The Beekeeper's Promise

by Fiona Valpy

  It was warm enough to drink their aperitifs outside. The Cortinis were welcoming and hospitable, and especially keen to share their wines with their friends and neighbours. Beneath the generous branches of a walnut tree whose new green leaves were just beginning to unfurl, a table was spread with dishes of pâté, olives and baby radishes alongside a generous array of wine bottles.

  Mathieu introduced the Martin family to his father and brother, both of whom were as silent as Mathieu himself at first. Later, though, as the wines flowed and they found themselves in the midst of the most convivial company, they relaxed and became a good deal more talkative. Luc chatted and joked with Yves and the Cortinis’ son, Patrick, and Monsieur Dubosq joined in an animated discussion with Gustave and Monsieur Cortini about the state of farming in France and the merits of mechanisation over the use of horses in ploughing. Mathieu and Eliane held hands beneath the table and watched as new bonds were forged between their families.

  Finally, they all pushed their chairs back from the dining table, replete with the feast of succulent roast lamb, which had been washed down with several bottles of the Cortinis’ finest vintage red.

  ‘So tell me . . .’ Monsieur Dubosq turned to Monsieur Cortini. ‘Are you going to make a winemaker out of my elder son?’

  ‘He has great aptitude, and he’s a dependable pair of hands in the cellar as well as in the vines. I’d be happy to keep him on here, if he’d like to stay.’

  ‘That’s good to know. And what about you, Mathieu? Do you think you’d prefer to be a wine farmer than to come back to our cattle and our fields of grain?’

  ‘I . . . I’m not sure, Papa. I know you will need me in the summer to help with the harvest. But I really like it here. I like working in the vines. I like learning how to make wine . . .’ He tailed off, unable to say more. Eliane gave his hand a gentle, reassuring squeeze under cover of the tablecloth.

  Monsieur Dubosq shot Mathieu a piercing look from beneath his bushy eyebrows and then smiled. ‘Don’t worry, mon fils, I can see that this place has done you good. You’re learning a lot and you’re growing up. I’m thankful to all these good people who have become your friends.’ His dark eyes included Eliane in his remarks at this juncture. ‘If Monsieur Cortini is prepared to keep you on then I daresay I can find someone in Tulle to help me and Luc at harvest time. Let’s see how it goes.’

  Monsieur Cortini clapped his hands. ‘Excellent! This calls for a glass of something special to celebrate. I think I have a bottle of Armagnac in the cellar . . .’

  That night, as the girls lay in their attic bedroom at the mill listening to the owls softly declaring their territories in the darkness, Mireille whispered, ‘Eliane? Are you awake?’

  ‘Yes,’ came the reply from across the room.

  ‘It’s been a good Easter, hasn’t it?’

  There was a pause. ‘One of the best.’

  ‘I’m glad you and Mathieu are so happy. You’re really good together.’

  ‘His family seemed nice, didn’t they?’

  ‘Of course they did. Luc’s coming over with Mathieu tomorrow to go fishing with Yves. They’re already firm friends. And I could see that Monsieur Dubosq approves of you, even if he is a man of few words. I can understand where Mathieu gets it from now!’

  As they fell asleep, in the room filled with the hush of the river and lit by moonbeams that stole in through the window by her bed, a smile of contentment played over Eliane’s face.

  Abi: 2017

  ‘This is Karen, my right-hand woman.’ Sara is in the kitchen, sorting dusters and cleaning cloths into three plastic buckets, but she pauses to introduce me to the capable-looking woman who has just appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Abi.’ Karen has an Australian accent that is almost as broad as her smile, and a handshake so firm that it leaves my fingers numb for a moment or two. ‘Sara’s told me about you. I hear you turned up out of the blue to save us, just in the nick of time.’

  ‘Actually, I think it was more like the other way around.’

  ‘How are your digs down by the river? Not too dusty?’

  I shake my head. ‘The room’s perfect. It’s so peaceful down there – at night-time at least. When I left this morning Thomas had just turned up with a cement mixer, so it’s probably not going to be so serene during daylight hours.’

