.
Tom’s heart was telling him: This is the girl.
A second before the headlamps on the car changed the colours of the light, and broke the moment, Tom moved away from her. And she recognised him doing it. He didn’t know whether he was relieved or disappointed to see it was a taxi. The next twenty minutes were spent hailing it, garbling instructions, très vite, s’il vous plâit, racing through Paris to the station, running down the platform. They caught the train with what felt like seconds to spare, and fell gratefully, breathlessly, into their seats.
Natalie laughed at him. ‘You look so stressed! I always catch trains like this.’
‘Why?’
‘Because life’s an adventure, Tom.’
But twenty minutes later she was asleep, her head against her rolled-up jacket, her bare feet up on the seat next to him. Tom watched her. I wonder if she wondered why I didn’t kiss her back there, he pondered. I wonder if she minded. I wonder what would have happened if the cab had been two minutes later. Would she have moved in towards me, like she did in the bedroom at the health farm? Or would she have changed the subject, made a joke? And if she had kissed me, got