by Peter Mayle
“You’re very quiet, Simon.”
“I’m very surprised. It’s not every day I get offered a little hotel.”
“Do you see how it could be?” Nicole stood up and shivered. The chill in the air was having a distracting effect on her nipples under the thin sweater.
“It could be a lot warmer. Come on. Let me buy you a drink.”
“You already did. We have champagne at home. Doctor’s orders.”
If I had a doctor like you, Simon thought, I’d be an Olympic-standard hypochondriac. “Nicole, it’s a fascinating idea.” He winced at his own words. “God, I’m sorry. I sound exactly like one of my clients. It’s just that I need to think about it, and I need to know a lot more. Let’s get back, and you can tell me about it.”
By the time they reached the house the sun was gone, leaving a pink afterglow in the sky. Nicole lit the fire and asked Simon to choose some music from the compact discs stacked between piles of books on the shelf, Tina Turner next to Mozart (he would have enjoyed that, Simon thought), Couperin, Fauré, Piaf, Brahms, Montserrat Caballé, Jeff Beck. He hesitated between Pavarotti and Chopin before picking Keith Jarrett. The first few quiet notes of the Köln concert were accompanied by the sound of a champagne cork. The room was warm, and aromatic with the scent of burning wood. Rutland Gate seemed a long way away.
Nicole handed him a glass. “Santé.”
“Here’s to small and charming hotels.”
They sat in front of the fire, and Simon started with the obvious questions. Nicole had done her homework—she knew the square metres on each floor, the details of the work that had already been completed, the asking price. As she’d told him before, the original plan had been to turn the gendarmerie into small apartments. Basic electrical and plumbing work had been finished. The pool had been dug and lined. The property was now ready for les finitions—plaster and glass and flagstones and fittings, lighting and landscaping, the exciting part of restoration that follows months and millions of francs devoted to essential but often invisible preparatory work.
“Let me ask you an impossible question,” Simon said. “What do you think it would cost to finish?”
Nicole leaned forward in her chair, elbows on her knees, her glass cradled in both hands. She wrinkled her nose in concentration. With her hair pushed back behind her ears, she looked about twenty. Simon felt himself slipping gently down the slope that leads from simple attraction to something more complicated.
“The main-d’oeuvre of the workers, that can always be calculated,” she said. “For the rest, it depends on your materials. There is one price for marble and another for stone from the local quarry. For me, the way to do this is with máterials from the region, very clean, not fussy. Like that, and with good furniture, maybe one or two antiques—” she looked up at the ceiling, and Simon admired the line of her throat—“I make a big guess: seven, eight million francs.”
“How long would it take?”
“This is Provence, remember. Five years?” Nicole laughed. “No, I’m not serious, but to be impatient here is expensive.”
“Could it be done in six months?”
Nicole held up one hand and rubbed fingers and thumb together. “With enough money, enough men, yes. Even here.”
Simon went on with his questions—architects, building permissions, a licence to serve alcohol, staff, a chef. A chef. He glanced at his watch. “I think we should do some research on chefs. Where would you like to eat?”
Nicole pretended to think. What she wanted was to stay here with this smiling, untidy man who still needed a haircut, and talk without the distractions of menus and waiters. He brought a warmth to the room that she liked very much.
“There are three or four places not too far away. But it’s Saturday. Without a reservation … I could try.” She hesitated, and shrugged. “Or I have pasta, with a fresh tomato sauce. Very simple.”
Simon closed his eyes in mock ecstasy, then opened one to look at her. “Fresh tomato sauce? With basil?”
“Of course with basil.”
“I’ll help. I’m good in kitchens. I wash dishes, I keep the cook’s glass filled, I don’t bump into things.”
Nicole laughed and stood up. “Bon. Do you open wine too?”
“No cork can resist me. It’s something I learned in the Boy Scouts.”
He followed her into the kitchen and watched as she slipped a long chef’s apron over her head, pushed up the sleeves of her sweater, and took a bottle of red wine from the rack.
