Hotel Pastis

by Peter Mayle

  Billy’s face creased into a grin. “Just asking.” He slapped Simon softly on the cheek. “Good to see you again. It would have been nicer without the red alert, but I really thought the little sod was after my stuff. All right, what’s the drill?”

  By the time they got back to the hotel, the guests around the pool were beginning to stir from the stupor brought on by food and drink and sun. Simon was watching them from the terrace as Billy came out with a beer in his hand, apparently completely recovered from his ordeal.

  “Well, my son,” he said to Simon, “this is the life.” He looked down to the pool. “Dear oh dear—it’s enough to make your eyes water, all that. Be lucky if you could make six hankies out of what they’re wearing.” The ladies were obviously determined to get as close as possible to the total tan, naked except for brightly coloured triangles that in most cases were slightly smaller than their oversized sunglasses.

  Simon glanced over to the wall and nudged Billy. Just visible in the shade cast by a tall cypress tree was the top of a bald head. “That’s our neighbour. I think he’s given up television for the summer.”

  Simon took Billy down to the pool and introduced him, watching with amusement as the little photographer insisted on shaking hands with all the women, ducking and bobbing his head as low as he decently could over the array of oiled flesh. Simon left him as he was asking Angela if she’d ever done any modelling—how many times had he used that one?—and went to find Nicole and Ernest.

  It was, everybody said, the most perfect evening, windless and warm, the sky flushed with the last of the sun, the mountains a hazy dark mauve. The terrace was filling up, locals and foreigners circling each other with polite interest as Ernest, resplendent in pink linen, encouraged them to mingle. Nicole and Simon, armed with bottles of champagne, moved slowly through the crowd, topping up glasses and eavesdropping on fragments of conversation. The French talked of politics, the Tour de France, and restaurants. The advertising group talked, as always, about advertising. The expatriates and owners of holiday homes compared plumbing disasters and, with a mixture of disbelief and secret satisfaction, shook their heads at the latest excessive leap in property prices.

  Billy Chandler and his camera stalked pretty women; he always said they could never resist a fashion photographer. The girls from the glossies, black uniforms and sunglasses abandoned in favour of loose, pale tops, tight leggings, and high-definition makeup, picked the brains of a decorator who specialised in making the interiors of old Provençal farmhouses look like apartments in Belgravia. Johnny Harris observed them all and waited for the drink to take hold. Sober people watched their words too carefully.

  Simon found him on the fringe of a group which included Philippe Murat, a French writer who was complaining about being famous, and a young heiress from Saint-Rémy, wearing several kilos of gold jewellery and a permanent pout.

  “Getting any scoops, Johnny?”

  Harris smiled with relief. “Can’t understand a bloody word they’re saying. What I need is an English-speaking gossip with an urge to confide in me.” He sipped his champagne. “A nice, talkative expatriate with absolutely no sense of discretion would be perfect.”

  Simon surveyed the mob of nodding, talking heads until he found the face he was looking for—a chubby, tanned, animated face framed by frizzy, shoulder-length light brown hair. “That’s your girl,” he said. “She’s a real estate agent, been here for fifteen years. If you want a rumour to get round here like a dose of flu, all you have to do is tell her in the strictest confidence. We call her Radio Lubéron.”

  They picked their way through the crowd, and Simon put his arm round the woman’s plump, bare shoulder. “I’m going to steal you away to meet a gentleman of the press. You can tell him all about our charming neighbours. Johnny, this is Diana Prescott.”

  “Johnny Harris.” They shook hands. “I do a little column in the News. Simon tells me you might be able to give me some local colour.”

  She looked at him through wide, prominent blue eyes and giggled. “Is that what they call it nowadays? Well, where would you like to start? The top ten snobs? The actors who don’t act? The decorators’ Mafia? People think it’s the back of beyond down here, but it’s positively seething.”

  “I can’t wait to hear,” said Johnny. He appropriated the bottle that Simon was holding. “This will be just between you and me and my countless millions of readers.”

