by Peter Mayle
Simon slumped in a chair and Ernest passed him his drink, then bent down to undo the button of Simon’s jacket. “If we sit like that with our jacket done up, we’re going to look like a concertina.”
“Yes, Ern. Cheers.”
“Oh, I nearly forgot. There was a message from foreign parts, a French person who says she has some good news.” Ernest sucked in his cheeks and looked down his nose at Simon. “She wasn’t prepared to tell me, so I assume it’s frightfully personal.” He hovered above Simon, a human question mark.
Simon laughed for the first time that day. It must be Nicole. “I expect it’s about my exhaust pipe.”
“Well, far be it for me to pry, dear. You call it what you like. Anyway, she left a number for you.” Ernest disappeared into the kitchen and, with a sniff and an ostentatious display of tact, closed the door behind him.
Simon lit a cigar and thought about his few days in Provence—the warmth, the light, the perfectly tanned cleavage—and went over to the phone.
“Oui?”
“Nicole, it’s Simon. How are you?”
“I’m well, thank you. And so is your car. At last the little monster has repaired it. Let’s hope he hasn’t stolen the radio.” She laughed, husky and intimate, and Simon wished he could see her.
“I’d love to come down and get it, but I don’t think it’s possible. There’s too much going on at the office. I’ll have to send someone down to pick it up.”
“Your gentleman’s gentleman?”
“Who?”
“The one who answered your phone. He sounds very correct.”
“Ah, that’s Ernest. Yes, I’ll send him. You’ll like him.”
There was a pause, and Simon could hear the scratch of a match as Nicole lit a cigarette.
“I have a better idea,” she said. “I have a copine—a girlfriend in London from the old days. She is always telling me to stay with her. Why don’t I bring your car? It would be fun, no?”
“It would be wonderful, but I don’t—”
“You don’t trust me with your expensive car?”
“I’d trust you with my auntie’s best bicycle.”
She laughed again. “So it’s a deal?”
“It’s a deal.”
Simon put down the phone and went into the kitchen whistling. Ernest looked up from the bowl of mussels that he was cleaning and took a sip from a glass of white wine. “Do I detect a certain improvement in our mood? I must say she has a very cultured voice for a garage mechanic.”
“She’s doing me a favour, bringing the Porsche back. Sweet of her.”
Ernest gave Simon a sceptical, sideways glance. “How rare it is to find a good fairy in this cruel world.”
“You should know, Ern.”
“I do, dear. I do.”
Nicole put a coat on against the chill of the evening and walked through the centre of the village, empty except for a dog sitting patiently outside the butcher’s, to the old gendarmerie. Simon had sounded pleased to hear from her. It was a pity he couldn’t come down. There was an idea forming in her mind, but it all depended: did he mean what he said about being tired of the advertising business? You could never tell with the English. They laughed and complained at the same time.
She stood looking through the doorway of the gendarmerie and then picked her way across the concrete floor to one of the openings in the far wall. The moon above the Lubéron cast a milky light on the terrace below, pale piles of stones around the inky pit of the unfinished swimming pool. Nicole tried to imagine how it could be, landscaped and floodlit, with music and laughter around her instead of the moan of the wind and the flapping of plastic that covered the sacks of cement against the wall.
She decided to do some research, maybe go and see the notaire before she went to London. Businessmen always wanted figures and details. It was an interesting idea, if he was as bored as he said. Or was he just looking for a little sympathy at lunchtime? They were so difficult to believe sometimes, the English, so foreign with their odd, dismissive sense of humour and their infuriating sangfroid. She found it slightly strange that she was looking forward so much to seeing him again.
She flinched as she felt something touch her ankle, and looked down to see a scrawny village cat winding its way through her feet, its tail erect and twitching, its mouth open in a soundless greeting.
“So? What do you think? Is this something that would amuse him?”
