‘I’ve never met the old man, as a matter of fact,’ he said.

‘Never met him? But you’ve been here for years!’

‘I was hired by a man who was the general manager at the time. I was told the Patron was too caught up with his business accounts and other interests to see me. Why should I mind? I have an understanding with the Cow. She lets me take a holiday in August when I can go back to the only part of this country worth living in.’

‘That’ll be soon, then?’

‘Yes. But as for you, young woman, I’m not sure the Cow would be quite so accommodating. Perhaps you’d better go to the very top.’

Anne looked at him uneasily as he slid a pointed knife into the belly of a fish he held from his dangling left arm and spilled its innards on to the table.

‘What if I were to ask Pierre?’

‘What if you were? He’s only the head waiter. He has to take his turn like the rest of us. No,’ said Bruno, wiping his hands on his apron, ‘I think it’s the man at the top for you. Undo another button of your blouse, hitch your skirt up a bit. Perhaps that’ll help persuade him.’

‘Is he like that?’

‘Any man likes to see a bit of young flesh, that’s obvious.’

‘But I don’t even know where he lives.’

‘You go along the corridor on the first floor until you come to the mirrored doors. Through there, where it’s marked private, is a suite of different rooms. I think his study is facing you at the end, though I’ve never been there myself.’

After making sure that Mme Bouin was not in her usual lair, she swiftly climbed the main staircase and turned down the long dingy corridor at the top which smelled of something indefinable – old cardboard mixed, with cigarettes and dimly remembered plumbing failures. At the end was the door marked Private. Anne waited for a moment, feeling the throb of her heart as it rose up from her chest to falter somewhere in her throat. She thought of the huge sums of money the Patron might be negotiating on the telephone with business partners in Paris, in England, or even in America. She thought how much money she herself would give in order not to have to go any further with this venture. Then she thought of Hartmann throwing her luggage on to the rack of the train as they set off for Bordeaux, and she saw her left knuckle rap timidly on the door.

There was no reply. Against all her better judgment, she pushed open the door and was confronted by a dark, book-lined hallway off which several doors opened. She coughed loudly. Nobody came. She called out, ‘Excuse me,’ but there was no sound. Slowly she made her way down to the door at the end. She pressed her ear against it. She thought she could hear a faint shuffling sound. Perhaps the Patron was filing something, or opening a telegram. She closed her eyes and prayed for a moment, then lifted her hand and knocked boldly on the door. There was no response.

She began to panic. She couldn’t spend much more time in this private apartment without making her presence known to someone, or people might suspect she was trying to steal something. She would have to go back downstairs and tell Hartmann later on that she hadn’t been able to contact the Patron, so she couldn’t come with him to . . .

She found the oval door-knob turning in her hand, as if her fingers had moved of their own volition. In front of her was a large armchair in which a small, bald man was fast asleep, his mouth open, a book abandoned on his lap and a glass of wine on the table beside him. Anne let out a short gasp of surprise and the man opened his eyes.

‘I’m terribly sorry, most awfully sorry, I didn’t realise . . .’

It was the man who spoke. Anne in her turn was saying words with similar meanings: ‘Monsieur, I do beg your pardon, I’m sorry, I did knock but . . .’

For a while they stammered at each other, then both stopped. Then they both began again until the Patron held up his hand and Anne lapsed into silence, caught between fear and an urge to laugh.

He cleared his throat. ‘I was doing some accounts and I must for a moment have closed my eyes. Now what can I do for you, young woman?’

Anne looked at the book he had laid down. It appeared to be a detective story.

‘My name is Anne. I’m a waitress here.’

The Patron looked at her blankly.

‘I arrived about six months ago to take over from Sophie, the girl from Lyon, who had to go back to her parents.’

‘Ah yes, yes, of course. I do remember Mme . . . the manageress mentioning something. I suppose you want more money, do you? Well, it’s very difficult, you know. There’s not a lot of business at the moment. The hard times have come to France rather later than the other countries in the world. If you believe what you read in the papers, that is.’ He looked out of the window. ‘I don’t. Not really. All this political activity. Half the young people are communists one day and in these leagues the next. I don’t know what to make of it all.’

‘It’s not about money, monsieur. It’s about a holiday.’

‘A holiday? Good heavens, a holiday. Doesn’t Mme . . . What is her name? You know, the manageress, I always want to call her Briand, she’s such a fixer, don’t you know. What is it?’

‘Mme Bouin?’

‘That’s it. Mme Bouin, doesn’t she make the staff arrangements?’

‘I wasn’t told about holidays, monsieur. And Mme Bouin wasn’t at her desk this evening, so I . . . .’

