The French House

by Helen Fripp

  ‘The grapes’ll stay plump and juicy for the presses with the moisture.’

  ‘You know more than I do and you’re half my age!’

  He puffed up the way he used to when he was delivering messages on horseback. ‘I’ve grown up with it, Madame. At least until now.’

  She squeezed his arm. ‘And you’ll do it for the rest of your life while you’re working for me.’

  Emile squeezed back.

  The sun was so low that it was brick orange, bathing the fields in light. Her comet workers – as she now called them – had turned up at six o’clock sharp, as requested. They had all kept to their word and not one of them had reneged. What a glorious day! The comet was visible in the sky, even in the daytime, and the autumn morning was delicious, like blackberry jam and croissants.

  Nicole helped Emile to the vines. His mother Marie was a familiar sight now, working at the land harder than ever, even though Nicole had paid them enough to support themselves without having to. She guided her son’s hand to the donkey reins. His job was to lead the donkey under her instruction, to gather the grapes.

  Antoine was there, still signing a queue of workers and Mademoiselle Var from the secret tasting committee was running a little crèche for the children of the women who needed work. In these hard times, even grandparents were out in the field.

  Her parents rode by to offer solidarity, Papa nodding proudly to her at the sight of all this industry.

  Nicole turned back, down the chalk path, towards her ledgers, which would not please her, she knew. Any other harvest, she would be out there, tasting grapes, imagining the blend.

  Louis arrived for his shift, bouncing towards her, all energy and enthusiasm.

  ‘Audacity, sauvage. How did you get so much of it?’

  ‘Good morning, Louis.’

  ‘You persuaded these men to work for half what Moët’s offering. Everyone’s talking about it.’

  ‘They’re country people, they’re used to planting a seed and waiting for their reward.’

  ‘I thought I was the one with the gift of the gab, but this eclipses anything I might have attempted.’

  ‘I had to do it. I can’t let Moët beat me after all he’s done. It’s a special year, I can feel it. I know you think I’m a superstitious peasant and you’re right. This harvest will make us our fortune, the comet has brought a change in the air, and they feel it too. You know they’re calling it Napoléon’s comet? The war will end, we’ll lay this down, and in time, it will bring us all the luck we need.’

  ‘They know you’re one of them at heart,’ said Louis.

  ‘How’s Miss Rhinewald?’

  ‘Mrs Bohne, you mean. She’s well. Not long to go until the baby.’

  ‘I’ll still never forgive you for not inviting me to the wedding.’

  ‘How could I let you outshine the bride?’ He searched her eyes for her response.

  ‘Don’t talk to me like that, we both made our choices. I am married to my land and I’m happy.’ It could be true, on the good days, she thought.

  ‘You should have someone to share it all with.’

  ‘I’m sharing it with you, in my own way.’ If she didn’t change the subject now, she wouldn’t be able to account for her actions. She pressed on, ‘I’ve been working on an idea I’d like you to see.’

  ‘Haven’t you had enough of those for one week?’

  ‘Don’t tease me, this is serious. It’s a way of making Veuve Clicquot champagne the clearest, most effervescent on the market. Absolute clarity for every bottle and in record time.’

  ‘If you’ve done that, it’s a miracle. I’d be rich if I had a franc for every cellarman who says he can produce a flawless batch of fizz every time. They are always proved wrong. It hasn’t been solved in thousands of years. It would certainly make my job easier if I didn’t have to discount for cloudy bottles in every consignment. And it would nearly kill Moët if you succeeded! Do you ever stop?’

  ‘You know the answer to that.’

  He held her gaze, so she quickly turned and paced back to her office. Life was complicated – and lonely – enough. Her little Mentine would be home from her Paris boarding school at Christmas and the two of them were a family, however small. Eleven years old now, her little rosebud growing into a rose. In looks, Mentine was more like her aunt than Nicole – fair, tall, conventionally pretty, all milk, roses and almonds. But her joie de vivre, love of poetry and social justice were so like François at his best, and she was becoming a delightful companion.

