by Peter Mayle
Alarm and consternation at the base of the tree. The cat must be rescued; Madame Noiret must be informed. A crise dramatique—what are we to do? I knew what I was going to do, which was to evade arrest and wait for the intruder to fall off his perch. It looked increasingly likely as the wind freshened, and I was interested to see if cats really do land on their feet.
The other half muttered something about an urgent appointment and began to sidle off to the bar, but our man with the tractor had other ideas. “You must get a ladder,” he said, “and recuperate the cat while I go to fetch Madame Noiret. Allez! We shall return with all speed.” And away he trotted on his errand of mercy.
With much dragging of the feet, the other half went to the garage and came back with an extension ladder, which for once he managed to erect without mutilating his fingers. He wedged it up into the tree, cursing the while, with madame telling him to be careful and moderate his language with the cat. As he climbed the ladder, the top of the tree began to bend in a most promising manner, with ginger Tom clinging on like grim death and hissing furiously.
I was well placed to see what happened next. The other half made reassuring noises and stretched out a rescuing hand, which was promptly attacked by tooth and claw. Ungrateful beasts, cats, as I’ve always maintained, and the other half had one or two choice phrases to describe them as he returned to earth with scratches up to his elbow, just in time to welcome Madame Noiret and her henchman.
She, of course, was in a fine old state about it all, wringing her hands and wailing and calling out to her little ray of sunshine in the branches to calm himself, Maman was here, double rations of calves’ liver for dinner if he came down, and so forth. But he wasn’t having any of it, and after seeing the damage to the other half’s arm, there was a distinct shortage of volunteers to climb up and get him.
If I’d been in charge, I’d have left him there until autumn, when he would have dropped off with the leaves, but Madame Noiret was working herself into a lather of distress. “It’s all your fault,” said she to the other half. “It’s your dog who has terrorized my poor Zouzou. What are you going to do?”
To which he replied—reasonably enough, I thought, after being wounded in action—“Madame, your cat was in my garage. My ladder is at your disposal. I’m going to bandage my arm, and then I shall very probably have a drink to restore myself. Good day to you.”
This wouldn’t do at all. Madame Noiret puffed herself up like an irate balloon and then demanded to use the telephone. In the face of such inhuman behavior, she said, she was forced to invoke the highest authorities. The English may have no regard for helpless animals, or so she claimed, but the French, being civilized, certainly do. We shall summon the pompiers and let the brave lads of the fire department save Zouzou.
Anything for a quiet life is the management’s motto, and so into the house they all went to make the call and glare at one another. I had become rather bored by now, and I went off digging with the Labrador to pass the time until the arrival of the boys in blue, with their cranes and, I hoped, hydraulically operated cat extractors. It’s very modern, the French fire department, and I had a mental picture of Zouzou being plucked off his branch by giant forceps.
But as things turned out, it wasn’t exactly the joyful climax you might have expected. The pompiers duly turned up, and we all went down to the drive to welcome them, Madame Noiret leading the way with cries of relief, showering blessings on anyone wearing a uniform, and pointing the finger of scorn at the other half. A bossy, disagreeable old boot, she was, and thoroughly deserving of what came next.
The captain cut her off in midbabble and asked her where the endangered cat was. “Follow me,” said Madame Noiret. “Bring your men and suitable equipment. And vite! There is not a moment to be lost.”
The procession made its way up to the almond tree, with Madame Noiret calling out in that nauseating way people address their cats, and then there was what you could only describe as a pregnant and embarrassed silence. The tree was uninhabited. Zouzou, finally showing a vestige of common sense, had gone while the going was good and we were all otherwise engaged.
The tree was uninhabited.
The best was yet to come. Madame Noiret, having made the call, was obliged to pay for bringing out the assembled forces of the fire department without due cause. She protested and carried on, as I’ve noticed people do when their wallets are under threat, but it was to no avail. The captain made the bill out on the spot.
The other half was smiling for the rest of the day, despite his wounds.
