Hotel Pastis

Acclaim for
Peter Mayle’s

HOTEL PASTIS

Peter Mayle

HOTEL PASTIS

Peter Mayle spent fifteen years in the advertising business, first as a copywriter and then as a reluctant executive, before escaping Madison Avenue in 1975 to write books. His work has been translated into seventeen languages, and he has contributed to the London
Sunday Times
, the
Financial Times
, and the
Independent
, as well as
Gentlemen’s Quarterly
and
Esquire
.

A Year in Provence
, published in 1990, won the British Book Awards’ Best Travel Book of the Year, and climbed steadily onto the bestseller lists there and in America.
Toujours Provence
, published a year later, has been just as enthusiastically embraced on both sides of the Atlantic. Mr. Mayle’s most recent book is
Chasing Cézanne
. He and his wife live in Provence.

ALSO BY
Peter Mayle

Chasing Cézanne
Anything Considered
A Dogs Life
Toujours Provence
A Year in Provence

“T
he trouble with all these divorces,” Ernest said as he put the tea tray on the packing case, “is the refurnishing. Look at that. We’re not going to find another one like that. Wasted on her, of course.”

Simon Shaw looked up and watched one of the moving men packing the Hockney in bubble wrap. As the man bent over, he displayed the traditional emblem of the British labourer, the buttock cleavage revealed by the separation of T-shirt from grimy, low-slung jeans. Ernest sniffed and went back to the kitchen, picking his way through the piles of expensive relics that were destined for the ex-Mrs. Shaw’s bijou cottage in Eaton Mews South.

Simon sipped his tea, the mixture of Lapsang souchong
and Earl Grey that Ernest blended with such ceremony, and considered his surroundings.

The best house, everybody had said, in central London—large, elegant, almost secluded at the end of a quiet Kensington square. Caroline had spent three years and God knows how much money decorating it until it had reached that state of mannered perfection which made the disorder of normal daily life unthinkable. Rag-rolled paint in artfully faded colours on ceilings and walls, antique silk curtains that overflowed across the floor, eighteenth-century fireplaces brought over from France, hand-embroidered cushions, tablescapes of meticulously arranged artefacts. A magazine house.

Caroline’s friends—those thin, smart friends who lived on salads and the occasional wicked glass of dry white wine—had cooed over the house. Caroline and her team of decorators adored it. Simon had always felt like an untidy intruder, smoking furtively in his panelled study because she didn’t like the smell of cigar smoke in the sitting room, or because some vulpine woman was “styling” the main rooms for a photographic essay on gracious urban living.

Towards the end, Simon had been living in the house like a visitor, spending his days in the office and his evenings with clients while Caroline entertained, joking with a slight sting in her voice that she had become an advertising widow. If he came home before her guests had left, Caroline would introduce him as poor darling, who’s been working so hard. But when they were alone, there would be tight-lipped verbal jabs about his absence, his tiredness, his preoccupation with business, his neglect—there was no other word for it, neglect—of her. From there, it was only a short step to the Other Woman in the office, Simon’s secretary, who always seemed to
be there no matter how late Caroline called. Caroline knew all about secretaries. She’d been one, and she’d been there, all sympathy and short skirts, when Simon had divorced his first wife. There had been no complaints then about working late.

In fact, Caroline must have known that there was no other woman. Simon didn’t have the privacy for adultery. His life was run by other people, even down to his bath, which was run by Ernest. The battle of the bath had been one of the few that Caroline had lost, and she had been at war with Ernest ever since. There was something not quite right about the relationship between the two men, she used to say in those late-night recriminations. Something unhealthy.

Ernest had been with Simon for nearly ten years, starting as his chauffeur in the early days when the only company car was an elderly Ford, and gradually becoming indispensable as the manager of Simon’s existence: part valet, part personal assistant, part confidant, part friend, the master of detail, tireless in his efficiency. He was a qualified Rolls-Royce mechanic, an inspired flower arranger, and a better cook than Caroline ever wanted to be. He disapproved of her extravagance, her social pretensions, and her total lack of domestic skills. She detested him because she couldn’t dislodge him. Simon had spent years in the crossfire. At least that was finished. What was it Caroline had said as they were leaving the lawyers’ offices after the settlement? Something about him having custody of Ernest.

“Excuse me, squire.” Two movers were standing over Simon, their arms piled with dust covers. “We’ll have the couch now, if you don’t mind. For Eaton Mews, innit, like the rest of the stuff?”

“You want the cup and saucer too?”

“Just doing our job, squire. Just doing our job.”

“I’m not a bloody squire.”

“Please yourself, cock.”

Simon surrendered the couch and went through the double doors into the naked dining room. Ernest was clattering next door in the kitchen, whistling a few bars of music that Simon recognised as part of a Rossini overture. Caroline had loathed any kind of classical music, enduring Glyndebourne for social reasons and the excuse for a new dress.

The kitchen was Simon’s favourite room in the house, partly, he admitted now, because it had been so rarely visited by Caroline. He and Ernest had designed it between them, equipping it to professional standards with a Le Cornu range the size of a small tank, pans of the heaviest cast iron and copper, knives and cleavers and end-grain chopping blocks, a chilled marble slab for pastry, two mammoth brushed-steel refrigerators, a separate pantry at the end of the long room. In the middle, on the oiled teak table, Ernest had collected bottles and decanters from the bar in the sitting room.

He stopped whistling as Simon came in. “Liz called,” he said. “There’s an executive committee meeting at six, and that security analyst at Goodman’s wants you to call him about the last quarter’s projections.” Ernest looked at the message pad by the phone. “And the agents want to know if they can show someone the house tomorrow. A musician, they said—Whatever that means nowadays.”

“It’s probably the assistant drummer from a rock group.”

“I know, dear. Most unsuitable, but what can you do? They’re the ones with the money.”

Simon pulled a chair away from the table and sat
down heavily. His back ached, and his shirt felt uncomfortably tight against his stomach. He was carrying too much weight. Too many lunches, too many meetings, not enough exercise. He looked at Ernest, who admitted to forty-eight but could have been ten years younger—slim, with a narrow, unlined face, close-cropped blond hair, immaculate in his dark blue suit and white shirt, no paunch, no jowls. That’s what years of self-discipline did for you, Simon thought. There was a rumour in the agency that Ernest had slipped away for a face-lift during one of his exotic holidays, but Simon knew it was the skin cream from the dermatologist in Harley Street—fifty pounds a tube, and put through on expenses as office supplies. It was one of Ernest’s perks.

“Shall I get Liz for you?” Ernest picked up the phone, one eyebrow cocked, his mouth slightly pursed.

“Ern, I don’t think I can face all that crap this evening. Ask Liz if she can fit it in tomorrow.”