The Critic

III

From the lab, in its tiny, hidden square in the heart of the old town, Enzo walked through to the Eglise Saint-Pierre. The repeating pattern of arches in an elaborate stone doorway were reflected in the redbrick architecture of its towering facade. Coloured fragments of sunlight, glimpsed beyond the half-open door, fell in through stained-glass windows to cast light in the gloom of its vast, echoing interior. But Enzo did not go inside. Neither prayer nor confession were high on his list of priorities.

He turned left into the Rue Portal and followed the narrow, cobbled street up between oddly canted apartments to the big, leafy Place de la Liberation, where sunlight danced in the shade of tall chestnuts whose leaves were stirred by a light wind. All along its length, old people sat on benches watching leaves fall and time slip away.

Sophie and Bertrand were sitting at a table outside the Grand Cafe des Sports with Nicole, Michelle, and Charlotte. As soon as he joined them, Enzo became aware of an unspoken tension between Charlotte and Michelle-aware, too, that he was probably the cause of it. He was neither flattered nor pleased by the thought, reflecting only that his life would be much less complicated if there were fewer women in it. Sophie was being extra bright in an attempt to gloss over the discordant atmosphere.

‘We went to the Maison du Vin,’ she said. ‘They’ve got an amazing tasting room down in the cellars of the old abbe. Rows and rows of sinks for spitting your wine into.’

Nicole humphed. ‘A waste of good wine.’

Sophie ignored her. ‘Trouble is, Papa, we’re out of season now, and they’re only doing tasting classes on Thursday nights.’ She delved into her bag. ‘But we got these.’ And she produced a sheaf of photocopied documents. ‘ Les etapes de la degustation. Everything you need to know about tasting wine.’ She thrust them at her father, and he flicked through sheets of paper with illustrations of wine glasses being looked at, sniffed, swirled, and quaffed. La vue. La nez. Le gout. There was a list of colour nuances for red, white, and rose wine, categories of smells and tastes, an illustration of the human tongue with its clusters of taste buds capable of distinguishing everything from sweet to acid to salty to bitter.

‘And I used to think wine was easy,’ he said. ‘You drank it, and you liked it. Or you didn’t.’

‘There’s much more to it than that, Monsieur Macleod,’ Bertrand said earnestly. ‘It’s full of subtlety and variety. And once you’ve trained your palate, you know, there’s no going back. Drinking wine will never be the same again.’

‘Hmmmph.’ Enzo was not convinced. He felt something tugging at his feet. ‘What the hell…?’ He looked under the table in time to see a brown puppy dog pulling at his laces before dancing away across the pavement.’

Nicole laughed. ‘It’s just Braucol. Shoelaces are his party trick. We’ve been watching him go round all the tables.’

‘Braucol?’

‘Yeah, that’s what they’ve christened him here.’

‘Well, they should teach him not to bother the customers.’ Enzo stooped to retie his laces.

‘Oh, he doesn’t belong to the cafe. He’s a stray.’

Enzo glared at the dog, which cocked its head and seemed to be smiling at him. He waved his hand at it. ‘Go on, bugger off!’

‘Papa!’

But Braucol seemed to take Enzo’s dismissal as a sign of encouragement and came racing back to the table to put his front paws up on Enzo’s thigh and thrust a big head and floppy ears into his lap.

‘He likes you, Monsieur Macleod.’ Nicole reached over and tousled the puppy’s head.

But he only had eyes for Enzo. Big, soft, irresistible brown eyes which he turned up towards what he clearly took to be the leader of the pack. Enzo sighed and gave in, scratching behind its ears, before pushing it back down on to the terrasse. ‘On you go, shoot the craw!’

Michelle frowned. ‘Shoot the craw?’

‘An old Scottish expression,’ Enzo told her. ‘For…for…’

‘Bugger off?’ Sophie suggested.

‘Something like that.’ Enzo turned to Bertrand. ‘So what do you suggest?’

‘Well, we should still go ahead and do the tasting.’ He riffled through the notes. ‘This is all pretty much what I got taught anyway.’

Enzo felt a tugging at his feet again. ‘Jesus Christ!’

Braucol went scampering off amongst the trees, having successfully undone the pack leader’s shoelaces again.

As he bent to tie them for the second time, Enzo saw the puppy go chasing down the sidewalk after a middle-aged lady wearing pink cut-off pants with laced-up slits at the side of either calf. She was what Enzo’s mother would have described as mutton dressed as lamb. She tried to avoid the dog dancing around her legs, then stumbled on precariously high heels and sat down abruptly as Braucol succeeded in grabbing one of her laces.

