A Good Year

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.

But the interior of the house was delightfully cool, and the endless scratchy serenade of the cigales was delightfully soothing. Max went to the library and picked a book from the shelves. He would read for half an hour before attacking the rest of the afternoon. He settled into one of the old leather club chairs and opened the book, a threadbare copy of E. I. Robson’s A Wayfarer in Provence, first published in 1926. On the very first page, Max was fascinated to discover that Provence had been invaded by “cruel ravishers.” Alas, despite this promising beginning, he never reached page two.

He was jolted awake by what he thought at first was thunder, then realized it was merely someone trying to break down the front door. Shaking his head to clear away the cobwebs of sleep, he pulled open the door to find, staring at him with undisguised curiosity, a man with a deep red face and a dog with a pale blue head.