“Oui,” I said.
She reached out and fingered my crystals. “I love your necklaces!” she exclaimed. “So original!”
I wasn’t sure which element of Adalene’s appearance I should praise first. She was stunning—a petite, green-eyed blond with perfectly manicured nails, wearing tailored capri pants, a snug-fitting but perfectly elegant cotton shirt in a lovely shade of jade, and the most exquisite, black leather flats that, like Julien’s shoes, looked as though they had been hand tooled by some Geppetto-like person in an obscure Italian village.
“Tes chausseures!” Julien exclaimed, admiring Adalene’s feet. He obviously knew and cared about shoes. She did a pretty little spin, modeling them for him. “Magnifique!” he concluded.
“I knew you would love them,” she said, linking her arm in mine and traipsing us to the kitchen, where she plied us with homemade madeleines.
“It is not everywhere that you meet a man who knows his shoes,” she whispered to me, but loud enough for Julien to hear. Julien blushed.
I looked down at my standard two-strap, suede Birkentsocks and, for the first time in my life, doubted their aesthetic appeal. Adalene was warm and welcoming, but beside her I felt completely out of my element.
We stayed at her house for a good hour. She and Julien chattered in a mix of fast French and English, which she switched to occasionally just enough for me to cotton on to what they were talking about before the conversation flew off in an entirely new direction.
Not being able to understand and speak French reduced me to an almost infantile state. I went from being a quick-witted, competent, intelligent seventeen-year-old to someone who needed to be babied. I was humbled by how my entire personality felt buried under my lack of French.
When we took leave of Adalene, she kissed me warmly and invited me to come and visit with Julien again.
“She’s lovely,” I said to Julien as we walked home.
“She is. It will be a lucky man who marries her. She has such style, such elegance. Did you see her shoes?”
“They were exquisite.”
“You can tell all you need to know about a woman by her shoes,” Julien rhapsodized, a dreamy expression on his face. “Does she have good taste? Does she take good care of herself? Look at a woman’s shoes and you know all.”
If there was a way I could hide my Birkenstocks while walking I would have, but unfortunately it was physically impossible. My eyes were drawn down to my feet. Not only was I wearing one of the ugliest forms of footwear known to man, but my toenails were in dire need of a pedicure. Even though my suspicion had been growing since I’d arrived at the Beaupres, I knew at that moment with absolute certainty that while Julien may be someone else’s soul mate, he would never be mine. I could never pay that much attention to my footwear.
Julien followed my glance down to my feet. There was a sudden stiffening of the atmosphere around him. He wasn’t an unkind person, I knew, and I could tell he was wondering how to backpedal. I prickled with embarrassment on his behalf.
“Of course, there are always cultural differences,” he said. “One has to account for that, naturally.”
“Naturally.” I wished he could laugh at his faux pas, but his features were rigid with mortification.
I needed someone who could face such a gaffe head on, apologize, and laugh. I just had to find that person.
CHAPTER 10
By the time the third week of school rolled around, I was definitely understanding more French, enough to follow about a third of what was said in my classes and at home. Sandrine had taken me firmly under her wing. Thank God, because the boys in Sandrine’s group of friends, led by Thibault, took it upon themselves to find sly ways to trick me into saying pretty much every dirty word and expression in the French language. I wondered if this is what the Ursus members back in Victoria had in mind when they rhapsodized about “cultural interactions.”
After school that Friday, Madame Beaupre was doing errands in Beaune and came to pick me up with a big smile on her face. “How would you like to do les vendanges tomorrow?” she asked.
I was proud that I knew what the word “vendanges” meant “grape harvest.” It was all anybody in the Beaupre household or at school had been talking about for the past several days. The harvest was later than usual because of the cold spring, and everyone was impatiently waiting for it to begin.
“Really?” I said. “I’d love to!”
As we drove back to Nuits-Saint-Georges, she explained it slowly and simply in French. I was amazed that I understood the gist of what she said.
