A Good Year (5 page)

Max finished his drink and left the café, stopping to watch the
boules
game. Uncle Henry had once explained the niceties of the
point
and the
tir,
the
raspaille
and the
sautée
—funny how the words came back to him without any recollection of their meaning—and had demonstrated the correct way to stand and throw one sunny evening on the gravel in front of the house. But the most important asset for any player, he used to say, was a talent for dispute. Argument was vital to the proper conduct and enjoyment of the game.

One of the players was about to throw. Feet together, knees bent, brow furrowed in concentration, he pitched his
boule
in a long and deadly arc that knocked aside two other
boules
before coming to rest within a hairbreadth of the small wooden target ball, the
cochonnet.
It looked to Max like a clear winner, but it was nothing of the sort; it was merely the signal for a heated debate between the two teams. The distance in millimeters and fractions of millimeters between
boule
and
cochonnet
had to be measured, then measured again, then challenged, which of course required yet another measurement. Voices were raised, shoulders were shrugged, arms spread wide in disbelief. There seemed to be no immediate prospect of the game continuing. Max left them to it and continued across the square to the restaurant.

Chez Fanny, with its tiled floor, cane chairs, paper tablecloths and napkins, and posters of old Marcel Pagnol films on the wall, was small and unpretentious. But the restaurant possessed two secret weapons: an old chef who had learned his trade at l’Ami Louis in Paris, and who cooked accordingly; and Fanny herself, who provided the
ambiance,
that intangible ingredient vital to any restaurant’s continuing success.

It has been said that you can’t eat atmosphere, which is true, and that the cooking is all that counts, which isn’t. Eating is, or should be, a comforting experience, and one cannot be comforted eating in chilly, impersonal surroundings, a fact that was very well understood by Fanny. She made her customers—all of them, not just the men—feel loved. She kissed them when they came in and again when they left. She laughed at their jokes. She was incapable of having a conversation without physical contact—a touch on the arm, a squeeze of the shoulder, a pat on the cheek. She noticed everything, forgot nothing, and appeared to like everyone.

She had, of course, heard about the new owner of the big house. Anyone in Saint-Pons with ears had heard about him, either from the official village information service, the butcher’s wife, or from the wise men of the café. She watched Max walking across the square and saw that he was heading for the restaurant. She turned to a mirror, making minute adjustments to her hair and
décolleté
before stepping outside.

Max had started to study the framed menu that was nailed to the trunk of a plane tree.

“
Bonsoir,
monsieur.”

Max looked up. “Hi. Oh, sorry.
Bonsoir,
madame.”

“Mademoiselle.”

“Of course. Excuse me.” For a few seconds they looked at one another in silence, both smiling. An observer would have guessed that they liked what they saw. “Am I too early?”

No, monsieur wasn’t too early. He had come just before the rush. Fanny placed him at a table on the small terrace, brought him a glass of wine and a saucer of sleek black olives, and left him with the menu. It was short, but filled with the kind of dishes Max liked: a choice of deep-fried sliced zucchini, vegetable terrine or a pâté to start;
bavette aux échalotes,
roasted cod, or
brochette de poulet
as a main course; cheeses, and those two reliable old standbys,
tarte aux pommes
and
crème brûlée,
for dessert. Simple food of the kind that attracted customers rather than Michelin stars.

Max made his choice and settled back in his chair, his feelings a mixture of contentment and anticipation as he watched Fanny embracing a group of four that had just arrived. Somewhere in her family, he thought, there must have been some North African blood. It would explain her coffee-colored skin, her mop of black curls, and her dark eyes. She was wearing a sleeveless, close-fitting top that accentuated the slender column of her neck and the curve of a jaunty bosom. From the waist down, she was wearing jeans and espadrilles. Max wondered if her legs were as long and well shaped as the rest of her.

She caught him looking at her, and came over to his table, smiling.
“Alors, vous avez choisi?”
She sat down opposite him, pad and pencil at the ready, and leaned forward to take his order.

With some difficulty, Max kept his eyes on the menu, to prevent them from their natural inclination to stray, and ordered zucchini, the steak, and a carafe of red wine.

Fanny noted down the order. “Is there anything else you’d like?”

Max looked at her for a long moment, his eyebrows raised and his imagination churning.

“Pommes frites? Gratin? Salade?”

