The Vineyards of Champagne

by Juliet Blackwell

  There was a long pause. “He sounds like a kind man.”

  “A very kind man. And a little pushy. You should meet him. I have the sense you two would get along well.”

  Emma smiled. “Are you calling me pushy because I think researching and writing this book would be a better use of your talents than sales? I just want you to be happy. Dash wouldn’t have wanted you to suffer like this, especially for his sins, would he?”

  “How am I supposed to know what Dash would have wanted?” Rosalyn snapped.

  Along with “He’s in a better place now,” this was one of the things well-meaning friends said to comfort the grief-stricken. Rosalyn found it deeply annoying, though she couldn’t put her finger on exactly why. How could she, or anyone, presume to know what Dash would have wanted? He had always said he wanted her to have a lifetime of laughter—but then he had gotten sick. And left her. And that had made laughter impossible.

  “I’m just saying you don’t owe Hugh your whole life, and if he’s half the man you suggest he is, he wouldn’t want that, either. First you lived for Dash, Rosalyn, and now for Hugh. Does that sound smart to you?”

  “You’d rather I live my life for you?”

  “Heaven forbid,” Emma chuckled. “I’m offering you an opportunity, Rosalyn. Creating a life is on you. But maybe we see this differently. What’s the expression in French? Chacun voit midi à sa porte.”

  “Meaning?”

  “‘We all see noon on our own doorstep.’ In other words, everyone sees things according to their own perspective. All I know is that in the end, no one can make you happy but you.” Emma let out a long sigh. “Anyway, I’m exhausted. I’m going to lie down.”

  “Rest well, Emma. And thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For your thoughts.”

  “It didn’t sound like you enjoyed hearing them.”

  “I didn’t. But I appreciate them. I’ll see you at dinner.”

  “After that lunch? I don’t know that I could eat another bite.”

  “Can’t skip meals in France. If I’ve learned one thing, it’s that.”

  Chapter Forty-eight

  The exchange with Emma left Rosalyn agitated. She gazed out the window, fiddling with the silver locket around her neck.

  She glanced at Émile’s letters—there were still dozens she hadn’t yet read, much less translated. But after what they had discovered about Lucie today, she didn’t have the heart to face Émile’s handwriting, to think of him in those god-awful trenches, carefully composing his thoughts and hopes and dreams for the future.

  Instead, she opened the new paint set. Sap green, Payne’s gray, Vandyke brown, turnsole red lake, burnt umber . . .

  She gazed at the pristine cream-colored walls of Chambre Chardonnay. Did she dare?

  Pietro could always paint over it.

  Without a plan or preliminary sketches, she started painting, right there on the walls. Before long, green champagne bottles took shape under her brush, their fat corks flying. She painted golden flutes of the bubbly, spattered pigment on the walls to create the impression of effervescence escaping, then added painted bunches of purple and green grapes and, just for the heck of it, a few birds flitting by. She dragged a chair over to the wall, climbed on it, and painted a loose border of grapevines just below the ceiling.

  Ever since Dash died, Rosalyn’s life had been nothing but gradations of gray. But now she felt the urge, the space, for color. Great splashes and splatters of color, washes and opaques and glazes. She wanted it all.

  She needed the beauty.

  Exhausted after hours of painting, Rosalyn sat down at her computer to e-mail Hugh. She remembered a time when the paint splatter on her hands would have bothered her, but now she enjoyed it.

  She worked on the message for a long time. What would she do if she didn’t work for Hugh? She had terrible credit and still owed money to Hugh and many others. But she had to trust herself to figure that part out; if worse came to worst, she could always go back to waiting tables, and she could pick up a second job. Right now Rosalyn knew, in her core, that she needed to make a change. She had to save herself.

  She concentrated on finding just the right words to express to Hugh all that she felt: profound gratitude for the generosity he had shown her and Dash, as a friend and a mentor, and why attending tomorrow’s festival of Saint Vincent would be her last official act as a Small Fortune wine rep.