  Nicole opened her ledgers and her head was so deep in her books that she didn’t hear the door open. At first, she thought she was seeing things. Standing there, cool and glamorous and beautiful as ever was Thérésa. Nicole collapsed into her friend’s arms.

  ‘You nearly scared me to death. How do you do that, sneak up anywhere you please?’

  ‘Come here, no need for tears.’ Thérésa dried her cheeks with her dress. ‘I rescued your charming salesman and sent him back to you. Where is he? How could he leave you on your own like this?’

  ‘He’s at home with his pregnant wife.’

  ‘How careless of you to let him slip through your fingers. Really, I don’t understand why you don’t make use of the opportunities widowhood offers at such a young age.’

  Nicole laughed and shook her head.

  ‘That’s better, now stop being so serious. Well, more fool you, he was in love with you once. I suppose you feel you still have to work for your living?’

  ‘You know it’s what keeps me alive, Thérésa. You deal in men, I in bottles.’

  ‘You are fooling yourself if you think that. You have every man here wrapped around your little finger. I heard about your “tasting” in the bar. You think they signed up for your talents? No. Men are the same everywhere, even in this backwater. Everyone here is a little in love with you, darling. No one can resist drawing near to a firefly and watching as it buzzes about.’

  Her delight at seeing Thérésa clouded for a moment as she remembered her pawned firefly necklace. She banished the thought as soon as it appeared, a skill she had developed since François, essential for survival.

  ‘If only that was true of Moët. I’m sure he’d actually kill me if he could find a way of doing it and stay respectable.’

  ‘You’ve challenged the richest and most powerful man within a hundred miles. What do you expect?’

  Nicole scrutinised Thérésa. She recognised the steel, the beguiling flattery like the finest vintage champagne – exciting and rare. A happy accident of white skin, perfect teeth, hair black as liquorice, a talent for flouting rules and being loved for it.

  ‘You’re looking at me in that way again. You won’t find anything more than complete frivolity.’

  ‘I see bravery, served up with sugar to try to fool me,’ replied Nicole. Hurt skimmed Thérésa’s face, chased by her dazzling smile. ‘It seems business is not so good for you either. Where is your latest conquest?’

  ‘I need a rest between the buffoons and a country retreat is just the thing. Marie Antoinette had the Petit Trianon, I have your little world full of grapes and field hands. You don’t begrudge me a bit of fun?’

  ‘I could never thank you enough for all you have done for me.’

  Thérésa clapped her hands. ‘I knew you had a soul under that tough exterior.’

  ‘And I know you have a way of deflecting attention away from yourself when things are bad. Why are you here?’

  ‘I need to lie low for a while. Things have got a little… awkward in Paris. You know how hot-headed men can be, especially when they’re regarded as important and my current husband has a very high opinion of himself. I was hoping you could get your friend Monsieur Moët to have a whisper in Napoléon’s ear, but you’ve completely ruined that for me now. It’s been over a year since Joséphine was cast aside for that plate-of-whey Marie-Louise. These aristocrats really are inbred. She has the blood, but absolutely nothing else. God completely overlo
oked her for wit, looks or personality, poor thing. Joséphine’s fall from grace has included me and while I’m financially secure – I haven’t been foolish enough to give myself to several marriages without ensuring mine and my children’s welfare – life is so dull without invitations and salons and being in the thick of things. Like you without your vineyards, I’m a flower without water.’

  ‘What are you hiding from?’ asked Nicole.

  ‘What does any self-respecting grown-up ever hide from? Scandal, of course. My husband and his friends are such prudes.’

  ‘You can stay as long as you like – I won’t ask for details, and you are welcome, though you’ll find my country life dull.’

  ‘Oh, don’t you worry about me, I can amuse myself. The men here may be a little gauche, but I’m a good teacher. I might even work on Moët myself.’

  Nicole grasped Thérésa’s hand – surprisingly cold – and squeezed it. ‘The truth is, I will be glad of the company.’

  ‘I refuse to stay without paying my way. What would it take to satisfactorily lay down your vintage comet champagne?’

  ‘How do you even know about that?’

