The Wine Widow

by Tessa Barclay

  ‘N… no … No … All right, then. But don’t make me wear this thing on my head.’

  ‘This thing’ was the wreath of forget-me-nots Monsieur Worth had concocted. His ‘theme’, which he secretly hoped to carry out, was to have each of the ladies adorned with different small flowers on their headgear.

  ‘Gaby, sweetheart, if you’re going to wear the dress you might as well wear the headdress,’ coaxed Netta. ‘Look at me ‒ I’m putting up with all these cream freesias ‒’

  ‘But you like dressing up! Mama, you know I hate it! Please don’t make me wear it.’

  Gaby’s mother, Madame Fournier-Tramont smiled and shook her dark head. ‘As your Aunt Alys says, my angel, just this once … We all have to dress up for the wedding and, only think how lucky you are! If it were Netta’s wedding you’d probably have to carry her train and handle a posy as well. Just to wear a garland ‒ that’s not asking much for Grandmama.’

  ‘We-ell … I s’pose not … All right then.’ And, despite her protests, the little girl looked surprisingly beautiful while the ‘bridesmaid’s’ dress was being tried on. Her vivid dark eyes and raven-black hair rescued the outfit from sugariness.

  She inherited her looks from her mother, Laura. Daughter of a New York banker, Laura had come into the Tramont family by her marriage to Robert Fournier-Tramont.

  Robert had gone to America some twelve years ago. Why he had gone was something of a mystery ‒ it wasn’t an easy journey for him, lame as he was, and certainly he could ill be spared from the business for the length of time necessary for the long sea passage. Of course, the members of the great wine families travelled: but generally it was to places where their wares were already in demand or where a market could be opened up.

  What Robert could possibly intend to do in California was an enigma, nor had it ever been explained.

  He had in fact gone to meet his father. Only Robert and Madame de Tramont knew the secret ‒ that Robert was not the son of Paulette, Madame de Tramont’s sister, but of Nicole de Tramont herself and Jean-Baptiste Labaud, former chief of cellar on the Tramont estate.

  It had taken Robert years to extract his father’s name and whereabouts from Nicole. She had persisted in saying it could do no good for him to know, that the mere fact of his existence was unknown to his father, that it would only bring unhappiness to the man and his innocent wife.

  ‘Aunt Nicole, of course I won’t go blundering in and cause an upset,’ Robert pleaded, time and again. ‘All I want to do is write to him ‒ tell him I exist. Is that too much to ask?’

  ‘Robert, my dear … You know I would tell you if I thought it were right. But he’s a long way away, you could never meet ‒ what’s the point?’

  He took her hand. They were good friends, closer than many mothers and sons, although the relationship between them was thought of by the world as that of aunt and nephew.

  ‘It’s hard to explain. Aunt Nicci. Partly it’s to do with Mama’s husband ‒ with Auguste …’

  Auguste Fournier had deserted his wife and children a little over twenty yeas ago, leaving Paulette, Nicole’s sister, with no one to provide for her.

  As always, Nicole had stepped into the breach. She’d pulled together the little builders’ business that had been Auguste’s supposed livelihood, she’d arranged for an income for the deserted wife. Later, when Nicole discovered she herself was pregnant, Paulette had volunteered out of gratitude to take the expected child and bring it up as her own. This she had done, so that until he was a young man Robert had always thought of Paulette Fournier as Mama.

  There had never been a ‘Papa’. Madame Fournier was accepted as a widow, although within the privacy of the home it was acknowledged that ‘Papa’ was probably alive somewhere, eking out a living as a seaman.

  It came as a bombshell to Robert when at last he had to be told that he was Nicole’s son. A time of great unhappiness had ensued. Robert escaped from it into the French Army, which almost at once was engulfed in the attempt to stop the German invasion of 1870. The wounds he received still marred his physique, although he managed very well with one stick considering that the doctors had said he would never walk again.

