A Good Year

Sixteen

“I borrowed this from an acquaintance in the village who is très anglophile,” said Madame Passepartout, who was showing Max the wonders she had achieved in what was to be Charlie’s bedroom. “It will make your friend feel instantly at home. Regard the dogs.” She pointed to the bedside table.

There, next to the decanter of cognac and a small vase of freesias, was a framed photograph, in full color, of a smiling Queen Elizabeth. She was perched on a couch, possibly in her private sitting room at Windsor, with an entourage of Corgis spread out on the carpet like a living fan at her feet.

Max considered the photograph, feeling sure that Charlie would think he’d gone mad. “Such attention to detail, madame,” he said. “My friend will undoubtedly be ravished.”

It was the morning of Charlie’s arrival, and Max had spent the past quarter of an hour dutifully admiring the bedroom’s high state of polish and perfection. He had to admit that Madame Passepartout had done wonders: the down-at-the-heel cushions and the maroon curtains with their rather sinister blotches had been flogged until not a speck of dust remained on them, every hard surface had been buffed and made to shine, the tiled floor rejuvenated with an application of water and linseed oil and elbow grease. A small rug had been placed by the side of the bed to protect Charlie’s delicate feet from direct contact with the floor. And there was the royal portrait. What more could a guest want?

Madame Passepartout interrupted Max’s flow of praise with an upraised finger. “Does he like to dance, your friend?”

Max had seen Charlie in action on the dance floor dozens of times. His feet seldom moved beyond a shuffle, but his hands were always busy; a form of slow-motion body search. Curiously, the girls never seemed to mind. “Yes,” said Max, “although he prefers music that is not too fast. It’s his arthritis.”

“Ah bon? Well, tonight there will be music of every speed. It is the village fête, un repas dansant. There will be an accordion band, and a diji from Avignon who will play the more modern tunes. With records,” she added, in case Max was not fully up to date with contemporary developments in the world of music, “as in a discotheque.”

Max nodded. “I hope you’ll be going, madame.”

“Of course. Everyone in the village will be there.” She raised herself up on tiptoe and executed a surprisingly accomplished pirouette. “Everyone will dance.”

For a brief moment, Max thought of Fanny, of dancing with Fanny under the stars. He looked at his watch. “I’d better go. He’s supposed to be arriving in the village quite soon, and he won’t know how to find the house.”

In fact, Charlie had been so anxious to get away from everything and everyone connected with luxury real estate that he had made an early start from Monte Carlo, and had already reached the village. Pulling up in front of the café, he stepped out of his large rented Mercedes and looked around the square with cheerful interest.

There was no mistaking him for a native of Saint-Pons. He was dressed very much à l’anglais: a double-breasted blazer with a multitude of brass buttons, pale gray flannels, a glaringly new Panama hat-all in all, an apparition from another world, and one the locals were studying with sidelong glances of discreet curiosity. Catching the eye of one of them, an elderly woman, Charlie raised his hat. “Bonjour, my dear, bonjour.”

Alas, that was very nearly the full extent of his French vocabulary. He had progressed a step beyond the traditional English method of communicating with foreigners-that is, to speak English very slowly and at maximum volume-but it was only a short step, and frequently unintelligible. Indeed, it was a language that had never been heard before in Saint-Pons, or anywhere else, for that matter: basically English, but with an “o” or an “a” or sometimes an “oo” added to the end of a word to give it that authentic continental flavor, with the occasional Spanish or Italian flourish thrown in for added confusion.

Leaving the car in front of the café, Charlie went inside to attend to what had suddenly become a pressing need. “Por favor, madame,” he said to the woman behind the bar, “toilettoes?” She looked up from her paper and jerked her head toward the back of the café. Charlie hurried off with a thankful sigh.

When Max got down to the village, he found the square teeming with activity in preparation for the evening’s revels. Half a dozen men were on ladders, stringing colored lights through the branches of the plane trees; others were arranging the rows of trestle tables and benches that took up much of the square; and a third group, scowling, unshaven, noisy, and irritated, had just jumped out of a huge truck that was loaded with scaffolding and wooden planks. These were to be transformed into a stage for the band, but unfortunately-and this was the cause of the scowls and the irritation-the truck was unable to reach or even get close to the area reserved for the stage. The way was blocked because some cretin had parked his Mercedes in front of the café. The driver of the truck leaned into the cabin, put his hand on the horn, and left it there.