  Somehow she doubted Hugh would be surprised.

  * * *

  The next morning, Blondine arrived early with a bag of fresh croissants, a pot of strong coffee, a cold bottle of champagne, and four colorful costumes.

  “I have one for you, me, and Emma, and Dominique will come here to dress as well. It’s more fun that way. I hope they fit. . . .”

  “Oh, great. Thank you. So . . . what do you think?” asked Rosalyn, anxious to hear Blondine’s opinion of her artwork on the walls.

  “What do I think about what?” Blondine asked, setting the croissants out on a plate.

  “The walls.” said Rosalyn. “I’ve been painting your walls.”

  Blondine looked up. “Oh! I didn’t even notice! You see, this is why I can’t be in charge of decorating. Oh, Rosalyn, this is—”

  “Pas mauvais?”

  Blondine laughed. “Pas mauvais, truly. Not bad at all. In fact, I love it. Look at the glasses of champagne. They’re dancing! And the vine border, and the grapes and birds—it is enchanting.”

  “I hope you mean it. If not, it won’t hurt my feelings if you want to paint over it. I had a lot of fun doing it.”

  “I love it, but now you must paint Emma’s room. Speaking of whom, has Emma seen it yet? She should be up by now.”

  Rosalyn felt a pang of fear as Blondine went to bang on Emma’s door, requesting her presence in Chambre Chardonnay. But soon enough she heard Emma yelling at Blondine to “hold your horses, already.”

  Dominique arrived not long after, smelling of cigarettes. She admired the painted walls, but then asked, “What happened to the poor ornament?” gesturing to Rosalyn’s cracked ornament in its evergreen nest.

  “She likes it that way,” said Emma as she joined them. She popped the champagne and poured it into four flutes.

  “It’s true. I like it that way,” said Rosalyn, relieved to see Emma looking whole, if tired.

  “If you like broken ornaments, there are plenty more where that came from,” said Dominique. “I have two cats, and they have a way with Christmas trees.”

  Emma handed them each a flute of champagne, which they held high in toast.

  “In answer to a question Rosalyn posed long ago, today’s the day we all drink champagne for breakfast!”

  For the next hour, the women chatted, feasted on croissants, drank champagne, and helped one another to don the traditional dress of this area of Champagne: long red skirts and red capes fastened by gold clasps at the throat. The white bonnets were trimmed in lace, with long sides that fell to the shoulders, and reminded Rosalyn of van Gogh’s paintings of peasants in Brittany. Rosalyn’s skirt was a snug fit—too many croissants?—but the cape hid a multitude of sins.

  “Do all the women wear the same costume?” Rosalyn asked.

  “No, of course not,” said Blondine. “Some wear more white, some green. I have even seen some brocade.”

  “Rebels,” murmured Emma.

  “We’re all cheating, though,” said Dominique. Her robust form looked surprisingly at home in the traditional outfit. “If we were really committed, we’d be wearing wooden shoes.”

  “I tried that one year, and aye-yi-yi,” said Blondine. “I’d rather wear high heels. They must have developed calluses or something; I can’t imagine working in the fields in those wooden shoes.”

  “You aren’t going to be a stickler about me rolling around in a
wheelchair, are you?” said Emma. “Because I suppose my crutches are more traditional, but my armpits will never last the whole day.”

  As Rosalyn adjusted her bonnet in the mirror, tilting her head this way and that, she realized that for the first time in a very long while, she cared about her appearance. She wasn’t about to construct a false shell as she once had. But as she swept on a hint of mascara and lip gloss, she was glad to see that a glow had returned to her cheeks, and now that she was sleeping more, the dark circles under her eyes had receded.

  Jérôme seemed happy to take her as she was, but still—she wanted to look nice for him. And also for herself.

  And when her date arrived to take her to the festival, she learned he was a man of his word: Jérôme really did look good in tights.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Lucie

  Here’s what I remember: climbing out of our hole into the blessedly fresh air of the vineyard, treading lightly to muffle the sound of our wooden shoes on the rungs, handing up the baskets.

