the one with Big Ben in black and white. She had thought it artistic. Well, the novelty value of London must have worn off quickly because the postcards had stopped coming, and phone calls were few and far between. This evening’s call might have made him happy in one respect, but it had still saddled him with one heck of a problem.
All the plans he and Charles had made together might come to diddly-squat. He had to fill in his accomplice, tonight if possible. Luckily it was not Wednesday or Saturday, so Charles was probably going to come round for tea in time for the weather report.
George went back into the living room, choosing his path carefully as he had always done. His tall, now slightly stooped frame just about fit under the beams of the cottage. These beams had been getting in his way since he was a teenager, but one advantage of getting older was that he no longer banged his head against the ceiling. Old age had arrived rather unexpectedly, because in his head he felt as young as ever and for an old fogey of eighty-three, he didn’t think he was in too bad a shape, should the question cross his mind. For starters, he still had a thick mop of hair poking out from under his baseball cap. Not quite the mane he had once boasted, but all things considered, he thought his hair had held out very well. Then there were his jeans and Reeboks – worn for comfort, of course, rather than out of a desire to be fashionable, something he regarded with great disdain. And most importantly, when it came to his memory not only was he second to none at the old folks’ club, he could also give any youngster in the village a run for their money. Admittedly his heart had been a little fragile since the operation. But as with his knee, his bladder and his back, he just had to follow the instruction manual, take the right medication and the rest would take care of itself.
George lowered himself into his chair, an old plastic sun lounger piled with various cushions. It was not that he couldn’t afford a proper armchair. Monsieur Nicoleau was not short of cash – in fact he had more of it than he knew what to do with. It wasn’t the butchery he had run for forty years that had made his fortune, though it had been quite a successful little business. George Nicoleau had always invested in land and property, bought and sold at as good a time as any, and above all, lived frugally and saved regularly. He was positively rolling in it. But he had never found an armchair as comfortable as this one.
He started to consider the problem and, in order to gather his thoughts, reached for the remote control lying on top of the latest edition of TéléStar and switched on the TV. He had missed the serious news at eight o’clock; now, half an hour later, they had moved on to the lighter stuff. He tended to prefer these items to the headlines, which came from a world he no longer recognised. His thoughts turned to Adèle again. He looked over at the suitcase that stood by the living-room door. They were due to set off exactly a week from now. His modest suitcase had been packed for two days. He had bought it – he now remembered – in Biarritz in 1985. The year Adèle was born, in fact. He had briefly considered investing in a new one for the occasion, a modern one with wheels. It would certainly have been more practical, but he was not planning on walking very far with it. It would have been a bit of a waste anyway; this one had barely been used. And as he was not taking any souvenirs from home with him, perhaps the suitcase itself would serve as a kind of memento.
He was distracted from these thoughts by the jingle that announced the weather report. At precisely the same moment, he heard the familiar sound of Charles’s footsteps coming from the garage. George’s house had a lovely front door bordered by flowers and a rock garden, and even a little garden gnome. But ever since they had first become neighbours thirty years ago, Charles had always come in through the cluttered garage, picking his way, despite his bad hip, through the cardboard boxes, rakes, buckets and other assorted odds and ends that lined the walls, and in some places were piled up to the ceiling. That was just the way it was.
Charles walked in, his eyes fixed on the television, and in a gesture that had been repeated every time he had walked in here for the last thirty years, he held his hand out to George. George shook it without taking his eyes off the screen. The weather forecaster was waving her arms in front of a sun-studded map of France.
‘Oh, would you look at that! No rain tomorrow either!’ cried Charles, who had not worked as a farmer for several years now (unless a handful of chickens in the garden and his great-granddaughter’s pony in the old stables counted as farming) but had retained a healthy suspicion of dry weather.
‘It looks like beautiful weather all the way, and not too hot either, would you believe.’
‘You’re right. Except for Pau, it’s not looking so good down there. Still, plenty of time for that to change. We’re not there yet, are we?’
Charles went to fetch two mugs from the old dresser.
‘Stupid damned thing,’ he said, massaging his hip. That hip was giving him a lot of bother these days, and yet, George thought to himself, Charles was still young, barely seventy-six. He was short and stocky with a round, bald head, rosy farmer’s cheeks and large hands that had seen much hard labour. He wore sixties-style glasses and had the air of an honest man you could count on. And it was true: you could always count on Charles Lepensier.
George was reluctant to bring up Adèle. But he eventually took the plunge.
‘That’s just it, Charles. We’re not there yet. I don’t even know if we’ll ever get there. We’ve got a problem. You remember Adèle, my granddaughter who lives over in London? She called this evening.’
Of course Charles remembered Adèle. George only had one granddaughter and no grandson so there was no risk of confusing her with anyone else. When it came to his own extended tribe, on the other hand, he was always getting names mixed up. Thanks to the family tendency not to hang about with producing offspring, he could now count eighteen grandchildren and four great-grandchildren, and, God willing, there would be more to come.
‘Oh, really? Is everything alright in London?’ Charles asked anxiously.
‘Oh yes, everything’s fine, just fine. That’s not the problem … She’s worried,’ George said emphatically.
‘What do you mean, she’s worried … about you? What, just today? What’s she getting worried about you now for, all of a sudden?’
‘Yes, I was a bit taken aback as well. But I reckon it’s her mother who’s worried. So she must have asked the kid to, you know, keep tabs on me.’
‘Blast it. Your women don’t half choose their moments.’
‘You’re not wrong about that.’
‘She’s not going to come here though, is she?’
‘Oh no, that wouldn’t be like her. And even if she did decide to, I worked it out: it would take her at least thirteen hours to get here from London. No, what’s really bothering me is that she’ll call, you can bet on that. Probably not every day or anything, but it wouldn’t surprise me if her mother had asked her to call once a week. Think about it, if I don’t pick up the phone once or twice, all hell will break loose, and Françoise will come haring back from her Peruvian mountains. Just imagine what’ll happen if they can’t get hold of me for almost two months!’
‘We should have seen this coming,’ growled Charles, barely concealing his annoyance. ‘It was too good to be true that your daughter decided to disappear off to the middle of nowhere for two months, no phone calls or anything. I could barely believe it, to be quite honest. I guess we just forgot she had her daughter up her sleeve.’
They had spent many hours discussing George’s only daughter, Françoise. The woman who, since her divorce and the death of her mother five years earlier, had not let her father alone even for a moment, the woman who – rightly or wrongly – believed her father to be seriously ill, had suddenly decided to fly off to the depths of the Andes to take part in an endurance expedition. This in itself was not surprising as she was always signing up for marathons, treks and other such activities favoured by the moneyed classes. But on every trip, no matter the time difference, she would find a moment to call her father, every evening if she could. This time, however, she had promised two months of total radio silence. It was the chance they had been waiting