The cretin, having completed successful negotiations for a cup of coffee to be served to him on the terrace, emerged, jaunty and relieved, from the door of the café as Max arrived. Their pleasure at seeing one another was cut short by a bellow from the truck driver.

“If that were my Mercedes, Charlie, I think I’d move it before they use the truck to shove it out of the way.”

“Oh God.” Charlie went over to the car, waving his hands in what he hoped were apologetic gestures. “Pardonnay, pardonnay. Frightfully sorry.” And with that, he backed the Mercedes out of the square, narrowly missing a trestle table and the café dog as he went.

Madame came out with a cup of coffee, and looked in vain for the man who had ordered it. She turned to Max, shaking her head. “I’m always getting caught like that,” she said. “They come in, they do their business, they disappear. As if I were running a pissotière.”

Max explained the problem, and ordered coffee for himself and, by way of a peace offering, for the men with the truck. He sat back and tilted his face up to the sun, smiling at the thought of having Charlie stay for a few days. It would be fun to introduce him to a different kind of life, especially with a pretty girl to keep him on his toes. The Panama hat would have to go, though. It reminded Max of the uniform worn by a certain kind of Englishman that he detested-loud, pink, and bumptious-which Charlie certainly was not.

“Sorry about that.” Charlie had returned, stripping off his blazer and draping it over the back of his chair before sitting down. “You’re looking well, you old bugger. Suits you down here. But I thought you said this was a quiet little place where nothing happened. What’s going on? You must have told them I was coming.”

The men from the truck were starting to erect the scaffolding framework that would support the wooden stage. Immediately in front of it was an area left clear for dancing, with the tables and benches lining the remaining three sides of the square. “Tonight is the annual village knees-up,” said Max. “Dinner, dancing, fairy lights, the works. Maybe even balloons. I’ll get tickets for us from the café before we leave. You don’t know how lucky you are-you’ll meet everybody from the mayor to the baker’s daughter.”

At the mention of what he took to be a young and no doubt voluptuous woman, Charlie rubbed his hands and looked hopeful. “Better polish up my French. You never know.”

“How’s your American?”

Charlie gave Max a speculative look. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

Max went through the story of Christie’s arrival, including the visit to the lawyer and the episode with the cast-iron skillet. “Ah,” said Charlie, “I was going to ask you about your head. You were forcing your attentions on the poor helpless girl, were you? What a nasty brute you are. A slave to testosterone. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“If you must know, Charlie, she’s not my type-she’s a blonde. You know how I feel about blondes.”

Charlie raised a finger. “You were just unlucky with my sister.” He shook his head, and added, “Weren’t we all? Actually, I’ve known some very pleasant blondes. Did I ever tell you about the one I found kipping in a flat in Eaton Square when I went round to take the measurements?”

Max brushed the sleeping blonde away. “As it happens, I’ve rather got my eye on a young lady from the village.” Realizing how prim he was sounding, he hurried on. “Anyway, Christie’s terrific. I’m sure you’ll like her.”

“Pretty?”

“Very. And she knows a bit about wine. You’ll be able to have a good old gargle-and-spit together.”

They ordered more coffee, and Max went on to describe what he’d learned from Roussel’s confession in the cave. Charlie’s eyebrows, never at rest for long, went up and down with each revelation. “Sounds to me,” he said, “as though you could be on to a little winner with that wine. I’d love to have a taste of it.”

“And I’d love to know who’s buying it. I’ve asked Roussel to draw off a couple of bottles and bring them over to the house. It’s young-only been in the barrels since last October. But you’ll get an idea of what it’s like.”

While they were talking, a small, exuberantly colored van-Monsieur La Fête painted in Day-Glo pink on its frog-green side-had managed to nose its way through the square to park by the stage. Then the driver, perhaps Monsieur La Fête himself, finished hooking up an amplifier and microphone to the loudspeakers he had attached to the scaffolding. He stood back to light a cigarette before throwing a switch on the amplifier. The square was instantly filled with electronic screeches and burps, scattering the pigeons and causing the café dog to raise his head and howl. The driver made some adjustments to the controls and flicked the microphone with his index finger. “Un… deux… trois… Bonjour Saint-Pons!” More screeching followed. The dog pursed his lips, retreated into the café, and found a haven of relative peace in the space beneath the pinball machine.