  She giggled again. “As long as you keep my name out of it, darling.” She accepted more champagne, and Simon realised that she was already half-tipsy. “Now, you see that tall man over there with the white hair and the stoop, looking terribly respectable? He has these parties …”

  Simon excused himself and left Harris to what would undoubtedly be a fruitful evening. He felt lightheaded from drinking on an empty stomach and was making for the buffet laid out in the restaurant when a hand took his arm. He turned to see Jean-Louis in tenue de fête—a salmon-pink shirt and a jacket the colour of vanilla ice cream—and a man in a dark blue suit and tie.

  “Permit me.” Jean-Louis smiled. “I present my colleague, Enrico from Marseille.”

  Enrico could have come straight from a meeting of senior management executives—conservatively tailored, carefully barbered—except for his curious stillness, the unblinking stare of his cold, dark eyes, and the scar slanting down his neck into his shirt collar. That didn’t come from a flying paper clip in an office. He was, so Jean-Louis told Simon, in the personal insurance business. The bottom half of Enrico’s face smiled. It would be a great pleasure to assist monsieur, he said, if ever there was a problem at the hotel that was too pressing or delicate for the police. He lit a cigarette and looked at Simon thoughtfully through the smoke. Such a beautiful establishment, so close to Marseille—might be a temptation to some of the … elements on the coast. Jean-Louis shook his head and sucked his teeth. Beh oui. We live in dangerous times.

  Simon suddenly felt that he had entered the hotel business a little impulsively. There was an air of menace about Enrico, despite his politeness and the fixed insincerity of his smile, that had nothing to do with conventional insurance. Thank God for advertising training, he thought. At least I know what to do in a situation like this.

  “Let’s have lunch, Enrico,” he said. “When we can talk quietly.”

  Mrs. Gibbons moved carefully through the forest of legs, wary of stiletto heels and spilt champagne, her snout sweeping the flagstones in search of dropped canapés. She came to a stone bench at the edge of the terrace and cocked her head. A large and interesting object lay under the bench. She sniffed it. It didn’t move. She took a trial bite, and it was pleasantly squashy. She picked it up and looked for a place away from all the noise and feet where she could destroy it in peace.

  Half an hour later, Harpers & Queen decided it was time to repair her makeup and reached down for her bag. Her screech of alarm cut through the babble and brought Simon pushing through the guests, half expecting to find Billy Chandler squaring up to an irate husband.

  “My bag!” cried Harpers & Queen. “Someone’s taken my bag!”

  Simon put aside thoughts of food once again and joined the distraught girl in a hunt that started in the lavender bed and continued through the guests and down to the pool. As they searched, Harpers & Queen went through an increasingly hysterical inventory of the contents. Absolutely her entire life was in the bag, and the thought of her vanished Filofax brought on another wail of despair. Simon, stomach rumbling and another headache developing, was in no mood to listen to Jean-Louis’s theory that the bag might be across the Italian border already, such was the speed of local robbers. Beh oui.

  One of the advertising contingent hurried over to Simon, his sunglasses on their neck loop bouncing against his chest. “It’s okay. We’ve found it.”

  Simon’s headache receded slightly. “Thank God for that. Where is it?”

  “Under that big table in the restaurant.”

  Harpers & Queen alm
ost swooned with relief, and then had a fresh attack of horror. Suppose someone had emptied it, stolen her life, maybe even her Filofax with all those private telephone numbers collected so carefully over the years? For a moment, social ruin stared her in the face.

  “No, no, no,” said the advertising man. “I don’t think anything’s gone. Not exactly.”

  When they reached the long buffet table, they found a small group squatting on their haunches, apparently talking to the bottom of the tablecloth. One of them looked up. “We’ve tried tempting her with salmon mousse and quiche, but she wasn’t interested.”

  Simon and Harpers & Queen got down on hands and knees and peered under the cloth. Mrs. Gibbons stared back at them and curled her pink lips, which were flecked with fragments of a blue British passport cover. She growled briefly before resuming her attack on a Tampax.

  “Oh God!” said Harpers & Queen.

  “Oh shit,” said Simon. “Where’s Ernest?”

