Читать книгу The President's Hat - Antoine Laurain - Страница 12

In his account of the evening, Daniel allowed himself just one slight alteration – the seafood platter now featured no more than twenty-four oysters, half a crab and a few winkles. He knew that if he gave the full details of his sumptuous dinner, there was a danger Véronique would concentrate solely on the expense. Comments like ‘Well, you certainly look after yourself when we’re not around,’ or ‘I see, dining in solitary splendour!’ would interfere with the re-telling of his adventure. In Daniel’s version of the story, the arrival of the head of state assumed near-biblical proportions, and the phrase accompanying the vinegared oysters, ‘As I was saying to Helmut Kohl last week’, rang out like a divine commandment from the cavernous halls of heaven.

‘Still, I’m shocked.’

‘Shocked? Why?’ said Daniel.

‘That you stole the hat. It’s not like you.’

‘I didn’t steal it as such,’ he objected, irritated, although much the same thought had occurred to him as well. ‘Let’s just say I didn’t give it back.’

Véronique seemed to accept that. He managed to convince her that he had, in fact, done the right thing by holding on to the hat because the moustachioed maître d’ would probably have kept it for himself. Worse, if he hadn’t spotted it, another customer might have taken it, unaware of the identity of its illustrious owner.

When they’d finished supper and Jérôme had gone to bed, they returned to the sitting room. Véronique carefully picked up the felt hat and sat stroking it, as if seized by a sudden melancholy. She regretted that Daniel hadn’t been quicker to spot that François Mitterrand had left it behind: he could have called after the President and given it back to him with a smile.

‘There would have been an understanding between you,’ she remarked, sadly.

‘Yes, but he was too far away,’ Daniel pointed out. He still preferred the real-life version of the story, the one that ended with him wearing the presidential hat on his own head.