by Kim Ekemar
“Father, tell us … I understand that you’re about to change your will in some way?” Michel changed the subject. “Would you like to share with us what you have in mind?”
“In good time, Michel, in good time,” Patrice said and waved his hand as if it was of no importance. He wrinkled his forehead in surprise that Michel had learnt of his intentions in advance. Justine must have spilled the beans, he noted. “Some minor details that are important to me, that’s all, now that I’m getting on in years. I’ll explain it to you tomorrow. Now, before we go into the drawing room, I want a pipe with my best tobacco.”
He rose from the table, removing the pipe he kept in his breast pocket and went over to the stove. He picked up a large matchbox that had been thrown into a corner, away from the fire, and opened it.
“What's this, Justine?” Patrice frowned as he looked at the matches inside. “These are all burnt. Why on earth would you keep burnt matches that are no use to anyone? Go and find some for me, will you!”
With her head lowered and without replying, Justine hurried out of the kitchen and a moment later returned with another matchbox. Patrice took it from her without a word and lit a match next to the tobacco that he had stuffed his pipe with. After sucking on it hard a couple of times, he was contented that the tobacco was burning.
“Now, my children, let’s go into the drawing room. I’d like to share some stories about this place handed down to me from my ancestors. I hope that one day you will sit in front of the fireplace and repeat them to the grandchildren – both mine and your own.”
Without waiting for their reply, Patrice marched into the main room situated on the ground floor, lined with books and hunting trophies, and sat down in his favourite chair in front of the fire that Gaspard had started.
Chapter X
Hunting in the woods
When Patrice rose at dawn the following day, he was in a bad mood. He went into the kitchen wearing his new, fluffy morning gown with a vague suspicion that it made him look effeminate. There he found Justine, who had just finished making coffee.
“How was your night, monsieur?” Justine asked him, which she did out of habit every morning.
“To tell you the truth, I hardly slept a wink,” Patrice muttered grumpily as he poured himself some coffee from the kettle on the stove. “That old clock you put in my room kept chiming in my ear every fifteen minutes until I couldn’t stand it any longer. I simply had to get up and stop it.”
Gaspard came into the kitchen carrying a rifle. He went over to the stove and took the mug that Justine silently offered him.
“I’m ready whenever you are”, Gaspard said to Patrice.
“Justine, why don’t go and wake up Constance”, Patrice ordered. “I doubt she has changed her habits since she moved to Paris. She always needed at least three prompts to get out of bed in the morning.”
Justine did as she was told and went upstairs. Gaspard carved a thick piece of ham that he put on a piece of brown bread. Patrice went back to his room to get dressed for the hunt.
An hour later, the three walked through the vineyards where the sun glittered in the morning dew still resident on the leaves. Gaspard carried his rifle and a bag, which contained the breakfast Justine had prepared for them, slung over his shoulder. As always, Patrice was filled with immense pleasure as he walked across the fields and into the woods where he and, before him, generations of his family had hunted.
“Dear Father, it’s so good to be back at Clos Saint-Jacques. Walking through this forest with you on such a beautiful day is a blessing few are able to enjoy …”
“I’m glad you still appreciate the good things we have on offer in Bercy, Constance”, her father mused, “despite being seduced by the superficial life in the capital.”
“Speaking of which … I’m ready to move back to Bercy again,” she said without believing a single word she uttered, “but I’m too penniless to do so.”
Gaspard had moved into earshot, Constance noticed, but she couldn’t change the subject now. This was the perfect opportunity to ask her father for the much-needed financial support. Anyway, Gaspard was as dumb as they come. Surely he wouldn’t understand the finer points of her pitch for her father's financial help.
“What you mean”, her father said with a hint of a sneer, “is that you’re broke again.”
“I was hoping you could help me move out of the grasps of Paris”, she went on the defence, “but to do so I have bills and commitments to settle.”
Patrice Lafarge thought for a moment. He seemed to believe her, she noted relieved.
“If you’re sincere about it, maybe I can write you a cheque for the amount you need. We’ll talk more about it later.”
That instant, a hare jumped across the meadow where they were standing, looking for shelter. Gaspard already had his rifle next to his cheek and expertly killed it with a single shot. After he had gutted the hare, they walked in silence through the woods until they came upon a dry patch of ground next to one of the brooks. There they shared the breakfast Gaspard had brought. Just like he had when Constance had been a little girl, Patrice named different birds and pointed out where they kept their nests. A pair of squirrels jumped from branch to branch.
Constance was becoming bored with the scenery. She wasn’t getting any younger, she knew. Maybe I should get married, she thought, while Patrice continued chatting about the birds and the animals and his precious woods. Somehow she couldn’t picture herself living with some boring government bureaucrat and caring for snivelling children. Her thoughts turned to Alphonse. Besides being six years younger, he possessed a perfidious streak. She knew it was unlikely that their relationship would last more than another month or so. No, her hope was to receive her inheritance before she got too old and no longer was able to enjoy the freedom that came with having money. She estimated that the value of her quarter of the property would keep her more than comfortable for the rest of her life, with no need to ever again work in humiliating conditions like those of her present employment.