  ‘You’re definitely better off up here in Wedding Land.’ She nods, and then turns to Sara. ‘What’ve you got in store for us this week then?’

  Sara glances at a bulky folder sitting on the table. ‘The MacAdams and the Howards: a full contingent staying here, all arriving Thursday afternoon; one hundred and twenty for the wedding on Saturday; the usual timings for the service and pre-dinner drinks. Caterers and florist booked for Saturday morning. We’ve got the wines in the cellar. So this morning it’s going to be making up the bedrooms. Abi, you can work with me and I’ll show you the ropes.’

  ‘This sounds like quite a straightforward one then?’ I say hopefully as I pick up my bucket.

  Karen grins, picking up her bucket. ‘Abi, as you’re about to find out, when it comes to weddings there’s no such thing as straightforward!’

  Château Bellevue is built on the site of an ancient hill fort, Sara explains as we tuck in sheets and shake out pillows, throwing open shutters and windows to air the rooms as we go. The main building houses a dozen bedrooms on its two upper floors; and on the ground floor there’s the kitchen as well as several reception rooms, which range in size and feel from cosy and secluded to large and elegant. The main sitting room has tall French windows that open on to a stone-slabbed terrace shaded by a wisteria-draped pergola. Beyond the terrace, a walkway leads to a vast marquee (luckily staked down a lot more securely against the storm than my tent had been), where the wedding receptions are held. And next door to the marquee is a lofty stone barn with a glitter-ball hanging from a central beam, a complicated-looking sound system and a bar stretching along one wall: ‘Party Central’, as Sara calls it. ‘Thomas doubles as the resident DJ and Karen’s husband, Didier, is the barman,’ she explains. ‘We might ask you to help behind the bar occasionally if there’s a particularly big crowd.’

  She also shows me the walled garden where she grows flowers, vegetables and herbs; the swimming pool; a small cottage where she and Thomas live in the summer months while the main building is full of wedding guests; and a lean-to apartment at the back of the barn where the gardener-cum-groundsman stays. ‘His name’s Jean-Marc. Our first year, we had several students working for us, but they’ve mostly moved on now. Jean-Marc’s been with us for the last two years. He can turn his hand to anything. Thomas and I couldn’t do without him. And here,’ Sara continues, ‘is the chapel.’

  A carved stone cross sits on the gable roof above an ancient wooden door. We push it open and step out of the midday glare into a peaceful hush, where the simple stone walls seem to embrace us. ‘It’s de-consecrated these days, but we can offer the option of holding services of blessing here if the bride and groom don’t want an outdoor ceremony.’

  I walk up the aisle between the pews and stop to read a memorial plaque set into the wall on one side of the dais at the front.

  Charles Montfort, Comte de Bellevue

  18 novembre 1877–6 juin 1944

  Amor Vincit Omnia

  ‘He was the owner of the château in the war years,’ says Sara. ‘A brave man, and much respected in the area.’

  ‘What do those words in Latin mean?’ I point to the inscription beneath the dates.

  ‘Love conquers all,’ Sara translates. ‘Very appropriate for a chapel that is used solely for the blessing of marriages nowadays.’

  ‘There’s so much history in this place,’ I remark, as we emerge into the courtyard around which the buildings are clustered. ‘If only the stones could talk.’

  Sara nods. ‘You’re more likely to get the stones to talk than to hear the history from the people about these parts. The war years are still
pretty recent for many of them, just one generation back. People tend not to want to dwell on those memories – they’re still too painful. Perhaps some things are best left to heal until it’s safe to bring them into the light of day.’

  I remember Thomas’ comments from the previous evening, about the Nazi occupation and the wounds being still there, just below the surface. And then I recall what he’d said about asking Sara to tell me the tale of the family in the mill house. ‘Do you know the story of this place from those years?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know the whole story of the house, but I do know one person’s story from the war. She grew up in the mill house and worked up here at the château for the Comte de Bellevue. She’d kept it to herself for decades, but I think perhaps she felt it was time, now, for her story to be told.’

  Sara pauses, considering, smoothing the embroidered linen cloth that covers a small altar just beneath the plaque. And then she says, ‘Her name was Eliane Martin.’

