‘Are you trying to provoke me?’
‘Not at all. Did you know that Thackeray drank Burgundy with his bouillabaisse? And Keats liked his claret “cool out of a cellar a mile deep”.’
‘Where did you hear that rubbish?’
‘Grandmaman…’
Charles-Louis refrained from commenting.
‘…People have been drinking wine for thousands of years, Papa. There are no rules about it. Nothing written in stone. You can’t even say one wine is “better” than another, any more than you can say your lamb is better than my beef. Taste is purely subjective…’
‘There is such a thing as accumulated wisdom.’
‘Grandmaman says that all that is needed is a perception of smell, a sense of taste and an eye for colour,’ Clare said loftily. ‘She says that for this reason, and because they’re used to buying scent and soap, women are better at tasting than men. Grandmaman says I have a photographic palate.’
The evening, as the Baron recalled, had, as usual, ended decidedly coolly. Having kissed his daughter formally, he had put on his felt trilby and set out for Pall Mall and his club, while Clare, clutching her plastic carriers (which had been handed over with great ceremony by the hall porter in exchange for the Baron’s pourboire), made for Oxford Street and her bus.
Apart from the statutory exchange of cards at Christmas – the Baron’s, with its etching of Château de Cluzac, sent by his secretary – Charles-Louis had neither seen nor heard from his daughter since. Dismissing her from his mind as he approached the outskirts of Toulouse, he concentrated on his forthcoming meeting with ‘Bernadette’ whom he had known as a boy, as his fun-loving sister Sylvie.
He had been ten years old when the incident that had led to Sylvie’s withdrawal from the world, and the abandonment of her earthly name, had taken place. Although the repercussions had shaken not only Château de Cluzac but the entire Médoc, he had had, at the time, only the vaguest of ideas what it was all about. Later he had managed to fit together the various hints and innuendoes like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and come up with Sylvie’s story which was never directly referred to.
Headstrong as her brother was timid – which as a child, in awe of his father, Baron Thibault, Charles-Louis had once been – Sylvie’s exuberant presence had breathed life into the château. It was Sylvie who had organised treasure hunts, who had dared him to steal apples from the neighbouring orchards, who had frightened geese and chickens, and made lifelike effigies out of snow. The fun, much of which had taken place in the vineyards, where the children spent a great deal of time, ended abruptly when Sylvie was fifteen.
Charles-Louis had been confined to his room with la rougeole, and Sylvie, for whom the gloomy house had little interest but who loved to roam the shady woodlands, to follow the paths that wound between the trees and to clamber over walls, had taken out her bicycle to ride to the nearby Château de Marianne to visit her friend, Charlotte.
Cycling through a deserted field, she had been stopped by one of the vineyard workers, a well-built lad of eighteen who had lagged behind his fellows and had asked her if she had the time.
Getting off her bicycle, Sylvie had consulted her new watch, a birthday present from her father, which the vigneron had duly admired. Taking her white hand in his own earthy one the better to examine the enamel face, he had been overcome by the girl’s proximity and was unable to resist pulling Sylvie into his arms. Sylvie – or so the story went, and Charles-Louis could well believe it, for even in adolescence his sister had been both extremely well-developed and curious about sex – had not objected when their lips had met in a kiss. Pulling away from Lucien, for that was the boy’s name, she had bent over to retrieve her bicycle, which was lying on the ground. Her body, clearly outlined beneath her flimsy summer skirt, had inflamed Lucien, whose intelligence was decidedly limited. Grabbing Sylvie, he had flung her roughly to the ground, and, stopping only to unbutton his trousers, hurled himself on top of her.
He was, according to the story, which had, very much later and little by little, been extracted from Sylvie, extremely drunk. His breath, at any rate, reeked of alcohol. Be that as it may, he had ripped off Sylvie’s clothes and subjected her to a rape so vicious, so violent and so protracted that after the alarm had been sounded and Sylvie was found by the chef de culture, unconscious and bleeding, she had been unable to speak for several days. When she did finally manage to communicate it was no longer Sylvie who spoke. The ordeal had robbed Charles-Louis of his sister and replaced her with a stranger from whom the joie de vivre had been extinguished and the will to live doused.
