The Champagne Girls

by Tessa Barclay

  ‘I hardly think so, monsieur. But thank you for the lift.’

  ‘It was a pleasure ‒ one I’ve been looking forward to for a long time.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, I’d noticed your nephew liked to get a ride with the carters. It was just a matter of arranging to be there one day to pick him up.’

  ‘How dare you!’

  ‘Of course it wasn’t the lad I was interested in. Now there’s a compliment for you!’

  ‘Mademoiselle Gaby!’ called Flori, trying to hold Pierre back from dashing up the drive to tell Mama about his ride on the big horse.

  ‘If you come to see me, leave her behind,’ Louis said with a jerk of the head towards the nursemaid. ‘Fat old thing …’

  ‘I’m certainly not going to ‒’

  ‘Oh yes you are,’ he said. He sprang up into the driving seat, picked up the long whip from its stanchion. He used it to give a little salute against his brown hair. ‘You’ll come sooner or later.’

  ‘Never!’

  But she was wrong. It took nearly a month before she gave in, during which time she kept running across him here and there ‒ in the village, at church, in the lanes, at a christening party for one of the little vineyardists.

  What she heard about him was disturbing. ‘He’s a bad lot,’ Flori asserted. ‘Half gipsy, you know ‒ nobody trusts him.’

  ‘He’s a wonder with horses,’ said the chief groom at Tramont. ‘Anything wrong with a beast, and they send for Peresqueau. Mind you, he always makes sure he gets paid ‒ never does anything for nothing.’

  ‘Oh, what a one he is for the girls,’ said the village seamstress with a giggle. ‘I can’t keep my apprentices away from him.’

  ‘Poor young man, poor young man,’ said the cure, sighing. ‘Widowed so early … A tragic accident, but at least there were no children left orphaned.’

  When she went to Louis’s cottage, it was he who led her there. They had met as if by accident at the big vintage party on the estate. He danced with her, one of the lilting waltzes from a successful operetta. The touch of his hard hand on her back, the scent of plain soap and male sweat, the sound of his whispered words … Something seemed to rise up within her to meet the physical enticement.

  Lucas Vourville had taught her to enjoy sexual passion. Now she discovered that she had needs that could only be assuaged by surrendering to the challenge of Louis Peresqueau. When he said goodnight, he murmured that he would wait for her at the wooded edge to the estate. She slipped out when at last the house quietened down after the party.

  It was turning towards dawn. A grey light was in the sky already. She ran though the dewy grass, her party dress drenched with the moisture, her little high-heeled shoes soundless on the wet soil.

  She didn’t see him at the meeting point. He was just suddenly there, engulfing her in his embrace. She let herself fall against him. He kissed her, her mouth, her cheeks, her neck, her bare shoulder where it rose from the party dress.

  ‘Come on,’ he said roughly.

  He hurried her through the woods, down the rough embankment, into a lane that deteriorated into a mere track. In a curve of the chalky hillside, a light could be glimpsed.

  ‘My place,’ he said. He led her through a gate. She could hear the sound of horses stamping and moving in a big shed behind the little house. He pushed open the house door. The interior was dimly lit by a lamp on a table, beyond which she could distinguish another door.

  He said nothing as he led her to it. She could see the whiteness of the sheets, the ghostly outline of the bed canopy. His arms were around her. They fell on the bed together, wrapped in each other, held together already as if by bands of iron.

  ‘I’ve always wanted you,’ he grunted. ‘From the minute I first saw you, my little beauty. Come on now … Come on … You’re mine, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she gasped. ‘Yes. Oh yes.’

  And within moments it was true. He had taken her and made her his own, a prisoner to the sheer animal fulfilment he brought with his lovemaking.

  He wasn’t a bit like Lucas, who had been clever, gentle yet exciting, considerate yet demanding. Louis was careless, sometimes almost cruel. He had no pretty turn of phrase, no pretence of chivalry. Yet each time she told herself she wouldn’t see him again, she found herself hurrying to be with him. It was a kind of enslavement.