‘Oh quite right, quite right. Come and see me, that’s it.’

Anne wasn’t sure if he was being welcoming or sarcastic. He seemed to be smiling anyway, so she went on, ‘I just wanted to take about four days off so I can go and see some friends near Bordeaux.’

‘What a good idea. It’s a lovely town. I want my son to go to university there, you know, but he’s got his heart set on Paris. It makes no difference, anyhow, because by the time he reaches that age he’ll have to go straight into the army anyway.’

‘May I go, monsieur?’

The Patron rubbed the hairless skin on the top of his head vigorously with a small, square hand. He took a step closer to Anne and looked at her. She could smell a mingled, not unpleasant, odour of garlic and tobacco on his breath. ‘Go on holiday? My God, I only wish I could!’

‘Mme Bouin says you’re very busy, monsieur,’ said Anne, rather regretting the sycophancy of her tone as soon as she had finished the sentence.

‘Does she? Does she? What on earth would she know about it? Busy?’ The Patron shook his head and walked over to his desk by the window from where he looked down on to the forecourt of his hotel. Some white shirt stuck out beneath his waistcoat and above his trousers, which in turn hung loosely at the back and finished abruptly some two or three inches above his ankles.

‘It’s not bad countryside round here, you know. Some good shooting. Terrible if you go down into Gascony, though. It’s so barren there that even the crows fly upside down to avert their eyes. All this is memory, only memory, of course.’ He turned round again to look at her. ‘I haven’t been out of this town for eighteen years. Do you know why?’ He came and stood close to her again. ‘Because I’m frightened. What do you think of that?’

‘I don’t know, monsieur, I –’

‘I’m sorry . . . Anne, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes. Anne.’

‘I’m sorry, Anne. This isn’t fair to you. You’re a young woman who’s come to ask me for a holiday. Why should I tell you my problems? I thought you wanted more money, that’s what I thought. They pay you all right, do they?’

‘But monsieur, surely you . . . surely you authorise the wages and so on?’

‘No, I leave all that to Madame Bri- . . . Madame . . . ?’

‘Bouin.’

‘Bouin. Is it enough?’

‘Yes, thank you. It’s enough.’

‘Do you know what I’m frightened of?’

‘No, monsieur.’

‘Nor do I. That’s the funny thing. It’s the trees and the sky and the roads, mainly. It’s odd, because I used to love them. The doctor said there was a name for it – agora-something. He says it should get better. But it hasn’t yet. Not in eighteen years. It happened at the end of the war. Have you seen the war memorial in the town? Most of my friends are on that slab of stone. We won’t do it again, you know. I’ll tell you one good reason why we won’t do it again, too. Because there aren’t enough Frenchmen left. The Germans killed too many. If my boy has to go and fight, he won’t last long. We can’t resist them this time. Dear God, what a mess they’ve made of it, the politicians, Poincaré, Briand and so on. What did they think would happen to the Boche? Of course they went broke. Of course they did!’ The Patron turned away in frustration. ‘Mind you, do you know who I blame? I blame the Americans. If they hadn’t been so greedy we wouldn’t have had to squeeze the Germans. They gave the Boche money to pay us, so we could repay the Americans. It was all American money going round and round. So the papers said, anyway.’

Anne watched in silence as the small man walked round his study. He said at last, ‘Of course you can go on holiday. I wish I could come with you. Tell the woman, Bouin, tell her I said you could go. You can come and see me again here, you know. If you want to talk. There’s my son, of course, but he’s only interested in girls. He hasn’t told me so, but I can tell by the look in his eyes. He was a mother’s boy, anyhow. He never had much time for me.’

‘In two weeks’ time, monsieur? I can go in two weekends’ time?’

‘Yes. You can go in two weekends’ time. If it’s that important to you.’

Anne wanted to kiss the Patron on the cheek, but restrained herself by thinking that only a few minutes ago she had thought him the most daunting man in the world. He took up a pair of spectacles from the desk and looked at her.

‘You can go, young woman, you can go. Enjoy it for me, too. Do one thing in return. When next you pass the memorial in the Place de la Victoire, stop and look at the list of names. Try to imagine that they’re not just letters chipped into rock but that each one has a face, a laugh, a look. My life might just as well have ended with them, too. But yours is possible because of them. It won’t happen again. You can be sure of that.’

‘I’ll look, monsieur, I promise.’

Anne left with shining eyes and, quite forgetting herself, went down by the front stairs to start her evening’s work. The Patron stared for a few moments through the door she had inadvertently left open and wondered if she had quite grasped his point. Presumably it was for people such as her to have their freedom that so many millions of men had died; there could be no other conceivable reason, he thought.