Hotel Pastis

by Peter Mayle

  He turned from the sink, his hands still wet, and offered Simon his elbow to shake. “Bonetto.”

  “Shaw. Simon Shaw.”

  “Bieng. Un verre?”

  He filled two thick glass tumblers with wine and motioned Simon to sit down at the table. Maman put a dish of sliced sausage and cornichons between them, and Simon’s first long and exhausting experience of Provençal hospitality began.

  Sausage was followed by pizza, then by steak and roast peppers, salad, cheese, a homemade tarte au citron. Three litres of the young, fruity red wine, the wine from Bonetto’s own vines. And in between mouthfuls, a lecture in that accent—part French, part soup, with bellows of laughter from Maman and giggles from the girl at Simon’s desperate attempts to follow the rumbles and twangs of Bonetto’s increasingly rapid speech.

  Some glimmers of comprehension came like flashes in the fog: Bonetto was not only the owner of the café and several hectares of vines, but also the mayor of Brassière, a socialist, a hunter, a true paysan du coin. He had never been farther from the village than Marseille, a hundred kilometres away, and then he’d taken his gun, as it was well known that Marseille was inhabited entirely by criminals. In Brassière, he said proudly, there was no crime.

  Simon nodded and smiled and said “Ah bon” whenever it seemed appropriate. Drink and concentration were making him drowsy, and when Bonetto produced a bottle of marc, yellowy-white and viscous, he tried to refuse. But it was no good: a guest in the Bonetto house was not allowed to go to bed thirsty. And so, while the women cleared away and washed the dishes, the level in the bottle went down, and Simon reached a state of comfortable numbness where it didn’t seem to matter whether they understood each other or not. He was finally allowed upstairs, with a parting slap on the back from Bonetto that almost knocked him over, and slept like a stone.

  It was strange to be woken by the sun on his face, and for a few seconds Simon wasn’t sure where he was. He looked out of the window. The plain was white with morning mist under a spotless blue sky, and to his surprise he didn’t have a hangover.

  He declined Maman’s offer of a sausage sandwich for breakfast and took his bowl of coffee outside. It was not yet hot, and the air—the purest air in France, so Bonetto had said, as though it were something that he personally had arranged—smelt fresh. In the village square, two women had put down their shopping baskets to leave both hands free for conversation, and a dog came out of an alley looking guilty, the remains of a baguette in its mouth. Simon decided to explore before going down to the garage. There would be time enough to call the office later on.

  He walked down the widest street leading off the square, past the épicerie on the corner and the narrow house that served as the mairie, and stopped in front of a gutted building. No windows, no shutters, no doors. A weather-stained notice, propped against the wall, said L’Ancienne Gendarmerie, and listed names and permit numbers and an announcement that the dossier could be inspected on request. Simon looked through the arched stone doorway and saw the Lubéron, framed like a picture in an opening on the far side of the building. He stepped over a pile of rubble into a high, long space littered with old beams, sacks of plaster, empty beer bottles, and piles of flagstones. Worms of electrical wiring twisted from the walls, and a cement mixer stood next to a waist-high drum of dusty water in one corner, at the end of a wide flight of stone steps. Openings had been made at regular intervals along the length of one wall, and the sun poured through to light the room with an intense halogen glow.

  He walked over to look through one of the openings. Below him, the land fell away in steep terraces. He could see steps leading down to the deep rectangular hole of a raw swimming pool, still at the concrete and bare pipe stage, and beyond that the view. Simon thought he’d never seen a more spectacular setting for a swim, and felt a moment of envy for the owner. But what was it going to be? The place was enormous, far too big for a house. He took one last look at the mountains, now turning a faded purple as the sun rose higher, and left to check on the progress of the injured Porsche.

  He found Duclos performing the jerky aerobics that accompany any heated conversation in Provence—shoulders twitching, arms waving, hands waggling in emphasis, eyebrows threatening to disappear upwards into his cap. The woman he was talking to seemed unimpressed. She sniffed in disbelief at the piece of paper she was holding, and Simon heard her cut across Duclos’s protestations of diligent labour and honest charges. “Non, non et non. C’est pas possible. C’est trop.”

