Read Early One Morning for Free Online Page B

grabbed his arm. ‘Well, come on.’
    Williams looked down at his uniform, the summer lightweight wool one, and shook his head. ‘Hardly dressed for it, Miss.’
    Eve nodded and stepped away. ‘Oops. I was forgetting your position.’ She let the last word slur. ‘May I have a cigarette?’
    ‘It’s my last I am afraid, Miss.’
    ‘We’ll share.’ She took the cigarette from his lips, inhaled deeply, tipped her head back and blew a long stream of smoke up towards where the gulls whirled in the dusk sky.
    ‘How is it inside, Miss?’
    ‘Oh, everybody has eyes for Babette.’
    ‘And how is Babette dressed?’
    She smiled. ‘Mostly as Vander Clyde.’
    For the past few years Babette, with her high wire and trapeze act at the Cirque Nedrano on Boulevard de Rouchechouart, was the only serious rival for Josephine Baker’s crown as darling expat American of Paris. Under the blond wig, however, Babette just happened to be a Texan male called Vander Clyde, which he demonstrated by tearing off his hair at the climax of each performance.
    ‘Tell me, Williams, what’s a man like you doing here?’
    He smiled and sidestepped the question. ‘What’s a man like me?’
    ‘Ah, that’s another question. What is a man like Williams? English but excellent French. None of that ugly, grating accent.’
    ‘French mother,’ he explained.
    ‘Good driver, despite what Mr Benoist says.’
    He nodded, not sure whether it was a compliment.
    ‘Handsome in a kind of … English way.’
    ‘What way is that?’
    ‘Oh, more direct and conventional than the French I think.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘And you are young. You should be ruining your health with absinthe and ogling the dancing girls at Le Palermo. Yet for the last six months you have spent your days and nights waiting on Orpsie’s whims. What is your secret, Mr Williams? And don’t tell me you haven’t got one.’
    ‘Eve.’
    The familiar rasping bellow, now slurred and rounded by whisky, carried across the street and bounced around them. ‘Get in here. Don’t worry about Williams.’
    She turned and raised a hand to Orpen, who ducked unsteadily back in. She handed Williams the remains of the cigarette. ‘Sorry. Seem to have done more than my fair share.’ Eve smiled and turned around, affording him a good look at the oscillation of her hips accentuated by the low sash on the dress.
    Three hours later, and Orpen was facing a chilling sobriety as fifty thousand francs crossed the roulette table to the croupier in half as many minutes. Eve tried to coax him away, but he grew more irascible with each spin of the wheel.
    Berri was playing chemin de fer , and Jessop, Patrick and Louisa, the skin-and-bone Bohemian, had spun off into an argument about Dostoevsky and James Joyce, which was way over Eve’s head and, she suspected, theirs as well. She could feel the slow drip of alcohol into her system over the last twelve hours souring her liver and the pall of smoke that rolled around the gilt fittings was beginning to sting her eyes. The atmosphere reeked of sweat and desperation. The night was slowly turning rancid. She had to go. Eve hovered over Berri as he won a couple of hands, then bust on the third and solicited his help.
    ‘Ray, I’m tired and Orps is on one of his losing streaks. We should leave.’
    Berri smiled. He knew they were in for a long night, no matter what Eve said. ‘I’d get a room if I were you. He’ll stay till he’s winning again or broke. And broke’d take quite some time.’
    Eve pouted at what she took to be a refusal to assist and stalked through the thin smattering of punters to the roulette table where Orpen was cursing the croupier under his breath. ‘Y’slippery bastard. I know the owner y’know.’ Then louder: ‘OK, on the black this time, my friend.’
    ‘Orpsie, come on. Enough.’
    He swung his diminutive frame around and snarled. ‘Enough? You mean this man here has enough of my money? Only just started, Evie.’
    She tried to