The Tasting
If, like me, you have a logical turn of mind, a self-indulgent nature, and a frequently dormant conscience, there is a certain aspect of human behavior that can put an immense strain on the patience. It’s spoken of, always in sanctimonious tones, as moderation—not too much of this, not too much of that, diet and abstinence and restraint, colonic irrigation, cold baths before breakfast, and regular readings of morally uplifting tracts. You must have come across all this and worse if you have any friends from California. Personally, I’m a great believer in the philosophy of live and let live, as long as you keep your proclivities to yourself. Follow the road of denial if that’s what you want, and all I’ll say is more fool you and spare me the details.
Unfortunately, you can’t avoid self-righteousness altogether, and this curious distrust of pleasure is nowhere more apparent than in the matter of drink. People like to drink. This became obvious to me very shortly after I arrived at the house of a thousand bottles (most of them empty). But it is rarely the simple, spontaneous process it should be, because there is always the question of the clock. I can’t tell you how often I’ve noticed it: When offered a drink, what is the first thing most people do? Look at their watches, as if the hour had anything to do with thirst. They invariably accept, but never before a token display of reluctance, usually dispelled by invoking the support of international time zones. Someone, somewhere in the world, is nursing a stiff one on the rocks. This apparently provides the necessary seal of approval.
Then there are the excuses, although I don’t know why they bother; I never need an excuse to jump in and make a beast of myself. But they do, and they’ll clutch at any straw. Birthdays, weddings and wakes, the arrival of a new year, the departure of the mother-in-law, the anniversary of the death of Napoleon’s favorite horse—the list is long and ingenious, and I’ve seen the bottles tumble for no other reason than the sighting of the first cuckoo. In my experience, however, there is no excuse quite as transparent as the wine tasting, a clear case of wretched excess thinly disguised as education, if you ask me. But you’d better read on and judge for yourself.
The hero of the occasion was a little fellow with bandy legs and a pocketful of corkscrews, who was known to his admirers as Gaston the Nose. He supplies many of the local residents with wine that he claims is grown on his family estate and available only to the privileged few. This always goes down well with the landed gentry, who tend to believe anything that flatters them, and they also like his accommodating habit of bringing supplies to the house, thus avoiding the unsteady drive back after a few liquid hours at the vineyard.
I never need an excuse to plunge in.
I’m not sure how Gaston did it—bribery, I wouldn’t wonder—but one fine day he had somehow persuaded the management to throw open the doors of the stately home and provide a convenient venue for a dégustation extraordinaire. Friends were invited, with the kickoff at twelve noon, and don’t forget your checkbook. The whole idea, you see, being to render the clientele softheaded and in a mood to place extravagant orders.
Gaston arrived early to prepare for the event. As I’ve said, he’s a small man—apart from his nose, which is impressive—and it was like watching an agitated jockey looking for his horse as he scampered in and out fetching his treasures. He set them out on the table: rows of bottles, oversized glasses, small spitting buckets, and napkins for those inclined to dribble. And then out came t
he ceremonial corkscrew, and he started crooning to himself as he opened the bottles. Every one was a little marvel, according to him, and he kept on dashing into the kitchen to wave corks under madame’s nose while she was doing her best to get the rations organized. The other half even took a break from his pencil sharpening to lend a hand, and in no time the dining room took on the appearance of a refreshment stand at the village fete.
Thirst must encourage punctuality, I suppose, because by noon the students of the grape were present and assembled. Familiar faces, most of them—Eloise, the artist with watercolorist’s block; the woman who breeds snails farther up the valley and her husband, the drinker with the writing problem; Angus, the Scottish refugee; Jules and Jim from the village; and the visiting expert, Charles, an English gentleman from the wine trade, complete with grog-blossom complexion—in other words, a representative selection of the dregs of local society, champing at the bit for the first glass of the day.