  “Mais madame …” Duclos noticed Simon standing by the pumps and took the opportunity to escape. “Ah, monsieur, j’arrive, j’arrive. Excusez-moi, madame.”

  Madame lit a cigarette and puffed angrily, pacing across the forecourt. From the look of her, Simon thought, she was not a native of the village. Blond and slim, in her mid-thirties, she might have been an elegant refugee from the Armani boutique in the place Vendôme—but country Armani, with a casual shirt of heavy silk, pale gabardine trousers, soft leather shoes and bag. Not the kind of woman one would expect to see haggling over a garage bill of a few hundred francs.

  Duclos and Simon went over to the Porsche, and the woman stopped her pacing to watch them. As her clothes suggested, she was originally from Paris and, until the new girlfriend of her ex-husband started dipping into the alimony, comfortably off. But now, now that the cheques arrived erratically or not at all, there were problems. Nicole Bouvier spent her life either feeling the pinch or anticipating it. How she was going to keep her house in Brassière and her tiny apartment in the Place des Vosges was becoming an increasingly difficult exercise in stretching money, and it wasn’t helped by gara-giste who padded his bills so shamelessly. She thought of driving off and paying him next time, but curiosity prevented her. Porsches were rare in Brassière, and the owner was not an unattractive man—a little rumpled, certainly, and he hadn’t shaved, but he had an interesting face. She moved closer to the two men so she could hear what they were saying.

  It was as Duclos had thought. He had telephoned—he held his oily left hand, thumb and little finger cocked, to his ear—to order the new exhaust assembly. Malheureusement, it would not arrive for at least three days, possibly a week. But that is always how it is with exotic cars. Had monsieur been driving a more reasonable car, a French car, this unfortunate matter could have arranged itself within twenty-four hours.

  Simon thought for a few moments. Was it possible that Duclos could rent him a car? he asked.

  A deeply apologetic shrug and a clicking of the tongue against the teeth. “Beh non. Il faut aller à Cavaillon.”

  A taxi?

  Duclos rubbed his forehead with the back of his wrist, leaving a skidmark of oil on his skin. There was always Pierrot, with his ambulance, but he’d be out in the vines. “Non.”

  Madame Bouvier looked at Simon, his hands thrust in his trouser pockets, biting his lip thoughtfully. A pleasant face, she thought, and perhaps a pleasant man. She took pity on him.

  “Monsieur?” Simon turned to look at her. “Je peux vous amener à Cavaillon. C’est pas loin.”

  “Mais, madame, c’est—”

  “C’est rien.” She walked to her car. “Allons-y.”

  Before Simon could argue or Duclos could return to the dispute over her bill, Madame Bouvier got into her car and leant across to open the passenger door, exposing a hint of perfectly tanned cleavage beneath her silk shirt. Simon’s hasty farewell and Duclos’s reply hung in the air as the car accelerated away.

  How kind people were down here, Simon thought, as he turned to his rescuer. “Madame, c’est vraiment très gentil.”

  She changed gear with a jerk as she drove down the hill, and changed languages. “You’re English, non? The plates on your car.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I was in England three years, in London, close to ’Arrods.” She spoke with a pronounced accent, and Simon hoped his French had the same charm as her English.

  “I have an office ther
e, in Knightsbridge.”

  “Ah bon? And where do you stay in Provence?”

  “The penthouse suite in the café in Brassière.”

  Madame Bouvier took both hands off the wheel in dramatic astonishment, and the car veered towards the ditch. “Mais c’est pas vrai! You cannot continue there.”

  Simon clutched at the dashboard as Madame Bouvier resumed control of the car and took up her position in the middle of the road. “I thought I’d find somewhere else this afternoon,” he said, “after I’ve picked up a car.”

  “Bon.” She tapped her fingers on the wheel and then accelerated decisively. “I know a little place—the Domaine de L’Enclos, just above Gordes. Very tranquille, and the restaurant is good. I take you there, and then we go to Cavaillon.”

