Читать книгу Where You Belong - Barbara Taylor Bradford - Страница 11

After crossing the Place Saint-Michel, I made my way towards the Rue de la Huchette, and walked down that narrow street, which long ago had been immortalized in a book by the American writer Elliot Paul, very aptly entitled A Narrow Street. After reading the book, I had been drawn to this particular area of Paris, and for the three years I was a student at the Sorbonne I had lived right here in a quaint little hotel called the Mont Blanc.

The hotel came into my line of vision almost immediately, and as I strolled past I glanced up at the room which had been mine, and remembered those days in a swirl of unexpected nostalgia.

Thirteen years ago now. Not so long really. But in certain ways they seemed far, far away, light years away, those youthful days when things had been infinitely simpler in my life.

So much had happened to me in the intervening years; I had lived a lifetime in them, and I had become a woman. A grown-up woman, mature and experienced.

Glancing across the street, I eyed the El Djazier, the North African restaurant which had once been my local hangout…what an habitueé I had been o that strange little nightspot full of colourful characters.

Sandy Lonsdale, an English writer who had lived in the hotel at the same time as me, had constantly predicted I would disappear one night, never to be seen again, whipped off to some disreputable brothel in Casablanca or Tangier by one of the seedy blokes who lurked in the restaurant most nights.

But of course that had never happened, the seedy blokes being perfectly innocuous in reality, and I had taken enormous pleasure in teasing Sandy about his vivid imagination and its tendency to work overtime. ‘You’ll make a great novelist,’ I used to tell him, and he had merely grinned at me and retorted, ‘You’d better be right about that.’

On numerous occasions I had taken Tony and Jake there, and they had enjoyed it as much as me, their taste buds tantalized by the couscous and other piquant Moroccan dishes, not to mention the erotic belly dancers in their flimsy costumes and tinkling ankle bracelets.

On these evenings, when we were back in Paris for a bit of relaxation and rest from covering wars, Jake would usually invite us to one of the jazz joints after dinner at the El Djazier. There were several spots on the Rue de la Huchette, where many of the greats of American jazz came to play or listen to others play.

Jake was a jazz aficionado and could happily spend long hours in these smoke-filled places, sipping a cognac and tapping his foot, lost in the music, lost to the world for a short while.

I ambled up the street, and glanced around as I walked. I never tired of wandering around this particular part of Paris, which I knew so well from my student days. It was full of picturesque cobblestone streets, ancient buildings, Greek and North African restaurants, art galleries and small shops selling colourful wares from some of the most exotic places in the world. Aside from anything else, it brought back memories of the time I had attended the Sorbonne, such a happy time for me, perhaps the happiest of my life.