After Hours: Tales From Ur-Bar

by Joshua Palmatier; Patricia Bray

  Patti nodded, though Todd guessed that meant as little to her as it did to him.

  The old lady didn’t seem to notice. “Sir Eustace served in the trenches through the first war. He won the Military Medal. Then he went into the Diplomatic, working on the Treaty of Versailles.”

  “Hey, is that Hitler?” Todd bent close to the velvet rope to get a better look.

  The old lady was unperturbed. “1936 Olympics. Sir Harold had friends in the equestrian events. Him and Sir Eustace, they both saw the writing on the wall in Germany. They always said we’d live to regret Versailles. Not that either of them had any time for Chamberlain,” she added swiftly. “Or appeasement.”

  “What did they do in World War II?” Todd searched the massed ranks of pictures for any uniforms he might recognize from film or TV. Wow. That was Churchill!

  “Sir Eustace was in Intelligence so that’s all classified. Sir Harold worked with the Special Operations Executive—?” The old lady broke off to look at them both.

  Todd nodded. “Secret agents.”

  Satisfied, the old lady continued. “He organized Free French goings-on in Occupied France and after D-Day.”

  Patti had moved on. “That’s some family photo. Oh, wait.” She looked confused.

  “That’s Sir Harold’s first wedding to Lady Imogen Bertram. She died in the Plymouth Blitz, 1941.” The old lady pointed to a second picture. “He married again in 1951. Carlotta Leibowitz, her ladyship was. Italian, from Rome.”

  “How many children did they have?” Patti wondered at the crowd in a later photo.

  “Five daughters, eleven grandchildren. That’s Miss Winifred’s wedding to David Ferrars, Sir Eustace’s third son.” The old woman was as proud as if they were her own kin. “They went all over the world, Sir Eustace and his family. In Germany first of all, helping with the Marshall Plan and reconstruction. After that he worked with the colonies when they wanted independence. That’s him in Ghana. He always said there was no call for trouble, not with goodwill on both sides.” The old girl surprised Todd with an impish grin. “You Americans taught us that, he used to say.”

  “Right.” Todd couldn’t help smiling back.

  “What about Sir Harold?” Patti was looking at a long photo of rows of children.

  “When he wasn’t in London, he was here in Devon.” The old girl nodded at the photo. “Always supported the Scouts and the Girl Guides. Youngsters from all over Europe came to camps on the estate after the war. He got involved in town twinning too, to promote understanding and friendship.” She pointed to a picture of the old boy on a platform under some banner. “Even campaigned for the EEC in 1975, in his eighties.”

  Whatever that was. Todd could see Patti was intrigued but he didn’t think they had time to find out.

  “Uh, honey, I think the guys are ready to get going.”

  The ceiling had lost its fascination for Eliot. He was heading for his brother, already hovering in the doorway to the next room. No way was Todd letting them out of his sight.

  “Thank you so much.” Patti said apologetically at the old lady. “That was really interesting.”

  “You’re welcome.” The old lady smiled and returned to her seat.

  “Remind me to get a guidebook from the gift shop,” Patti said as they hurried after the kids. “I want to find out more about the family. Hey, guys! Wait up!”

  PARIS 24

  Laura Anne Gilman

  THE streets were damp with the afternoon rain still, the air warm and filled with softer noises than he was accustomed to. Foreign noises, strange and distracting. Montparnasse, Richard thought, was chaos and confusion: people everywhere, ornate streetlamps casting electric light that framed the scene alternately into brightness and shadows. The cafes were filled with people, some slumped over their hands even this early in the evening as though sleeping off a hard night of drinking, no one paying them the slightest mind but talking over their heads, arms moving as they argued and laughed. Men, wearing everything from formal evening wear to the sweaters and bags of students and the smocks of artists, mingling together without any seeming regard for class. And women, too, dressed in the smart modern fashion that still raised eyebrows and shocked whispers back home, laughing and smoking and drinking in public.

  It was heady stuff, making his head spin. The sights, the sounds, even the smells were richer, more exotic, the blend of fresh breads and rabbit and beer and sweat mixing in the damp air like a perfume. He wanted to linger, to sniff the passing bodies, to run his hands over the colorful murals painted on walls and the stylized metal bands around the doors, to look in the darkened windows of storefronts and the brighter-lit facades of cafes and bars—out in the open, unlike back home—but his companions dragged him forward, men on a mission.

  “Bonjour, m’sieur. Vous m’ payez un verre?” a woman called, catching his eye and smiling at him.

  “Keep walking, Dicky,” George said, laughing, slinging an arm around his neck. “You couldn’t afford her.”

  They were halfway down the block before Richard finally translated what the woman had said, and his ears flushed bright red. He was the youngest of the team, barely eighteen, and they never let him forget it.

  The entire team had arrived in France two days before, in a tumble of trunks and shouted orders, loaded into conveyances and taken to their destination with barely time to breathe, overwhelmed with the rush of excitement on seeing the great flags of every nation flying over the cottages they had been assigned to, just beyond the stadium. Three weeks crossing the Atlantic, anticipation growing more intense every day, and then suddenly: there.

