by Peter Mayle
Simon felt almost happy, impatient to get away from the office. Ernest could organise the flat in Rutland Gate, and Jordan would have the time of his life playing chief executive for a week. Nothing much could go wrong in a week.
Liz came back with the coffee. “Shall we do the calls?”
“Just the clients. Jordan can deal with the agency stuff.”
“And Mrs. Shaw’s lawyers?”
“Ah. Them. You don’t think I could send them a postcard from Saint-Tropez?”
“I had the senior partner on yesterday. He said it was urgent.”
Simon sipped his coffee. “Elizabeth, did you know he has a timer next to his phone? He charges by the minute. If, God forbid, you should ever be desperate enough to call and invite him to dinner, he’d charge you for the call. A postcard would be cheaper.”
“You’ll only have to speak to him when you get back.”
“You’re right. I know you’re right.” He sighed. “Okay. Let’s get the thieving swine before he issues a writ for contempt of phone calls. But you listen when he comes on the line. You can hear the timer. It ticks. It’s one of those things you use for boiling eggs.”
The call was brief and expensive. Caroline wanted a new car. She needed a new car. She was entitled to a new car, under the terms of the settlement. Simon agreed to a BMW, but haggled about the stereophonic equipment until he realised that he could have bought it for the price of a five-minute legal conversation. As he put the phone down, he wondered if killing a lawyer could ever be excused as a crime passionnel.
He looked up to see Jordan standing in the doorway, a cup of coffee in his hand, the sartorial antithesis of most people’s idea of an advertising man. His appearance was old-fashioned and deeply respectable, which was probably why clients felt safe with him. Ernest swore that he’d once heard Jordan’s suit creak, it was so heavy. Today he was disguised as a successful merchant banker—three-piece pinstriped suit, striped shirt, sober tie, the gold watch chain in his lapel disappearing into the voluminous silk folds of his breast-pocket handkerchief, highly polished black shoes. His mouse-coloured hair was brushed straight back and made wings over his ears. Simon noticed that he was cultivating small tufts of hair on his cheekbones in the manner of retired naval officers, embryonic buggers’ grips. He could not have been anything but English.
Simon didn’t give him a chance to speak. “Come in, Nigel, come in. Listen, I’m sorry I had to cancel last night, but I’d had a hell of a day. Just wasn’t up to it. Have some more coffee. Have a cigar. Tell me I’m forgiven.”
Jordan folded his lanky body onto a couch and put down his coffee so that he could shoot his cuffs and smooth back his hair. “It’s not that I mind, Simon,” he said. He spoke as if his shirt collar were too tight. “It’s the others. They’re beginning to wonder if the executive committee still exists. Three meetings in a row cancelled. Feathers are ruffled, old boy, I can tell you.”
Simon could guess whose feathers were the most ruffled. “Anyone in particular? Anyone you think I should pop in and see?”
Jordan produced a gold cigarette case and took his time selecting a cigarette. He took a gold lighter from his waistcoat pocket. The light caught his heavy gold signet ring and his gold cufflinks. The man’s a walking bloody jewellery store, Simon thought.
“I think I can handle them this time, Simon. A drink at the end of the day should do it, a quiet word over the whisky. Why don’t you leave it to me?”
Simon tried to look suitably grateful. “If you’re sure.”
“Don’t give it another thought.” Jordan blew a plume of smoke into the air. He had a studied, complacent way of smoking that always made Simon want to give him an exploding cigarette. “In fact, I’m probably a little more in touch with the troops than you are at the moment. Personal problems and everything. Takes your mind off management.” Jordan’s theories on management were aired at great length whenever he was with anyone he considered his corporate equal, and Simon had heard them a hundred times.
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” Jordan, sensing a revelation, leaned forward as Simon’s voice became confidential. “The fact is, I could really do with a break. The last few months have been pretty difficult.”
Jordan nodded sagely. “Seriously bad news, divorce.”
“Well, I’ll get over it, but I could do with a few days out of the firing line, and I was wondering if you could take over for a week or so. I hate to ask you. God knows you must have enough on your plate already, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable unless I knew there weren’t going to be any fuck-ups.”
