Despite Marie-Paule’s disapproval, he indulged his own appetites vicariously, and stuffed the child with sweets and cakes. Despite her father’s insensitive parenting, Christiane Balard, who was not over-endowed with brains, grew up to be not only good-looking but sweet-natured and gentle. Although her father was putty in her hands, she rarely made demands upon him, and as the only member of the family to be excluded from the paranoid circle, in which nothing they did was right, Christiane could do no wrong.
Harry’s pronouncement about the sale of Château de Cluzac, made over lunch in the gloomy dining-room with its heavy Provençal furniture and collection of plates inherited from Marie-Paule’s mother (dismissed contemptuously by Balard as ramasses nids à poussières, although he did not have to dust them), did not have quite the explosive effect upon her husband that Marie-Paule might have expected.
Putting down his spoon on the potage au cresson – the current cook was not inspired – which he rudely dismissed as Bouillie Bordelaise (the ‘Bordeaux Mixture’ specific against mildew and potato disease), he accused Harry of lying.
Marie-Paule, as usual, sprang to her son’s defence.
‘How could he make up such a terrible thing, cheri? Why would he wish to do so?’
Commanded to do so, Harry, whose transient stammer was exacerbated by the presence of his father, reiterated the news that the château on which his father had set his heart had been withdrawn from the market and would henceforth be run by Clare de Cluzac. His pronouncement shattered the tranquillity of the family mealtime, not exactly an oasis of peace at the best of times.
‘Idle gossip,’ Balard said, as if the vehemence with which he delivered his comment made it true.
Harry shrugged. ‘Everyone in the clubhouse was talking about it…’
‘Someone in the English Bookshop was saying that the Baron had already sold Château de Cluzac to a South African…’ Christiane Balard ventured.
‘Another silly rumour!’ Balard looked at Harry, taking him down a peg. ‘The next thing we’ll be hearing is that Asterix has bought Château de Cluzac. These stories have been circulating for months.’
‘Fine!’ Harry said insolently, looking at his watch – he had a date in Bordeaux.
‘Surely the agents would have let you know, chéri.’ Marie-Paule poured oil on troubled waters. ‘Surely they would have written to you…’
Ignoring his wife, and picking his teeth assiduously – a habit that irritated her intensely – Balard, who was unable to repudiate Harry’s pronouncement entirely, turned to his son.
‘Who is it that’s been spreading this malicious gossip?’
‘Pierre Kilmartin…’
‘And where did young Kilmartin get it from?’
‘Clare de Cluzac.’
The fact that her husband was not snoring like a pig meant that Balard was awake. At the risk of having her head bitten off, of being accused of waking him up, of introducing controversial subjects when he was about to go to sleep, of meddling in things that did not concern her, of voicing an opinion on matters she knew nothing about, Marie-Paule, unable to sleep herself at the thought of the prize she had craved for so long being snatched from beneath her nose, decided to take a chance.
‘She doesn’t even live in France.’
The fact that her husband knew immediately what she was talking about, that he didn’t taunt her with her inability to make herself clear, gave her an indication that all was not well. She decided to push her luck.
‘Clare de Cluzac a château owner!’ Her voice was scornful. ‘Did I tell you that I met her chez Biancarelli…?’
Balard pricked up his ears.
‘My femme de ménage has a better idea how to dress.’
Turning over suddenly, and without warning, Balard flopped down like a great porpoise coming to rest.
‘You are Charles-Louis’ negociant,’ Marie-Paule said soothingly, wondering if she should put a reassuring hand on her husband’s shoulder. ‘He would not have done anything without telling you…’
‘Charles-Louis is capable of anything.’
‘Maybe you should telephone him…’
‘At three o’clock in the morning!’
‘If it is true,’ Marie-Paule said, now near to tears, ‘I will look a complete fool. I have told everyone that we were buying Château de Cluzac. A Venetian Carnival…’
‘Venetian Carnival?’
‘The Fête de la Fleur. A Doge’s Palace. I had it all planned. I shan’t be able to look my Baby Home committee in the face again.’
