The Wine Widow

by Tessa Barclay

  ‘Oh, us common peasant girls can think too, you know,’ Nicole said, turning away with a shrug.

  ‘Ah, so that’s where I’ve seen you before! It was you in the square this morning.’ He bowed. ‘I’m delighted to meet you again. I’m Philippe de Tramont.’

  ‘And I’m Nicole Berthois.’

  ‘Well, Nicole Berthois, I wish we had you at home to deflect Mama’s bad temper now and again …’

  ‘You’re very kind, sir, but I have a mother of my own to claim my attention.’

  ‘Are you from hereabouts?’ he inquired, partly to detain her and partly because he was puzzled. She wasn’t speaking in the local dialect. She wasn’t like most pretty country girls, difficult to understand when she spoke and a bore when she didn’t.

  Nicole saw a tall, slender young man with fairish brown hair worn rather long ‒ had she been more in touch with fashion she would have understood that this stamped him ‘poetic’. His hands, which he used to emphasize occasional words, showed that he had never done a day’s hard work in his life.

  To Nicole he was strange and exotic as a bird of paradise. It was infinitely flattering to see that he liked her, even admired her. But she knew this was only a passing encounter for when Madame Treignac came back Nicole must make herself scarce. Madame had met Nicole several times, had no objection to her visits to her sister and even the clandestine sharing of a midday meal or two. But she certainly wouldn’t feel friendly towards the girl who had almost precipitated a disaster with a wealthy customer.

  She told Philippe she came from the village next to the manor house estate, that several inhabitants of the village were employed by the Tramont champagne house. He asked if she would like employment. She told him she had in fact sometimes worked on his rows of vines. They were delighted with the idea that they had already been in contact, even if in some remote fashion.

  But then back swept Clothilde de Tramont in her street gown and fur-trimmed mantle, ready to be taken to the best hotel for a meal before setting out on the other matters of business that brought them to Rheims. ‘Come along, Philippe, we’ve wasted enough time here. Ah … you, child!’

  Nicole, quietly slipping towards the screen that shielded the big door, paused. She hardly knew what to expect ‒ a scolding for daring to interfere in the affairs of the gentry? ‘You have some sense, it seems,’ Clothilde said with an approval that was somewhat grim. ‘Here, you deserve some reward.’

  She held out a coin. Nicole drew back, about to tell her she didn’t expect to be tipped like a coachman. But then she recollected that the extra fifty centimes could be used to advantage in the Berthois housekeeping, and that to refuse it might precipitate another scene. ‘Thank you, madame,’ she said with a curtsy. As she took the money she allowed her glance to flicker towards Philippe. He looked apologetic, she let her mouth tremble in the beginnings of a smile.

  Then she had left the room, with Paulette ahead of her carrying the troublesome gown in its shroud of protective muslin.

  ‘Never do a thing like that again, Nicci!’ Paulette cried when they were safely up to the first landing. ‘Madame can’t make up her mind whether to be grateful or infuriated!’

  Nicole shrugged. ‘It all turned out all right. Why the fuss?’ But she knew very well. Peasants didn’t make critical remarks about the gentry. There might have been a revolution to establish liberty, equality and fraternity, but it had very little effect in the countryside of France. Even in Paris, the memory of those heady days had faded.

  The midday meal was being served as they reached the workrooms. The gowns and mantles were carefully covered with cotton sheeting. Eight girls, the store-keeper, the errand boy and Nicole drank the soup. Madame Treignac’s maid and coachman ate in splendour in the kitchen attached to the living quarters.

  The story of Madame de Tramont’s gown had somehow reached them already. ‘My word, Nicci, you took a big risk, speaking out like that! Why did you do it?’

  She couldn’t tell them that she’d wanted to assert herself after being dismissed by Madame de Tramont as a nothing. She laughed and bit into the chunk of crusty bread. ‘If a thing needs to be said, why not say it?’ she remarked. And that was all they could get out of her.