  Eliane: 1939

  In the walled garden, Eliane had been able to add three new hives to her thriving apiary as a result of early-summer swarms. As the summer wore on, she made extra space in each of the hives by adding empty frames above the brood boxes so that the busy community of worker bees would fill these with honey. They could then be collected without disturbing the queens and drones, whose sole preoccupation was to ensure the continuity of the colony.

  Leaning a little less heavily on his stick these days – the ulcer on his leg had healed well – Monsieur le Comte watched from a safe distance just beyond the garden gate as Eliane, armed with a smoker and wearing a broad-brimmed hat draped with a veil, moved calmly from one hive to the next. She worked methodically, first puffing a little smoke in to calm the bees, then removing the wax-capped frames, which were heavy with honey, gently brushing off any bees from them and placing them carefully into tin buckets at her side. She replaced them with empty ones and closed the hives securely again, leaving the bees to set to work on the task of filling the new frames with the next cache of sweet nectar.

  The kitchen was its own hive of activity. Francine had come to help prepare the honey harvest for their market stall. She held the frames as Eliane ran a broad-bladed knife over each to remove the wax capping, revealing the honeycomb whose hexagonal cells immediately began to ooze sticky liquid gold. Setting aside a little of the comb honey – le Comte de Bellevue was particularly partial to it on toasted brioche for his breakfast – Eliane slotted the rest of the frames into the drum of the extractor. Madame Boin then set to, cranking the handle with gusto to spin the precious liquid out of every individual cell, while Francine operated the tap at the base, collecting the honey in sterilised jars.

  In the meantime, Eliane gathered up the shards of wax and put them into a squat iron cauldron sat just close enough to the range to allow the warmth to melt them. The girls would then strain this through a clean muslin cloth and pour it into more wide-mouthed jars. The smell of honey-scented beeswax began to fill the kitchen, perfuming their skin and hair until its sweetness seemed to have permeated the core of their very being.

  Madame Boin hummed to herself as she cranked the handle of the extractor and the girls chatted and laughed as they worked, filling the château with life.

  ‘I hear Stéphanie’s been seen going for an awful lot of walks in the vines over at Château de la Chapelle lately,’ Francine remarked as she wrung out a damp cloth to wipe the stickiness off the mouths of the jars.

  Madame Boin gave a derisory snort. ‘That girl, she’s always out hunting – and I don’t mean for rabbits, either!’

  ‘Well she needs to look for some other prey than Mathieu Dubosq. She’s wasting her time setting her sights on him. Everyone knows he only has eyes for Eliane.’

  Madame Boin glanced across sharply to where Eliane continued transferring wax into the cauldron. ‘Perhaps he should speak to your father, Eliane, and make it official. Then maybe that Stéphanie would finally get the message and leave him alone.’

  Eliane smiled and shook her head, placidly giving the pot a stir, and Francine nudged her with her hip. ‘What’s that starry-eyed look about then?’ she asked her friend.

  Eliane pretended to concentrate hard on stirring the melting wax, but the flush on her cheeks gave her away. Francine nudged her again. ‘Well?’ she persisted.

  Wiping her hands on the hem of her apron, Eliane turned to face her inquisitors. She shrugged, abandoning all pretence of trying to cover up her emotions, and her eyes shone like the opalescent sky of a summer’s dawn. ‘I love him, Francine. And I think he loves me too.’

  Her friend laughed, and put an arm around Eliane, giving her a hug. ‘Well, that’s as plain to see as the nose on your face. Anyone with half a brain can see he adores you.’

  Eliane’s cheeks flushed an even deeper pink, which had nothing to do with her proximity to the heat of the cast-iron range. She picked up a few more shards of wax and dropped them into the cauldron. Suddenly serious, she turned to Francine again. ‘You know, I’m not worried that Mathieu’s going to be stolen away by Stéphanie, or anyone else for that matter. I know we will be together. We’ve already talked about it. We just have to wait until he’s finished his apprenticeship and secured a winemaking position somewhere. He knows there won’t be a permanent job for him at Château de la Chapelle, unless Monsieur Cortini and Patrick were to expand the vineyard considerably. And that seems very unlikely in these uncertain times.’

