Hotel Pastis

by Peter Mayle

  Ernest sniffed loudly. “That never stopped her making a pest of herself. An extremely spoilt young woman, in my opinion.” He pulled out to overtake a truck filled with sheep. “She’ll be curious, you know, when she finds out. She’ll come down to have a look, nosy little madam.”

  “I’m sure.” Simon looked at the rocky, grey-green landscape, and felt suddenly tired. The past few weeks hadn’t been easy, and now that they were over he wanted to collapse, to be with Nicole. He was starting to think of her as home. “Can’t you get this old tub to go any faster?”

  They reached Brassière just after six, and Nicole came out to greet them, hugging herself against the cold. She was wearing tights and sweater of fine black wool, with a small and totally impractical white apron. Simon picked her up and nuzzled her neck. Her skin was warm from the kitchen. “You could get arrested wearing an outfit like that. How are you?”

  “Welcome home, chéri.” She leant back in his arms to look at his face, and then her eyes widened as she saw something over his shoulder. “My God, what’s that?”

  Mrs. Gibbons was celebrating her arrival with an investigation of local aromas, moving from lamppost to dustbin with a rolling, bandy-legged, nautical walk, her tail stiff and quizzical. Nicole watched her with disbelief as she chose a suitable spot to relieve herself, her great blunt snout lifted to take the evening air.

  “That,” said Simon, “is Mrs. Gibbons. Unusual, isn’t she?”

  Nicole laughed and shook her head. A truly ugly dog, she thought, one of God’s jokes. She kissed Simon on the nose. “You don’t get a drink until you put me down.”

  They unloaded the car and sat round the fire with a bottle of red wine as Nicole brought them up to date. News of the hotel had spread well beyond the village through the téléphone arabe—café talk and shop gossip. Every day now, she said, someone would approach her to suggest an arrangement of one kind or another: a job, a discount on meat, an exceptional opportunity to buy antiques, pool maintenance service, fully grown olive trees at a prix d’ami. The whole world, it seemed, had something or someone to sell.

  And nobody was more persistent than the burglar’s dedicated foe, Jean-Louis, the alarm system salesman. At least once a day, he would call or drop in with the latest reports of criminal activity in the Vaucluse. Robbery was rampant, according to him, and nothing was safe. Cars disappeared in seconds, houses were violated, garden furniture and statues took flight, even the very knives and forks of the hotel would be at risk. It would be, he told Nicole, his personal pleasure and responsibility to supervise a security system that would rival the Banque de France for impregnability. Not even a rat from the fields would be able to slip through the net.

  “He sounds like a con artist to me,” said Simon. “What do we need all that for? There’ll always be someone in the hotel. Anyway, we can train Mrs. Gibbons to kill on command.”

  Nicole shrugged. “I think he looks for a job—you know, chef de sécurité. He’s quite charming, but a little louche. You met him at the party.”

  “What about the real chef?”

  “Two possibilities so far. A young man who is sous-chef at one of the big hotels on the coast. He wants his own kitchen. They say he is good, and ambitious to do something famous. The other—” Nicole lit a cigarette and laughed through the smoke—“is Madame Pons. She’s from the region, a wonderful cook, but with a temperament. Her last job was in Avignon, but she had a fracas with a client who said the duck was undercooked. She came out of the kitchen and paf! It was very dramatic.”

  “How do you feel about a dramatic chef, Ern?”

  “Artists are never easy, dear. We all know that.”

  “I had her soufflé aux truffes one night,” said Nicole, “and chicken with tarragon. Superbe.” She looked at her watch and stood up. “And now all I have for you is my poor little cassoulet.”

  The poor little cassoulet—a heavy, rich stew of sausage and lamb and goose and beans with a light crust of bread crumbs—was placed in its deep earthenware bowl on the table, next to the wine from Rasteau that they were testing for the hotel cellar. The long, fat loaf of bread was cut into thick slices which felt soft and springy between the fingers. The salad was tossed, the wine poured, and as Nicole broke the crust of the cassoulet, a savoury steam came from the bowl. Simon grinned at her as he tucked his napkin into his collar. “I’m taking care of your shirts.”

  “Bon. Now eat while it’s hot.”