  Before Christmas had come round, she’d discovered the truth of the head groom’s saying, that Louis Peresqueau never did anything for nothing. He began to demand her help in furthering his career.

  ‘Your family does a lot of business in this area,’ he mused. ‘I don’t see why they couldn’t put some work my way.’

  ‘But they do already ‒ didn’t you tell me you did haulage for us?’

  ‘Oh, but only when the big companies are hard pressed. What I mean is, they could give me a contract. See, Gaby, if they’d give me a contract I could get credit from a bank and buy that other dray.’

  ‘Well, it seems to me it would be more sense for you to get a contract as a self-employed haulier with one of the haulage firms.’

  ‘No, no ‒ I tried that ‒ they give you jobs that take you miles away, miles and miles, and it exhausts the team, and you have to pay outrageous prices for feed in areas where they don’t know you.’

  She listened with sympathy, offering little suggestions when she thought they might be useful. Always she came up against the same obstacle ‒ Louis didn’t want to take orders, he wanted to be entirely his own master.

  ‘But even if you got a contract from some big winemaking firm in the Champagne area, Louis, you’d have to take orders from somebody. The chief of cellar, or the transport manager.’

  ‘That’d be different. That’d be between equals. Look, Gaby, why don’t you see what you can do about having work put my way?’

  She tried time and again to explain that there was nothing she could do. Such matters were settled by her father or her uncle.

  At last he came out with it. ‘I’d think if you really cared a damn about me you’d want to help me get a good contract! All you have to do is speak to your father!’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ she riposted. ‘Can’t you just imagine the conversation? “Listen, Papa, there’s this man I’m sleeping with, and he wants you to” ‒’

  He seized her by the wrists. ‘Don’t make fun of me!’

  ‘Louis!’ She pulled away, but he held on fiercely. ‘Louis, you’re hurting me!’

  ‘Huh! That’s not all I’ll do! Who do you think you are, making fun of me?’

  ‘I wasn’t, Louis, really I wasn’t. I was just trying to show ‒’

  ‘Oh, you always think you know best! Such a great lady, with such a marvellous education!’

  She sat up in the bed, rubbing her wrists. After a long silence he said: ‘All I’m asking is for you to introduce my name into a conversation, that’s all.’

  ‘But … Louis … the menfolk hardly ever talk about things like that to me.’

  ‘Every winemaking family always talks about winemaking ‒’

  ‘Yes, of course, but not about transporting casks or hauling timber.’

  He let it go for the time being but returned to it again and again. His temper, always chancy, would rise. She began to be physically afraid of him.

  One evening she was dressing for dinner in her room at the mansion of Tramont. Her little nephew came running in, looking for a place to conceal himself in a game of hide-and-seek. Hard on his heels came his mother, pretending not to see him kneeling behind his Aunt Gaby at her dressing table.

  ‘I wonder where he can be?’ Netta asked the air, twirling around in the pretty room. ‘I ‒’

  She broke off. Her eye had lighted on her cousin’s arms, upraised with her hairbrush so that the loose sleeves of her robe fell away. There were dark bruises on the slender forearms.

  She stood staring at Gaby. Pierre, unable to keep quiet in his excitement, leapt out. ‘You didn’t see me, you didn�
�t see me!’

  ‘No, you were invisible! Run along now, dear, Flori will be looking for you in a minute for your bath.’

  ‘Oh, Mama!’

  ‘Go along, love.’

  Pouting, the little boy raised his face to be kissed goodnight by his aunt then left the room. Netta closed the door behind him. Then she came to her cousin and took her hands in both of hers. She drew them out towards her. Then she let go and pushed back the sleeves of the robe.

  ‘How did you get those marks?’

  ‘I walked into a door in the dark a day or so ago …’

  Netta turned the hands over. The marks went right round the wrists.

  After a pause she said, almost in a whisper: ‘It’s a man, isn’t it?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I see now. You stopped being unhappy some time just after the vintage. But recently you’ve begun to seem … drawn, anxious …’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Who is it, Gaby?’

  ‘No one. You’re imagining things.’