  Richard had thought they would spend the time practicing and resting for opening ceremonies, but once they assured themselves that all their equipment had arrived and was properly stored, had made sure that everyone was where they were supposed to be, none missing or mislaid, the close lure of Paris, that terrible center of sin and desire, was too great to resist.

  George and Henry, who had appointed themselves his caretakers, were leading the way, bypassing one café and bistro after another, leading them somewhere—somewhere special, they promised him. Someplace like you’ll never see back home.

  Richard kept his laughter within his own chest, so the others would not ask him what he found so amusing. There wasn’t anything like this back home. This was Paris. But he let his teammates tow him through the stone-cut steps of the arrondissement, turning this way and that through crooked streets and down what seemed scarcely alleyways, until they finally fetched up in front of a building, two stories high, built of yellowgray stone. Glossy brown wooden panels fronted the door, with its polished brass handle, and there was one window, frosted over so that you could not see in, with one word painted on it: Gil’s.

  “Doesn’t sound very French,” George said, suddenly dubious.

  “Everyone says this is the place to go,” Henry responded, already reaching for the door. “Before your first bout, not after.”

  “Why?” Richard asked, curious.

  “I have no idea.” Henry was gloriously unconcerned, the way he was unconcerned about all else, touched with the assurance that the world would move for him as he desired. “Good luck, maybe?”

  “Bad luck, if the coach finds out we’re out carousing?” He couldn’t, he wouldn’t, do anything to jeopardize his chances, not this close to the prize.

  “It’s not illegal here, Dicky,” George scoffed, the five years between them suddenly a chasm. “Lighten up!”

  They were speaking English, but nobody gave them a second look; on George’s advice they had left their identifying badges behind, dressed in what they had hoped were casually smart flannels and coats that now seemed almost conservative amid the flash and chaos of Paris.

  “Nobody ever gets caught at Gil’s,” Henry said confidently, as though he had done this a hundred times before, and went through the doorway, assuming the others would follow him.

  They did. They always did.

 
; Inside, it was as though the dampness and noise of the city faded away, the space larger than it seemed from the front; the center dominated by a horseshoe-shaped bar topped with a gleaming marble top, glassware racked and glittering overhead. Scattered on either side were dozens of round tables, large enough for two or three to sit at, but most crowded with four or five, save the occasional table where a single soul sat crouched over his drink, like a cat guarding its mouse. The walls were lined with brown leather banquettes, people lounging against the whitewashed walls as though they were in the comfort of their own homes.

  The door closed behind them, and Richard was tugged further into the bar itself, George’s grip not allowing him time to gawp.

  Although Gil’s was not as crowded as the artier, more open-air cafes they had passed, there were already men two deep at the bar, with that elegant slouch Frenchmen somehow perfected, elbows down and shoulders back, looking as though they could spend all day just where they were.

  Henry managed to find a way through, the way Henry always did, and those already drinking obligingly made room for them.

  “Bon soir.” The bartender was a slender, almost short man with polished brown skin who could have slipped into their team without a moment of doubt; whipcord strong and probably just as fast. He took another look at them, and then switched into English. “Good evening. What may I fetch you?”

  “Trois ‘Sidecars,’ s’il vous plait,” Henry said. He was the only one who knew much French at all, beyond what they drilled into them before leaving the States—and of course the terms of the sport, but somehow Richard didn’t think “en garde” was going to get him anything to drink.

  “I’ve got this,” George said, reaching for his money clip. Richard hoped he wasn’t going to haul out the wad of bills he had seen George shove in there before they left: George’s clip was bright silver and set with a stone that glittered enough to catch even the most honest eye.

  Thankfully, George knew enough to keep it in his pocket, pulling out a few crumpled francs and counting them twice, to make sure he knew how many he had.

  “What do you think of the Italian team?” Richard asked, uncomfortably aware of the stranger at his back, the hum of a foreign language being spoken around him. In the Village they were housed in there were a dozen or more languages around them, but it had seemed less confusing, somehow.

  “They’re Italian,” Henry said, as though that was all that needed to be said.

  “I think they’re overrated.” George sounded more like he was wishing that was true, rather than believing it. Their coach was worried; that was reason enough for them to take the other team seriously. “You should worry about Hungary. Their boy, the captain, is damn good.”

  Richard bit back a smirk. They were better than the Hungarians.

  George paid for the drinks, and then nudged Henry with his elbow, indicating where a small table against the far wall had become available. It was only slightly less crowded than at the bar, but they’d be able to sit down and drink comfortably.

  Gil saw them the moment they came in. He saw everyone; the quick pass of a gaze that had once sized up potential opponents, and now merely gauged, in an instant, if the newcomer was of interest or not. All too often the answer was ‘not.’

  Even here, in this city filled with men—and some women—aching to make their mark on history, to achieve a fame and glory he once chased himself, he found little of interest walked through the doors. The usual assortment of sad drinkers and happy drinkers, hopeful drinkers and those who were resigned to there being nothing more than a momentary pause at the bottom of a glass; that was what came through his door.

  Something made him hesitate when the three children came in.