  The hiring of the chef, they all agreed, needed to be settled quickly, before the kitchen was built and equipped. A good chef could make an hotel’s reputation in a single season and attract local customers throughout the year. But finding the right chef, being sure, that was the problem. Did you go and try the restaurant, in the anonymous fashion of the Michelin inspector? And if you did, could you be certain that it was the chef, rather than some talented slave, who did the cooking?

  Ernest dabbed his mouth with his napkin and took a mouthful of wine, chewing at it for a moment before swallowing. “Mmmm. Very promising. Shall we try the Cairanne? It’s wonderful that all the vineyards are so close.” He got up to fetch clean glasses and poured the wine. “Now, are you ready for an answer to the problem?”

  “Another pensée, is this, Ern?”

  “Exactly, dear. What I suggest is that we ask each chef to come to Brassière—which they’d want to do anyway—and cook for us. A test lunch. Why not?”

  Nicole and Simon looked at each other. Why not?

  They were not prepared, however, for the delicate and highly important matter of gastronomic self-esteem, the ego of a chef who knows he’s good and who sees himself among the masters like Bocuse and Senderens—revered, courted, treated like national treasures by the President, fawned over by movie stars. When Nicole called the young man on the coast, he declined the invitation to lower himself by cooking in a private kitchen. He would come to Brassière, providing a chauffeur-driven car was sent to Nice to pick him up, but there would be a déplacement charge of five thousand francs, and he would not cook.

  Nicole put the phone down and grimaced. “Il pète plus haut que son cul.”

  “I beg your pardon?” said Ernest.

  Simon laughed. “They don’t teach that one at Berlitz, Ern. It means that he has an exaggerated idea of his own importance—he farts higher than his own arse.”

  “An anal ventriloquist. How very distasteful.”

  After some difficulty, Nicole managed to track down the second candidate, Madame Pons, and put the same proposition to her. It was agreed that she would come to look at the hotel and then at Nicole’s kitchen. If she liked what she saw, she would cook. If not, they could buy her lunch at the Mas Tourteron outside Gordes, which she had heard was excellent, and that would be her fee for the day. But she was, she said, an optimist. She told Nicole to meet her in Les Halles in Avignon at six the next morning to buy the ingredients for lunch.

  The three of them arrived at Les Halles just before six. In the predawn gloom of the Place Pie, the only indications that anyone else was up were the cars jammed into every parking space and the faint glow of light coming from the entrance to the market. It was well below zero, with a wind that chased empty cigarette packets along the gutter and sliced into exposed skin. Simon rubbed his unshaven face, and it felt like frozen sandpaper.

  “How are we going to find her?”

  “She said she’ll be having breakfast at Kiki’s bar.”

  Darkness and silence became noise and bustle and glaring light as soon as they were inside. The aisles were crowded, the stall holders shouting to make themselves heard as they filled orders and bellowed encouragement at indecisive shoppers. Ernest stood in astonishment as he looked at the stalls, every inch filled with vegetables, with meat, with cheeses and olives and fruit and fish, abundance piled on abundance.

  “Well! I can see we’ll be spending many happy hours here. Look at the size of those aubergines—they’re enough to give a ballet dancer an inferiority complex.”
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  They made their way through the crowd towards the bar. Men in old work clothes stood shoulder to shoulder over small ballons of red wine and sausage sandwiches. In the corner, a solitary woman was making notes on the back of an envelope, a half-empty flute of champagne in front of her.

  Madame Pons had passed the stage of being merely ripe and was now, in early middle age, voluminous. Below her dark red curly hair and fleshy, handsome face, chins cascaded into a white lace blouse. Her makeup was emphatic, as was her bosom, which rested on the bar like two sleeping puppies. Around her shoulders was slung a cloak of bottle green, and two surprisingly dainty feet balanced on a pair of elegant high heels.

  Nicole made the introductions, and Madame Pons looked at them with lively brown eyes as she finished her champagne. Simon put a one hundred-franc note on the bar. “Permit me,” he said.

  Madame Pons nodded graciously, picked up her envelope, and tapped it with a plump finger. “I have the menu for lunch,” she said. “A little bouffe—nothing complicated. Follow me.”

