A Good Year (3 page)

He then told Max about the first meeting of the Young Connoisseurs’ Club, which he had been invited to join by Billy, his friend in the wine trade. Half a dozen young men—enthusiastic drinkers, but by no means connoisseurs—had gathered in a set of dignified chambers in St. James’s, the headquarters of an old established firm of shippers. Here, amidst the spittoons and flickering candles, beneath portraits of the bewhiskered gentlemen who had founded the firm, they were to sample wines from a few of the lesser-known chateaux in Bordeaux, and one or two promising upstarts from Australia and California.

Their host, Billy, was young, as wine merchants go. He had been taken into the firm when his more elderly colleagues had realized that their equally elderly customers were buying less wine, often as a result of natural causes (or, as some would say, death). Billy’s mission was to find younger, thirstier souls with a good thirty or forty years of drinking ahead of them, to educate them, and, naturally, to make them faithful clients. Charlie was in the first batch, eager but ignorant, and Billy started the proceedings by demonstrating the basic steps of tasting. Watch me, he told his audience, and do as I do.

The pupils had been rather puzzled to see that the first part of the ritual involved Billy’s tie, an ornamental polka-dot creation made of thick Jermyn Street silk. He carefully tucked the end into the waistband of his trousers, advising the others to do the same.

Next, he picked up his glass, not with a nonchalant grab, but delicately, holding the base of the glass between the thumb and the first two fingers. His class stood lined up in front of him, ties tucked in, glasses at the ready but as yet unfilled, waiting for further instructions.

Swirling, said Billy. You must learn to swirl, to let the air in and allow the wine to breathe. The class imitated as best they could the small circular movements of his hand, swirling make-believe wine in empty glasses and beginning to feel faintly ridiculous. It was to get worse before it got better.

The class held their empty glasses up to the candlelight, to appreciate the imaginary subtleties of color in their imaginary wine. They applied their noses to the empty glasses, breathing in the imaginary bouquet. They took an imaginary mouthful and had an imaginary spit, thankful that their ties were out of the way of any imaginary drops. By this time, everyone was ready for a large Scotch, but it was not to be.

At last, Billy poured out the first of the wines to be tasted as he moved on to part two of wine appreciation for beginners. This was in the nature of an anatomy lesson. Wine had a nose, the class was told. Wine had body, wine had legs. Wine had a robe, a bouquet, a personality, an
essence.
And it was not enough, according to Billy, merely to go through the motions of tasting; one must also know how to describe what one has just tasted. So, as the class dutifully swirled and sipped and spat, Billy provided a running commentary on the wines under review.

The first, so he said, was vigorous and well constructed, even a little bosomy. The second was an iron fist in a velvet glove. The third was a little jagged around the edges, but potentially drinkable. The fourth was a little young to be up so late. And so it went on. As the would-be connoisseurs worked their way through the bottles, the descriptions became more and more outlandish: truffles, hyacinths, hay, wet leather, damp tweed, weasel, hare’s belly, old carpet, vintage socks. Music made a brief appearance, with one wine being compared in its lingering finish to the final notes of Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 (the Adagio). Surprisingly, there was never a mention of the main ingredient, presumably because grapes, honest and worthy and indeed essential though they may be, were not considered sufficiently exotic to gain a place in the wine lover’s lexicon.

“That was just the first session,” Charlie said. “It got better after that, and I learned quite a bit.” His face became serious as he stared into the dark red heart of his wine. “It is quite extraordinary, though,” he said, talking more to himself than to Max. “The most elegant drink in the world. When I’ve made my bundle, I shall have this every day. I might even buy a vineyard.” He came out of his reverie and grinned at Max. “And you’ve already got one. Lucky sod.”

“Not for long. I think I’ll have to sell it.”

Charlie winced, then did his best to look stern and businesslike. “Never, ever make a rushed decision about selling land. They’re not making any more of it, or so I’m told. Rent it or sit on it, but don’t get rid of it. In any case, you might be able to make a very tidy living with twenty hectares of vines.”

