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Max had started to study the framed menu that was nailed to the trunk of a plane tree.
“Bonsoir, monsieur.”
Max looked up. “Hi. Oh, sorry. Bonsoir, madame.”
“Mademoiselle.”
“Of course. Excuse me.” For a few seconds they looked at one another in silence, both smiling. An observer would have guessed that they liked what they saw. “Am I too early?”
No, monsieur wasn’t too early. He had come just before the rush. Fa
Max made his choice and settled back in his chair, his feelings a mixture of contentment and anticipation as he watched Fa
She caught him looking at her, and came over to his table, smiling. “Alors, vous avez choisi?” She sat down opposite him, pad and pencil at the ready, and leaned forward to take his order.
With some difficulty, Max kept his eyes on the menu, to prevent them from their natural inclination to stray, and ordered zucchini, the steak, and a carafe of red wine.
Fa
Max looked at her for a long moment, his eyebrows raised and his imagination churning.
“Pommes frites? Gratin? Salade?”
Later, sitting over a Calvados and a second cup of coffee, Max reviewed the first day of his new life. With the optimism induced by a good di
He paid the bill and overtipped. The restaurant was still busy, but Fa
“A bientôt?” she said.
Max smiled and nodded. “Try to keep me away.”
Five
God’s alarm clock, the sun, came streaming through the bedroom window and woke Max after the best night’s sleep he’d had in years, even though sleep had not come instantly. In London, there had always been the lullaby of distant traffic, and a glow in the sky from the city’s lights. In the country, there was total silence, and the darkness was thick and absolute. It would take some getting used to. Now, half-conscious and at first not sure where he was, he opened his eyes and looked up at the plaster and beam ceiling. Three pigeons were conducting an interminable conversation on the window ledge. The air was already warm. Glancing at his watch, he could hardly believe he’d slept so late. He decided to celebrate his first morning in Provence with a run in the sun.
Although many foreign habits, such as te
It seemed to Max that he was ru
The car slowed down to keep pace with him. Glancing over, he saw Fa
“Mais vous êtes fou,” she said, and cocked an approving eye at his legs. “Come. Let me take you into the village. You look as if you need a beer.”
Max thanked her but shook his head, not without some reluctance. “This is what I do to get rid of the Calvados. You know what the English are like. We love to suffer.”
Fa
After the third mile, Max was begi
The shower was a classic example of late-twentieth-century French plumbing, a monument to inconvenience, no more than a vestigial afterthought attached to the bath taps by a rubber umbilical cord. It was a handheld model, thus leaving only one hand free for the soap and its application to various parts of the body. To work up a satisfactory two-handed lather, the shower had to be placed, writhing and squirting, in the bottom of the bath, and then retrieved for the rinsing process, one body part at a time. In London, it had been a simple matter of standing under a torrent; here, it was an exercise that would tax the ingenuity of a contortionist.
Max stepped out gingerly onto the flooded tile floor and dripped dry while he was shaving. Among the Band-Aids and aspirin in the medicine cabinet above the basin, he found a small flask, still half-full of Uncle Henry’s eau de cologne. It was a relic from the old Turkish baths in Mayfair, with a label like an ornate banknote and a scent that made Max think of silk dressing gowns. He splashed some on, combed his hair, and went to choose something suitable to wear for lunch with Maître Auzet.
She had suggested, for the sake of discretion, a restaurant in the countryside, a few miles away from the prying eyes and wagging tongues of Saint-Pons. Max found it without difficulty, rural France often being more generously supplied with restaurant signs than road signs, and arrived a few minutes early.