He has arranged his best things on the desk like a child, he realises. They are too obvious. So he scatters them artlessly around the study, as a lover would, hoping to reveal himself more slowly, hoping to impress. The Roman coins go in a glass bowl on the broad windowsill; the delicate bronze head on the mantelpiece. A couple of rare editions are shifted to the walnut side table, and the desk is freed up for the business in hand. His annotated copy of Danielsen on top of the photographs and sketches, with Z’s letters; a pile of notes to the side. Or should the pictures go on top? He tries it several ways; he cannot think straight. It will be fine, the effect of the room will be fine. Z will be impressed. He goes out through the French windows into the garden for another cigar. He leans against one of the apple trees, furred up with moss and laden with tiny green fruits. Breathing out smoke, he acknowledges the sun, the beautiful yellow light of a June evening that shows his house and garden at their scented, bewitching best. It has been a long afternoon on the longest day of the year.
They watch him waiting, and smile briefly at each other. But his nervousness affects them too, and Madame hustles little Katell back up to the dining room to check the placements again while she tastes the soup and adds a little cream, a little salt. It is delicious. She is sure of that. She knows it would not disgrace a dinner party in Paris, because she worked for his mother for many years in Paris, and was often praised. But she also knows that what is categorically delicious in one country may not be so in another. Who knows what will please this gentleman from the East? Still, they discussed the menu for days and in the end it was his decision. She has done her best.
Katell is so absorbed in the geometry of the dining table – there is something, she feels, not quite right about it – that she does not hear him come in. His sudden voice makes her judder; her face turns pink. He is pleased, however, with the table and pats her benevolently on the shoulder. She waits for a second or two in case there are further orders, prays that she will be able to understand them. But he says nothing else, and so she bobs, and disappears back to the kitchen, leaving him in her place, staring tranced at the three tall unlit candles and the interplay of white and silver.What he remembers has more colour. A deep-blue glaze on a bowl patterned with yellow and red. The pilaff piled into it, coloured and scented and spiced. The pleasure of the faint burning in the throat, like hot sun on skin. Dark faces and eyes of those waiting on, and Z’s own slender hands breaking pitta bread, passing it over. Smiling, and talking, and talking.
Z will be at least another hour, but Le Coadic should be getting here by now; his train was due at Plouaret half an hour ago. He heads out again, for the front garden this time, down past the lavender and the roses to the gate.
The click of the latch flusters them until Katell jumps up and sees that it is just the restless doctor leaving. Madame relaxes, lets slip an irreverent proverb in Breton. Katell giggles, goes back to chopping parsley, starts singing.