A Good Year by Peter Mayle

Nathalie for not coming more often as he waved to a waiter to bring wine. He recommended the
plat du jour
with the passionate enthusiasm of a man who was worried that he might have bought too much of it, and wished them a pleasant lunch.
    The wine arrived in a thick carafe beaded with moisture, an irresistible sight on a thirsty day. Max poured, and they touched glasses, a small politeness that, with Nathalie, he found oddly intimate. Like most Englishmen, he was accustomed to drinkers keeping their distance from one another, with only an impersonal, mumbled “cheers” before the first sip.
    “So?” Nathalie had pushed her sunglasses up into her hair, her fine dark eyes wide and amused. “You won’t be retiring on the proceeds of the treasures in your attic?”
    “Afraid not. But thanks for bringing me. You must have had better things to do today.” The unspoken question hung in the air for a moment.
    “Max,” she said, “I think you’re fishing.”
    Max grinned. “Well, what do you usually do on weekends? Apart from motor racing?”
    “Ah.” Nathalie smiled, but refused to be drawn out. She retreated into her menu. “The lamb is always good here, and so is the salmon. They serve it with a sorrel sauce. And you should start with the
pissaladière.
”
    Max abandoned his menu and leaned back in his chair. “Fine. Anything you say.”
    Nathalie gave a dismissive wave of her fingers, as though she were batting away an insect. “Do you always do what women tell you?” She looked up, half-smiling.
    “Depends on the woman.”
    They ordered, and ate, and one carafe of wine led to another as they talked on into the afternoon, exchanging the kind of edited life histories that strangers reveal to one another on their way to friendship. Max noticed that Nathalie listened—attentively, and laughing in all the right places—much more than she spoke. But lunch had been a success, he felt; so much so that it wasn’t until they were walking back to the car that he remembered to ask if she’d had any luck in her search for a wine doctor.
    “I think so,” she said. “Didn’t I tell you? He’s supposed to be one of the top men, but he’s very busy.” She shrugged. “All the good ones are. If they’re not in Bordeaux, they’re in California or Chile. Anyway, his office promised me that he’d call next week.”
    They reached the car. Max stopped, putting his hand on his heart and what he hoped was a winning expression on his face. “Nathalie,” he said, “can I suggest the perfect way to end a lovely afternoon?”
    She had turned her head away, and looked back at him with a sideways, wary glance. He had so far behaved like a civilized man, but one could never tell. The English were not always what they seemed. Her eyebrows went up.
    “Let me drive.”

Nine
    This was Mr. Chen’s third visit to Bordeaux, a city he found increasingly agreeable. As on his previous visits, he was particularly taken by the elegance and human scale of the eighteenth-century buildings, which made a refreshing change from the glass and steel towers of his native Hong Kong. He admired the architectural set pieces—the Place de la Bourse, the Esplanade des Quinconces, the Grand Théâtre, the fountains and statues—and he delighted in the tranquil surface of the broad, slow-flowing Garonne. And, telling himself that there should always be a place in a man’s life for recreation, Chen had begun to appreciate some of Bordeaux’s less publicized attractions, the exotically dressed young ladies who patrolled the back streets of the old town. In fact, he was thinking of increasing his visits to two a year.
    It was in his nature to make himself well informed, and in the course of doing his homework he had discovered, among many other things, that Bordeaux was the first place in France where tennis had been played; that the novelist François Mauriac had invented “the aristocracy of the cork” to describe the multinational mix of