Peter Mayle - A Good Year

“Mais quand même!” Madame Passepartout chose to be unconvinced, looking at her watch and almost pawing the ground in her eagerness to prepare for Charlie’s coming. “It would oblige me, Monsieur Max, if you and mademoiselle were to remove yourselves from the house today, so that I can work without distraction. The weather is most agreeable. I suggest a pique-nique. ” The suggestion was delivered in a tone of voice that did not invite any discussion.

To Max’s surprise, the thought appealed to Christie, who had come down to the kitchen and was groping her way toward her first cup of coffee. “Great,” she said, from the depths of her early-morning coma. “Love picnics.” Within ten minutes, they had been ejected from the house and were standing by the car, equipped with a map, a corkscrew, and absolutely no clear idea of where they were going.

Inspiration came while they were in the village. They had bought the ingredients for a simple lunch and were getting bread when Christie’s eye was caught by something pinned to the baker’s notice board. There, among the photographs of missing cats and details of secondhand domestic and agricultural articles for sale at prix d’ami, was the card of a farm outside the village offering horses to rent for what were described as pique-niques hippiques in the Luberon.

“Is this what I think it is?” Christie asked Max. “ Pique-nique I can just about work out, and there’s a picture of a horse, so I guess it’s horseback picnics, right? How terrific.”

“Can you ride?”

“Sure. Can’t you?”

Max shared Oscar Wilde’s view that horses were dangerous at each end and uncomfortable in the middle, and remembered his first and, so far, last attempt at riding. The horse had shrugged him off even before he was settled in the saddle, and had then stood looking down at him, lips drawn back in a ghastly yellow-toothed smile utterly devoid of sympathy. “I tried it once,” he said. “But the horse won.”

“Come on,” said Christie. “It’s just like riding a bicycle. Nothing to it.”

Half an hour later they were standing in the paddock next to two amiable and outwardly docile horses. The farmer had given Max a rough, hand-drawn map of the bridle paths-although, as he said, the horses knew them so well they could find their way blindfolded. Christie swung up into the saddle, smooth and easy, as Max put a tentative foot in the stirrup.

“No, Max. Other side. You always mount on the left.”

“Why?” The horse turned his head and gave Max a reproachful look.

“I’m not exactly sure,” said Christie. “But you just do. I think it’s got something to do with your sword. You know? So it doesn’t get tangled up with your legs?”

“Of course,” said Max. “My sword. Silly of me.” He scrambled into the saddle, and, without any urging, the horse set off at an unhurried, stately walk.

It wasn’t very long before Max had forgotten his apprehension and was feeling, if not relaxed, then slightly less tense, and was even beginning to enjoy the unfamiliar but increasingly pleasant sensation of sitting on a large, living creature in motion. He breathed in the smell of warm horse and old leather, shifted his weight in the creaking saddle, tried to appear nonchalant, and started to pay more attention to the scenery. They were in single file, going upward all the time, the horses picking their way slowly along the narrow stony path through a tangle of broom and boxwood, their hooves crushing the rosemary and thyme that seemed to grow out of every rock. The views, carpeted in different shades of green, became more and more spectacular as they climbed toward the top.

Two hours of gentle riding took them to the highest point on the Luberon, marked on the farmer’s map as the Mourre Nègre, more than thirty-five hundred feet above sea level. The loudest sound was the soft whiffle of the horses’ breath. They hadn’t seen or heard a soul since they started off.

Christie tethered the horses in the shade of a scrub oak while Max unpacked the bread and sausage, the cheese and fruit, and a bottle of red wine, warmed by its proximity to the horse until it had reached the temperature of a well-heated room. He stretched to ease the stiffness in a back that had been held more or less rigid during the ride up, and looked around.

It was impossible not to be affected by the extraordinary peace and beauty of the surroundings, the total absence of human sounds, the enormously long views. To the north, he could see Mont Ventoux, the blinding white gravel on its crest looking like a permanent snowcap; to the south, the massive bulk of Mont Sainte-Victoire; and far beyond that, the silvery glint of the Mediterranean. Christie joined him, and they stood for a few moments without speaking, listening to the breeze.

“Roussel comes up here when he’s hunting. He told me he’s often seen eagles,” said Max. “Wonderful, isn’t it? London seems a million miles away.”

“Don’t you miss it?”

“ London?” He thought for a moment before shaking his head. “No, not a bit. Odd, isn’t it? I’d forgotten how much I liked it here. Before, when I used to come out, I never really wanted to leave, and it’s the same now. It feels like home.” He grinned at her. “And I used to think I was a city boy.”

They found a spot where they could sit side by side looking south, their backs against a sun-warmed rock, and Max opened the wine and poured it into paper cups while Christie made primitive sandwiches. “So,” she said, passing him half a baguette bulging with slices of sausage, “are you going to stay?”

“I hope so. I don’t know that I’ll be able to, but I’d love to. It suits me down here-the lack of pressure, the little details of ordinary life, the chance to spend so much of the year out of doors; I even like the French-well, you know that…” He shrugged, contemplating the huge sandwich that he was holding with both hands. “We’ll see. How about you?”

Christie took her time to reply, and when she did there was an almost apologetic tone to her voice. “I’m not ready for that yet. There’s too much of the world I haven’t seen. You won’t believe this, but until a couple of years ago, I was one of the ninety percent of the American population that doesn’t have a passport. You know? We travel, but we stay at home. And I guess we miss a lot. London, Paris, Prague, Venice, Florence -you name it, I haven’t been there. I’d really like to see as much as I can while I’m over here.” She took a mouthful of wine and stared into her paper cup. “So I guess I’ll be moving along pretty soon.”

Half-dreading the answer, Max asked the question that had been on his mind almost from the moment Christie arrived. “So what do you think we should do about the house?”

“I’ve thought about it a lot. I guess you have too.” She put up a hand to stop Max from replying. “First of all, I didn’t come here for a house; I already have my mother’s old house, and that’s now worth about ten times what she paid for it. No, I came because I wanted to get away for a bit after breaking up with Bob-and, you know, to see if I had a long-lost dad. But I’m not ready to settle down yet, and certainly not in France.” She saw Max begin to smile. “I mean, it’s great, but it’s not for me. Perhaps it’s an acquired taste. In any case, your uncle wanted you to have the house. So you know what?” She raised her paper cup in a toast. “It’s all yours.” It was her turn to smile at the look on Max’s face. “Actually, it’s just a way of getting out of spending good money on that creep of a lawyer with his waggling eyebrows and his dirty mind. I mean, the nerve of the guy.”

Max cast his mind back to that afternoon in Aix-it seemed so long ago now-when they had been to see the lawyer, and the remark that had outraged Christie. Something about romance. “Don’t be too hard on him. The French always think that sex conquers all. Look at Madame Passepartout-she’s been trying to get us into the same bedroom from the moment you arrived, and it wasn’t to cut down on the laundry.” He fished a startled grasshopper out of his wine with his finger before taking another mouthful. “They don’t mean to be offensive, but it’s like a national sport. It’s in their genes.”