6
It had been a stroke of luck for the General, finding the barn. It was out in the wild country north of Joucas, big enough to hide everything that had to be hidden, screened from the road by a high, ragged row of cypress trees. The owner had given up farming years ago and moved to Apt. He’d been happy to take five hundred francs a month and believe the story about using the space to keep a couple of tractors. All the General had needed to do was buy a new padlock for the massive wooden doors.
The dim interior echoed with the sound of early morning coughs as the first cigarettes of the day were lit while the men inspected the bicycles that were propped against the wall. Claude, his bulk straining against a threadbare track suit, lumbered over and picked one up by the crossbar. He grunted.
“Don’t tell me it’s heavy,” said the General. “These are the lightest bikes in Provence, pro bikes—ten-speed gears, racing tyres, water bottles, moulded saddles, everything.”
Claude grunted again. “No cigar lighter?”
Fernand hoisted a leg over the crossbar of his bike and tried the saddle. He winced through the smoke of his cigarette. “Ouf. This is like having an operation.”
The others stopped laughing when they tried their own saddles. “The pros—they sit on these razor blades all through the Tour de France?”
The General tried to be patient with them. “Listen. I got you the best bikes. They don’t come with armchairs. After a week or two, the saddles will soften up. Bon, so you have sore backsides until they do.” He looked at them perching gingerly on their bikes. “But, my friends, when this is over, you’ll be sitting on a cushion. Nice, comfortable money.”
There was a silence while each man thought about his share. Jojo remembered his role as the faithful lieutenant. “He’s right. What’s a sore arse anyway. Eh?”
The General nodded. “What we’re going to do this morning is a little warm-up, just to get you used to riding—twenty, thirty kilometres. Every Sunday we’ll increase the distance until you can do a hundred kilometres without passing out, and then we’ll do a bit of hill work. You’ll have steel legs by the spring. Allez!”
They wheeled their bikes out of the barn and into the autumn sunlight, dressed in an assortment of outfits that ranged from Claude’s track suit to the Borels’ brightly coloured boxer shorts and Fernand’s oily blue mechanic’s overalls. The General made a mental note to buy them something more suitable for winter cycling, those thick black tights that kept the wind out and the muscles warm.
“Turn left at the end of the track,” he said. “I’ll catch you up.” He closed and padlocked the doors, feeling good now that it had started, alert and optimistic, and glad that he’d taken for himself the job of team driver. Those saddles really were bastards.
Nobody could have mistaken the group for practised cyclists. They wobbled, they weaved, they cursed as they fumbled with the gears. Two or three of them had been unable to get into the toe clips and were pedalling flat-footed, like old women going to the market. Bachir’s saddle was too low, and he had adopted an ungainly, splay-legged style, his knees sticking out on either side of the bike. Claude was smoking. The General realised that they needed a little elementary instruction. He overtook them and waved them to stop.
“How much further?” Jean rubbed his buttocks, coughed, and spat.
The General got out of the car. “A long way,” he said. “And it’ll seem twice as long the way you’re riding. Haven’t you ever been on bikes before?” He went over to Jojo. “Watch this.” He adjusted the height of the saddle. “You shou
ld just be able to touch the ground either side on tiptoe, okay? Like that, your legs will be straight on the downstroke. Otherwise, you’ll be riding as if you’ve wet your pants, like our friend here.” He grinned at Bachir.
“Next, you should always pedal with the ball of your foot, and that means using the toe clips. They’re to stop your feet from slipping. If your foot slips, you’ll have sore balls from the saddle, take my word for it. And keep pedalling when you change gear. If you don’t, the chain will jump off the cogs.” The General pulled at his moustache. What else? “Ah, yes.” He wagged a finger at Claude. “No smoking.”
“Merde. I can’t give up smoking. I tried.”
“I’m not asking you to give it up. Just don’t smoke while you’re riding. It doesn’t look right. You don’t see Lemond with a clop hanging out of his mouth, do you? By the time we do the job, you’ve got to look like you’re part of your bike. You understand? You’ve got to look like all those other keen bastards. That’s what will make you invisible.”
