The dark vineyard b,op-2

by Martin Walker

  “I’m making sure everyone gets at least one glass of Max’s wine for when I start the bonfire,” said Alphonse. “So we’ll have that to remember him by. I just hope we have enough, so many of his friends have come. And I’m delighted to see you again,” he said to Jacqueline. “He was in love with you, and very happy in those last days.”

  Jacqueline managed a small smile, the first sign of animation on her face since Bruno had arrived at Pamela’s place to lead the three women to the commune. She embraced Alphonse, and then almost disappeared into Celine’s billowing dress as she was embraced again. Then Pamela was embraced and hailed as an honorary godmother for having been a witness at Max’s adoption. Dominique, wearing an apron and brandishing a large knife, came from the table where she had been helping Marie prepare great bowls of salad. She kissed Bruno and exchanged a cool, appraising handshake with Jacqueline.

  “It’s a reunion,” said Alphonse, handing out glasses of Max’s wine. “All the original members of the commune have come for this, and one even flew in from London. Max was like a son to all of us. And the children have come back, from Bordeaux and Marseilles and everywhere.”

  “We wanted to have his ashes scattered here tonight, when everyone was with us, but they won’t release the body,” said Celine. “I don’t understand why not. You must know, Bruno. What is it?”

  “I think there’s some concern about whether Max or Cresseil died first because that will affect the inheritance,” said Bruno. He changed the subject. “What time do you light the fire?”

  “Any time now, when it’s really dusk,” said Alphonse. “But first I think I should dance with Jacqueline, the last woman who held our dear boy and made him happy.” He took her hand, turned to take a long puff from Celine’s joint and led Jacqueline away.

  “I’m glad you didn’t notice that,” Pamela teased. “It would be awful to ruin the evening by arresting the host.”

  “Live and let live,” said Bruno. “Would you like to dance?”

  They strolled through the throng, pausing to greet new arrivals, dodging goats and children, and arrived at the terrace that had become a dance floor to see all the dancers standing in a ring and grinning as Alphonse performed one of his extraordinary dances to Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit.” Jacqueline looked bewildered as she tried to keep in step as Alphonse bounced happily around her, his elbows jerking out from side to side, his fingers snapping and his head rocking as he belted out the words of the song.

  “Did people used to dance like that?” asked Pamela.

  “They must have,” said Bruno. “Look at the new arrivals.”

  Celine now had taken the floor, twirling around with her arms outstretched, her green robe billowing like a mainsail as the smoke from her joint drifted into the air. Another of the commune originals, a tall and gaunt man, completely bald and wearing a suit of black velvet, joined her and began to sway. An even older couple with white hair stepped onto the floor and began to jive.

  “I’m not sure I can do any of those dances,” said Pamela. “But let’s try.”

  The last echoes of “feed your head” were fading, to be replaced by Eric Clapton’s “Layla” as Bruno and Pamela stepped forward. Bruno encouraged others in the surrounding crowd to join them, and soon it seemed everyone was dancing, including the mayor and Xavier and Rene and Gilbert from the bar with their wives. The mayor cut in on Bruno, took Pamela in his arms and began what looked like a slow foxtrot, leaving Bruno to join Jacqueline just a moment before half the rugby team descended on her.

  “Alphonse said he had to light the fire,” she said. “Isn’t he bizarre? You wonder how Max grew up so normal in a place like this.”

  The music faded, and the boom of a great gong sounded. People turned to see Alphonse standing by the bonfire, holding up a large brass disk and beating it again so that the sound echoed back and forth across the hollow. Even the goats stopped their chewing and stared. Celine walked down to stand beside him. Alphonse laid down the gong and picked up a large stick, its tip black and sticky with oil.

  “Friends and family, we are all here because of Max, and in this commune we do not grieve the passing, we celebrate the life. So we dance and sing and feast in his honor. I raised Max and I loved him. His memory will always be with me, as it will be with you, and I’m grateful for the warmth he brought to all our lives. Now I’d like all the family of our commune to come down here and join me.”

