Vintage

by Rosemary Friedman

  ‘You are as pig-headed as Madame la Baronne,’ the old cook said as she sweated over the iron pots in the kitchens. ‘As obstinate as your father. What experience have you had with the harvest? Don’t you think Jean and Albert, who have grapes in their bones, who have claret instead of blood in their veins, who imbibed wine-wisdom with their mother’s milk, who live, eat and breathe Château de Cluzac and its vineyards, know better than you?’

  ‘I told Papa…’

  ‘And your oenologue, with his fancy laboratoire. I don’t see you taking his advice.’

  ‘I told Papa, I would…’

  ‘Told Papa, told Papa! I regret the day I took you to the Baron’s Room, that I showed you the Mémo de Chasse. Château de Cluzac would have been better off with Monsieur Balard, better sold to that Monsieur Lamotte – don’t think I haven’t seen the two of you with your heads together in your office – better off with the South African and his bonsai trees, than with someone who doesn’t know a grape from a gooseberry. Look around you, Mademoiselle! Ribagnac is picking, Estaminet is picking, Gélise-Rose has nearly finished picking, even your cousins at Kilmartin…’

  ‘Sois patiente,’ Clare said.

  ‘Vous dites que je dois patienter? C’est bien ça. C’est tellement drôle. If you wait any longer the rain will come. And if the rains come… Bonté Divine, Mademoiselle Clare…’ Sidonie crossed herself. ‘We will all be out of a job!’

  ‘They’re all gunning for me,’ Clare told Jamie on the phone.

  ‘I’m on your side.’

  ‘I wish the harvest was over.’

  ‘So do I. There’s a trauma meeting in Brazil in October. You’ve always wanted to see Rio. You can go on the spouse tours…’

  ‘Jamie I can’t.’

  ‘Can’t what?’

  ‘Come to the conference.’

  ‘Nonsense!’

  ‘Nonsense? You sound like…’

  ‘I thought that after the harvest…’

  ‘After the harvest I have to watch the fermentation.’

  ‘…it was all over bar the shouting.’

  It was Halliday who had explained to her that her constant presence in the chais was crucial, not only until the grapes were in, but until after she had made her wine.

  ‘I have to make sure that the vats are heated, that there are no glitches before the assemblage…’

  ‘No sweat.’ Jamie’s voice was breezy but she knew that he was hurt. ‘I’ll go by myself.’

  Ten days later, the neighbouring châteaux were making a start on their cabernets sauvignon. Although they had papered over the cracks, Clare was still feeling guilty about Jamie, as Albert Rochas, Jean Boyer and Monsieur Boniface, who had been holding a council of war in the cellars, made their way in a disgruntled posse to the Bureau d’Acceuil where they confronted her.

  ‘The report from the laboratoire!’ Albert banged a sheet of paper triumphantly in front of her. ‘Thirteen degrees for the merlots, and a full twelve degrees for the cabernets!’

  ‘La météo!’ Monsieur Boniface waved a fax in her face. ‘The long-range forecast is for rain.’

  Out of the habit of praying, Clare yearned suddenly and unaccountably for the comfort of her rosary. Beseeching inwardly that her one small vintage, like that of Palmer in 1961, which had created unparalleled excitement in the Gironde, would produce an exceptional claret, she recalled the promise made by Our Lady to St Dominic that you shall obtain all you ask of me by recitation of the rosary.

  Glancing at the three grim faces, at the sun, which still bathed the courtyard in golden light, although the temperature had dropped dramatically and there was a distinct hint of autumn in the air, she asked Jean Boyer, Albert Rochas and Monsieur Boniface to accompany her to the cellars.

  In the chais, aware of the glum looks, the mutterings and the puzzled glances behind her, she drew four glasses of last year’s wine, still tannic from the wood.

  Albert Rochas exchanged glances with Jean Boyer who rolled his long-suffering eyes towards the ceiling. She heard the impatient click of Monsieur Boniface’s false teeth.

  Clare raised her glass.

  ‘A la vendange! We start picking tomorrow!’

