Le Temps des Cerises by Zillah Bethel Page B

time Eveline got to the front, there wasn’t even beetroot left, just soup – watery nonsense with something inedible floating around on the top – and a potato. She watched the brawny arms spoon it into her tin from the great tureens, glad to be getting that at least. As she turned away, a young woman standing by the hatch handed her a card and she took it automatically before realising it was the girl who’d spoken the other day about the women’s battalions.
    â€˜White railings. End of terrace. Next Tuesday,’ the girl whispered after her. ‘We’ll show the men how it’s done!’
    Eveline glanced at the card in surprise. It was thick and black rimmed and printed on the front in delicate calligraphy it said: Elizabeth T, Paradis, 2 Rue de Turbigo.
    And on the back the words: Malheureuse la femme qui fonde sur les hommes son appui 8 . It was a quotation of a sort. Eveline recognised it dimly but was unable to place it. Laurie would know of course but she wouldn’t ask him. She slipped the card into her pocket, feeling proud and a little guilty. It was like being invited to join a secret society. The girls on the Rue Ornano and la Païva must get invitations like this all the time: cards for balls, luncheons, dinner parties and dances where the women whispered behind their fans, the men got drunk on champagne, where there were chandeliers and crystal vases, caviar and waltzes…

    She swept down towards the Seine, swinging her tin and feeling quite happy: glad she had held out for the soup at least. She loved the river. It exerted a fascination over her as presumably it had for her mother, though Eveline had no intention of drowning herself in it. She loved the way it shone like a pewter mirror when the sun hit it. She even loved the fog that came off it: warm and enveloping like a great yellow overcoat, making you feel that you were strangely invisible. In the old days when she had time to spare, she had browsed among the stalls in the parapets that sold bird seed and liquorice water, parasols and shoelaces. Or sat beneath the rusty old arches of the Pont Royal, playing ducks and drakes in the greasy dark water and listening to the rumble of the omnibuses and wagonettes above her. There was always something to see on the water: flotillas of skiffs and dinghies, laundry boats with their great tall chimneys, barges laden with coal and bright golden apples. Now they were laden with cannon, and the little ‘flies’ and ‘swallows’ that had steamed up and down on jaunty trips with the visitors and tourists now steamed up and down with the wounded.
    Or she used to go licking windows as Laurie put it, staring at the ‘confections pour les dames’ – the silk, satin and taffettas in the big department stores and despising herself a little for doing it. Now she was licking windows for real, sniffing out titbits and morsels to eat in the most unlikely of places. One woman had found a dozen eggs in a jeweller’s shop displayed like a necklace of great white pearls. Another had found a bit of leathery pork in the back of a shoe shop! You just had to keep your eyes peeled and your nose to the wind. Her favourite hunting ground was the back of a good restaurant which was why she was heading in the direction of Brébant’s. It occurred to her that Alphonse might be there but she didn’t follow that line of thought too closely. She simply concentrated her mind on the rich pickings that were to be found in the bins amongst the old corks and parings – a bunch of radishes perhaps, some fried potatoes, a bit of black sausage in silver paper.
    The sun was coming up now, trickling through the clouds and drizzle. Soon it would set the whole city alight, scooting over rooftops, down chimneys, through cracks and crannies until even the panes of Notre Dame caught flame and the carved suns on the Tuileries burnt red hot. Newspaper sellers were setting up