by Peter Mayle
“Well?” said Ernest. “Do we approve? There’ll be flowers arriving later, of course, and food and ice. And the electricity’s laid on, although I must say I’m dithering a little between Christmas carols and that very loud man they all seem to like—Johnny something. What do you think?”
Simon smiled and shook his head. “It looks fantastic, Ern. You were right about having it here. It’s going to be fun, isn’t it?”
“Glittering, dear, glittering.” Ernest glowed with pleasure and almost skipped across to one of the windows. “Now this is exciting. Come and see.”
Simon joined him at the window. In the clear winter light, the mountains in the distance looked like a stage set painted against a blue background, sharp and almost flat. Immediately below him, Simon saw that the terraces had been cleared and paved, and the pool finished. A cement mixer grumbled and turned, and men were working in a low, open-fronted stone building, set back from the pool and facing west to catch the sunset.
“The pool house looks fine,” Simon said. “As if it’s been there forever.”
“It’s all old stones and old tiles. Heaven knows where Monsieur Blanc gets them. When I asked him, he just tapped his nose.”
They went down the stairs and through the vaulted room, now used as a storage area for beams and sacks of cement, that would eventually be the restaurant. Once they finished the pool house, the men would move in here and then up through the building. Simon felt a surge of impatience and excitement: it was going to work. He clapped Ernest on the back. “How do you feel about it?”
“Need you ask, dear? Do you know, I think it’s what I’ve always wanted to do, something special like this.” He looked out at the mountains, screwing up his eyes against the sun. “Yes, this will do very nicely. It won’t be a wrench to give up Wimbledon.”
They walked across the flagstones, which had been set with spaces between them to plant with herbs, and over to the empty pool. The long side facing south had been cut back so that when the pool was filled, the surface of the water would appear to flow into the horizon.
“There can’t be many pools with a view like that,” Simon said. “It must be eight or ten miles, and you can hardly see a house.”
Ernest pointed over to the west. “And there, right over that rather dear little peak, is where the sun goes down. You can sit in the pool house and watch it. I did the other evening, and it was quite extraordinary. Almost too gaudy to be true, actually.”
They went over to the pool house. Blanc was hovering anxiously over the team of masons as they braced themselves to lift a ten-foot slab of stone that was to be the counter of the bar. “C’est bon? Attention aux doigts. Allez … hop!”
With a silent scream of muscles, the masons lifted the slab to chest height and lowered it, with excruciating slowness and delicacy, onto the wet cement that coated the bar. Blanc darted in and laid a spirit level on the slab, studied it, and frowned. “Non. Il faut le monter un tout petit peu.” He bent down and picked up two small, wedge-shaped pieces of stone and motioned to the biggest of the masons.
Claude stooped to get one shoulder under the end of the slab and, with a surge of effort that made the veins of his neck pop with strain, raised the slab while Blanc inserted the wedges and tried again with the spirit level. “Oui, c’est bon.” The masons blew with exertion and rubbed cold, sore fingers.
Blanc wiped a dusty hand on the seat of his trousers before greeting Simon and Ernest. It was going well, he said. The weather had been kind; soon the exterior work would be finished, and the masons could spend the rest of the winter indoors. He called one of them over to introduce him to Simon—a young, thickset man with bulky shoulders that started just below the ears, a light beard, and a cheerful, intelligent face.
“Monsieur Fonzi,” Blanc said, “le chef d’équipe.”
Fonzi grinned, looked at his cement-coated hands, and extended a forearm for Simon to shake. It felt like a steel hawser.
“You’re coming tonight, I hope?” said Simon.
“Beh oui, volontiers.” He grinned again, nodded, and turned back to the other masons, who were smoking and watching from the bar—Claude and Jojo breathing easily, Jean and Bachir still massaging frayed hands. “On prend les vacances? Allez!”
Blanc excused himself and went back to work. Ernest looked at his watch. “I’d better go in. They promised to be here with the flowers before lunch.”