  They came to stand with Alphonse and Celine as the darkness gathered and Alphonse lit his torch. Celine bent to the floor by the bonfire and began to distribute a sheaf of similar torches. The commune members all held them against Alphonse’s flame until half a dozen were flaring against the darkening sky, casting red glows that flickered over their faces as the heady scent of roasting meat drifted across the crowd. It felt pagan but somehow deeply familiar to Bruno, as though this was how all celebrations and events must have been in the past, centuries of roasted lambs and fires and wine, before the age of electricity, when there was only fire to light the darkness.

  Alphonse and Celine thrust their torches into the base of the bonfire, and then one after the other the rest of the commune members followed suit. Hesitantly at first but then with growing vigor the fire began to rise up the tall sticks, delicate blue flickerings at first and then yellow flares and finally thrusting, eager red flames four meters high that towered above Alphonse and his friends, who stepped steadily farther and farther back from the surging heat.

  “Farewell, Max,” called Alphonse, then he turned to embrace Celine, and then all the children and the former members of his commune, and led them back to the wine and the roasting lambs and the throng of friends, all lit by the raging fire.

  Stephane and Raoul were the carvers, neatly severing the heads and legs by the light of oil lamps and the distant bonfire, before slicing the meat into hearty portions. Alphonse was brandishing a massive ladle, serving couscous from a giant cauldron, and Bruno had been recruited to help Xavier open the massed ranks of wine bottles the guests had brought. Pamela was at the next table, tossing vast bowls of salad with olive oil and the commune’s own wine vinegar. Fabiola was bandaging the skinned knee of a weeping small boy who had tripped over one of the young goats, and Jacqueline was still dancing.

  When the crowds were all served, and Bruno and Pamela and the other servers began to feed themselves, the few available chairs were all taken. Bruno tucked a bottle of wine under each arm, his plate in one hand and a stack of plastic glasses in the other, and joined Dominique and Stephane, who were sitting on the grass. Pamela brought her plate atop a large bowl of salad, one of Alphonse’s loaves under one arm and a roll of paper towels under the other. Alphonse had turned down the volume so the Beatles’ White Album was a distant backdrop.

  “I feel like I’m back in the Middle Ages,” said Pamela, giving up on the feeble plastic fork and starting to eat with her fingers. Bruno handed her his knife, knowing it would make little difference. He had been to so many such events that he came prepared, and now he reached into a side pocket of his cargo pants and brought out a fistful of foil packets emblazoned with a lobster, each containing a moistened towel.

  “I never go to a picnic without them,” he said. “The Middle Ages might have been different if they’d had them. But I know what you mean, feeling that this is how it must have been for our ancestors. Maybe that’s why we enjoy it.”

  Looking out over Alphonse’s strange property, he saw Fabiola and Jacqueline squeezed onto benches at the same table with the rugby team, laughing and chatting. The mayor was at a table with Alphonse and Celine and some of the original commune members.

  “You’re like a mother hen.” Pamela grinned. “Don’t worry, all your chicks are happily taken care of and enjoying themselves. The guardian of Saint-Denis can relax for once.”

  “I was just a bit worried about Fabiola, but she seems to be fitting in fine and meeting people.”

  “She’s a pretty girl, despite that sc
ar, and since she doesn’t pay much attention to it, other people don’t get embarrassed and after a while you forget about it. It’s like having red hair. I hated it when I was a girl and thought everybody was looking at me all the time, but then you realize they aren’t, and if they are it doesn’t matter.”

  “Really?” Bruno asked. “I thought your hair must always have been that glorious auburn-bronze color.”

  “It was brighter when I was little. Carrottop, they called me, and sometimes Ginger. I had an uncle who used to pretend to light his cigarette from it.”

  “They used to call me ‘dwarf’ and ‘shorty’ and other names because I didn’t really grow until I was fifteen,” said Dominique. “Except Max. He never called me names and never let other people do it, not when he was around.”

  “You know, you had me worried for a while, when you went off to the lycee,” said Stephane. “I thought you and Max were getting far too serious for your age.”

