Better Than Easy (3 page)

I take a hit. My head spins instantly. “Wow, this one's strong,” I say. “This one's gonna make me
really
lazy. Yeah, I knew you'd want a dungeon down there.”

Tom wiggles his head sideways. “There's no reason why we can't is there?”

I roll my eyes. “Again Tom, nice idea, but not that high on the list of priorities.”

“Oh go on!” he laughs. “We could make it a
gay
hotel. Charge extra for the dungeon key… like those places in Amsterdam,” he says, “with whips and chains in every room.”

I laugh and shake my head. “You dirty birdie,” I say.

“Nice idea though,” Tom says.

I nod and grin. The dope is working and it all suddenly seems not only a very funny idea but also a very good idea. Except… “You crazy guy,” I say. “We're not going to be
in
Amsterdam though, are we?”

Tom frowns.

“They have hotels like that in Amsterdam because it's a city of clubs and bars and cruising zones,” I say. “Loads of guys want to go there anyway. Up in the Alps I think you're much more likely to get hearty Christian heterosexual hill-walking types in those green convertible short/long trouser things.”

Tom sighs. “I guess,” he says sadly.

“What are they called anyway?” I ask, dragging on the joint again and then passing it to Tom. “Those zippy short/trouser things?”

Tom shrugs and looks mock-despondent. “Pantaloons?” he says.

“Pantaloons?”
I repeat, and we both collapse into laughter.

“Anyway, they usually have good muscled walking legs,” I say when I manage to stop sniggering.
“Pantaloons
indeed.”

Tom flashes the whites of his eyes at me. “I love a chunky calf,” he says. “A chunky calf protruding from the bottom of a pantaloon.”

I nod. “I know you do,” I say. “Only they're
so
not called pantaloons.”

Tom reaches out and rubs my own, not-so chunky calf. “Fancy a siesta?” he says.

I open my mouth to say, “Yes,” but the phone starts to ring. With a little difficulty I stand and cross the room. “Allo?” I say. I frown at the officious voice on the other end, then I cover the mouthpiece and roll my eyes at Tom. “It's about the gîte,” I tell him. “Just hold that thought, OK?”

The phone call takes forever. The information I am given is irritating and confusing and particularly hard to decipher through my dope smoke screen. By the time I hang up, Tom has given up and wandered off, so I sit and frown and sigh repeatedly until he returns, two carrier bags of food hanging from his wrists.

“What kind of a country
is
this?” he asks, pushing his way in. “I mean the French think they're so civilised – some guy on telly said it was
the
most civilised country in the world the other day – anyway, I think that's what he said.”
“Le pays le plus civilisé du monde,”
he mocks pompously. “But they've never even heard of rhubarb crumble. Can you imagine that? You see, we
do
need to plant rhubarb. Urgently! Anyway, I found lemon meringue pie – I suppose that'll have to do…” He looks at me and pauses as he notices my expression. “What was that about then?” he asks, nodding sideways towards the phone and pulling a frozen lemon meringue pie in a box from the Picard bag.

“That,”
I say rolling my eyes, “was bad news.”

“About the gîte?”

I nod sadly. “About the gîte.”

“She's
not
pulling out?” he asks, suddenly serious, frozen in the doorway, the pie still half in, half out of the bag. “She can't now, can she?”

“Not quite,” I say. “But you know Chantal's missing husband.”

Tom shrugs. “I never saw him.”

I shake my head. “None of us did – it seems he's
really
missing.”

“Missing?”

“Yeah, like missing-person missing,” I explain.
“He walked out on her eighteen months ago and never came back.”

“What, like, popped out for a packet of cigarettes?” Tom asks. “Or a lemon meringue pie?”

I shrug. “Something like that. Only trouble is, because they were married, the place automatically belongs to both of them. So he needs to be present to sign the sale.”

Tom's mouth drops. “And what? Chantal didn't know this when she signed the papers?”