Jordan did his best not to preen.
“I’d like to leave tomorrow,” Simon said, “but obviously that depends on how you’re fixed. Bloody short notice, I know, but I think sooner is better than later, the way I’m feeling.”
“Tomorrow?” Jordan frowned as he considered the burdens of high office. “I’ll need to juggle a few meetings around. The diary looks seriously sticky for the next few days.”
Simon had glanced at Jordan’s diary earlier. One entire day had a line through it and the single word “Cotswolds” written at the top of the page. There were no agency clients in that part of the English countryside. Horses, however, were plentiful.
“Look, if it’s too—”
Jordan held up his hand. “I’ll manage somehow.” He frowned again. “Might need to borrow Liz, though. Susan’s frightfully good, but she might get snowed under if I’m wearing two hats.”
Simon had a vision of Jordan conducting meetings with two polo helmets balanced on his head. “Of course.” Simon fed him the plum. “I think it might make sense if you moved in here. Might be easier.”
Jordan pretended to ponder the massive inconvenience of moving ten yards down the corridor, then gave Simon the sincere look with furrowed brow that always worked so well with clients. “Might be better, old boy. Might be better. More reassuring for the troops.”
“Let them know there’s a firm hand on the reins,” said Simon.
“My point exactly. Never thought of taking up riding, have you? Great fun. Magnificent creature, the horse.”
“You know what Oscar Wilde said about horses, don’t you? Dangerous at both ends, and uncomfortable in the middle. I rather agree with him.”
“Don’t know what you’re missing, old boy.” Jordan unfolded himself, stood up, and delivered a left and a right with his cuffs. “Well, I’d better get on. I’ll catch up with you before you go tonight.”
Simon heard him talking to Liz next door: “… holding the fort while Simon’s away … liaise with Susan … all meetings in here, I think.”
Now there, thought Simon, is a happy man. He spent the rest of the day on the phone.
He was in Paris late the following afternoon, and found a message waiting for him at the Lancaster: Monsieur Murat would meet him at Chez L’Ami Louis at eight o’clock. A good start to the holiday. It was Simon’s favourite restaurant in Paris, and he wouldn’t have to wear a tie. He showered and changed and decided to walk over to Saint-Germain for a drink at the Deux Magots.
He’d forgotten what a beautiful city Paris was. It seemed very clean after London, no garbage bags on the pavements, no For Sale signs on the houses. He stopped on the Pont-Neuf and looked back across the river towards the Louvre. The dusk was tinged with blue, dotted with light from windows and street lamps, and he had a moment’s regret about dinner. As much as he liked Murat, an evening like this should be spent with a pretty girl.
The Deux Magots was as crowded as ever, the waiters as supercilious as ever, the poses of the clientele as world-weary as ever. The girls were in black yet again this autumn, with carefully tangled long hair and pale faces, oversized leather jackets, and the heavy flat shoes that Simon hated—brothel-creepers that made even the best pair of legs look clumsy. Why did they all want to look the same?
Simon lit a cigar and ordered a kir. It was good to be in France again, good to hear French spoken. He was
surprised how much he could understand. It had been a long time, more than twenty years, since he had spent six months working as a waiter in Nice. He’d been fluent then, or fluent enough to make a living, and he was pleased that some of it had stuck.
He watched a Japanese couple in the corner trying to order from a waiter who was playing the popular Parisian game of blank incomprehension in the face of the foreigner.
“Scosh.” The Japanese man held up two fingers. “Scosh.”
“Comment?”
“Scosh.”
The waiter shrugged. The Japanese picked up the small menu card and held it open, pointing halfway down the page. “Scosh.”
The waiter condescended to look, and sighed. “Non,” he said. “Whisky.”
“Hai, hai. Scosh whisky.”
“Deux?”
The Japanese grinned and bobbed his head, and the waiter, satisfied that his superiority had been established, snaked away through the tables to the bar.