‘If Clare de Cluzac thinks she can run a château,’ her husband’s voice boomed from the depths of his vinous belly, ‘she’s mistaken. It’s not like dabbling in an art gallery. You have to make financial choices. It’s more like being in charge of a bank. It’s like owning a racing stables – you win one race, then you lose four more. Anyone can make good wine in a good vintage. It takes years to learn how to deal with a difficult vintage, to know when to keep a reserve and when to release it. Photographic palate! What you see in your glass is a very small part of the story. It starts in the bare fields in winter, with the wet summers, with knowing how to cope with the contrariétés. When we want rain we get drought. When we want drought we get rain. You have to make decisions. Decisions that make the difference between an average wine and a great one. You have to know the weather. And when to start picking. Are you going to wait? If you wait, will it be raining? How will you handle the rain? Can you pick the grapes fast? Will the petit verdot ripen? What does Clare de Cluzac know about sanitation in the vineyards – I used to carry her on my shoulders when she was a baby – about fermentation? Has she even heard of the malo? Is she aware that the Cluzac chai is archaic, that the equipment comes out of the ark? A vineyard is a business. With seventy hectares under cultivation it is big business. Every day is a battle. What does she know about it? The girl must be as mad as her mother. She must think that running a vineyard is some kind of game…’
Balard’s voice was getting louder. He suffered from high blood pressure, he was not supposed to get excited. Marie-Paule switched on the light.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Doctor Hébèque said you shouldn’t get excited…’
‘I am not excited! I am trying to tell you something, woman, and all you do is interrupt.’
‘I am going to get you a pill!’
‘I do not want a pill!’ Balard was sweating profusely. He was dangerously red in the face.
‘Then I am going to fetch Harry…’
‘I forbid you…’ Balard said.
But Marie-Paule was half-way down the passage. Calling Harry by name, she knocked and, without waiting for an answer, opened the door on to his empty room. Sitting down for a moment on the neatly made bed with its simple cotton quilt, she was overcome by a wave of maternal jealousy. Tracing an outline of Harry’s head on the pillow, she pictured him in some Bordeaux disco dancing with another woman.
Nothing could have been farther from the truth. Although Harry was in Bordeaux, although he was in fact in a disco, although his partner wore the highest of heels, the shortest of skirts and sported the most luxuriant of eyelashes, he was not dancing with a girl.
Having not only been christened with a fashionable English name, but sent away to a fashionable English boarding school – against his mother’s wishes – Harry Balard had grown up somewhat confused about his sexual orientation.
He was waiting to go up to Oxford when Julien Gilles, the tennis coach at Primrose, had, on more than one occasion, put his arms around him ostensibly to monitor his stroke. Together with an impressive backhand, and a service that was virtually unreturnable, the tennis coach had subsequently indoctrinated his pupil with skills other than those having to do with the game.
The sight of Julien’s massive thighs in the showers, of his broad shoulders and muscular arms as he lathered his chest with soap, had provoked a response from Harry’s body hitherto associated with the girls, optimi
stically introduced to him by his mother, with whom he danced, played tennis, took sailing on the Garonne, and only occasionally to bed.
In love, for the first time, with a man old enough to be his father, Harry Balard was introduced by his protector to the underbelly of Bordeaux.
In a moment of typical braggadocio, Harry had taken Julien home and introduced him to his mother. Marie-Paule, not immune herself to the indisputable charm of the bronzed athlete, had innocently enquired how Harry’s tennis was coming along, and, when the two of them remained closeted in Harry’s bedroom for an unconscionably long time, assumed that Julien was demonstrating to her son the finer points of the game.
When Harry deceived Julien (who was scuba-diving in the Red Sea) with Apollo Durand, a young man whom he picked up in a gay bar, the shit had hit the fan. Julien made every threat in the book, from killing himself to denouncing Harry to his family, but it was too late.
