Black Diamond - Martin Walker [51]
“Did you hear…,” began Bruno. “Sorry…,” said Pamela. “I meant to say…,” said Fabiola. “Go ahead, Pamela,” said Bruno.
“I’ll just get the chicken,” Pamela said. “I was just going to ask what you two thought about this idea of Bill’s about my going on the council. He mentioned it to me just before he spoke publicly. I think you’d do a better job, Bruno.”
“I can’t do it, and I think he probably knows that,” Bruno replied as the steaming pot came from the oven. He sniffed deeply, savoring the scents of garlic and chicken and lemon. “I’m employed by the mayor and the council. So I couldn’t be in charge of myself, it’s against the rules. I think you’d be good on the council.”
“They still talk of me as the Mad Englishwoman, don’t they?” She put the pot in the center of the table.
“That was before they got to know you,” Bruno said. “Country people always invent a nickname for strangers. It’s a way of placing them when you don’t know their parents and grandparents and how they looked when they were babies. Now everybody knows you as Pamela.”
“Would it be a lot of work?” she asked.
“It’s usually one evening every other week for the council meeting, more in the week when the budget gets approved,” Bruno replied. “But you’d have to be available to your voters. In your case, that would mean the other foreigners here, and some of them don’t speak much French. You might find yourself acting as an unpaid translator and a guide through the thickets of our French bureaucracy. And then it would depend on which committee they put you on. Avoid the ponts et chaussées committee or every farmer will be badgering you to make his cart track into a commune road so that the town has to pay for the upkeep.”
“It’s flattering just to be considered,” said Fabiola as Bruno poured the wine.
Pamela had seemed distracted, picking at her food rather than dispatching it with her usual appetite. But she drank as much wine as the other two together. After the chicken, Bruno took a small sliver of the Tomme d’Audrix, the local cheese that his friend Stéphane had invented, and a final swallow of wine. Then he rose, pleading an early start in the morning and a busy day and pretending not to notice the brief frown that passed across Pamela’s face.
“Don’t be upset,” Fabiola had said as she walked him to the Land Rover. “She’s a bit confused and distracted. A friend of hers in Le Buisson saw you with some old girlfriend at the station yesterday evening. You know how word gets around.”
Bruno replayed the scene in his head as he lay in the dark of his bedroom. There had been no time at the station for anything more than a brief peck on Isabelle’s cheek as she dashed for the waiting train. He’d always nurture a sweet tendresse for Isabelle, but she had made it clear the last time they’d parted that any romance was over. Bruno smiled to himself, remembering the look of her beside him in this bed, the scent she left on the pillows, the way she liked to wear his shirts as a dressing gown.
He opened his eyes and looked at the darkness of the woods through the window. The worst thing about winter was that dawn came so late he always rose in the dark. At least the house was warm, the thick stone walls holding the heat pumped out by the woodstove. He climbed out of bed, opened the door to let Gigi in to smother him with doggy affection, turned on Radio Périgord and began the usual routine of exercises he’d learned in the army. The second item on the news was a fire at an Asian supermarket in Bergerac. This was getting worse.
He made coffee and began toasting yesterday’s baguette for breakfast. He’d better start on the venison casserole for Hercule’s wake. Gigi looked hopeful at his feet as Bruno took down the large ham that hung from the beam that supported the kitchen roof. He sliced off some of the dense fat with the meat, chopped it into lardons, tossed them into his big casserole dish and lit the gas. He pulled down six shallots from the string that hung from the beam and began to