“Voilà, monsieur. Château Val-Joanis. It comes from just the other side of the Lubéron.” She held out the bottle, and he noticed the delicate blue veins on the inside of her forearm. He liked a woman who rolled up her sleeves to cook, something that Caroline had never done. “Corkscrew and glasses on the bar.”
It was a fine kitchen, he thought—a proper cook’s kitchen, with copper pans hanging where you could get at them, knives with blades worn thin by years of sharpening, a stove with a cast-iron top, a shelf of battered cookbooks, a round table of scarred, thick wood. Everything well used, well cared for. He poured the wine and took a glass to Nicole, who was ladling tomato sauce into a pan. He bent his head over the pan to inhale the wonderful summery smell, and then, with a quick, guilty dab, dipped a finger into the sauce and licked it clean.
Nicole tapped the back of his hand with the ladle. “No more. You help me better if you sit and talk.”
Simon retired to the table, sucking sauce from his knuckles. He enjoyed watching Nicole as she moved, reaching for knives, chopping and stirring, wiping her hands on her thighs before picking up her glass, the unhurried, sensual rhythm of a confident cook. She looked almost elegant in her apron, tied tightly so that it accentuated her slim waist.
“Tell me about hotels down here,” he said. “What happens in the winter? Do they all close, like they do on the coast?”
Nicole put a pan of water on the stove, added salt and a bay leaf, and picked up her glass. “For one month, maybe two. It’s changed since the years when the season was just July and August. From Easter it’s busy until October. Then you have the holidays like Toussaint in November, then you have Christmas and the New Year. Spring begins in March.” She sipped her wine. “The season is nine months, and the clientele is not just French, not just Parisians. Germans, Dutch, Belgians, Swiss, English—they all come, more and more each year. A good hotel will always work, and here round Brassière it is a corner without hotels. The nearest is Gordes.” She put down her glass and started to mix a dressing for the salad, beating the oil and vinegar in with a little mustard and brown sugar, adding a few drops of fresh lemon juice. “I tell you, it’s not a crazy idea.”
“No,” Simon said, “it’s not.” He thought about it, thought about the kind of hotel that he would like to stay in—small, friendly, simple, perfectly run. Could he run it? Probably not. He didn’t have the patience or the eye for detail. But Ernest—meticulous, efficient, reliable, knowledgeable about food and drink, a prince among flower arrangers and a good man with people—now there was a born hotel manager. If he wanted to do it.
“I wonder what Ern would think about it.”
Nicole tore off a small piece of bread, dipped it in the salad dressing, and offered it to Simon. “Why don’t you ask him?”
He bit into the bread, and the sharp-sweet dressing dripped onto his chin. Nicole bent over to wipe it with the corner of her apron. Their faces were very close.
“I hope you’re better with tomato sauce.”
Simon swallowed. Nicole had moved back to the stove. She put the pasta in boiling water, took cutlery and napkins from a drawer, poured the dressing over the salad, and passed him the wooden bowl. “Mix that, and then we can eat.”
Anyone watching this domestic scene might have taken them for an established couple, except that they glanced at each other a little too often, and when they happened to touch it was not in the casual, familiar way of a man and a woman who are used to being together.
Simon felt his chin where Nicole had wiped it. He would have kissed her if he hadn’t had his mouth full.
Nicole drained the pasta, added olive oil, and slipped the loop of the apron over her head. There was a flush in her cheeks from the heat of the stove, and she made a face as she pushed back her hair. “I think I must look terrible.”
Simon grinned and stood up to pull out her chair. “Completely hideous,” he said. “Let’s hope you’re a decent cook.”
Pasta and conversation don’t mix, and there was a contented silence while they ate. Simon mopped up the last of his sauce with a scrap of bread and wiped his mouth with exaggerated care. “There you are,” he said. “A clean chin. A spotless chin.”