I shake my head and interrupt. “She says not. I mean, that wasn't her – it was the lawyer, but no, he said she inherited the gîte, so she just thought it was hers.”

“So what, until this bloke turns up we can't buy the place?”

I shrug. “Unless they declare him dead,” I say. “I think
missing presumed dead
is the term.”

Tom nods and then looks at the pie box again, frowning as he reads the French defrosting instructions. “Shit,” he says. “It takes ages. You have to leave it to defrost. So how long is
that
gonna take?”

I shrug. “I dunno, doesn't it say on the box?”

Tom shakes his head and turns, a bemused expression on his face. “Not the pie! For him to be declared dead!”

I frown, and then slip into a smirk.

“What?” Tom says.

I shrug. “I forgot to ask,” I say, biting my tongue and crossing my eyes in a caricature of stupidity.

Tom grins at me in disbelief. “You
are
joking, right? I mean, it's the only really important bit of information in there.”

I shrug. “I'm stoned,” I say, starting to snigger. “Sorry.”

Tom turns his palms skywards and looks at the ceiling and shakes his head, then turns to the kitchen. “I can't wait that long,” he says, as he disappears. “There's only one thing for it.”

“Yeah?” I shout, standing to follow him.

“We'll have to eat it frozen,” he replies.

My beloved Kawasaki purrs and rolls beautifully from one bend to the next. The air is crisp and clear, the sky a deep shade of blue after the rain. Despite thick, gleaming bike leathers and somewhat less sexy Damart underwear, the cold is starting to reach my thighs and I'm still only a third of the way up. I wonder just how cold it is going to be up there.

Despite the ride, the air, the sky, the sun, I'm feeling blurry and irritable. As I pass through tiny abandoned villages I wonder how much of my mood is due to the dope hangover, and how much is caused by circumstance – the holdup on the sale and Tom's refusal to come with me (his own reaction to the hangover being a day in bed.)

As I leave the 202 and head up towards Guillaumes, little patches of snow start to appear at the roadside and my visor starts to mist up as the temperature plummets. The cold really starts to penetrate my leathers now, but it's a good feeling – bracing and somehow real, invigorating. I pass a group of cars parked for no apparent reason in the middle of nowhere, then a police car and another, and I vaguely wonder what that's all about.

In Guillaumes there seem to be far more people milling about than usual, but I don't really pay any attention – I put it down to some kind of village fête and continue on up towards Chatauneuf d'Entraunes, the hilltop village where the gîte is located. The snowfall here has been heavy, and though the road has been cleared, I start to wonder if it's actually possible to get to the top on a motorbike. Cars may slip and slide in the snow, but two hundred kilos of motorbike (two-eighty if you include the rider) on two motorbike tyres – well, if I meet snow on the
road then there's really no way. I wonder about the state of my front tyre and suddenly can't remember when I last checked the tread. It can't be far from illegal.

The scenery is incredible and eventually it manages to pierce my dope bubble. The pines, deepest green, are heavily laden with brilliant white, icing-sugar snow. It looks more and more like a Swiss postcard the higher I ride.

As I take the final turn towards Chateauneuf d'Entraunes the snow starts to encroach upon the road – there has clearly been far less traffic on this stretch. I pass another policeman sitting in his car on the bend and almost stop to ask what's up, but really I am just too lazy to pull the brake lever.

I keep the bike in one of the narrow tracks left by car tyres and slow to walking pace. The bike slithers a little from time to time, but nothing so bad that it doesn't seem like fun.

The gîte, when I finally arrive, looks stunning – far more beautiful than my memories. The roof is blanketed with ten inches of snow, rising and falling as it hugs the contours of the roof tiles. Everything – the deep grey stone walls, the plastic table and chairs, even the wheelbarrow – looks different and beautiful topped with this fresh glittering whiteness. But the blue, weather-beaten shutters are closed; there is no trail to the front door. The place has been closed for a while.

I park the bike and slip and slide my way – my bike boots don't seem to have much tread left either – round the back of the building and up into the tiny village square, but here too, apart from a couple of single sets of footprints, the place shows no sign of life. I'm not going to be able to speak to Chantal today.