Simon walked slowly round the pool and sat on a pile of flagstones. He imagined how it would be in full summer—guests in the pool, the scent of thyme and lavender on the terrace, tables laid outside for lunch under those off-white canvas umbrellas that transformed the glare of the sun into a soft, diffused fall of light. He wondered who the first guests would be. Maybe he should invite Philippe down from Paris with one of his decorative friends from Vogue. What would Nicole think of him?
The screech of a cutting wheel biting into stone came from the pool house, and Simon winced. What a brutal job it was, being a mason—cold, dirty, noisy, and dangerous. If any one of them had let that slab slip, it would have been a broken leg or a crushed foot. The cutting wheel skidding off a fossil in the stone would go through flesh and bone in half a second. They certainly earned their money. Simon felt the chill from the flagstones coming through his clothes. With a guilty sense of his own privileged situation, he went inside and put up no resistance at all to Ernest’s offer of a glass of red wine.
14
The three of them had spent a busy afternoon, and it was dusk by the time Ernest pronounced himself satisfied with the arrangements. Braziers glowed; candlelight shadows trembled on the walls; vases of pink tulips decorated each table; and there was enough food, Simon thought, for a prolonged siege—terrines, charcuterie, salads, cheeses, a vast daube keeping warm over a bed of charcoal, gâteaux and tarts and a gigantic bowl of Ernest’s dangerously alcoholic trifle. Nobody would leave hungry.
Simon opened the door and looked up and down the empty street. The village was silent. He felt the doubt that hosts experience in that empty waiting period when everything is ready and nobody is there.
“They’re not exactly lining up to get in,” he said. “Perhaps I’d better go into Cavaillon and rent a few bodies.”
Nicole laughed. “They’ll come, don’t worry. Didn’t you see this afternoon? Half the village was trying to look inside.”
Simon remembered seeing a couple through the open door while a delivery was being made. They were tall, in their mid-thirties, pasty-faced and dressed in dingy colours. The man wore the kind of narrow, faintly sinister sunglasses affected by out-of-work actors hoping to be recognised. The two of them had stared at Simon, expressionless and unfriendly. He described them to Nicole.
“Ah, yes,” she said. “Those.” She shook her head. “Those you are not going to like. They’re English, très snob, and they are great friends with Ambrose Crouch.”
“What does he do for a living?”
“He married her. She bought him an antique shop.”
“Do they live here all the time?”
“Oh, sometimes here, sometimes in Paris. In the village they are called les Valium.”
Ernest snorted with laughter. “How marvellous. Are they artificially assisted, or just naturally boring?”
Nicole shrugged. “Who knows? They’re very slow, very cold—no, not cold, very … blasé, you know. Very cool.”
“God help us,” Simon said. “I should have known from the look they gave me. If they’d had their noses any further up in the air they’d have dislocated their necks. Posers. I wonder if he sleeps in his sunglasses.”
“Really!” said Ernest. “This is hardly the festive spirit. I think we should have a quiet drink while we can, before the rush starts. And if the Valiums should honour us with a visit, we’ll put them in a corner where nobody will fall over them, and wake them up when it’s time to go home. What are you going to have?”
They sat at one of the small tables, sipping red wine that wa
s still slightly chilled. Simon felt edgy, a little apprehensive, the way he felt before a meeting that he knew was going to be difficult. Supposing Nicole was wrong, and the village hated the idea of an hotel? Supposing Crouch dug his heels in and wrote a smear piece? Supposing …
“Bon soir, mes amis, bon soir.” Blanc came through the door, towering above a small, dark woman whom he introduced as his wife. They were followed almost immediately by a group of ruddy, fair-haired young men and girls with an older couple.
“The village Swedes,” Nicole whispered to Simon, “very sympa, and there are always many of them.” She made the introductions—Ebba and Lars, Anna and Carl and Birgitta and Arne and Harald—all tall and smiling and speaking perfect English. Who said Swedes were cold? Simon began to relax and explained his plans for the hotel. The elder couple nodded. It would be good for them. There was never enough room in their house for everyone who wanted to come down. Sometimes it seemed as if they had half of Sweden sleeping on the floor, and last summer, when the fosse septique had blocked up … They shuddered and laughed and took another drink.
