Peter Mayle - A Good Year

“Well?” said Charlie. “What do you think?” He had come out of the front door and was standing in the courtyard, arms spread wide, waiting for comments. His hair was still wet from the shower, brushed straight back, and he was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, decorated with bright green marijuana plants, outside a pair of white cotton trousers. “I picked this up last year in Martinique,” he said, smoothing down the collar, “from a guy on the beach. It’s called a spliff shirt. Très cool, he said-at least, I think that’s what he said.”

“Cool’s the word, Charlie,” said Max. “No doubt about it. And you can roll it up and smoke it, too. What a shirt.”

Max returned his attentions to the bottle, twisting off the wire around the neck and easing the cork up a fraction. Keeping his hand over it, he could feel it pressing up against his palm, almost as though it were alive and trying to escape. Little by little, he allowed it to push upward, until it came out of the bottle with no more than a muffled, bubbly sigh.

Charlie had been watching, nodding with approval. “That’s the way to do it,” he said. “I can’t stand people who wave the bottle around and pop the cork like a bloody Scud missile. Terrible waste of champagne. What have you got there, anyway?”

Max pulled the beaded bottle from the bucket. “An ’83 Krug. I found it hidden away in a corner-Uncle Henry must have forgotten about it.”

“Good for him.” Max poured the wine, releasing its delicate, slightly toasty bouquet. Charlie inhaled deeply, with closed eyes, then held the glass up to his ear. “It’s the only wine in the world you can hear,” he said. “The music of the grape. Cheers.”

They sipped for a moment in silence, the rush of bubbles prickling their tongues. “Seriously,” said Charlie, “you think the shirt’s OK? Nonchalant but not too loud-that’s what we’re after. Casual elegance, Cary Grant on his day off, that sort of thing.”

Max nodded toward the front door. “Here’s your date. Ask her.”

Christie was wearing the same black dress-pressed to perfection by Madame Passepartout-that she had worn to the Roussel dinner, and the same exhilarating scarlet high heels, this time with matching scarlet toenails peeping through the cutout at the front of each shoe. Charlie let out a long, appreciative whistle.

Christie bobbed her head in acknowledgment. “Like the shirt, Charlie,” she said. “Very cool.”

Max handed her a glass of champagne. “A toast,” he said. “Here’s to the man who made this possible: Uncle Henry, God bless him.” Their glasses raised, the three of them looked at one other-smiling, each with private and delightful expectations of the evening to come.

The level in the bottle and the setting sun dropped at an approximately equal pace, and it was dusk-a soft and rosy dusk-by the time the three of them reached the village. The square was crowded, a cheerful hum of greeting and conversation mingling with the music coming from the loudspeakers. Extra tables had been set out on the café terrace, and the accordion band, four impressively mustached gentlemen in their best black trousers, embroidered waistcoats, and white shirts, were drinking a pre-performance pastis. Children chased each other around, and sometimes through, the forest of adult legs. Dogs loitered, more in hope than expectation, beside the long open barbecue where a méchoui of spit-roasted lamb and merguez sausages the color of dried blood were sizzling above the coals, watched over by the chef from Chez Fanny.

Max made his way through the crowd to the makeshift bar where Fanny herself, protected from collarbone to knee by a demure apron, was pouring glasses of the vin d’honneur with a liberal hand. “This is a bit of a change for you,” he said, pointing to the apron.

Without speaking, Fanny performed a slow turn and looked at him over one shoulder, her eyebrows raised. Beneath the apron was an almost backless wisp of lavender-colored silk, with little more than a suggestion of a skirt below. “Better?” she said.

Max swallowed hard and ordered three glasses of wine. “I hope you’re not going to be stuck behind the bar all evening,” he said. “A girl’s got to eat. Can I save you a place?”

“Eh, Fanny! The drinks are flowing like glue.” Guichard the postman and his wife, both heavily scented, had pushed up to the bar and were panting for refreshment. “ Bonsoir, Monsieur Skinner. Are we going to see an Englishman dance tonight?”

Max picked up the glasses and went off, encouraged by a parting wink from Fanny, to find Christie and Charlie, who had been watching him from a table in front of the café.

“What’s so funny?” Max said, looking from one smirking face to the other.

“Nothing,” said Charlie. “Nothing at all.”

“They’ve been circling each other for days,” said Christie. “You should watch out, Max. I think she’s decided to go for it tonight.”

“You two,” said Max, shaking his head. “Vulgar speculation. I was merely being polite to a charming young lady who, I might say…”

“… is wearing a dress the size of a handkerchief,” Charlie added. “I think Christie’s right.”

They sipped their wine-which Charlie pronounced to be young and playful, but essentially good-hearted-while they watched the parade passing in front of them. The evening had attracted people from surrounding villages as well as some other, more distant foreigners: Germans the color of polished mahogany, their speech sounding harsh and guttural against the background of softer, more mellifluous French; the American cyclists they had seen in the market, now dressed like wealthy teenagers in that particular kind of cotton that never seems to wrinkle, with silver-tipped belts, pristine pneumatic sneakers, and, of course, baseball caps with sporting or military motifs; a group of Gypsies, lean and swarthy and all in black, slithering through the crowd like sharks among a shoal of tropical fish; a sprinkling of Parisians, pastel cashmere sweaters draped over their shoulders to ward off the eighty-degree evening chill. But, as Christie remarked, there didn’t seem to be any English.

“Ah,” said Max, with the knowledgeable air of an old local inhabitant of ten days’ standing, “they’re mostly on the other side of the Luberon-Gordes, Ménerbes, Bonnieux, the golden triangle. I’m told it’s a lot more social over there than it is here, soirées every soir. Right up your street actually, Charlie. Apparently they love talking about property prices.”

A few tables away, the accordion band, fortified by a final pastis, had gathered up their instruments and were now filing onto the stage. The rap singer being broadcast over the loudspeakers was cut off in mid-expletive, and the space in front of the stage began to clear. Over behind the bar, Fanny had removed her apron and was slipping it over the head of the relief bartender, an ancient, diminutive man who stood motionless, hypnotized by the proximity of the décolleté being presented to him at nose level.

Charlie gave Max a nudge. “Better get in quick before young Lochinvar over there asks her to dance,” he said as he and Christie stood up. “We’ll go and find a table.”

But getting Fanny to the table was a slow, convivial process, marked by frequent stops while she embraced friends and clients of the restaurant, watched by wary and sometimes not wholly approving wifely eyes. Fanny in the restaurant, taken up with all her duties, was somehow safe-charming and highly decorative, but safe. Fanny freed from her professional responsibilities, in a dress that could make even the best behaved husband think of a weekend in Paris, was not a sight any wife would welcome, especially during an evening of wine, music, and dancing. Max felt he had done well to cover the distance between bar and table-no more than fifty yards-in ten minutes.