  Americans, from the language. Not part or parcel of the scribblers and scrawlers and social parasites who had overrun the city in recent years; these three were too healthy, practically alight with youth and vigor. Olympiads. Skinny but strong; not runners, the wrong build for that, and not swimmers ... swordsmen. Fencers.

  An elegant sport, removed from its bloody origins but not so far as to make it bloodless. Gil approved. Men still died at the edge of a blade, even in mock-combat, and all the protection and training in the world did not remove that risk. Fencers knew what they held when they picked up their blades, even blunted and capped.

  But why these three? Of all the would-be champions in Paris this summer, why these three to catch his eye, to pique his age-weary attention? He put down the glass he had been polishing, and drifted toward the front of the bar, even as they placed their order, the tallest of them speaking in execrable French.

  Like any good bartender, Gil could read his patrons. Over the millennia he had been trapped within the confines of this bar, he had honed that skill until it was almost uncanny, knowing what they desired, what they feared, what they needed.

  Most of the time it was merely a pause: for refreshment, for drowning their sorrows or speaking them, before they went back out into the world again. Gil’s served them what they needed, and let them go. Sometimes they needed a fight, to get the blood moving and the spark of life relit within themselves. Gil himself obliged them, holding back his own considerable strength so that they felt they had a chance against the burly owner.

  Sometimes, not often, they needed more. Sometimes they had earned more, merely by being more than their fellows, having some spark of fire their fellows lacked, banked or slow-burning, waiting only the gift to make it bloom into open flame.

  Was one of these three such a man?

  Gil watched as they moved to a smaller table, leaning their elbows against the zinc countertop with the nonchalance of men who were utterly comfortable with their bodies, but not to the point of vanity. Three men, but one sparked with more fire than the others, the faint halo of potential glory that had been given to Gil to see.

  See ... and act upon. If he chose.

  “Did you hear about Ignacio? Already threatening to fight a duel with everyone who looks at him sideways”

  “It’s the women.” The Olympic Committee had allowed females to compete in foil this year; an experiment. The United States had two women on their own team, although the males didn’t have much to do with them, separated by chaperones and the knowledge that a single infraction could endanger the entire team. “Having them around distracts him,” George went on. “Good for us, I say. Bastard’s too good when he’s focused, we can use all the help we can get.”

  They laughed, an arrogant sound of men who know that the only help they needed was within their own abilities.

  “Enough fencing,” Richard decided. “I’m bored of talking about nothing but fencing.” It was all they had discussed on the voyage over, endless hours at sea filled with practice and theory, discussing their possible opponents, and wondering who they would face.

  “What would you prefer we talk about? Women?” Henry shook that idea off. “I haven’t been near one since we were picked for the team, and I know that you haven’t either. And I don’t think that’s going to change tonight, even for George. Finance? Politics? No thanks. Time enough for that when I am back home, facing nothing but meetings and ledgers.” Henry was the son of a banker, and it was understood that he would follow his father into the industry, once the Games were done.

  “You love it.” George said, his eye caught on a lively bird who was, sadly, on the arm of another man. George’s father was a well-to-do businessman as well, but George had claimed no desire to take his turn as a Captain of Industry. Fencing was everything to him; he lived and breathed it—except when he was chasing after women, anyway. The others called him Casanova, not without some envy.

  “I do,” Henry admitted ruefully, smiling. “It’s almost like fencing, the move and countermove, touch and point. Only when you win, you earn potloads of money, in addition to a shiny medal.”

  The woman passed by them, and gave George a sly smile, then was gone before he had a chance to make a fool out of himself.

  �
�I’m not bailing you out if you get your hat handed to you over another woman,” Richard said, not entirely joking. “That will be harder to explain, come morning, than a simple headache from overindulgences.”

  “You don’t know what you’re missing, old man,” George said, but let the woman disappear into the crowd, and raised his glass to the others in toast. Richard smiled, and raised his as well, clinking the rim lightly against theirs before taking the first sip. The concoction was a pale orange, and tangy-sweet with a bitter kick at the back of the throat, and he could feel the alcohol start to work swiftly, bringing him a sort of calmness that had been rare ever since he was selected for the team, and the fuss had begun.

  Henry was right. There wasn’t anything except fencing to talk about. That was all that mattered, while they were here. The rest of the world would wait, while they claimed their gold.

  “I’m not going into my old man’s business,” George said suddenly, his drink halfway gone already. “I’m going into the Army.”

  “What?” That was new, and unexpected.

  The other man shrugged, trying to make his admission into a minor thing. “Makes as much sense as going into business. There’s going to be another war. Everyone knows it. If I join now, I’ll be in a position to give orders, not take them by the time action starts. Not for me, foxholes and gas masks for breakfast.”

  Richard looked around, cautiously, to see if anyone had overheard, or taken offense. Americans had suffered in the Great War, but the Continent had seen far worse. Paris might seem filled with life and laughter now—but it had not been that long ago that all Europe felt the shadow of the Huns and their allies. The thought that it could come again....

  His cousin had been in the Army, and not come home. Another war, it might well be him.

  Richard took another sip of his drink, as though to wash away that thought. “The silver won’t get you far,” he joked, instead. “You’ll need to show them the gold, to jump over other officers.”