The Champagne War

by Fiona McIntosh

  As Sophie approached the city house, she lowered her gaze to watch the progress of her scuffed boots; it was too upsetting to observe the pockmarks in the façade of the family’s once proud home, which attested to more target practice by the Germans. Their attacks had collapsed one corner of the house that had stood to its majestic height on the edge of the city for a century. Now relentless artillery had broken one side of its elegant structure, and it looked to Sophie as though it was bending its knee to the Germans.

  Gaston, the man she was charged to seek out, had smiled at her when she mentioned this on the morning the destruction had taken place.

  ‘Sophie, don’t ever forget that you are House Delancré, not this building. This building is mute, inanimate. You are the walking, talking, breathing version that carries its memories forward, who embodies your great-great-grandfather who built this house.’

  ‘And then there’s Épernay,’ she murmured, taking a breath to calm herself.

  ‘Yes, and then there’s Épernay, another glorious mansion of the Delancré family . . . and let’s not overlook the chateau in Sézanne.’ Gaston placed his hands on her shoulders to force her to face him. He spoke tenderly. ‘Your family owns much property and you could say any one of the many houses is Delancré, but —’ he squeezed her shoulders — ‘they are stone and mortar, bricks and timber. You are the flesh of Delancré . . . you are the living embodiment of its collective spirit and knowledge. You cannot be rebuilt like this house. So, let them break your property but not your fine spirit, Sophie.’

  They were rousing words at the right time. Gaston could do this, had been doing this since they were children and the closest of friends.

  It was he who had said to her: ‘So, don’t look at the house. Look at your feet, which keep you moving towards it and while you do so, think about something important and then go below. Confront it only when peace arrives. Then you can fix it. For now, all that matters is that you stay safe.’

  She’d followed his advice ever since, and now as she descended the stairs into the crayères that tunnelled below the house, she reminded herself once again that this wasn’t her childhood home, where she had also lived with Jerome and where the real memories lived. That was in Épernay, and in a safer position than the Reims dwelling.

  Nevertheless, this city house was the face of the Delancré business and below it ran the city’s cellars. More than one hundred of the limestone and chalk pits, which the Romans had carved out of the earth during their occupation of Gaul, had been purchased by the fourth-generation champenois Marcus Delancré, her great-great-grandfather. The crayères twisted, turned back on themselves and ran for several kilometres below the city. Hers were just a small part of the collective network that Reims had once proudly stood above, but over which it was now increasingly collapsing.

  Sophie paused on the stairs to inhale. It was a ritual of hers. She breathed deeply twice: no matter her mood, her body responded identically each time. Sometimes the comforting smell of chalk and mustiness lasted longer, or like today, the pleasure was fleeting, but it was always reassuringly present.

  She hadn’t yet fully immersed herself in the cool that she knew awaited her sixty feet below on the floor of the crayères. For the moment she liked noting the first and most important sensation, which was the unique fragrance of the tunnels. At first it was like sniffing mushrooms . . . predictably earthy. She touched the walls, which felt moist and yet silken. The soft chalk was porous, wicking away rainfall and the damp that rose from below. Sophie put her fingertips to her nose to smell again; she had been doing this since childhood, loving the timeless flinty aroma of the chalk. She was smelling the Romans. She was smelling generations of her family. She was tasting the atmosphere that these tunnels could maintain, which led to the dry, crisp and, yes, even chalky flavour of the beverage that fizzed in the collective mind as the world’s most desirable. The family crayères offered safety to her and others, and a womb in which the young wines could be nurtured.

  She continued her descent, the smooth walls cast in a vague yellow from the lamplight and the rare and random electrification. Finally, on the ground, she did what she always did at this point, which was to look up towards the lip of the original pit. Daylight shone through its small circumference at street level in Reims, whereas down below, the tip of the funnel widened and led into a vast subterranean pit. As a child she had loved the idea of this secret domain running beneath the verdant countryside of her part of France.

