Eye Witness

Edward’s dark glasses, romantic and mysterious, were aimed at the Polish waitress.

She was his type, he said, as we sat down to our working lunch and turned to The Great Composers, his latest mail order project. ‘There’ll be more work than you can shake a fist at!’ Edward (don’t ever call him Ted) spoke fast but softly with the hint of a transatlantic accent that could be very persuasive. ‘Tchaikovsky was queer, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘and his marriage was a disaster.’ The dark glasses gave nothing away, but Edward had been through more marriages than I could shake a fist at. ‘It was always some little thing,’ he confessed.

The Polish waitress handed us the wine list with a cool indifference. Edward lowered the dark glasses just enough to scan her and it, with one eye only. The other was black and blue and shut tight.

One of those little things, I supposed, as we settled for the Nuits Saint Georges.