Max remembered the ocean of green that surrounded the old house. In his memory, there was always a man on a tractor somewhere on the horizon. Uncle Henry referred to him as Russell, but that couldn’t have been his real name. When he came to the house, he brought with him whiffs of garlic and engine oil. Shaking hands with him was like grasping a warm brick.

“I don’t know, Charlie. It’s not a game for amateurs.”

Charlie finished a mouthful of lamb and took a long, considered pull at his glass. “It’s changed, no doubt about that. There’s a guy taking the course who works for one of the really big shippers, and he’s been telling me all kinds of fascinating stuff. Garage wines, for instance. Have you ever heard about garage wines?”

Max shook his head.

“If you want to pull rank, you call them boutique wines, or haute couture wines. Small vineyards, small production, seriously big prices. Le Pin is probably the best known at the moment. Five thousand pounds a case, sometimes more. And that’s wine you won’t be drinking for years. Not bad if you’re the one growing the grapes, is it?” He looked at Max, a forkful of lamb halfway to his mouth. “And you can grow a lot of grapes on twenty hectares.” Charlie gave him the kind of long, significant look—head tilted downward, eyes looking up beneath a frowning forehead—that he used to great effect with girls or when describing a particularly enviable property to his clients.

Max began to have the sense that he was being nudged, not too subtly, into a new career among the vines, and as the level of wine in the decanter dropped he became sure of it. At one point, Charlie abandoned rational persuasion altogether in favor of appeals to what he hoped was Max’s latent desire to become a French peasant. “Buy a beret!” he said. “Take tractor-driving lessons! Get your hands dirty! You’ll love it.”

They ate and drank in the companionable silence of old friends, Charlie glancing at Max from time to time as if trying to read his thoughts. In fact, Max was having some difficulty reading them himself. He had always been attracted to change, and the idea of leaving a soggy, jobless London for the warmth and light of the south was immensely appealing. Also, he was curious to see how reality compared to his memories: if the old house was as big as he remembered; if the rooms still had the dry, pungent smell of herbs and lavender; if the sounds of a summer afternoon were the same; if the girls in the village were still as pretty.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t any money in the nostalgia budget. “The problem is,” he said to Charlie, “I’m skint. No, worse than skint. Rent, credit cards, debts of one sort or another—I’m a financial disaster. I can’t afford to go swanning off to the south of France. I’ve got to get a job. Simple as that.”

“Let’s have a little cheese to go with the rest of the wine, shall we? And I’ll tell you why it’s not as simple as that.” Charlie leaned across the table, one finger tapping on the cloth to emphasize his words. “First, you’ve arrived at a moment in your life of marvelous freedom. No deadlines, no appointments, no responsibilities . . .”

“No money,” said Max.

“. . . a detail I shall come to in a moment. This is a turning point, an ideal time for you to take a break, look at what fate and Uncle Henry have dumped in your lap, and decide what you want to do. The weather down there will be delightful, and the trip will do you the world of good. Put the roses back in your cheeks.”

“Charlie, you don’t . . .”

“Hear me out. At the worst, you’ll decide to sell the house, in which case you can put it with a local agent while you’re down there. At the best . . . well, at the best, you’ll decide to stay on and do what I’d like to do: make a really good little wine. Can you imagine a more pleasant life? Agreeable working conditions, the cash rolling in, and as much free wine as you can drink. Heaven.”

As usual when he was in the grip of one of his enthusiasms, Charlie chose to ignore practical problems—in this case, as Max pointed out again, lack of funds. He could barely afford a train ticket down to Brighton, let alone a voyage of discovery in the south of France.

“I was coming to that,” Charlie said. He patted the pockets of his jacket and fished out a checkbook, placing it with a slap on the table between them. “I’m making so much loot I don’t know what to do with it, and there’s a lot more in the pipeline. My flat’s paid for, they’ve given me a car, and I’m not interested in yachts or racehorses.” He sat back and beamed at Max.

“Women?”

“Of course. But that’s just pocket money.” He took a pen from his pocket and opened the checkbook. “You can look on this as a bridging loan.” He scribbled out a check, tore it from the book, and passed it across to Max. “There. That should keep you going for a month or two while you sort everything out.”

Max looked down at Charlie’s scrawl and blinked.

“Charlie, I can’t possibly . . .”

