Us полностью

But Albie clearly wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to make me uncomfortable, and he stopped and stared and stared. Determined not to seem priggish, I doubled back and returned to his side.

‘Now that is oversharing!’ I said.

Nothing.

‘It’s quite confrontational, isn’t it?’ I said. Albie sniffed and tilted his head, as if that made a difference. ‘Amazing to think it was painted in 1866.’

‘Why? You think naked women were different back then?’ He was walking up and peering at the canvas now, so close that I thought the security guard might intervene.

‘No, I just mean that we tend to think of the past as inherently conservative. It’s interesting to note that outrage is not a late-twentieth-century invention.’ This was good, I thought. It sounded like the kind of thing Connie might say, but Albie only scowled.

‘I don’t think it’s outrageous. I think it’s beautiful.’

‘Me too,’ I said, though without conviction. ‘Great picture. Terrific.’ I latched on to the caption once again. ‘The Origins of the World.’ When I’m nervous I tend to read things out — captions, signage, often more than once. ‘The Origins of the World. Witty title,’ and I expelled air sharply through my nose to show just how damned hysterical I found it. ‘I wonder what the model thought of it. I wonder if she came round to look at the canvas and said, “Gustave, it’s like looking in a mirror!”’

But Albie had already produced his sketchbook from his bag, because it wasn’t enough to stare at this anonymous woman’s private parts, clearly he was going to have to sketch them, too.

‘Meet you in the gift shop,’ I said, and left him there, madly cross-hatching and shading in.

Then, on our final night in Paris we all went to a Vietnamese restaurant, but I had to leave early because I was injured by my soup.

I have always had a poor record with heavily spiced food, believing, not unreasonably, that if a substance burns my fingers I shouldn’t put it in my stomach. Of course Albie loves fiery food, thinking that it reflects his tempestuous personality or politics or something. As for Connie, her mood had improved a little since the great breakfast-buffet farrago, but she was wearying of bistros. ‘I swear, if I see another duck leg, I shall scream.’ Albie suggested Vietnamese, and wasn’t I meant to be trying new things and leaving my so-called ‘comfort zone’? So at Albie’s suggestion we set off in our wobbly convoy of bicycles to a Vietnamese restaurant in Montparnasse.

‘“Authentiquement épicé”!’ Albie read approvingly in the menu. ‘Which basically means “bloody hot”!’

I ordered some sort of beef soup, specifying ‘pas trop chaud, s’il vous plaît’, but the bowl, when it arrived, was so heavily dosed with small vicious red chillis that I wondered if perhaps it was some sort of practical joke. Perhaps Albie had put them up to it, perhaps the chefs’ faces were pressed to the little round window, chuckling away. Either way I was having to drink a great deal of beer to cool my palate.

‘Too much for you, Dad?’ he grinned.

‘Just a little.’ I ordered one more beer.

‘You see?’ grinned Connie. ‘Anything that isn’t boiled meat in gravy …’

‘That’s not true, Connie, you know it’s not,’ I said, a little snappily perhaps. ‘As a matter of fact, it’s delicious.’

And then it wasn’t delicious anymore. I had been attempting to avoid the chillies by sieving the soup through my teeth, but something must have slipped through, because my mouth was suddenly ablaze. I drained the beer and, in slamming the glass down, flipped the large ceramic spoon from the broth, catapulting a ladleful into my right eye. So heavily dosed with lime juice and chilli was this broth that I was momentarily blinded, scrabbling around the table for a napkin, grabbing one that had been discarded by Albie and was smeared with the chilli sauce from his spare ribs, which I then proceeded to rub into the affected eye and, somehow, the unaffected eye too. If he hadn’t been laughing no doubt Albie would have warned me, but tears were pouring down my face now, and Albie and Connie’s amusement had turned to embarrassment and concern as I stumbled blindly to the bathroom, bumping into several diners, stumbling through a beaded curtain into first the ladies’ — desolé! desolé! — then the gentlemen’s toilets and finally locating the world’s smallest and most impractical handbasin, into which I attempted to squeeze my head, scraping my forehead with the tap and pouring first scalding hot, then cold water into my eye. I stood there, spine twisted, with the water jetting uncomfortably onto my eyeball, then into my mouth which was now mercifully numb, with a chemical throb that recalled the removal of an impacted molar some years ago.

I stayed like this for some time.