by Peter Mayle
“Look,” he said, “we’re going to have to sort this out.” He got up, went to a drawer of the dresser, pulled out a phone directory, and started leafing through the Yellow Pages. “Better to do it now, before things get any more complicated.”
Christie watched, a puzzled half smile on her face. “I don’t understand. What’s going on?”
“I think we should get a legal opinion.” Max found what he was looking for, and reached for his phone.
“Oh, come on. Do you really think…”
“I’m serious. Do you have anything against lawyers?”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
As Max tapped in the number, Madame Passepartout, saucer-eyed and bursting with frustrated incomprehension, looked at Christie and shrugged. Christie could do nothing but shrug back. They waited for Max to finish his call.
“OK. We’ve got an appointment in Aix at two o’clock.”
Lunch was a swift, informal affair of bread and cheese and salad in the kitchen. Max was preoccupied, his head filled with depressing possibilities: losing the house, having to go back to London and find a job, scraping together the money to pay back Charlie. Christie was thoughtful, a little bewildered, and saddened by the realization that she never would meet her father. Madame Passepartout had given up the linguistic struggle and had gone home, promising to return to do battle with the cobwebs in the afternoon.
They were about to get into the car when Christie paused as she was opening the door. “Max? Do we really need to do this?”
Max looked at her across the roof of the car. “I do. I couldn’t stay not knowing if the house were mine or yours. Suppose you did something silly, like marry a Frenchman? You might want to come and live here.”
She shook her head. “Not on my agenda.”
“You never know. Agendas have a habit of changing.”
The drive down to Aix was marked by the kind of safe, impersonal conversation two people resort to when they don’t want to discuss what is really on their minds. They compared jobs: Max’s time in the City, Christie’s in the winery. They shared an admiration for the spectacular countryside they were driving through-like Napa, but greener and somehow older-looking-and by the time they had found a parking spot in Aix they were starting to feel as comfortable with one another as they could under the curious circumstances.
One of the most attractive corners of Aix is the Place d’Albertas, a miniature eighteenth-century cobbled square built around a fountain. Once an architectural prelude to the palace behind it, the square is now largely taken over by discreet offices filled with more or less discreet members of the legal profession. Maître Bosc, the lawyer Max had chosen at random from the extensive selection in the Yellow Pages, occupied the ground floor of one of the best-kept buildings, his brass plaque twinkling in the sun.
The secretary placed Christie and Max on two hard chairs while she disappeared to announce their arrival. Five minutes passed, then ten. Finally, when enough time had passed to establish that the maître was a busy and important man, the secretary reappeared and ushered them into his office.
It was a large, beautifully proportioned room-a high ceiling, tall windows, and delicately molded cornices-desecrated by the kind of modern office furniture one finds in catalogs that offer a discount for buying in bulk. Maître Bosc stood up behind his faux-rosewood desk and gestured at them to sit down. He was a thickset, rumpled man, shirtsleeves pushed up above his elbows, hair awry, his reading glasses dangling from a cord around his neck, a cigar smoldering between his fingers. He looked at them with a pleasant smile. “Alors? What can I do for you?”
Max described the odd situation in which he and Christie found themselves while Bosc made notes, interrupting from time to time with a murmured question. Christie’s exposure to lawyers had been limited to the California variety, sharply dressed and aggressive. Bosc, although she couldn’t understand him, seemed cozy and sympathetic. But he had a lawyer’s instinct for a lengthy and lucrative assignment, something that was apparent from his first words after Max had finished speaking.
He let his glasses drop from his nose, and began to swivel his chair slowly from side to side. “It’s a gray area,” he said.
Max knew little about law, but he had enough experience to know that whenever that invaluable legal accessory, the gray area, was invoked, substantial bills were sure to follow. The lawyer’s next words confirmed this.
