This country made no impression on Jean.
They were already passing Ménerbes with its curry-coloured rocks, and approaching the Calavon valley and Bonnieux among vineyards and farmsteads.
‘Bonnieux rises in a stack between the Grand Luberon and the Petit Luberon. Like a five-layered cake,’ Manon had told Perdu. ‘At the very top, the old church and the hundred-year-old cedars and the most scenic cemetery in the Luberon. Down at the bottom, the winegrowers, the fruit farmers and the holiday homes. And between them three layers of houses and restaurants. All connected by steep paths and stairs, which explains why all the village girls have such gorgeous, strong calves.’ She had shown Jean hers, and he had kissed them.
‘I think it’s beautiful around here,’ said Max.
They bumped along dirt tracks, curved around a sunflower field, drove through a vineyard – and were forced to admit that they had absolutely no idea where they were. Jean pulled over onto the verge.
‘It should be somewhere near here, Le Petit St Jean,’ muttered Max, staring at the map.
The cicadas chirped. Now it sounded more like: ‘Hee hee hee hee hee.’ Other than that it was so quiet that only the soft ticking of the cooling engine troubled the deep silence of the countryside.
Then there was the juddering of a fast-approaching tractor. It emerged from one of the vineyards at speed. They’d never seen a tractor like this before – it was extremely narrow, and its tyres were thin but very tall to allow it to race between the rows of vines.
Behind the wheel sat a young man in a baseball cap, sunglasses, cutoff jeans and a faded white T-shirt; he acknowledged them with a nod as he rumbled past. Max waved frantically, and the tractor pulled up a few yards further along the track. Max ran over.
‘Excuse me, Monsieur!’ Jean heard Max call over the noise of the engine. ‘Where can we find a house called “Le Petit St Jean”, belonging to Brigitte Bonnet?’
The man cut the engine, took off his baseball cap and sunglasses, and wiped his lower arm across his face as a cascade of long, chocolate-brown hair fell over his shoulders.
‘Oh. Pardonnez-moi, pardon me, Mademoiselle. I thought you were a, er … man,’ Jean heard a distraught Max croak.
‘I bet you imagine women trussed up in tight dresses, not driving tractors,’ the stranger said coolly, piling her hair back under her cap.
‘Or pregnant, barefoot and chained to the stove,’ Max added.
The stranger hesitated – then broke into peals of laughter.
As Jean craned his neck to get a better look at the two of them, the young woman had already put her large dark glasses back on and was explaining the way to Max: the Bonnets’ property lay on the far side of the vineyard, and they simply had to drive around it on the right.
‘Merci, Mademoiselle.’
The rest of Max’s words were swallowed up in the howl of the throttle. Perdu could see only the bottom half of her face now – her lips twitched into an amused smile. Then she pressed the accelerator to the floor and rattled away, whipping up a small cloud of dust as she went.
‘It’s really beautiful around here,’ said Max as he got back into the car. Jean thought there was a glow about him.
‘Something happen?’ he asked.
‘With that woman?’ Max said with a laugh that was a little too loud and a little high-pitched. ‘Well, in a nutshell, straight ahead, that’s the way, so … anyway, she looked terrific.’ Max was as happy as a cuddly toy rabbit, Jean thought. ‘Dirty, sweaty, but really cute. Like chocolate on top of the fridge. Other than that, no, otherwise … nothing happened. Nice tractor. Why do you ask?’ Max looked befuddled.
‘No reason,’ Jean lied.
A few minutes later they found Le Petit St Jean, an early-eighteenth-century farmhouse, something out of a picture book: watery-grey stone; tall, narrow windows; a garden in such full and extravagant bloom that it looked as if it had been painted. In an internet café Max had come across www.luberonweb.com, and through it he had found Madame Bonnet, who had one of the last vacancies in the area. She rented out a room in her converted dovecote, her pigeonnier, breakfast included.
Brigitte Bonnet – a petite crop-haired woman in her late fifties – was waiting for them with a warm smile and a basket full of freshly picked apricots. She was dressed in a man’s vest and light-green Bermuda shorts, her outfit topped off with a floppy hat. Madame Bonnet was tanned as brown as a nut, and her eyes shone a liquid blue.
Her apricots were covered with sweet, soft fuzz, and her converted dovecote turned out to be a twelve-foot-square hideaway with a washtub, a toilet the size of a cupboard, a few hooks by way of a wardrobe, and an uncomfortably narrow bed.
‘Where’s the second bed?’ asked Jean.
‘Oh, Messieurs, there’s only one. Aren’t you a couple?’