By the time Harry went up to university, from which he came down speaking French with an Oxford accent, he had discovered the delights of bisexual promiscuity. Fearful of AIDS, he did not permit his brief and indiscriminate male encounters – which belied his fastidiousness in all other respects – to include penetrative sex.
Failing to find Harry in his bedroom, Marie-Paule went to wake Christiane in her room across the passage, which was as cluttered and revealing, with its frilled cushions, miniature scent bottles, pictures of rock idols and cuddly animals, as Harry’s was secret and stark.
She was unable to bring herself to rouse Christiane from what appeared to be an extremely deep sleep. With a wistful sigh at the sight of the youthful body exposed to the heat, Marie-Paule caressed a strand of her daughter’s fine hair, streaked golden by the sun, which strayed across the pillow, and tiptoed out of the room.
Returning to the master bedroom, she found Claude, lying in the middle of the bed and spreadeagled over two thirds of it, breathing stertorously through his open mouth, and fast asleep.
Making herself as small as possible, she climbed in beside him. Alone for once with her thoughts – even when he was not actually controlling her, Balard’s wires were in her head – she made her own plans for Château de Cluzac; plans which she was not going to give up without a struggle, and for which she would enlist Harry’s willing help.
Twenty-one
Delphine Lamotte heard the news in the hairdresser’s. When she had paid her bill, taking care, as she returned her credit card to her wallet, that she did not smudge her freshly varnished nails, she had tucked Bijou, her miniature poodle, under her arm and, by dint of nonchalantly bouncing her Volkswagon Golf off the bumper of the car parked in front of her and backing into the car behind, extracted it from its parking place. Driving straight to the headquarters of Assurance Mondiale in the Rue Vauban, she swept into her husband’s office, where she found him yoked, as usual, to his computer.
‘Alain!’ Delphine put Bijou on the leather sofa.
‘Chérie!’
Pressing the save button, Alain Lamotte, impeccable in his impeccable white-on-white shirt and elephant tie (a Christmas present from Delphine), stubbed out his cigarette in the already overflowing ashtray and got up from his desk. Although he was always happy when his wife dropped in on him unexpectedly, he was surprised to see her. Putting his arms round her, he kissed her on both cheeks and ruffled her hair affectionately.
‘Attention mes cheveux!’ Delphine put a hand to her hair. ‘Sais-tu les dernières nouvelles, chéri?’
‘News?’
Alain sat down again at his desk. He assumed that Delphine had had one of her petits petits accidents in the car, that Amélie or Joséphine had been sent home from school sick, or that there was a problem, a blocked filter or a surplus de chlore in the swimming-pool.
‘Clare de Cluzac is taking over Château de Cluzac from the Baron!’
Alain glanced involuntarily at the Château de Cluzac sale document which for the past six months had been his bible. The list of liabilities to be taken over by a new owner: the long-term loans (buildings and stock as security), the short-term bank credit. He could recite, like a litany, the reported income statement for the past four years (Exhibit 3, Page 15), the sales, the gross income, the profit before depreciation, interest and tax. He was au fait with the volume of wine production of the Château, with the sales and distribution, with the ‘adjusted’ profits and the currency exposure. He patted the dossier as if to reassure himself, and looked at his wife.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘The Baron has handed over the château to his daughter. It has been withdrawn from the market.’
‘It’s not possible. The Baron is already deeply committed in Florida.’
‘I heard it chez Alexandre.’
Alain grinned. His teeth were white and even except for one in the front, which was slightly askew. The aberration produced a small gap which added to the attraction of his boyish smile.
‘Eh bien!’ he said dismissively. Like many men imbued from the cradle with idées reçues, he equated beauty-parlour gossip with fiction.
‘Laura Spray was in the next chair.’
A light went out on Alain’s face. Delphine had seen that expression before. When the news had come from Paris that his father had died; when she had miscarried their third child, a boy.
‘Laura Spray told you?’
‘She didn’t exactly tell me. She was shooting her mouth off to Alexandre.’