  She walked around a puddle from a recent rain shower before she headed deeper into the labyrinthine world that felt like her second home. The damp would bring more illness, she reminded herself, and stepped up her pace through the familiar winding tunnels. She’d been running along these narrow alleyways since she was old enough to run. Others needed arrows and posters to tell them where they were within the network, but Sophie had a mental picture of her precise location and could get just about anywhere, not just within her family’s crayères, but within the maze beneath the city, if required. All the members of all the champagne households could do this. Champagne families raised their young to be independent within the cellars. And so she passed countless rows of bottles of Delancré champagne angled in their pupitres and tried not to think about the inevitable thieving that was surely going on.

  Voices sounded in the distance. As Sophie turned into the dogleg of the tunnel, she knew it would get far busier from hereon, not just because of the hospital but following this opening would take her past living quarters, some separated by furniture, others more salubriously curtained off with heavy fabric. In these tiny nooks of the tunnels, once used to house pupitres, women now cooked, read or did their sewing by candlelight, rocked babies to sleep and wrote letters with stubs of pencils to send to their loved ones in the trenches.

  Life – or at least a semblance of it – functioned like a busy beehive; everyone just got on with what had to be achieved, from council meetings to school lessons, from physical exercise classes to keep themselves limber, to laundry and an apothecary dispensing medicines. City hall had been moved underground, as had the headquarters of other essential services including the police and the fire brigade, into this upside-down world below the city.

  Light was in short supply. It was the one elusive life giver that they all protected, whether candle or oil lamp, and yet everyone moved to the rhythms of daylight. Sophie had been astonished to discover that even the pet songbirds that now lived in the shadowy world of the crayères, lit only by glows and glimmers, nevertheless sang their songs without the help of the sun.

  She passed an elderly woman who was busy knitting, her pet canary cheerfully singing as she worked with a soft smile – to all intents, a look of complete contentment. It reminded Sophie that even in the darkest corners the human spirit was strong enough to prevail.

  Sophie wasn’t looking forward to the meeting ahead but it was necessary. She made her way to the subterranean café, one of several, and lifted a hand to the man who had been shown down here to wait for her. Looking at him made her realise that another spring had rolled around. The war continued in its relentless bleakness. How had nearly four years passed since Jerome marched off to die? How had nearly three disappeared in the grief of his loss? These were the searching questions she tortured herself with only when she put her head down on a pillow. At other times, self-pity was banished, and thoughts of Jerome were pressed deep and inward. It was easier that way to put one foot in front of the other and help herself by helping others. Sometimes, though, helping others meant begging for assistance from people like the man seated before her.

  ‘My, my, Sophie. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?’ Louis Méa remarked. The small cane chair creaked a protest as he settled his weight into it.

  She’d promised herself she would be accessible and even warm to Jerome’s brother, especially as he’d made the time and taken the trouble to visit. No doubt it coincided with the opportunity to check the house and business at Avize
but she shouldn’t be churlish. He was family, after all, but more importantly, Louis was well connected . . . and that’s what mattered to her at the moment. ‘Louis, I’m sorry that we haven’t —’

  He stopped her with a tutting sound like tutor to student. ‘No need, dear Sophie. We’re together now, and I’m so very delighted that we can be. Your correspondence was timely.’ He didn’t explain why, so she stopped wondering as he continued. ‘I’m thrilled to see you. You look as alluring as ever, my dear. Dare I say war suits you?’ She didn’t answer, giving him a wan smile instead. ‘I’d rather see you in a gown, of course, but I’d be lying, my dear, if I didn’t admit that this austere outfit makes you look powerful.’

  ‘It’s what I wear when I’m volunteering at the hospital,’ she said, giving a once-over glance to her simple charcoal dress with a narrow skirt that brushed her ankles. She’d only removed her apron because it took so long to starch and iron, preferring to leave it hanging up in the nurses’ area of the cellars. Alluring? Sombre, more like.

  ‘Well, this is a novelty,’ Louis remarked, moving on, casting a slow gaze around the hollow of this part of the cellars, which had become a popular underground café since the city of Reims had reinvented itself below ground. ‘I had no idea you’d all become subterranean creatures,’ he chortled, as if life had never been gayer.

