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malheur! – was life itself! And that cost money. The clinic had been a disastrous expenditure, eating away at his fragile resources, for a maire did not become a millionaire from his work for the community! Ah no!
    This line of anguish went on for a time. I let him tell me the story without interruption for fear we’d both lose track of my telephone; but all was well with a second glass of Ricard, and it was agreed, in very low tones as if we had been planning to blow up a bridge somewhere or demolish the mairie itself, that a little ‘gesture’ from me, towards the ailing Monsieur le Maire, slipped ‘under the table’ would be most acceptable and also go a long way to securing a machine and getting it installed in the charming little house which I would soon claim as my own.
    It was unthinkable, Maurice insisted, that a writer such as I should be without a telephone and unable to be in touch with – he hunted about for a few place names anxiously – New York? Washington? London? Moscow even! As a writer I had to be completely au fait with the world. Was that not so? I assured him that it was so and suggested a price might be written down on a piece of paper?
    This Maurice agreed to with alacrity. It saved him the acute embarrassment of having to phrase the sum, the amount due to his brother-in-law for the kindness and the amount due to
him
for bringing us together. After all, he had suggested that I rent the Simca in the first place. Hein? It would not be amiss? I sent Giles across to Claude behind the bar to get pen and paper, while Maurice went on to suggest that he had a nephew who had a friend who would both be happy to come and install the poles which would be needed to bring the line from the road. He felt that three would be quite enough, and turning slightly, so that he was screened from any possible observer, he wrote, rather laboriously I felt, some figures on the back of a beer mat which Giles had brought across, with a yellow plastic Biro.
    By the end of the session I had secured my telephone. When the instrument would be delivered was uncertain, but it was mine, for sure. The nephews and the poles and the ‘tra tra la la’ (meaning the cable or line) would be discussed, as would the price for them, as soon as he could find them and bring them all together. About this time, just as the third Ricard was being raised in a salute to the completion of the transaction, Eugène arrived and slid the menu for the evening across the little table and said he’d be back in fifteen minutes. Maurice, by this time, was sitting comfortably, his eyes slightly glazing with the Ricard consumed, the beer mat safe in his inner pocket, with my signature of acceptance for the sum indicated.
    Giles took the menu and asked what I’d like. I suggested biscuits and cheese after this essay into financial largesse. It had not been desperately immodest, but not minor either. When Eugène returned I settled for the tagliatelle and chicken livers.
    â€˜Yuck. Will I like that?’ said Giles.
    â€˜I honestly don’t know, Giles, and at this very moment I don’t terribly care. You are not going to your bed with a gut full of veal and saffron rice. You’ve been stuffing yourself the entire day. You’ll be sick.’
    â€˜I might. I jolly well might. Chicken livers! Yuck!’
    â€˜Well, we’ll find out, won’t we? It takes about seven hours to get through your system. We’ll see if you’ve been poisoned. The lavatory is at the end of your corridor. Convenient.’
    â€˜A convenient convenience,’ he said brightly, watching to see my reaction.
    I made none at all.
    Aronovich was as good as his word, coped with the cremation arrangements, and left me to get on to the very understanding Vice-Consul in Nice. I sorted out the bank, and really almost effortlessly, it would seem, James and his mortal remains were disposed of without fuss or fury. I