Free Anything Considered by Peter Mayle Page B

the weather in London? The usual? Gray and wet? It’s seventy-five and sunny here. I’m having breakfast on the terrace.”
    “Piss off.”
    But he didn’t, and after another five minutes of his cajolery, flattery, and protestations of devotion, she agreed to take the early flight to Nice on Saturday morning. Bennett put the phone down with a pleasurable sense of anticipation, made a mental note to buy flowers and stock up the fridge, and spent the rest of the day flat in the sun, a human lizard.
    The week slipped by in a warm and well-fed blur.Bennett tried the other two restaurants Poe had suggested, and found them both excellent. He made a brief expedition across the border into Italy and did his shopping at the Ventimiglia market. He stopped at the Café de Paris every evening to have an aperitif and watch the passing parade. Daily, as the lubricant of money smoothed away the rough edges from his life, he felt more and more comfortable in his role as a rich layabout. He was discovering that while it takes years to accept adversity, a man becomes accustomed to good fortune almost overnight.
    The only flaw in this week of solitary bliss was a call from Shimo, giving Bennett instructions to stay in the apartment on Saturday evening to receive a delivery for Poe. It was important, Shimo said, in his flat, intimidating monotone. He himself would be coming over to collect the item later that same night. Did Bennett understand?
    Bennett understood. He had planned to take Susie to Louis XV, but after a moment’s irritation, he persuaded himself that a simple dinner on the terrace, with its convenient proximity to the bedroom, might be a more personal way to celebrate her arrival in Monaco. Smoked salmon, he thought, followed by something cold and delicious in aspic from the
traiteur
in town. Cheese, fruit, and then a dive between the sheets. What more could a girl want?
    Saturday morning found him—tanned, scrupulously shaved, and tastefully cologned—driving the Mercedes, top down, along the Corniche to Nice airport. This was once, so an old Côte d’Azur hand had told him, a small, almost rural terminal, smelling of black tobacco and suntanoil, where on Sunday mornings elderly British expatriates, still in their slippers and ancient dressing gowns, could be seen shuffling up to the newsstand in search of a copy of the London
Times
. It was hard to believe now, Bennett thought, as he turned off into the tangled spaghetti of airport side roads, past pollution-proof palm trees, and up to the gleaming modern blockhouses that had been built during the reign of Mayor Médecin, who had ruled Nice during its boom years.
    There was no need to check the arrivals board to identify the flight from London. The gray straggle of passengers coming out of the gate couldn’t have been anything but British. There was a uniform pallor to the faces, and their owners, particularly the men, announced their positions on the class ladder by their clothes—bright new panama hats, shirts of a violent stripe, and double-breasted blazers with a surfeit of brass buttons for the gentry; wrinkled jeans, scuffed running shoes, and bags bulging with duty-free liquor for the less exalted. Bennett was studying a tall, knobbly man in shorts that displayed veal-white legs, black socks, and sandals, when he saw the burnished hair and wildly waving arm of Susie, dressed as though on her way to a smart lunch at the Ivy, in a clinging dark suit and high heels. Her sole concession to the holiday spirit was a pair of small and modish sunglasses, which clashed with Bennett’s as they exchanged pecks of greeting.
    Bennett stepped back, smiling. “You look fantastic,” he said, and she did—the hair blonder than he remembered,the makeup luminous and subtle, the body displaying the results of ruthless exercise, an altogether more sophisticated version of the giggling, pretty girl he had met two years before.
    She took off her sunglasses and looked at him, her