We went out in the street and walke to a park, and Mama and I had our picture taken in French. The result looke just like a picture taken in English. A small square picture of me in my Eton suit holding a hoop (that was part of having your picture taken) and Mama leaning against a park gate. It's such a simple little picture on my wall that I simply can't understand why it doesn't show all the turmoil and the history of that afternoon.
When we got back to the hotel, Paris was just gathering itself for the evening. Men in bleu horizon pants, and top hats from the Almanach de Gotha… which propped up the missing leg on our hotel chair… and the little string ban playing—I can still hear them—Mendelssohn's Auf Flügeln des Gesanges. I had once spent a bitter two weeks on a piano struggling with that music. I would know it in hell… which was an idea.
The lights were not on in our suite, and we found Aunt Fran lying on the sofa, looking at the dark ceiling. She was not crying, and Mama put the lights on and Aunt Fran sat up and looked at us, and sniffed her tiny nose.
“When can we leave for Austria?”
“Soon, Fran.… What shall we do tonight?”
“Do ladies get drunk?”
“No,” said Mama, “but let's gamble. Remember what Gramp always said, ‘To the brave chemin de fer.’”
“It's a pun in English and French,” I said.
The tea of café au lait et croissants was untouched, so we three had it as it was. And then Mama and Aunt Fran “dressed up to nines,” as Mr. Blood-bater said, and he took them out to gamble. Aunt Fran proved that “unlucky in love, lucky in cards” wasn't so, and they ended up the evening “full of Joe de vivre,” as Aunt Fran put it.
Mama said she didn't get it, so Aunt Fran said it was a pun in American and French. Mr. Bloodbater later told me some of that evening; they really made a night of it.
The only thing, Mr. Bloodbater tol me the next day, that he could not understand was Mama's remarks to Aunt Fran after they had tried some Veuve Cliquot.
“Don't worry, Fran, honey… I hear the waiters in the Austrian Tyrol are crude and charming.”
They got in at two in the morning, the best of friends and sisters… an Mama never mentioned her war against the British again.…
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