by Peter Mayle
Wilkinson’s voice became smug, the smugness that professional men use as a refuge from argument. “I think the City has a very clear understanding of the advertising business. More prudence and less conjecture would do it the world of good.”
“Bollocks.” Simon slammed the phone down, dropping cigar ash on his trousers. He stood up and stared out of the window at the square, dusty gold as the flat evening sun caught the yellowing leaves on the trees. He tried to remember how the square had looked in spring and summer, and realised that he’d never noticed. He didn’t look out of windows anymore. His life was spent looking at people in rooms—nursing his staff, stroking clients, enduring the Wilkinsons and executive committees and financial journalists. It wasn’t surprising that Caroline had resented them all. At least she’d had the fun of spending the money.
He had succeeded in not thinking too much about his marriage ever since it became obvious that it had been a mistake. The transition from a secretary to a rich man’s wife had changed Caroline; or maybe she’d always been a shrew beneath that decorative exterior. Well, it was all over now bar the alimony, and he was once again, as Ernest remarked in one of his friskier moments, a bachelor gay.
Simon crossed the hall and finished his cigar in the sitting room. He’d once been told that the scent of a good Havana in an empty house could add a few thousand to the price. Subliminal advertising. He left the butt still smoking in the fireplace and went back to the kitchen.
He found the bottle of Petrus and put it gently on the table, and enjoyed the careful ritual of opening it, cutting the lead capsule cleanly and drawing the long cork with a slow, even pull. What a wine. A thousand pounds a case if you were lucky enough to get hold of any. Now that would be a job worth having, the proprietor of a great vineyard. No presentations to clients, no idiots from the City, no board meetings—just a few acres of gravel and clay to deal with, and nectar at the end of every year. He held the bottle against the light and poured the dense, rich wine into a decanter until he saw the first traces of sediment reach the neck of the bottle. Even at arm’s length, he was aware of the powerful, soft-sweet bouquet.
He had just placed the decanter on the table when he heard the front door, and Ernest’s light tenor singing “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic.” Simon smiled. Divorce obviously agreed with Ernest; he had been noticeably happier since Caroline had left the house.
“Well!” said Ernest as he put a shopping bag down. “The food halls at Harrods are not what they used to be. A zoo. People in running shoes and track suits with saggy bottoms, hardly an English voice to be heard, and those poor boys behind the counters rushed off their feet. Where are the days of grace and leisure? I ask myself. Never mind. I escaped with enough for a simple peasant meal.”
He took off his jacket and put on a long chef’s apron and started to unpack the bag. “A salade tiède to begin with, I thought, with slices of foie gras, and then your favourite.” He took out a plump leg of lamb. “With garlic and flageolets. And to finish—” he unwrapped two packages and held them out—“some Brillat-Savarin and a fierce little cheddar.”
“Couldn’t be better,” Simon said. He opened the fridge and took out a bottle of champagne. “You’ll break the habit of a lifetime, won’t you?”
Ernest looked up from the garlic cloves he was peeling. “Just a glass to encourage the cook.” He put the knife down as Simon twisted the cork out and filled two glasses.
“Cheers, Ern. Thanks for taking care of all this.” He waved a hand at the packing cases stacked against the wall.
“Happy days, dear. You won’t be too sorry to go, will you? You never really felt at home here.”
“I suppose not.”
The two men drank.
“If I may say so,” Ernest said, “the state of our trousers is not what it should be for this evening. Not quite up to the wine.”
Simon looked down at the grey smear of cigar ash and started to rub it.
“No, no, no. You’re rubbing it in, not rubbing it off. What would our tailor say? You go up and change while I get on down here. Leave those out and I’ll see to them tomorrow.”
