“What a wind last night, eh?” she asked, as if she was reading my mind.
“Was it windy?”
She laughed again and shook her finger at me. “What, you didn’t notice? It wasn’t only wind but a mistral!”
Was it the mistral that had tugged at the bedclothes? I’m a grown man and do know the difference between the wind and someone tugging at blankets, like Agathe used to do. Sandrine poured coffee into two café-au-lait bowls and added hot milk. She looked at me as she poured, seeing my fatigue and possibly other things too.
I took a sip of the coffee—she made it better than I did—and actually smiled. I felt better. “So, Mlle Matton, have you read my books?”
She sat down and crossed her legs, a sandal hanging loose off her right foot as she rocked it back and forth. “Have I!” She sighed and pretended to fan herself, and I knew then which books she had read. “I think my favorite is Everything We Said,” she told me. “Such a sad ending, but somehow you don’t feel bad. And I loved Postcard Romance. Such a good idea, to write a love story between travel writers who send postcards to each other! My sister Josy’s favorite is April in Paris. We read it when we were teens dreaming of going to Paris.” She shrugged and drank some coffee. “Maybe someday.”
I stared at her. “You’ve never been to Paris?”
“Imagine that,” she answered. “I’m thirty-six years old and have never been to our capital.”
“But your uncle—”
“Oh, Uncle Guillaume comes here! He loves the South.”
I went on, “It’s only a three-hour train ride from Aix—”
“Only?” she asked. “And what do I do when I get there? My uncle is busy with work. Who would show me around?”
I wanted to say, You just buy a map or a guidebook and wander to your heart’s delight. Or sit in a café and people watch. Or visit the Louvre. Justin, herein lies the difference between people who read my early books—the Pauliks, for example, I would imagine—and those who read my later ones, which as you know are filed in airport and train station bookstores on the romance shelves. The former are active and get things done. The latter can only dream about it.
I’m not being fair, you say? We’ll see. I finished my coffee and realized that if Sandrine Matton really wanted to go to Paris, she would have. Right? But all she could do was dream about it. The safer choice.
Chapter Six
New York City,
September 22, 2010
I’ve heard there are people in Jersey City who’ve never been to Manhattan,” Justin said. “But that may be an urban myth.” He looked at their empty glasses and, picking up the bottle, poured a little wine into each. He knew that was the sommelier’s job, but she was nowhere to be seen.
Valère tapped the edge of his glass, and Justin continued pouring. “Do you want us to die of thirst?” Valère took a big sip and continued, “Sandrine is a really fascinating person. She’s full of contradictions. She travels with her own tool kit and talks like a rough-and-tough city kid, and yet she’s afraid to go to Paris.”
Justin sipped his wine. It was just about the best thing he had ever tasted. “What’s she so afraid of?”
Valère played with his wineglass, twirling it around by the stem. “Sandrine has her own ghosts to deal with as it turns out. She . . . no, that should come later. I’ll get back to the morning when I first met her.”
* * *
We finished our breakfast—stale croissants that Sandrine warmed in the vintage gas oven—and we did a tour of the bastide together, trying to figure out what to unpack first and where things should go. It was too big of a house for me, and she saw the worry and disappointment on my face. “M Barbier,” she said, taking my shoulders in her hands, “we will unpack all these boxes and crates, and this house will fill up in no time. Plus, not only can I clean and organize, but I’m also a little bit of an interior design whiz!” I looked at how she was dressed and forced a smile. “What’s in these crates, anyway?” she asked, pointing to one of the larger ones that sat in the middle of the dining room.
“My late wife’s artwork,” I answered.
“Sculpture?”
“Pots.”
Sandrine looked at me with one eyebrow raised. “Huh?”
“Ceramic pots,” I went on. “Agathe was a potter.”
“Oh, I see,” Sandrine replied slowly. She looked around the room, her index finger resting on her chin. “Do they have pedestals?”
“The smaller ones, yes, and the bigger ones stand alone.”
“This is going to be fun!” she exclaimed. My heart leapt a bit, for the first time in months. “I’ll go get my drill to open these crates.”
“Your drill?” I asked. I couldn’t believe this woman. Like I said, Justin, I couldn’t make this stuff up.
“I brought my tool chest,” she went on. “And don’t worry, the drill runs by battery, and I charged it this morning. I know you don’t have electricity yet.” She slapped her forehead. “But before I get the drill, I’ll call the EDF and get them out here ASAP!” She pulled her cell phone from a huge bright-blue purse covered in sequins, dialed a number, and began, very politely, asking for the hookup service. She stayed calm while getting switched from person to person, and soon she had the third one laughing. I sat down on the bottom step and listened. She rang off, and came out into the front hall where I was sitting. “Tomorrow morning,” she said. “They promise. One more night of campfires—eh, M Barbier?” She laughed and went out to get the drill.
We spent the rest of the morning getting Agathe’s pots out of their crates. “These are good crates,” Sandrine said. “We’ll take them down to the basement later.”
I mumbled in agreement but couldn’t see myself ever needing them again. Sandrine was right: the place soon filled up with Agathe’s pots, which we tried to place artfully around the downstairs rooms. I had missed them, with their rough surfaces and dark terra-cotta hues.
