Cosmopolitan

Chapter 3

Alex looked wistfully at the picture in his hand. It was a miniature portrait of a young girl with strawberry blond hair, large blue eyes and a slightly pensive expression on her lovely face. True, the actual Bethee did not look very much like the girl in the picture, in reality she would never have looked so dreamy, yet he had formed a magical bond with this picture during the last months of the war, and he had almost forgotten the face of the real Bethee.
He turned the picture around. On the back was written in a perky handwriting:

"To Alex.
Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure."

which means in English:

"Let the night come: strike the hour
The days go past while I stand here."

It was a poem by Guillaume Apollinaire, published a few years ago, and undoubtedly described their last meeting at the station.
She stood amidst the smoke emitted by the departing train, in her black coat and without a hat. Alex leaned so far out of the train window that he almost fell out, and he actually wished it would happen. "I'll write to you," he shouted through the noise.
"How many times?", she called back.
"At least twice a day!"
She took out her handkerchief and waved it at him as she ran down the platform faster and faster. Eventually she had to stop, but still she kept waving until the train turned a corner and she was no longer to be seen.
That was the last he had heard of her. The steam had swallowed her up and with it, it seemed, her love, for she never answered his letters and all he had left was a picture of her.

A car noise down in the yard gave Alex a fright. He looked through the window and saw Daniel Gainsborough's cream-white sports car heading for the house. He took Bethee's portrait and put it in his bedside drawer. Then he slowly went downstairs. After all, there were more important things than some silly girl with eyes as blue as violets who wouldn't write him back. At least he was Lord Alexander Arthur Edward Harris, he belonged to one of the most influential and famous families in the country.
In fact, Daniel was a much more loyal companion, and he had known him a lot longer than Bethee.

Daniel was standing in the hall and looking around searchingly when Alex rushed down the stairs. On the way down he had slowly regained his good mood and was now looking forward to the time that lay ahead of him.
Daniel squeezed his hand especially warmly. "Well, what have you been up to since you came back? You hear all kinds of things."
"What do you hear?" Alex asked, as cheerfully as possible.
"Well, the fact that you're engaged, for example. To an American nurse from France."
Alex couldn't help but notice the hint of disappointment in Daniel's voice. He mentally kicked himself in the bottom.
"Oh that," he replied, "that was nothing!" And he patted Daniel on the shoulder.

When they were alone in the green salon, a small room that had once been a sophisticated ladies' room but was now hardly ever used, Alex mysteriously asked: "Have you ever heard of the "Cosmopolitan Café"? "
"Of course. Everyone's heard about it, but nobody's been there."
"Well, Clarence was there, and he says it's quite wonderful."
"Wonderful in general, or in your sense?" Daniel asked sceptically.
Holding his almost transparent hand against the light, he looked at the fine veins that ran through them. Then he began to declaim:

"Enraged against a quondam friend,
To Wisdom once proud Fortune said
"I'll give thee treasures without end,
If thou wilt be my friend instead."

Alex grinned restrainedly and took Daniel's other hand. At least that had remained the same. They were still a couple of hopeless aesthetes.