Black Diamond

night, and our thanks to you all, and
Vive la France
.”
    “Councillor Bruno.” Fabiola sniffed. “I think I prefer you as chief of police. Just to keep you in your place.”

12
    Bruno woke in his own bed and alone. Back at Pamela’s home after the meeting, he and Pamela and Fabiola were invited to share the chicken Pamela had left slowly roasting on a bed of potatoes and garlic. Bruno had opened a bottle of his Pomerol. Fabiola set the table in the kitchen, and Pamela opened a large can of
petits pois
.
    “I hope you don’t mind, but I’m feeling drained after that event and I’d rather eat at once than wait for some vegetables to be cooked. I think I was pretty tired anyway.” She yawned.
    Bruno decided to play it by ear, but he’d probably leave after the meal. He stayed the night here often enough to know where everything was, so he pulled down the decanter from the top shelf and went to the sink to pour the wine. It should have been opened a couple of hours earlier, but the decanting would have to serve. Fabiola sliced a baguette and arranged a cheese tray. Nobody was speaking and the silence was starting to become oppressive when they all spoke at once.
    “Did you hear…,” began Bruno. “Sorry…,” said Pamela. “I meant to say…,” said Fabiola. “Go ahead, Pamela,” said Bruno.
    “I’ll just get the chicken,” Pamela said. “I was just going to ask what you two thought about this idea of Bill’s about my going on the council. He mentioned it to me just before he spoke publicly. I think you’d do a better job, Bruno.”
    “I can’t do it, and I think he probably knows that,” Bruno replied as the steaming pot came from the oven. He sniffed deeply, savoring the scents of garlic and chicken and lemon. “I’m employed by the mayor and the council. So I couldn’t be in charge of myself, it’s against the rules. I think you’d be good on the council.”
    “They still talk of me as the Mad Englishwoman, don’t they?” She put the pot in the center of the table.
    “That was before they got to know you,” Bruno said. “Country people always invent a nickname for strangers. It’s a way of placing them when you don’t know their parents and grandparents and how they looked when they were babies. Now everybody knows you as Pamela.”
    “Would it be a lot of work?” she asked.
    “It’s usually one evening every other week for the council meeting, more in the week when the budget gets approved,” Bruno replied. “But you’d have to be available to your voters. In your case, that would mean the other foreigners here, and some of them don’t speak much French. You might find yourself acting as an unpaid translator and a guide through the thickets of our French bureaucracy. And then it would depend on which committee they put you on. Avoid the
ponts et chaussées
committee or every farmer will be badgering you to make his cart track into a commune road so that the town has to pay for the upkeep.”
    “It’s flattering just to be considered,” said Fabiola as Bruno poured the wine.
    Pamela had seemed distracted, picking at her food ratherthan dispatching it with her usual appetite. But she drank as much wine as the other two together. After the chicken, Bruno took a small sliver of the Tomme d’Audrix, the local cheese that his friend Stéphane had invented, and a final swallow of wine. Then he rose, pleading an early start in the morning and a busy day and pretending not to notice the brief frown that passed across Pamela’s face.
    “Don’t be upset,” Fabiola had said as she walked him to the Land Rover. “She’s a bit confused and distracted. A friend of hers in Le Buisson saw you with some old girlfriend at the station yesterday evening. You know how word gets around.”
    Bruno replayed the scene in his head as he lay in the dark of his bedroom. There had been no time at the station for anything more than a brief peck on Isabelle’s cheek as she dashed for the waiting train. He’d always nurture a sweet
tendresse
for Isabelle, but she had made it clear the last time they’d parted that any romance was over. Bruno smiled to himself, remembering the look of her beside him in this bed, the scent she left on the pillows, the way she liked to wear his shirts as a dressing gown.
    He opened his eyes and looked at the darkness of the woods through the window. The worst thing about winter was that dawn came so late he always rose in the dark. At least the house was