  She moved regally along the stalls, prodding, sniffing, rejecting. Most of the stall holders knew her and were loud in praising their produce, offering lettuces and cheeses for her inspection as though they were works of art. She said little, either shaking her head with disapproving clicks of her tongue or nodding before moving on, leaving Simon and Ernest to pick up her choices. After nearly two hours, they were both weighed down with plastic shopping bags, and Madame Pons was satisfied. She drove off with Nicole, and the two men followed.

  “What do you think of her, Ern?”

  Ernest was silent as he swerved to avoid a dog that had stopped in the middle of the road for a scratch. “If she cooks as well as she shops … Did you see the look she gave to that first man with the fish? Withering. I rather took to her, I must say. Rubens would have adored her.”

  “There’s certainly a lot to adore. You saw she was dipping into the champagne?”

  “Oh, I never trust a chef who doesn’t like a tipple. It shows up in the cooking, you know.”

  They were out of central Avignon, and Ernest slowed down as they saw a girl in high boots and a micro-skirt bent over the bonnet of a BMW, her bottom presented to the oncoming traffic. “Do you think we ought to give her a hand?”

  Simon laughed. “Ern, she’s a working girl—a hooker. She’s there every day. Nicole told me.”

  The sun had come up, and the fields and orchards that had once been the private property of the Popes of Avignon glittered with frost. It was going to be a postcard day, clear and blue and bright, the kind of weather that promises good luck.

  They gathered in the vaulted rooms that were to be the hotel kitchen and restaurant, now the temporary headquarters of Fonzi and his men, who were knocking through the thick stone walls to make high arched windows. A fog of dust hung in the air, and the jackhammer was in full song.

  Madame Pons gathered her cloak around her and tiptoed through the rubble towards the kitchen area. She stood in the middle of the space, turning slowly as she mentally arranged her ovens and burners and preparation tables, her refrigerators and dishwashers and pot racks. She paced out distances, gauged the height of the ceiling, studied the access to the dining room. The others watched her in silence as she moved back and forth in majestic slow motion. Eventually, she looked at them and nodded.

  “It will do,” she said. “A little small, but it will do.”

  With smiles of relief, they escorted Madame Pons through the dining room and up the stairs, unaware of the admiring glances she had attracted from the smallest of the masons. He waited until they were out of earshot and turned to Fonzi.

  “Elle est magnifique, non?” He shook one hand vigorously from the wrist. “Un bon paquet.”

  Fonzi grinned. “Always the big ones, Jojo, eh? You’d get lost.”

  The little mason sighed. One of these days, if the affair of the bank raid worked, he’d be able to buy a suit and take a woman like that out, smother her with money. One of these days. He resumed his assault on the wall and thought about vast expanses of milky flesh.

  Madame Pons slipped off her cloak and examined Nicole’s kitchen, testing the edge of a knife on her thumb, feeling the weight of a copper pot while Ernest unpacked the bags from the market. She demanded an apron and a glass of white wine, selected Ernest as her assistant, and told Nicole and Simon to come back at noon. As they were going out of the front door, they heard the first of her instructions and a brisk “D’accord, dear” from Ernest.

  Simon smiled. “How do you like being thrown out of your own house? She’s a tough one, isn’t she?”

  “All good chefs are dictators.” Nicole looked at her watch. “It’s good, because there’s something I want to show you—a surprise for Ernest. We have time.”

  “I think he’s having a surprise at the moment.”

  They drove along the N-100 and then up into the hills. Nicole parked by the side of a high fence, and they walked through a pair of sagging gates. In front of them was a plot of land that stretched for three or four acres, still frosty, and, despite the sunlight, slightly macabre. It looked as though a violent and untidy giant had demolished a village and tossed the remnants over his shoulder—piles of old beams, blocks of cut stone the size of small cars, pillars, fireplaces, roof tiles, millstones, colossal ornamental tubs, an entire staircase leaning against the side of a barn, terra-cotta urns as tall as a man, everything chipped and pockmarked with age among the weeds and brambles. Nicole led Simon past a battered nymph with no nose, lying on her back, her hands crossed modestly over lichen-speckled breasts.

  “What is this place?” Simon asked.