That Sylvie had not given in without a struggle was evident from the tattered state of the shirt with which Lucien had returned home. It had been exhibited in the court, which had found him guilty and sentenced him to ten years in prison, together with a report of injuries which included lacerations to his face and back, inflicted by Sylvie’s desperate nails, and a broken nose. This last had been caused by her shoe, which she had managed to slip off and with which she had succeeded in hitting him repeatedly with all her not inconsiderable strength. It was a Pyrrhic victory.
Sylvie, putting her head round the door of his sick-room to say she was going for a cycle ride, was the last Charles-Louis had seen of his erstwhile playmate. The Sylvie who survived, to haunt the château like a shadow of her former self, was another Sylvie.
By the time she was eighteen, Sylvie had recovered, or so they all thought. Her engagement to the young Comte de Fustel de St Médard was announced. On the day of the wedding she left her beloved standing at the altar to become the bride of Christ.
Parking his red Aston Martin in the forecourt of the convent, alongside the 2CV driven by the nuns, Charles-Louis put on his jacket and tugged at the iron bell-pull which hung at the side of the oak door beneath the outsize bronze replica of the Virgin Mary.
The Sister, whose face beneath her coif regarded him through the iron grill, recognised him at once. Charles-Louis was a frequent visitor.
Greeting her respectfully as she swung open the door and motioned him to come in, he followed her down the corridor and through the cool cloisters until he came to the room set aside for the Mother Superior.
Eleven
‘Loulou you are up to something.’
Despite the fact that Charles-Louis was in his fifties, and Sylvie (now Bernadette), five years his senior, she still addressed her brother by his nickname. The childish appellation made him feel that she both loved and cherished him, which was perhaps why he liked visiting Bernadette, although he could not pretend to understand what appeared to him to be his sister’s futile renunciation of everything that made life worth living.
They were seated, Bernadette beneath the crucifix which occupied the place of honour, in her large, comfortable room. Shafts of coloured light from the stained-glass windows criss-crossed the Baron’s grey flannel trousers and made geometric patterns on the wooden floor.
The furniture in the room was simple, but in accordance with the rank and position of the Reverend Mother. Like many who had gone before her, Bernadette would have preferred to inhabit an ordinary cell. Since she no longer belonged to herself however, but to God, her personal wishes had been set aside. Her pleasant room was accessible both to her daughters and to strangers. Holy poverty was relegated to her bedroom, situated through a door behind her writing-table, which was appointed much more simply. It had wooden shutters at the windows, and a bed with a coconut-hair mattress beneath an unframed sepia picture of Saint Theresa. Another door, behind a thick curtain, led to the chapel where she attended the Offices daily and on Sundays, and Festivals at the high altar. The chapel, panelled with carved oak and hung with rich fabric, was adorned with works of art such as were fitting to the Saviour, whom Bernadette consulted frequently in prayer, and who dwelt in the Tabernacle.
In his sister’s pleasant office, in which Charles-Louis was always surprised to find himself affected by the pervasiveness of its spiritual teno
r, many a doubt had been set at rest, many a guilty conscience appeased, and many an overburdened heart granted the consolation it was seeking. It was here that beginners were initiated into the sacred principles of religious observance and vocations were confirmed. Here that the novices were received or tactfully sent back to a more suitable existence in the outside world. Here that itinerants were instructed in the ways of monastic life. Here that, during the course of a cheerful conversation, the Mother Superior not only revealed to visitors the hidden beauty of the religious order, but sowed in their hearts a tiny seed that might one day bear fruit.
Looking at Charles-Louis as he sat, in his green checked shirt and green pullover, opposite her on the wooden chair, Bernadette noticed that he was waggling one foot, in its hand-made shoe, in agitation. It was a sure sign that he had something on his mind and that his visit was not purely social.