  Madame Boin shook her head and frowned, cranking the handle even more vigorously. ‘Those power-crazy Nazis must be stopped if you ask me. Monsieur le Comte is worried sick that we’re going to be dragged into another war, which is the last thing anyone wants. He spends far too much time sitting hunched over that blessed wireless, listening to the doom and gloom that gets broadcast day in, day out. We mustn’t let those bullies scare us.’

  ‘I agree. We can’t just ignore what’s going on,’ Francine chipped in. ‘I heard they’re deporting thousands of people. And the refugee situation is becoming a crisis in Paris. Bullies need to be stood up to, not just ignored in the hope they’ll go away. Otherwise we might find that we are their next target. What do you think, Eliane?’

  ‘I think we should promise that we will stay true to ourselves. No matter what happens. No matter how bad things get. We should hold on to that truth. And I think we should all do whatever we can to prevent any more bloodshed. Even if, at the moment, it seems that the only thing we can do is pray. Pray that everyone sees sense.’

  ‘But what if the only way to bring an end to the bloodshed is to fight, spilling more blood along the way?’ Francine persisted.

  ‘Then we will fight when the time comes,’ Eliane replied, her eyes becoming sad, suddenly. But the expression was fleeting, like a cloud passing across the sun, and then her gaze became clear again. ‘Now,’ she said briskly, ‘pass me those lids and let’s get these jars ready for market, otherwise Saturday will arrive and we’ll still be standing here worrying about things we cannot change.’

  Abi: 2017

  The wedding party will be arriving this afternoon, so Sara and I are in the walled garden cutting flowers to put in the bedrooms and the main sitting room, and picking herbs, which she’ll be using to flavour tonight’s meal. She explains to me that, while they use outside caterers and professional florists for the celebrations in the marquee, she and her team do the day-to-day catering and housekeeping. She was a landscape gardener before she came to live in France, she tells me, and her evident talent is on display all around us.

  In the shelter of the walled garden, she’s created long beds crammed full of cottage-garden flowers – blowsy peonies and scented roses, starry-blue love-in-a-mist and a foam of mock-orange blossom – with which we fill our baskets before returning to the kitchen to arrange them in Sara’s collection of pretty vases and jugs, gleaned from brocantes, which will add a welcoming touch to each guest’s bedside table.

  The gardener, Jean-Marc, waves to u
s from his tractor-mower as he cuts a swathe through a meadow of marguerite daisies which they’ve cultivated to one side of the marquee. This grassy walkway will allow the bride and groom to make their way into the heart of the meadow of white flowers, the perfect setting for some stunning wedding photos.

  Along the paths that lead to the chapel, the barn and the swimming pool, Sara and Jean-Marc have planted beds of lavender interspersed with a froth of long-stemmed white flowers (‘gaura’, she says it’s called), which dance like butterflies above the blue haze. Cream-coloured climbing roses drape themselves over stonework and around windows, and the heavenly scent of wisteria hangs in the warm stillness of the midday air.

  ‘What a romantic setting,’ I remark, imagining how these backdrops must set off the photos of beautiful brides and dashing grooms. It’s in stark contrast to my own wedding photo. Zac and I paused on the steps of the registry office as his mother snapped a picture on her phone. She had made it very clear that she thought her son could have done far better than marrying a penniless, family-less nanny.

  I remember clearly the day we met. He was staying the night with the family I was working for in London and he’d marched into the kitchen, full of confidence in his perfectly ironed shirt (I found out only later that he’d sent them to be professionally laundered, but that he expected his new wife to do an equally immaculate job as part of her uxorial duties). I was attempting to spoon spag bol into little Freddie and had resorted to the ‘train going into the tunnel’ game to try to get him to finish what was in his Thomas the Tank Engine bowl. Some of the sauce had spattered on to my grey T-shirt (I’d given up wearing white ones within twenty-four hours of embarking upon my nannying career, two families back), and my hair was scraped back into a messy bun that was way more utilitarian than chic.