“Don’t be bloody stupid. If you sell the house, you can pay me back. And if you keep the house, we can turn it into some kind of mortgage. You can’t afford not to give it a go. This is the chance of a lifetime, old son. What do you say to a modest glass of Calvados?”

Max continued to protest and Charlie continued to insist as one Calvados led to another. Unnoticed by them as they talked, the restaurant had become empty and quiet. Standing nearby, Calvados bottle at the ready, the sommelier concealed a yawn and longed for a cigarette. The sound of laughter came from the kitchen, and the waiters started stripping the cloths from the tables. The lovely Monica, now dressed in black leather and carrying a crash helmet, stopped at the table to pat Charlie on the head and wish the two friends good night.

At last, Max gave in, folding the check and putting it away with fuddled fingers. Then, with even more difficulty, he wrote out an IOU for ten thousand pounds on his napkin and stuffed it into Charlie’s top pocket.

Three

Standing in the shower after his morning run, hot water beating down on a skull tenderized by alcohol, Max reviewed the changes that had occurred during the past twenty-four hours, and found them all good. Lucky, lucky bastard, he thought while he was getting dressed, and caught himself whistling the “Marseillaise” as he walked up to Knightsbridge for a cup of coffee.

The day was gray but dry, and he sat at one of the tables that had been placed on the pavement as part of London’s effort, at least for the summer, to imitate the cafés of Paris. Around him, people were muttering into their cell phones, shuffling documents, and consulting their watches before going off to work. He felt an almost guilty thrill of pleasure that he was no longer one of them. All he had to do today was cash Charlie’s check, make an appointment with the
notaire,
and book his ticket.

The
notaire
first. It was eight-thirty in England, nine-thirty in France; the office should be open. He took out the letter from the Cabinet Auzet, now dappled with traces of Calvados, and smoothed it on the table, preparing himself for the ordeal of his first French conversation in years. It was just like riding a bicycle, he told himself as he fed the number into his phone. Once learned, never forgotten. Even so, he had a moment of hesitation when he heard a tinny female voice, blurred by static, utter a grudging
“Allo?”
In the French manner, she made it sound as if the call had come at a particularly inconvenient moment.

The voice, which identified itself as belonging to the secretary of Maître Auzet, lost some of its chill when Max explained that he was the nephew of Henry Skinner, and the inheritor of his property. After a number of pauses to allow for consultations with what Max assumed was the
maître
himself, an appointment was made for the following afternoon. He finished his coffee and went in search of a travel agent.

“Air France to Marseille?” The girl at the desk didn’t even bother to consult her computer. “Out of luck there, sir. Air France doesn’t fly direct to Marseille from London anymore. I could try British Airways.”

Max had developed a deep aversion to all airlines ever since one of them had lost his suitcase and wrongly accused him of having it improperly labeled. It had been returned some days later having been run over, still bearing marks of the tire that had flattened it. There had been neither apology nor reimbursement. If he hadn’t been so impatient to get to Provence, he’d have taken the train.

As it turned out, all direct flights were full anyway, and he had to settle for a short hop to Paris and a connection that would get him into Marseille around lunchtime. The ticket safely in his pocket, he stopped off at his bank, then spent the rest of the day dealing with domestic chores in preparation for what he was beginning to feel might be a prolonged absence from England.

That evening, packed and ready, he poured himself the last of the vodka and looked through his window at the gloom that had gathered to obscure any glimpse of a sunset. The sense of anticipation and excitement that had been with him all day intensified. Tomorrow he would see the sun and sleep in a foreign bed, perhaps his
own
foreign bed if there weren’t any problems taking possession of the house. Feeling slightly lightheaded at the possibility of a new life, he changed the message on his answering machine: “I’ve gone to France. Back in six months. Perhaps.”

Heathrow was as depressing and congested as ever, and the weather in Paris was overcast. It wasn’t until the Air France
navette
was south of Saint-Etienne that the sky cleared and Max could see mile after cloudless mile of postcard-blue sky. And then, as he walked out of Marignane airport to the car rental area, there was the glorious shock of heat. Taxi drivers in short sleeves and sunglasses loitered in the shade by their cars, eyeing the girls in their summer dresses. A light breeze carried a whiff of diesel, an evocative whiff that Max always associated with France, and every wrinkle of the limestone cliffs behind the airport was crisp and well defined in the brilliant clarity of the light. Artists’ light. His London clothes felt heavy and drab.