  ‘Finalement!’ A smile of pure joy illuminated Albert Rochas’ face.

  ‘La vendange!’ Even Monsieur Boniface was smiling.

  ‘La vendange!’ Putting down his glass on an upturned barrel, Jean limped towards the door.

  ‘Ou vas tu, Jean?’ Albert looked surprised.

  ‘I’m going to tell them in the château!’

  Scarcely able to contain her excitement that her harvest – Clare de Cluzac’s harvest – was actually going to begin, Clare was anxious to pass the good news on to Halliday.

  After a long time, the telephone was answered by a female Australian voice.

  Clare was puzzled. ‘I’d like to speak to Halliday Baines…’

  ‘Halliday’s not here; this is Jenny speaking.’

  ‘Jenny?’

  ‘Jennifer Patterson. Can I give Halliday a message?’

  ‘Not really. What time are you expecting him?’

  ‘It’s anybody’s guess. He’s bringing in the harvest. This is his busy time. Who shall I say called?’

  ‘Nobody. It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Cheers then.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  Two days later, the motley troupe of pickers – Spaniards from Andalusia, Portuguese and gypsies, students from Holland and Germany, Rambos and Tarzans – each of whom had been assigned a particular position by Albert Rochas, made their methodical way along the rows cutting the ripe bunches of grapes. As they worked the muscular ‘carrier’, who had been allotted to them, emptied their baskets into the heavy plastic hotte strapped to his back. When the hotte was full, he dumped his load into the trailer on the sandy path at the end of the rows, to be collected by the tractor.

  Clare watched the stooped shoulders, the agile fingers, the arms executing the ritualistic movements of some ancient ballet. As each picker made obeisance at the foot of the vine, before making his cut and holding out the swollen bunch like some votive offering, she realised suddenly that throughout her childhood the responsibility of getting the grapes from vineyard to vat in the shortest possible interval had always been her father’s. This time terrifyingly, it was down to her.

  As she walked along the rows among the curses directed at blisters and at aching backs, among the snatches of song and the ribaldry, among the camaraderie forged in previous vintages, she caught sight of Halliday Baines, in his familiar bush hat, stopping now and then to take the secateurs from the hands of a slow picker, making his way towards her.

  ‘You’re a gutsy sheila!’ He looked up at the sky in which there was no sign of cloud. There was grudging admiration in his voice. ‘Where’s your chef de culture?’

  ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘I just came from Ribagnac. There’s a trailer load of your grapes standing by the roadside.’

  ‘Merde’

  Once the grapes were mature, it was not only speed of picking that was essential. A trailer load of grapes left standing in the midday sun, with the attendant risk of oxidation, could spell disaster. Nothing that would detract from the final quality of the wine could be left to chance.

  Clare had been up since five supervising the freshly sluiced pressing house where the sight of the previous day’s skins and bits of twig left in the giant screw of the égrappoir had sent her baying for blood. Later on she had had to give the women at the sorting table, who were so busy laughing and joking – using language that would make a publican blush – that they were letting rotten grapes into the égrappoir, the sharp end of her tongue.

  Trembling with rage at the thought of an entire load of her precious grapes being left in the sun to rot; and, screaming as she went at a ‘carrier’ with a dirty hotte to replace it with a clean one, she returned to the château with Halliday in search of her chef de culture, who was responsible for the tractors.<
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  ‘Who’s Jenny?’

  ‘A mate.’

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘What more do you want, her shoe size?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I was over at Kilmartin last night. I had too much too drink.’

  The atmosphere of carnival that pervaded the vineyards by day continued in the châteaux at night. Last night at Cluzac, when a weary Jean had finally closed the heavy doors of the pressing house, the sunburned pickers had trailed back through the vineyards to the château. Over dinner at the long tables, at the end of their first day, the wine had flowed freely.

  It was midnight, by the bonfire they had made, by the time the gypsies got out their accordians and the Spaniards their guitars. Singing until they could sing no more, dancing to music which crossed the boundaries of language, clapping their calloused hands, the troupe made their own entertainment, until even the most stout-hearted gave in, and, one by one, they drifted off to bed.

