He was very good at keeping a conversation moving along, never interrupting, never talking over her, his questions never too pointed or intrusive. Step-by-step, minute by minute, she grew ever more comfortable in his company. Of course she knew he was setting out to charm her, and it wasn’t smart to simply let him bowl her over in such a fashion. Yet she couldn’t find it in her to care.
He pointed out the café not long after they rounded the corner onto Old Compton Street. “Eye-catching, isn’t it?” An enormous Harlequin figure was attached to the upper floors of the building, and just below his dangling feet was a sign: CAFé TORINO RESTAURANT.
“What on earth . . . ?”
“I know. Odd, isn’t it? I think it may be Pulcinella—the Italian version of Punch. He doesn’t look very happy to be out in the rain, does he?”
Inside the café it was warm and crowded and very noisy, and the air was laden with an array of tempting aromas, and though Ann couldn’t quite put a name to what she smelled, her mouth watered all the same. Some tables were punctuated by towers of empty coffee cups, while others held piles of books and hastily folded newspapers. The tables’ occupants were young for the most part, younger even than Ann. Students, she realized, and they were using this place as a sort of library—but what library allowed its patrons to eat and drink and smoke and, horror of horrors, engage in torrents of noisily passionate discussion?
“Let me see if I can find us a table,” Jeremy said, and he led them through the maze of diners, occasionally pausing to ask someone to inch their chair out of the way. The table he found was small and only recently vacated, and still covered with a mass of dirty dishes, but rather than call over a waiter he stacked them neatly and carried them over to the bar.
“You get settled while I deal with these. I’ll see if I can find a menu while I’m at it.”
There didn’t seem to be any sort of rack, so Ann hung her sodden coat over the back of her chair, then sat down and tried to restore some degree of dignity to her appearance. Her hair had probably frizzed into an enormous orange nimbus by now, but she could only finger-comb it and clip it back off her face and hope the end result didn’t look too slapdash. At least she had a handkerchief in her bag. She patted her face dry, bent over her bag to apply a surreptitious dab of powder to her nose, and wished in vain for lipstick. As it was forbidden at work, she never thought to carry any with her.
Jeremy had returned. “No luck on the menu, but I’m here often enough that I should be able to help. I usually have the spaghetti with meat sauce, but they serve it with the appetite of a typical undergraduate in mind. They also do vol-au-vents with chicken and peas. Not especially Italian, but it’s a more manageable amount of food.”
She’d never eaten spaghetti before, although she had seen more than one comic short in which confused visitors to Italian restaurants struggled with improbably long strands of pasta. Best to stay with something she could consume in a dignified fashion. “I think the vol-au-vents. Please.”
“Excellent. Ah—here comes the waiter. Right. I’ll have the spaghetti, and my friend will have the vol-au-vents. And some bread for the table.”
“Very good, sir. Would you like anything to drink?”
“Hmm. Do you have any Sangiovese? A bottle, then. And two glasses.”
That accomplished, Jeremy sat back in his chair, produced a silver cigarette case from his inside breast pocket, and offered it to Ann. “No? You don’t mind if I do?”
“Not at all.”
He extracted a cigarette from the case, lighted it with practiced ease, and blew a gust of smoke toward the ceiling. “There. That’s better. Now, tell me—do you have a long journey home? Since you said you don’t live hereabouts.”
“It’s not so very long. I live just outside the city proper. I grew up there. Where do you live?” she countered.
“Here in town. At my parents’ house, actually. They spend most of their time in the country, you see, so otherwise it would just stand empty. Well, apart from the servants. My sister is meant to be living there, too, but I hardly see her. Either she’s off on holiday somewhere or she’s at some friend’s place. If my parents knew the half of it they’d keel over.”
“Did you—”
“Here’s your wine, sir.”
“Very well. No—I’ll pour. Ann?”
“Only a little. Thank you. What was I going to say . . . ?”