After a quick lunch of very decent egg salad sandwiches made by Sandrine (she had thought to bring ice, and beer, for my cooler), we began unpacking smaller boxes. Sandrine would remove an item—say, a crystal ashtray—hold it up in the air, and ask, “Have you used this recently? In the past year?” If I answered yes, as I did with the crystal ashtray, a gift from Jacques Mitterrand, she put it aside, in this case on an antique end table. If I answered no, back in the box it went, labeled “Emmaüs.” The charity would come and collect everything after Sandrine arranged a date.
By the end of the day we’d furnished three rooms: the big salon, which Sandrine had taken to calling la salle des fêtes; the smaller salon, which she called la salle de télé, something I abhor; and the dining room. I was elated. She made it clear that she didn’t appreciate my taste, a mixture of 1970s Italian and French antiques, but I was happy that she liked Agathe’s pottery.
“What do you think, M Barbier?” Sandrine asked, hands on hips, as we stood in the middle of the dining room.
“It’s wonderful,” I said. “The furniture and Agathe’s pots look so beautiful next to the faded blue walls.”
Sandrine hummed to herself.
“I’m keeping the wall color,” I added, knowing that her humming meant she didn’t agree. “Faded elegance.” The ceiling was about four meters high, and the walls had been painted decades, perhaps even a century, ago. Two-toned blue: dark midnight up to about hip height, and a lighter robin’s-egg blue above. Over the doors, as is tradition in Provence, were little painted scenes, oval in form. They depicted the seasons, and I pointed out fall above the door that led from the dining room back into the foyer. “They’re harvesting up there,” I said.
“There would have been hundreds of harvests here,” Sandrine said. “If only the paintings could talk—eh, M Barbier?”
“I’d like to taste some of the wine they were making back then.”
“I
’ll bet it was plonk,” Sandrine said. “My grandparents would add water to their wine, and that wasn’t so long ago.”
“You’re probably right.” I was about to say something about the oldest wine I have tasted—a 1929 Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Justin—when I stopped. A fast whispering interrupted me—so fast I couldn’t understand it. “Pardon, Sandrine?”
She looked at me, frowning. “I didn’t say anything,” she said. “Should we stop for the day?” She was looking at me as if I were a dotty old man.
“Sounds like a good idea,” I said, trying to act nonchalant. “Would you like a beer?”
“That’s why I brought ’em!” she answered. “I’m going down to the cellar to find a spot for the crates; then we’ll really be done for the day.”
“Let’s do it tomorrow,” I said.
She waved her hand my way. “No, I don’t think so.” That was obviously her way of saying she disagreed with me and was going to override my request. “I’ll use the flashlight on my cell phone. Then it will be done.” She almost skipped toward the cellar door, located behind the stairs, and opened it with the key that was hanging below the knob. In a few seconds she called up from down below. “There’s lots of room down here!” I could hear her chatting with herself—oh là là this and that—and I grinned and went to the kitchen to get the beers. I was walking out of the kitchen, a bottle in each hand, when Sandrine came running up from the cellar, her face red, her eyes enormous. She rushed straight past me, toward the front door, and ran outside. I followed her, quickly setting the beers on the foyer console. She had stopped at a pine tree, and was leaning against it, panting.
“What on earth?” I asked.
She rubbed her neck, and tears formed in her eyes. “I couldn’t breathe—”
“Was it too stuffy?”
She shook her head wildly back and forth. “No.” She took a deep breath and felt up to her neck once again. “It was cold, not hot. But I couldn’t breathe.” I was going to ask her to stop being repetitive when she went on, “Someone was choking me.”
I took a step back and almost tripped over the pine roots. I could see that she wasn’t joking, nor was she being theatrical. “In that case,” I said, “we have to call the police!”
“But there isn’t anyone down there,” she said. “How can there be? We’ve been here all day, working right beside the front door.”
“I’ll go down there, then.” Don’t laugh, Justin. I know I was being an idiot, trying to be the hero, but I couldn’t let her see that the author of Everything We Said was a chicken.
“I’ll go with you,” she said, taking my arm. So she could see that I was a chicken.
“It might have been the wind,” I mumbled as we stood at the top of the cellar stairs. I wanted to tell her about my sleepless nights, but it didn’t seem like a good time.
“I’m staying here,” she said, peering down into the depths of the cellar from the top step. “I’ll shine my flashlight down the stairs.”
“All right,” I said, starting down the stairs, making a lot of noise.
Sandrine began singing an old Claude Nougaro song called “Tu verras,” which I thought was a really clever choice: “Ah, you’ll see, you’ll see. Everything will start again, you’ll see.”
Like she said, it was cold down there, and it was vast. The walls were rough stone, and the floor was a dull gray concrete. “It’s too musty down here for the crates,” I called up, trying to be chatty. “We’ll put them in one of the outbuildings.”
