‘How lovely,’ he muttered, more sarcastically than he meant to.
Max snorted. ‘What did you expect? That Luc would flagellate himself, never look at another woman and wait, on a diet of dry bread, shrivelled olives and garlic, for death to come?’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You tell me,’ Max hissed back. ‘To each his own way of mourning. The wine man chose the “new wife” option. So what? Do we blame him? Should he have done … what you did?’
A blaze of indignation shot through Perdu.
‘I could punch you right now, Max.’
‘I know,’ Max replied. ‘But I also know that afterwards we’ll still be able to grow old together, you daft git.’
‘It’s the mistral,’ said Madame Bonnet, who had heard them arguing and crunched grimly past them across the gravel towards the main house.
‘Sorry,’ Jean muttered.
‘Me too. Damn wind.’
They fell silent again. The wind might have been merely a convenient excuse.
‘Are you still going to go and see Luc?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘I’ve been meaning to tell you something ever since you got here.’
And when Max revealed what had been making him feel so ill for the past few weeks, Jean was sure that he must have misheard him amid the buzzing and jeering of the wind. Yes, that must be it, because what he heard was so wonderful and yet so terrible that it could hardly be true.
42
Max served himself another helping of the aromatic scrambled eggs with truffle that Brigitte Bonnet had cooked them for breakfast. In keeping with Proven?al tradition, she had placed nine fresh unbroken eggs in a Kilner jar with an early winter truffle for the eggs to absorb its fragrance. Only three days later did she carefully scramble the eggs and garnish them with a few wafer-thin slices of truffle. The taste was sensual, wild, almost earthy and meaty.
What a lavish last meal for a condemned man, it occurred to Jean. Today, he feared, would be the hardest and longest day of his life.
He ate as though he were praying. He didn’t speak; he relished everything with quiet concentration so as to have a reserve to fall back on in the coming hours.
Aside from the scrambled eggs there were two varieties of juicy Cavaillon melon, white and orange; full-flavoured coffee with steaming-hot, sugared milk in large flowery mugs; and homemade plum and lavender jam, freshly baked baguette and buttery croissants, which Max had fetched, as always, from Bonnieux on his wheezing scooter.
Jean looked up from his plate. Up there was Bonnieux’s old Romanesque church. Alongside it the cemetery wall, blazing hot in the sun’s rays. Stone crosses reared into the sky. He recalled the promise he had broken.
I’d like you to die before me.
Her body had embraced his as she gasped, ‘Promise! Promise me!’
He had promised.
Now he was sure: Manon had known then that he wouldn’t be able to keep his oath.
I don’t want you to have to walk to my grave on your own.
Now he would have to walk that path alone after all.
After breakfast, the three of them set out on their pilgrimage, through cypress groves and orchards, vegetable fields and vineyards.
After a quarter of an hour the Basset winery – a long, three-storey, soft-yellow manor house, flanked by tall, spreading chestnut trees, copper beeches and oaks – came glittering into view through the rows of vines.
Perdu gazed uneasily at the splendid building. The wind was teasing the bushes and trees.
Something stirred inside him. Not envy, not jealousy, not last night’s indignation. Rather …
It often turns out very differently to how you feared.
Warmth. Yes, he felt a detached warmth – towards the place and towards the people who had named their wine Manon and dedicated themselves to restoring their own happiness.
Max was smart enough to keep quiet that morning.
Jean reached for Catherine’s hand.
‘Thank you,’ he said. She understood what he meant.
There was a new hangar to the right of the winery – for trailers, large and small tractors, and for the special vineyard tractor, the one with the tall, narrow wheels.
Two legs in work overalls poked out from beneath one of the tractors, and some imaginative swearwords and the clink of tools could be heard spilling forth from under the machine.
‘Hi, Victoria!’ called Max, his voice a mixture of cheeriness and despondency.
‘Oh, Mister Napkin Man,’ a young female voice could be heard saying.
A second later the tractor girl rolled out from under the vehicle. She wiped an embarrassed hand over her expressive face, but only succeeded in making things worse by smudging the dirt and oil stains.
Jean had steeled himself, but still it was bad.