The tables were of rough-hewn wood and the stools hard and uncompromising. The stone walls were whitewashed and a wooden staircase led to a gallery where there were more tables. People leaned on the wooden rail and gazed down on the orchestra, their faces flickering in the candlelight, tiny mobile pinpoints of light shining in their eyes.
Bannerman and Sally sat at a table by the big window that looked out on the Place du Grand Sablon, and though the café was busy they felt safe and anomymous in its darkness. A waiter with a black shirt and trousers and a white napkin over his arm came to take their order. Sally’s face brightened. ‘You must try their speciality,’ she said. And to the waiter, ‘Deux thés Slaves.’
Bannerman looked around. The clientele was mostly middle-aged. There were one or two young couples holding hands below tables and watching the orchestra or gazing at each other as though they had just discovered love for the first time and it was unique to them.
‘The place never closes,’ Sally said. ‘Open twenty-four hours a day. I used to come in for a drink sometimes after college and sometimes after babysitting for Tania.’ She was talking for the sake of talking. ‘On Sundays the square is used as a market for the antique dealers. You can see the antique shops across the other side there, and on Sundays there are stalls set out right up to the church.’
Bannerman smiled and reached for her hand. ‘You don’t have to talk,’ he said.
She took a deep breath and tried to smile. This was so difficult for her. She said, ‘I think, perhaps, I could love you, Neil. I don’t really know, but I think it might be worth a try.’ He felt her hand tighten around his. ‘It’s been too easy just to put it off, not to think about it. But now I’ve got to decide, haven’t I?’
‘I thought you already had. I thought you were going tomorrow.’
The violinist had begun to wander among the tables and he stopped now at theirs and played for them. It seemed as though all the eyes in the café were on them. Bannerman looked up at him and shook his head almost imperceptibly, but the maestro did not miss it. He was too experienced. He smiled and moved away to the next table. Sally’s smile was strained. ‘God, it’s embarrassing when that happens.’ She hesitated, then for the first time faced him with it. ‘Help me, Neil. Please. If I only knew how you felt. If... if you wanted me to, I’d stay.’
There had been a time when she had vowed never to make that kind of commitment again. To any man. And she remembered the horror of that night before the wedding. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. Just that. ‘I’m sorry.’ And there had been the tears, the humiliation of turning away all those people who’d travelled for the wedding. Sending back the presents. The embarrassment of her friends who didn’t know what to say to her. The false comfort of the relatives who told her they never liked him anyway.
But things had changed. She was thirty-two now. Ahead of her lay a lifetime of loneliness. And with Bannerman, somehow, it seemed different in a way that had caught her off balance. Yet she hardly knew him and within her still lay the seeds of doubt and mistrust sown that night three years before. But maybe, just maybe, it would be worth trying.
The thés Slaves arrived in glasses wrapped around with paper napkins, a mixture of tea and some kind of spirit that the waiter set alight at their table. The flames licked up over the rims of the glasses, soft and warm. Bannerman looked across the table at Sally’s downturned face. The flames softened it and he thought she looked almost beautiful. He felt a tremendous weight of responsibility. It would be too easy to say yes, he wanted her to stay. But he knew she would make demands on him that he was not sure he was capable of fulfilling. And his was the kind of life into which love did not fit easily. There was a place inside him, big and empty, that needed it badly. But in that way he was like Tania. It was so often those who needed love most who were the most difficult to love. And what kind of life could he give her? ‘It’s not for me to say,’ he said, knowing that he didn’t want her to go. ‘You don’t know anything about me.’ He blew blew out the flames in their glasses. ‘Drink,’ he said. ‘You’ll feel better.’ And he thought what an empty son of thing it was to say.
They lifted the scalding liquid to their lips and drank it in tiny sips. It was strong, and the spirit filled their mouths like a cold breath before slipping, burning, over their throats to bring a real glow to their insides. She stared into her glass. ‘Is that just a roundabout way of saying that you don’t want me to stay?’ Bannerman said nothing. If that was what she wanted to think then perhaps it would be easier for her. Then suddenly she said, ‘I’d like to spend just one night with you, Neil. Something...’ she hesitated, ‘to remember you by.’
So, she had decided and he knew now that it was beyond recall. He was going to say he didn’t think it would be a good idea, but a voice cut in before he could speak.
‘Well, Mr. Bannerman, isn’t this a surprise. Come on, Henry. You don’t mind if we join you, Mr. Bannerman?’ Mrs. Schumacher sat herself down without waiting for his reply.
Bannerman turned in astonishment. Mrs. Schumacher grinned at him, her face flushed that way he had seen it at the party. She had been drinking. Behind her Henry Schumacher hovered apologetically. He nodded politely at Bannerman and the girl. ‘Perhaps they want to be alone, dear,’ he said tentatively.
‘Oh, nonsense, Henry, sit down.’ Then to Bannerman, ‘Well, Mr. Bannerman this is a real surprise. Aren’t you going to introduce us to your young lady?’ And confidentially, ‘My, you are a fast worker. Does she speak English?’
Bannerman smiled indulgently. ‘She is English. Miss Sally Robertson — Mr. and Mrs. Schumacher.’
Sally was taken aback by the sudden arrival of this garrulous American woman with her big bosoms and timid husband. She took a moment to collect herself. ‘How do you do?’
‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, my dear.’
A waiter arrived promptly at the table and Mrs. Schumacher gave him a broad grin. ‘How are you tonight, Jean?’
‘I am very well, madame. Have you had a good night?’ His manners were impeccable. He looked almost as though he was genuinely interested in the reply.
‘Why, yes, Jean, as always. We took your advice about that little restaurant in the Grand Place. Exquisite.’
‘I’m very pleased, Madame. You will have a sherry?’
‘Well, yes. But just a very small one.’
‘And Monsieur?’
‘A small whisky, please.’
Jean bowed and dematerialised into the gloom.
Sally and Bannerman exchanged looks. ‘Actually we were just leaving,’ Bannerman said.
Schumacher leaped self-consciously to his feet to allow Sally out from behind the table.
‘Perhaps you would join us for a drink tomorrow night,’ he said. ‘We are going home on Sunday.’ He seemed so eager for their company that Bannerman was almost sorry to turn him down.
‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible.’
‘That’s a pity,’ Mrs. Schumacher said. ‘Tomorrow’s our last day, and I would so have liked to hear all about the exciting world of newspapers. We’re flying back to Edinburgh on Sunday morning to spend another few days there before going back to the States. The folks back home would just have loved to hear all about it. It is The Times you work for, isn’t it?’
‘The Post. The Edinburgh Post.’
She frowned as the myth she had been building in her mind crumbled. She would no doubt rebuild it over the next few days. ‘Wasn’t it just terrible about that poor Mr. Griffin?’