Simon took his glass and went up the broad staircase and into what the decorators always referred to as the master suite. The scent that Caroline wore was still there, very faint, as he passed the line of fitted closets that had held her last few dozen dresses, the overflow from the dressing room. He pushed back the folding doors. Hangers had been dropped on the floor in a spiky pile next to discarded shopping bags from Joseph, Max Mara, Saint Laurent—glossy, crumpled souvenirs from half the boutiques in Knightsbridge. A pair of beige and black Chanel shoes, their soles barely scuffed, lay on their sides in the corner. Why had she left them? Simon picked them up and noticed a nick in the leather of one of the heels; £250 tossed away because of an almost invisible scar.
He put the shoes back and undressed, dropping his clothes on the four-poster bed. It was too big for Caroline’s new house, and he wondered idly who would be sleeping in it after him. He’d always hated the damn thing. With its pleats and ruffles and billowing curtains, it made him feel like a trespasser in a decorator’s boudoir. But then the whole house made him feel like that.
He walked into the bathroom and met his reflection in the full-length mirror, a naked middle-aged man holding a glass. God, he looked older than forty-two. Tired eyes, deep creases either side of his mouth, a streak of grey in one of his eyebrows, silver tips beginning to show in his straight black hair. Another few years and he’d be pear-shaped if he didn’t do something more than the occasional snatched game of tennis. He sucked in his belly and pushed out his chest. Right. Hold that for the next ten years; eat less; drink less—a lot less; go to a gym. Boring. He exhaled, finished his champagne and ducked into the shower without looking at the mirror again, and spent fifteen minutes letting the water beat down on the back of his neck.
The bedroom phone rang as he finished drying himself. “Chez Nous is open,” Ernest said. “We can eat in half an hour.”
Simon put on old cotton trousers and a frayed silk shirt that Caroline had tried to throw away several times, and walked down to the kitchen barefoot. The tiled floor was cool and smooth, and the feel of it reminded him of holidays long ago in hot places.
Ernest had set the table with candles and a shallow dish of white rose heads. A box of Partagas and a cigar cutter were beside Simon’s place, and the sound of a Mozart piano concerto came from the speakers recessed in the wall at the far end of the room. Simon felt clean and relaxed and hungry. He took the champagne from the fridge.
“Ern?” He held up the bottle.
Ernest noticed Simon’s bare feet while the glasses were being filled. “I can see we’re in a bohemian mood tonight,” he said. “Quite the beachcomber, aren’t we?”
Simon smiled. “Caroline would have had a fit.”
Ernest wiped his hands on his apron and picked up his glass. “The trouble is,” he said, “that your entire life is spent with sensitive flowers who have fits. The sainted executive committee, the clients, those pipsqueaks in the City, that frightful old adolescent who’s supposed to run the creative department—how he thinks nobody notices when he goes to the gents’ every half-hour and comes back with a runny nose, I don’t know, I’m sure—all of them are more trouble than they’re worth, if you ask me.” He managed to sip his champagne and look disdainful at the same time. “Which of course you didn’t.”
Ernest put down his glass and mixed the salad dressing as though he were punishing it, beating the olive oil and vinegar until it was almost frothing. He dipped his little finger in the bowl and licked it. “Delicious.”
“It’s business, Ern. You can’t expect to like everyone you have to work with.”
Ernest cut the block of foie gras into thin pink slices and put them in a blackened cast-iron pan that had been warming on the hob. “Well, I’m not going to let them spoil our dinner.” He poured the dressing over the salad and tossed it with quick, deft hands,
wiped his oily fingers, and moved across to peer into the pan. “It can all vanish, you know, the foie gras, if it gets too hot. It melts away.” He put the salad on two plates and, as the first tiny bubbles appeared round the edge of the foie gras, took the pan off the heat and slid the soft slices onto their lettuce beds.
Simon took his first mouthful, the lettuce crisp and cool, the foie gras warm and rich. Across the table, Ernest was conducting an investigation of the wine with long, appreciative sniffs, his eyes half-closed.
“Will it do?” asked Simon. “According to the books, we should be drinking Sauternes with this.”
Ernest held the wine in his mouth for a moment before answering. “Absolute heaven,” he said. “Let’s not send it back.”