They continued along the well-trodden paths until Patrice was able to match Gaspard’s feat by shooting another hare.
“Now we’ve secured our lunch for tomorrow”, he shouted triumphantly. “Time to head back to the house!”
Chapter XI
Saturday noon at l’Auberge le Cheval Blanc
Claude had enjoyed a long, lazy morning in his chamber at the inn before going downstairs for breakfast at eleven thirty.
“I’m sorry, sir”, the servant girl excused herself on behalf of the establishment, “we don't serve breakfast after ten o’clock.”
Annoyed Claude put on his rehearsed airs of a gentleman accustomed to far better considerations.
“But lunch is served in an hour, and on weekends we always make an extra effort”, she promised as she curtsied and hurried towards the kitchen area.
With his stomach grumbling in protest of having to wait for another hour, Claude took a tour of the inn. Outside the large verandah doors, he saw a couple by a table – he reading the morning paper and she, presumably the wife, writing a letter. Two elderly pipe-smoking gentlemen sat immobile staring at their ongoing chess game on a worn board. A couple of tables apart, a woman in her early twenties was sitting on her own. Claude’s keen eye noticed that she looked bored. In want of something better to do, he decided to approach her.
The young woman smiled weakly as she nodded her agreement to his question of whether he may be allowed to join her. After he had introduced himself, she told Claude that her name was Juliette Sinclair. She was pretty and clearly aware of this indisputable fact. In response to anything she found interesting or amusing, she coquettishly shook her curls and flashed a brief smile. At first Claude found her dull, but in want of something better to do until Henri returned from his boring family affair, he decided to keep up a conversation with her.
By and by they found themselves on better terms. The turning point was when Juliette discovered that
Claude was immune to her practice of teasing any male audience with her flirtatious manners. She felt offended until she realised that he wasn’t interested in women at all. Strangely enough, this made her feel relaxed in his company and, as two sisters would, they breathlessly began to share observations and gossips that they found hilarious.
When lunch was served, Claude grandiosely invited her to share a spectacular meal, which he insisted on ordering. He went for the most expensive items he could find on the menu. Naturally, he expected Henri to pay for the opulent meal. It was the least Henri could do, having left him stranded here, alone, the whole weekend … well, almost alone. After the extended lunch they took a stroll along the lake. Upon their return, they half-heartedly played a game of croquet on the lawn next to the hotel before entering the main hall for afternoon tea.
As they became better acquainted with each other, they began to exchange confidences. Nothing important to begin with, but the astute Claude eventually had her revealing her innermost secrets. The most important among these was that she recently had become the secret lover to a man named Michel Lafarge.
Chapter XII
Wine tasting in the cellar
It was almost one o’clock when Patrice returned with his two children in tow. Gaspard entered the kitchen and threw down the game on the kitchen table.
“Justine!” Patrice called out. “Why don’t you prepare these hares for that stew you do so well?”
Justine came up from the kitchen cellar with two large earthenware jugs brimming with red wine.
“I’ll have the stew ready for lunch tomorrow, monsieur,” she replied. “I’m happy to announce that today we’ll have stuffed goose for your birthday.”
“None of the usual table wine, then”, Patrice admonished, ignoring her. “Not on my seventy-fifth birthday with all my children back home. Come”, he called out to Henri and Michel, who had descended the stairs from the upper floor when they had heard their father’s booming voice confirm the hunters’ return.
Gaspard announced that he would help Justine set the table outside. Michel and Henri followed Patrice out to the small terrace at the back of the house. It overlooked the vineyard recently pruned by Gaspard. The sunlight could be glimpsed through the vine interlacing the trellis that covered the terrace. It certainly is a beautiful day, Patrice mused contentedly.
“It’s a beautiful day”, Michel echoed his thoughts.
“And it was more beautiful still in the woods”, Patrice said sarcastically. “You don’t know what you missed. Ask Constance, and she’ll tell you.”
Constance had gone up to her room to change. Justine and Gaspard came out with trays laden with glasses, plates and cutlery. They began setting the table for six.
“When will the goose be ready?” Patrice asked Justine as he grabbed three of the glasses.
“In about an hour or so”, she replied. “I need to fetch more glasses, I see.”
“Very well. In the meantime I’ll go to the cave with the boys to choose some suitable wine.”
They marched in Indian file to the stone house where the vats for the fermentation of the grapes were kept. A small staircase lead down to a cellar where dusty bottles from the past twenty-five years of harvests were stacked horizontally in wooden structures that lined the walls. On small blackboards above them, the years and the quality had been noted with chalk. It was noticeably chillier in the cellar.
Patrice chose a bottle marked as harvested in 1915 and opened it on top of a large oak barrel.
“This is a remarkable wine, and to my profound regret I only have ten bottles left”, he announced proudly. “If I were to sell them, I could charge their weight in gold. You’ll see.”
They all tasted it, and even Michel, whose trade was that of a wine connoisseur, had to admit that it was extraordinary. As they continued the wine tasting, Patrice spoke about the various treasures that he kept there for them to enjoy in the future. He had realised, he confessed, that it would be impossible to drink them all by his own before his time was up.
