A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle Page A

because there is no supporting evidence on paper to account for the outlay. Also, he refuses to raise the price of his menus, even when they are studded with truffles, to a level which might offend his regular customers. (In winter, the clientele is local, and careful with its money; the big spenders don’t usually come down until Easter.)
    This was the problem, and Madame was doing her best to be philosophical about it as she showed us a copper pan containing several thousand francs’ worth of nondeductible truffles. We asked her why Michel did it, and she gave a classic shrug—shoulders and eyebrows going upwards in unison, corners of the mouth turning down.
“Pour faire plaisir,”
she said.
    We had omelettes. They were moist and fat and fluffy, with a tiny deep black nugget of truffle in every mouthful, a last rich taste of winter. We wiped our plates with bread and tried to guess what a treat like this would cost in London, and came to the conclusion that we had just eaten a bargain. Comparison with London is a sure way of justifying any minor extravagance in Provence.
    Michel came out of the kitchen to make his rounds andnoticed our bone-clean plates. “They were good, the truffles?” Better than good, we said. He told us that the dealer who had sold them to him—one of the old rogues in the business—had just been robbed. The thief had taken a cardboard box stuffed with cash, more than 100,000 francs, but the dealer hadn’t dared to report the loss for fear that embarrassing questions might be asked about where the money had come from. Now he was pleading poverty. Next year his prices would be higher.
C’est la vie.
    We got home to find the telephone ringing. It is a sound that both of us detest, and there is always a certain amount of maneuvering to see who can avoid answering it. We have an innate pessimism about telephone calls; they have a habit of coming at the wrong time, and they are too sudden, catapulting you into a conversation you weren’t expecting. Letters, on the other hand, are a pleasure to receive, not least because they allow you to consider your reply. But people don’t write letters anymore. They’re too busy, they’re in too much of a hurry or, dismissing the service that manages to deliver bills with unfailing reliability, they don’t trust the post. We were learning not to trust the telephone, and I picked it up as I would a long-dead fish.
    “How’s the weather?” asked an unidentified voice.
    I said that the weather was good. It must have made all the difference, because the caller then introduced himself as Tony. He wasn’t a friend, or even a friend of a friend, but an acquaintance of an acquaintance. “Looking for a house down there,” he said, in the clipped, time-is-money voice that executives adopt when they talk on their car phones to their wives. “Thought you could give me a hand. Want to get in before the Easter rush and the frogs put up the prices.”
    I offered to give him the names of some property agents. “Bit of a problem there,” he said. “Don’t speak the language. Order a meal, of course, but that’s about it.” I offered to give him the name of a bilingual agent, but that wouldn’t do. “Don’t want to get tied up with one firm. Bad move. No leverage.”
    We had reached the moment in the conversation when Iwas supposed to offer my services, or else say something to terminate this budding relationship before it could bud any further, but the chance was denied me.
    “Must go. Can’t chat all night. Plenty of time for that when I get down next week.” And then those awful words that put an end to any hopes of hiding: “Don’t worry. I’ve got your address. I’ll find you.”
    The line went dead.

I T WAS ONE of those mornings when the early mist hung in wet sheets along the valley under a band of bright blue sky and, by the time we came home from walking, the dogs were sleek with damp, whiskers glittering in the sun. They saw the stranger