Rewind now; not far, just to the night before.
The scene: a restaurant not far from Notre Dame, Paris, owned by a friendly, if overenthusiastic Portuguese man. There is a row of tables set up outside, brought together to seat eight people, but for now all the seats are empty. Piano music emanates from inside - Simon sits at the little upright in the cramped quarters of the lower floor bar, while Molly sings "I got Rhythm" accompanied (partially) by me. We'd met Molly and her friends earlier that day, at breakfast in the hostel. It was their first day there, and our last full one, and it being the fourth of July it seemed like a good reason to get together for a drink. She was there with Waller and Chiara, all the way from Rome where they'd been studying.
Rewind a little more, to earlier in the evening. Molly had told us about the Shakespeare and Co., an English bookstore in the Latin quarter of Paris where authors occasionally gave lectures. At half past eight, Molly and I meet everyone else at Notre Dame - we've come from the Shakespeare and Co. after attending a reading by an American author (whose stories are very good, but more about that another time), and it seems we've arrived just in time to watch the evening's festivities just as they begin. Paris, it seems, is one big carnival in the evenings: a makeshift ramp has been set up on the bridge between Ile-Saint-Louis and Ile-de-la-Cite, and a group of rollerbladers are skating up it and performing flips and tricks to a crowd of awed spectators; A man painted silver and holding a broom is pretending to be a statue; children run about and laugh as they try to pop the gigantic bubbles created by a man in front of us, surrounded by Japanese tourists fascinated by the bubbles.
And in the middle of all this, Simon is getting his portrait drawn by a Romanian man.
'He looks like a cherub,' says Joe Hartley of the picture, and at this stage I'm forced to agree. But we're all too busy talking to the Americans and watching everything going on around us - Waller takes a selfie of himself looking terrified in front of several military-looking men as they stop on the bridge, guns casually cradled in their arms, and we talk about football (English football, sorry Americans!) and hockey while we wait for Jobe and Jozef Doyle to arrive.
Eventually, we're all together again, Simon is presented with his finished portrait (it's pretty good, and looks less cherub-y now) and we head off to the restaurant. Fast forward, just a little. Dessert rolls around, and Simon is whisked off to play piano for the restaurant patrons. Chiara starts giggling uncontrollably, probably at yet another of Doyle's deadpan jokes, and this sets off Molly too. A glass of red wine (not my thing - bleah!) and the rest of us are ready to play - Hartley is using Doyle's guitar while Doyle keeps rhythm on the Bodhrán, or Irish drum, I have my ukulele and half an idea of which chords go where, and Jobe's taken out an impressive looking mandolin - we play a few folky songs and have a bit of fun. I try tap dancing, but in my work shoes it's not really possible. But we're all having fun, so it doesn't really matter.
Soon enough, dinner is over, all our songs are sung - though not by Waller or Chiara, who insist they don't sing - and we're heading back to the hostel. It seems a shame, since we've got maybe an hour before we have to be back, so we make a decision. And that's how we wind up at the Louis Philippe, not far from the hostel, singing a bunch of songs with some Frenchmen at another table.
The few of us who speak French - or know a few anthems - burst into a rousing chorus of La Marseillaise, before the men point out that it's July fourth, and why don't we have some of the national anthem. And suddenly Waller - who has given us a very vocal and out of tune reason for why he doesn't sing - bursts into a perfect rendition of the first verse of the Star-Spangled Banner, accompanied by the other Americans.
'Shit!' he finishes, to everyone's amusement. 'I forgot the rest!' And then the rest of us decide we have some national pride, too, and start with a couple of verses of God Save the Queen while Waller composes himself and wracks his brains.
After a fuller version of the Star-Spangled Banner, and a quick and hesitant version of Le Poinçonneur de Lilas by Joe Hartley and our French friends in the restaurant, it's time to head back. Of course, the night isn't quite over - we return to our room, and soon enough the American students rejoin us (Shhhh! Don't tell the hostel!) for some card games and more laughs. Finally, at two thirty in the morning, Independence Day is over for them, and our last full day is over for us. Not entirely happily - we'll all miss Paris, of course. But we're left with the feeling that it's been a great trip overall, and we've still got half a day left. That's half a day to spend climbing a cemetery.
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