My second host family, the Girards, whose house I would be moving to in mid-December and who I had, according to Madame Beaupre, met at that Ursus dinner and winetasting lesson in Beaune, were winemakers. Their vines spanned the nearby villages of Comblachien and Corgoloin. They were beginning their wine harvest the next day and thought it would be an excellent way for me to have this quintessential Burgundian experience. It was exactly the kind of cool thing that I’d daydreamed about in my bedroom back in Canada.
I glanced out the car window where the buildings of Beaune were giving way to the vineyards. Just as we passed the sign for the village of Chorey-les-Beaune, I caught sight of wine harvesters dotting the vineyards.
“Regardez!” I pointed, barely able to contain my excitement.
“Oui. It’s started!” Madame Beaupre said, reflecting how I felt. Everyone in Burgundy talked about the grape harvest with barely contained glee, like kids looking forward to a huge ocean storm back in Victoria. The harvest was central to the life of every Burgundian, it seemed, even those like Madame Beaupre who were not directly involved with the wine trade.
I would be dropped off at the Girard’s wine domaine before dawn the next morning and would join the harvesting team for the weekend. I needed to dress warmly, Madame Beaupre told me with maternal anxiety. The vineyards were full of mud. Rain was a distinct possibility, so I needed to have some waterproof outerwear too. She could lend me some of Sophie’s.
I sat back in my seat as we passed Corgoloin, and then Premeaux-Prissey, and began to daydream. That familiar ache in my heart returned. I wondered if I’d finally meet the person I knew was out there somewhere for me. Somebody who wouldn’t draw any ironclad conclusions based on my shoes. It was possible. If so, would I know him? This question kept my mind occupied for most of the evening.
I had been brought up to be an ambitious and independent woman. I shouldn’t need a man. I felt guilty about my lurking feelings of loneliness, but I couldn’t convince my heart to pay heed to my head.
The next morning Madame woke me up, still in her silk peignoir and with rollers in her hair. I could have turned over and slept for several more hours, but forced myself to get out of bed and stagger downstairs to the bathroom and take my shower.
I dressed in jeans, a heavy cotton sweater, and running shoes. I carried a K-WAY jacket and Sophie’s grape-harvesting rain pants in my arms. Apparently the one place Burgundians could dispense with elegance was in the vineyards.
Madame emerged as I was sipping my big bowl of café au lait. She located the car keys and, with a kiss on my head, told me it was time to leave.
We headed out to the car just as the sky was beginning to turn from black to a dark shade of blue. Already there were a lot of tractors and utility vehicles on the narrow vineyard roads that Madame Beaupre had opted to use between Nuits-Saint-Georges and Corgoloin, where the family’s wine domaine was located in the center of the village.
It was intimidating, this idea of being dropped off amongst a bunch of new people. Madame told me that the wine harvesters were always made up of family members, close friends who came back every year, and hired hands, often young people who were travelling and wanted to pick up a few days’ work.
I donned my gregarious Ursus front as we entered the village, just like Clark Kent would change into his Superman costume.
Madame pulled up to park in front of an ancient stone
house attached to a large garage-like building. People of all ages, dressed in versions of what I was wearing, were mulling around the open door of the garage. They were drinking from plastic cups.
Madame took me over to a small, round man with a pleasant face, who, as it turned out, did not look entirely unfamiliar. This must be my second host father, Monsieur Girard.
“Bienvenue, Laura.” He kissed me roundly on both cheeks. “Did you come ready to cut grapes?” He spoke in slow, methodical French that was surprisingly easy to understand. Thank God for that.
“Oui.”
He handed me a pair of secateurs, big metal clippers that were slightly rusty and looked, unlike me, like this wasn’t their first harvest. I noticed almost everyone else was holding a pair. “Don’t lose these. They will be yours for the weekend.”
A woman with abundant white hairs growing out of her chin, who looked almost as ancient as the house, came by bearing a tray loaded with more plastic cups. Monsieur plucked one off and handed it to me.