My father-in-law is right, Michel thought. There’s a fortune waiting to be made from this land. After selling off the timber and ploughing the fields, new vineyards would produce ten or twenty times more of this truly wonderful wine. It would take some investing, of course, but his father-in-law had assured him that he would provide him with all the investment money he needed if Michel could make good on his promise to convert the Clos Saint-Jacques forest into vineyards. Once his father was dead, Michel would convince his brothers and sister to sell out. Maybe he could keep Gaspard on as a supervisor. Even if he wasn’t very bright, at least he was family – and cheap labour at that. Henri and Constance weren’t businessmen like himself; they would never understand the grand plans he envisioned. As neither had any interest in the property, it would merely be a question of negotiating a reasonable price. He knew that Henri was short of money, a dreamer really, with constant debts. Henri didn’t have the necessary patience to barter successfully, and Michel was certain that it wouldn't take long before he accepted an immediate cash settlement.
A different approach was needed with Constance. She had always been capricious, not to say erratic. Sometimes she was tight-fisted and at other times a spendthrift. Michel had taken the precaution of discreetly investigating her situation in Paris and had a clear understanding of both her difficulties and her aspirations in life. Despite her assurance to the contrary, he knew that her supposedly great career at the Paris theatres and music halls was rapidly dwindling now that she no longer was a pretty twenty-something. He suspected that she’d never possessed either the talent or the necessary contacts to make a lasting impression on the fickle, sophisticated audience in the capital. No doubt her lovers were rotating through her bedroom faster than before – now because they left her and not the other way around. Then there was her weakness for fashionable clothes, shoes and accessories. If he could provide her with enough cash, Michel felt assured that she would accept a bargain proposal. Time was on his side, not hers. Constance’s greatest concern was ageing.
As Patrice continued his stories from the past, Henri shut his ears to his words and reflected on his situation. He was thankful, of course, that Rolf had taken him under his wing all those years ago. But the passing of time had brought middle age into their relationship, and at fifty he didn’t find Rolf that attractive any longer. No, even greater than his love for literature and old books, Henri adored hairless young men with wit. Rolf gave him financial security, companionship and a house in which to live. It was comfortable, but to Henri it made life less than exciting. Sooner or later, Henri realised, he would be obliged to leave Rolf. To do so, he would first have to guarantee his proper financial security.
That financial security, he knew, could only come from the estate his father would leave as inheritance. The day couldn’t be too far off. The old man was, after all, celebrating his seventy-fifth birthday today.
Chapter XIII
Patrice Lafarge’s birthday feast
Followed by his two sons, Patrice climbed out of the cellar. They each carried two bottles that the patriarch had chosen. They crossed the yard and reached the terrace, shaded by the wooden trellis braided with grapevine, under which the table had been set. Constance emerged from the kitchen carrying a large oak plank with assorted hams and sausages. Gaspard followed with another board displaying more than a dozen different cheeses.
“It’s good of you all to share this table with me!” Patrice shouted. ”I feel more starved than a Bulgarian … no, a Hungarian boar, as the saying goes!”
Henri and Michel laughed politely at his crass joke. Patrice sat down at the head of the table and placed the opened bottles in front of him. His sons followed his example. Wearing thick mittens, Justine appeared with the goose she had just removed from the oven. It was golden and crisp on the outside. She began cutting the strings that had kept the stuffing from spilling out during the long hours the goose had baked in low heat.
“In view of the festive occasion”, she said, “I stuffed the bird with plums, nuts, quail eggs and just about every spice in our vegetable garden.”
“It smells absolutely delicious, Justine”, Constance said, sitting down.
“What is it I always have told you?” Patrice insisted while studying his city-dwelling children with a broad smile. “There’s nothing like living in the country – especially when you’re fortunate to have a property like this.”
The meal continued for a good three hours, with Patrice doing most of the talking.
At least he’s happy, Constance thought, and why shouldn’t he be – a beautiful day, his children back home and food fit for the banquets of kings. He’s enjoying that he’s alive, knowing that it won’t be for much longer. Come to think of it, although he had always been large and robust, he’s really looking a little frailer than on my last visit.
After Henri had served himself a second generous helping of the goose, and then a third, he turned his attention to the cheese platter. Rarely did he have a chance to eat to his heart’s desire as when he was back at Clos Saint-Jacques. Well, he reflected, soon I‘ll be able to, when the old man is gone and I can finally get my slice of the inheritance.
With his usual big appetite, Gaspard ate everything that was served. To him, it was standard fare, only more plentiful than on other days. Without listening to what was said, he heard his father’s booming voice and his brothers and sister laughing and shouting back. He intuited a false note of gaiety in their replies, but this perception wasn’t one he was able to shape into pronounced thoughts. Gaspard knew that he wasn’t very clever, and that was why his father and everybody else treated him no better than a workhorse. He resented that he was treated this way, the oldest of the siblings. Gaspard was, however, unable to put his resentment into something tangible, into words that rung clear in his mind. No, his frustration could only be mollified when he vented it with his hammer pounding some piece of metal on the anvil in his work shed.
