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love. We
have
to be happy today – it’s the rule. We can’t let anything spoil the last day of our honeymoon.’
    Scotch abandoned his scrutiny of the horizon. ‘You’re right. It would be criminal.’
    ‘Make me laugh, then. Tell me a joke.’
    ‘You’ve heard all my jokes.’
    ‘But I
love
your jokes!’
    ‘I don’t have the energy.’
    ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Scotch. I forget sometimes that you’re still recuperating.’
    He took a pack of Gitanes from his pocket and extracted a half-smoked butt. Jessie wanted to say, ‘
Pas de tabac!
’ but thought better of it.
    ‘Hell, Jessie,’ Scotch said, as he lit up. ‘Forgive me. It’s just that sometimes I feel so damnably inadequate.’
    ‘Inadequate? Whatever for?’
    ‘Don’t think I didn’t see the envy in your eyes when you spotted those girls back there. And I saw the way you ogled the displays in the Champs-Elysées last week, and I know you pretend not to mind when we travel third class. I know you still hanker after finery and fashion.’
    ‘Finery and fashion mean nothing to me! I’m a socialist now, and perfectly happy to be one.’ Pulling a lace-edged handkerchief from her pocket, Jessie dabbed her neck, wishing she’d brought some eau-de-cologne.
    Scotch looked thoughtful, and flicked the ash from his cigarette. ‘You know what Alexander Herzen said about your kind of socialism?’
    Jessie didn’t want to admit that she didn’t know who Alexander Herzen was, so she gave a careless shrug. ‘What did he say?’
    ‘He said, and I paraphrase: “Some people talk about socialism over pastry and champagne while others die of cold and hunger.”’
    She looked at him uncertainly.
    ‘You miss all that, don’t you?’ he said. ‘Of course you must. The pastry and champagne, the boxes at the opera, the gala evenings, the Saturday-to-Mondays in grand country estates, the shopping, the cocktail parties . . .’
    ‘On the contrary, I don’t miss them at all.’
    ‘Then why did you pack an evening dress? You knew we wouldn’t be staying at the Ritz.’
    ‘A girl has to think of every eventuality,’ she said, with mock snootiness. ‘We might have had an invitation to a high-class
vernissage
, or a salon. And we
did
get invitations. Count Demetrios suggested dinner, remember, should we happen to meet up with him in Paris.’
    ‘And instead we end up carousing with low-life in spit and sawdust cafés, drinking cheap wine when you’re used to vintage. What would your parents have to say about that?’
    ‘Pawpey would just be glad that I’m having a lark.’
    ‘A lark? With a penniless artist for a husband? A blasted amputee, at that?’
    ‘Oh, come, my dear! You’re more dexterous than some of the so-called able-bodied men I’ve known.’ She slanted him a smile. ‘I’ll never forget that time in Chambéry when you challenged the Italian attaché to billiards and beat him so effortlessly. I thought his
amie
was going to swoon with ardour. No wonder she asked you to paint her.’
    ‘She wasn’t his
amie
.’
    ‘She certainly behaved as if she was, driving out with him in his Isotta every day.’
    Jessie had been furious that she had not been invited to accompany the attaché on his drives. She used to watch from the
pension
window as the signorina was handed into the car by a flunkey, then crane her neck to follow the progress of the car as it bowled off along the road: paintwork gleaming, engine purring, sleek and streamlined as the dusky beauty lounging in the passenger seat. She remembered how she had written home from Chambéry, affecting a blasé attitude as though she were quite indifferent to the allure the girl held for Scotch:
    She was fearfully keen on him painting her portrait, so he did one, in water-colour, and tears his hair with rage to think that his oil-box is in Paris . . .
    ‘She was an extremely intelligent woman,’ Scotch remarked.
    ‘She didn’t look it.’
    ‘You didn’t spend as much time with her as I did.