The French House

by Helen Fripp

  ‘When are the investigators arriving?’ she asked.

  Monsieur Moët checked his pocket watch and tapped it. ‘I’m afraid I can’t give you much time. The notary came today to inform me that they’re arriving tomorrow at two p.m. sharp.’

  ‘Then you will have my answer tomorrow morning.’

  ‘The papers will be ready.’

  ‘I don’t doubt you already have them prepared. Good afternoon.’

  As soon as she was safely inside the press at Bouzy with Xavier, Nicole collapsed.

  ‘What the fuck happened to you? I haven’t seen you like this since François…’

  ‘It’s like he’s died all over again. Xavier, can I be frank with you? You found us the day François died and you’re the only one I can tell.’

  She told him everything, about the typhoid and the rat poison, about Moët’s threats. It was such a relief. He let her speak, didn’t say a word, or show any emotion, and she was grateful for that, too. She needed a cool head when hers was exploding.

  ‘The worst thing is that Moët knows he’s right,’ she continued. ‘Doctor Moreau’s name on François’ death certificate will ruin the Ponsardin-Clicquot family name. Mentine’s school friends will shun her, and everyone in Champagne who ever wanted to stop me has been handed the perfect gift.’

  ‘You’re running this place, I just follow orders. But if you want my advice, take your lead from the vines. Buy yourself some time and pray for a miracle.’

  ‘If only it was that simple.’

  ‘You’ve got it all wrong with a sore like Moët. He likes to swagger about like he’s in charge. Underneath all that smarm, he’s no different from a prize bull. All this time you’ve been saying no, but the only way to beat him is to say yes. Louis’ name is on the contract with shares for this place, I think?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Get your lawyer to dredge up some legal bollocks saying Louis must be given a year to return. That gives you another harvest. If he doesn’t come back, you go into partnership with Moët as agreed. That way, you’ve said yes, you’ve signed one of his bloody pieces of paper and he’s off your case for over a year. Then you wait for a miracle.’ He flicked his chin at the window. ‘You’ve seen them happen year after year out there.’

  At home, Nicole poured herself a glass of champagne to steady her nerves. These grapes had grown on the eastern slopes and she could taste the sharp frosts that had come late the year she bottled it, the year that François died. The harvest had been terrible and this batch was all they could salvage. No miracles that year, but she was decided. Xavier’s advice was good. Delay the deal until harvest the following year, 1811. Plant the seeds, nurture the vines, do everything in your power to make things grow, and pray.

  Chapter 16

  Needs Must

  March 1810

  Did the smell of shit vary from town to town, like terroir? Nicole pressed a handkerchief to her nose to block plagues, but nothing could disguise the sickly-sweet stench of the open sewer.

  Moët had agreed to her terms. If Louis didn’t return by the 1811 harvest in over a year’s time, they would become partners, an eighty–twenty split in his favour. The death certificate was safe until next year, and Xavier was right: Moët just needed a yes from her to keep him quiet for now. That didn’t solve her immediate problems, though. In two weeks’ time she would need to pay the wages, and the supplier invoices were piling up at an alarming rate.

  She’d accepted Monsieur Moët’s offer to pay her bottle supplier. He’d insisted, so that when their deal matured and he took over the business next year, he could be sure the bottles were good quality – another yes to reassure him, and one she couldn’t really refuse in her straitened circumstances. It was one bill paid at least.

  Nicole fingered her most precious possession in the velvet pouch in her pocket. The last thing of value she had, her gift from François, and the only thing she’d sworn not to sell for the sake of the business. But she had no intention of waiting for Xavier’s miracle. She’d make her own while she still had time.

  She focused on the three grubby balls of the pawnbroker sign down the street and pressed on, past the red-cheeked laundry women shaking out their washing and cackling at a private joke, past the men catcalling and playing cards together outside the café. Everyone except her belonged to someone.

  The pawnbroker shrugged as she untied the velvet pouch and held up the yellow diamond that was the firefly’s body. Even in the dim light, the sun sliced it into prisms. The last thing François had given her, and the most valuable.