  Françoise was doing her best to understand the little English photographer. He was, after all, very charming, and it was in no way disagreeable to be the object of such flattering attention, even if he had very few words of French.

  “Now then, darling,” he said, “let’s do a few for Vogue. You know Vogue, yes? Le top magazine.” He stood back and tilted his head. “Right. Let’s have you on the couch here.” He patted the seat, and Françoise perched on the edge. “No, I think lying would be better—très relax, okay? May I?” He adjusted Françoise until she was stretched out on the couch. “There. That’s better.” He knelt beside her. “Now, I think this leg bent—there we go—and those top two buttons … here, let me … and the skirt … ah yes, magic.…”

  Ernest’s pink and white striped espadrilles made no sound as he walked quickly through the reception area on his way down to the restaurant. He came to an abrupt halt, his eyebrows doing their best to meet his hairline, and coughed emphatically.

  Billy Chandler looked back over his shoulder and grinned. “Doing a few test shots here, Ern. You haven’t seen my light meter, have you?”

  “It wasn’t secreted in the young lady’s blouse, I take it? Or hadn’t you finished looking?”

  “We were working on a truly artistic pose, Ern, that’s all.” He winked. “Listen, you’d better go. I heard Simon calling you.”

  Ernest sniffed. “I’ll send Monsieur Bonetto up, and then you can do an artistic portrait of father and daughter. Don’t start without him, will you?”

  • • •

  The group around the table stood back and watched Ernest scold Mrs. Gibbons into giving up what was left of her snack and then banish her, with her tail between her legs, to find sympathy with Madame Pons in the kitchen. Harpers & Queen was in despair as she gathered the remnants together and put them in a soggy, chewed pile on the table. Her Filofax had escaped major damage, but it was doubtful if her credit cards would pass through any machine that wasn’t capable of accepting toothmarks, and she was going to need a new passport. She glared at Simon, her crimson mouth set in a tight, irritated line. Something must be done. But what? The British consulate in Marseille was closed for the weekend. Simon resigned himself to spending Sunday morning on the phone trying to track down the consul. Ernest led Harpers & Queen, clutching the shreds of her bag, off to the nearest bottle of champagne, and the spectators drifted away towards the sound of music coming from the pool house.

  It was nearly midnight by the time Simon sat down to lunch at a small table in the corner of the terrace, enjoying the floodlit view and the relief of being alone. Apart from the damned dog, everything was going well. Nobody seemed to be dangerously drunk, nobody was arguing, nobody had hit Billy Chandler. Someone was bound to fall in the pool sooner or later, but on the whole it had been a happy evening. Simon took a mouthful of salmon and allowed himself to relax.

  “The patron resting from his labours.” Johnny Harris pulled up a chair and sat down. “How’s your face? Aching from all that smiling?”

  Simon swallowed and nodded. “How about you?”

  “Feeling distinctly inferior.” Harris poured himself some wine. “Angela never told me she had a First in modern languages. She’s been babbling away to all the frogs while I’ve been standing there like a prat. They’ve been round her like flies. Quite a shock, really. She doesn’t look the academic type.”

  Simon remembered Angela’s party outfit—a brief, backless dress and high heels that had attracted admiring glances from Madame Pons—and laughed. “They do like intellectuals, the French, specially the blond ones with long legs. Tell me, was Radio Lubéron interesting?”

  Harris pulled a notebook from his pocket and flicked through the pages. “Amazing, but quite unprintable, most of it. Do you know there’s an old boy in one of the villages round here who pays girls to climb up curtains while he watches and listens to Wagner and gets shit-faced on port? He’s English.”

  “He would be,” said Simon. “A Frenchman wouldn’t drink port.”

  “Let’s see.” Harris looked at his notes. “Orgies in the ruins, backhanders in the property business—she knows a lot about that—the decorators’ Mafia, fake antiques, genuine assholes like our friend Mr. Crouch and his disciples …” Harris paused and shook his head. “And I thought the most exciting thing that happened down here was watching the grapes grow. Not a bit of it. Everything from adultery to Swiss bank accounts, take your pick. Not unlike Weybridge, really.”

