Max began to have the sense that he was being nudged, not too subtly, into a new career among the vines, and as the level of wine in the decanter dropped he became sure of it. At one point, Charlie abandoned rational persuasion altogether in favor of appeals to what he hoped was Max’s latent desire to become a French peasant. “Buy a beret!” he said. “Take tractor-driving lessons! Get your hands dirty! You’ll love it.”
They ate and drank in the companionable silence of old friends, Charlie glancing at Max from time to time as if trying to read his thoughts. In fact, Max was having some difficulty reading them himself. He had always been attracted to change, and the idea of leaving a soggy, jobless London for the warmth and light of the south was immensely appealing. Also, he was curious to see how reality compared to his memories: if the old house was as big as he remembered; if the rooms still had the dry, pungent smell of herbs and lavender; if the sounds of a summer afternoon were the same; if the girls in the village were still as pretty.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t any money in the nostalgia budget. “The problem is,” he said to Charlie, “I’m skint. No, worse than skint. Rent, credit cards, debts of one sort or another-I’m a financial disaster. I can’t afford to go swanning off to the south of France. I’ve got to get a job. Simple as that.”
“Let’s have a little cheese to go with the rest of the wine, shall we? And I’ll tell you why it’s not as simple as that.” Charlie leaned across the table, one finger tapping on the cloth to emphasize his words. “First, you’ve arrived at a moment in your life of marvelous freedom. No deadlines, no appointments, no responsibilities…”
“No money,” said Max.
“… a detail I shall come to in a moment. This is a turning point, an ideal time for you to take a break, look at what fate and Uncle Henry have dumped in your lap, and decide what you want to do. The weather down there will be delightful, and the trip will do you the world of good. Put the roses back in your cheeks.”
“Charlie, you don’t…”
“Hear me out. At the worst, you’ll decide to sell the house, in which case you can put it with a local agent while you’re down there. At the best… well, at the best, you’ll decide to stay on and do what I’d like to do: make a really good little wine. Can you imagine a more pleasant life? Agreeable working conditions, the cash rolling in, and as much free wine as you can drink. Heaven.”
As usual when he was in the grip of one of his enthusiasms, Charlie chose to ignore practical problems-in this case, as Max pointed out again, lack of funds. He could barely afford a train ticket down to Brighton, let alone a voyage of discovery in the south of France.
“I was coming to that,” Charlie said. He patted the pockets of his jacket and fished out a checkbook, placing it with a slap on the table between them. “I’m making so much loot I don’t know what to do with it, and there’s a lot more in the pipeline. My flat’s paid for, they’ve given me a car, and I’m not interested in yachts or racehorses.” He sat back and beamed at Max.
“Women?”
“Of course. But that’s just pocket money.” He took a pen from his pocket and opened the checkbook. “You can look on this as a bridging loan.” He scribbled out a check, tore it from the book, and passed it across to Max. “There. That should keep you going for a month or two while you sort everything out.”
Max looked down at Charlie’s scrawl and blinked.
“Charlie, I can’t possibly…”
“Don’t be bloody stupid. If you sell the house, you can pay me back. And if you keep the house, we can turn it into some kind of mortgage. You can’t afford not to give it a go. This is the chance of a lifetime, old son. What do you say to a modest glass of Calvados?”
Max continued to protest and Charlie continued to insist as one Calvados led to another. Unnoticed by them as they talked, the restaurant had become empty and quiet. Standing nearby, Calvados bottle at the ready, the sommelier concealed a yawn and longed for a cigarette. The sound of laughter came from the kitchen, and the waiters started stripping the cloths from the tables. The lovely Monica, now dressed in black leather and carrying a crash helmet, stopped at the table to pat Charlie on the head and wish the two friends good night.
At last, Max gave in, folding the check and putting it away with fuddled fingers. Then, with even more difficulty, he wrote out an IOU for ten thousand pounds on his napkin and stuffed it into Charlie’s top pocket.
Three
Standing in the shower after his morning run, hot water beating down on a skull tenderized by alcohol, Max reviewed the changes that had occurred during the past twenty-four hours, and found them all good. Lucky, lucky bastard, he thought while he was getting dressed, and caught himself whistling the “Marseillaise” as he walked up to Knightsbridge for a cup of coffee.
The day was gray but dry, and he sat at one of the tables that had been placed on the pavement as part of London ’s effort, at least for the summer, to imitate the cafés of Paris. Around him, people were muttering into their cell phones, shuffling documents, and consulting their watches before going off to work. He felt an almost guilty thrill of pleasure that he was no longer one of them. All he had to do today was cash Charlie’s check, make an appointment with the notaire, and book his ticket.
The notaire first. It was eight-thirty in England, nine-thirty in France; the office should be open. He took out the letter from the Cabinet Auzet, now dappled with traces of Calvados, and smoothed it on the table, preparing himself for the ordeal of his first French conversation in years. It was just like riding a bicycle, he told himself as he fed the number into his phone. Once learned, never forgotten. Even so, he had a moment of hesitation when he heard a tinny female voice, blurred by static, utter a grudging “Allo?” In the French manner, she made it sound as if the call had come at a particularly inconvenient moment.
The voice, which identified itself as belonging to the secretary of Maître Auzet, lost some of its chill when Max explained that he was the nephew of Henry Skinner, and the inheritor of his property. After a number of pauses to allow for consultations with what Max assumed was the maître himself, an appointment was made for the following afternoon. He finished his coffee and went in search of a travel agent.
“Air France to Marseille?” The girl at the desk didn’t even bother to consult her computer. “Out of luck there, sir. Air France doesn’t fly direct to Marseille from London anymore. I could try British Airways.”
Max had developed a deep aversion to all airlines ever since one of them had lost his suitcase and wrongly accused him of having it improperly labeled. It had been returned some days later having been run over, still bearing marks of the tire that had flattened it. There had been neither apology nor reimbursement. If he hadn’t been so impatient to get to Provence, he’d have taken the train.