  Simon looked away from the road, which seemed to become narrower as the car’s speed increased, and turned towards Madame Bouvier’s fine-boned profile under the mane of blond hair. He could hardly have hoped for a better-looking chauffeur.

  “Look, I’m already taking up too much of your time. But if you’re not too busy, let me buy you lunch. If it weren’t for you, I’d be waiting for Duclos’s friend to pick me up in his ambulance.”

  “Ouf. That little robber. The most expensive garage in Provence. They all smile here, you know, and then you find their hand in your pocket. Not everyone is honest.”

  “Not everyone is honest anywhere. But at least they smile here.”

  Madame Bouvier slowed down as they came to a crossroad: Gordes 4 Kilometres. She turned right, onto a wider tarmac road, and looked at the wafer of gold on her wrist. “I would like lunch. Thank you.”

  They drove up the hill towards Gordes and turned left just before the village, on the road that was signposted to the Abbey of Senanque. There were signposts everywhere here, and the village looked as if it were posing for a postcard—beautiful, but almost too perfect. Simon preferred the less manicured appearance of Brassière-les-Deux-Eglises.

  They drove through the gate in the high drystone wall that protected the Domaine de L’Enclos from the rest of the world, and Simon suddenly felt scruffy. This was not quite the simple little country hotel he’d expected; the grounds were immaculate, the trees carefully barbered, the small stone cottages widely separated from each other and the main building of the hotel. He could have been in Bel Air instead of rural France.

  Madame Bouvier pulled into the shaded parking area and found a space between a Mercedes with Swiss plates and a British-registered Jaguar. “Voilà. I think you will be more comfortable here than the café.”

  “I’m amazed a place like this exists.” They walked down through the trees to the hotel entrance. “Does it do well? Where do they find the customers?”

  “You’d be surprised. People come from the north, from all over Europe, sometimes from America. And the season is long, from Easter to Christmas. Next time you must bring your helicopter.” She pointed through a gap in the trees. “There’s a piste over there.”

  Next time, Simon thought, I should shave before I come, and bring a token suitcase. This was a hell of a way to arrive at a smart hotel. But the girl at the desk smiled and said yes, there was a cottage he could have for a week, and yes, there was a table on the terrace for lunch. Simon relaxed, and began to feel hungry. “A good hotel always gives you the benefit of the doubt,” he said.

  Madame Bouvier frowned. “Doubt? What do you mean?”

  “Well, look at me.” He rubbed his chin. “No shave, no luggage, arriving with you …”

  “What would they do in England?”

  “Oh, look down their noses, probably make me wear a jacket and tie, generally make me feel uncomfortable.”

  Madame Bouvier gave a little snort of disapproval. “Here is not so formal. Nobody wears a tie.” She looked at Simon and smiled. “But sometimes they shave. Come.” She led the way out onto the terrace.

  As they ate, overlooking the long view south towards the Lubéron, the formalities dropped away. By the main course they were Nicole and Simon, and with the arrival of the second bottle of crisp pink wine they began to compare divorces. Simon found her easy and amusing company, and when he lit her cigarette and she touched his hand, he felt a brief twinge of lust. That would have to stop; he was still paying for the last twinge. He ordered coffee and moved the conversation to safe ground.

  “That place in Brassière, the big place they’re restoring. What’s that going to be?”

  Nicole dipped a sugar lump in her coffee and bit into it. “The old gendarmerie? It was empty since five years, when they built a new gendarmerie down on the N-100. Brassière is not a criminal place, except for that little voleur in the garage.” She took a sip of her coffee. “Anyway, there was a man from Avignon, a building entrepreneur, who bought the gendarmerie for a handful of poussière—”

  “ ‘Poussière’?”

  “Dust. Nothing. I think less than a million francs, and it is a big barraque, two levels—and en plus you have the cells underneath. Bon. So he buys also some land at the back, and he has the plan to make apartments with a pool and of course the view.”

  “It’s a good idea. When’s it going to be finished?”