Nicole touched Simon’s arm and nodded towards the door, where Mayor Bonetto and his wife stood as if rooted to the threshold. Simon went over to welcome them, and madame pretended to scold him. “You don’t stay with us now,” she said, and looked at Nicole. “You’ve found a softer bed, eh?”
Bonetto crushed Simon’s hand. “Ça va?” He moved his grip up to the shoulder. “So we’re going to have our own hotel?” His eyes, bright and inquisitive in his weather-cracked face, studied Simon.
“I hope you approve.”
“I did approve. The whole conseil municipal approved. Why should everybody stay in Gordes? C’est bieng, c’est bieng.” He patted Simon hard enough to leave a bruise. With a sense of relief, Simon took them over to the bar, and Ernest poured pastis.
“Tell me,” asked Simon, “where’s your daughter? Isn’t she going to come?”
“She stays at the café. She’s not pleased, but it’s necessary for someone to be there. Santé.” Bonetto attacked his pastis.
“I’ll take her a glass of champagne,” Simon said. “Cheer her up.”
The room was becoming crowded, and Nicole steered Simon round the guests, feeding names into his ear that he forgot almost instantly: a quartet of Parisians, tactile in soft leather blousons; the butcher and the baker; the notaire and his wife; an amiable Dutch couple; madame who ran the tiny post office; Duclos and his oily dog from the garage; Fonzi with his suede-covered, scented girlfriend; Jojo and Claude, shaved and scrubbed; elderly, wrinkled villagers standing quietly against the wall; two real estate agents, who slipped their cards into Simon’s top pocket; a sharply dressed man who wanted to discuss burglar alarm systems; and the proprietor of the best local vineyard. In the course of a bewildering but encouraging hour of working the room, Simon had found no negative reactions. The atmosphere was warm, and the initial separation between villagers and foreigners was starting to disappear. They’d probably never been thrown together like this before. It was turning into a good party.
Simon made his way to the bar. “How are you getting on, Ern?”
“Keeping up, dear, but only just.” He drew a hand across his brow. “The champagne seems to be frightfully popular.”
Simon remembered the girl in the café. “I thought I might take a glass next door for Bonetto’s daughter.” He watched Ernest pour the champagne. “I think it’s going well, don’t you?”
“Well, if dead bottles are anything to go by …” Ernest was distracted by the sight of Madame Bonetto’s empty glass. “Un petit pastis, madame?”
Madame Bonetto allowed her glass to be refilled. “Merci, jeune homme.” Ernest bridled.
Simon took the champagne and picked his way through the crowd to the door and out into the shock of the night air.
The girl was alone in the café, watching the television at the end of the bar and eating peanuts from a small plastic saucer. She ran her tongue over her teeth before smiling at Simon.
“I’m sorry you have to stay here,” he said. “I’ve brought you some champagne.”
“C’est gentil.” She looked at him over the top of the glass, her eyes wide and dark. A pretty girl like her would make a good receptionist for the hotel, Simon thought. He’d have a word with her father.
“I’ve never asked your name,” he said.
“Françoise.”
“Simon.”
“Papa says you’re going to make an hotel.”
“That’s right. We’re hoping to be open next summer.”
She took a sip of champagne and looked down into the glass, black eyelashes against olive skin. “You will need people to work there.”
“We’re going to start looking after Christmas.”
“It would be very interesting for me.” She leaned forward, and Simon found himself staring at the tiny gold crucifix hanging in the opening of her blouse. “I like to do something new.”
“What would your parents think if you left the café? I can’t steal you.”
She stuck out her lower lip and twitched a shoulder. “There’s a cousin. She could come here.”
“I’ll talk to your father, okay? Listen, I’d better go.” He backed away from the bar. “Au revoir, Françoise.”
“Bye-bye, Simon.”
He walked down towards the gendarmerie, smiling in the dark. She’d cause a few heart murmurs among the male guests if she was on the reception desk.