“You do like wine as I recall,” he said.
Merde. Monsieur Girard must have heard my tipsy speech at the Ursus meeting…
My eyes darted to his face and I was relieved to see he was smiling, not angry.
“Oui,” I answered.
“This is our white aligoté,” he said. “Those will be the first vines we harvest this morning.”
Somebody shouted, and a noisy tractor pulled up in front of the crowd. “Hop on!” Monsieur told me. “It will take you to the vineyards.”
I hopped on, coughing from the gray diesel fumes that bellowed out the back. The tractor did not contain anything as pedestrian as seatbelts, or even, it seemed, any more than two seats at the very front. One of these was for the driver, who happened to be an extremely handsome young man with chestnut curls and huge dark eyes with lashes that I felt were unfairly bestowed on a guy.
I ended up standing on the ledge of the door at the front of the tractor, clinging for dear life. I seemed precariously high off the ground. I jammed my secateurs into my back pocket and clung on to my plastic glass of wine with one hand and the frame of the tractor with the other.
Once we got going, I realized that, although the tractor lurched and hopped along the pitted vineyard paths, it didn’t go very fast. I felt slightly more at ease and glanced behind me. There was a wooden trailer attached to the back of the machine where most of the other harvesters sat. Beginner’s mistake. I would sit there on my way back.
The tractor lurched up to a patch of vineyards on the upwards slope of the Nationale road, just outside the village limits of Premeaux-Prissey. A grizzled man who must have been pushing sixty-five and who, had he been dressed in military garb, could have passed for a general in a World War II movie, gave me a large plastic bucket with a metal handle. He led me to a section of the vines and shouted a set of instructions at me in staccato French. I didn’t understand much but…how complicated could it be? I needed to snip off the bunches of grapes. I could handle that.
I began, and within seconds the General was beside me again and motioned at me to kneel down. I studied the ground… It was muddy.
I knelt. Luckily as a coastal girl I was not intimidated by a bit of mud. It squelched under the denim covering my knees. Maybe I should have sacrificed vanity and put on Sophie’s rain pants after all. I had left them, as well as my change of clothes, back at the domaine.
The General put his face so close to mine that I got an excellent view of his patchy, white facial hair. He demonstrated exactly how to snip the bunches of grapes. Apparently there was a very specific spot on the vine that allowed for maximum grapes and a minimum of green vines. I nodded and said a few enthusiastic oui’s!
He grunted and stalked off to berate someone else.
I began snipping the grapes of the vines. The clusters were different from any grapes I had ever seen in the supermarket. They were fat and fit together so snugly that I almost couldn’t distinguish most of the individual grapes.
The first few landed in my basket with a satisfying thump, and quickly my basket was half full, then completely full. Just when I was going to stand up to stretch my legs and figure out where to empty it, a strapping young man with a large, white, inverted plastic cone strapped to his back like a backpack came down the row. He stopped beside me.
“Bon travail,” he said. Nice work.
“Merci,” I answered, standing up with my basket.
“Ah. You are the Canadienne?” he said, in English.
“You could tell from my merci? I thought I was pronouncing it better.”
“Still a slight accent,” he said. “But it’s charming.”
“Charming? I’d rather be able to pass for French.” I said honestly.
“Give it time. I’m Florian. I’m from Switzerland. Nice to meet you.” He stuck out his hand.
“Laura.” I wiped mine off on my jeans and shook his. “You guessed right. I’m from Canada. The English-speaking part, obviously.”
Florian had white-blond hair and looked like he had been brought up exactly like Heidi, on fresh milk and huge wheels of cheese made from cows that roamed the green pastures of the Alps.
He leaned forward and gave me les bises. I was surprised. I had never had a handshake and les bises. I blushed.
To cover up my awkwardness, I lifted up my basket of grapes. “What should I do with these now?
He turned around so that the cone he carried on his back was turned towards me. “Pour them in here,” he instructed. “Gently. We don’t want to bruise the precious grapes.”