The kir had made Simon hungry, and he wondered if it was too early in the year for the wild cèpes that made a brief annual appearance on the menu at L’Ami Louis. He realised that he hadn’t thought about the office all afternoon, hadn’t even called Liz to tell her he’d arrived. France was already doing him good. He paid his bill and crossed boulevard Saint-Germain to the taxi stand.
The taxi dropped him off in the narrow rue du Vertbois, and he stood for a moment outside the restaurant. Thank God it hadn’t been tarted up and sanitized. He pushed open the door and stepped into the bustling warmth of one of the last great bistros in Paris.
The decorative style was early-twentieth-century shabby, with cracked paint the colour of a good dark brown stew and floor tiles that had worn through to the bare concrete. Apart from a photograph of the old patron, the grey-whiskered Antoine, and one or two mirrors stained with age, the walls were bare beneath the coat rack that ran the length of the room. Nothing much had changed here for more than half a century, and Simon felt, as he did each time he came, that he was in the ramshackle dining room of an old friend.
Murat had reserved a table behind the ancient wood-burning stove, and Simon settled back to wait and to speculate about the people round him. There was usually an interesting mixture of fame, wealth, and notoriety—movie stars and directors, politicians hoping to be recognised and statesmen trying to be incognito, young men from rich Parisian families, actresses with their admirers, middle-aged playboys, and, almost always, a tentative group on their first visit, not quite sure what to make of the well-worn surroundings.
Two American couples came through the door, the women in premature fur coats and frosted hair, the men still in summer blazers. Simon noticed the expressions of alarm on the women’s faces as several thousand dollars’ worth of prime chinchilla was casually bundled up by the waiter and tossed onto the rack above their table. “Clayton,” one of them said to her husband, “are you sure this is the place?” The husband patted her into her seat. “It’s a bistro, honey. What do you expect, valet parking?”
Simon’s waiter came with a bottle of Meursault, and he breathed in the bouquet that made him think of cobwebs and dark cellars. The wine was chilled, not too cold to mask the taste. Simon sipped and nodded. The waiter filled his glass. “C’est pas terrible, eh?”
There was a thump on the door of the restaurant and Murat came skidding through, late and dishevelled in a rumpled black suit and long pink scarf, teeth and glasses gleaming against his tanned face as he turned to Simon, his shoulder-length hair giving him the appearance of a fugitive from the sixties. How he managed to run the Paris office and keep his suntan and attend to his complicated and energetic love life Simon never knew. They had met when Simon had bought a majority share in Murat’s agency, and business had turned into friendship.
“Philippe! Good to see you.”
“Simon! You’re early. No? I’m late. Merde. The meeting went on and on.”
“Who was she?”
Murat looked at Simon as he sat down and unwrapped the pink cashmere bandage from around his neck. He smiled the innocent and charming smile that Simon was sure he practised in the mirror every morning.
“You have a dirty mind, my friend. But I remember what you once told me: never bullshit a bullshitter.” Murat spoke the phrase with relish. He enjoyed being colloquial in his English, and collected slang wherever he found it. “Okay, I’ll tell you. It was the yogurt client, you know? She’s a woman of a certain age, and …”
“… and you gave her one for the sake of the agency,” Simon said.
Murat helped himself to wine. “She bought the campaign for next year, and then we celebrated with a little drink, and then, well …” He shrugged.
“Don’t depress me with the details. What are you going to eat?”
As they were looking at the menu, they overheard the conversation from the American table. “… And you know what it turned out to be in the end? A hiatus hernia. I’m going for the roast chicken. So he gets out of the hospital and sues for malpractice.…”
Simon grinned at Murat. “I think I’d rather hear about your sex life than that.” He beckoned to a waiter, and they ordered.
“How long are you in Paris?” asked Murat. “There’s a party on Saturday with guaranteed pretty girls. Nobody from advertising. You should come.” He winked, and tried out his latest phrase. “Get the dirty water off your chest, you know?”
“You make it sound so romantic,” Simon said. “But I can’t. I’m leaving early tomorrow—driving down to Saint-Tropez for a few days.”