“Nothing like it,” said Charlie. “The blessed tranquility of village life.”

When they arrived back at the house, Madame Passepartout was hovering in the doorway, eager for her first glimpse of the young English milor. For an awful moment, Max had the feeling that she was going to curtsy, but she made do with a simper and a handshake.

“Enchanto, madame,” said Charlie, raising his hat, “enchanto.” Another simper from Madame Passepartout, and the beginnings of a blush.

They took Charlie upstairs to his bedroom, where Madame Passepartout fussed with the pillows and made a point of carrying out invisible adjustments to the decanter and the royal portrait on the bedside table, in case Charlie might not have noticed them.

He put his suitcase on the bed and opened it, taking out a tangled pile of dirty laundry, a side of smoked salmon, and two packets of sausages. “Here-you’d better put these in the fridge before they go off,” he said, giving them to Max.

“I shall take these.” Madame Passepartout swooped on the laundry and gathered it up in her arms. “Does monsieur like his shirts and handkerchiefs with a little starch, or au naturel?”

Charlie beamed and nodded in amiable incomprehension. “Splendide, most kind,” and Madame Passepartout, with a parting remark to Max that she had prepared a simple lunch of crespeou and salad for them, swept out of the bedroom to consign the laundry to the uncertain care of the ancient washing machine in the scullery.

Max shook his head. “You’ll have to get used to this. I’m afraid she thinks you’re some kind of toff.” He sat on the side of the bed while Charlie unpacked what was left of his clothes and started to put them in the armoire. “We’ll have lunch, and then I’ll give you the guided tour.”

“It looks pretty good so far. Definitely a chateau, I’d say. Minor chateau, of course, but with chateau-like qualities, and that’s what counts these days, rather than the inconvenience of the real thing; the feeling of being in a house that might have a ballroom, without the bother of the ballroom itself. Does that make sense? In any case, here we are with an early-eighteenth-century gem whose original features have been carefully preserved through the generations. Imposing, of course, and standing in its own cultivated grounds, secluded but not isolated. I can see the sales brochure now. The guys in Monte Carlo would rip your head off to get their hands on this. Oh, I forgot.” He unrolled a pair of trousers and produced a bottle of Laphroaig. “Still drinking whisky, I hope. Now then. Where’s the beautiful lodger?”

Christie had spent the morning with guidebooks and a map of Europe, trying to decide where to go next. London? Venice? Paris? She looked up from the kitchen table as the two friends came in.

“Christie, this is Charlie.”

Max saw Charlie’s eyes widen. He smoothed back his hair and held out his hand. “Lovely to meet you. Thank God I won’t have to dance with Max tonight.”

Christie giggled. The two of them stood smiling at one another without speaking while Max went to fetch glasses, and a bottle of wine from the refrigerator.

Madame Passepartout came out of the scullery and studied the couple, still silent, still smiling. Clearly pleased at what she saw, she tiptoed over to where Max was uncorking the bottle. “Monsieur Max,” she said, in the muffled boom that for her passed as a conspiratorial whisper, “perhaps they would like to have lunch alone.”

“What? Nonsense. I haven’t seen Charlie for ages. We’ve got lots of catching up to do.”

A sniff from Madame Passepartout. It took a woman to recognize these things.

It had been Max’s intention to spend lunch going over the business of Roussel’s wine in greater detail, but he was instead treated to an example of Charlie’s sales technique-selling himself, of course, but under the guise of promoting the charms of London compared with Venice or Paris. “Did you know,” he was saying to Christie, “that at this time of year there are more tourists than pigeons in Venice? True as I sit here. Also, one false step and you’re in a canal, being run over by gondolas. Damned dangerous place. As for Paris, well, the whole city is closed for the summer; you’d be lucky to find the subway open. The Parisians are all down here on the coast, or in one of their little spas, bathing their livers in fizzy water. Now, London has it all: the theater, clubs, pubs, shops, restaurants, Beefeaters, Buckingham Palace, Notting Hill-think of the postcards you could send home-a climate that is absolutely guaranteed to do wonders for the female complexion, taxi drivers who speak English… well, of course, everybody speaks English.”