As he approached the open door, he saw three figures standing outside. “Well,” one of them said, “I suppose we should go and mingle. He’s an ad man, didn’t you say, Ambrose? Some ghastly little person with a bow tie.” They went through the door, and Simon recognised the Valiums, followed by a short, slight man with an oversized head. The beau monde of Brassière had arrived.
Simon waited outside for a few moments before going back into the convivial warmth of the room. The Valiums and Crouch had found a small table in one corner and had appropriated a bottle of champagne. They were leaning back, languid and detached from the laughter and conversation around them. Simon steeled himself to be pleasant and went over to their table.
“Glad you could come. I’m Simon Shaw.”
It was like shaking hands with three exhausted fish. Mrs. Valium, her blank, almost pretty face framed by long, straight hair, offered a half-smile. Mr. Valium’s expression didn’t change beneath the sunglasses he was wearing to shield his eyes from the candlelight. Crouch stared. Simon thought he had rarely seen three more unhealthy-looking faces, pallid and waxy.
“So,” said Crouch, “you’re the famous ad man. Well, well. We are honoured.” His voice seemed to be coming through his nose, in a peevish baritone that reminded Simon of a sarcastic master he’d detested at school.
“How did you know I was in advertising?”
“I’m a journalist, Mr. Shaw. It’s my business to be informed about our gallant captains of industry.” The Valiums smiled faintly and toyed with their champagne.
“I gather,” Crouch went on, “that this is to become a boutique hotel.” He made it sound as though it were something unpleasant he’d just stepped in.
“A small hotel, yes.”
“Just what the village needs.”
“The villagers seem quite happy about it.”
“Not all the villagers, Mr. Shaw. You’ve read my column, I imagine, so you know my feelings about Provence being ruined by what we so misguidedly call progress.” Crouch took a deep swallow of champagne and nodded at the Valiums. “No, not all the villagers want to see the streets crawling with Mercedes and overdressed trippers.”
“I think you’re exaggerating.”
Crouch continued as if he hadn’t heard. “But I suppose we must let the public judge. What do they say in your, ah, occupation? ‘Any publicity is good publicity’?” He laughed, and the Valiums smiled. “We shall see.”
Simon reached for the bottle of champagne, filled Crouch’s glas
s, and picked it up. “Funnily enough, I wanted to talk to you about publicity. Perhaps we could go over there. I don’t want to bore your friends.”
Crouch looked up at him and got to his feet. “Well, this will be amusing.”
Simon led him across the room to a quiet corner behind the bar. The firelight shone on Crouch’s face, and Simon noticed the gleam of a light sweat on his forehead and above his top lip. He’d been drinking before he arrived, and Simon caught a gust of his sour white-wine breath.
“Now then, Mr. Crouch. Publicity.” Simon smiled brightly and made an effort to keep his voice pleasant and reasonable. “I’d much prefer it if there were nothing in the press until the hotel is ready to open. You know what a short memory the public has.”
Crouch looked at him without replying, the beginnings of a sneer curling at one side of his mouth. So that was it: this overpaid yob was going to ask him for a favour.
“And so I’d be grateful if you could save any comments you might have for the time being.” Simon reached over to the bar and took a bottle from its nest of ice. “More champagne?”
“It would take more than champagne to stop me writing about this, Mr. Shaw. You’re being very naive.” He held out his empty glass. “But then, you’re in a naive business.”
Simon nodded, refusing to be drawn. “Tell me, what would it take?”
Crouch’s sneer came into full bloom. “I think I can see where this conversation is leading, but I’m going to have to disappoint you.” He took a long pull at his glass, relishing the moment, the power of the press, the glow of satisfaction at the delightful thought of making a rich man squirm. “No, Mr. Shaw, you can look forward to seeing a great deal of publicity in the Globe. Plenty of coverage—isn’t that the term you people use? I have 750,000 readers, you know.” He muffled a belch and finished his champagne. He helped himself from the bottle.
A hardness came into Simon’s voice. “You used to have 750,000 readers. You don’t now. Circulation has been slipping for three years—or haven’t they told you?”