  ‘You spend too much time with your head in your ledgers and mooning over grapes. The talk in this town is of nothing else. I have only been here for one day and I know all about it. A beautiful woman – don’t shake your head, darling, it’s a fact – a beautiful woman, alone in this godforsaken village, obsessing about wine, luring men out of bars to work for her, secret shipments, miraculous comets… from what I hear of François, he would have been proud – now you look like you want to cry again. Don’t do that, it makes you blotchy.’

  ‘I can’t take a sou.’

  ‘You most certainly will. It’s purely business. I’ll invest in you, show the whole of Paris and take all the credit. Don’t you try to stop me. Napoléon wants to conquer the world, but he will never, ever conquer me. I want it for the same reason as you, darling. Freedom from men, respectability. To be above the rules, like you.’

  As always, it was impossible to resist her beautiful friend. And why would she? They would both benefit, and she would have the added bonus of her company for as long as she cared to give it, which was all you could ever expect from a capricious goddess.

  ‘Let’s get you settled. Josette can make your room up and I’ll ask Antoine and Xavier to stay here and keep an eye on the workers.’

  ‘The faithful retainers? It seems I still have a lot to learn from you, my lady of Reims.’

  ‘Loyalty is all I have left at the moment and yours is more valuable to me than anyone’s.’

  Of course country life wasn’t dull for Thérésa. She employed Claudine to make her peasant dresses out of the best silk the dress shop could supply and wafted around, chattering to milkmaids, chewing on clover, picking autumn flowers from the hedgerows and threading them through her hair.

  Her target was Moët. If anyone in the world could distract Moët from her destruction, it was Thérésa. Every day, she strolled the borders where the Clicquot and Moët vineyards met, pretending to inspect the vines on Nicole’s behalf.

  While Thérésa was out playing the country maid, Nicole hacked away at her makeshift invention in the cellar, with borrowed tools from Antoine, a feverish idea she’d had from her years of experimenting with the riddling bottles in the sand.

  The kitchen table she had sacrificed for the purpose was old and solid, made of local oak and big enough for sixty bottles. As she made the holes with a bradawl, the wood released its scent of sap and sawdust.

  Josette knocked on the door and Nicole tutted. She had given strict instructions – no one was allowed in the kitchen cellar.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Monsieur Bohne is here, Madame. I thought perhaps you might make an exception.’

  Of course, for Louis.

  ‘Send him in.’

  Louis bowed. ‘I am honoured to be admitted to your top-secret activities.’

  ‘You should be.’

  ‘What are you doing? Josette says you’ve been down here for days.’

  Nicole held up the lamp to illuminate the old kitchen table with four neat rows of champagne bottles upturned, a total of sixty bottles. In her frenzy to make her invention real, she had scattered wood shavings everywhere and the tabletop was pocked with failed attempts, but the diagonal holes were exactly as she wanted them. The old table had taken a battering, but it worked. All the years of trying to make it work for François, trying to solve the problem that had eluded vintners down the ages. Just a few adjustments and efficiencies and voilà! All she’d really had to do was believe that she could do it.

  ‘You’re moving from viticulture to woodwork?’ Louis asked, perplexed.

  ‘It solves everything!’

  ‘I know that look. You have a big scheme that will embarrass your father, give the village endless gossip and me more reason to worry about you than ever. What are you planning with that battered old thing?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter how it looks, Louis! It’s the answer to all our problems!’

  ‘We both have a lot more problems than a butchered kitchen table can solve,’ said Louis softly.

  ‘I mean the sediment problem! Times are hard, and it takes months for a skilled cellarman to reach your standards of clarity when it comes to champagne. How many times have you told me not to send you cloudy bottles?’

  Louis counted on his fingers, and ran out of them very quickly. ‘A lot more than I can show you this way,’ he laughed.

  ‘I’ve solved it, Louis! No more laying out in sand and hoping for the best with inexact positions and waiting for the sediment to travel to the cork instead of sticking to the bottom and sides. No more transferring from one bottle to another and losing all the fizz, and some of the precious wine, never mind taking up the time of my best cellarmen. And no more “clarifiers” from spurious sources.’