Nicole smiled at him and shook her head. “I think you wiped it on your shirt.” She got up and fetched a cloth and a bowl of water. Simon looked down at the oily, dark blotches that had made a rash on the blue poplin of his shirt front.
“Stand up.”
“I’m sorry. I told you I was a slob.”
“Yes,” Nicole said. “A big slob.” She put the bowl down, dipped the cloth in the water, and undid a button of his shirt, slipping her hand inside. He felt her fingers against his heart, and this time he didn’t have his mouth full.
It was midday before they got up, showered, started to dress and went back to bed, and mid-afternoon before they left the house to pick up Simon’s case from the hotel.
“God knows what they think of me at this place,” he said. “The first time I arrived without a suitcase, and this time I didn’t even use the room.”
Simon went into the reception area, conscious of his unshaven face and the faint traces of acne on his shirt. The girl at the desk was charming, and he found himself thinking of her as someone to remember if he went ahead with the hotel.
“I hope you enjoyed your stay, Mr. Shaw.”
He signed the bill and smiled. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I did, very much. The scenery’s lovely at this time of year.”
They had an hour to kill before going to the airport, and went back to the gendarmerie. The idea was taking hold of Simon’s imagination; he could see it finished in his mind, stone and glass and sunlight. He wondered how much of this enthusiasm came from a detached business perspective, and how much from the woman who was standing beside him. There had been a shock of happiness when he had woken up to see Nicole’s face on the pillow. He put his arm round her waist and pulled her towards him.
“I want to do it,” he said. “But on two conditions. The first is Ernest. He could make it work if he wanted to come.”
“And?”
“You have to make pasta for me again.” He looked down at Nicole and noticed the burn that his stubble had made on her throat. “I’ll bring a spare shirt.”
10
By two o’clock, the lunchtime customers at Chez Mathilde were gone, the tables had been reset for dinner, and the girl who helped in the kitchen was making her customary clatter as she scoured pans and stacked plates. Mathilde was bent suspiciously over the till, glasses on the end of her nose, smoothing wrinkled bank notes into neat piles and frowning at the occasional cheque, which would have to pass through the bank and therefore be liable to tax. She looked up as the General put on his jacket and patted his pockets.
“Merde,” he said. “I won’t have time to stop. You’d better let me have some cash.”
Mathilde licked her thumb and counted out five 100-franc notes. “Make sure he gives you a discount.” She put the money on top of the till. “When will you be back?”
“Not late, unless he finds something serious.” The General took the money and ducked under Mathilde’s glasses to kiss her cheek. “Have a little nap, eh?”
Mathilde nodded. “Yes, chéri. I’ll take a nap, and nothing will be ready for tonight. Off you go. Don’t forget—a discount for cash.”
The General was still smiling as he got into the car. A good woman, Mathilde, careful with the centimes. She’d probably be the same if they had millions—and if this job came off, they would. He turned right at the sign for Isle-sur-Sorgue and felt a slight emptiness in his stomach, a ripple of excitement. Mathilde thought he was going to the dentist. In fact, he was going to do some research at the scene of the crime.
He parked a hundred yards from the Caisse d’Epargne and looked at his watch. Plenty of time to buy what he needed before the appointment. He picked up two copies of Le Provençal and then found a stationery shop. He chose a small notebook and two large manila envelopes which bulged in a satisfactory way when he put the folded newspapers inside them.
Ten minutes to kill. He went into the bar at the end of the narrow bridge across the river and ordered a Calva to settle the nerves. The town was quiet, almost deserted, just another slow autumn afternoon. The General felt the Calvados go down, a warm and comforting jolt, and imagined how different the view from the bar would be on that Sunday next July. There would be market stalls all along the river, the bric-à-brac dealers lining the main road, tourists everywhere, traffic at a standstill, and the cops nowhere to be seen, keeping out of the heat and letting the motorists argue among themselves. Perfect.
