The Caves of Périgord: A Novel

Major Manners grinning at her from the seat of an open-topped elderly Jaguar, his hair in disarray and looking boyish.
    “Am I late, Lydia?” he called.
    “No. I was early,” she said, stuffing Foot’s fat tome into her usefully large bag, a lesson she had learned from Clothilde, and walking briskly to the car. It looked red and mean and luxurious and she savored it, as Manners clambered out and walked around the beast to open the passenger door and escort her in. She felt relieved that she had chosen to wear slacks, and had a silk scarf in her bag. Convertibles were hell on hair.
    “Lunch,” he said, and drove off with a luscious mechanical growl. They went around the cathedral square, down two streets, and reversed into an embarrassingly narrow alley. He led her into a small but decently furnished restaurant called the Wolf-something, which had an impressive number of points in the extract from the Gault Millaud guide pasted proudly beside the door. A young woman with dark bags under her eyes greeted him effusively, stared coldly at Lydia, and showed them to a table by the window.
    “They say we should eat the seafood ravioli and the fish in beurre blanc,” he began. “You are looking breathtakingly lovely. Milan must suit you. Or perhaps it is Bordeaux.”
    “Or perhaps the educational value of Eleanor of Aquitaine’s cathedral balanced by Jean Moulin’s memorial,” she said coolly. “Two great French people who each in their way chose the English. A happy augury for our task, I trust. And thank you for the compliment.” She looked at his tousled hair, the odd smut from the road on his reddened face, and surveyed the denim shirt and antiquated tweed jacket. They suited him. And for the first time since she had met him, he looked younger than his age, which she had ascertained from a quick check of Debrett’s to be thirty-eight. And he was indeed divorced. “Your choice of food sounds excellent. Might I begin with a Campari and soda, please?”
    “No. When I booked the table, I asked them to prepare some champagne. I want to celebrate your arrival, and drink to the success of our venture. And thank you for coming, Lydia.”
    “Thank you for meeting me. Now, where are we? Do you have your father’s war records?”
    “Yes. And better still, I have a reply from Malrand, from the …lysée Palace itself, on the thickest notepaper you ever saw. And an invitation to have lunch with him later this week at the family place near Le Buisson. An invitation to us both.”
    “I haven’t got a thing to wear that is suitable for lunch with a head of state, let alone the President of France,” she said, as a flute of champagne was placed before her. “In fact, I’m not sure I even own anything suitable.”
    “I don’t think the ancestral jewels are called for. He called it a very informal family lunch, and suggested that I not bother to wear a tie.”
    “Worse still, Manners. Any girl can dress decently for a formal lunch. Informal ones are the very devil.”
    “The last time I was called Manners was at school. Please go on using it,” he grinned. He was looking more boyish by the minute. Boyish and merry. And still dashing. She grinned back, liking this version of him on holiday, and getting a sketchy sense of how he must have looked as a schoolboy. Emboldened, he went on. “Manners sounds much better than mister or major, and I was never all that fond of Philip.”
    Two plates of giant ravioli arrived. There were three on Lydia’s plate, two white and one black, with some overflow calimari nestling against some shredded tomatoes with white slivers of garlic peeking above, like snowfields on summer mountains. It smelled divine.
    “ Bon appétit, ” she said, and took a bite. Delicious. “The war records?”
    “Thin. He was in a Jedburgh team, one of three. Most of the Jedburgh teams were set up in the same way. One Brit, one Yank, and one Free Frenchman, who in my father’s case appears to have been Malrand,” he said, and took a forkful of his food. Silence. Evident appreciation. He had not been this attentive to his food at the Savoy Grill.
    “Jolly good grub,” he said, as Lydia continued to eat. He put down his fork and carried on talking.
    “They trained together in 1943, and dropped into France together early in 1944. The record is unclear about the date, but in French accounts Malrand is given credit for some sabotage operation against a propeller factory in February. Most of the