Black Diamond - Martin Walker [113]
“Could you fetch Gigi for me from your car, please?” he asked the mayor. His room was so crowded that a dog wouldn’t make much difference. The mayor squeezed his way out.
“Do you want to come with me to Pons’s place?” Bruno asked J-J and the brigadier.
“I can’t,” said the brigadier. “The helicopter is taking me to Marseilles, where we’ll have the truce meeting. Vien sends you his regards, and Bao Le says he’ll let you know if they learn anything about the girl. The Vinhs will be home in St. Denis tomorrow and back in the market next week.”
“I’ll gladly come with you,” said J-J. “But I don’t think there’s much hurry.”
Then came the sound of running paws and Gigi darted into the room and made a flying leap to join Bruno on his bed.
“For God’s sake,” said Fabiola, with an exasperated laugh. “This is supposed to be a hospital.”
She and Pamela sat down beside Bruno on the bed and joined him in stroking Gigi’s long velvet ears.
“I’ll be off,” said the brigadier. “My offer still stands, Bruno. I want you on my team. Think about it.”
Raising his face to escape Gigi’s tongue, Bruno looked around the room at his friends, the mayor and the baron and J-J, Pamela and Fabiola. Through the window behind them the wintry sun gilded the old stone of the mairie and glinted from the bronze eagle atop the war memorial.
“I don’t think I could leave this,” Bruno said. “Besides, I’ve got the rugby club New Year’s dance to arrange, and Stéphane expects me at the farm to help kill the pig next month. I’ve still got to sort out the contracts for the town fireworks on le quatorze juillet, and then there are the children who are expecting me to carry on teaching them to play tennis. On top of that, I came across this recipe I want to try, called truffes cendrillon, little pies with foie gras topped with truffle and baked in cinders. I was thinking of inviting you all to a Christmas dinner at my place with Florence and her children to welcome them to St. Denis.”
“Dear Bruno,” said Pamela, lifting her hand from Bruno’s dog to cup his cheek and kiss him softly on the lips. “Don’t ever change.”
“Change?” said Bruno, returning the kiss. “I don’t think St. Denis would let me.”
Acknowledgments
This is a work of fiction and the characters and situations have all been invented by the author. While there is regrettably a growing amount of fraud in the truffle trade, particularly relating to China, the reputation of the famous truffle market in Ste. Alvère has not been tarnished. But my friends and neighbors in the enchanting Périgord have served as inspirations, guides and the most patient of teachers in educating a foreigner into some of the folkways of the land. They have taught me to pick and tread the grapes, to hunt and cook the elusive bécasse, to search for truffles and try to tell one variety from another. Above all, they have taught me the difference between food enriched with the real black diamond of Périgord and the wan apologies for the truffle you so often encounter in places that take their gastronomy less seriously. So my gratitude to the people of the valley of the river Vézère for the welcome they have given to me and my family and our basset hound is deepened yet further, along with my fondness for their way of life. I hope that the Bruno novels convey some of my profound affection and respect for the people of this valley, whose ancestors had the excellent taste to settle amid its gentle hills and fertile slopes some forty thousand years ago. Their descendants have never left, and I can understand why.
This novel is dedicated to a particular friend, Raymond Bounichou, a veteran of the gendarmes and of various other, perhaps less public, arms of the French state. Not only has he made me reassess the role of the barbouze in France’s complicated recent history, but his endless stories have also triggered thoughts of many future plots.