  She smiled, fondly putting a hand on his knee. “It was never like that with Max. He was much more like a brother.”

  “So you didn’t mind when Max took up with Jacqueline?” Bruno asked.

  “Not like you think. But I can’t say I was happy about it. She was cruel to him, dating that other guy, the American. Max used to confide in me, and I didn’t like what I heard.”

  “She seems to be over it now,” Pamela said in a low voice, gesturing to the dome, where Jacqueline was laughing at her table. “But maybe she still is upset. She’s been throwing herself into her work. I took her some coffee earlier today and she was upstairs asleep, but the table was full of work, all her wine books and thick files about vineyards and companies. She has heaps of stuff on that Bondino group, the one with the young American. Since she wants to be in the wine business, I’m surprised she dropped him.”

  Bruno looked sharply at Pamela. “When you say she has lots of stuff on the Bondinos, what do you mean?”

  “Well, I didn’t really look, but she has annual reports, files of press clippings, lots of loose photos of the family. There were a couple of really thick files as well as the one that was open. I suppose she got it all from the Internet, doing some research when she started dating him.”

  “Is that something you ever did, research someone you were seeing?”

  “That was before the age of Google,” she said, smiling. “But yes, you ask around, ask your friends, try to find out something about someone who could be important to you. It’s human nature.”

  “What you describe sounds like a lot more than that. Family photos, thick files.”

  “Yes, I was surprised. It struck me as being like a special research project. They were real photos, glossy prints rather than computer printouts. And there were not just portraits but group shots, like snaps from a family album, some quite old, from what looked like the thirties and forties. But I think you can get real photos made from computer images these days.”

  Bruno nodded. It was more than strange for Jacqueline to go to that much trouble for a guy she’d dated briefly and then dropped. But he was rich. Perhaps that was it. Despite her affair with Max, maybe she was thinking of Bondino and his money. Or perhaps she was hoping to make her career in the Bondino firm. That would make sense. But her having all these photos suggested something different, something more personal than just researching a company for a possible job. Even beyond her manipulative ways there was something about Jacqueline that troubled him. He’d have to question her again, maybe get a look at those files.

  Dominique was collecting the used paper plates and throwing them into a big black plastic bag. Stephane hauled Pamela to her feet and back to the dance floor, where the music was now Beach Boys surfing songs. Alphonse’s collection seemed to have stopped growing at about the time he started the commune. Dominique gave her hand to Bruno and they went off to join the dancers.

  “Max would have loved this,” said Dominique. “It’s just his kind of party.”

  The music changed to Francoise Hardy, “Tous les Garcons et les Filles,” and as Alphonse cut in to dance with Dominique, Bruno found Pamela and took her in his arms.

  “This is rather more my kind of music,” Pamela said. “I never really enjoyed the bouncy stuff.”

  “Just wait,” he said. “I know Alphonse’s music. Next it will be Jean Trenet from the 1940s and then some slow numbers from Juliette Greco and Yves Montand.”

  “Better still,” she said, and spun away, still holding his hand, to turn a stately pirouette before coming back into his arms. In the firelight, with her fine skin and clear complexion, she looked impossibly young, and Bruno felt the supple play of a horsewoman’s lithe muscles under the light touch of his hands.

  “I never thought of you as a dancer, with all that energetic rugby and tennis,” she said.

  She was smiling, her eyes fixed on his. She moved in toward him, her cheek close to his. He shifted his head a fraction to nestle his cheek against hers, and he felt the slightest tremble under his hands. Yves Montand was singing “Feuilles Mortes.” Bruno heard Pamela singing along quietly in English, “The autumn leaves caress my windowpane…” She had a sweet voice, soft and low.

  “Did you mean to kiss me, the night after your dinner?” she asked, almost whispering.

  “I didn’t mean to,” he answered quickly, almost despite himself. He had to tell the truth. “But then I wanted to, very much. It seemed to come from nowhere.”

  “Yes, I know,” she said. “It seemed that way to me as well. Then I felt sorry that we stopped.”