Later, sitting over a Calvados and a second cup of coffee, Max reviewed the first day of his new life. With the optimism induced by a good dinner and the soft warmth of the evening breeze, he could see that his initial disappointment over the wine was nothing. That, according to Charlie, could be fixed; as for Roussel, he would probably require some diplomatic handling, and Max would have to tread gently. But the other discoveries of the day were all encouraging—a potentially wonderful house, a delightful village, and two of the prettiest women he’d met for months. And perhaps more important, there were the first stirrings of a sense that he could happily fit in down here in Provence. Another of Uncle Henry’s nuggets of advice to the young came drifting back into his mind from years ago:
There is nowhere else in the world where you can keep busy doing so little and enjoying it so much. One day you’ll understand.

He paid the bill and overtipped. The restaurant was still busy, but Fanny found time to come over to wish him good night with a kiss on each cheek. She smelled like every young man’s dream.

“A bientôt?”
she said.

Max smiled and nodded. “Try to keep me away.”

Five

God’s alarm clock, the sun, came streaming through the bedroom window and woke Max after the best night’s sleep he’d had in years, even though sleep had not come instantly. In London, there had always been the lullaby of distant traffic, and a glow in the sky from the city’s lights. In the country, there was total silence, and the darkness was thick and absolute. It would take some getting used to. Now, half-conscious and at first not sure where he was, he opened his eyes and looked up at the plaster and beam ceiling. Three pigeons were conducting an interminable conversation on the window ledge. The air was already warm. Glancing at his watch, he could hardly believe he’d slept so late. He decided to celebrate his first morning in Provence with a run in the sun.

Although many foreign habits, such as tennis, were now familiar to the inhabitants of Saint-Pons, the sight of a runner was still enough to cause a flicker of interest among the men who spent their lives in the vines. A small group of them, trimming off overgrown shoots, paused to watch as Max ran by. To them, voluntary physical exercise in the midmorning heat was an incomprehensible form of self-torture. They shook their heads and bent their backs and resumed their trimming.

It seemed to Max that he was running more easily than he had ever done in Hyde Park; probably, he thought, because he was breathing sweet air instead of the fumes from a million exhaust pipes. He lengthened his stride, feeling the sweat run down his chest, and moved onto the shoulder of the road as he heard a car coming up behind him.

The car slowed down to keep pace with him. Glancing over, he saw Fanny’s curly head and wide smile. She overtook him, then stopped and pushed open the passenger door.

“Mais vous êtes fou,”
she said, and cocked an approving eye at his legs. “Come. Let me take you into the village. You look as if you need a beer.”

Max thanked her but shook his head, not without some reluctance. “This is what I do to get rid of the Calvados. You know what the English are like. We love to suffer.”

Fanny considered this national peculiarity for a moment, then shrugged and drove off, watching the running figure grow smaller in the rearview mirror. What an odd lot they were, English men; uncomfortable with women, most of them. But that was hardly surprising when one considered their education. The public school system had once been explained to her—all boys together, cold baths, and not a female in sight. What a way to start your life. She wondered if Max would settle in his uncle’s house, and found herself hoping he would. The selection of unattached young men in Saint-Pons was severely limited.

After the third mile, Max was beginning to regret that he’d turned down her offer. The sun seemed to be focused on the top of his head, and the air was still, with no breeze to relieve the heat. By the time he got back to the house he was melting, his shorts and T-shirt black with sweat, his legs like jelly as he climbed the stairs to the bathroom.

The shower was a classic example of late-twentieth-century French plumbing, a monument to inconvenience, no more than a vestigial afterthought attached to the bath taps by a rubber umbilical cord. It was a handheld model, thus leaving only one hand free for the soap and its application to various parts of the body. To work up a satisfactory two-handed lather, the shower had to be placed, writhing and squirting, in the bottom of the bath, and then retrieved for the rinsing process, one body part at a time. In London, it had been a simple matter of standing under a torrent; here, it was an exercise that would tax the ingenuity of a contortionist.

Max stepped out gingerly onto the flooded tile floor and dripped dry while he was shaving. Among the Band-Aids and aspirin in the medicine cabinet above the basin, he found a small flask, still half-full of Uncle Henry’s eau de cologne. It was a relic from the old Turkish baths in Mayfair, with a label like an ornate banknote and a scent that made Max think of silk dressing gowns. He splashed some on, combed his hair, and went to choose something suitable to wear for lunch with Maître Auzet.