  The man picked it up and peered through his loupe, holding it up to the window. Dust swirled in the yellow light of the window. Worn jewellery, silverware and treasures were piled haphazardly in display cases.

  He placed the diamond on his scales, counterbalancing it with weights.

  Nicole narrowed her eyes. ‘It’s two carats. Those weights are wrong.’

  ‘Nine hundred francs. Not a sou more, Madame.’

  Nicole snatched it off the scale and wrapped it back in the velvet pouch. ‘I do business on honest terms. Weigh it honestly and pay fairly.’

  The man shrugged again. ‘I have mouths to feed as, I suspect, do you. It’s up to you.’

  He was right, she had mouths to feed – he’d never imagine how many. Hundreds of employees and suppliers queued up in her head, hands outstretched. She unwrapped the necklace and admired it in the palm of her hand, the gold warming to her touch for one last time.

  ‘Promise I won’t be followed with the cash in my pocket and I’ll take your price. I’d rather be robbed in here than on the streets.’

  He didn’t take his eyes off the velvet package. ‘You have my protection, Madame. I guarantee it.’

  Nicole counted the cash twice, folded the money into a leather wallet and pushed it deep into her pocket. Enough to buy another year, until Moët’s deadline.

  ‘Give me six months,’ she said. ‘I’ll buy it back for more than anyone else can pay.’

  ‘I’d be rich if I had a franc for everyone who says that. I don’t expect we’ll meet again.’

  Chapter 17

  Luck from the Skies

  March 1811

  Everyone knew that the first March full moon gave rise to a tide of bubbles and it sent all the vintners rushing to their cellars, including Nicole. Napoléon and his Austrian wife Marie-Louise had at last given birth to a boy, but that didn’t stop his designs on the domination of Europe. His new son was to be crowned King of Rome and rumours of alliances to the advantage or detriment of the nation flew like forest fires around France. The war blighted all of their lives. In Reims, the wine sales that depended on European and Russian trade was still dead.

  It was five months since her harvest was successfully brought in, laid down in Moët’s paid-for bottles last October, the 1810 vintage. She had high hopes for that at least. The harvest had been perfect, and after four years, Madame Olivier and Mademoiselle Var had proved invaluable, her own women’s tasting committee. When the men’s tasting committee made sure year after year that the Clicquot blends would be last on their list, giving everyone in the region a competitive advantage over her, she just smiled and wished them well.

  One of Nicole’s favourite pastimes was to tell her fellow vintners of her women’s tasting committee and see the barely supressed snorts of derision and hopeless shrugs on her behalf, whilst politely enquiring exactly who these females were. That their identity was top secret brought even more derision, but there was no way that Nicole could reveal Madame Olivier’s involvement to her violent husband. Whatever they thought didn’t matter. The indisputable fact was that her wines were far superior to any of her competitors’. Everyone knew that, and sometimes, at the markets, or at the feast of St Rémi, when Monsieur Moët and Monsieur Olivier were otherwise occupied, the kinder members of the committee would seek her out and tell her so, even ask her advice on the finer points of the blend or fermentation.

 
The dedication of the women’s tasting committee to the craft was unstoppable, undertaking blind tastings and studying varietals in the privacy of their own homes so as not to arouse suspicion, then swapping tips and discoveries in Natasha’s bakery on a daily basis. As a result, their instincts were honed and reliable. Nicole was still the ‘super nose’, but if she was unsure, they were ready with an informed verdict, taking pleasure in a colourful turn of phrase… There’s a north-slope dreariness to the top note… The tannins are as bitter as my granny’s recycled coffee dregs… Bright and breezy as a walk by the sea.

  They also brought her invaluable insights from her competitors. Madame Olivier was married to a stalwart of the Reims vintners’ cabal and Mademoiselle Var was so shy and retiring that no one thought for a moment to suspect espionage when she asked a pointed question about the latest goings-on with a simpering smile.