It was hot outside, and so I decided to stay in the shade under the table and hope for the odd contribution from above. Madame had been giving her all in the kitchen, and among other delights on offer were pâtés, salami, ham, tarts of various persuasions, and cheeses. From past experience, I know that wine makes for careless hands. Fingers lose their grasp, and there is usually a choice of low-flying delicacies for those who lie in wait. Alas, nothing in life is without its price, and in this case I was obliged to listen to some of the most arrant twaddle I’d heard since I gave up the struggle with television.
It began quietly enough, with Gaston twittering on about the rules of dégustation, the importance of following procedure so that the palate is primed to appreciate the developing subtleties of taste, the crucial role of the nostrils, and a few other gems of mumbo jumbo. This was followed by a brief period of silence, presumably while the assembled tasters were performing their devotions over their glasses, and then—this actually made me sit up, because I thought the plumbing had taken a turn for the worse—the sound effects took over.
Swilling, that’s the word. They swilled in unison; they gurgled; they made prolonged sucking noises. And they spat. I’ve known children sent to bed in disgrace for far less offensive behavior at the table, but they seemed to be highly delighted with themselves, little Gaston congratulating them on what he called their “professional technique.” Mind you, he’d probably have said the same if they’d chosen to drink stark naked through a straw as long as they came through with an order at the end of the day. Praise from a salesman, in my humble opinion, is one of life’s less convincing compliments.
The sounds of suction continued apace, although I noticed that as time passed the level of spitting dropped off sharply. And then, after a particularly prolonged and noisy session of squelches and gargles, we were given the benefit of some learned comments from Charles, the gentleman in the wine trade. “Brambles,” he said, “truffles, spices, a hint of weasel, bewildering complexity, but”—and this brought the house down, so you can tell that they were quite well on by now—“isn’t it a little young to be up so late?”
“Mais non,” piped Gaston, drawing himself up to his full height, such as it was. “This wine is delightfully precocious. He has body, legs, shoulders, stamina, a pedigree, a formidable personality. Also, he has ambition.” And with that, glasses were refilled while the other connoisseurs joined in the debate.
It had the makings of rather an interesting squabble, with the French contingent closing ranks against the English “milord.” He started looking down his nose, and made the mistake of talking about the glories of Bordeaux, which was a gift to our side, of course. Jules and Jim asked him, with a great deal of sniggering, how this year’s vintage was in Wimbledon, and the discussion was degenerating quite promisingly when Eloise came out of her trance. “The spirit of the wine,” said she, “is definitely burnt umber. I can see it. There’s an aura. Artists can sense these things.” This, mark you, coming from someone who hadn’t laid hand on brush in living memory.
The informed nose
In less exalted company, of course, a remark like that would have been treated as a sure sign of the third level of intoxication, and Eloise would have been sent off to a dark room with smelling salts and a glass of water. But amazingly enough, the assembled sages took it seriously, and my hopes of a noisy rift in international relations vanished as they settled down to discuss the aura of wines. I ask you.
Student of the human condition though I may be, there’s a limit to the amount of pretentious nonsense I can listen to, and it was by now time for my afternoon stroll. This is usually taken in the company of the management, but they were rooted to their seats with fixed and glassy grins as the conversation became ever more fatuous, and so I decided to leave them to fend for themselves.
A solitary expedition quite suited me, in fact, because I had for some time been planning to visit a neighboring farmhouse where a new dog had taken up residence. I’d seen her from the forest path. A fetching little thing, she was, too, small but perfectly formed, and I would have dropped in to pay my respects earlier if the management hadn’t dragged me away. And so I left the brain trust to their deliberations and slipped out of the house. An assignation in the vines, I thought, would be just the thing to clear the head after the intellectual rigors of a wine tasting.
One doesn’t rush on these occasions. Call me old-fashioned if you like, but I don’t believe in arriving for a tryst panting for breath and with the tongue hanging out. It doesn’t do to appear too eager. Besides, I never hurry through the forest, for fear of missing something. I prefer to prowl, all senses alert, the master of the wilderness and scourge of small things that squeak.