Driving in his baby Renault toward the Luberon, the scenery was at the same time fresh and yet familiar, reminding Max of the times when Uncle Henry had picked him up at the start of his summer visits. He turned off the N7 toward Rognes and followed the narrow road that twisted through groves of pine and oak, warm air coming through the open window, the sound of Patrick Bruel whispering
“Parlez-moi d’amour”
trickling like honey from the radio.

Thoughts of
amour
were pushed aside by an increasingly pressing need to relieve himself. Max pulled off the road, parked next to a dusty white Peugeot, and sought the comfort of a bush. He found the Peugeot’s driver already installed, and they nodded to one another, two men with the same urgent mission.

After a while, Max broke the silence. “Nice day,” he said. “Wonderful sunshine.”

“C’est normal.”

“Not where I come from.”

The man shrugged, zipped, lit a cigarette, and nodded once again before going back to his car, leaving Max to reflect on the insouciant French attitude to bodily functions. He couldn’t imagine the same episode taking place on the Kingston bypass back in England, where such activities—if carried out at all—would be conducted in an atmosphere of furtive embarrassment, with many a contorted and guilty glance over the shoulder, in dread of a passing police car and subsequent arrest for indecent exposure.

He took the bridge across the Durance, once a river, now shrunk by the early-summer drought to little more than a muddy stream, and entered the
département
of the Vaucluse. The Luberon was directly ahead—a series of low, rounded humps, softened by a coating of perennially green scrub oak, a cosy, photogenic range that had been disparagingly described as designer mountains. It was true that they were pretty from a distance. But, as Max remembered from boyhood explorations, the slopes were steeper and higher than they appeared, the rocks beneath the scrub oak were as sharp as coral, and the going was hard.

Turning off the main road, he followed the signs to Saint-Pons, and wondered if it had changed much in the years since he last saw it. He guessed not. It was on the wrong side of the Luberon to be considered chic, and, unlike the high-fashion villages—Gordes, Ménerbes, Bonnieux, Roussillon, Lacoste—Saint-Pons couldn’t claim the distinction of being a
village perché,
having been built on the plain and not on the top of a hill. Perhaps the lack of altitude had affected the disposition of the inhabitants, because the Saint-Ponnois were known in the region to be more friendly and hospitable than their neighbors to the north who spent their lives perched on crags, and who, several centuries ago, had spent many years at war with one another.

A long avenue of plane trees formed a graceful natural entrance to the village. They had been planted, like every other plane tree in Provence—if one believed the stories—by Napoleon, in order to provide shade for his marching armies. History didn’t relate how he had ever found time for war—or, indeed, for Josephine—in the midst of all this frenzied gardening.

Max parked in the shade and strolled into the main square. It was much as he remembered it: a café, a
tabac,
the Mairie, and a fountain. The only obvious change was a small restaurant, the tables under their umbrellas still filled with people lingering over a shady lunch. What had been there before? It must have been the village hairdresser. Max had dim memories of having his hair cut by a large, scented woman whose bosom, thrust in his ear or close up at eye level, had inflamed his adolescent imagination.

Leading off the square were narrow, shadowy streets, little wider than passageways. Max could see signs hanging over the doors of the bakery and the butcher’s shop and, on one corner, another sign with peeling, sun-bleached paint and an arrow marked
Notaire
pointing up the street. He looked at his watch, and saw that he had half an hour to kill before his appointment. The sun beat down on the top of his head. He took his thirst into the café, nodding at the group of old men who had paused in their card game to inspect this stranger in a suit, and ordered a pastis.

The woman behind the bar waved an arm at the shelf behind her.
“Lequel? Ricard? Casanis? Bardouin? Janot? Pernod?”
Max shrugged, and she smiled at his confusion.
“Alors, un Ricard.”
She poured a generous shot into a glass and placed it on the pockmarked zinc bar next to a jug beaded with moisture. Max added water and went to sit at a table on the terrace, where he was joined by the café dog, who put his head on Max’s knee and stared at him with large, soulful brown eyes that made him think of Charlie.