  It would be untrue to say that she never gave Philippe de Tramont another thought. He came into her mind now and then as she worked through her day’s tasks ‒ as she sprayed the Berthois vines with her own special mixture against mildew and cochinelle larvae, as she hoed between the rows, as she tended the goats, and more especially as she went into the village to work for some other small vineyardist. On those walks she would look at the carriages which occasionally went by, wondering if Philippe de Tramont would be in one.

  She didn’t see him again until July, a frantically busy month for the wine villages. She and a few others from Calmady stole time off to go to Rheims, in order to see the nephew of the great Napoleon.

  Louis Napoleon wanted to have himself elected Emperor-Consul. He had gained the rank of President two years previously, but those who knew about such things maintained that he wanted a more imposing title.

  To further this aim, the President appeared at big events all over France. To encourage the country people to attend, his supporters spent money hiring carts and conveyances. Who wouldn’t seize the chance of a free ride into Rheims to see a great man review a local regiment? Delighted at the idea, Nicole put on her best clothes once again ‒ with no protest from her mother this time ‒ and clambered aboard the cask-cart decked with bunting.

  It was a fine enough day, warm, sunny, but with heavy clouds often concealing the sun ‒ in fact a typical July day in the Department of the Marne. The old men shook their heads and predicted rain. The shopkeepers and businessmen who had paid for seats in the stands had brought umbrellas, and some of the country folk had their broad-brimmed hats or pieces of oiled linen to protect their heads.

  Nicole had no hat or shawl. She was blithely certain it would be a fine day. So when the clouds broke overhead to send down a cascade of heavy, thundery drops, she ran for shelter.

  The nearest doorway was that of a lawyer’s office. She huddled under its stone canopy, wishing the doors would open so that she could slip through into the hall or the concierge’s office.

  As if in answer to her prayer, the double doors parted. Out came Philippe de Tramont, unfurling an umbrella. Nicole, about to whisk past him, drew back. ‘Oh, m’sieu …!’

  ‘What? Oh, it’s you!’ He stopped in the doorway, examining her, smiling, pleased at the encounter. ‘My word, you’re wet! Have you fallen in the river?’

  ‘No need of that, the river is coming to us,’ she said in a rueful tone, holding her hand out into the pouring rain.

  ‘Have you been to the review?’

  She nodded. ‘But you have not?’

  ‘Oh no!’ He laughed aloud. ‘No, no, the de Tramonts cannot show any interest in the descendants of the ogre Napoleon. Mama would die of shock at the mere idea. No, I’ve been to see the family lawyer.’ He didn’t add that yet one more tentative approach towards a marriage had come to nothing. At twenty-one Philippe felt no great distress at being spared an arranged marriage so far.

  But that wasn’t the kind of thing you told a pretty girl who was smiling up from under a drenched lawn cap. ‘Tell me, mademoiselle, what are your plans now?’

  ‘Plans? Good gracious, my plan was to have a good time listening to the band and watching the soldiers, and then I was to be driven home again in the cask-cart.’

  ‘So now that the review has been more or less ruined, you are free?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Let me offer you a glass of wine. I’m sure you need it, to ward off a chill after being soaked through.’

  ‘No, thank you, m’sieu.’ Nicole couldn’t see how it could be done. He couldn’t take her to one of the fine cafés and sit down with her ‒ he in his fine summer suit and silk cravat, she in her country-girl’s clothes. And he wouldn’t want to
patronise the sort of homely little café that the peasants used.

  ‘Oh, please permit me. I owe you at least that much, after you averted a near-catastrophe the last time we met.’

  ‘But I was paid for that,’ she reminded him, with a wrinkle of the nose.

  ‘That, too ‒ I should like to make amends for that. Please let me offer you some refreshment.’

  ‘But … where could we go?’

  ‘To the Market Café?’

  Well, that was quite a good idea. It was some distance away but it was the kind of place that had customers of all kinds ‒ merchants, farmers, wine-growers and wine-dealers, housewives, visitors from out of town, and such stall-holders from the market as felt they could afford to celebrate the day’s takings.

