I am wearing my lilac dress with a green turban and tall felt-topped boots. I can feel the men at the other tables, studying me with interest, and I look up from my writing to glance back from the corner of my eye, making sure André doesn’t notice.
A handsome, well-dressed older man with a beard, a Russian or a Pole, perhaps, sits waiting for a colleague or mistress while he reads the Figaro. A woman in a magnificent hat with a lavender plume drinks champagne alone, smiling at André. Two soldiers on leave at the next table are discussing the progress of the war as they sip their aperitifs and ogle the lady in the hat, who doesn’t seem to mind in the least. The three girls at the table nearest the street must be factory workers. They wear dull blue serge dresses and black cloche hats—Père