Her little brother – she still thought of him as her little brother – was her only contact with the family she had renounced. Baronne Gertrude had not spoken to her Sylvie (as she then was) since she had fled from the altar leaving her mother to cope with the disbelieving guests, a cornucopia of crystal and silver by way of wedding presents, and a banquet which had taken many months to organise. It was to have been the wedding of the year and Baronne Gertrude, who from that day had erased her daughter from her mind, had never forgiven her. Bernadette prayed for her soul daily.
The bridegroom she had deserted was more forgiving. She had written him a letter of apology in which she had explained that the purpose of her life, which had changed so dramatically on that summer day in the vineyard, had in a flash of revelation become clear to her. She was devoting what remained of it to helping others and to God.
The Comte, an affable if somewhat spineless young man, lured to Château de Cluzac by Baronne Gertrude for the precise purpose of forming an alliance with her increasingly reclusive daughter, had written her a long letter, which she still had. It chivalrously declared his undying love for her and affirmed the devastation she had caused in his heart, from which he was unlikely to recover. Six months later he had married her friend Charlotte.
The Order which Sylvie de Cluzac had joined, Notre Dame de Consolation, required her to keep the Rules. By the daily and hourly sacrifice of everything she loved, she vowed to make the striving after a more perfect walk with God the one object of her life. As a novice, she had had her waist-length hair cut short and she had put on the scapular of penitence, the cord of chastity and the sandals of obedience, although she had not then been required to separate herself from the world either by dress or by enclosure.
When she finally entered the Order, kneeling before the altar to take her farewell of earthly joys, the sisters had come, with lighted tapers, to kiss and embrace their new sister. ‘The wise virgins took oil in their lamps; they went in with Him to the marriage, and the door was shut.’ The chant was followed by the symbolic slamming of the door, a sound that would ring for ever in her ears.
Sister Bernadette Magdalena de la Charité, for this was the name she had been given, had henceforth devoted herself to good works and manual labour. The life she had chosen expressed the subjection and penance of the body, humbled the spirit and taught her to follow the example of her Lord Jesus Christ.
In the convent of Notre Dame de Consolation, the sisters were not ashamed to work in the house and in the garden, to hew and carry wood, to make hay and to dig potatoes. Following the example of St Margaret, Dominican nun and daughter of King Bela of Hungary, they swept the convent, washed the dishes, cleaned out the dirtiest places, and took upon themselves the very lowliest of offices.
Bernadette’s particular occupation was the administration of the kitchen garden, an aptitude for which she had learned from Monsieur Louchemain (who was responsible for supplying the Château with vegetables at Cluzac), and running a restaurant for the homeless, La Couronne d’Epines, the crown of thorns, in the old quarter of Toulouse. The restaurant was supplied, at her insistence, with barrels of presse wine by her brother Charles-Louis.
Much as Bernadette enjoyed her work in the restaurant, however, she had no desire whatever to return to the world. It always surprised her to discover how many discontented people there were, out there in the street, and it was with a feeling of relief that she came back to the convent.
Bernadette’s thoughts were interrupted by a light tap at her door. As the Reverend Mother Superior, she held responsibilities not only to God and to the poor and needy, giving them food and drink and clothing them in winter. She devoted herself also, day and night, to her children in the convent, consoling them in sickness, supporting them in their struggles, and closing their eyes at the hour of death. At their service night and day, she was, like any other mother, frequently interrupted to share in their joys and their sorrows, their labour and privations.
She bid the supplicant enter. It was the Prioress with the day’s post which, with downcast eyes, she laid upon Bernadette’s table. Later, when Charles-Louis had gone, she would read it out to the Revered Mother and together they would deliberate as to the answers. Business matters and requests for aid, which were granted, or refused with regret (if the sisters were overburdened), would all be dealt with. There might be letters from aspirants begging for admission to the Order about whom enquiries must be made, accounts to be looked at, visitors to accommodate. Decisions could not be made without permission from the Mother Superior, who had to correct abuses, preserve order and maintain the due observance of the Rule. In the course of a single hour, she might be called upon to bestow a blessing on a sister setting out to visit a sick person, approve sketches and designs submitted from the artists’ studio, give strangers leave to look over the convent, bestow permission on students to spend a few days in spiritual exercise, counsel a novice, hear medical reports of the sick who had been visited, and monitor the progress of a sister in the infirmary.