The General wiped his moustache, tucked his envelopes under his arm, and crossed the bridge, walking briskly, as a man would who had important and confidential business to transact. He passed the old water wheel at the side of the bank with no more than a quick glance at the top of the opening that showed above the green flow of the river, and climbed the flight of steps to the entrance.
The clerk behind the counter ignored him for the statutory two minutes, as laid down in bank regulations, before looking up from his computer sheets.
“I have a rendezvous,” said the General, “with Monsieur Millet.”
The clerk sighed and left his vital work to lead the General over to a cubicle in the corner. He tapped on the glass door before pushing it open and murmured at the top of a dark head that was bent over a desk. Monsieur Millet removed his glasses, placed them carefully in the exact centre of the document he had been studying, rose to his feet, and extended a small, pale hand. He was slight and neat in his white shirt and precisely knotted tie. His desk was uncluttered, his pencils sharp. A framed photograph of a neat woman and a neat child stood next to his empty In tray. The General was wondering why he had no telephone when one of the drawers rang.
“Excuse me,” said Monsieur Millet. “Please sit down.” He opened the drawer and picked up the phone. The General decided not to disturb the symmetry of the desk with his manila envelopes and kept them on his lap.
Monsieur Millet finished his conversation and hid the phone. He placed his elbows on the desk and clasped his hands, leaning forward to give the General his full attention. “Alors …”
The General tapped the envelopes in his lap. “I have some papers—deeds and contracts—the kind of papers that one would not wish to lose.”
“Deeds and contracts,” said Monsieur Millet. “I understand. Documents of value and importance.”
“Exactly. That is why I feel they should be kept in a place of great security.”
“Maximum security, my dear monsieur. Maximum security.” The fingers of the small, pale hands fidgeted with concern. “Without correct documentation, as I keep telling my staff, the world would cease to function. Documents should be treated like gold.”
The General nodded and once again tapped his two folded copies of Le Provençal. “These particularly.” He leaned forward. “I would like to keep them here, in one of your strongboxes. Safer than at home.”
“Ah, if only everyone were as prudent as you! Here in the Vaucluse, we have the highest rate of burglary in France—except for Paris, of course.” Millet shrugged his skinny shoulders and then permitted himself a smile. “Fortunately, people are learning.”
He reached in his pocket and took out a bunch of keys that was attached to his belt by a chain, unlocked the deep drawer below the home of his telephone, and produced a thick dossier. “In here,” he said, putting o
n his glasses, “I have the details of our strongbox rentals. Three hundred boxes were installed last year—on my recommendation, I may say—and today, let me see … we have just thirty-eight boxes unrented.” He pursed his lips and rearranged an errant sheet of paper that was protruding slightly from the pile. “Two hundred and sixty-two boxes rented in less than a year.” He looked at the General. “Yes, people are learning.”
The General tugged his moustache. “How very encouraging. Local people, I suppose, like myself?”
“That, monsieur, I cannot tell you.” Millet took off his glasses, and his hands resumed their embrace. “Discretion is guaranteed to all our clients. Discretion and security.”
“Excellent,” said the General. “That’s the way it should be, like it is in Switzerland.”
Millet sniffed. “We have nothing to learn from the Swiss. You will see when I take you through to the strong room. Now then, shall we deal with the formalities?”
The General had considered using a false name but had decided that it was an unnecessary complication. He was doing nothing wrong. His box would be robbed like everyone else’s. What was the point of taking the risk, however slight, of bumping into Millet one day on the street and being greeted with a name that wasn’t his? So he filled in the form and made out a cheque for a year’s rental, using the chequebook that Mathilde didn’t know about, the account he’d built up over the years that was now funding the operation.
Millet excused himself for a few minutes, returning with the keys of the strong room and the General’s personal box. Together, they went to an unmarked door at the back of the bank.
“Now,” said Millet, “let us imagine that you are a bank robber.” He smiled at the General. “An amusing hypothesis, no?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “Bon. You have arrived here. What do you see?”
