Hotel Pastis by Peter Mayle

to tomorrow.
    The days were long, but passed too quickly. Simon explored the villages, drove up to the bare white crest of Mont Ventoux, walked through the ruins of the Marquis de Sade’s château at Lacoste, dawdled in cafés. Every evening when he got back to the hotel there were messages from London, messages that seemed curiously unreal when he looked through them as he sat barefoot on his terrace. The contrast between the peace of his surroundings and the reports of trivial events in the agency, exaggerated into crises, was something he thought about more and more. Living versus business.
    It was time to be thinking about getting back. Duclos should have repaired the Porsche by now, although it was strange that he hadn’t called. Simon decided to go to Brassière the next morning, and maybe have lunch with the perfectly tanned cleavage after he’d picked up the car. He found the number that Nicole had written on a matchbook.
    “Nicole? It’s Simon Shaw.”
    “Ah, the disappearing Englishman. Where have you been?”
    “I’m sorry. I meant to call, but …”
    Nicole laughed. “That’s the Provençal disease—to do it
demain
. Maybe.”
    “I wondered if I could take you to lunch tomorrow. The garage has had the car for nearly a week. It should be ready.”
    “A week here is nothing, Simon. But yes to lunch,
volontiers
.”
    They arranged to meet at the café, and Simon spent a pleasant half-hour looking through the Gault-Millau Guide for a restaurant. He should have called Nicole before, but perhaps he needed to get London out of his system first. He caught himself shrugging again and smiled.
    He arrived in Brassière the next morning to find Duclos in the position he had first seen him, under a car. It looked suspiciously like the same car. Simon said good morning to the oily boots, and the body slid out on its trolley.
    “Ah, monsieur. C’est vous.”
    Duclos had some good news. The spare parts would be arriving next week—
certain, garanti, pas de problème
. He had meant to call, but …
    In London, Simon would have been furious, but here it didn’t seem to matter. It was a glorious day. He was having lunch with a pretty woman. He could send Ernest down for the car when it was ready. He was surprised at his philosophical attitude, that he was beginning to shrug mentally as well as physically. He thanked Duclos and walked up towards the café.
    The sun made a divided tunnel of the street that led off the square, half blinding light, half deep shade, and Simon was drawn again to the old
gendarmerie
. He went up the stairs. The second storey looked even bigger than the ground floor, a huge space, cleared and ready for the next stage of building. If anything, the extra height made the view even better: the vines, now turning scarletand brown; a pine-covered hill with stone buildings visible among the trees, flat, backlit silhouettes against the sun; and, behind it all, the mountain. The air was so clear that Simon could see the outlines of the trees on the highest ridge, tiny but distinct. He heard laughter coming up from the terraces below him, and the sound of a tractor starting up. It was noon, the time when every good Provençal leaves the fields to go home to lunch.
    Nicole was sitting at an outside table when Simon got back to the café. She offered both cheeks to be kissed, and he was aware of her scent, fresh and spicy.
    “How does it go with your car? I hope you didn’t pay what he asked.”
    “He’s still waiting for the spare parts. It doesn’t matter. I’ll send someone down from London to pick it up.”
    Nicole rummaged in her bag for cigarettes. She was wearing a sleeveless linen dress the colour of putty that set off the even tan of her arms and bare legs. Simon regretted not having called her before.
    “So,” she said, “you have to go back?”
    “That’s what they tell me at the office.” Simon ordered drinks from the girl, who was studying Nicole’s clothes with undisguised