  ‘As you saw when you arrived, there is nothing left of Reims,’ Sophie said, trying to anchor him with some pity but not letting any edge of disdain creep into her tone. ‘We had no choice; we feel lucky to have these tunnels below our city.’

  He nodded. ‘Living in Paris, we certainly have our restrictions too . . .’ She didn’t think so, going by his girth, which had spread to make him rounder than she remembered. Meanwhile people down here in the champagne cellars beneath Reims had become ghostlike versions of their peacetime selves. Thin, pale, lacking vitality – it was all due to this underworld existence, where the sun and fresh air never reached them . . . not to mention existing just a breath away from the front, so nerves were often shredded. ‘This is truly amazing, my dear,’ he said, trying not to sound condescending, she was sure, but failing nonetheless.

  ‘How have you been, Louis?’ She injected bright interest into her query.

  The few candles whose flames danced in the makeshift café dulled colour to create a crepuscular atmosphere that Sophie decided suited Louis. He liked to act flamboyant, but she suspected that was the theatre he hid behind; Sophie felt convinced that he preferred the cool of the shadows and that shadings of grey best described him, despite his ruby necktie, which perhaps unintentionally matched his lips.

  He wet them now before he answered. ‘Well enough, Sophie, thank you. I’m glad you extended this invitation. Actually, more than that, I’m genuinely touched. We share the same surname, we both grieve the same person, we are linked through the same interests. We have much in common, you and I.’

  Sophie blinked. Louis was heading somewhere and wasting no time about it. She would follow his lead and not waste any more time with polite niceties. ‘I did have a motive for making contact, I must admit,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sure,’ he said, reaching to pat her hand. She watched his sausage-like fingers cover hers. They were soft and slightly clammy. She wondered if the signet ring with the family crest could ever come off that little finger. She doubted it: it appeared to sit in a valley of flesh, and she couldn’t imagine it would ever slip over the mountain ahead of it. No persuasion of oil or soap was getting that off. She had to resist pulling away her hand and cut her gaze back to his narrow-set eyes – which were watching her intently, she now realised, glad she hadn’t overreacted. He was testing her. ‘I do wish us to be closer,’ he continued, ‘and I also want you to feel wholly encouraged to ask for my help at any time.’

  Sophie answered with a smile that felt awkward. ‘That’s generous, Louis, thank you. Let’s drink to family, then,’ she offered, reaching for the bottle of champagne she had organised. It was her label, but she was happy to pay for it at the café and keep business ticking over. ‘This is a vintage that I made at the start of the war, just as Jerome was leaving.’

  They clinked glasses.

  ‘Mmm, Sophie, my dear! Assaults my senses in every good way.’

  She nodded, impressed by his remark. ‘Shocking, isn’t it, that our most memorable vintage of recent times was crafted in the most devastating of years. I recall weeping as we bottled and corked it.’

  ‘Perhaps your sorrow, which I suspect was exquisite in its pain, is in here?’ Louis suggested, taking her even more by surprise. She’d never got to know him well enough to understand that he might possess empathy for others. Sophie felt suddenly disappointed in herself for perhaps being impetuous – a quality her father had counselled against. Jerome had certainly tried many times to assure her that Louis had a good heart despite his pomposity. Her instincts had always told her Louis was greedy, though, and she’d trusted those rather than Jerome’s generous and helplessly sentimental loyalty.

  He so wants to be loved, Jerome had said repeatedly.

  ‘. . . and in that way he is never gone. You can always uncork him, taste him . . . love him,’ Louis was saying.

  She blinked, arrested. She didn’t expect such tenderness in Jerome’s brother, but then she really did not know him well enough.

  ‘That’s a lovely way to view it, Louis, thank you,’ Sophie replied. ‘I feel like I’ve lived several lifetimes since I made this, and that time soon after we lost Jerome is such a blur . . . a dark cave of misery that had no light source, no way of finding my way back from that cave, or so it felt.’