  I remember the hills glowed in soft silvers and golds, and even the ugly barbed wire was painted in lunar light. I remember the stars twinkling on that crisp, clear night. My little Topette, smelling of the lavender sachet my mother had given her to wear around her neck to shield her from the foul smells of the caves.

  I remember breathing deeply of the aroma of dusk, feeling the warmth of the dissipating heat, the smells of earth and leaf and les raisins, the sweet grapes. The children stole a few of the little jewels, popping them into their mouths as though the grown-ups did not notice.

  The rustle of the drying leaves in the soft breeze.

  Turning my face up to the full moon shining above us. Still wondering if Émile might be looking up at the same moon, somewhere, somehow.

  That is what I remember.

  I heard a loud pop and saw a boy fall. The sheer terror, the taste of metal in my mouth. In the dim light, I couldn’t tell who it was—Édouard or Charles or little Marcel? I turned to go to him, only then realizing the pops were continuing. Another child fell.

  I grabbed Topette’s arm roughly in my panic, and threw her to the ground, covering her with my body, hoping the vines would hide us.

  As I lay there, I tried to envision the sniper. Had he once been a sweet red-cheeked boy? Did he have a doting mother and a warm hearth waiting for him in a charming gingerbread-decorated Bavarian hamlet? Did his loved ones fret and pray for his safe return? Did they realize that he lay in wait, exhibiting the patience of a spider, until women and children crawled out of their holes, emerging from their underground refuge in search of grapes, and in that moment, he took aim and fired hot lead into the vulnerable body of a child?

  I thought of my precious Narcissa with her rosebud mouth and bright eyes so like her father’s. I thought of my dear Topette, crushing her as I was. I thought of joining my beloved Émile, holding his hand as we ascended the steps, toward the light, toward a world without war.

  I wondered if I would forever wander these vineyards, meander through these caves, remain a friendly spirit haunting these beloved lands.

  That was all I wondered.

  Chapter Fifty

  Why Saint Vincent?” Rosalyn asked Jérôme as they made their way to the designated meeting spot for the marchers. Reims had been decorated to the nines, with banners, flags, ribbons, and flower baskets hanging from lampposts and telephone poles. They stopped short as half a dozen excited children dressed in colorful aprons and caps ran by them, screaming and laughing.

  “Pardon?” Jérôme asked.

  “Why is Saint Vincent the patron saint of wine?”

  “No one knows, exactly. His saint’s day coincides with the lunar phase for commencing the new growing season, but the explanation might be even simpler: he has a vin in his name, as in ‘wine.’”

  Rosalyn nodded, feeling mellow from the champagne she had enjoyed with breakfast. “As good a reason as any, I suppose.”

  “The festival is held in a different part of the region each year—last year it was in Épernay. So obviously the Rémois are excited to host this year. It was organized by the Archiconfrérie de Saint Vincent des Vignerons de Champagne.”

  “That’s a mouthful. Gaspard is proud of being on the committee this year. He’s mentioned it a few times. But isn’t that a lot of infrastructure for a regional festival?”

  “We French excel at bureaucracy,” said Jérôme. “But it’s not just for the festival, of course. The officials set the standards for pruning, dictate the amount of reserve each vintner must carry, determine how long we can pick, and when. . . . They do important work for an important industry. You’ll see groups from every town and part of Champagne represented here today.”

  In her red skirt and headgear, Rosalyn felt like a woman from another time and place. She thought of Lucie, and wondered where she had been buried; she thought of those thousands of small white crosses sprinkling the landscape in Châlons-en-Champagne. The losses of war were enormous, yet too easy to forget.

  But Gaspard was right: Lucie had died over a century ago, and she would have been long gone even if she had lived a full life. Still . . . What had happened to the baby? Had Émile been reunited with his child?