  When they had all gone Clare strolled across the lawns in the moonlight, listening to cries of the crickets and the croaking of the frogs. In the distance she thought she heard a rumble of thunder. Then that she had imagined it. Calling to Rougemont who, still pining for the Baron, slept outside her door, she had fallen, fully clothed, into bed.

  Recalling that she had woken three hours later with a splitting headache the remnants of which still hovered behind her eyes, Clare acknowledged the oenologist’s apology.

  ‘We’re all a bit the worse for wear.’

  ‘You ain’t seen nothing.’ Halliday grinned. ‘Wait till the end of your second week.’

  They found Albert Rochas in the far corner of the vineyard, where he was supervising a group of inexperienced pickers. While the chef de culture, purple with rage, drove off in search of the culprit who had left the loaded trailer by the roadside, Halliday went with Clare to the cellars, where the supervision of the vats was as fundamental to the harvest as was the picking of the grapes.

  Jean Boyer, faced not with an inept troupe, but with gleaming and hostile inox in place of his familiar and unsanitary wooden vats, greeted them gruffly.

  ‘Need any help?’ Halliday cast an expert eye over the temperature on the inox as above them the grapes were pumped into the vats.

  The old cellarmaster shook his head. He was not as baffled by the calibrated thermostats and electronic mysteries of the new technology as he made out. Adept at priming a hand grenade and at wiring a detonator, he had made it his business to understand it.

  Following Halliday’s glance, he took his glasses, one side held on with sticking plaster, from the pocket of his overalls and peered at the thermometer on the side of the vat. ‘Trente-deux degrés.’

  As Halliday turned on the cold water, Clare noticed a load of grapes which was about to be pumped into the vat currently being filled.

  ‘Hey! Hold it a minute.’

  ‘Il y a encore de la place.’ Jean didn’t welcome the interference.

  ‘I don’t care how much room there is. Those grapes come from a different parcelle. They must go into a separate vat.’

  Muttering that it had been good enough for the Baron, Jean reluctantly directed the gum-booted loaders to the adjoining vat.

  ‘Good on you, girl.’

  Picking up a glass, Halliday opened the tap and drew the must from an earlier vat. He held it to the light.

  ‘Quelle couleur, Monsieur!’

  There was grudging admiration in Jean’s voice. He had never known the wine to run so clear after only one day.

  Clare smiled triumphantly.

  It was a Pyhrric victory.

  Twenty-four hours later, the rain, forecast for the Pyrenees and the Massif Central, fell in slanting sheets, dousing the grapes in the deserted vineyards.

  Forty-three

  The sun that streamed into Marie-Paule Balard’s bedroom as she flung open the shutters caused her, uncharacteristically, to swear.

  ‘Merde!’

  ‘Qu’est ce que tu as dis?’ Claude Balard sat up in bed. He could not believe what he was hearing.

  ‘Merde.’

  ‘Pourquoi merde?’

  ‘ll ne pleut plus.’

  ‘Et alors?’

  Wrapping her robe de chambre around her, Marie-Paule did not reply. How could she explain that with the downpour of the past twenty-four hours, which had flooded the Bordeaux gutters and swelled the murky waters of the Garonne, had come renewed hope that Clare’s harvest would fail and she would yet be mistress of Château de Cluzac.

  ‘Je vais regarder le télévision.’

  Trotting down to the salon in which the TV set sat oddly among the Louis XV chairs and canapés, she kicked off her pink slippers and settled down to watch the weather forecast, which she hoped would contradict what she had seen out of the bedroom window with her own eyes.

  * * *

  The news on the Pavé des Chartrons, confirmed by the sexy weather girl on TFl, was welcomed with relief at Château de Cluzac. After a day of enforced idleness the pickers streamed out towards the vineyards where the grapes, saved in the nick of time from destruction, were already drying in the breeze that came tenderly from the south. The chef de culture had spent a few early-morning moments in the chapel, acknowledging the small miracle that had left his grapes none the worse for their wash.