‘Braucol!’ Enzo shouted admonishment at the dog, and it immediately turned and raced back to their table. The woman glared in their direction, humiliation flushing her face as pink as her trousers. She got to her feet and strode over to the gathering of would-be wine tasters.

‘Is this your dog?’ she demanded of Enzo.

‘Well, actually…’

But she wasn’t waiting for an explanation. Her hand swung unexpectedly from somewhere beyond her handbag, and its open palm caught Enzo squarely on the side of the face. It made a very loud slapping sound. ‘You should learn to keep your animals under control.’ And she strode off, dignity restored, leaving Enzo speechless, face stinging.

There was a moment of shocked silence around the table, before they all burst out laughing. Except for Enzo. And Braucol began dancing around Enzo’s chair, barking his delight.

The dog sat next to their table all through lunch, gazing up, wide-eyed and expectant, as Nicole and Sophie, to Enzo’s annoyance, threw him scraps of skin and fat from their poulet farci.

‘You’ll only spoil him,’ Enzo growled.

But no matter who it was who fed him the scraps, it was always to Enzo that he came back with upturned eyes.

‘Look, see, he only has eyes for you, Papa.’

Enzo glared at the dog. ‘Go away!’

Braucol smiled. And when, eventually, they paid up and left, crossing the square to the Place d’Hautpoul, where they had parked their cars opposite the mairie, he followed. Initially at a safe distance, before getting bolder, and diving around their feet, rubbing himself against Enzo’s legs. But despite several gentle attempts by Enzo to discourage him with the toe-end of his training shoes, Braucol was determined to remain a part of the group.

When they reached Enzo’s 2CV Michelle broke her long silence. ‘Would you drive me back to Chateau de Salettes please, Enzo?’ She had left her rental car at the hotel after taking her father’s belongings from the gite, and come down with them to Gaillac in the back of Bertrand’s van.

‘Of course,’ Charlotte said quickly. ‘We’d be happy to.’ She smiled sweetly at Enzo. ‘Wouldn’t we?’

Enzo flicked her a dark look. ‘Of course.’

And as he opened the door for Michelle, Braucol jumped up on to the backseat and dipped his head to peer out at them from under the curve of the roof.

Sophie laughed. ‘He’s definitely adopted you, Papa.’

‘He can’t come with us,’ Enzo insisted. ‘We’ve got nothing to feed him.’

‘Don’t worry, me and Bertrand’ll stop and get some dog food and a bowl at Leclerc’s. I’m sure the Lefevre’s won’t mind a dog at the gite. They’ve got one of their own, haven’t they?’

Michelle slipped into the backseat beside Braucol and ruffled his ears. Charlotte got in the passenger side. Enzo sighed and got in behind the wheel. He flipped up the window and called to Sophie as the three youngsters made their way across the car park towards Bertrand’s van. ‘You’ll have to take him home with you when you leave. I can’t look after him here.’

Braucol curled up next to Michelle, his head on her lap, as they drove north and east out Gaillac, heading in silence up into the hills towards Cahuzac and the Chateau de Salettes. Although the sky was still clear, the wind had risen, warm and humid, redolent with the sense of approaching rain. The weather was on the change.

Sun slanted off the angles of red roof and white stone as they drove into the compound outside the walled gate of the chateau, dust rising from crushed castine on the edge of the wind, to be whipped away across a sea of fibrillating green and red vine leaves. Enzo left the engine running as Michelle got out of the car. She hesitated, eyes concealed by her sunglasses, and tossed her hair back from her face. She seemed to be looking beyond Enzo towards Charlotte, before switching her focus back to him. ‘Could we talk?’ she said. ‘Privately.’

Enzo hesitated, then turned off the ignition and stepped out of the car, suspension dipping dangerously. He leaned in the window. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

He followed Michelle through the open half of a wooden gate into the courtyard beyond. The walls seemed to press in around them in the heat of the afternoon. There was no one else about. Michelle stopped at the entrance to reception. She took off her sunglasses and turned disconcerting green eyes towards him, holding him in their gaze. ‘I’m sorry things turned out like this.’

‘Like what?’

She smiled sadly. ‘Like you don’t know?’ She nodded towards the gate, and the unseen Charlotte somewhere beyond the walls. ‘I never meant to go trespassing on anyone else’s territory.’

‘You didn’t. I’m not anyone’s territory.’ He raised a rueful eyebrow. ‘In any case, nothing happened between us.’

She nodded. ‘I know. I never did get to taste whisky on the lips of a real Scotsman.’

‘That sounds very past tense.’