Delphine had been reading about the latest exploits of Princess Di (she wondered what the magazines would find to write about without her) while she waited patiently – it was not a bit of use looking at your watch – for Alexandre, who was blow-drying the hair of a client in the adjacent chair. Alerted by the transatlantic accents, she had looked in the mirror and realised that the raised voice belonged to Baron de Cluzac’s American fiancée, who was shouting to make herself heard.
‘I wouldn’t live in that old castle if you paid me,’ Laura Spray had said as she helped herself to mineral water from the bottle on the dressing-table. ‘You can’t get the staff. It’s falling to pieces. It needs renovating from top to bottom, and it’s impossible to heat…’
Now paying attention, Delphine realised that Laura Spray was talking about Château de Cluzac, for which Alain had put in a sizeable bid on behalf of Assurance Mondiale, and over the acquisition of which he had had many sleepless nights.
‘There’s something very funny going on if you ask me,’ Laura Spray confided, unaware that the salon had gone quiet. ‘The Baron had everything settled. Mr van Gelder, the new owner, had gone back to South Africa to wind up his affairs. The next thing I hear the sale is off. Off! Cancelled. Finished. When contracts were about to be signed. It doesn’t make any difference to me one way or another. I believe…’ – she lowered her voice – ‘that the Baron is being blackmailed by his daughter. That she has gotten some kind of hold over him. She hasn’t set foot in the place for years. According to her father she’s some sort of junk dealer and doesn’t know a vineyard from a Van Go. To cut a long story short, the last few days have been hell. I was worried the Baron would have a coronary. Cluzac has been withdrawn from sale and Clare – she could do with your attentions, Alexandre, you want to see what she looks like – is taking over. The Baron wants us to stick around for a while, tie up a few loose ends. Frankly, I wouldn’t care if I never saw another vineyard again. The sooner I can get him away to Florida…’
It was at this point that Delphine, who for the last few minutes had been stuck on a picture of an anorexic Princesse Di looking ravishing in a low-cut black dress, stopped paying attention. She was vaguely aware of Laura Spray buttering up Alexandre, asking would he come to Florida and do her hair for the wedding – which sounded as if it was going to have everything except an Aztec sacrificial fire dance – and why didn’t he open a salon in Palm Beach (she could fill it for him in no time), when the full impact of what she had heard, with all its ramifications, had sunk in.
Ten years ago, Assurance Mondiale had decided to balance the long-term liabilities from its insurance business with long-term assets. It was one of the first major outside investors to run a group of European vineyards as a business, with a computerised database. Despite the vicissitudes of nature, these vineyards aimed to deliver an average return of at least three per cent plus asset appreciation. Those that failed to do so were sold.
Like Alcatel at Gruaud-Larose and Axa at Pichon-Longueville-Baron, Assurance Mondiale had set its heart on acquiring a premier Bordeaux vineyard. For the past six months the potential addition of Château de Cluzac to its portfolio had brought the gentle simmer of life at the Moulin de la Misère, the Lamotte residence near Villandraut, to an excited boil. Alain’s plans for the modernisation of the estate, which included the latest in bottling chains, capable of filling 2,000 bottles an hour, were known even to the little girls.
Alain had done his homework. While, like an ageing courtesan, the château itself was crying out for a facelift, the eastern aspect of the sloping vineyards, warmed gradually by the morning sun and cooled gently in the evening, allowed the grapes to ripen to perfection. The property sat arrogantly, between two tiny villages, on the most coveted croupe in the Médoc. Of its 150 hectares of gravelly topsoil (which not only reflected the heat but prevented the soil from drying out), stony subsoil (with its minute traces of minerals, which enhanced the subtlety of the wine) and iron foundations, 75 hectares were legally plantable. Thanks however to Baron de Cluzac’s neglect, only two-thirds of these were actually planted. Bringing the vineyards up to their 10,000-vines-per-hectare maximum (as laid down by the Appellation Contrôlée) would mean that there was the very real possibility of doubling the production – and by extension the market value – of the estate in under ten years. Alain had already put too much work into the project to allow such a potentially worthwhile investment to slip through his fingers.
Vintage Page 17