They ate in silence until they had finished. Simon wiped his plate with a piece of bread and leaned back in his chair. “I haven’t enjoyed anything as much as that for months.” He drank some wine slowly, rolling it around his mouth before swallowing. “What’s the kitchen in the new place like?”
“Horrid,” said Ernest as he started carving the lamb. “Poky and plastic. Perfect for a dwarf with no taste who loathes cooking. The rental agent was very proud of it. Custom-built, she said. Custom-built for what, I said—TV dinners for one?”
Simon had taken a short lease on a flat in Rutland Gate, mainly because it was round the corner from the office. He’d hardly looked at it; the car had been waiting to take him to the airport. What the hell. It was only somewhere to sleep until he found somewhere to live.
“It won’t be for long, Ern. We’ll look at flats as soon as I’ve got some time.”
Ernest served the lamb, rosy and running with juice. “Well, I won’t hold my breath. I know you. Off to New York every five minutes, or Paris, or Düsseldorf. Rush rush rush, jet lag and bad temper, and when you’re in London it’s one dreary meeting after another.” Ernest finished his wine and poured some more. His cheeks were flushed as he leaned forward into the candlelight. “They don’t care, you know, at the office.”
“What are you talking about?”
“They don’t care about you. All they care about is what you can do for them—their new cars, their bonuses, their silly little status games. I heard Jordan having the vapours for half an hour the other day because a client had parked in his space in the garage. You’d have thought someone had touched up his secretary. ‘I shall have to take this up with Simon if something isn’t done at once.’ Pathetic. Well, you know better than I do. They’re all like children.”
“I thought you weren’t going to let them spoil dinner.”
Ernest went on as if he hadn’t heard. “And another thing. Holidays. Three hundred people in that office, and only one of them hasn’t had a holiday this year.” He reached for the decanter. “Another glass of wine if you can guess who that is.”
Simon held out his glass. “Me.”
“You. No wonder you look so peaky.”
Simon remembered his reflection in the bathroom mirror. When was the last time he’d taken a few days off? It must have been nearly two years ago, when he and Caroline had been pretending they still had a marriage. He’d been delighted to get back to the office.
Ernest cleared the plates and put the cheese on the table. “Maybe it’s the wine talking,” he said, “and you can call me an old nag if you like, but I don’t care. You need a holiday.” He fussed over the cheese board. “A bit of each?”
“I don’t know, Ern. I’ve got a lot on at the moment.”
“Leave Jordan in charge. He’d be thrilled. He could use your parking space.” Ernest put the cheese in front of Simon. “There. Have a nibble of the Brillat-Savarin, close your eyes and think of France. You’re always saying how much you love it. Take a car and drive down to the south.” He cocked his head and smiled at Simon. “You know what they say about all work and no play?”
“Yes, Ern. It makes you rich.” And then he took a mouthful of cheese and thought of the south. The warm, seductive south, with its polished light and soft air and lavender evening skies. And no executive committee. “It’s tempting, I must say.”
“Well, then,” said Ernest, as if he’d just won an argument, “lie back and enjoy it. That’s what temptation’s for.”
Simon reached for his glass. “Maybe you’re right.” The wine felt warm and round in his mouth, comforting and relaxing. He grinned at Ernest. “Okay, I give in. Just a few days. Why not?”
2
Simon was in the office by eight-thirty. The long and tastefully stark corridors were quiet, empty except for the potted palms and ficus trees that were now so numerous an official agency gardener had been hired to look after them, a willowy young man who wore cotton gloves and spent his days polishing leaves. Ernest called him the foliage executive.
Passing an open door, Simon saw a junior account man crouched over his first memo of the day. He looked up, pleased that his diligence had been noticed. Simon nodded good morning and wondered what his name was. There were so many of them now, and most of them looked the same in their suits of serious colour and fashionable cut. Maybe he should get them to wear identification tags.