Jojo nodded. “Tout à fait,” he said. “Invisible.”
“And rich,” said the General.
They set off again, this time looking less like a drunken circus act, and the General drove slowly behind them. The first few rides were going to be the worst, he thought, when the legs were like blancmange and the lungs were on fire. That was when the weaker ones would think of giving up. Jojo was fine, determined and fit. Jean the pickpocket hadn’t said much so far, but then he never did. Claude would growl and keep going. The Borel brothers, who were now riding shoulder to shoulder, would probably encourage each other, and Fernand was a tough little brute. Bachir—well, Bachir would need coaxing along. He’d been used to quick jobs, two minutes with a knife and off down an alley. Did he have the stamina, did he have the patience? Nine months of training and waiting and planning wasn’t his style. Yes, a little special treatment for Bachir—maybe a good couscous dinner one night and a quiet chat.
The General pulled out to overtake, and studied the faces as he passed. They were all showing signs of effort, but nobody had puked yet, and Jojo actually winked as the car drew level with him. Ten kilometres to go. The General led them off onto a side road with a gentle downhill gradient and watched them in the mirror as they freewheeled behind him, straightening up from the handlebars to ease their backs. They were good boys. It was going to work. He was sure it was going to work.
He had drifted out into the middle of the road, and had to squeeze into the verge to avoid the black Porsche coming the other way, a flash of blond hair behind the wheel, the deep rumble of the exhaust. Putain, he thought, what a car—half a million francs minimum, and a few million more for the optional extra with the blond hair. Some men had all the luck.
Nicole hardly noticed the oddly dressed group of cyclists as she went up the hill and joined the road that led to Cavaillon and the autoroute. She was still irritated after her exchange with Duclos at the garage; he had refused to let her take the car unless she paid there and then for the repairs. And what a bill! A bill suitable for framing, she’d said to him as she wrote out a cheque that would undoubtedly bounce unless she called Monsieur Gilles at the Crédit Agricole when she reached London on Monday. It was true that Monsieur Gilles was sympathique, and terribly understanding about her frequent financial problems; but even so, it was a bad way to start the journey.
The Sunday morning traffic was light going through Cavaillon and over the bridge, and there were no trucks on the autoroute. Nicole kept the Porsche down to a comfortable cruising speed and enjoyed the snug fit of the bucket seat around her hips, the smell of leather, and the way the car took a long bend. What a pleasure it was after driving her little heap, which, according to Duclos, needed new tyres and God knows what else if it was going to get through another year. Then there was the work that had to be done on the house in Brassière—just odds and ends of maintenance, but it always ended up costing thousands of francs—and the taxe d’habitation that was due in November. Her life was spent stretching the alimony, and even that was at risk since her ex-husband had moved to New York. Ex-husbands had a habit of vanishing in America. It had happened to two of her friends.
She’d tried to make some extra money. There had been the job in a boutique in Avignon, and when that had gone bankrupt she’d worked for a man in real estate until he’d made one pass too many. She’d managed to rent the house once or twice in the season, and done some public relations work for a property developer; but it was all hand to mouth, and she was tired of it. Tired, and beginning to feel, as her thirties passed by, a little apprehensive. The tiny apartment in Paris was over-mortgaged, and either that or the house would have to go next year. Maybe it would be best to move back to Paris. She didn’t want to, but at least she might meet someone there. Unattached men were thin on the ground in Provence.
She stamped on the accelerator to pass a big Renault. The jolt of speed was exhilarating, and her mood changed. She was being morbid, imagining herself as an old crone living with a poodle in Paris. Something would turn up. She was, after all, going to meet an unattached man in London. Quite a promising unattached man.
