In the Michelin guide, Bargemon-sur-Yves was indeed in the Var, some 900 kilometres from Paris. It had one small hotel, La Maison Blanche, with a rocking-chair indicating peaceful surroundings and no marks for cooking. It had eight rooms. There were two restaurants, Chez Titin and Le Sporting, a garage for Renault; the hotel and Chez Titin were closed from November until December. That was all.

As far as the guide was concerned, that is to say. But seeing the village in the warmer southern afternoon sun a few weeks later, I realized, in a way, why James had chosen the place. A small village strung neatly along the base of an immense line of jagged limestone cliffs, probably mountain high, certainly bare towards the tops, scrub and thorn at the base. The church stuck up like a warning finger, a shallow pointed roof, four rows of arches in the belfry. Around it lay the village; clustered tightly, chicks about a hen, it had spread to east and west as the years had gone by, but in general it was dominated by the huge cliffs behind and the tall, ochre brick and stone tower of the church.

La Maison Blanche was small, comfortable, unpretentious, and stood across the square from the church.

A little terrace, three concrete pots with laurel and a dusty cypress, a sagging, sun-faded blind, a scatter of battered tables and chairs, a wooden figure of a chef holding the day’s menu, a drawing-pin through his pink, upheld hand. The paint had scabbed from his face, but the menu, in violet ink, immaculately written, was attractive, if simple.

Yes, there was a free room, not very much commerce so early in the year: late April was not a favourite time for tourists, the evenings were too cold yet at this height. A room over the square? Or perhaps at the back? It would be quieter.

From my window I looked down on to a small garden, a line of table napkins drying on a long line, fluttering like a ship dressed all over at a regatta. Two big lime trees breaking bud, a row of bushes, obviously fruit, and beyond a tidy vegetable garden with rows of things growing in perfect order. A tin shed in a corner with a wire enclosure and a scrabble of chickens. A solitary, proud cockerel standing on one leg on an upturned bucket. Beyond the garden, a cluster of roofs, red-tiled, at all angles, beyond them the high cliffs rising to the clear blue sky, shading into pale apricot as the afternoon began to fade.

My room itself was pretty bare: a huge Napoleon bed in mahogany, a small table in the window, a couple of straw-bottomed chairs, a wardrobe of immense size, one lithograph of Jesus baring his heart and looking heavenwards, a smaller picture of kittens with goldfish in a bowl.