Hotel Pastis (11 page)

And the same old postmortem in the conference room after the clients had been bowed out of the agency. Recriminations from the research director, who had been denied his moment of glory; David Fry in a postcoke depression at the lack of response to the creative work; anticlimax spread thick among the rest of them.

It was a relief when Liz came in and handed Simon a note, but a relief that was short-lived:
“Mrs. Shaw is in reception. She says she has to see you.”

Simon arrived in reception to find his ex-wife fluttering her eyelashes at Jordan, who was pawing the ground and smoothing his hair flirtatiously. He was known for his roving hand under the table at dinner parties, a habit that Caroline and Simon used to joke about in the days when they made jokes. “The thigh creeper,” they called him, and always tried to avoid seating him next to a client’s wife.

“Hello, Caroline. How are you?”

The eyelashes stopped fluttering and the smile faded. “Hello, Simon.”

Jordan suddenly remembered a pressing engagement. “Nice to see you again, old thing,” he said. “I’d better
run.” He shot his cuffs in farewell and sauntered off towards the lift.

“Shall we go into my office?” Simon followed the long legs and short skirt out of reception and past Liz’s discreetly averted head. He shut the door.

“Would you like a drink?”

A superior shake of the head. “It’s a little early for me.”

Simon shrugged and went over to the small bar in the corner. He hesitated over whisky, sighed, and poured a glass of Perrier. Caroline arranged herself at the far end of the leather couch and puffed on a cigarette—short, cross little puffs with a toss of the head when she exhaled.

“When did you start smoking?”

“I’ve had a terribly upsetting time. Those bloody builders every day.” She tapped ash from her cigarette with a red-tipped finger. Her nail varnish was an exact match for her lipstick. Her crocodile shoes matched her crocodile bag. The dark tan suit of fine wool set off her lighter brown hair, and the silk shirt picked up the distinctive pale blue of her eyes. Simon thought she’d probably spent a hard morning getting dressed for a three-hour lunch at San Lorenzo before an exhausting session with her hairdresser. He was surprised and rather pleased that he no longer found her at all attractive.

He sat down at the other end of the couch. “Well?”

“I thought it was more civilised to come and see you instead of going through the lawyers.”

“We’ve already been through the lawyers.” Simon sipped his drink. “Remember? Or do you want to see the bills?”

Caroline sighed. “I’m trying to be reasonable, Simon.
There’s no need to jump down my throat.” She looked at him and pulled at her skirt until it almost covered her knees. Don’t think you’re going to jump anywhere else, either.

“Okay, let’s be reasonable.”

“It’s the house. They just haven’t stuck to their estimates, none of them. The curtains, painting, the kitchen—God, the kitchen!—it’s been an absolute nightmare. You’ve no idea.”

“Sounds just like last time.”

Caroline stubbed out her cigarette. “It’s not funny. Every tiny thing has been more than they said it was going to be. I mean, lots more.” She widened her eyes as she looked at Simon, a sure sign, he remembered, that news of extravagance was about to follow. “And now they’re all wanting to be paid.”

“Well,” said Simon, “it’s one of those irritating little habits they have.” He wondered how long it would be before she mentioned a figure, before the veneer of strained politeness would wear off to be replaced by threats or tears or hysterics. He felt oddly detached, and bored. It had all happened dozens of times since they’d been separated.

Caroline mistook his calm for acceptance and smiled. She did have nice teeth, Simon thought, even and beautifully capped by some bandit in New York for $25,000. “I knew it would be best to come and see you,” she said. “I knew you’d understand.”

“What are we talking about?”

“Well, it’s difficult to say exactly, because there are still one or two—”

“Roughly.”

“Well. Thirty thousand. Thirty-five at the most.”

Simon went back to the bar and refilled his glass. He
looked at Caroline, who was lighting another cigarette. “Thirty-five at the most,” he said. “Let me just get this clear. I bought you the house. You and your lawyers suggested a budget for doing it up. I agreed to the budget. You agreed to the budget. Am I right so far?”

“It was only supposed to be—”

“It was supposed to be a budget. You know what a budget is, don’t you? It’s a finite amount of money.”

Caroline mangled her cigarette in the ashtray. “There’s no need to talk to me like one of your dreary little executives.”