She had looked for traces of him in the car—a pair of sunglasses, a sweater, a box of cigars, a book—but there was nothing. It was perfectly maintained, hardly used, impersonal. A rich man’s occasional toy. When she had spoken to him, it was almost as if he’d forgotten he had it. He’d sounded pleased to talk to her, though—warm and ready to laugh, the way he’d been when they had lunch together. A Frenchman would have been either very formal or overintimate, but he’d been—what was that word the English used so much?—nice. Very nice. She decided not to stop in Paris, but to drive on to Calais and spend the night there. With an early ferry, she’d be in London by midday on Monday.
The weather at Dover was doing its best to rain. Nicole drove off the car ferry and joined the line waiting to go through customs and immigration. She got out her passport and lit a cigarette as the cars moved up to pass through the green channel.
The two customs officers standing in the lee of the building looked at the Porsche, black and sleek among the travel-stained family saloons, and studied the blond driver. It had been a slow morning, and a pretty woman travelling alone in an expensive car—well, could be a mule, couldn’t it? Classic. A few kilos hidden in the door panels. Worth a look. Definitely worth a look.
One of the officers strolled down the line of cars and tapped on Nicole’s window. “Morning, madam. Mind if I see your passport?”
Nicole handed it through the window.
French. Might have known it from the perfume. This early in the morning, too. “Where did you start your journey, madam?”
“From Provence.”
“Provence?”
“In the south of France.”
“Now where exactly would that be? Nice? Marseille? Round there?”
“Yes. About an hour from Marseille.”
“I see. About an hour from Marseille.”
The customs officer returned the passport and walked to the front of the car, looked at the number plate, and walked back. “Your car, is it, madam?”
“No. I bring it back for a friend in London.”
“A friend. I see.” He leaned down until his face, with its official, polite half-smile, was level with Nicole’s. “Mind taking the car over there, madam?” He pointed to the empty red channel.
Nicole was aware of passengers in the other cars turning to look at her. “But I—”
“Thank you, madam.” He straightened up and followed the Porsche over to the red channel. Couldn’t be too careful these days, the things people got up to. Anyway, he had a couple of hours to kill before his shift was over, and he never did like the French. Toffee-nosed buggers. Why would anyone in their right mind want a bloody Channel tunnel? He watched Nicole get out of the car—high heels, silk legs, expensive-looking piece of work. Classic mule, if ever he’d seen one.
They took the car away and put Nicole i
n a small, drab room that smelled of a thousand stale cigarettes. She stared at the rabies poster on the wall and looked through the window as the last cars from the ferry drove away through the drizzle. Welcome to England. She shivered, and felt irrationally guilty. In France, she would have argued, demanded some kind of explanation; but here, a foreigner, she wasn’t sure enough of herself or her English to complain to the man with the raw red face and the hostile eyes. She longed for a cup of coffee.
An hour went by, and then the door opened.
“Everything seems to be in order, madam. Here are your keys. Sorry to have kept you.”
“What were you looking for?”
“Illegal substances, madam—illegal substances.” He watched as she got up, stood aside to let her pass through the door, stayed watching from the doorway as she started the car, stalled it, and started again. Pity about that. He could have sworn she was a live one.
Nicole had to make an effort to drive away slowly. Silly to get nervous about nothing. She was grateful for the sign reminding her to drive on the left, and joined the traffic going towards London. It was nearly eleven-fifteen, and she’d be lucky to get there in time for lunch. Her friend Emma would be wondering what had happened to her. Merde.
It wasn’t until she glanced down for her cigarettes that she noticed the car phone.
Emma’s well-bred, slightly strangulated voice cut through the static. “Darling, how are you? Where are you?”
“I just left Dover. The customs stopped me.”
“What jolly bad luck, darling. Did they find anything? Horrid little men. They just adore going through one’s underwear. I hope you made them wear gloves.”
“No, I had nothing. They looked at the car, that’s all.”
“Well, don’t you worry. Get to the flat when you can, and we’ll have something here. Julian’s away, as usual, so we can rummage through his Burgundy. I’ll put some Montrachet in the fridge and we’ll have a lovely chat. Don’t stick your tongue out at any policemen. A tout à l’heure, darling. ’Bye.”