  ‘And still you did.’ He smiled, letting the gesture curl and linger wide against cheeks that were more jowly than ever; the years were not being kind to Louis. ‘And yet there’s nothing dark or brooding about this,’ he said, holding up the glass to admire the track of ascending bubbles in the low flickering light of the tunnel.

  All the underground cafés were well patronised, and Sophie sold her champagne at subsidised prices to this particular bar. This was one of Sophie’s ideas to help achieve a small sense of normality. Many a glass, over the past few years, of House Delancré’s sparkling wine had been part of muted celebrations of sorts for birthdays, anniversaries, christenings and, yes, even weddings. She’d been amazed to see people gathered around tables adorned with fine linens, prized china . . . even a candelabra or two. The resilience of folk to take their lives underground into an upside-down existence hadn’t failed to impress her. Even now, with nothing in particular to toast, sitting at a small table and sipping an aperitif or a flute of champagne could fool the participants – if just for a short while – that life was not all bleak.

  ‘Tell me about this vintage. Jerome once said it was like listening to poetry when he heard you talk about champagne.’

  Sophie was touched; he was trying to be charming, and she needed to recognise that and respond in kind. ‘Well, now, I hear the rustle of silk skirts in the chorus of bubbles,’ she began. ‘Listen,’ she urged.

  He grinned and did as he was bid, putting the glass to one ear, which she noted looked too small against his large, marrow-shaped head. Thinning fairness on top was compensated with licks of hair around those small ears allowed to grow long. It was prejudicial to compare these half-brothers, as it seemed that in every way Jerome was handsome, Louis was not; that couldn’t have been easy for the elder brother as they were growing up. Jerome was not perfect – a nose broken falling from a plum tree had lent a permanent kink to it; one eye was slightly narrower than the other, and he showed a dimple on only one cheek when he grinned, but she liked that these imperfections gave Jerome a rakish appearance. Her husband had been helplessly untidy, too. Clumsy, always dropping things or knocking into furniture, his hair rarely obeying a comb, his jaw always in need of a shave . . . even when he had shaved! She could recall now the scrape of his ever-threatening beard against her skin. She would give all the bottles in her cel
lar to feel that again.

  His brother by contrast was pallid, smooth-faced, neat despite his roundness, deft and economical in his movements . . . and there was nothing open about Louis, nothing carefree, no abandon. His mind was quick and agile, though, whereas it used to make her laugh that Jerome was always slow to catch on, whether it was a simple jest or an undercurrent; he wasn’t a sharp judge of character. He liked to trust and gave his trust freely. Jerome had admitted once that he left all the important decisions to Louis because he couldn’t rely on his own prudence. ‘Except for falling in love with you,’ he’d said. ‘That was my greatest moment of acumen.’ She’d never fully understood that sentiment but there was no doubting that Jerome’s brother was decisive, shrewd, driven. She had no idea of his role in Paris but knew it was important, part of the government, and no doubt, knowing Louis, he had his finger poised over any number of well-connected buttons he could push at any time. It was Jerome’s honest, uncomplicated way, though, that had attracted her. She hadn’t wanted complexity when it came to love.

  ‘Where did you go?’ Louis lifted a caterpillar eyebrow in query, although his next comment reminded her of his sharpness. ‘You have to let his memory rest, Sophie.’

  He was onto her. She sighed. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘It’s been three years since he died.’

  ‘Not dead, Louis. Missing.’

  He bowed his head at the correction. ‘If he was genuinely still missing, though, do you not think we would have heard something by now?’ He didn’t make it sound accusatory; his tone was light, conversational. She looked down. ‘If he was still alive, my dear, we would have been contacted by the various authorities, even if he can’t reach us because he’s injured or the like.’

  ‘But what if he’s lost?’

  ‘Lost how? In his mind, you mean?’ She nodded. He gave her a patient smile. ‘Then even if he’s languishing in a German prison, the wardens are obliged by international law to make known to the French Red Cross every prisoner they hold. You read the prison gazettes, no doubt?’