  Nicole had never perhaps understood Robert’s need to know his father. ‘Papa’ had been a bad lot, but then ‘Papa’ had not been his real Papa. When he found that out, it was only to be told that the man responsible for his existence had been another ‘deserter’, a man who had packed up and left France. ‘It had to be so, my dear. Everything was complicated enough as it was. It was better not to tell him.’

  ‘But I want to know, Aunt Nicole. I want to know if he’s someone I can respect. You tell me he was a good man ‒ I want to know that for myself.’

  ‘No, dear. It’s better not.’

  And for years she held by that decision.

  What changed her mind? She learned, by the interchange of news that took place in the world of wine-making, that Jean-Baptiste’s wife had died. His children by that marriage must be grown and out in the world by now. It was safe to tell Robert the name of the man who had sired him.

  ‘My dear, before I give it to you, I want your promise that you’ll act with caution and tact.’

  ‘Something has changed?’

  ‘Yes, Robert. Madame Labaud died last year. It says in the Journal de Vinicole Mondiale that Jean-Baptiste had done no research for about six months due to anxieties over his wife’s health.’

  ‘That’s his name? Labaud?’

  She nodded. The soft lace lappets of the widow’s cap she always wore swung gently with the movement. Her face was pensive, sad. ‘Jean-Baptiste Labaud. A fine man ‒ tall and strong and honest.’

  ‘Labaud? But I’ve seen articles by him in the Journal ‒ good God, Aunt Nicci, he lives in California!’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘California!’

  ‘You see, my mother-in-law ‒ Old Madame ‒ she’d made everything impossible by interfering and meddling …’

  Her voice died away. She was back in the past, reliving the agony of that day when Jean-Baptiste told her he was leaving France.

  How she had loved him! Even now she thought of him with affection and respect. But of course he would have changed, after all these years. He would be a true American, though somehow she could never quite bring herself to believe that. Just as she could never bring herself to believe that even Jean-Baptiste would produce wine worth drinking from grapes produced on the other side of the world …

  Everything was different now. She herself wasn’t the same woman as that passionate young widow of twenty years ago. She’d rebuilt the House of Tramont, literally and figuratively, after the Franco-Prussian War. She’d survived the death of a daughter and the anxieties of Robert’s illness. He had recovered well: better still, he had been reconciled to her after bereavement brought them together. Now he had taken her name legally, as had Gavin, her son-in-law. The two men helped her to manage the business.

  The House of Tramont flourished under their care. It was only fair that Robert should have the reward he’d wished for so long ‒ that of knowing his real father.

  True to his promise, he wrote a careful letter to Jean-Baptiste Labaud, saying that Madame de Tramont had given him permission to approach him and would vouch for the truth of what he now related. If Monsieur Labaud would do him the honour to reply, they could correspond with one another, enough to get to know each other a little.

  ‘Perhaps he’ll take no notice,’ Robert murmured to Nicole when he confided the letter to the post.

  ‘He’ll reply,’ Nicole said with assurance.

  She was right. As soon as could be ‒ although that wasn’t too soon, since the mail service between France and western America was not of the best ‒ a letter came. Two letters, in fact ‒ one to Nicole reproaching her for keeping her secret so long.

  ‘My dearest girl, I understand your reasons and respect them, but I can’t help being stricken to the heart to learn after all thes
e years that you and I produced a son. Write to me, Nicci, tell me what he’s like! From his letter he seems a sincere and earnest young man better educated than his Papa, of course, and I daresay brought up to be a gentleman. He tells me he helps in the business. What does he do? It would be nice to think he inherited some of my ability with the wine. My own children are quite uninterested, although Alain is a decent enough assistant-manager.’

  Correspondence between the two families flew back and forth. It ended with an invitation from Jean-Baptiste to Robert ‒ to come to California so that they could meet. ‘I can’t come to France, my boy. If I left here, the wine-making would go to pieces in two days. These Americans! They understand nothing about vintage. Besides, it wouldn’t be a good thing for me to turn up again in Calmady, nor would I fit in too well with the grand life you lead in Paris. Come, dear boy ‒ you might like the New World.’