  He bent his head and kissed her neck, and felt her hands tighten on his back.

  “I thought about it all the way back to town,” he said. “And then Bondino took over.”

  “Ah, yes, Bondino and Jacqueline. And poor Max. What a mess that girl has made.” She paused, and they swayed together to the music, oblivious to the other dancers. “Do you think we get any more sensible about love as we get older?”

  “Not more sensible, no. But it’s more quiet, more subtle, stronger. It loses none of its power,” he said. “Maybe we grow more cautious, because we know what it is to be hurt.”

  “Is that what it is?” she whispered. He felt her lips brush his cheek and her fingers play gently with the curls at the nape of his neck. “Or do we just think about it and talk about it more?”

  “I think about it far too much,” he said, and kissed her. This time neither of them turned away as the firelight slowly died and the stars became brilliant above.

  39

  Because he had been a soldier, Cresseil deserved military honors. Between his paperwork and phone calls, Bruno had spent the morning making the arrangements. Now as the mairie clock chimed the last quarter before three, he went down to the basement and brought out the flags and the ROUTE BARREE signs for the small procession from the church to the war memorial, then to Cresseil’s final resting place beside his wife in the town cemetery.

  The church was almost full when Bruno slipped in through the side door. Raoul, who worked part-time as a pallbearer when he wasn’t selling his wines in the market, was taking a final smoke with the other men in black ties from the funeral parlor. The coffin stood on trestles before the altar, on a stool beside it a cushion that bore the campaign and Resistance medals Bruno had found in Cresseil’s house. The mayor and Xavier with their wives were in the front row with the baron, and behind them was a group of strangers who were the cousins. Bruno nodded at Alphonse.

  The organ was playing some doleful music that Bruno learned from the program was a choral prelude by Bach. He scanned the crowd for Pamela. After the previous evening’s embrace, she had left him with a lingering kiss and a look of promise in her eyes as she left the wake with Fabiola and Jacqueline. He felt a surge of excitement as he spotted her, her face half shrouded by the dark shawl that covered her head. Jacqueline sat beside her, her head uncovered. As he studied them, the distinction was sharp between the mature and lovely woman and the more conventionally pretty girl. S
ensing his gaze, Pamela turned and caught his eye. She smiled and raised a discreet eyebrow, as if to ask how their relationship would now unfold. He nodded to her in return.

  Father Sentout, resplendent in full robes, came from the vestry to shake hands with the mayor and Cresseil’s cousins before standing at the head of the coffin and beginning the service. Bruno slipped out again to ensure that Jean-Pierre, Bachelot and Marie-Louise, each almost as old as the man they were burying, were ready with their flags. The small honor guard from the gendarmes was lined up with the school band for the short march to the war memorial.

  As he went back to the main doors of the church, they opened and J-J emerged. “Saw you leave,” he said, handing Bruno a computer printout. “Here’s that reply you wanted from Quebec.” Bruno had sent him a text message the previous evening, asking him to send a routine “Anything Known?” query on Jacqueline to the Quebec police. “It looks like she’s clean,” J-J added, “which means she’s in better shape than I am. The prefect is furious with me, and we’ve got a fancy lawyer threatening to sue me personally for the wrongful arrest of Bondino.”

  “Still no attestation of wrongful death from the pathologist?” Bruno asked. He resisted the temptation to remind J-J that he’d warned him of this.

  “No, so they can’t appoint a juge d’instruction, and I can’t hold Bondino any longer. I’ve got his fingerprints, and I think the DNA will show it was his hair under the dead man’s fingernails. But until the pathologist’s report there’s no crime as yet, so he’s free, and I’m in the merde. I’m so deep in it that I’ve had to come down here to apologize to your Captain Duroc for misusing his gendarmerie. The prefect insisted. But I’m still not sure I’m wrong.”

  “This reply from Quebec came back very fast. I wasn’t expecting an answer for a couple of days.”

  “I rang our friend the brigadier, thinking he could get it faster. I got it overnight.”