As I head back through the snow-dampened silence, it strikes me for the first time how
difficult
it is going to be to fill this place in winter; to get paying
guests up here at all, in fact to get anyone,
even friends
, to visit. And I realise that if the seller has closed the place up awaiting the sale, it's probable that there aren't any paying guests in winter anyway – and further, that if she isn't here to take bookings then we are no longer buying a going concern but a clean slate with an empty diary. It's going to be harder than I ever imagined to make ends meet.

I clean the snow from a chair and sit in the sun for a while enjoying the view, which is undeniably stunning and definitely the thing to concentrate on in any marketing we do. I imagine life here, with Tom walking his big dog along the ridge, or tending his rhubarb. I imagine us play fighting over who has to get up to do breakfast for the early-starting hill-walkers. After half an hour my stomach starts to rumble – I had hoped to have lunch here – so I start the bike and crawl back down the hill. The heavy bike on the snow feels much scarier heading back down – lethal in fact – but I make it to the main road without a mishap. The nail of realisation about just how tough winter can be up here is driven in a little further. The bike will be unusable a lot of the time; even in a car it could be hard to get in and out. We're going to be pretty isolated, pretty cold and money will be tight too. But in the end, as long as I imagine Tom in the picture doing it all with me, as long as I imagine us shovelling snow together or building huge log fires, then it seems fine, brilliant in fact. And I realise that my own dreams really don't have much to do with the gîte at all. Of course its fun, it's an adventure, it's a change, but the more I analyse things, it's really all just about Tom. And I wonder if that isn't a good definition of being in love.

As I round the final bend of the track and the main road comes into view, I jolt with the surprise of seeing someone – a policeman – in the middle of the junction. He has blocked the end of the road with red tape stretched between his wing mirror and a signpost. Beside me a French
pompier
is sitting in his red fire-truck-come-ambulance thing; a small group of people are standing at the roadside.

My first thought, because that is what is on my mind, is that it has something to do with Chantal's missing husband, and then I discount this and presume there's been an accident. A few feet before the policeman, I slither to a halt.

“La route est fermée,” he says raising his hand. –
“The road is closed.”

“Fermée?” I repeat.

“Yes,” he tells me. “For the rally.”

I shake my head. “Rally? But I have to get out,” I say, adding a
Monsieur
at the end hoping this will help.

“Not until six,” he replies. “If you're lucky.”

I know there's no point arguing with French policemen about anything,
ever
, but the
pompier
in his truck and one of the rally organisers are looking our way, so hoping to gain their support I carry on meekly. “But I have to go to work; I didn't know there was a rally. What can I do?”

“Where are you trying to get to?” the policeman asks.

“Nice,” I reply. “I work in Nice.”

“Well you won't be able to get there until after six,” he says.

“Where
can
I get to?” I ask.

“From here?” he says. “Today?” He pauses dramatically, then shakes his head and says, “Nulle
part.” –
“Nowhere.”
There is no trace of humour in his voice.

I shake my head and a
Jesus!
slips out despite myself. “Look, the rally hasn't started yet has it?” I plead, glancing at a steward in an attempt at including him. “Can't I just slip out before it starts?”

The policeman sighs unhappily. “Are you sure you want to argue with me?” he asks, one eyebrow raised. He glances at my front tyre, which means of course that he has won.

I shake my head. “Non, Monsieur,” I say.

With difficulty I turn the bike around. It would be easier if the policeman moved back a foot, but he stands there like a rock, so I have to do the manoeuvre – which on the sloping, snowy hill is hard enough – whilst also trying not to run over his foot. I park it next to the
pompier's
van a few yards back up the hill.

“Il ne vous laisse pas passer?” he says from his window.
– “He's not letting you through?”

I shake my head. “Not till six he says.”

“If you're lucky,” he laughs. “The last one I went to, we were there till midnight – a car crashed in the tunnel.”