She had suggested, for the sake of discretion, a restaurant in the countryside, a few miles away from the prying eyes and wagging tongues of Saint-Pons. Max found it without difficulty, rural France often being more generously supplied with restaurant signs than road signs, and arrived a few minutes early.

The Auberge des Grives was a two-story building in the concrete blockhouse style of architecture, rescued from ugliness by a magnificent run of wisteria that stretched the length of a long terrace. Groups of local businessmen and one or two middle-aged couples were murmuring over their menus. There was no sign of Maître Auzet, although, as the waiter told Max, she had reserved her usual table overlooking the sweep of vines to the south.

Max ordered a
kir,
which was delivered with a dish of radishes and some sea salt, together with the menus and the wine list—a tome bound in tooled leather, bulging with expensive bottles. Not surprisingly, Max failed to find any mention of the wine from Le Griffon. He called the waiter over.

“I was told the other day about a local red. I think it’s called Le Griffon,” he said.

The waiter looked impassive.
“Ah bon?”

“What do you think of it? Any good?”

The waiter inclined his upper body toward Max and lowered his voice. “
Entre nous,
monsieur”—he applied his thumb and index finger delicately to the end of his nose—
“pipi de chat.”
He paused to allow this to sink in. “May I recommend something more appropriate? In the summer, Maître Auzet is partial to the rosé of La Figuière, from the Var, pale and dry.”

“What a good idea,” said Max. “It was on the tip of my tongue.”

The arrival of Maître Auzet was marked by a flurry of deference from the waiter, who escorted her to the table and eased her into her chair. She was wearing another of her suits, black and severe, and carried an anorexic briefcase. She had clearly decided that this was to be a strictly business lunch.

“
Bonjour,
Monsieur Skinner . . .”

Max held up his hand. “Please. Call me Max. And I can’t possibly keep calling you
maître.
It makes me think of some old man with a white wig and false teeth.”

She smiled, took a radish from the dish, and dipped it in the salt. “Nathalie,” she said, “and they’re my own teeth.” She bit into the radish, a pink tongue darting out to lick a grain of salt from her lower lip. “So tell me. You found everything in order at the house? Oh, before I forget . . .” She opened her briefcase and took out a folder. “A few more bills—house insurance, some work the electrician did, the quarterly account from the
Cave Co-opérative.
” She slid the folder across the table. “
Voilà.
That’s all. No more disagreeable surprises, I promise you.”

Before Max could reply, the waiter reappeared with an ice bucket and the wine. With the first glasses poured, a light meal of salad and fillets of
rouget
ordered, and the social niceties out of the way, Nathalie began to describe the situation with Roussel and the vines.

In Provence, she explained, as in most other wine-producing regions, there was an arrangement known as
métayage.
Roussel and Max’s uncle had adopted this system many years ago, whereby Roussel did the work on the vines, Uncle Henry paid for the cost of upkeep, and the two of them shared the wine. With Uncle Henry’s death, the change of proprietor had made Roussel anxious. He wanted the arrangement to continue, and was worried that Max might be thinking of ending it.

Max asked if that were technically possible, and Nathalie admitted that it was. But, she said, it would be difficult and perhaps legally complicated to change things. As legal people love to do, she then cited a precedent—a local precedent, in fact. The owners of a nearby vineyard had worked with the same family of peasants for nearly two hundred years. A few generations ago, after a dispute, the owners tried to cancel the arrangement. The peasants resisted. After a prolonged and bitter argument, the peasants won the right to continue working the land, which they still did. But the two families hadn’t spoken to one another since 1923.

Max finished a mouthful of
rouget
and shook his head. “Unbelievable. Is that really true?”

“Of course. There are hundreds of histories like that, feuds over land and water, even within the same family. Brothers against brothers, fathers against sons. It’s good, the fish, no?”

“Terrific. But tell me something. I tasted some of the wine—Le Griffon—at the house last night. It was undrinkable. And your friend the waiter here thinks it’s terrible.” If he was expecting any sympathy from Nathalie, he was disappointed.

Nothing but a shrug. “
Dommage.
But this isn’t the Médoc.”

“But if the wine is that bad, it can’t be very profitable to sell, can it?”

“I’m a
notaire.
What do I know about selling wine?”

Probably a lot more than I do, Max thought. “What I’d really like to know is this: if the wine is as bad as it seems to be, why is Roussel so anxious to carry on making it?”

