Silent Noon by Trilby Kent

Author:Trilby Kent [Kent, Trilby]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781846882999
Publisher: Alma Books

Miss Duchâtel made choux amandine and arranged them on a china plate with a dusting of icing sugar. “I so rarely have the chance to entertain guests,” she said. She did not seem to mind that Ivor had brought Belinda with him, and she did not ask if her parents knew.

She had laid the table with a yellow cloth and scattered lavender sprigs about the bone china settings. She personalized the bowls of soup with their initials swirled in cream. She opened a bottle of wine and poured it into crystal glasses, which she handed over with a warning to sip around the chips.

Ivor looked well for an invalid, Miss Duchâtel observed, when Barney introduced them. She hoped that his illness would not affect his appetite. This made Ivor blush – a sight new to Barney, and gratifying – and he tried to change the subject by saying that he’d heard she kept geese.

“You must take some eggs back with you.” Miss Duchâtel indicated that they should sit. “When I was a girl, at the orphanage on Rue des Hospitalières, there were several blind children who came to stay with us while their school was being renovated. Their teacher kept eggs in a little incubator so that when they were about to hatch the children could gather round and feel the little chicks coming through the shell. How do you describe that to a little child of six or seven who has never even seen a chicken? The children spent a little time every day feeling the eggs in their hands, raising them to their ears, smelling them and even trying to taste them, waiting for this magic event that they had been told would happen any day.” She set the pot on the table and nudged the water jug toward Barney. “I will never forget the morning the eggs started to hatch. We were allowed to come and watch, but not to touch them: that privilege was for the blind children only. The sight of that first tiny chick struggling against the shell – and the face of the little boy when he felt his finger pricked by the beak – well, I’d never seen anything like it. How often do we get to see the world so new like that? Once or twice in our lives, if we are lucky.”

“And you came here after you left the orphanage?” said Ivor.

“No, no. I worked in Paris. In the ’30s I spent some time in Switzerland, publicizing a cabaret show. Die Pfefermühle, it was called: The Pepper Mill. Perhaps you have heard of it?” Both boys shook their heads. “It was produced by Erika Mann. Her father, Thomas, you might know from his books.”

Ivor was listening carefully. Barney was counting the number of bread slices they’d each had and wondering if it would seem greedy to take the last one.

“So how did you end up here?”

Miss Duchâtel blew a thin stream of smoke over one shoulder, tapped her cigarette on her saucer.

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