  Albert Rochas was not the only one to express his gratitude. Clare was scarcely able to believe that what she saw as her punishment – for defying her father, for thinking that she knew better than Halliday, for not following the lead of the other châteaux, for pushing her luck – had been averted. She offered up, to a God with whom she was unfamiliar, a brief litany of thanks.

  For the next two back-breaking weeks, as the tractors, piled high with purple grapes, bumped their way once more along the paths towards the pressing house, and the troupe set about the vines with renewed vigour, filling their panniers in record time, she kept a weather eye on the sky.

  Somewhat subdued, after the humiliating episode of the rain, and breaking her back to get her harvest in on time, she kept up the morale of the pickers as they systematically denuded the vines, watched as the bunches were sorted, scrutinised the fouloir-égrappoir, and supervised the cellars in which the skins of the grapes rose slowly to form a chapeau in the new vats. Dashing from vineyard to chais, and chais to vineyard, she brought in the last of the cabernet sauvignon, which were already fermenting in the neighbouring cellars.

  In the winery she found Halliday, eyes everywhere as usual, at the top of a ladder. He was wielding an aluminium pole with which he broke up the purple crust of grape skins which had formed at the top of the vat.

  ‘This cap should have been pierced, Clare. I suggest you have a word with your cellarmaster.’

  Jean’s years under the laissez-faire attitude of the Baron had made him lazy. Hoarse and utterly exhausted, Clare exhorted the cellarmaster to greater vigilance.

  The last day of the harvest was traditionally celebrated with a wild party, at the conclusion of which the regular pickers, swearing undying friendship, would take emotional leave of each other for another year. As the preparations were being completed, Baron de Cluzac arrived, unexpectedly, back at his château.

  The first intimation Clare had of her father’s return was when Rougemont, who had been at her side all day as the last of the grapes were gleaned, went suddenly berserk.

  She followed the dog, who scampered, falling over himself, all the way from the vineyards to the château. In the courtyard, she found her father shouting, at the top of his voice, for Monsieur Boniface to pay the driver of his taxi.

  ‘Papa!’

  ‘Clare.’

  Clare recognised the familiar look of disapproval in her father’s eyes as he took in her grape-stained hands, her dishevelled appearance.

  ‘It’s the last day of the harvest,’ she said defensively, then realised that her father was alone. ‘Where’s Laura?’

  ‘In Florida.’

>   ‘Getting the big top ready for the wedding?’

  ‘There will be no wedding.’

  ‘Changed your mind?’ Clare thought of the money he had paid Viola for the divorce, with which she had bought the new casks now waiting to be filled.

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me?’ She had no time to play games.

  Charles-Louis hesitated.

  All had been going well in Florida. The orange groves needed less attention and were more predictable than his vineyards, and much of his summer had been spent cruising on the Laura Dear.

  Back at the mansion, where the giant marquee was already under construction, Laura had entered the Baron’s quarters to ask him about some last-minute preparations. Although it was not yet noon, she had found her prospective bridegroom in the arms of Rosa Delaware.

  Laura had been doing her best for some time to ignore the rumours that had been circulating about Charles-Louis’ proclivity for women, many of whom she suspected were her close friends. Had she not felt that she was rapidly becoming a laughing stock, she might have overlooked what might, in other circumstances, have been regarded as an indiscretion.

  Coming as it did hard on the heels of his seduction of her New York decorator, who had been unable to keep what she saw as her double triumph at the Spray mansion to herself, Laura flipped her lid.

  Emptying a large Chinese flower vase (famille rose) of contract lilies over the copulating couple – so that the brass and mahogany bed resembled a lily pond – and shrieking like a harridan, she hurled everything in sight that was not battened down at the lovers, and told Charles-Louis Eugène Bertrand, Baron de Cluzac, to get the hell out.

  The Baron’s subsequent remorse – he knew on which side his wheat-toast was buttered – got him nowhere. Before she had signed the pre-nuptial contract on which they had agreed, and which would get Charles-Louis out of his financial difficulties, Laura Spray had had her butler pack his valise, and ordered the immediate dismantling of the marquee.