  A glimmer of light. The winter had been harsh, but the black vines had fought off the frost bravely and now, in March, Nicole fretted about the fresh little shoots and how much time she had left before Moët’s deal matured. Still no news of Louis. It was nearly five years since his arrest, and she had to believe that he was dead. She buried herself in work to stop the thought. If he was gone, he took what was left of her heart with him, and all her hopes of a legal split from Moët when the contract was due this autumn.

  All she could do was keep going.

  Nicole picked out a bottle from last year that she had marked. She had refined the blend with her committee and they agreed, all being well, this young champagne would taste of white flowers, crisp white bread and mint. She held it to a candle and smiled at the froth.

  ‘The moon has done its job,’ she whispered to it.

  She imagined Monsieur Moët’s response: ‘The second fermentation is in process. Attention to detail, meticulous care. All this talk about the moon is superstitious nonsense amongst peasants.’

  By now, she and François would be waltzing through the cellars in celebration, with the workers laughing behind their hands. All the best wines were made with love.

  Her sister was happily married and a rich housewife. Why could she not just be satisfied like her? Her parents worried about her constantly, but knew better than to try to persuade her off her course. Besides, they understood her responsibility to the business and her workers. And what about Mentine, studying hard at boarding school? Her daughter herself had asked to go to the top establishment in Paris and was showing a great appetite for learning and study. How could she just give up and teach her that a girl couldn’t have the same dreams of success as men? She just had to keep going.

  Putting the bottle back carefully, she trudged up the cellar steps, locked the door and went out into the evening to complete her lonely routine. She didn’t sleep well nowadays, so she tramped the borders of her vineyards every night, to try to walk off the worry.

  Through the vineyards, clods of clay and chalk weighed her boots and the dew wet her ankles as she hitched up her skirts to walk the familiar chalky paths. She paced until the lights of the press and cellar were no longer visible and she was surrounded by vines. When she reached the roofless shelter, she lay on the ground to watch the stars. The earth was cool on the back of her neck, gritty in her hair. She smoothed her hands over the sticky, pale soil and looked up at the velvet sky.

  A shooting star crossed, just above the horizon, and she waited for it to shatter and die before she made a wish. The thing kept going. She stared at it, so long her limbs stiffened with cold. It stayed hovering, a bright sphere with a tail, fizzing away. She checked the constellations. All in the right place. Orion, her knight, reminded her of François, cold and brittle up there in the night sky, but undimmed. The tail was forked, and around the bright sphere was a cascade of shattered light, like a sparkling veil. The points of light rushed in a cordon of fine bubbles away from the central sphere. She imagined her ideal champagne, the first nose: orange peel, brioche, wheat, peach. The second nose: milky toffee, honey, walnut and vanilla.

  A twitch of movement in the corner of her eye drew her attention away from the skies. She glanced around to see a sackcloth in the corner moving. She froze, then crouched, ready to run. It shifted, fell sideways and revealed a filthy man barely able to sit himself up.

  ‘Wondering what the fuck that thing in the sky is?’ he said. He had wild eyes, mud-caked skin covered in sores.

  She’d know that voice anywhere. A slight German lilt, sewer mouth. Her heart soared.

  ‘Louis! You’re here, you came home. Oh, Jesus, you’re alive.’

  He was skin and bones, fragile as a chick in a nest. She wanted to hug him but she was afraid she’d hurt him.

  ‘Any chance of getting a drink and something to eat around here?’

  ‘My God, I thought I’d lost you! You’ll have a feast and vintage champagne and everything you need. What happened to you?’

  ‘I lost everything…’

  ‘You have done everything I ever needed just by coming back. I don’t care about anything else.’

  ‘It’s a comet, by the way.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘That shooting star that won’t go away. It’s a comet. The field hands will be stroking their rabbits’ feet and nailing their horseshoes the right way up. It brings omens of all kinds.’ He looked at Nicole sideways. ‘It’s brought me good luck so far.’

