The Critic ef-2

by Peter May

  ‘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.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I

  ‘Hold still!’

  Enzo sat in the chair with his tongue sticking out, and struggled to prevent it from twitching involuntarily.

  Bertrand held his head back with one hand, and with the other squeezed the rubber nipple of his eye-dropper to let the blue food dye drip on to the tip of Enzo’s tongue.

  ‘Now keep your tongue out, don’t swallow.’

  Enzo gurgled incoherently as Bertrand pressed the punched hole in a sheet of paper on to the end of his tongue and brought a magnifying glass up to his eye. He started counting the fungiform papillae visible in the hole.

  ‘Twenty-seven,’ he said. ‘Which puts you bang in the middle category. A taster.’ He gave Enzo his tongue back, and watched as the older man pulled a face and washed away the food dye with a glass of water.

  Bertrand had explained the experiment before dropping dye on to each of their tongues in turn. The tongue would take up the dye, he told them, but the small round structures of the fungiform papillae, or taste buds, stayed pink, allowing them to be counted. Fewer than fifteen, concentrated in the seven millimetre hole in the sheet of paper, classified you as a nontaster. Fifteen to thirty-five, as a taster. And more than thirty-five made you a supertaster.

  Nicole had been delighted to learn that she was a supertaster, until Bertrand told her that this wasn’t necessarily a good thing. ‘If you’re too sensitive to taste, then you can end up with flavour overkill. Things are too sweet, or too bitter, or too salty.’

  Bertrand, Sophie, and her father all had average counts in the fifteen to thirty-five middle range.

  ‘We can only perceive five different tastes.’ Bertrand was warming to his subject, revelling in his knowledge. ‘Sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and umami — which is a Japanese word that translates as meaty or savoury.’

  Enzo looked at the young man with renewed admiration. He really did know his stuff. However, this was an area about which Enzo also knew a little. ‘But we’re sensitive to thousands of smells,’ he said. ‘Although we can only identify up to a maximum of four odours at any one time in any mixture, regardless of whether it’s a single molecule odour, like alcohol, or something more complex, like smoke.’ He grinned. ‘So the next time you see some flamboyant wine review, extolling the virtues of a half dozen or more wonderful aromas, you’ll know just what bullshit it really is.’

  Bertrand took up the baton again. ‘The hardest thing, though, is to identify the smells. The olfactory epithelium…’

  Sophie pulled a face. “All factory what…?’

  ‘Epithelium,’ Enzo said. ‘The tissue that traps and identifies smell molecules.’

  Bertrand ignored the interruption. ‘The olfactory epithelium in humans is only about a fifth as sensitive as cats, and we just don’t live in the same smell universe as dogs.’ He looked at Braucol, who cocked his head and looked back at him. ‘If dogs could taste wine, Robert Parker would be out of a job.’ He turned back to Enzo. ‘What made Gil Petty almost unique, was his ability to remember smells, to classify them in some way that allowed him to associate them with words.’

  Enzo nodded. ‘Michelle said he had the smell equivalent of a photographic memory.’

  Bertrand started lining up bottles and glasses. ‘It’s much harder than you think to identify a smell. The first day of my training course, they gave us little bottles of clear liquid infused with different odours. Some were easy, like peach, or strawberry. Others were impossible. You reco
gnised the smell, but couldn’t for the life of you say what it was. Until the prof would tell you it was ground pepper. And immediately you thought, of course it is! Why the hell couldn’t I tell that?’ He turned to face the others. ‘It’s a long, hard learning process.’

  ‘It can’t be that hard, surely?’ Nicole said. ‘I mean, we’ve all got the same sense of taste and smell. Except for me, of course. I’m a supertaster.’

  Bertrand started pouring a little wine into each glass. ‘They did this experiment in Italy with something called fMRI. I’m not sure what it stands for.’

  ‘Functional magnetic resonance imaging,’ Enzo said. ‘It’s an MRI scan specifically applied to the brain. It allows scientists to actually see the brain working.’

  ‘Well, anyway, they did this experiment taking seven professional sommeliers and seven other people matched for age and sex, who didn’t have any specific wine-tasting abilities, and scanned their brains while they fed them different wines.’

  ‘Hmmm, I’d have volunteered for that,’ Sophie said.

  Bertrand tipped her a look of mild annoyance. ‘While the wine was actually in the mouth, it stimulated activity in the same area of the brain in all fourteen participants.’

  Nicole let a little explosion of triumph escape her lips. ‘Like I said, we’ve all got the same sense of taste and smell.’

  But Bertrand shook his head and raised a finger. She was being premature. ‘No, you’re wrong, Nicole. Because there was another area of the brain that showed activity only in the sommeliers. And then during the aftertaste phase, when they’d swallowed the wine, the sommeliers had brain activity on both sides of the…the…amagama hippo something…’

  ‘Amygdala-hippocampal?’ Enzo suggested.

  ‘That’s it. Well, the professionals showed activity on both sides of that, and the others only on the right side.’

  ‘So what’s your point?’ Nicole was impatient to get on with the tasting.

  ‘Well, the experiment showed that the professional tasters were accessing parts of their brains that the nonprofessionals weren’t, almost certainly consulting database material accumulated through training and experience. You can’t just walk in off the street and be a professional winetaster, you know It’s a learned art, and it takes time.’