  They set off together along the pavement, which was awash with rain. Philippe held the umbrella so as to protect her from the downpour. It was a most unusual feeling to be escorted in this polite fashion. The men of Calmady rarely had occasion to try out their good manners on the womenfolk, for most of the time they were working together in the vineyards or the wine-cellars. Only now and then, at a village celebration, would courtesy seem natural ‒ and then, alas, it was usually a way of getting a girl into a corner to steal a kiss while her mother wasn’t looking.

  Philippe had been in the Market Café only once, to meet a wine-dealer from Paris. He didn’t greatly care for it but he understood Nicole would be more at ease among its plain wooden furniture and checked cloths than in the Café du Dome with its gilt chairs. She was an attractive girl, pretty and lively ‒ but nothing could come of this little tête-à-tête except an hour’s amusement on a wet day in Rheims.

  Naturally, since they belonged to the Champagne district, Philippe ordered champagne when they sat down. Nicole was flattered that he chose a good wine and with it gateau: it was as if he regarded her as a guest at his mother’s house, where the ladies were served sweet champagne and cake at about this hour in the afternoon.

  There was a formula, more or less, for making a good impression with a girl. You told her she was very pretty, then by and by came around to saying you would die if she didn’t give you a kiss, or let you hold her hand, or whatever you thought would find a chink in her armour.

  With Nicole, however, it didn’t happen. She laughed when he told her she was pretty and to his astonishment replied that he was quite good-looking. Then she somehow turned the conversation so that he was talking about himself.

  She had a genuine curiosity to know what he did with himself all day.

  ‘I write plays,’ he told her.

  ‘You do what?’

  ‘Write plays. For the theatre.’

  ‘The theatre!’ She was impressed, no doubt of it. She studied him with her sparkling brown eyes, a little frown gathering between her brows. ‘What’s it like in a theatre?’

  ‘You’ve never been to one?’

  ‘Never. I’ve seen the street performers in Rheims, of course, and sometimes a company of actors comes to the village but they perform in the village hall, which I suppose is …’ Her voice died away as she thought about it. ‘Are your plays put on in Paris? How many have been performed? Oh, when anyone gives me a newspaper from now on, I’ll look for your name!’

  ‘We-ell …’ He twirled his wine-glass about on the cloth. ‘The fact is, I’ve never had one accepted so far. But ‒’ as he saw the disappointment momentarily glinting in her eyes ‒ ‘I shall!’

  She agreed that of course his plays would be performed but he had the feeling she was saying it out of politeness. He felt it was imperative to impress her with his talents. He told her the plot of the play he was working on, explained the intrigues and influences that kept the work of young playwrights off the stage.

  Although it all sounded like another world, Nicole was genuinely sympathetic. It must be terribly frustrating to have talent and yet be unable to make anyone listen. She knew the feeling. She had ambitions herself ‒ secret, absurd ambitions that she had never dared confide to anyone. There were things she could do that needed more scope than a few rows of vines and a stretch of chalky hillside.

  An hour flew by while she listened to his quick sketches of interviews with lofty theatrical managers, play-readings where all the actors mistook the sense of the words, times of hope when a play was under consideration, times of despair when it was returned as too unusual or too difficult.

  ‘It only means they don’t have sense enough to understand it,’ she soothed. ‘You shouldn’t let it upset you.’

  ‘It’s easy for you to say that,’ he replied, as if she were his equal and quite accustomed to dealing with such disappointments. ‘It puts me in the doldrums for weeks, a thing like that! And then my mother gets annoyed and accuses me of wasting my time ‒ which is true I suppose, for I don’t really spend as much time in the wine cellars as I should.’

  ‘Well, that’s understandable. Making champagne is a great art. But it doesn’t happen to be the one that interests you.’ She sighed. ‘I’d love to read one of your plays.’

  He almost exclaimed, ‘You can read?’ but checked himself. This remarkable girl … She spoke French that was almost Parisian, she understood all he had told her about the theatre world. Why shouldn’t she be able to read? She was a cut above every other country girl he’d ever encountered and, if it came to that, above most of the girls of good family. Few of them had shown any interest in his play-writing and not one had wished to read one.

  He asked: ‘Have you ever read a play? It’s not like an ordinary book, you know.’