“Why not? You talk to me as if I was a cash dispenser.”

“Thirty-five thousand is nothing to you. You’re rich. My lawyers said you got off lightly. They could have—”

“Your lawyers are a bunch of greedy, dishonest bastards who pad their bills and expect me to pay for their bloody children to go through Eton.”

They stared at each other in silence. Caroline’s face was tight with animosity. Later on, if Simon allowed the conversation to continue, animosity would dissolve into sobbing, and if that didn’t work there would be abuse.

He glanced at his watch. “Look, I’m sorry, but I’ve got a meeting going on.”

Caroline mimicked him. “I’ve got a meeting.” She pushed back her hair as if it exasperated her. “God, you’ve always got a meeting. Our marriage was fitted in between meetings. I wasn’t married to you; I was married to an advertising agency.” She sniffed. “If you could call it a marriage. Too busy to take a holiday, too tired to go out, too tired to—”

“Caroline, we’ve been through all this before.”

“And now, when all I want is a home, you resent it.”

“I resent thirty-five thousand pounds being thrown away on bloody cushions.”

Caroline stood up. With quick, angry movements she put her cigarettes into her bag and smoothed her skirt. “Well, I tried. I’m not staying here to be shouted at. Go back to your precious meeting.” She walked over to the door and opened it so that Liz could hear her exit line. “You’ll be hearing from my lawyers.”

Simon thought about going back to the wake being conducted in the conference room, but decided against it. What was the point? Either they’d get the business or they wouldn’t, and the way he was feeling he didn’t particularly care. He put on his jacket, said goodnight to Liz, and walked through the early evening bustle of the streets to the flat in Rutland Gate.

Ernest came out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on his apron, his eyebrows raised in exaggerated surprise. “Fancy seeing you before eight o’clock. What happened? Has the factory burned down, or did those little rubber people have a puncture and not turn up?”

“No, Ern. They came and went. So did Caroline.”

“Oh dear. I thought you looked a tiny bit ruffled. I expect you’d like a drink.” He continued talking as he put ice and whisky in a tumbler. “What was it this time? Danger money for living in Belgravia? Say what one may about that young lady, she’s never short of ideas.”

Simon slumped in a chair and Ernest passed him his drink, then bent down to undo the button of Simon’s jacket. “If we sit like that with our jacket done up, we’re going to look like a concertina.”

“Yes, Ern. Cheers.”

“Oh, I nearly forgot. There was a message from foreign parts, a French person who says she has some good news.” Ernest sucked in his cheeks and looked down his nose at Simon. “She wasn’t prepared to tell me, so I assume it’s frightfully personal.” He hovered above Simon, a human question mark.

Simon laughed for the first time that day. It must be Nicole. “I expect it’s about my exhaust pipe.”

“Well, far be it for me to pry, dear. You call it what you like. Anyway, she left a number for you.” Ernest disappeared into the kitchen and, with a sniff and an ostentatious display of tact, closed the door behind him.

Simon lit a cigar and thought about his few days in Provence—the warmth, the light, the perfectly tanned cleavage—and went over to the phone.

“Oui?”

“Nicole, it’s Simon. How are you?”

“I’m well, thank you. And so is your car. At last the little monster has repaired it. Let’s hope he hasn’t stolen the radio.” She laughed, husky and intimate, and Simon wished he could see her.

“I’d love to come down and get it, but I don’t think it’s possible. There’s too much going on at the office. I’ll have to send someone down to pick it up.”

“Your gentleman’s gentleman?”

“Who?”

“The one who answered your phone. He sounds very correct.”

“Ah, that’s Ernest. Yes, I’ll send him. You’ll like him.”

There was a pause, and Simon could hear the scratch of a match as Nicole lit a cigarette.

“I have a better idea,” she said. “I have a
copine
—a girlfriend in London from the old days. She is always telling me to stay with her. Why don’t I bring your car? It would be fun, no?”

“It would be wonderful, but I don’t—”

“You don’t trust me with your expensive car?”

“I’d trust you with my auntie’s best bicycle.”

She laughed again. “So it’s a deal?”

“It’s a deal.”