  “A casse. Isn’t it marvellous? With these things, you can make a new house look two hundred years old.” Nicole stopped to look around. “Merde, I’m lost. Where is it?”

  “What are we looking for?”

  “Ah, voilà. Over there, past the beams.”

  It was a statue, a large, weather-stained replica of the Manneken Pis in Brussels, a corpulent cherub micturating pensively into a circular stone basin, blind-eyed and content, one chubby stone fist clutching a penis made from ancient copper piping.

  Nicole tapped the copper. “This, I think, may be a little too evident, but Fonzi can adjust it.” She stood back and looked at Simon, her face a smiling question mark. “Well?”

  Simon laughed as he walked round the statue and patted its bottom. “I love it. Ern will be thrilled. I know exactly where he’ll put the spotlight.” He put an arm round her shoulders. “You’re a clever girl. I can’t wait to see his face.”

  They spent half an hour wandering through the rest of the domestic graveyard, chose some troughs and pots for the hotel terrace, and found the owner’s makeshift office in a corner of the barn. Simon watched with interest as Nicole haggled, asking the prices of several pieces she had no intention of buying, wincing as she heard them, shaking her head.

  “If only one was rich,” she said to the owner. “And the old fountain? How much is that?”

  “Ah, that.” His expression was soulful beneath his knitted wool cap. “My grandmother’s fountain. I grew up with it. I have a great sentiment for that fountain.”

  “I understand, monsieur. Some things are beyond price.” She shrugged. “Well, that’s a pity.”

  “Eight thousand francs, madame.”

  “Cash?”

  “Six thousand.”

  They got back to the house at noon to find Ernest putting the finishing touches to the table while Madame Pons, glass in hand, supervised.

  “Remember, Airnest, flowers are for the eyes, not for the nose. If they are too strong, they fight with the scent of the food.”

  “You’re so right, dear. Specially freesias.” Ernest stepped back, frowned at the table, decided that it was satisfactory, and reached into the fridge for a bottle of white wine. “On the menu today,” he said, “we have a terrine of aubergine with a coulis of fresh peppers, roast turbot with a sauce of butter and f
ines herbes, les fromages maison, and hot crepes wrapped around a filling of chilled whipped cream and vodka.” He poured wine for Nicole and Simon and then a glass for himself, which he raised to Madame Pons. “Madame is a jewel.” She looked puzzled. “Un bijou.” She beamed.

  They sat down at twelve-thirty and were still at the table, drinking a final cup of coffee, three hours later. Madame Pons had triumphed, and in an unfamiliar kitchen. Warmed by compliments and wine, she became expansive, leaning over to cuff Ernest from time to time at some of his more outrageous flatteries, quivering with laughter, the flush extending down all her chins to the apron she was still wearing. Simon knew he wanted to hire her when she refused to discuss business over food.

  “Eating,” she said, “is too important to spoil with talk of work. The table is for pleasure. I might take a little Calvados, Airnest, and then I must go.” She held a hand up to her ear, thumb and little finger extended, the gesture that always accompanies the promise of a phone call in Provence. “We will talk tomorrow.”

  They went down with Madame Pons to see her off. On the way back, Ernest stopped at his car to let Mrs. Gibbons out. She yawned and looked at him reproachfully.

  “She doesn’t like dogs, Ern?”

  “Quite the contrary, dear. She kept tossing little bits and pieces at Mrs. Gibbons while she was cooking, and it’s not good for her. Gives her wind.”

  When they got back to the house, they were unanimous over the washing up. The hotel had a chef.

  16

  There were times during the next few weeks when Simon felt that his only function, the beginning and end of his usefulness, was to sign cheques. Everyone else had a job.

  Madame Pons, always in the steepest of heels and usually with a glass in her hand, was supervising the design and equipping of the kitchen, interviewing sous-chefs, and constructing the hotel wine list. Two or three times a week, she would hold court at an old tin table in her unfinished kitchen as burly wine-growers or smart young négociants came in with their best bottles. These visits were always followed by an invitation to a return tasting at the property, accompanied by a light three-hour lunch. It was l’enfer, Madame Pons kept saying, but how else would one discover the little treasures of the region?