I shone my light around, walking from room to room. Empty wine bottles, a broken chair, and stacks and stacks of old newspapers. If there had ever been more in the cellar, it had been cleaned out before I bought the bastide. An ancient-looking heating system took up one of the rooms. I vaguely remembered Sandrine’s uncle, my friend Matton, telling me that it would need changing. The cellar was certainly eerie, but we were definitely the only people there.
I walked back up the stairs, relieved to see Sandrine’s Stars and Stripes miniskirt. “Did you come down here when you cleaned the place for me?” I asked.
Sandrine shook her head. “It was locked, and the key wasn’t there.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I’m sorry. I just put the key there yesterday.”
“I’m sorry, M Barbier,” she said as I closed the door firmly, locking it. I showed her the key and put it in my shirt pocket. She added, trying to smile, “Maybe I imagined it.”
“Let’s drink those beers now. Outside.” I wanted to tell her to call me Valère, but I also knew from experience that these sorts of working relationships should remain formal. No, Justin, you may not call me Valère. Very funny.
“I need something stronger,” she then said. Her mouth trembled a bit when she spoke, and she bit her upper lip to stop it. “Like whiskey.” She surprised me. Most French women don’t drink hard spirits.
“That I can do,” I said. “And I’ll join you.”
* * *
We sat outside, each of us on a chaise longue, staring at the vineyard. I smoked a big Montecristo double corona, and Sandrine took out a pack of those long, thin menthol cigarettes. As she lit one, she told me that she didn’t smoke every day, only a few if she was drinking. “So that’s not too bad for my health,” she said, throwing her “Marseille je t’aime” lighter back in her purse. “Not like smoking those,” she went on, pointing at my stogie.
I gave her a quick lesson in cigars, explaining that there are no chemicals added to the tobacco and, most important, that one doesn’t inhale cigar smoke, so lung cancer isn’t a risk. But with you, Justin, I’m preaching to the converted. I’ll tell you right now, too, that I brought some Cubans over with me from France, to share with you tonight.
Sandrine asked, “But a big cigar like that must be so strong, no?”
A common misconception, I told her, and let her have a drag. It may seem like an intimate act, but sharing a cigar has never bothered me, especially if I can get a convert out of a cigarette smoker.
Her face lit up. “Ça alors!” she exclaimed, slowly blowing out cigar smoke like an old pro. “It tastes good! Very good!”
An hour and another whiskey later, Sandrine went into the house to get us some snacks. She came out with a bowl of peanuts and some salami that she had cut into big chunks. I tried not to wince: food thinly sliced always tastes better. Agathe taught me that. Sandrine chatted about Provence, the weather, her sister, Josy. I was as relaxed as I had been in months. At around eight or nine o’clock she stretched and reached into her purse for her car keys. She had been drinking a lot of water for the past hour, so I knew she’d be all right to drive. I stood up to walk her to her car, shook her hand, and told her what an enormous help she had been. “Can you come back tomorrow?” I asked.
“Of course!” she answered as she got behind the wheel. “We have the kitchen to do, and we can make some plans to redesign it.” She put the key in the ignition, and the car made a sputtering noise. She sighed and laughed, patting the dashboard. “Clochette! Allez, Clochette!” Yes, she called that beat-up Citroën Tinker Bell. The car was making funny sounds and wouldn’t start. You can see where this is going.
“Is it the battery?” I asked. As a Parisian, I know nothing about cars.
“It’s a new battery,” she answered. “You can hear the battery trying to turn over the engine.” She looked up and smiled at me, thinking it funny I hadn’t figured that out. “No, it’s the fuel pump,” she continued. “I had the fuel filter replaced when I had this problem before, but now I’m afraid I have to get the pump replaced. Ô purée!” That’s a cute way, in the South, to say putain.
She got out her cell phone and dialed someone. I could hear a man’s voice on the other end, and I stepped aside to give her some privacy. She was speaking a mile a minute, more yelling into the phone than actually talking. Her Provençal accent seemed to be dia
led up. “Connard!” she finally yelled, and then hung up.
I walked over to the car. “I take it he can’t help you out?”
“Connard d’ex!”
“Your ex-boyfriend?” I asked. Or maybe it was her ex-husband. Or ex-brother-in-law. I had no idea. At any rate, she called him an asshole.
“Yes! One of my ex-boyfriends. André!” she exclaimed. “He’s at home watching the World Cup!”
“Soccer, right? Is that on now?”
Sandrine whistled. “Wow. It’s the last game tonight. What planet are you from?”
“And Josy?” I asked, ignoring her jab.
Sandrine paused before answering. “She’s gone on holiday.”
“Don’t worry,” I reassured her. “It’s probably better that you don’t drive after those whiskies.”
She sighed and got out of the car. She patted the hood and said, “It’s not your fault, Clochette.”
She began searching through the contacts on her phone, but I could see she didn’t look convinced that anyone would come. Her hand trembled slightly.
“You bought enough sheets to set up a small luxury hotel,” I said. “You can take your pick of any of the bedrooms, and we’ll get a pizza delivered from the village for dinner. I’d drive you into Aix, but I’ve had more whiskey than you. Tomorrow we’ll get a mechanic out here. I noticed that there’s a garage in the village.”
The Secrets of the Bastide Blanche Page 5