  Nicole shook her head. “Never. It ate his money. It’s always like this with the old buildings, the little inconnus that you cannot imagine. You break a wall and plok!—the ceiling falls down.” She took out another cigarette and leant forward to the match Simon held for her. Another button of her shirt had somehow come undone. “Merci.” She sat back and tilted her head up to blow smoke into the air, and Simon found himself staring at her neck, slender and smooth.

  He busied himself with a cigar as Nicole continued. “So more money is borrowed, and then more. And he needs to have on a new roof. And the piscine costs double because there is no access by truck, and all the cement, all the stones, everything must be carried down by hand. Bref, he runs out of money.” She pulled a finger across her throat. “He goes bankrupt. It happens often here—people are too much optimists, and they believe the maçon when he tells them a price. And once the work is started …” Nicole made climbing motions in the air with two fingers and shrugged.

  “It’s the same in England,” Simon said. He remembered the bills for the house in Kensington, bills that had made his eyes water. “And decorators are even worse.”

  Nicole laughed. “When I was in London, I had a little garden, no bigger than a bed. I wanted to make it grass—you know, la pelouse anglaise—so I look in the dictionary and find ‘turf.’ Bon. Then I go to a little shop in Chelsea, full of men, and I ask for six metres of turf, and they look at me like I am a crazy woman.”

  “Why?”

  “I was in the shop of a turf accountant.” Who but the English would describe a bookmaker with such a dignified euphemism? Nicole laughed again, and made a face at her own ignorance. One of the pleasures of life, Simon thought, is the way women become progressively prettier and more amusing the longer lunch lasts.

  Nicole dropped him in Cavaillon, and he drove slowly back to Brassière in his rented car, collected his bags, and returned to the hotel. He walked round the grounds, putting off the duty call to London. He’d been out of touch for two days, and he’d enjoyed every second of it. Back in his cottage, he looked at the phone, squat, plastic, accusing. He picked it up and pressed the digits that would connect him to reality.

  “Where are you?” Liz sounded like a worried mother. “We’ve been calling the Byblos all the time—then we tried Mr. Murat in Paris, but—”

  “What did he say?”

  “Oh, he was awful. He said you’d run off with a girl from the Crazy Horse. He seemed to think it was very funny. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. I just changed my mind on the way down, and then I had a shunt with the car—nothing serious, but I’ve been sorting that out. Anyway, I’ll be here in Gordes until it’s repaired.”

  He gave Liz the number of the hotel, and heard her talking to someone in the office. “Liz?”


  “Just a minute. Ernest wants to speak to you. But don’t go away. There’s an urgent message from Mr. Ziegler.”

  “Hello hello, wherever you are,” said Ernest. “I can’t tell you what a fuss there’s been—panic stations, man overboard, Liz turning grey overnight, we seek him here, we seek him there.… ”

  “I’ve only been gone two days.”

  “That’s what I said. Give the poor man a chance to unpack his toothbrush, I said—but you know what they’re like, can’t leave you alone for five minutes. Now, would you like a bit of good news?”

  “Always.”

  “The musician who came to see the house—dreadful little person, absolutely swathed in leather—well, he’s made a very good offer as long as he can move in next month.”

  “He can move in tomorrow if his cheque doesn’t bounce. What’s the offer?”

  “A hundred thousand under the asking price.”

  “Two point four million?”

  “Including the bed. He adored the bed. I think he had visions of himself—”

  “I can imagine. Okay. Tell the agents to get on with it.”

  “I’ll do that now. I’d better pass you back to Liz. She’s making faces at me. Have fun. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  “You’re not going to like this, I’m afraid,” said Liz, “but Mr. Ziegler’s asking you to come back to London at once. The president of Morgan’s is coming through tomorrow on his way back to New York, and Mr. Ziegler thinks—”

  “I know what Mr. Ziegler thinks,” said Simon. “Mr. Ziegler thinks that the presidential hand should be held.”

  “Exactly. I’m sorry, but he was rather agitated when he found out you were away.”