Hotel Pastis (24 page)

“So,” said Crouch, “you’re the famous ad man. Well, well. We are honoured.” His voice seemed to be coming through his nose, in a peevish baritone that reminded Simon of a sarcastic master he’d detested at school.

“How did you know I was in advertising?”

“I’m a journalist, Mr. Shaw. It’s my business to be informed about our gallant captains of industry.” The Valiums smiled faintly and toyed with their champagne.

“I gather,” Crouch went on, “that this is to become a boutique hotel.” He made it sound as though it were something unpleasant he’d just stepped in.

“A small hotel, yes.”

“Just what the village needs.”

“The villagers seem quite happy about it.”

“Not all the villagers, Mr. Shaw. You’ve read my column, I imagine, so you know my feelings about Provence being ruined by what we so misguidedly call progress.” Crouch took a deep swallow of champagne and nodded at the Valiums. “No, not all the villagers want to see the streets crawling with Mercedes and overdressed trippers.”

“I think you’re exaggerating.”

Crouch continued as if he hadn’t heard. “But I suppose we must let the public judge. What do they say in your, ah, occupation? ‘Any publicity is good publicity’?” He laughed, and the Valiums smiled. “We shall see.”

Simon reached for the bottle of champagne, filled
Crouch’s glass, and picked it up. “Funnily enough, I wanted to talk to you about publicity. Perhaps we could go over there. I don’t want to bore your friends.”

Crouch looked up at him and got to his feet. “Well, this will be amusing.”

Simon led him across the room to a quiet corner behind the bar. The firelight shone on Crouch’s face, and Simon noticed the gleam of a light sweat on his forehead and above his top lip. He’d been drinking before he arrived, and Simon caught a gust of his sour white-wine breath.

“Now then, Mr. Crouch. Publicity.” Simon smiled brightly and made an effort to keep his voice pleasant and reasonable. “I’d much prefer it if there were nothing in the press until the hotel is ready to open. You know what a short memory the public has.”

Crouch looked at him without replying, the beginnings of a sneer curling at one side of his mouth. So that was it: this overpaid yob was going to ask him for a favour.

“And so I’d be grateful if you could save any comments you might have for the time being.” Simon reached over to the bar and took a bottle from its nest of ice. “More champagne?”

“It would take more than champagne to stop me writing about this, Mr. Shaw. You’re being very naive.” He held out his empty glass. “But then, you’re in a naive business.”

Simon nodded, refusing to be drawn. “Tell me, what would it take?”

Crouch’s sneer came into full bloom. “I think I can see where this conversation is leading, but I’m going to have to disappoint you.” He took a long pull at his glass, relishing the moment, the power of the press, the glow
of satisfaction at the delightful thought of making a rich man squirm. “No, Mr. Shaw, you can look forward to seeing a great deal of publicity in the
Globe
. Plenty of coverage—isn’t that the term you people use? I have 750,000 readers, you know.” He muffled a belch and finished his champagne. He helped himself from the bottle.

A hardness came into Simon’s voice. “You used to have 750,000 readers. You don’t now. Circulation has been slipping for three years—or haven’t they told you?”

Crouch licked the sweat from his top lip. “It’s still the most influential newspaper in Britain.”

“That’s one of the reasons my agency spends over four million pounds a year buying space in it.” Simon sighed, as if he were reluctant to dilute this happy statistic with bad news. “Of course, that’s always subject to review.”

Crouch’s eyes narrowed above the puffy folds of his cheeks.

“Some of that four million pounds goes towards paying your salary, Mr. Crouch. Have you ever thought of that? Probably not. Anyway, it’s not important.”

“No, Mr. Shaw, it’s not.” Crouch started to move away, but Simon held his arm.

“I haven’t quite finished. Let me put it as plainly as I can. If there is any mention of the hotel during the next six months, either in your column or through a plant in another paper, I’ll pull the advertising from the
Globe
. All of it.”

Crouch’s glass stopped halfway to his mouth. “You wouldn’t dare. You’re not dealing with one of your tinpot little printers. You’re dealing with the British press. My editor wouldn’t tolerate it.”

“I don’t deal with your editor. I deal with your owner.
Your proprietor—” Simon repeated Crouch’s earlier condescending phrase—“isn’t that the term you people use? I have lunch with him two or three times a year. He’s a very practical man.”