  It was a big decision. Robert’s health was good, but getting on and off trains and boats presented difficulties, and as for stagecoaches! However, Jean-Baptiste assured him that the train would take him to the West Coast, and although from there he would indeed have to go by Wells Fargo the road was good and the distance to Bracanda Norte could be covered in about a day and a half.

  With many misgivings Nicole de Tramont let her son make the trip. She wondered if his body with its mended bones would stand up to it, and whether his eagerness to meet his father would end in pleasure or disappointment.

  It was to be a six months’ trip. As Jean-Baptiste said, it was hardly worth making the effort if he allowed less time, because the sea passage to New York was long and the train journey across the continent almost equally so.

  In one respect Robert was lucky. He had no difficulty with the language. His mother had always insisted that her daughters and her supposed nephew should learn English and German, and of course once Alys settled at home with her English husband the language became almost as common in the Tramont household as French.

  But he found the Americans strange. New York itself was extraordinary, with buildings apparently trying to poke a hole in the sky ‒ and in fact that was their name, ‘skyscrapers’. The food was unspeakable, good wine was unobtainable, even in good restaurants because even if it was in stock, it was badly handled.

  During the long transit of the continent he sent back letters from stations where the train stopped to take on passengers or mail. Respect began to creep into the phrases: ‘So vast a country … Little towns huddled at the railheads … What struggles the settlers must have endured … Yet there is activity. There must also be prosperity, though I have no chance to see it …’

  When he reached San Francisco he wrote to say he was staying overnight, to rest and prepare for his venture into the old-fashioned stage-coach system. Always his letters were suitable to be read aloud to other members of the family at Calmady, taking it for granted he was on a journey of investigation into the Californian wine industry.

  But his first letter from Bracanda Norte contained also a single sheet, folded over and marked ‘Confidential’.

  ‘I have met my father. I must tell you how much I like him. We have had several long talks. Though he would wish to acknowledge me, we have concluded that it would be needlessly cruel to his other children to reveal our kinship. My role here is as a visitor from the region where he was born, a member of the family with whom he was once employed.

  ‘My father has some shares in the wine company, Bracanda Norte Winery. There would be no problem in making a post for me here and this has already been hinted at but I shan’t take it up ‒ it would look strange to my half-brother Alain, for they have no work for a manager of buildings since in this country they as yet care too little about the warehousing of the wine.

  ‘Besides, if I stayed here, I think it would become clear that there is a relationship ‒ we are not unalike in features. Gossip would spring up. You know in the little world of wine-makers news is handed on sooner or later ‒ through shipping agents it would undoubtedly get back to France, and harm your reputation, dear Mama.

  ‘That is the first time I have ever addressed you by that name, Mama, and I think it must be the last. It would be dangerous to let it become a habit. I conclude this note by saying merely that I regret not having had the chance to grow up in a family with such a father and mother. I believe it will be best if you destroy this note ‒ Your son, Robert.’

  Nicole wept over the letter, and kept it for several days, taking it out in the privacy of her bedroom to read and re-read it. But in the end she obeyed her son’s command and held it in the flame of a match. It scarcely mattered that the truth of their relationship had to be kept secret. All the world knew that on the death of her sister Paulette she had adopted both her nephew Robert and her son-in-law Gavin as joint heirs of the Tramont name. Everything she owned would be divided between them. If she sometimes showed more affection for Robert than for Gavin, that was only natural ‒ she’d known him since he was a child, whereas Gavin, though in every way a fine son-in-law, had only come into her life a few years ago.

  All the other letters that Robert wrote from the United States were for public consumption. He returned in the autumn on the Gallia.

  But he didn’t rush straight to Calmady, which was strange, as the wine harvest was just over and the grapes were being pressed. It was an anxious time, one he usually shared with Nicole and Gavin.

  Instead he made use of their newly-installed telephone to call from Paris. ‘I have some matters that will keep me here a day or two, Aunt Nicole. How is the pressing going?’

  ‘Not well. The juice from nearby seems very “heavy”. I’m going tomorrow to take a look at what they’re producing on the cotes. How are you, my dear boy ‒ have you recovered from the effects of your trip?’

