A Good Year

as Charlie’s words came back to him: a new life… you could be sitting on a gold mine… boutique wines are the coming thing. Max raised his glass and drank to the future.

Looking across the square, he watched the last customers leaving the restaurant, flinching at the heat and adjusting their sunglasses before ambling off in a slow, post-lunch waddle to deal with the business of the afternoon. One of them, a man with a prosperous belly and the remains of a cigar, disappeared up the street leading to the notaire’s office. Probably the notaire himself, Max thought. He finished his drink and stood up. It was time to go and inherit.

The office was at the top of the street, just before the village ended and the vines began. A small house, its windows shuttered against the heat, a brass plaque on the front door. Max pressed the buzzer.

“Oui?” said the tinny voice, querulous at yet another unwelcome disturbance. Max announced himself, heard the latch click, and went in to meet the voice’s owner.

She sat behind a large, old-fashioned desk piled with dossiers, a middle-aged woman with the tightly permed hairstyle that had been popular during her mother’s youth. Attempting a smile, she waved Max toward the two hard-backed chairs in the corner of the room. Maitre Auzet wouldn’t be long, she told him, and returned to her files.

He picked up a dog-eared, six-month-old copy of Coucou from the table between the two chairs. The magazine, consistent as ever in its choice of editorial revelations, featured all the usual suspects: Stephanie of Monaco, the latest temporary Hollywood legend, Jean-Paul Belmondo’s son, Prince William, Johnny Hallyday. In or out of love, it made no difference-they all led the kind of lives that were guaranteed to fascinate people in waiting rooms.

Max was distracted from an exclusive interview with Brazil’s top cosmetic surgeon by the sound of an angry, raised voice coming from behind the closed door of what he assumed was Maitre Auzet’s office. There was a final explosive grunt, the door was flung open, and a burly man with the roasted complexion of a farmworker stamped out of the office, giving Max a sidelong glare as he left. The secretary didn’t bother to look up from her papers. The man’s face seemed vaguely, very vaguely, familiar, but Max couldn’t place it. He went back to the cosmetic surgeon, who had apparently achieved an exciting breakthrough in buttock lifting.

Some moments later, there was the click of heels on the tiled floor, and Maitre Auzet appeared, smiling a welcome. “Monsieur Skinner? I’m delighted to meet you. Would you like to come into the office?”

Max needed a moment to recover from his surprise before getting up and shaking the proffered hand. Maitre Auzet was, despite the official masculine title, a young woman: slim and olive-skinned, with the deep, burnished henna-red hair that one only seems to see in France. She was wearing a jacket and skirt that wouldn’t have been out of place in Paris, and her elegant legs ended in an equally elegant pair of high heels.

“Monsieur Skinner?” She seemed amused by his evident surprise. “Is something wrong?”

Max shook his head, and muttered something about never having seen his English solicitor, Mr. Chapman, in high heels before following her into her office. In contrast to the secretary’s sparse and rather dingy surroundings, the office of Maitre Auzet was not unlike her, sleek and modern, beige and dark brown. The desk was bare except for a laptop, a notepad, a vase of peonies, and a crystal tumbler filled with a bouquet of Montblanc pens.

“Could I ask you for some identification?” She smiled again. “Just a formality.” Max gave her his passport. She put on a pair of reading glasses before comparing the photograph with the real thing sitting opposite her, looking from one to the other, shaking her head. “Never very flattering, are they? I wonder why that is.” She slid the passport back across the desk and, reaching into a drawer, took out a thick file and a bunch of large, old-fashioned keys tied together with binding twine.

She started to go through the contents of the file, reading out various passages from different documents. Max half-listened, his thoughts far from legal technicalities as he took advantage of her lowered head to study her: the merest, most discreet hint of cleavage where her silk blouse had fallen away from her body as she bent forward; the skin with its rich Mediterranean glow; that wonderful hair; delicate hands, shining, unpainted nails, and, he noticed, no wedding band. Maybe his luck really was changing. He tried to think of a convincing excuse for another, less businesslike meeting.

“… and so you don’t have to worry about the property taxes. They won’t be due until November.” She closed the file, and pushed it across the desk with the keys. “Voila.”

She turned to the pad on which she’d made some notes.

“Unfortunately”-her mouth formed a pout, as if to emphasize the burdens of a notaire’s life-“matters of succession are never completely without a few loose ends.” She looked at Max over the top of her glasses and tilted her head prettily. “You probably saw one of them leaving the office while you were waiting.”

Max thought back to the scowling peasant. “He didn’t seem too happy. Who is he?”

“Claude Roussel. He used to work for your uncle.”

Now he remembered. That was Russell, an older Russell made thicker and balder and more weather-beaten by the passage of the years, but certainly the same man he’d met once or twice at the house. “What’s he upset about?”

Maitre Auzet glanced at the wafer of gold on her wrist. “It’s a little complicated to explain, and I don’t really have time today…”

Max held up a hand. “I’ve just had a wonderful idea.”

She looked at him, half-smiling.

“Tomorrow. Lunch. Even notaires eat lunch, don’t they?”

She took off her glasses. There was a moment’s hesitation and a twitch of one shoulder. “Yes,” she said, “notaires eat lunch.”

Max stood up and inclined his head in an abbreviated bow. “Until tomorrow, then.” He turned to leave.

“Monsieur Skinner?’ Her smile had broadened. “Don’t forget your keys.”

Max gathered up the keys and the bulky file, stopping at the secretary’s desk on his way out. “I hope you have a truly splendid evening, madame. Champagne and dancing.”

The woman looked up at him and nodded. “Of course, monsieur.” She watched him go through the front door, whistling as he went. The younger men were often like that after meeting Maitre Auzet for the first time.

Four

Max drove out of the village toward the house, finding memories around every bend. The ditches on either side of the road were still as deep and overgrown as they had been when Uncle Henry used to send him down to the baker’s every morning on a dilapidated bicycle, with the promise of a five-franc reward if the croissants were still warm by the time he got back. He used to race against himself, legs pumping furiously to break his previous best time and add to the collection of five-franc pieces that he kept in an old mustard pot beside his bed. The pot, empty at the beginning of the holidays, would be full and wonderfully heavy by the end. It had been Max’s first experience of feeling rich.

He pulled up in front of the stone pillars, crumbling and stained almost black by two centuries of weather, that marked the entrance to the dirt road leading down to the house. The name of the property could just be made out etched into the stone: Le Griffon, the letters soft and fuzzy with lichen after their prolonged battle against the elements.

Max drove on, through rows of well-kept vines, and parked under the plane tree-a huge tree, pre-Napoleonic-that shaded the long south wall of the bastide. In contrast to the clipped