Simon saw that Crouch’s hand was shaking. “Careful. You’re going to spill your champagne.”

“This is outrageous.” Crouch sucked at the contents of his glass, and it seemed to give him inspiration. The sneer returned. “You know that I could put this—this whole sordid little attempt at blackmail—on the front page, don’t you? It would make a nice story. A very nice story.”

Simon nodded. “Yes, I expect it would. And if it ever ran, three things would happen: I’d deny it. I’d pull the advertising. And I’d sue the shit out of you. Not the paper.
You
.”

The two men stared at each other for a few moments before Simon broke the hostile silence. “Another glass?”

“Fuck you.” Crouch lurched past Simon and went back, fast and slightly unsteady, to the table where the Valiums were sitting. Crouch spoke to them; they looked across at Simon and got up to leave.

Jojo and Claude, leaning over pastis at the bar, watched as Crouch and the Valiums pushed their way to the door, lips tight and faces set in expressions of irritated disdain. Jojo nudged his companion.
“Ils sont en colère, les rosbifs.”

Claude shrugged.
“C’est normal.”
In his limited experience, the English he had come across were usually upset about something—the heat of the sun, the plumbing, slow progress on the
chantier
. They missed no opportunity for restrained despair. But at least most of them
were polite, not arrogant like the Parisians. Jesus, the Parisians. He drained his glass and yawned. There was another training session with the General tomorrow, more torture. His backside was still sore from the last time. Bicycle saddles weren’t built for big men.
“Alors, on y va?”

They went over to say goodnight to Simon. He wasn’t too bad, they thought, for an Englishman. They shook his hand hard. He was going to keep them in work all through the winter—comfortable indoor work.

Simon felt himself relax. Crouch would behave himself, he was sure. The poisonous little bastard had believed him, and he didn’t seem the kind of man with sufficient confidence and guts to take a risk. Nor did he have the journalist’s usual advantage of being able to hit and run, to escape from the repercussions of his writing and hide behind his editor, who was hundreds of miles away. An enemy in the village, Simon thought, would be easier to deal with than an enemy in London.

It was well past midnight by the time the last guest, a flushed and boozily affectionate Mayor Bonetto, hugged the three of them goodbye and staggered home to the café. Ernest cut off the Gypsy Kings in mid-wail and replaced them with Chopin. The room became calm. The wreckage—bottles, glasses, plates, and ashtrays everywhere, the food table picked clean—was gratifying to see, the chaotic evidence of a successful evening. Simon had to tilt the barrel of red wine to fill three glasses.

Tired, but not yet ready for bed, they compared social notes. Nicole’s bottom had been pinched by the mayor.
The burglar alarm salesman had attempted to horrify Simon with local crime statistics. The real estate agents had hinted at a commission for every client they recommended to stay at the hotel. Duclos from the garage had proposed that the dilapidated Citroën ambulance he’d been unable to sell for eighteen months be used as a taxi for the guests. They could lie in the stretcher beds in the back, he said, and sleep all the way from the airport to Brassière. Or, for couples on their honeymoon …

“And what about that little man with the perspiration problem?” asked Ernest. “I saw you having a cosy chat in the corner, and then he slunk away with his friends—who, I must say, would be perfect if one ever wanted to hold a completely silent dinner party.”

Simon repeated his conversation with Crouch.

Nicole shook her head. “How complicated,” she said. “In France, it’s more simple. You give journalists money.” She shrugged.
“C’est tout.”

“What do you do when they come back for more?” Simon yawned and stretched. “I think he’ll keep quiet until I’ve sorted everything out with the agency. After that, it doesn’t matter. What’s more important is that the villagers seemed happy.”

They sat for another half-hour as Nicole told them what she’d overheard. As she’d predicted, the people of Brassière saw the hotel as a source of diversion and possible profit. Their properties would increase in value; there would be more jobs; perhaps their children wouldn’t have to leave the village to find work—for them, tourism was attractive. The postcard version of the peasant’s life, picturesque and sunlit, was a long way from the grinding reality of disappointing crops, aching backs, and bank loans. A chance to earn a living in clean clothes would be welcome.