  ‘You can hardly even sit up; I’ll need to get you a carriage. My darling, dearest Louis, it will take too long to explain now, but no one can know you’re back, not yet, until we make a plan.’

  ‘Well, that’s no surprise. Nothing ever was straightforward with you.’

  He was trembling with cold and his voice was barely louder than a whisper. She took off her cloak and wrapped it around him. He winced at the weight on his skin.

  ‘Don’t move a muscle and don’t you dare leave my sight ever again. I’ll be back with blankets and transport and you can stay with Antoine and Claudine and you’ll get better. And listen, I want to know everything!’

  She blew him a kiss and ran back to the house, not caring about the freezing night air on her bare arms.

  She checked the horizon when she arrived at the stables. The comète was still there. So that must mean that Louis was actually back. Her champagne comet, Louis alive. She threw a saddle on Pinot and flew.

  Antoine and Claudine were attentive carers to Louis. Nicole gave them what she could for his upkeep and he was bedridden, so keeping his homecoming quiet was easy for now. He spent the first few days drifting in and out of sleep, but as the days passed and the vine shoots toughened, Louis began to tell his story.

  She visited every evening, bringing firewood so Antoine and Claudine could afford to lay a fire for him, and he talked as she lost herself in the flames and forgot her troubles for a while, lulled by Louis’ stories of hoar frosts, frozen lakes, hardships and samovars of sweet tea. Unimaginable opulence of golden rooms, duck-egg silks and Fabergé eggs as Louis’ fortunes rose and fell, until, finally, he was arrested as a spy when Russian relations with France declined.

  It was a glittering evening, he told her. Lights filled the ballroom and chandeliers flickered with hundreds of candles. Louis was talking to the lovely Tanya Kurochkin when they came for him. Two soldiers marched up and whispered in Tanya’s ear. She did nothing, just turned away from him, as did her friends and associates.

  The men had flanked him each side, accusing him of spying for the French and escorted him out so roughly that he struggled to keep his feet on the ground. No one stopped them. He didn’t even have time to stop for his new wolfskin coat – and it was the kind of weather that made icicles of your eyelashes. They roughed him into the back of a barred carriage, tapped the back with the blunt of their swords and waved goodbye.

  It was only when his eyes became accustomed to the dark, and the stench of human waste stung his nostrils, that he began to shiver. The bare stone cell they’d thrown him in was crawling with cockroaches and the wi
ndowless room stole all sense of night and day. He came to look forward to the moment when the slot was opened in the great door and a thin bowl of grey gruel was passed through. He would try to elongate these moments of human contact in his mind, make up allegiances that didn’t exist. He made the cockroaches into acquaintances, naming them for his friends. Louis described a tiny one, black and shiny, always busy, boldly leading the lines to the small spills of gruel he spared for them. That one was Babouchette. The clumsy brown one behind was Louis himself. The wayward one, always going in the opposite direction, François. Even Moët was represented, the biggest and shiniest of them, barging the others to get to the food first.

  He wrote messages in Russian with the congealed gruel to communicate with the guards. Thank you. Delicious. Hello. Then, observations… New hat? No moustache? In love? Is she beautiful? The regular guard was young, a boy really. He was nervous at first, as if Louis might bite. Eventually he began to relax and smile. Louis lived for that smile. It was the sun on his face, his rain, his nourishment, his sunrise and sunset, the stars. He lost track of time. God knows how many months or years it was.

  He had lost any sense of the years passing the day that Thérésa Tallien appeared with the guard, and he was afraid. She shone with health and the boy’s eyes glowed at her attention. The slot slid open and there she was, steely eyes narrowed, holding a candle up to light the cell.

  ‘Ah, there you are. Hiding from me in this miserable little place.’

  She nodded at the boy and the door swung open, the boy proud of his part in Thérésa’s plans.

  Louis didn’t move.

  ‘We must leave immediately.’ Thérésa held out her hand. ‘Darling, take it. We will leave here together. Move quickly now.’

  Louis turned to bid farewell to the cockroaches and Thérésa nodded in understanding.