“The problem is not quite as straightforward as it might appear.” Bosc rekindled his cigar, brushing the fallen ashes from his tie. “One must search for precedent. But perhaps there is no precedent.” He watched to see how Max received this cheerful news. “In which case, the highest judicial authorities will have to be consulted.”
Max translated for Christie. “He says it could be complicated.”
“Yeah, right,” she said. “Why am I not surprised? Max, we don’t need this.”
Max shrugged. “We’re here. We might as well see what else he has to say.”
Bosc swiveled slowly, waiting for them to finish. “Then there is the question of establishing that mademoiselle is indeed Monsieur Skinner’s daughter; a love child, but his daughter nevertheless. Nowadays, there is DNA, of course-one remembers the affaire concerning the child of Yves Montand some years ago-but again this is not straightforward. Monsieur Skinner’s remains are in a cemetery, and disinterment is an extremely sensitive business requiring permission from a number of different authorities.” He rolled his next phrase around his mouth with evident pleasure. “There could be formidable complications. Quite formidable. But it’s a fascinating case, and I shall be delighted to take it on.”
Max turned again to Christie. “The complications have just got more complicated. I think I’d better tell you the details afterwards.”
Christie rolled her eyes and took out her cigarettes.
Bosc looked from one to the other, not knowing which of them would end up as his client. He hoped it was the one who spoke French. On the other hand, the girl was very pretty. Also, as the young man had told him, American, and therefore extremely rich. He decided to offer them a constructive piece of advice. “To safeguard your positions,” he said, “it would be prudent if both parties were to maintain a physical presence in the property while the matter is being resolved. Absence could possibly be interpreted as giving up legal rights. French law can sometimes play these tricks.”
Max was silent for a moment as the words sank in. “Let me get this straight,” he said. “What I think you’re saying is that we’re going to have to live together. Is that right?”
The lawyer nodded. “Under the same roof, yes. But not in the romantic sense. Unless, of course…” He looked from Max to Christie, signaling all kinds of delightful possibilities with his eyebrows.
“What?” asked Christie.
“Later,” said Max.
The meeting ended with Bosc promising to institute inquiries. But, as he told Max, these would take time. They would have to be patient. He saw them to the front door and stood watching as they went out into the sunlit square, mentally rubbing his hands at the prospect of fat fees to come.
Christie blew out a long, loud gust of air. “OK. Is that all settled?”
“Not exactly. I think a beer would help me explain. You’re not too fond of lawyers, are you?”
“I used to live with one.”
They walked in silence down the rue de Nazareth to the Cours Mirabeau, and took the last empty table on the terrace of the Deux Garçons. Christie looked around at the crowd, most of them studying maps and guidebooks, many of them in the American vacationers’ uniform of baseball caps, baggy multipocketed shorts, and sandals made from strips of black industrial webbing. She turned back to Max with a grin. “Where’s the guy with the beret and the accordion?”
The waiter, impassive and bored, put two beers on their table and waited to be paid, his eyes focused on something far away, perhaps his retirement. He glanced down to assess the size of his tip, ackno
wledged it with an almost imperceptible tilt of the head, and moved off on feet as flat as the crêpes being eaten at the next table.
Max began his explanation, but he could sense that it was a struggle for Christie to stay interested in precedents and judicial consultations, and when he came to disinterment and DNA tests, she shuddered and shook her head.
“Look,” said Max, “I’m just telling you what he said.” Before he could continue, Christie put up a hand to stop him.
“Right at the end,” she said, “when he was looking at both of us, all that stuff with the eyebrows, what was that all about?”
“Good question. I was coming to that. Well, what he was suggesting-no, what he was advising, only as a legal thing, you understand-was that you should, as he put it, ‘maintain a presence.’ ”
“Maintain a presence?”
“Yes. In the house.”
“With you?”
“Well, yes. I mean, I’d be there, obviously. Maintaining a presence as well. Just until this is all sorted out.”
“Max, I only met you this morning. I don’t know you. And now you’re suggesting I come and live with you?”
