Paris Requiem by Chris Lloyd

Author:Chris Lloyd
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2023-02-23T00:00:00+00:00

27

The opening notes of ‘J’attendrai’ played and the audience drowned them out in dewy-eyed applause. I liked the song. It wasn’t normally my sort and it had been seized on by a sort of sentimental patriotism, but it was still a good song. Curiously, the German soldiers in the audience loved it too. It had also been recorded in Germany, as ‘Zurück’, and appealed to the same longing. I looked at the heads, both civil and military, bobbing appreciatively in time to the melody and wished our similarities could outweigh our differences. In the lights, I caught the flash of a swastika on an arm and a jagged double-S on a collar and I knew they never would.

I turned away from the stage and scanned the room. I couldn’t help the automatic actions I’d had when I worked in the jazz club in Montmartre – surveying the room for trouble, looking for wrongdoing, making sure everyone did as they were meant to. It was no different from policing under the Occupation.

Fran’s club on its grand reopening night. The man himself, or Poquelin, as I had to remember to call him, was standing by the bar, black-market champagne in one hand, Paulette’s replacement in the other, both of them commodities to him for which he would never pay the full price. Looking around, I saw the place had more than its fair share of local criminals, and not a few Germans – some officers, some lower ranks – but I was surprised to see the place well-stocked with what passed for a jazz crowd these days. My prejudice when Fran had asked me to come to the first night had been to assume it would be little better than Luigi’s with a band.

The song finished and Fran waved me over. He weaved towards me, meeting me halfway. He still held on to his two temporary possessions.

‘Eddie, Cosette. Cosette, Eddie,’ he introduced me to his new ‘lady friend’. I had the sudden memory of Boniface quoting who I now knew to be Capeluche using that description a lifetime ago. Fran let go of Cosette and slapped her on the arse, shoving her back in the direction of the bar. ‘Off you go.’ He watched her freshly smacked bottom sashay through the crowd.

‘Classy, Fran.’

‘Isn’t she just?’

‘I meant you.’

He raised his glass to me. ‘Thank you, Eddie.’

I raised my own wine glass back without smiling. ‘I want a word.’

The only problem was that Fran had been enjoying substances besides the one in his champagne glass and wasn’t up to listening.

‘I gotta thank you for this, Eddie.’ He waved his glass around, splashing his drink over a couple of jazz-lovers nearby. They laughed indulgently. ‘It’s thanks to you the Boches allowed me to reopen. I was going under, Eddie, I don’t mind telling you.’

He took three attempts to get out the words he didn’t mind telling.

‘It was nothing.’ I recalled Capeluche’s comment about getting the club reopened. I was telling the truth, it was nothing to do with me.

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