‘I’m leaving, Enzo.’

‘Why?’

‘Because.’

‘Michelle, we haven’t found your father’s killer yet.’

She shrugged her regret. ‘I’m sure you will. And I’m sure you’ll tell me when you have. But as long as she’s around, I’m going to feel like I’m in some kind of competition. And this is all stressful enough without that kind of complication. You know, I only ever intended to come and get his things. To close a door on that part of my life for good. Move on.’

He wasn’t sure if it was the heat of her body he felt, or the sun reflecting off the stone. But she was standing very close to him. Almost touching. And her eyes still held him in their relentless, searching green. She put a hand on his arm. It felt cool.

‘You know, they say when one door closes another opens. I thought, maybe, that night at Le Romuald, that you were that other door. You’re different, Enzo. Special.’ She pushed herself up on tiptoes to kiss him. A soft, moist caress of the lips. ‘But I guess it wasn’t meant to be.’

He swallowed hard. ‘I’m too old for you, Michelle.’

She smiled and shook her head. ‘No you’re not. It’s my fault. I’m too young. I wish I were older.’

‘No. You shouldn’t ever wish your life away.’ He cupped her face in his hands, and it felt very small and delicate in his palms. He stooped to kiss her softly, before enveloping her in strong arms to hold her tightly for several moments. Moments in which neither of them heard the slamming of a car door in the carpark.

When he let her go, her eyes were moist and her cheeks flushed. She gazed up at him for a long time, searching for words. And when none came, she reached up to kiss him again. A short, sweet kiss. ‘Goodbye, Enzo.’

She turned and hurried off into the shuttered cool of the stone-tiled reception, and he stood for nearly a minute before turning to find Charlotte leaning against the arch of the gate watching him. She cast him a very curious look, before pushing herself away from the wall and walking back across the castine to the car. She was sitting staring straight ahead when he slipped into the driver’s seat beside her, and the car rocked on big, coiled springs. He put his hands on the wheel and held it for some time without speaking. Finally he said, ‘So how much did you see?’

‘Enough.’

‘She’s leaving, Charlotte.’

‘That makes two of us.’

He stared at her very hard, but she refused to turn and meet his eye. ‘Because of Michelle?’

‘Because I have patients.’

And he knew there was no point in discussing it further. He looked over his shoulder to find Braucol watching him with big, sad eyes. Almost as if he had understood. Enzo breathed silent frustration through his teeth and turned the key in the ignition. The one reliable thing in his life turned over, as it always did, the characteristic tinny purr of the two horsepower engine idling patiently, waiting for him to engage first gear.

Sophie followed Charlotte around the gite as she collected her things. ‘But why are you going? It’s because of her, isn’t it?’ She glared at her father. With a woman’s instinct, she had gone straight to what she perceived to be the heart of the matter. Bertrand gave Enzo a sympathetic smile, and Enzo found himself grateful for even that small crumb of support in this conspiracy of the sexes which he knew would always cast him as the villain.

‘No. I have patients.’ Charlotte wasn’t playing the game. ‘I have no reason to be jealous of anyone in relation to your father, Sophie. Least of all a child like Michelle Petty.’

Sophie looked towards Nicole at the computer, in search of an ally. But Nicole just shrugged. ‘In my limited experience, women are always fighting over him. I can’t think why.’

‘I am still in the room, you know,’ Enzo said.

When, finally, Charlotte emerged from the bedroom with her case packed, Bertrand stepped smartly forward to relieve her of the burden. ‘I’ll take that for you.’

Enzo glowered at him. A look that said, traitor! And grabbed the handle before him. ‘I might be nearly twice your age, Bertrand, but I think I can still handle a suitcase.’

After Sophie and Charlotte had kissed goodbye, Enzo followed the psychologist across the grass to her car and heaved her case into the trunk. She banged the lid shut, and they stood looking at each other. He wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake her, and tell her if only she would commit to him he would have no need for any other woman in his life. As if she could read his thoughts from the frustration in his face, her eyes softened suddenly, and a slight smile curled up the corners of her mouth.

‘If you go to California, you’ll be flying from Paris?’

‘Probably.’

‘Stay over at my place before you go, then.’ She slipped cool fingers behind his neck and gently pulled his head down so she could kiss him. And then she stepped into the car, backing up before accelerating away on the long drive through the trees to the road.

He watched her go, filled with love and frustration and anger, and wondered if he would ever understand her.

A tugging at his feet drew his eyes down, and Braucol sprang away, never tiring of his party trick, eyebrows pushed up in anticipation of admiration or admonishment. Either would do.