'Bon jour,' I said eagerly, looking up at these black silhouettes against the sky. 'Je vous prie de venir me voir.'
They stared at me, still holding back their skirts from the leaping dog.
Perhaps they were Italians. I am close to Italy, and Italian women usually dress in black.
I know some Italian words, and I know the one you say when you want somebody to come in, so I tried that.
'Avanti,' I said breathlessly.
They didn't. They still just stood and stared.
They couldn't be English I thought, because underneath their black skirts I could see white cotton petticoats with embroidery on them, the kind that England has shed these fifty years, and that is only now to be found in remote and religious parts of abroad, like the more fervent portions of Lutheran Germany. Could they be Germans? The thought distracted me. How could I ask two Germans in? How could I sit at meat with people whose male relations had so recently been killing mine? Or been killed by them, perhaps, judging from their black clothes. Anyhow there was blood between us. But how could I resist asking them in, when if I didn't there would be hours and hours of intolerable silence and solitude for me, till evening brought those Antoines back who never ought to have been let go? On my birthday, too.
I know some German words—it is wonderful what a lot of languages I seem to know some words in—so I threw one up at them between two of Mou-Mou's barks.
'Deutsch?' I inquired.
They ignored it.