  ‘I’ve read Racine.’

  ‘Racine!’ This time he couldn’t hide his astonishment. How could this little vineyard-girl ever have come to handle a book of the plays of Racine, France’s great tragedian?

  ‘We have quite a few books in our house,’ Nicole explained. ‘They belonged to Brother Joseph.’

  ‘And who, pray, is Brother Joseph?’

  ‘Oh, that’s a long story. My family took him in years ago ‒ you know, when the monasteries were broken up and the monks had to find ordinary work or go to prison? My grandfather used to say Brother Joseph turned up in Calmady with twenty books tied up in a blanket and no shoes on his feet. His father ‒ that’s my great-grandfather ‒ took pity on him. And found he had a great bargain, for Brother Joseph knew a lot about the vines, and could read and write …’

  ‘I see,’ said Philippe. He felt a dawning admiration. This girl had a family history, quite different of course from his own but just as interesting. It had never struck him before that peasant families could have a history.

  Outside the drums of the 4th Regiment of the Marne could be heard beating time as the men marched off parade. The review had continued despite the wet weather and a much-reduced audience. Louis Napoleon had stood gravely in his dark blue and gold uniform, at the salute in the pouring rain, to prove to his people that he would never fail in his duty.

  ‘I must go,’ said Nicole, patting her still-damp cap into place and tucking up some curling tendrils of hair. ‘I have to go back on the cart that brought us from Calmady, which is waiting for us by the basket factory, if Etienne hasn’t gone off with the other drivers to play cards.’

  ‘Oh, but you must let me drive you home!’

  She was astounded at the offer and, to tell the truth, so was he. One didn’t make such offers to peasant girls. One might suggest such a thing to an older woman of one’s acquaintance, or to a young lady whose home lay nearby (so that there could be nothing compromising in the incident). But to be seen driving a girl in peasant blouse and skirt …

  Then he recalled that, as the weather was wet, he could have the hood up on the curricle. As they whisked by on the heavy, uneven road, who would be able to peer inside at his passenger?

  Nicole was thinking about something different. What a commotion it would cause at home if she was handed down from a gentleman’s carriage! She thought of her mother’s surprise and disapproval. No, though it would be deli
ghtful to sample the charms of a private conveyance, she must refuse.

  ‘I had better not,’ she said with real regret. ‘In the first place, they’d go looking for me if I didn’t join the party in the cask-cart. And then … you see … my mother …’

  ‘Ah yes.’ He understood perfectly. ‘Let me at least escort you to the waiting place ‒ you’ll get soaked again without an umbrella.’

  ‘Well, all right … Perhaps just to the corner of the building.’ Then she could say a grateful goodbye and escape without any of her fellow villagers seeing her companion. She dreaded the teasing and gossip that might ensue if they knew anything about today’s events.

  ‘Just as you wish.’

  Outside the rain was much less heavy. She could quite easily have said she could manage in the shelter of the buildings. But she somehow found she didn’t want to part from him any earlier than she had to. He was so … so different. And so kind. Though he was a gentleman, she’d felt no embarrassment in his company.

  At the far end of the street in which the basket factory stood, she paused to bid farewell. He took her hand. ‘Au revoir,’ he said, raising it to kiss.

  ‘Oh, I doubt we shall see each other again, m’sieu ‒’

  ‘Of course we shall! I’m going to bring you a copy of one of my plays to read ‒’

  ‘No, no!’ Not to the house. Apart from the risks her mother would foresee in friendship with the son of the de Tramont family, there were the reproaches for wasting time on reading. Her mother didn’t disapprove of reading, although she herself had never learned, but she felt that one should use the talent only for the newspapers and worthy volumes about the lives of saints.

  ‘But I thought you were interested?’ He was hurt. And when she saw his disappointment she relented at once.

  ‘I really should love to read your play, m’sieu. I meant that. But you see, if you come to the house …’

  ‘Could we meet? Is there a moment when you would be free to spend some time with me? I should like to read some of the scenes aloud to you. You know, my plays aren’t in verse, like Racine ‒ they need a certain amount of understanding in the way they’re read.’