Max took his first sip of the cloudy liquid, sharp and refreshing with the bite of aniseed, and wondered why it tasted so much better here than the few times he’d had it in London. The heat, of course; it was a warm-weather drink. But it was also the surroundings. Pastis was at its best when you could hear the click of
boules
and the sound of French voices. It would taste even better, he thought, if he weren’t wearing a suit and socks. He took out the
notaire
’s letter and looked at it again as Charlie’s words came back to him:
a new life . . . you could be sitting on a gold mine . . . boutique wines are the coming thing.
Max raised his glass and drank to the future.

Looking across the square, he watched the last customers leaving the restaurant, flinching at the heat and adjusting their sunglasses before ambling off in a slow, post-lunch waddle to deal with the business of the afternoon. One of them, a man with a prosperous belly and the remains of a cigar, disappeared up the street leading to the
notaire
’s office. Probably the
notaire
himself, Max thought. He finished his drink and stood up. It was time to go and inherit.

The office was at the top of the street, just before the village ended and the vines began. A small house, its windows shuttered against the heat, a brass plaque on the front door. Max pressed the buzzer.

“Oui?”
said the tinny voice, querulous at yet another unwelcome disturbance. Max announced himself, heard the latch click, and went in to meet the voice’s owner.

She sat behind a large, old-fashioned desk piled with dossiers, a middle-aged woman with the tightly permed hairstyle that had been popular during her mother’s youth. Attempting a smile, she waved Max toward the two hard-backed chairs in the corner of the room. Maître Auzet wouldn’t be long, she told him, and returned to her files.

He picked up a dog-eared, six-month-old copy of
Coucou
from the table between the two chairs. The magazine, consistent as ever in its choice of editorial revelations, featured all the usual suspects: Stephanie of Monaco, the latest temporary Hollywood legend, Jean-Paul Belmondo’s son, Prince William, Johnny Hallyday. In or out of love, it made no difference—they all led the kind of lives that were guaranteed to fascinate people in waiting rooms.

Max was distracted from an exclusive interview with Brazil’s top cosmetic surgeon by the sound of an angry, raised voice coming from behind the closed door of what he assumed was Maître Auzet’s office. There was a final explosive grunt, the door was flung open, and a burly man with the roasted complexion of a farmworker stamped out of the office, giving Max a sidelong glare as he left. The secretary didn’t bother to look up from her papers. The man’s face seemed vaguely, very vaguely, familiar, but Max couldn’t place it. He went back to the cosmetic surgeon, who had apparently achieved an exciting breakthrough in buttock lifting.

Some moments later, there was the click of heels on the tiled floor, and Maître Auzet appeared, smiling a welcome. “Monsieur Skinner? I’m delighted to meet you. Would you like to come into the office?”

Max needed a moment to recover from his surprise before getting up and shaking the proffered hand. Maître Auzet was, despite the official masculine title, a young woman: slim and olive-skinned, with the deep, burnished henna-red hair that one only seems to see in France. She was wearing a jacket and skirt that wouldn’t have been out of place in Paris, and her elegant legs ended in an equally elegant pair of high heels.

“Monsieur Skinner?” She seemed amused by his evident surprise. “Is something wrong?”

Max shook his head, and muttered something about never having seen his English solicitor, Mr. Chapman, in high heels before following her into her office. In contrast to the secretary’s sparse and rather dingy surroundings, the office of Maître Auzet was not unlike her, sleek and modern, beige and dark brown. The desk was bare except for a laptop, a notepad, a vase of peonies, and a crystal tumbler filled with a bouquet of Montblanc pens.

“Could I ask you for some identification?” She smiled again. “Just a formality.” Max gave her his passport. She put on a pair of reading glasses before comparing the photograph with the real thing sitting opposite her, looking from one to the other, shaking her head. “Never very flattering, are they? I wonder why that is.” She slid the passport back across the desk and, reaching into a drawer, took out a thick file and a bunch of large, old-fashioned keys tied together with binding twine.