The French Confection Read Free Page A

traffic jams. But the strange thing is that nobody seems to be in a hurry. Life is just a big jumble that moves along at its own pace and if you’re in a hurry to leave then maybe you should never have come there in the first place.
    That first day, Tim and I did the usual tourist things. We went up the Eiffel Tower. Tim fainted. So we came down again. We went to the cathedral of Notre Dame and I took a picture of Tim and another of a gargoyle. I just hoped that when I got them developed I’d remember which was which. We went up the Champs Elysées and down the Jardin des Tuileries. By lunch-time, my stomach was rumbling. So, more worryingly, were my feet.
    We had an early supper at a brasserie overlooking another brasserie. That’s another thing about Paris. There are brasseries everywhere. Tim ordered two ham sandwiches, a beer for him and a Coke for me. Then I ordered them again using words the waiter understood. The sandwiches arrived: twenty centimetres of bread, I noticed, but only ten centimetres of ham.
    “This is the life, eh, Nick?” Tim sighed as he sipped his beer.
    “Yes, Tim,” I said. “And this is the bill.”
    Tim glanced at it and swallowed his beer the wrong way. “Ten euros!” he exclaimed. “That’s … that’s…!” He frowned. “How much is that?”
    “A euro’s worth about seven old francs,” I explained. “It’s about seventy pence. So the bill is about seven quid.”
    Tim shook his head. “I hate this new money,” he said.
    “I know,” I agreed. “Because you haven’t got any.”
    We were walking back in the direction of the hotel when it happened. We were in one of those quiet, antique streets near the Seine when two men appeared, blocking our way. The first was in his forties, tall and slim, wearing a white linen suit that was so crumpled and dirty, it hung off him like a used paper bag. He was one of the ugliest men I had ever seen. He had green eyes, a small nose and a mouth like a knife wound. None of these were in quite the right place. It was as if his whole face had been drawn by a six-year-old child.
    His partner was about twenty years younger with the body of an ape and, if the dull glimmer in his eyes was anything to go by, a brain to match. He was wearing jeans and a leather jacket and smoking a cigarette. I guessed he was a body-builder. He had muscles bulging everywhere and a neck that somehow managed to be wider than his head. His hair was blonde and greasy. He had fat lips and a tiny beard sprouting out of the middle of his chin.
    “Good evening,” White Suit said in perfect English. His voice came out like a whisper from a punctured balloon. “My name is Bastille. Jacques Bastille. My friend’s name is Lavache. I wonder if I might speak with you.”
    “If you want to know the way, don’t ask us!” Tim replied. “We’re lost too.”
    “I’m not lost. Oh, no.” Bastille smiled, revealing teeth the colour of French mustard. “No. But I want to know what he told you. I want to know what you know.”
    Tim turned to me, puzzled.
    “What exactly do you mean?” I asked.
    “The steward on the train. What did he tell you?” There was a pause. Then … “Lavache!”
    Bastille nodded and his partner produced what looked like a little model of that famous statue, the Venus de Milo. You know the one. The naked woman with no arms that stands somewhere in the Louvre.
    “No thank you,” Tim began. “We’re not…”
    Lavache pressed a button and ten centimetres of razor-sharp metal sprang out of the head of the statue. It was a neat trick. I don’t think the real statue ever did that.
    Tim stared at it.
    “Where is it?” Bastille demanded.
    “Your friend’s holding it in his hand!” Tim gasped.
    “Not the knife!
Sacré bleu!
Are all the English such idiots? I am talking about the object. The item that you were given this morning at the Gare du Nord.”
    “I wasn’t given anything!” Tim wailed.
    “It’s true,” I said, even though I knew