The waiter arrived with scallops, sizzling and pungent with garlic, the foie gras that Simon could never resist, and a plate piled with warm slices of toasted baguette. A bottle of red Burgundy, dull with dust, was placed at one side of the table to breathe. Simon took off his jacket and looked around the room. All the tables were full now, full and noisy. There was always the sound of laughter here; it was a place for enjoyment. Diets were forbidden, and portions were enormous. Nobody came to L’Ami Louis to sit quietly over a couple of lettuce leaves.
“Saint-Tropez?” Murat made a small, dismissive grimace. “It’s finished now. The whole coast is finished, unless you want to play golf with a bunch of tight-asses from Paris. The BCBG have taken over—Bon Chic Bon Genre—and you get fined if you’re not wearing a Lacoste shirt.”
“Suppose you haven’t got a Lacoste shirt? Where do you go?”
Murat chased some sauce around the plate with his last scallop. “Have you ever been to the Lubéron? Between Avignon and Aix. It’s getting a little chichi, specially in August, but it’s beautiful—old villages, mountains, no crowds, fantastic light. I was there for a week in June with Nathalie. It was très romantique, until her husband arrived.”
The waiter cleared the table. Simon had never been to the Lubéron. Like hundreds of thousands of others, he had gone straight to the Côte d’Azur, fried on the beach, and gone straight home again. The back country of Provence was unknown territory, a blur of names on the autoroute signs.
“Where do you drive to?”
“Leave the autoroute at Cavaillon, and go towards Apt. It’s nothing, twenty minutes. I can tell you where Nathalie and I stayed—a little place, beaucoup de charme, a private terrace where the two of you can sunbathe naked.…”
“Philippe, I’m on my own.”
“So? Sunbathe naked on your own. You might get lucky.” Murat leaned forward. “The maid comes in one morning to make your bed—one of those ripe little Provençal girls of seventeen with the olive skin and the big brown eyes—and she discovers the English milor. He is on the terrace tout nu. She cannot resist him. Voilà! It is a leg-over.”
Murat’s version of a quiet and uncomplicated holiday was interrupted by the arrival of the gigantic roast pheasant that they were sharing, and a pyramid of crisp, finely cut pommes frites. There was audible consternation from the American table at the size of the chicken that one of the women had ordered. “All for moi? My God.”
3
The wiry little man they called Jojo was there early, leaning against the warm stone wall, watching the huge moss-skinned water wheel as it turned slowly, shiny green and dripping in the sun. He could see behind the wheel the ornate gingerbread bulk of the Caisse d’Epargne, a picture-postcard building with its elaborate architectural flourishes and fat tubs of geraniums on the entrance steps, more like a melon millionaire’s villa than a bank. People said it was the most picturesque bank in Provence, a fitting bank for the picturesque town of Isle-sur-Sorgue. According to Jojo’s information, it could be taken. There was a way in. He lit a cigarette and turned to look for a familiar face among the crowds drifting through the Sunday-morning market.
It was getting on for the end of the season, late September, but the fine weather had tempted them out—the sturdy, suspicious housewives with their bulging baskets, the Arabs buying their lunch live from the chicken stalls, the tourists with their reddened skins and bright holiday clothes. They moved slowly, clogging the pavements, spilling out into the road. Cars attempting to drive through the town were reduced to an irate, honking crawl. That might be a problem, Jojo thought. He took a last drag on his cigarette, cupping the butt in the curve of his hand, an old prison habit.
The man he’d been waiting for sauntered across the road, a half-eaten croissant in his hand, his belly bigger than ever. Life must have treated him well since the old days, although he’d never been thin.
“Eh, General!”
The other man waved his croissant. “Salut, Jojo. Ça va?”
They shook hands and stood back, smiling as they inspected each other.
“How long has it been? Two years?”
“More.” The big man laughed. “You haven’t grown much.” He took a bite from his croissant and wiped golden flakes of pastry from his moustache with the back of his hand—a hand, Jojo noticed, that hadn’t done any manual labour for years, unlike his own scarred fingers and roughened palms.