When the Prioress had gone, leaving a pile of letters such as would have daunted any business executive, and she was alone with her brother, Bernadette addressed Charles-Louis.
‘What do you want to tell me, Loulou?’
‘What makes you think that I have come to tell you anything?’
‘You never could keep a secret. Remember when we used to play cache-cache? When it was my turn to find Victorine or Charlotte you always told me where they were hiding. I only had to look at your face.’
‘I am selling the château.’
Bernadette crossed herself.
‘Seigneur Dieu. Château de Cluzac? You’re not serious?’
‘I’m selling up. Going to Florida. Investing in orange groves. Miles and miles of them. They’re quite a sight. I wish you could see them.’
‘I don’t have to go to Florida to see the beauty of God’s creation.’
‘You’d see another aspect of it.’
‘Am I lacking as a person because I haven’t been to Florida? What’s her name?’
‘Whose name?’
‘It has to be a woman.’
‘Laura Spray.’
‘Does she know about Viola?’
‘I’m working on Viola.’
‘Have you found a buyer for Cluzac?’
‘A South African.’ Charles-Louis took some papers from his briefcase. ‘I shall need your pouvoir.’
‘How much money will there be?’
‘Enough. What had you in mind?’
‘A new roof for the chapel. When it rains we have to put buckets behind the altar. What about my homeless, Loulou? Where will I get their wine?’
‘I shall speak to Van Gelder’
‘Do you remember Miss Bloo?’ Bernadette’s face had taken on a faraway look.
Charles-Louis cast his mind back to their English governess.
‘Muffins…’
‘And Oxford marmalade.’
‘I can still hear Maman’s voice: “Don’t go in the billiard room, the floor has been waxed.” “Papa is in the library.” And when she taught y
ou to say, “May I have this dance?” before we went to a party. Do you remember the Mass of St Hubert before the hunt, when the priest blessed the forest and the pack? Little did I know…’
‘And old Monsieur Lebrecht…’
‘…who came to wind the clocks.’
‘And the kennels and the Orangery…’
‘And swimming from the landing stage…’
‘Do you remember the time you pushed me in the river? Et l’heure du gouter…’
‘Chocolate cake and fanchonnettes with redcurrant jelly on the top.’
‘Shall I tell you a secret? The only longing I still have regularly is to walk through the vineyards…’ She caught Charles-Louis’ eye as they recalled what had taken place there and was never spoken of.
That evening of long ago, when the setting sun had cast long shadows from the rows of ordered vines, that had changed the course of her life, was never far from her mind. A lifetime of penitence would not assuage the guilt. The incident had become the leitmotiv of her thoughts ever since. Had the event taken place yesterday, rather than forty years ago, the memory of it could not have been more vivid.
She blamed no one but herself. At fifteen she had been preoccupied both with unbidden thoughts and the increasing unfamiliarity of her own body. Satisfying the burgeoning desires, which she regarded as shameful, through her forbidden reading purloined from Baron Thibault’s library, she looked upon the world with wonder and in particular upon the opposite sex. She had noticed Lucien in the vineyards. Passing by on her bicycle she had surreptitiously admired his luxuriant black hair, his strong arms, his deep barrel of a chest which she had imagined pressed hard to hers. Looking up as she passed, on more than one occasion, their eyes had met.
When he waylaid her on that fateful evening she had known very well that it was not the time that he wanted from her. She had wanted him to kiss her. An unfamiliar essence emanated from his body and created chaos in her own. Immediately he had touched her she had become frightened. Her fear had communicated itself to the boy. What happened afterwards, and which was seared into her memory, had been beyond her control but she had been the instigator. It was because of her guilty desires that a young man, not all that bright, a young man who needed not punishment but tender loving care, had been deprived of his freedom, that he had been locked away.
Vintage Page 9