  “I’m finding out,” said Simon. He looked over Harris’s shoulder to see Jean-Louis and Enrico from Marseille smiling at him.

  “A wonderful evening,” said Jean-Louis. “I am delighted that the affair of the handbag has resolved itself. A criminal with four legs, c’est drôle, non?”

  “Very comical,” said Simon.

  Enrico raised a hand to his ear, the thumb and little finger extended. “Lunch?”

  “I’ll look forward to it, Enrico.”

  “Ciao, Simon.”

  Harris turned to watch the two men leave. “Sinister-looking bugger, the one in the dark suit. What is he, a local politician?”

  “Insurance.”

  “I’d be inclined to pay the premium, if I were you.”

  Harris looked down to the pool house, where Angela was demonstrating her abilities on the dance floor with Philippe Murat, and decided that his presence was required. Simon went back to his food. When Nicole found him, two hours later, he was asleep in his chair with a half-smoked cigar between his fingers.

  19

  It was four o’clock, the sun still a thud of heat on the head. Ernest was happy to come in from the terrace, where he had been discussing the dietary requirements of a vegetarian guest from Düsseldorf, and escape to the coolness of his office behind the reception desk. The hotel was taking a siesta: lunch had been cleared away, the tables set for dinner; a row of almost motionless bodies broiled themselves by the pool, turning occasionally like spit-roasted chickens. Nothing much would happen before six. Ernest sent Françoise off to get something to eat and settled down to go through the day’s correspondence, taking pleasure in the bundle of letters asking for reservations. The season was shaping up very nicely, he thought.

  He heard the sigh of the main door opening, footsteps, and the sound of heavy breathing. He pushed the letters aside and got up.

  “Yo!” called a voice. “Anybody home?”

  Ernest had never seen quite such a strapping young man. He was well over six foot, most of it muscle. He wore black cycling shorts and a sweat-darkened sleeveless vest decorated with a legend that read, “Texas U.—Four or Five of the Happiest Years of Your Life.” Short fair hair, blue eyes, and a wide, white fluoride smile exposing the perfect and regular teeth that seem to be distributed only in America.

  “Good afternoon,” said Ernest. “Can I help you?”

  “How you doing?” The young man stuck out a hand. “Boone Parker? I’m looking for Simon Shaw?” He had, like many Americans, a way of talking with a lift at the end of ea
ch phrase, turning statements into questions.

  “Boone, how nice to meet you. We’ve been expecting you. I’m Ernest.” The young man bobbed his head. “Mr. Shaw should be here in a few minutes. I dare say you could do with something to drink.” He picked up the phone to call the bar downstairs. “What would you like?”

  “Two beers? That would be great.”

  “Of course,” said Ernest. “One for each hand.”

  Boone killed the first beer with a single, seemingly continuous swallow, and sighed happily. “Boy, I needed that. I came over by bike?” He grinned at Ernest. “You got some mean little hills round here.”

  As he dealt more slowly with the second beer, Boone gave Ernest his first impressions of France, which he thought was pretty neat, although he hadn’t met too many girls. But it was great to be here in the cycling capital of the world, because that was one of his passions—or, as he described it, a major kick. That and cooking. He couldn’t decide whether to be the next Greg Lemond or the next Paul Bocuse. It was wheels versus meals.

  Ernest found it hard to imagine this amiable young monster bent over a stove or dicing shallots with those enormous hands, but Boone explained that it was hereditary.

  “My daddy’s in food, Ernie. Food’s in my genes? I was cooking when I was nine—only eggs and refried beans and stuff like that—and now I’m into cuisine. I nearly went to one of those cookery schools in Paris, you know? The kind of place where they bust your ass if you can’t make a tomato coulis with one hand tied behind your back. I love that serious French shit.”

  “Well, young Boone,” said Ernest, “I think you’ll have to meet our chef. How’s your French?”

  Boone scratched his head and shrugged. “Sort of rudimentary? My Spanish is good, but I guess that doesn’t get you too far over here. Guess I’ll pick it up.” He drank the last of his beer and looked at the clock behind the desk. “Shoot, I’d better go. I’ve got a class at five.”