Jerusalem the Golden by Margaret Drabble

worse way. He asked her, in French, if she were German; she said no, she was English.
    ‘Ah, ah, Anglaise,’ he said, nodding his head knowledgeably, as though the word conveyed a wealth of information. She could tell, instantly, that he was stupid. He had to think for several seconds before he came out with, ‘Moi, je suis Italien.’
    ‘Ah, oui,’ she said, politely, giving him time, ‘Italien.’
    He thought hard, and then said, ‘Vous êtes étudiante?’
    ‘Oui,’ she replied indulgently.
    ‘Vous venez de Londres?’ he then asked, anxiously, solicitously.
    ‘Non, non, du nord de l’Angleterre,’ she replied. The sense of effort in his conversation staggered her, and she watched him with pity, for he laboured as though he were to try to write a sonnet, and all the while the conversation was predestined, unnecessary, a mere coin of payment.
    ‘C’est très grand, Londres,’ he continued, unable to adapt to her last remark.
    ‘Oui, très grand,’ she agreed, and then asked him, politely, ‘Et vous, d’où venez-vous?’
    ‘Da Milano,’ he said, and added helpfully, ‘Milan, c’est au nord de l’Italie. C’est amusant, moi je viens du nord de l’Italie, et vous venez du nord de l’Angleterre. C’est amusant.’
    ‘Oui,’ said Clara, and smiled benignly, while he laughed.
    ‘Le nord de l’Angleterre, c’est l’Écosse,’ said the man, flashing his even teeth at her, showing them as though to compensate for the deficiences of his wit.
    ‘Oui,’ said Clara, thinking it not worth her while to draw the distinction.
    ‘Une écossaise, alors,’ he said, grinning. She did not correct him.
    ‘Et vous, vous n’êtes pas étudiant,’ she said, thinking that she might learn the difference between tarts and students sooner than she had imagined.
    ‘Non, non, je travaille ici,’ he said. She did not like to ask him the nature of his work, thinking that if he were something incommunicable, the effort of inventing a lie might crack him up completely. He did not look resourceful. On the other hand, she did not know what else to say, so she said nothing. He too had come to the end of his small talk. He sat there for quite a while, grinning at her, then looking away, then looking back and grinning at her again. Such behaviour, which always unnerved her when displayed by such as Higginbotham, did not unnerve her at all. The isolation of the moment, and its total disconnection from all other moments, gave her a sensation of quite unfamiliar ease. Her hands, clasped on the iron table, grew limp.
    After a while he offered her a cigarette. She took it, and he lit it for her. Her smoking experiences, hitherto, had been confined to a few borrowed puffs from Walter Ash’s cigarettes, and some experimental moments, at the age of twelve, in the school bicycle shed. This cigarette tasted different; it was a Gauloise, and it tasted of France, as pungent, as unacceptably alien as that knotty sausage. She smoked it with delight.
    ‘Comment tu t’appelles?’ he asked, after a few minutes.
    ‘Je m’appelle Isabel,’ said Clara.
    ‘Isabel. C’est joli,’ he said.
    ‘Tu trouves?’ she said. She did not ask him his name, for she did not wish to know it.
    ‘Qu’est-ce que tu fais ce soir?’ he said eventually.
    ‘Rien, rien du tout,’ said Clara.
    ‘Tu veux m’accompagner au cinéma?’ he said. And Clara, overcome
by the wonderful, felicitous acceptability of his offer, an offer so familiar to her, so marvellously manageable, trembled only most slightly as she said, staring down at the limp arrangement of her hands, ‘Oui, sûrement.’ She had been afraid that his suggestion, when it came, would have been too fraught with the unknown – his room, perhaps, or else, God knows, a naked nightclub – but as for the cinema, she could cope with that.
    And so they went to the cinema. He took her arm, and held it firmly by its crooked elbow, propelling her so that she did not collide with the crowds of