breathing, and probably even if he were not, so they shook hands on the bargain

and he set to work. It was springtime, so to save his rent money Bruno moved

into the barn with a camp bed, a sleeping bag and a camping stove, and came to

relish the briskness of his morning shower – a bucket of water from the well

poured over his head, a quick soaping, and then another bucket to rinse himself

off. It was the way he and his unit had kept clean on manoeuvres. He spent his

first days off and all his evenings clearing the old vegetable garden and

building a new fence of chicken wire to keep out the rabbits. Then, with a happy

sense of mission, he began planting potatoes, courgettes, onions, lettuce,

tomatoes and herbs.

He explored the copse of trees behind the vegetable garden and found wild

garlic. Later, in the autumn, he discovered the big brown cep mushrooms, and

under one of the white oaks he saw the darting movement of the tiny fly that

signalled the presence of truffles on his land. Below the turf that stretched

out generously to the front of his new home were hedges of raspberries and

blackcurrants, and three old and distinguished walnut trees.

By the time the electricity was connected, he had put new lathes and tiles on

the cottage roof and installed insulation. He had bought ready-made windows from

Bricomarché, making them fit by building his own wooden frames. The doorway was

of an unusual size, so he built his own door of planks and beams, and to fulfil

a longstanding fancy of his own ever since he had first seen a horse staring

curiously over a half-door in the cavalry stables at Saumur, he made the door so

that the top half could open separately, and he could lean on the sill of the

half-door inside the cottage and gaze out at his property. Michel from the

public works depot had brought up a mechanical digger to repair the old car

track, dig a hole for the septic tank and lay trenches for the pipes. Michel

stayed to help instal the electricity circuit and run cables to the barn. René

from the tennis club had put in the plumbing, and old Joe had brought his cement

mixer up the newly levelled track to help him lay a new floor, and then showed

him how to make foundations for the additions that Bruno was planning – a large

bedroom and bathroom. Without really thinking about it, Bruno assumed that

someday there would be a wife here and a family to house.

By the end of the summer, the foundations of the new wing were laid and Bruno

had moved out of the barn and into the big room of the cottage with its view

over the plateau. He could take a hot shower in his own bathroom with water from

the gas heater, fuelled by the big blue containers that Jean-Louis sold at the

garage. He had a gas cooker, a refrigerator, a sink with hot and cold running

water, wooden floors, and a very large bill at the Bricomarché that he would be

paying off with one fifth of his monthly paycheck for the next two years.

He signed the contract of sale in the Mayor’s office, the town notaire on hand

to ensure that all was legal. There was enough of his Army gratuity left to pay

the first year of property taxes and to buy a good wood-burning stove, a lamb

and a hundred litres of good Bergerac wine, and throw himself a housewarming

party. He dug the pit for the fire that would roast the lamb and borrowed the

giant fait-tout enamel pot from the tennis club to make his couscous. He added

trestle tables and benches from the rugby club, feasted all his new friends,

showed off his house and became an established man of property.

What he had not expected were the gifts. His colleagues at the Mairie had

clubbed together to buy him a washing machine, and Joe brought him a cockerel

and half a dozen hens. It seemed that every housewife in St Denis had prepared

him jars of homemade pâté or preserved vegetables and jams, salamis and

rillettes. Not a pig had been killed in St Denis over the past year but some of

it ended in Bruno’s larder. The tennis club brought him a set of cutlery and the

rugby club brought him crockery. The staff of the medical clinic gave him a

mirror for his bathroom and a cupboard with a first-aid kit that could have

equipped a small surgery. Fat Jeanne from the market gave him a mixed set of

wine and water glasses that she had picked up at the last vide-grenier jumble

sale, and even the staff at Bricomarché had donated a set of cooking pots.

Michel and the lads from the public works depot made him a gift of some old

spades and garden tools that they had managed to replace by juggling next year’s

budget. The gendarmes bought him a big radio, and the pompiers gave him a

shotgun and a hunting licence. The minimes, the children of the tennis and rugby

clubs whom he taught to play, had put together their centimes and bought him a

young apple tree, and everyone who came to his housewarming brought him a bottle

of good wine to lay down in the cellar that he and Joe had built under the new

wing.

As the night wore on, Bruno had felt compelled to take a small toast with every

one of his guests. Finally, when wine and good fellowship overcame him sometime

towards dawn, he fell asleep with his head on one of the trestle tables. The

friends who had stayed the course carried him into his house, took off his

shoes, laid him on the big new bed that René had built and covered him with the

quilt that the pompiers’ wives had sewn.

But Bruno had one more gift. It was curled up peacefully asleep on an expanse of

old newspaper, and, as Bruno rose with an aching head, it woke up and came

across to lick his feet and then scrambled up into his lap to burrow into the

warmth and gaze at its new master with intelligent and adoring eyes. This was

the Mayor’s gift, a basset hound from the litter of his own renowned hunting

dog, and Bruno decided to name him Gitane, or gypsy. But by the end of the day,

when Bruno had already come to delight in his puppy’s long, velvet ears,

outsized feet and seductive ways, it had been shortened to Gigi. For Bruno it

had been the most memorable evening of his life – his formal baptism into the

fraternity of the Commune of St Denis.

Dressed in shorts and sandals, Bruno was staking his young tomato plants when he

heard a car labouring up the track and one of the celebrants from that first

happy night came into view. But there was no cheer in Doctor Gelletreau as he

levered himself from the elderly Mercedes, patted the welcoming Gigi, and

lumbered up the path to the terrace. Bruno rinsed his hands under the garden tap

and went to welcome his unexpected guest.

‘I called at your house earlier, but there was no-one there,’ Bruno told him.

‘Yes, thanks, Bruno. I found your note on the door. We were in Périgueux, with

the lawyer and then at the police station,’ said the doctor, who had taped

Bruno’s broken ribs after a rugby game, tended his influenza and signed his

annual certificate of health after a casual glance up and down the policeman’s

healthy frame. Gelletreau was overweight and far too red in the face for

comfort, a man who ignored the sound advice he gave to his patients. With his

white hair and heavy moustache, he looked almost too old to have a teenage son

but there was a daughter even younger.

‘Any news?’ Bruno asked.

‘No, the damn fool boy is being held pending drugs charges, which the lawyer

says may not stand since he was under – er – restraint when the police arrived.’