Simon put down the phone and went into the kitchen whistling. Ernest looked up from the bowl of mussels that he was cleaning and took a sip from a glass of white wine. “Do I detect a certain improvement in our mood? I must say she has a very cultured voice for a garage mechanic.”

“She’s doing me a favour, bringing the Porsche back. Sweet of her.”

Ernest gave Simon a sceptical, sideways glance. “How rare it is to find a good fairy in this cruel world.”

“You should know, Ern.”

“I do, dear. I do.”

Nicole put a coat on against the chill of the evening and walked through the centre of the village, empty except for a dog sitting patiently outside the butcher’s, to the old
gendarmerie
. Simon had sounded pleased to hear from her. It was a pity he couldn’t come down. There was an idea forming in her mind, but it all depended: did he mean what he said about being tired of the advertising business? You could never tell with the English. They laughed and complained at the same time.

She stood looking through the doorway of
the gendarmerie
and then picked her way across the concrete floor to one of the openings in the far wall. The moon above the Lubéron cast a milky light on the terrace below, pale piles of stones around the inky pit of the unfinished swimming pool. Nicole tried to imagine how it could be, landscaped and floodlit, with music and laughter around her instead of the moan of the wind and the flapping of plastic that covered the sacks of cement against the wall.

She decided to do some research, maybe go and see
the
notaire
before she went to London. Businessmen always wanted figures and details. It was an interesting idea, if he was as bored as he said. Or was he just looking for a little sympathy at lunchtime? They were so difficult to believe sometimes, the English, so foreign with their odd, dismissive sense of humour and their infuriating sangfroid. She found it slightly strange that she was looking forward so much to seeing him again.

She flinched as she felt something touch her ankle, and looked down to see a scrawny village cat winding its way through her feet, its tail erect and twitching, its mouth open in a soundless greeting.

“So? What do you think? Is this something that would amuse him?”

I
t had been a stroke of luck for the General, finding the barn. It was out in the wild country north of Joucas, big enough to hide everything that had to be hidden, screened from the road by a high, ragged row of cypress trees. The owner had given up farming years ago and moved to Apt. He’d been happy to take five hundred francs a month and believe the story about using the space to keep a couple of tractors. All the General had needed to do was buy a new padlock for the massive wooden doors.

The dim interior echoed with the sound of early morning coughs as the first cigarettes of the day were lit while the men inspected the bicycles that were propped against the wall. Claude, his bulk straining against a
threadbare track suit, lumbered over and picked one up by the crossbar. He grunted.

“Don’t tell me it’s heavy,” said the General. “These are the lightest bikes in Provence, pro bikes—ten-speed gears, racing tyres, water bottles, moulded saddles, everything.”

Claude grunted again. “No cigar lighter?”

Fernand hoisted a leg over the crossbar of his bike and tried the saddle. He winced through the smoke of his cigarette. “
Ouf
. This is like having an operation.”

The others stopped laughing when they tried their own saddles. “The pros—they sit on these razor blades all through the Tour de France?”

The General tried to be patient with them. “Listen. I got you the best bikes. They don’t come with armchairs. After a week or two, the saddles will soften up.
Bon
, so you have sore backsides until they do.” He looked at them perching gingerly on their bikes. “But, my friends, when this is over, you’ll be sitting on a cushion. Nice, comfortable money.”

There was a silence while each man thought about his share. Jojo remembered his role as the faithful lieutenant. “He’s right. What’s a sore arse anyway. Eh?”

The General nodded. “What we’re going to do this morning is a little warm-up, just to get you used to riding—twenty, thirty kilometres. Every Sunday we’ll increase the distance until you can do a hundred kilometres without passing out, and then we’ll do a bit of hill work. You’ll have steel legs by the spring.
Allez!
”

They wheeled their bikes out of the barn and into the autumn sunlight, dressed in an assortment of outfits that ranged from Claude’s track suit to the Borels’ brightly coloured boxer shorts and Fernand’s oily blue mechanic’s overalls. The General made a mental note to buy them
something more suitable for winter cycling, those thick black tights that kept the wind out and the muscles warm.

“Turn left at the end of the track,” he said. “I’ll catch you up.” He closed and padlocked the doors, feeling good now that it had started, alert and optimistic, and glad that he’d taken for himself the job of team driver. Those saddles really were bastards.