Читать книгу Five Quarters of the Orange / Пять четвертинок апельсина онлайн

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For some reason I sensed that this pleased Cassis, as if passing information to an almost-Frenchman were somehow less reprehensible.

Reinette touched the paper with her fingertips. Her face was flushed with excitement.

“What time is it now?” she said. “Will we be late?”

Cassis shook his head.

“Not with the bikes,” he said, trying for a laconic tone. “Let’s see what they’ve got for us.”

As we retrieved the bikes from their usual place in the alley, I noticed that Reinette took a compact from her pocket and quickly checked her reflection. She frowned; snaking the gold lipstick from the pocket of her dress she retouched her lips in scarlet, smiled, retouched, smiled again. The compact closed. I was not entirely surprised. It was clear to me from the first trip that she had something on her mind besides moving-picture shows. The care with which she dressed, the attention she gave to her hair, the lipstick and the perfume… All this must be for the benefit of someone. To tell the truth I was not especially interested. I was used to Reine and her ways. At twelve she already looked sixteen. With her hair curled in that sophisticated style and her lips reddened, she might have been older. I had already seen the looks she got from people in the village. Paul Hourias grew tongue-tied and bashful when she was around. Even Jean-Benet Darius, who was an old man of nearly forty, and Guguste Ramondin or Raphaël at the café… Boys looked at her; I knew that. And she noticed them-from her first day at the collège she had been full of tales about the boys she met there. One week it might be Justin, who had such wonderful eyes, or Raymond, who made the whole class laugh, or Pierre-André, who could play chess, or Guillaume, whose parents moved from Paris last year… Thinking back I could even remember when those tales stopped. It must have been about the same time the German garrison moved in.