“So this is The Table,” they’d say, walking around it and running their fingers over the surface as if it was one of Henry Moore’s best efforts. It was a very curious sensation to have ourselves, our dogs (who loved it), and our house inspected with such interest. And, I suppose inevitably, there were times when it wasn’t curious but irritating, when a visit felt more like an invasion.
Unseen by us one afternoon when the temperature was over 100 degrees, the husband, the wife, and the wife’s friend, noses and knees sunburned to a matching angry red, had parked at the end of the drive and walked up to the house. The dogs were asleep and hadn’t heard them. When I went indoors to get a beer, I found them in the sitting room, chatting to each other as they examined the books and the furniture. I was startled. They weren’t.
“Ah, there you are,” said the husband. “We read the bits in the Sunday Times, so we decided to pop in.”
That was it. No excuses, no hint of awkwardness, no thought that I might not be thrilled to see them. They didn’t even have a copy of the book. Waiting for the paperback to come out, they said. Hardcover books are so expensive these days. They oozed an unfortunate mixture of familiarity and condescension.
It is not often that I take against people on sight, but I took against them. I asked them to leave.
The husband’s red wattles turned even redder, and he puffed up like an aggrieved turkey who had just been told the bad news about Christmas.
“But we’ve driven all the way over from Saint-Remy.” I asked him to drive all the way back, and they left in a cloud of muttering. That’s one book we won’t be buying, only wanted to look, anyone would think it was Buckingham Palace.
I watched them march down the drive to their Volvo, shoulders rigid with indignation, and thought about getting a Rottweiler.
After that, the sight of a car slowing down and stopping on the road in front of the house was the signal for what came to be known as a crawler alert. “Make yourself decent,” my wife would say, “I think they’re coming up the drive. No—they’ve stopped at the mailbox.” And later on, when I went down to collect the post, there was a copy of the book in a plastic bag, to be signed and left under a stone on top of the well. The next day it was gone; taken, I hoped, by the considerate people who had delivered it without wanting to disturb us.
By the end of summer, we were not the only ones to have received some attention from the public. Our neighbour Faustin had been asked to autograph a book, which had puzzled him since, as he said, he was not an écrivang. When I told him that people had been reading about him in England, he took off his cap and smoothed his hair and said Ah bon? twice, sounding rather pleased.
Maurice the chef had also done his share of signing, and said he’d never had so many English customers in his restaurant. Some of them had been surprised to find that he actually existed; they thought I’d made him up. Others had arrived with copies of the book and had ordered, down to the final glass of marc, a meal that they had read about.
And then there was the celebrity plumber, Monsieur Menicucci, who drops in from time to time between his oeuvres to share with us his thoughts on politics, wild mushrooms, climatic irregularities, the prospects for the French rugby team, the genius of Mozart, and any exciting developments in the world of sanitary fittings. I gave him a copy of the book and showed him passages in which he had starred, and told him that some of our visitors had expressed a desire to meet him.
He adjusted his woollen bonnet and straightened the collar of his old check shirt. “C’est vrai?”
Yes, I said, absolutely true. His name had even appeared in the Sunday Times. Perhaps I should organize a signing session for him.
“Ah, Monsieur Peter, vous rigolez.” But I could see that he was not displeased at the idea, and he went off holding his book as carefully as if he were carrying a fragile and expensive bidet.
The voice on the other end of the phone could have come all the way from Sydney, cheerful and twangy.
“G’day. Wally Storer here, from the English Bookshop in Cannes. Plenty of Brits down here, and your book’s going nicely. How about coming along to sign a few copies one day during the Film Festival?”
I have always had doubts about the literary appetite of people in the film business. An old friend who works in Hollywood confessed that he had read one book in six years, and he was considered a borderline intellectual. If you mention Rimbaud in Bel Air it is assumed that you’re talking about Sylvester Stallone. I didn’t hold out much hope for writer’s cramp and mammoth sales. Even so, I thought it would be fun. Maybe I’d see a star, or a topless sensation on the Croisette, or—the rarest sight in town—a smiling waiter on the Carlton Hotel terrace. I said I’d be happy to come.