She looked comically earnest, her blue eyes wide with concern, a young American woman face to face for the first time with European turpitude. Max gave up trying to take the situation seriously. It was too bizarre.
“It’s a big house,” he said. “We could have three bedrooms each.”
Eleven
“Ah,” said Madame Passepartout, “it is as I thought. The young Américaine is moving in.” She watched approvingly as Max struggled to maneuver Christie’s bag, an enormous sausage-shaped canvas holdall, through the front door. “Everything is ready, Monsieur Max,” adding, with a smirk, “I’ve put flowers in your bedroom and changed the sheets. I’m sure you’ll both be very comfortable.”
Max dropped the bag on the floor. “No, madame. No. You don’t understand. She’s staying here, but not with me. Well, with me, but not in the same bedroom.”
Madame Passepartout received this news with a look of astonishment, as though the idea of two healthy and unattached young people choosing not to share a bed was odd, even unnatural. She cocked her head and put her hands on her hips. “Ah bon? And why not?”
“I’ll explain later.” Turning to Christie, Max nodded toward the stairs and heaved the bag onto his shoulder. “Let’s get you settled in.”
They made a tour of the upstairs rooms, with Madame Passepartout flinging open shutters and flicking any surface she suspected of harboring dust, pointing out the views through the tall windows and muttering, not quite under her breath, about the waste of Max’s perfectly good bedroom. Christie looked with apprehension at the sagging beds, the ancient, lopsided armoires, the uneven tiled floors. Apprehension turned to disbelief when they came to one bathroom even more medieval than the others, with a shower attachment linked to the tub by twisted coils of cracked and faded pink rubber tubing. She shook her head slowly. “Far out,” she said. “Incredible.”
“Not exactly the Ritz, I know,” said Max. “But bags of charm. You won’t find anything like this in the States.” He perched on the lavatory seat and stretched both arms out toward the window. “I mean, you could spend many happy hours here. The view’s fantastic.”
A half smile couldn’t conceal Christie’s obvious dismay, just this side of horror, and Max tried to imagine the palatial sanitary arrangements she must have been accustomed to in California. Hygiene, as he knew, was one of the minor religions of America. He took pity on her. “Look,” he said, “why don’t you have my room and bathroom, and I’ll go somewhere else?”
And so it was decided. Leaving Christie to unpack, Max and Madame Passepartout went downstairs to the kitchen, Max to seek comfort in a glass of wine, Madame Passepartout to seek enlightenment.
“But why not?” she asked again. “It is the best room. The bed is large enough for two. You could be together. Très cosy.”
“We’ve only just met.”
“So? You’ll get to know each other.”
“She’s my cousin. At least, I think she’s my cousin.”
Madame Passepartout dismissed that trifling accident of birth with a wave of the hand. “Half the aristocrats in France have liaisons with their cousins.” She poked Max in the chest for emphasis. “And many of the peasants. Why, even here in the village, it is well known that…”
Max cut her off in mid-revelation. “Look, the truth of it is…”
“Ah. The truth.”
“… the truth of it is that I’ve never really fancied blondes. I prefer brunettes. Always have.”
“C’est vrai?”
“Absolutely.”
Madame Passepartout couldn’t help a hand going up to touch her acceptably brunette hair, even as she shrugged. She had proposed what she considered to be a sensible and convenient arrangement-a potentially very pleasurable arrangement-and it had been declined for no other reason, as far as she could see, than the girl having been born a blonde. Absurd. How strange men were, English men in particular. She wished Max an agreeable evening and went off to discuss him and his foibles at length with her sister, Madame Roussel.
