Early One Morning Read Online Free PDF

you think you are? Robert Benoist?’
    The two brothers pulled away in an insulting spray of muck, their laughter caught by the slipstream and thrown back into Williams’ face.

Three
    P ARIS , A PRIL 1928
    C HAUFFEURING, WILLIAMS HAD decided soon after joining the Orpen household, wasn’t so much about being able to drive as being able to wait. The evening had begun with him waiting for Orpen and Eve to get ready, waiting while they picked up Jessop, the young American writer who was on his way south and had been so for more than a year, then waiting on the Champs Elysées near Fouquet’s while the trio had an early supper, then, swollen to a quartet by Raymond Berri, an industrialist who was after having his portrait painted by Orpen for his boardroom, waiting while they had taken in a show at the Bobino. Then they had completed the group by picking up yet another American, this one called George, from the Majestic.
    Now Williams was killing time once more while they all drank Aquavit at Select among the crop-headed lesbians in their mannish le smoking suits who had struggled to keep their monocles in place as Eve swished by in her asymmetrical gold mesh dress with the deep v-neck line. Even Madame Select, as usual counting the cash in her fingerless gloves while her husband supervised the endless stream of welsh rarebits, had looked up from her arithmetic to see who was causing such a stir.
    Orpen had imbibed prodigiously and from where he stood Williams could hear him on the terrace, seated as close as possible to the stove, buttonholing Barley, another young American sent abroad by his parents to gather a few rough edges. Orpen was doing his best to oblige.
    ‘So I was there when they brought her in. Beautiful she was. Eighteen. French. The Belgians were convinced she was a spy. They tried her, sentenced her to death by firing squad.’
    ‘And you saw her shot?’ asked Barley, his jaw almost on the table.
    Williams could see that several women had joined the party, including Sylvie and a rather imposing woman who towered over her.
    ‘Had to. Official war artist. Orpsie saw some terrible things. Terrible. So she was asked if she had any last requests and the girl says, I would like to die in my mink coat. Okey-dokey, said the Belgian officer and it was delivered to her cell. Another round here. Yes, another set of drinks. So, come the morning, first light, she is led out to the execution wall, in her mink coat. Six Belgian soldiers stand there. The officer says, shoulder arms, take aim, all that, and just as they are about to fire she drops the mink coat off her shoulders.’ There was a pause while Orpen knocked back a drink ‘And there she was totally bloody naked as the day she was born.’
    ‘Gosh.’
    ‘Gosh indeed. That’s what we all said to ourselves. Gosh. Should’ve seen those Belgies’ rifles shake. End of the barrel going up and down like they had St Virus’s dance.’
    ‘What happened?’ asked Barley.
    ‘Happened? They shot her. She was a spy.’
    Williams allowed himself a smirk. He had heard the story a dozen times, and knew it was pure fiction. Orpen had spun it round one of the first portraits of Eve he had executed of her in her late teens, when he caught her bare shouldered and innocent, with her curly blond hair falling on to that angelic skin. He had made the mistake of repeating the tale to someone at the War Office and a whole inquiry into the ungentlemanly conduct of the Belgians had been launched. Orpen was obliged to admit he created the whole story to up the value of the painting by a few thousand guineas.
    Williams instinctively straightened his slouch as he saw the two-man police night patrol approach on cycles. These were the watchdogs of nocturnal Paris—Madame Select was famed for her readiness to summon them in the case of the slightest fracas—and were of a different order to most cops, seeming to consist mostly of rough, resentful Corsicans. Williams instinctively