“Wow,” said Christie. “Fancy that.” She reached across the table and rescued Charlie’s napkin from his salad, tucking it back in the top of his shirt.

“Seriously, that’s a big advantage, particularly the first time you visit a place. And the other big advantage is that you have a contact who knows London inside out, and who’d be delighted to show you around.” He leaned back in his chair and tapped his chest. “Moi.And I have a spare room.”

Charlie was for once managing to keep his eyebrows under control, and his expression innocent. Watching the two of them smiling at one another, Max felt it was as though he weren’t there. He also thought that the spare room would probably stay empty. He broke the silence with a loud sigh of mock relief. “Well,” he said, “that’s a load off my mind. Now that you two have settled your travel arrangements, do you think we could talk about the wine?”

Max went through it all again, and came to the same conclusion: They could confront Nathalie Auzet and try to extract a confession from her, which Max thought was unlikely and Christie dismissed as an impossibility. Or they could wait for the mystery truck to come back in September.

“Then what?” asked Charlie. “Ask them nicely where they were taking the wine? Tell them to hang on while you call the police?” He shook his head. “And another thing: how do you know Roussel hasn’t already told Nathalie Auzet that the game’s up?”

Max had to admit that was possible. “He told me he wouldn’t say a word, but I suppose we can’t be sure of that.”

Christie was frowning at the empty wine bottle on the table in front of her. “Wait a minute,” she said. “Max, didn’t you say you’d seen something at Nathalie Auzet’s house? Some kind of label?”

Max nodded. “You’re quite right. I remember making a note of it, but God knows where I put it.” He stood up. “Why don’t you show Charlie round while I go and have a look.”

Madame Passepartout had abandoned her observation post at the kitchen window to come out and clear the table, and she watched with an approving eye as Christie and Charlie left the courtyard, their heads close together in conversation. “It is as I thought,” she said with great satisfaction. “Un coup de foudre.”

Max spent a frustrating hour going through the pockets of all his clothes and the various piles of lists and papers that he had stuffed into the chest of drawers and in the back of the armoire. Eventually, he found what he was looking for, scrawled on the back of his English checkbook. It was no more illuminating now than it had been when he’d written it down.

He went downstairs to find Charlie returned from his tour of the property in a high state of excitement. “It’s sensational,” he said to Max, “all you need to do is a bit of work on the house-and put in a pool; must have a pool-and you’d be sitting on seven figures. That’s sterling, of course.” He looked around, a real estate agent’s gleam in his eye. “You’re protected at the back by the mountain, and there’s a cushion of land surrounding the house, so there’s no problem with neighbors. Why, if you…”

Max held up a hand. “Charlie, before you get carried away and put in a helicopter pad, take a look at this. Does it mean anything to you?”

Charlie looked up from the checkbook, tapping it against his free hand. “It rings a bell,” he said, “but I can’t be sure.” He looked at his watch. “ London ’s an hour behind, isn’t it? Billy would know. Let me see if I can catch him.”

Christie watched him go into the house, with the smile that had scarcely left her face since she’d met him.

“I’m glad you two have hit it off,” said Max. “I’ve known Charlie for twenty years. We were at school together. He’s one of the best.”

“He’s awfully cute,” said Christie. “Is he always like this?”

“Cute?” Max grinned at her. “I don’t know about that, but he never changes-it’s one of the reasons I like him so much. You’ll have a lot of fun in London.”

At Christie’s urging, Max began to tell her about the London he thought she should see, from the Tate Modern and the National Portrait Gallery to Harvey Nichols and the Portobello Road market, adding a few things she should avoid like the plague: plastic pubs, Piccadilly on Saturday night, anything masquerading as doner kebab. He was moving on to the sometimes bizarre attractions of Soho when Charlie returned, shaking his head.

“No joy, I’m afraid. His secretary said he’s off playing golf with God-I think that’s the unofficial name for the wine buyer from the Connaught. Anyway, he’ll be back in the office tomorrow.” He tossed the checkbook back to Max. “Now then, about tonight. I don’t want to look like the visitor from outer space. What are we all wearing? I want to blend in.”

Max looked at him: rumpled winter-weight flannels, black city shoes, a blue-and-white-striped Jermyn Street shirt open at the neck, a broad, ruddy face; resolutely, eternally, unmistakably English. Even his hair was English. “You didn’t bring a beret, did you? That might help.”