Folly Du Jour by Barbara Cleverly Read Free Book Online Page A

approach and he flung himself inside. Bonnefoye and Miss Watkins were sitting together on the back seat.
    ‘What have you done with our hero?’ panted Joe.
    ‘Dropped him off at Reception in the hangar. He’ll be all right. The American Ambassador’s taken cover in there with him, offering medical aid, engineering assistance and a bed and breakfast at the Embassy when they can make a break for it. And now, Sandilands, if you’ve quite finished horsing around and showing off, perhaps we can extricate ourselves from this mêlée and get ahead of the crowd before they all block the road back into Paris.’ Bonnefoye looked anxiously at his watch. ‘If you’d taken many more curtain calls we’d have missed the best of the entertainment at Zelli’s, which is where I’m planning we’ll make a start.’

Chapter Five
    Act followed act and George settled to enjoy himself. Music Hall. This was something he could respond to. And the quality of the turns was high – the best the world had to offer, he would have thought, and lavishly staged. He admired especially a slender woman in a tight black sheath, and was moved to wiping a sentimental tear from his eye as she sang of the fickleness of men. He wasn’t quite sure about the androgynous creature who swung out over the audience on a Watteau-like, flower-bedecked swing and, at the end of the act, peeled off a blonde wig to reveal a man’s hairless scalp. Not entertaining. But he enjoyed the lines of chorus girls, performing complex manoeuvres to the split second. Some backstage drill sergeant deserved a commendation, George reckoned.
    To huge enthusiasm, Josephine Baker made a second appearance just before the interval but this time she sang. Coming forward and involving the audience with a touching directness she warbled in a thin, little-girl’s voice, strange but, once heard, unforgettable, of her two loves: J’ai deux amours, Mon pays et Paris . . .
    Everyone including George was enchanted. Except, apparently, for Alice. She leaned over and whispered: ‘ Two loves? Is that all she’s declaring? Ha! And the other thousand!’ Miss Baker bowed and laughed and made her way offstage, the curtain was lowered and the lights began to come on again in the auditorium. Alice started to fidget. Under the pretence of stretching her legs, she moved her chair stealthily back a foot or so and lifted the hood of her cape to cover her head again. Odd behaviour. George wondered whether he should remark on it and decided to give no indication he’d noticed anything strange. If she wanted to tell him, she would tell him in her own good time of whom she was so afraid. But he rather thought it was not her intention to confide in him at all. Do you whisper your terrors to the trunk of a sheltering oak tree when the lightning is flashing all around? No, you stay under its branches looking out, with just the anxious eyes Alice was trying to hide from him, until the storm was over. But perhaps there was some revealing reaction he could provoke?
    ‘Ah, the interval already,’ he exclaimed jovially. ‘I say, Alice, I was rather expecting my cousin Jack would be with me tonight. I’ve ordered up a tray of whisky . . . not at all suitable for a lady. I’ll just speed off and change that to champagne, shall I? Or is there something else you’d prefer? Now what was that pink drink you used to like?’ He started to get up. ‘Though – we could go and show our faces in the bar?’
    Her reaction was instant. She seized him by the arm, trying to hold him in his place. ‘No! You’re quite wrong, George. I’ll drink whisky with great pleasure. Don’t go off into those crowds, you’ll never find your way back and we’ll lose minutes of precious time. It’s been five years – you must have such lots to tell me. Let’s just stay quietly here, shall we? And talk about old times.’ And then, with relief: ‘Ah – here are our drinks.’
    So – he hadn’t imagined her nervousness, her