  At long last they found the group from Cochet and the surrounding area, who would be marching together in the parade. Gaspard and several other local growers were there; Michel Bonnet and Dominique and Dani, and Pietro and his wife. Blondine was chatting with several friends her age, and André—who also looked very good in tights—was pushing Emma in her wheelchair. Rosalyn spotted other familiar faces, including those of Gilbert Schreyer and Valérie Trepot, whom she had met at Dominique’s shop the first day it opened after the holidays. That day seemed a lifetime ago, though it had been a matter of only weeks.

  “Where’s Laurent?” asked Blondine.

  “He’s with my mother,” said Jérôme. “He’ll join us later, when the parade begins. He likes the marching part, but not so much the standing-around-waiting part.”

  “A boy after my own heart,” said Emma.

  It took another hour to get organized, but at long last, the parade commenced, led by a marching band, with a cohort of costumed dancing children following behind.

  Four men from Cochet hoisted up a stretcher carrying a carved wooden figure of Saint Vincent, dressed in humble brown robes and sitting on bunches of grapes, and Laurent ran to join them just as the group from Cochet began to march. Despite Jérôme’s warning that there would be few to witness the parade, the streets and squares were full of hundreds of celebrants. Most of the men wore red capes similar to the women’s, but their caps were black. Some people carried old-fashioned cone-shaped baskets on their backs, reminiscent of the historical photographs of the region, and a few even sported wooden shoes.

  Two women filled small plastic glasses with champagne from a massive oak keg, handing them out to the cheering crowd—and to the grateful marchers.

  A large tractor rumbled by, towing an old-fashioned wooden pressoir like the one Rosalyn had seen in Jérôme’s cellar. Another trailed a massive wine bottle—Rosalyn tried in vain to remember the name: Jeroboam? Methuselah? Balthazar? Madame Bolze would have known. Some floats were strewn with flowers and grapes, and topped with kegs of wine, while others featured mounds of bread, old-fashioned beehives, and miniature windmills.

  It was raucous, silly, good-natured fun, and as Rosalyn marched alongside Jérôme and Laurent and the others from Cochet, waving and throwing candy to the bystanders, she felt it again: that sense of not-quite-unhappiness. Her smile muscles didn’t even ache.

  At last the marchers ended up in the large square in front of the cathedral. As each group arrived, they stopped and sang songs from their region. Rosalyn did her best to sing along, though she had no idea of the words. Finally, they took their seats at one of the long lines of tables set for an elaborate f
east.

  “As I told you,” Jérôme said loudly to be heard over the crowd and the band, “we work hard in Champagne, but then we celebrate.”

  “With champagne.”

  “Mais oui. But of course.”

  When a roving accordionist stopped to ask for requests, Rosalyn shouted out: “‘La Vie en Rose’!”

  Jérôme winced. “You’re such an American. ‘La Vie en Rose’ is about the most stereotypical tourist song ever.”

  “I don’t care,” Rosalyn said as the beautiful notes of the song filled the air. “I’m ready to be sappy, and stereotypical, and see la vie en rose. I’m ready for a little color in my life, pink or otherwise.”

  “If it was good enough for Édith Piaf,” said Emma, lifting her glass in a toast, “it’s good enough for us. Here’s to seeing life through rose-colored glasses.”

  * * *

  “I have a surprise for you,” said Jérôme, hours later, after they had eaten—and drunk—their fill.

  “I don’t love surprises,” replied Rosalyn.

  He laughed.

  “I’m serious.”

  “I believe you. But you’ll like this one. Fancy a walk?”

  “I think I need one.” She was feeling the effects of the champagne and the meal, and she surreptitiously loosened the top button of her red skirt. Leaving Laurent in the care of his grandmother, they headed down the Rue du Barbâtre and onto the tree-lined Boulevard Victor Hugo.

  Rosalyn recognized the route. “We’re headed to the Pommery champagne house?”

  Jérôme nodded. “I know one of the cellar masters there, a fellow named Marius. He got permission for me to take you exploring in the crayères.”