  The question really meant, Have you got over the shock of meeting your father for the first time? She waited anxiously for his reply.

  ‘What? Oh … yes … All that is behind me now. Aunt Nicole, you don’t mind if I stay on in Paris?’

  ‘Of course not, Robert. But you won’t stay away too long, will you? It’s six months and more, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I know … I’ll be at Calmady by the end of the week.’

  It was very strange.

  ‘It’s a woman,’ Gavin declared when Nicole wondered why he should linger in Paris.

  ‘Robert? Never!’

  ‘Dearest Belle-mère, even Robert can fall in love, you know!’

  Nicole didn’t reply that Robert had been in love once, tragically. That was all in the past. Delphine was dead, seldom spoken of because the memory was too painful for those who knew the story.

  She had almost taken for granted that Robert would go through the rest of his life faithful to that memory. She had never wanted it so, but Robert was so grave and quiet in his ways that somehow it had seemed suitable he should remain a solitary figure.

  Yet Gavin was proved right. When Robert at last came home to the country house at Calmady, he had a request to make after the first excitements of reunion. ‘Aunt Nicole, when we go up to Paris for the winter, may I ask you to call on a friend of mine?’

  ‘Certainly. I believe I heard that Antoine Delahaie and his wife had taken an apartment in ‒’

  ‘It’s not Antoine. It’s someone I met on the Gallia.’

  ‘Ah, a new acquaintance. Of course, Robert ‒ I’ll leave a card. What’s his name?’

  ‘It’s a lady.’

  ‘Aha!’ cried Gavin, with a glance of triumph at his mother-in-law. ‘Didn’t I say so?’

  ‘S-sh, Gavin … There’s no need for an uproar ‒’

  ‘But it’s so unlike Robert to make friends with a lady! What’s she like, Robert? Young? Pretty? What’s her name?’

  Robert took the boisterous inquiries with his usual tranquillity. ‘She’s Laura Simeon, from New York ‒’

  ‘An American?’ exclaimed Alys in amazement.

  ‘Good gracious, Alys, Americans are people like the
rest of us. Go on, my boy,’ urged Nicole, now thoroughly curious. ‘From New York ‒ yes? On a visit?’

  ‘With her mother. They’re staying at the Crillon. I gathered that they intended the usual round ‒ the art galleries, the museums, the opera … They have friends and distant relations here but … it would be nice if we could help them enjoy the city.’

  ‘Yes, of course, we must come to their aid,’ Gavin agreed, ‘and if in doing so we increase our acquaintance with this pretty American, that’s only the just rewards for a good action.’

  ‘I haven’t said she’s pretty.’

  ‘But she is, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And young? And witty?’

  ‘Not witty. Laura’s rather serious, I think.’ Teased by Gavin and urged by Alys, Robert revealed that the young lady was the daughter of a New York banker, a third generation American of French extraction. They had met on the boat at the captain’s table, but their friendship seemed to date from the moment when he rescued her hat from sailing overboard by trapping it with his cane.

  He didn’t speak of the hours they’d spent together, in long conversations that ranged from their past travels to their present plans, their intentions for the future, and their secret hopes and beliefs. A sea voyage is like a forcing house ‒ relationships flourish in the enforced idleness and the continual meetings. By the time the Gallia docked it felt as if they’d known each other forever.

  Nicole took to Laura at once. The others were less enthusiastic. They thought her too quiet, too introspective. ‘But don’t you see, that makes her exactly right for Robert!’ Nicole declared. ‘He’s quiet too, and so reserved that I never expected him to get involved with any young woman ‒ certainly not with any of those in our set.’

  ‘Mama,’ Alys said, colouring, ‘I don’t wish to seem snobbish, but the family seem to have come from nowhere.’

  ‘They came from Bordeaux ‒’

  ‘That’s not what I meant, Mama, and you know it. As far as I can gather from what Madame Simeon says, her father-in-law landed in New York without a sou.’