Max waited until her car had disappeared up the drive before taking a bottle of rosé and two glasses out into the courtyard. He put the bottle under the flow of the fountain to keep a chill on the wine, and fetched two tattered wicker chairs from the barn, putting them beside the bassin so that they faced the sunset. He was, he thought, performing all the duties of a considerate host. But as he sat down to review the events of the day, he couldn’t ignore the thought that his days as a host might be numbered. Was the house really his, or would some arcane wrinkle in a law established centuries ago by Napoleon decide otherwise? Had he been stupid to bring up the problem in the first place? Possibly. But he liked to think of himself as a man with one or two basic principles, and a voice from the grave came back to remind him of something that Uncle Henry had often told him: a principle isn’t a principle until it costs you money. Not only money, in this case, but a new life.
“Hi.”
Max turned from the contemplation of his future to see Christie, dressed in fresh jeans and white T-shirt, her wet hair brushed straight back. She looked about eighteen.
“Congratulations. You worked out how to use the shower.” Max poured a glass of wine and held it out to her.
“Thanks. Is that all you ever get? A trickle?”
“The French aren’t great at showers. But they do wonderful sunsets.”
They sat for a moment without speaking, looking at a sky streaked with gold and pink and decorated with small, rose-colored clouds that could have been painted by Maxfield Parrish in one of his more extravagant moods. Water splashed from the fountain, the sound mingling with the chirrup of cigales and the croak of frogs calling out to one another across the bassin.
Christie turned to look at Max. “What was he like, my dad?”
Max stared into the distance, consulting his memory. “I think what I liked most about him was that he treated me like an adult instead of a schoolboy. And he was funny, especially about the French, although he loved them. ‘Our sweet enemy,’ he used to call them; or, if they were being particularly obstinate and difficult, ‘bloody frogs.’ But he rather admired their superiority complex and their good manners. He was a great one for good manners. I suppose nowadays he’d be considered very old-fashioned.”
“Why’s that?”
“He was a gent. You know, honorable, fair, decent-all those things that have rather gone out of style. You’d have liked him a lot. I did.” Max sipped his wine and glanced at his watch. “I thought we might go down to the village to eat. I’ll tell you more about him over dinner.”
Chez Fanny was noisy and already crowded with people from the village and a handful of tourists, these easily identified by their sun-flushed faces and their logo-spattered clothes. Fanny came over to greet Max, a look of surprise on her face when she saw he was not alon
e.
“It’s been so long,” she said, patting Max on the arm as she kissed him. “At least two days. Where have you been? And who’s this?”
Max made the introductions and watched the two women sizing one another up as they shook hands, a searching mutual inspection that neither bothered to conceal, almost like two dogs meeting in a park. Why was it that men were never as open in their curiosity? Max was smiling as they sat down at their table.
“What’s so funny?” asked Christie.
“You two,” he said. “I thought for a moment you were going to start sniffing each other.”
Christie’s eyes followed Fanny as she snaked her way through the tables. “They wear their clothes pretty tight over here, don’t they? If she sneezed she’d be out of that top.”
“I live in hope,” said Max. Seeing Christie raise a censorious eyebrow, he hurried on. “Now, what would you like? Have you ever had rabbit stuffed with tapenade? Wonderful.”
Christie seemed unconvinced. “We don’t do rabbit in California. Is it, you know, gamey?”
“Tastes like chicken. You’ll love it.”
The topic of Uncle Henry occupied most of dinner, and Max told Christie as much as he could remember of those summers long ago. His uncle had given him what amounted to a haphazard education, introducing him to tennis and chess and wine, good books and good music. Max recalled in particular one endless rainy day devoted to the Ring cycle, preceded by his uncle’s comment: “Wagner’s music isn’t as bad as it sounds.”
There had also been lessons on elementary tractor maintenance, gutting chickens, and the care and handling of a pet ferret whose job it was to keep the rats down. Tossed into this informative stew were other diverse ingredients, such as the unpredictable nature of red-haired women, the virtues of Aleppo soap, the importance of a good blue suit-“Remember your tailor in your will; it’s the only time you should pay him”-and a proven system of winning at backgammon.
“I loved those summers,” said Max. “It was just like being with an older boy who knew a lot more than I did.”