  ‘I’m not imagining those.’ Netta sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘And Flori tried to tell me something a few weeks ago, but I didn’t bother to listen …’

  ‘Flori!’

  ‘Oh, she sees almost everything that goes on. What was it she was saying? Something about … a waggoner?’

  Gaby suddenly felt incapable of going on with her denials. The urge to confide was irresistible. To tell someone, to ask advice! And especially to tell Cousin Netta, who had been so kind and good over Lucas Vourville …

  ‘His name’s Louis Peresqueau. You’re right ‒ it all began just after the vintage party.’

  ‘And he did this to you?’ Netta said, nodding at the bruised arms.

  Gaby said nothing.

  ‘Louis Peresqueau … Isn’t he the man whose wife died in strange circumstances a couple of years ago?’

  ‘She fell from the hay-loft in their stable.’

  ‘Ah!’ Netta remembered it all now. ‘Of course. And there are some villagers who say he broke her neck himself.’

  ‘Netta!’

  Gaby had gone white. Netta leapt up to put her arms around her. ‘My poor cousin! What have you got yourself into?’

  Tears began to flow. Gaby’s sobs came strongly, almost hysterically, as she tried to explain the hold that Louis had upon her. ‘And he wants me … to help him … become a successful businessman … And he just won’t listen when … I try to tell him … I have no influence with Papa and Uncle Gavin …’

  ‘So he beats you?’

  She nodded, her face hidden against Netta’s shoulder.

  ‘All you have to do, my love, is not see him any more.’

  ‘If it were only that easy! The only way to steer clear of him is to stay inside the grounds. If I don’t come to his house as promised, he puts himself in my way in the village or somehow manages to find me in Rheims or Épernay if I go shopping.’

  Netta sat holding her cousin close. ‘My dear Gaby, have you thought that you are laying yourself open to blackmail with this man?’

  ‘No, no! You don’t know him! He’s straightforward in his own strange way. I’m his woman, you see ‒ it’s up to me to do all I can to help him. But he wouldn’t stoop to blackmail, that would be a weakling’s weapon. No, he wants my help, and won’t believe I can’t give it.’

  Her tears had subsided now. She straightened, gathering her tangled mane of hair and twisting it up in a knot at the back of her head. She found a handkerchief and wiped her eyes. She looked at Netta, shaking her head.

  ‘It’s my own fault. I must find my own way out of this mess.’

  ‘Not at all, little cousin. You could tell your father and let him deal with Monsieur Peresqueau ‒’

  ‘Oh no! Oh, promise me you won’t tell Papa! He’d be so … disappointed in me!’

  Netta got up and took a pace or two about the room, her long skirt dragging on the turkey carpet. ‘To tell the truth, I’m a little disappointed in you myself, Gaby. How could you? A man like that?’

  ‘But you don’t understand! I … I needed him. I can’t live without love, Netta.’

  Netta said nothing. She’d never been in this miserable situation. She’d never even thought about physical desire until Frederic aroused it in her, and ever since then she had found all the fulfilment she wanted in his arms. To go with first one man and then another in response to needs she couldn’t control was an unhappiness she’d heard of but couldn’t really imagine.

  ‘But you’ve come to your senses about him now, I take it? You wouldn’t care to end up with a broken neck like his wife?’

  ‘Netta!’

  ‘It’s a possibility, isn’t it? If he can do that to you ‒’ she nodded to indicate the bruises she’d seen and perhaps others invisible under the silk robe ‒ ‘he can do worse. You must get rid of him.’

  ‘But how? I’ve thought about going away, but where to?’

  ‘No, he must go.’

  ‘His home is here. His little house, his stable …’

  ‘I imagine his house and stables are rented. If I remember aright, he’s of half gipsy stock, settled here about six years ago …’ Netta paced about, thinking. ‘Gaby, will you let me tell Frederic about it?’

  ‘Oh no!’

  ‘Only a man can deal with this, dear. And Frederic’s a man of the world ‒ and used to dealing with bad cases like Peresqueau, he handled men worse than him in the Army, I’m sure … Let me tell Frederic.’