Nathalie wiped some sauce from her plate with a piece of bread. “It’s his habit. It’s what he’s been doing for thirty years, and he’s comfortable doing it.” She leaned forward. “What you must understand is that people down here don’t like change. It upsets them.”

Max raised his hands in surrender. “Fine. I’ve got no objection if he wants to go on working the vines. But what I would like is some decent wine at the end of it. That’s reasonable, isn’t it?” He paused, trying to remember the word Charlie had used. “Actually, what I want to do is get someone to come in and take a look at the vines. An
oenologiste.
”

The word was hardly out of his mouth before Nathalie was wagging a finger at him, a gesture the French cannot resist before correcting a foreigner who commits a hiccup in their language.
“Oenologue.”

“Exactly. A wine doctor. There must be quite a few around here.”

There was a moment’s silence while Nathalie considered the wine in her glass, the hint of a frown on her forehead. “I don’t know,” she said. “Roussel might feel . . . how shall I say . . . threatened? Not trusted? I’m sure he’s like all the rest of them. They don’t like outside interference. It’s a rather sensitive situation. It always is where vines are concerned.” She shook her head at the delicacy of it all.

Max practiced his shrug. “Look. He stands to benefit as much as I do if we improve the wine. You don’t have to be a genius to see that. What has he got to lose? Anyway, I’ve made up my mind. That’s what I’m going to do.”

Nathalie was saved from having to give an immediate reply by the arrival of the waiter to clear away their plates and sing the praises of the cheese board in general and the Banon in particular, a goat cheese that he informed them, kissing the tips of his fingers, had just been awarded Appellation Contrôlée status. The interruption seemed to help Nathalie come to a decision.
“Bon,”
she said. “If you’re sure that’s what you want to do, I can ask some friends. They might be able to help you find someone who can do it without stepping on any toes.”

“You’re a princess.” Max leaned back, feeling that he had won a minor victory. “You wouldn’t like to help me with another problem, would you?”

The frown had disappeared, and Nathalie was smiling. “That depends.”

“I found all this furniture in the attic. Old stuff, but one or two pieces might be worth selling, and I could do with some cash to take care of the bills. You wouldn’t happen to know an honest antique dealer, would you?”

For the first time since she’d sat down, Nathalie laughed. “Of course,” she said, “and I believe in Father Christmas, too.”

“I thought so,” said Max. “You look the type.” He poured the last of the wine. “So they’re all villains, are they?”

Nathalie’s lips formed a dismissive pout, an answer that needed no words. “What you should do,” she said, “is spend one Sunday at Ile-sur-Sorgue. You’ll find more dealers there than anywhere except Paris. See if you like the look of any of them.” At this, Max sucked in a deep breath and shook his head. Nathalie looked puzzled. “What’s the matter?”

“Well,” he said, “look at me. I’m naive, innocent, and trusting. And I’m a foreigner, alone in a strange land. Those guys would have the shirt off my back in five minutes. I couldn’t possibly go without some local protection, someone who knows the ropes.”

Nathalie nodded, as if she couldn’t see what was coming. “Do you have anyone in mind?”

“That’s my other problem. I don’t know anyone except you.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I’m hoping that my enormous charm and the promise of a good lunch will be enough to persuade you to come with me.
Notaires
don’t work on Sunday, do they?”

Nathalie shook her head. “
Notaires
don’t work on Sunday.
Notaires
do occasionally have lunch. In many ways,
notaires
are very similar to people. Or hadn’t you noticed?”

Max winced. “Let me start again. I’d be the happiest man in Provence if you would care to join me on Sunday. That is, if you’re free.”

Nathalie put on her sunglasses to signal that lunch was over and it was time to go. “As it happens,” she said, “I am.”

Driving back from the restaurant, Max twice caught himself nearly falling asleep at the wheel. The road in front of him had a hypnotic shimmer in the heat, the temperature inside the car was in the nineties, and by the time he’d reached the house the lunchtime wine was whispering to him, telling him to go straight upstairs, lie down, and close his eyes.

His instinctive reaction was to resist, remembering with a smile the oft-repeated words of Mr. Farnell, his history master at school. The siesta, according to Farnell, was one of those pernicious, self-indulgent habits, typical of foreigners, that had sapped the will and contributed to the downfall of entire civilizations. This had enabled the British, who never slept after lunch, to move in and accumulate their empire. QED.