The Speakeasy Club is a place where people tell stories (sad, happy,
funny and, sometimes, tall) of love, of fear, of trust and of hate; in
short, their stories are about people. Those who tell them live in the
Luberon, a beautiful, rural area of southern France. At their monthly
meetings, club members of different nationalities relate their experiences
and gossip about their friends and enemies. There are fifteen tales, through
which we are guided by the club's president, Freddie Makepeace.
The Speakeasy Club is Freddie's introduction of the cast of characters
and his description of the Provencal setting in which they find themselves.
In Fathers' Day, two old soldiers, a Belgian and a German, meet for the
first time since 1944 when, at great personal cost, one had saved the life
of the other.
Love and Marriage is Freddie Makepeace's own story of how he
re-discovered love long after the death of his wife but soon came to realise
that ,apart from money, he had little to offer the woman he desired.
A Frenchman, in A Place in Aix, addresses the complex approach of his
nation to their history and to modern bureaucracy.
A local killing in Breaking Point prompts a Briton to reveal how close he
came to committing murder as a young boy at the time of the Battle of
Britain.
Bunny is a famous author who tries to hide away from the pressures of the
world in the quiet and congenial surroundings of the Speakeasy Club.
A newcomer receives a lesson in humility when relating his encounter with
The Ghost he claims to have met while walking on the Luberon.
The rich and the poor have their say in Funny Money before an enigmatic
Canadian shows the futility of seeking fortune above all else.
Can a woman who exists only in the imagination bring about somebody's
death? The bizarre story of Fancy Woman offers an answer.
Yves Montand is the nickname of an elderly Frenchman who suffered
indignity and worse because of allegations of collaboration during the war.
Only after his death is the truth is revealed.
The club holds a picnic to watch an Eclipse of the sun but the fun of the
day leads to some sober reflections on human mortality.
Armistice Day sees the spilling over of the bitterness that an American
woman maintains towards the Germans many years after the war.
In The Russian Wives, an American reveals the complications of life when
married to a girl who cannot leave Russia. The fact that she has a twin
sister is both an asset and a liability.
An old British general tells how he fought under the code name Lysander
with the French Resistance but reflects on how in-fighting between Frenchmen
came close to destroying France itself.
Peace is Freddie's acknowledgement that within the framework of the
Speakeasy Club its members show what life is really like for them and that
they are not all the contented beings one would imagine given their
comfortable life styles.
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