  Gaby protested but in the end gave in. There was no one else to turn to, except her father ‒ and the shock and disgust that would have caused were unendurable.

  Frederic heard the tale from his wife with astonishment. ‘How long’s it been going on?’

  ‘Something like six months now.’

  ‘Good God!’

  ‘Freddi darling, I’m afraid for her. He hits her! And you won’t remember, but his wife died in a very strange way ‒ the examining magistrate was very dubious about it although the certificate was issued in the end.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll see to him!’ Frederic said, his dark eyes flashing with anger. ‘Knocking a woman about? He must be a brute!’

  ‘Well, not according to his lights. I suppose he thinks he’s got a right. Anyhow, as far as I can gather, he’s hanging on to poor little Gaby in hopes of doing well through her connection with the House of Tramont. He wants to be given a haulage contract, if you’ll believe it.’

  Frederic grimaced. A beautiful, young, passionate girl like Gaby ‒ and all the man wanted was commercial advancement! It was an absurd waste.

  ‘Well, I think we’ll have to scare him off.’ ‘I don’t think he scares easily.’

  ‘Money?’

  ‘It would have to be enough to persuade him to move away, to start somewhere else.’

  ‘That sounds like quite a large sum. How could we find it, and not alert your Uncle Robert?’

  They discussed it off and on for a day and a half. Then Netta came back to Gaby. ‘Gaby, you know the pearls you inherited from your mother?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Would you sell them?’

  ‘Oh no! They were Mama’s!’

  ‘Dear, we need a good sum of money to buy out Peresqueau and persuade him to move right out of the district. Neither Freddi nor I can think how to raise the money without attracting attention.’

  Gaby was unwilling but began to see the necessity when Netta explained Frederic’s thinking. ‘But how would I explain to Papa if I never wear them? He notices things like that ‒ anything to do with Mama’s memory …’

  ‘We can have a replica made, my love. Frederic will take them to Paris next time he goes on business and have the duplicate made, then sell them. Believe me, he tells me many rich ladies do it ‒ there are jewellers who specialise in it.’

  Gaby never heard what happened at the two interviews between Frederic de la Sebiq and her lover. All she knew was that Fr
ederic brought her a letter, ill-spelt and smudged, on a piece of cheap paper.

  ‘You didn’t want to help me but things have settled satisfactory. Shan’t be seeing you again. Thanks for everything, Louis.’ She read it in the privacy of her room. She felt shivers down her spine as she sat staring at it. Could she really have been in love with a man who could write a farewell letter like that?

  What could have got into her? She should never have let herself lose her head so wildly. She felt shame, disgust, regret.

  After sitting a long time in the spring twilight with the paper in her hands, she rose stiffly. She picked up the matches from the china tray which held the emergency candle, always kept in each room in case the newly installed electricity should fail.

  She lit a match with trembling fingers. She set fire to the letter, held it until the flame had consumed so far that it began to burn her fingers. She let the flinders drop into the tray, then with idiotic fierceness began to crush them into dust with her fist. When they were a little pile of black nothingness she drew a deep breath and blew them away into the air.

  There … That was the end of it. From now on she would never surrender herself to anyone as she had to Louis Peresqueau or Lucas Vourville.

  Love … It was a chimera, a mirage. It seemed she couldn’t live without it but she would take care where she chose to find it in future. She would never let it become the master influence in her life.

  And yet, what was there for her now? She shuddered away from the idea of an arranged marriage of the kind that Netta suggested. She knew her father would never force her into one if she refused. But what, in effect, could she do with her life?

  She looked at herself in her dressing table mirror and saw a white-faced, tear-stained, whimpering fool. Anger raced up in her heart.

  She sprang up and ran outside. It was a cool spring evening. The drizzle of late March touched her cheeks, cooling the shamed blood that had risen there. Calmer, she walked towards the vine rows at the far side of the estate.

  There the workers were just beginning to wend their way home. Figures clad in dark blue trudged away into the grey-blue dusk, tools were stacked in little huts, a voice called a farewell.