He went through Liz’s office and into his own. A visiting American had once told him that it was a power office, because it occupied a corner and so had twice the view that less exalted employees could enjoy, and—a great touch, so the American had said—there was nothing as humble as a desk in sight. Deep leather couches, low tables, a wall of TV and computer screens, conspicuously larger and lusher plants than those which decorated the agency’s common parts. Tycoon heaven.
Liz had left the previous day’s accumulation of paperwork on a side table, neatly divided into four piles: messages, correspondence, contact reports, and, the most forbidding pile of all, strategy documents and marketing plans, several hours of intense boredom bound in glossy dark blue covers.
The fax machine chirped next door as Simon looked through the message pile. Ziegler had called from New York. Caroline’s lawyers. Four clients. The creative director, the financial director, two account supervisors, and the head of television. And Jordan. God, what a way to start the day. And then Simon remembered the decision he had taken last night, and his mood lightened. He was going on holiday.
He took Jordan’s message—“Must see you ASAP”—and scrawled on the bottom, “Ready when you are. 8 a.m.” The small lie would put Jordan on the defensive; he never got in before nine-thirty. Simon took the message across the hall to deliver it, and to catch up on Jordan’s latest hobby, traces of which were always on casual but prominent display in his office. It must be hell for him, Simon thought, trying to keep ahead of the rank and file. Tennis had been abandoned a long time ago, when junior executives had taken it up. There had been a period of shotguns and game bags when Jordan first bought his country seat, and then a nautical phase marked by sea boots and oilskins. Now, apparently, it was polo.
Three mallets were propped against the wall behind Jordan’s desk, and a pristine helmet hung above them, next to the pinboard where the fixture list of the Ham Polo Club partially obscured an invitation to drinks at the Reform. Polo, of course, was the ultimate hobby for the socially ambitious advertising man—ruinously expensive, glamorous upper-class accoutrements, and, with any kind of luck, a chance to be on swearing terms with royalty. Simon smiled, and wondered how long it would be before Jordan wanted a parking space for his ponies and a company helicopter to whisk him off to Windsor.
He heard the click of high heels on the tiled floor, and left the message tucked into the frame of a photograph of Jordan’s acceptably pretty and, according to gossip, very rich wife.
Liz was sorting through the faxes that had come in overnight from America, her body silhouetted against the window, long dark hair falling forward across her cheek. She was dressed with a businesslike severity that accentuated a spectacular pair of legs. Simon considered himself a connoisseur of legs, and Liz’s were as good as he’d seen anywhere, very long from knee to ankle. F
or all his good intentions to hire plain middle-aged spinsters with halitosis and flat feet, he always ended up with attractive secretaries, and took great pleasure in looking at them. The sight of Liz bending over had sustained him through countless meetings.
“Good morning, Elizabeth.”
“Good morning, Mr. Shaw. How are you today.” She smiled at him over her bouquet of faxes. Whenever he called her Elizabeth she knew he was in a good mood.
“I’m fine, and a cup of coffee would make me even better. And then we must look for my bucket and spade and sunhat.”
Liz stopped on her way to the coffee percolator, eyebrows raised.
“I’m going to take a few days off. I thought I’d drive down through France and see if it’s true what they say about Saint-Tropez.”
“I think it would do you good. What do they say about Saint-Tropez?”
“Autumn in Saint-Tropez,” said Simon, “is completely devoid of temptation. It will be just me and the seagulls on the beach, and solitary evenings in my monklike cell. Could you fax the Byblos and make a reservation?”
Liz bent over her desk to make a note on her pad. “You’ll need a place on the car ferry.”
“And one night in Paris. The Lancaster.”
“When do you want to leave?”
“Tomorrow. Give Philippe Murat a call and see if he’s free for dinner. And for God’s sake tell him it’s business, otherwise he’ll bring one of his girlfriends from Elle and he’ll be blowing in her ear all evening. You know what he’s like—beneath that veneer of after-shave lurks a sex maniac.”
Liz looked prim. “I think Mr. Murat is very charming.”
“Well, don’t ever get into a lift alone with him, that’s all.”
