A Season in Paris, by Rupert Haldane

An original novel extract set in the twentieth century.

Lionel Ashby had eleven francs, a sketchbook and a good tweed jacket that his father had paid for in another, more prosperous year. The jacket was the problem. In the jacket he looked like a young man who could afford to dine, and so when Hester Vane and her friends swept him up outside the gallery and carried him off to the Coq d’Argent, he could think of no way to refuse that did not involve the truth.

The restaurant was all mirrors and brass and white cloths. Lionel saw himself reflected a dozen times, smiling, and every one of him was lying.

‘I’ve dined already,’ he said, when the menus came. ‘Just coffee for me.’ He said it lightly, with a little wave, the way one of them might have said it.

The food arrived. A dish of mushrooms in butter was set down beside his elbow, and the smell of it reached him like a hand on the collar. His stomach, which had been offered nothing since a heel of bread at breakfast, gave a long and perfectly audible complaint. Lionel coughed. He talked loudly about Cézanne. He drank his coffee in small, slow sips to make it last, and he did not look at the mushrooms, and he thought about nothing but the mushrooms.

Hester was watching him. She had grey, clever eyes and he had always been a little afraid of them.

‘Lionel, be an angel,’ she said, ‘and help me with this omelette. I ordered far too much and I can’t bear waste.’

She slid the plate across to him. Nobody else noticed. That was the cleverness of it, and he understood perfectly that she had ordered it for him and that she knew he knew. For a moment he hated her with his whole heart. Then he picked up his fork.

He ate slowly, as a gentleman would, and it was the best omelette he had ever tasted, and every mouthful went down with a little lump of something that was not food.

Walking home along the river, full for the first time in three days, he found he could not decide whether he had been rescued or robbed.

How does the writer show Lionel’s thoughts and feelings about hiding his poverty from his friends?

You should consider:

• what the writer says about Lionel
• the writer’s use of language to show his thoughts and feelings

You must refer to the text to support your answer, using relevant subject terminology where appropriate.