Sylvie folded her hands neatly in her lap and smiled mischievously. ‘I’ve never been taken here for a drink – I hear it’s quite unwholesome.’
I jumped up, my face burning. ‘We can go somewhere else.’
‘I want to stay here.’ She laughed at me again and signalled for the waiter. ‘I’ll have a whisky sour,’ she told him. ‘And this gentleman will have some wine-and-water.’
The waiter went away without saying anything, but I thought I saw him sneer at me. Freddie would have known exactly where to take her, I told myself, and he would have done the ordering.
Sylvie took out her cigarette case and lit a cigarette. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Now I can get to know you properly.’
‘There’s not much to know.’
‘Don’t be so hard on yourself. People are talking about you already, you know.’
‘Why?’
‘You’re absurdly handsome, Theo.’
I felt my heart beating violently in my throat. I’d never been made to feel handsome by people my own age – it seemed too manly a word – but maybe adults had a different idea of beauty to children and I thought how wonderful it would be to be part of a world where I was appreciated rather than laughed at.
Sylvie gave me her special smile and breathed blue smoke out of her nostrils. ‘Freddie noticed it,’ she said, ‘the first time we saw you at the hotel. He said “Who’s that beautiful boy over there?” You were like a wild animal, the way you were watching us with your big eyes. Then you ran away as soon as we’d spotted you.’
Knowing that Freddie thought that made me feel hot and cold at the same time. I flailed around for something to say. ‘Sorry.’
‘For what?’
‘For running away – it’s rude.’
‘I wouldn’t say that.’ She leaned back again in her chair. ‘Now, I know you were born in bonny Scotland, but have you lived anywhere else?’
‘No. Have you?’
‘Born in Buffalo twenty-five years ago,’ she said, pulling on her cigarette. ‘Mother died when I was seven, father remarried.’ She parted her lips slightly to let the smoke curl out of her mouth. ‘I actually liked my stepmother, but my father was a bit of a kook, so I went to live with Aunt Tattie in Chicago when I was thirteen. Then she decided I was running with some unsavoury characters so she took me to Paris, where I met my husband, the Comte de Croÿ.’
The Comte de Croÿ; I rolled the title around in my head – he was probably old and rich and fat.
Our drinks arrived and Sylvie waited until the waiter had gone before continuing, ‘We lived for a little while in Beaufort, his castle in Normandy, but I felt … trapped. So he agreed to bring me out here.’
So he was some provincial Frenchman who didn’t speak a word of English and ignored her. I remembered Lady Joan’s disapproving face when she mentioned Sylvie, and felt a surge of protective anger. Why should she stay with her husband if she was unhappy? If someone younger came along who could make her laugh, and look after her, then why shouldn’t she be with them?
Sylvie dropped her cigarette on the floor and ground it out, then scooped Roderigo up in one arm. ‘And that’s the potted history.’ She held her glass up and I chinked mine against it. ‘Salut. Your turn.’
‘Born in Scotland,’ I said, shifting in my seat. ‘Lived there until a month or so ago. Both parents alive. One sister.’
‘She’s charming. She reminds me of my eldest daughter.’
I took a sip of my wine, but it went down the wrong way and I broke into a coughing fit. Sylvie took out another cigarette and lit it, pretending she hadn’t noticed. I took a second sip of the wine, trying to calm my throat. ‘I didn’t know you had children. You don’t look old enough.’
‘I’m not,’ Sylvie said. ‘I wasn’t. I should have waited.’ She drained her whisky sour and gestured to the waiter for another. ‘They’re both living in France with Aunt Tattie. Great Aunt Tattie now.’
‘Oh.’
‘They’re adorable, but they’re …’ She leaned back in her chair, resting her head against it. ‘People. Human beings.’ Roderigo climbed back up to his perch on her shoulder and she scratched him behind his ear.
‘I suppose so.’
She smiled. ‘I mean – they’re real. And they’re so small and they need you so much, and I couldn’t be sure I wasn’t going to mess up their lives.’
She looked so beautiful and fragile. I knew I should say something, but I didn’t want to disturb her, either.
‘I’m sure you wouldn’t. You’re very nice.’
‘I’ll give you a tip.’ She pulled on her cigarette. ‘That’s not really a word that women want to be called.’
‘Sorry.’
She was laughing at me again, but I didn’t mind.
The waiter brought over her second cocktail and we clinked glasses again. I was suddenly, idiotically happy.
‘To Africa,’ she said. ‘And new friends.’
‘To new friends.’
When we finished our drinks I tossed the money down onto the table and hurried over to pull out Sylvie’s chair for her. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her tip the contents of the ashtray she’d been using onto the floor, and slip the ashtray into her purse. I stopped just beside her, feeling my cheeks flare up.
‘Well,’ she was saying. ‘Now I can cross this bar off my to-do list.’
‘Yes,’ I mumbled.
She looked up at me expectantly. My mind was racing – maybe her husband controlled the money and wouldn’t give her any. Maybe she was keeping it as a souvenir of our drink together.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I can’t get up with you standing there.’
I looked at her properly and she smiled. I felt her perfume envelop me.
‘Let me,’ I said, and moved her chair back for her as she stood.
‘You’re a rarity, Theo,’ she said. ‘Beautiful people don’t usually have beautiful natures.’
My breath caught in my chest, making me feel dizzy. Without thinking about it I offered her my arm, as I’d seen young men do to young women before. Sylvie considered it gravely, then slipped her arm through mine. I knew I would be late back to the hotel, and my mother would probably be angry, but it didn’t seem to matter any more.
‘Where shall we go?’ I asked.
Christmas arrived a week later. I woke with the sunshine falling across my face. ‘Auntie’, the white-haired proprietor of The Norfolk, had arranged for stockings filled with oranges, nuts and chocolate to be hung on each guest’s door, and we ate the food with the shutters and garden doors wide open, the sky blossoming above us into a rich, cloudless blue. Ten feet away a group of white-bellied-go-away-birds gathered, bleating to each other on the branch of a mango tree. It was a world away from Christmas at home.
Down in the lobby, the staff had decorated the Christmas tree with bells and coloured candles, and guests were drinking glasses of champagne, fanning themselves in the heat. My parents joined them while we went for a swim, staying on the edge of the other groups of children, then we took a rickshaw to the Carlton Grill on Government Road.
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