  She took a bottle out, very gingerly so as not to disturb her work and held it up to the lantern.

  ‘Look. The sediment is near the cork, ready to slip out without disturbing my bubbles.’

  Nicole removed the staple, placed her thumb over the cork and felt the pressure, searched for the air bubble separating the sediment and wine. Just right, ready to go. A deft flick of the cap and the sediment shot out, leaving the champagne intact. She quickly replaced the cork and showed the champagne to Louis.

  ‘Look! Clear as a diamond, and nothing lost. It takes less time for the sediment to travel to the cork, and reduces the labour time, too. The processing time for everything is halved!’

  ‘Bloody genius!’ Louis took the bottle and held it up to the light again. ‘Clear as a sunbeam. My God, the weeks of labour for each bottle it’ll save…’ He inspected it upside down, then upright again.

  ‘It’s really simple. A few efficiencies and improvements to an age-old technique and I’ll save thousands of labour hours. Look.’

  Nicole dragged over the sandbox she’d hidden over six years ago, the day François had died, and demonstrated. She bent over, picked up two bottles, stood up to shake them a little, then knelt back down to place them in the sand. Then, at her riddling table, she showed Louis the same process with her new invention. Standing at her table with all the bottles in front of her at waist height, she shook and turned a whole row of fifteen in the time it had just taken her to do the same with the two in the sandbox. Then, her pièce de resistance. She held up the neck of the bottle to Louis, ready to burst with excitement.

  ‘Four chalk marks?’ He was unimpressed.

  ‘Yes! It’s obvious! When I put the bottles back in the sand, it’s never accurate and the sediment has to move again if I get the angle even half a centimetre wrong, which delays the process even further. With my riddling table, all the cellar workers need to do is to line the chalk mark back up and voilà. With this, I can turn thirty-five thousand bottles in a day, with practice. Each turn and the sediment travels a little further towards the cork. It’s ridiculou
sly simple, like all the best ideas, but it works. It’s really just an exercise in time and motion, like I’ve seen in Papa’s woollen mills.’

  ‘Fifteen thousand bottles a day for mere mortals, and thirty-five thousand for you no doubt! Nevertheless, the advantage over all our competitors, thousands of flawless bottles turned in a fraction of the time, with half the labour. You’ve done it, Babouchette… all the sacrifices and gambles!’

  She bowed and he applauded.

  ‘Even with this, how will you manage to keep going? It will still be a long time before you can get the money in. The markets are still dead, even with thousands of bottles of flawless champagne laid down.’

  ‘I don’t know, but I’m doing this for us, Louis. For your family, for mine, for all the workers who belong here. I’m also doing it for me. I want to be first, the best.’

  ‘You always have been.’

  ‘I want to be the best in the world’s eyes. Not just Reims, not even just France. This is our secret, Louis. Antoine knows about it too. We will pay the workers to keep quiet and only a select few will be allowed to work the champagne cellars. No one else must know about it. I’ll lay down my comet champagne on my new racks and wait. The war will be over one day.’

  ‘You can’t afford to wait; Veuve Clicquot et Compagnie is on its knees.’

  ‘My new lodger is making an investment,’ said Nicole.

  Louis held his head in his hands. ‘Ah, the fairy godmother, La Tallien, with her ill-gotten gains.’

  ‘The very one. And the more ill-gotten, the better, as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘She’s a wonderful woman, but trouble is never far away when she’s around. Please tread carefully.’

  Chapter 21

  Rich Woman, Thief

  September 1813

  Thérésa’s house in Reims was the scandal of the town, but she was more than tolerated for her outrageous behaviour. These were austere times and she brought colour wherever she went. In Champagne, the shops were badly stocked. Napoléon had invaded Russia. His war ate up fresh young conscripts and spat them out maimed and broken. The returned were the lucky ones. Parents who had seen poverty take their loved ones as children before the revolution now saw their own children taken by war. Thérésa was a welcome distraction, their outrageous, glamourous local célébrée. She could dangle the great Napoléon from her little finger if she saw fit, bring mighty generals to their knees and, more practically, put in a good word for ambitious sons.