When he turned back, he was giving me a sly smile. He was flirting with me. I couldn’t believe it. Here I was, flirting with a cute Swiss guy in the middle of the grape vines during the grape harvest in France.
Someone else tapped me on my back. I turned to find a young boy who looked around twelve. He thrust a bottle in my hand. It was a bottle of white wine, unlabeled, and chilled in the cool morning air.
I gestured with the bottle to my new Swiss friend. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
Florian laughed. “Drink from it, of course. You will find there are bottles of wine passed up and down the rows all the time. It wouldn’t do to let the harvesters go thirsty, you know. They wouldn’t come back the following year.”
I took a swig. It was the same delicious white wine I had sipped from the plastic cup before leaving the Girard’s domaine. I passed the bottle to Florian then wondered if I should have wiped the neck off with a bit of my clothing first to clean it. I looked down. I was absolutely covered in mud. A patch of clean clothing would be challenging to find.
Florian accepted it and, without taking his eyes off me, took a deep drink. “Ah!” he said. “That was particularly good.” We stood staring at each other.
Just then the General started yelling something about “fait-neantes” and “AU BOULOT!” in our direction.
Florian winked at me. “That was for us. Back to work. I’ll save you a seat at lunch though. Would that be all right?”
“That would be great,” I said.
I nestled down again, further down the row of vines, and happily snipped off grapes.
My back was soon cramping from being bent over in an awkward position for so long, as were my thighs and my knees, but I was so caught up in daydreams of Florian the Swiss Grape Harvester that I barely noticed.
I didn’t feel my soul reverberating, but I was flattered and a bit thrilled. That was a start, wasn’t it? I needed to be open-minded, I thought to myself.
I had never been particularly attracted to blond men. I’d always found them bland, a bit like the plastic Ken dolls I’d played with as a child. Or maybe it was that I knew for a fact I was no Barbie and never would be. Don’t get so ahead of yourself, as usual.
A cowbell rang out over the vines and we were all summoned to a white utility van where slices of baguette with different types of paté were available for a mid- morning snack. I ate several, as I was already s
tarving. Florian also took a few, then stood talking with a group of male harvesters. He did catch my eye though, and winked at me again.
Florian was very…wholesome. It wasn’t that I went for crack addicts or Hell’s Angels biker gang types, but I did like a guy to have a bit of an edge.
All these thoughts and conjectures swirled through my mind as I sat back down after the snack to snip many, many more clusters of grapes.
Florian wasn’t sent to my row again to pick them up. The General must have assigned him elsewhere.
Bottles of wine, first white and then red, kept being passed to me as I worked, and I took a swig out of every one until the sky started spinning. There was no water, and the work made me thirsty.
The smell of the earth in Burgundy was completely different than back home. Here it had a mineral scent, overlaid by the smell of decomposing leaves. My stomach began to rumble again.
Finally the tractor engines began to rev up and somebody rang the cowbell. Lunch! We all took our buckets over to the tractor that was hauling the grapes and dumped them in the back. Florian appeared beside me. “Don’t forget about sitting together at lunch.”
I shook my head. “I won’t.” Even if Florian didn’t have that Han Solo edge that I always appreciated in a man, I was seventeen and far away from home for the first time in my life—what was wrong with having a little fun?
Florian then lifted himself, in a notable display of arm muscles, up onto the wooden rail that surrounded the trailer piled high with grapes. I couldn’t decide which was more impressive, Florian’s biceps or the mound of grapes.
To think all those clusters would be squeezed to make delectable wine… During the previous few hours, I’d gained an entirely new appreciation for wine and the work that went into making each bottle. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to drink it again without remembering the feel of my knees squishing into the Burgundian mud.
I found a spot in the back of the white utility van where fifteen or so of us harvesters had piled in. Seatbelts didn’t appear to be a high priority for the French at the best of times, but during the grape harvest, road safety rules seemed to be abandoned in their entirety.
My Grape Year: (The Grape Series #1) Page 8