And so it was with some satisfaction that they blew out the candles and locked the door on the debris. It had been a good party, and in two days it would be Christmas.

Simon made the call about the time when he thought that Jordan would be two gins into Christmas Eve and beginning to feel a deepening gloom at the prospect of humouring his parents-in-law for the next few days.

“Helleau?” It was Jordan’s wife, competing with a dog barking in the background. “Percy, do shut up. Helleau?”

“Louise, I hope I’m not disturbing you. It’s Simon Shaw.”

“Simon, how are you? Happy Christmas. Percy, go and find your slipper, for God’s sake. Sorry, Simon.”

“Happy Christmas to you. I wonder if I could have a very quick word with Nigel.”

Simon heard Percy being scolded and the sound of footsteps on a wooden floor.

“Simon?”

“Nigel, I’m sorry to bother you, but it’s important. Could you drag yourself up to London for a meeting on the twenty-seventh? I hate to ask you, but …”

“My dear fellow—” Jordan’s voice dropped to just above a whisper—“just between you and I, there’s nothing I’d like more. What’s it about?”

“Good news. Why don’t you pick me up at Rutland Gate in the morning and we’ll go on from there. How’s the car going?”

“Like a bird, old boy, like a bird.”

“See you on the twenty-seventh, then. Oh, and happy Christmas.”

There was a snort from Jordan. “Very little chance of that unless I lace the port.”

“They say cyanide does the trick. Have fun.”

Simon put down the phone and shook his head. The family Christmas always made him think of Bernard Shaw’s comment about marriage. What was it? “The triumph of optimism over experience”?

But he had to admit, by the time the short French Christmas was over, that he’d enjoyed it. They had eaten lunch outside on the sheltered terrace, wrapped in scarves and sweaters, walked for hours in the rough country behind the village, and gone to bed early, stunned by fresh air and heavy red wine. The next day had been spent in the
gendarmerie
going over the plans until it was time to leave for the airport to catch the evening flight back to Heathrow. As he and Ernest drove out of the village and down into the valley, Simon thought it had been a long time since he’d looked forward to a new year with such anticipation.

London was dead, sunk in its Boxing Day stupor in front of the television. Rutland Gate felt like a stranger’s flat, and Simon passed a restless evening, missing Nicole, unable to concentrate on his notes for tomorrow’s meeting, wishing it were over and he were back in the warm little house on the top of the hill. Ziegler was going to be even more of a shock to the system than usual.

He woke early, inspected the empty fridge, and went out looking for somewhere he could get some breakfast. Sloane Street was quiet and grey, with some of the more desperate shops already festooned with Sale notices. As
he walked past the Armani boutique, Simon wondered where Caroline had spent her Christmas. Saint-Moritz, probably, where she could change her outfit four times a day and mingle with the Eurotrash.

He went into the Carlton Tower Hotel and found the dining room, normally filled with men in suits having their first meeting of the morning, but now thinly populated with Americans and Japanese studying their guide books as they struggled with the delights of the traditional English breakfast. Simon ordered coffee and took out the draft press release he’d prepared. It was, he thought, a model of superficially significant nonsense, and he had managed to fit in several of his favorite clichés: the “consulting sabbatical” was there, cheek by jowl with the “detached global overview” and the “continuing close ties with the agency.” A masterpiece of woolliness. Jordan would probably want a paragraph in it about himself and his management team, but that was easily done. And Ziegler? He’d call it horseshit, and he’d be right. But he knew, as Simon did, that horseshit in advertising is the corporate cement that holds everything together.

Simon made his way along empty streets back to the flat and settled down with a cigar to wait for Jordan. In a couple of hours it would be done.

Jordan’s arrival was announced by a throaty burble from the Bentley as it swept into Rutland Gate, and Simon went out to meet him. He was encased in another of his bulletproof tweed suits, brown and bristly as a doormat, with a knitted tie the colour of catarrh.

“Morning, old boy. Survived the festivities?”

Simon got into the car and looked appreciatively at the dark brown leather and polished walnut. “Just about. And you?”

“No casualties so far. But this little break has come at the right moment, I can tell you. Nonstop bridge is seriously boring.” He looked at Simon, his fingers tapping on the steering wheel. “This is all frightfully mysterious. What’s going on?”