Peter Mayle - A Good Year

They found him on the terrace, a cell phone pressed to his ear, a frown on his face. Seeing them climbing up the steps, he finished the conversation and walked across to greet them, putting on a smile as he came. This evening, it was Roussel en tenue de soirée, wearing black trousers, crisp white shirt, and black waistcoat, for all the world like Yves Montand about to do a turn onstage. The pale strip of untanned skin across the top of his forehead was the only sign that he spent most of his life outdoors with his cap on.

“Monsieur Max! Mademoiselle! Welcome!” He was clearly rather taken with Christie’s outfit, lingering with exaggerated gallantry over her hand as he gave her bosom a surreptitious appraisal. “We must have an apéro -no, first I show you my little property.”

He took them round to the back of the house, where they were greeted by a chorus of squeals and barks coming from a squirming pack of mud-colored hounds. They were in a long, fenced-off run with a large wooden hut at one end built in the Alpine style, decorated with fretwork flourishes, more like a chalet than a kennel.

“Chiens de chasse,” said Roussel, waving a proprietorial arm. “They are impatient for September, when the season starts. Nothing eludes them-boar, snipe, partridge…”

“Postmen?” said Max.

Roussel winked at him. “Always the blagueur. But you should see them hunt, a magnificent sight.” He led them away from the kennel to an area enclosed by a stone wall that framed a picture of cultivated perfection-row upon row of vegetables, separated from one another by low box hedges and pathways of raked gravel. “My potager, ” said Roussel. “I was inspired by a photograph of the gardens at Villandry. This is more modest, of course. Would you care to see my black tomatoes?”

They marveled at the black tomatoes, admired the small grove of truffle oaks, and exclaimed with wonder at Roussel’s pride and joy, a lifesized sculpture of a wild boar rampant- le sanglier rose -executed in the same emphatic pink concrete as the house. Everything was immaculately maintained, and the property had evidently cost a considerable amount of money. Perhaps an inheritance, Max thought, or it might be that Roussel had made a lucrative marriage. That must be it. In any case, it was not what one would expect from a man who habitually dressed like a scarecrow down on his luck.

The glories of the garden dealt with, Roussel took them back to the terrace to meet madame, a swarthy, smiling woman with the shadow of a moustache and a taste for bright orange accessories. She distributed pastis, they clinked glasses, and stood in amiable silence, searching for conversation. Max congratulated them on their view while Christie, recovering from her first-ever encounter with pastis, did her best with smiles and sign language to compliment madame on her unusually vibrant earrings.

And then, with a rumble of wheels, the Roussels’ daughter, a more delicate version of her mother, emerged from the house with a movable feast-a trolley laden with slices of fat-dappled sausage, wedges of pizza, tapenade on squares of toasted bread, slivers of raw vegetables with an anchoiade dip, olives both green and black, radishes with white butter, and a thick earthenware terrine of thrush pâté, with the unfortunate bird’s beak protruding from the dark meat.

“Ah,” said Roussel, rubbing his hands, “a few small mouthfuls to encourage the appetite.”

Max nudged Christie. “Pace yourself.”

She looked at the trolley. “This isn’t dinner?”

Max shook his head. “Afraid not.”

For a few moments, nothing was heard except murmurs of appreciation at the display of food, which seemed to act as a signal for Madame Roussel to excuse herself and return to the kitchen with her daughter. Roussel took a knife to the thrush pâté and spread some on a small square of toast, which he presented to Christie. She took it with barely concealed reluctance, her eyes still on the beak as she whispered to Max: “What else is in there? The head? The feet?”

Roussel smiled at her, pointing to his mouth and nodding his encouragement. “Jolly good,” he said, drawing on the limited English vocabulary he had picked up from Uncle Henry. “Stick it to your ribs.”

“Claude,” said Max, “there’s something I wanted to ask you. You know the vines at the end of the property, beyond the wall? I took a look at them today, and I noticed that a lot of the young grapes have been cut off. Is that a good idea? I mean, I’m no expert, but it seems like a bit of a waste.”

Roussel took his time to answer, his tan and white forehead crinkled in thought, his lower lip out-thrust. He sighed, a melodramatic gale of air that made his lip tremble. “People will tell you,” he said, “that vines must suffer, but that poor parcel of land is beyond suffering. Nothing but stones and dust”-he paused to shake his head-“ putain, even the weeds complain. If I didn’t thin out the bunches, we wouldn’t have grapes; we’d have pinheads. Pinheads,” he repeated, holding up a forefinger and thumb a millimeter apart.

He drained his glass, and searched the trolley without success for the bottle. Muttering about his wife letting them die of thirst, he went indoors to fetch more pastis.

Max took the chance to tell Christie what Roussel had said about the grapes. Looking around, she tipped the remains of her drink into a glazed urn containing a neatly tailored shrub, and shook her head. “I don’t buy that,” she said. “Nobody goes to that kind of trouble unless… you know what? Why don’t you ask him…”

But he was back, brandishing a bottle and some of his best cocktail-party English. Refilling their glasses, he beamed, and with an accent that had very little to do with any known tongue, cried, “Bottoms away! Air of zer dog! Pip pip!”

Christie edged closer to the glazed urn, waiting for an appropriate moment to jettison at least part of the mixture-forty-five degrees of aniseed-flavored alcohol-that was already starting to make her head swim.

Before Max had a chance to return to the subject of the grapes, Roussel moved closer to him, putting one weather-beaten paw on his shoulder. “Tell me, Monsieur Max,” he said, “just between us, of course: what are your plans for the house?”

Max considered the question for a moment, tempted to provide Roussel with some grist for the village gossip mill: a weekend love nest for the Marseille soccer team, an ostrich farm, a school for wayward girls. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I’m still settling in. Anyway, there’s no need to rush things.”

Roussel patted his shoulder and nodded. “Very wise. A place like that, right in the heart of the Luberon, is impossible to find nowadays. English, Germans, Americans, Parisians-they’re all looking for houses down here.” He removed his hand from Max’s shoulder and used his index finger to stir the ice cubes in his glass. “Best to take your time. Be sure to let me know if you should decide to sell. And attention. ” The dripping finger was wagged in Max’s face. “Never trust a real estate agent. They’re all bandits. I could tell you stories you wouldn’t believe. But where are my manners? We are ignoring mademoiselle.” He looked across at Christie, standing by her urn, smiling. Roussel nodded approvingly at the sight of her empty glass, offered her his arm, and the three of them went into the house for dinner.

The interior of the house was as perfectly maintained as the garden, with an equally impressive array of ironwork-over-wrought iron, even more complicated in its twirls and entanglements than the selection in the garden. The tiled floors and the dark wooden furniture gleamed with care and polish. No wall was without its niche, and no niche was without its framed photograph-portraits, for the most part, illustrating the Roussel dynasty, with several studies of camouflage-clad men, chests thrown out, displaying their furred or feathered victims.