It changes every day, you know, the forest, perhaps not to the eye of man, but certainly to the informed nose. You can smell where hunting dogs have been, if a wild boar has crossed the path, whether or not the rabbits have been out and about, as well as the traces of human passage. And, below it all, the dry, sharp smell of pine needles and wild herbs mingling, on a good day, with the bouquet of a stale ham sandwich left behind by a passing hiker. Full of surprises, nature.
I made my way in a long loop through the trees, darting hither and yon as sounds and scents demanded my attention, until I came to a vantage point on a slope above the farmhouse. I looked down, and there was my sleeping beauty, tethered in the shade and snoring gently, the picture of innocence. Well, I thought, we’ll soon put an end to that, but I held back for a moment—not out of any gallant or romantic feelings, to be honest, but so that I could make sure there wasn’t some dangerous clod with a gun lurking in the wings.
The coast was clear, and I approached on noiseless paw. On close inspection, she was smaller than I had thought, but nicely rounded, with a fresh young smell to her and a charming little beard. I woke her up with a searching nudge to the rump. She jumped to her feet, yelped, bit me, and wedged herself behind a large flowerpot—all the signs, in case you’re not familiar with them, of instant attraction. Strange indeed are the ways of love.
We dallied. Or rather, I did my best to dally, and she eventually began to enter into the spirit of things, but there was a serious obstacle. I was twice her height, and without artificial assistance, there was no way in which we could relate, if you follow me. It’s vital to remember this, in light of subsequent events, but you can take my word for it: The inclination was there, but practical considerations intervened.
I don’t give up without a struggle, and as dusk fell I was still trying to apply logic to the problem when the interlude ended on a dramatic note. Ah, you’ll be thinking, the earth finally moved. Not a bit of it. I was so preoccupied that I had no idea we were being observed until I felt a thunderous kick in the ribs and heard the furious cries of the proprietor, who had staggered home from his needlework class to find us in what he assumed, with his dirty mind, was flagrante delicto.
It was not a moment for loitering. I retreated to my vantage point on the slope behind the house, concealed myself behind
a bush, and pondered. So near and yet so far, I thought. Star-crossed lovers separated by a cruel twist of fate, unfulfilled yearning, and, as though that weren’t enough for one day, I was beginning to feel an overpowering hollowness, which reminded me that I’d missed lunch. As dusk turned into night, I started back home, bittersweet memories giving way to anticipation of what might be waiting for me in the kitchen. I’m not one for pining—at least, not on an empty stomach.
The forest is not normally a busy place after dark, and so I was surprised to see gleams of flashlights ahead of me, on the path and in the trees. I paused. Caution is the thing when you come across strangers in the night. They might be hunters, and I had no desire to be mistaken for something edible. Accidents happen from time to time, and it has been known for hunters to shoot first and apologize later, as they did with Madame Noiret’s cat only the other day. She took it rather badly, but for once nobody could blame me.
I made a detour off the path until I was safely above the flashlights, and in the flickers of light I made out a group of figures. They were blundering through the undergrowth, bumping into trees and tripping gracefully over rocks, or sitting down with that peculiar, sudden jerk caused by the legs giving way with no prior warning. It was when one of them cried out in pain after choosing a sharp place to sit that I recognized the voice, and as I came closer, I saw that it was indeed Gaston the Nose, with his merry band of connoisseurs around him. The program for the day obviously included a nature ramble after the wine tasting.
I thought I’d join in for a few minutes before going home, and I went up behind Gaston as he was massaging his injury, barking politely to make myself known.
What a welcome. All thoughts of his wound behind him, Gaston called out to the others—Name of a pipe, it is Boy; I have found him. Madame will be ravished, heaven be praised, and a lot more besides—and amid the patting and chirruping and general excitement, I realized that this was in fact a search party sent out to look for yours truly. They’d probably still be there now if I hadn’t found them, but that’s beside the point. I was rather touched by their concern, actually, and made sure they were all present and correct before I guided them home.