Vintage

by Rosemary Friedman

  Thinking afterwards about the rite of committal, the sight of the coffin being lowered into the chasm, which she had found especially distressing, Clare wondered about the two black-clad figures she had noticed as she had laid her tribute of miniature roses – ‘to Grandmaman from her Petite Clare’ – on the grave. They had stood, their hats in their hands, at a respectful distance at the edge of the cemetery. She wondered what business Monsieur Huchez and Monsieur Combe had at her grandmother’s funeral.

  Caught up with the cold collation, which Sidonie had laid out in the salle-à-manger for the mourners, she had thought no more about the fisc. After exchanging a few words with the Baron, they had disappeared as silently as they had come.

  After lunch she took Hannah and Nicola, stumbling in their city shoes, for a tour of the denuded vineyards. As she related to them the near disaster of her vendange verte, she saw them exchange glances.

  ‘Zoffany’s getting on my nerves,’ Nicola said. ‘And I’m missing Portobello. When are you coming home?’

  ‘When I’ve made my wine.’

  Nicola took her arm, hardly glancing at the vines. ‘We’ll have a big rave-up.’

  ‘We’re having one,’ Clare said. ‘It’s called a wedding.’

  ‘I’ve got the consultant job at the John Radcliffe.’ Jamie was exultant. ‘From next week I’ll be flying solo.’

  ‘Félicitations… I mean congratulations! That’s terrific. Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I waited until after the funeral.’

  He spread some architectural drawings out on the floor of the library.

  ‘That means we’ll be staying in Waterperry. I brought the preliminary plans. What the architect wants to do is to extend the cottage at the side and back and add an extra floor over what is now the sitting-room but which, rather cleverly I think, he is turning into the kitchen… Clare, you’re not listening!’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  Rolling up the drawings, Jamie thrust them into their cardboard tube. ‘I think we need to talk.’

  ‘I thought that’s what we were doing.’

  ‘There are things we have to discuss, arrangements for the wedding. Sebastian’s agreed to be my best man, and I’ve made a list of the ushers…’

  ‘It won’t be the same without Grandmaman.’

  ‘I get the impression you’re not interested in the wedding…’

  ‘I’ve got so much on my mind.’

  ‘I’m sorry, darling.’ Jamie put his arm round her and drew her to him. ‘You’re upset about Grandmaman. This wasn’t the day to talk about Waterperry. Cheer up. I love you. Grandmaman wouldn’t have wanted you to be sad…’

  Nicola’s voice, preceded by a discreet cough, came from the corridor.

  ‘Jamie! We’re going to miss the plane!’

  Petronella took them to the airport. Waving to the back window of the station wagon as it left the yard, Clare made disconsolately for the obscurity of the chais. Bereft of Grandmaman, bereft of Jamie who had solicitously put her reluctance to discuss the wedding down to her grief, bereft of her friends, bereft of the funeral guests, bereft even of Rougemont who had now deserted her for the Baron, the cellars suited her dark mood.

  ‘Are you going to show me the “divorce” barrels, Clare?’

  Viola’s voice in the courtyard broke into her gloomy thoughts. Slipping her hand into Clare’s in an unfamiliar gesture, Viola accompanied her daughter into the first-year cellars in which the aroma of the new oak was coupled with the aroma of the newly fermented wine.

  ‘Grandmaman would have been so happy to see you actually making wine. What was it she used to say? Toot passe…’

  ‘Tout passe, tout lasse, tout casse.’ Shivering, Clare took her mother’s arm. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  Alone in the château – Viola was visiting Kilmartin and the Baron had gone out – Clare sat in the solitary salle-à-manger, where a disapproving Sidonie removed her untouched dinner plate.

  Wishing that Grandmaman were not lying silent and unreachable in the dank vault, trying to make sense of death and of non-being, never mind all that life eternal, she drifted disconsolately out into the grounds.

  Pulling her black cardigan around her – the nights were drawing in – she leaned against the parapet of the moat in a halo of evening midges, and stared unseeingly at the trout making small ripples in the murky water. Noticing a few drops of water fall on to the stone of the balustrade, she thought that it was raining. Realising that her face too was wet, she wiped away her tears on her sleeve.

  ‘Want to see the ace of diamonds vanish?’ a gentle voice asked as a pack of cards appeared before her on the parapet.

  ‘Halliday!’

  Holding the three cards like a small fan, Halliday showed Clare the ace of spades, the ace of clubs, and the ace of diamonds. Closing the fan, he placed the three cards in different parts of the pack.

  ‘OK, here we go.’ He handed the cards to Clare. ‘Find the ace of diamonds.’

  Clare sifted unenthusiastically through the pack.

  ‘It isn’t here.’

  ‘You saw me put it back.’

  ‘Where is it then?’

  ‘How about in that urn?’ Halliday indicated the moss-covered urn several yards away at the edge of the parapet.

  Putting her hand into its cobwebbed cavity, Clare removed the ace of diamonds.

  ‘Why did you come?’

  ‘I thought you might be lonely. I thought I’d drive you back to Bordeaux. I’ve been saving a bottle of champagne. One of the last of Krug’s private cuvée…’

  While Halliday was in the kitchenette, Clare, unable to settle after her traumatic day, wandered round the sitting-room. On the buffet, next to the photograph of Billy, was a neatly ironed woman’s handkerchief embroidered with an ornate ‘C’.

  ‘Christiane Balard?’

  Coming in with the champagne in an ice-bucket and two glasses on a tray, Halliday followed her gaze.

  ‘How did you guess?’

  Taking the Krug from the bucket, he clasped the cork firmly and, concentrating hard, twisted the bottle.

  Pouring out two glasses, he handed one to Clare.

  ‘To your grandmother.’ He touched Clare’s glass with his own. ‘May she rest in peace.’

  They sat side by side on the sofa.

  When the champagne was almost finished, Clare said, ‘Have you ever thought that the bliss of the saved in heaven is more difficult to imagine than the torments of the damned in hell?’

  ‘It’s only in this world that life can be hell. What do you think of it?’

  ‘Hell?’

  ‘The Krug.’

  Clare held her glass by the foot. ‘The apotheosis of elegance. Rich but well mannered, perfectly balanced and beautifully textured, with an understated bouquet and long finish, dry…fruity…smoky…meaty…’ Her voice wavered unsteadily as a tear fell into the champagne.

  ‘Hang on there.’ He removed the glass from her hand. ‘This was meant to cheer you up…’

  Sobbing unashamedly, Clare let all the misery of the past week come out.

  Halliday fetched the incriminating handkerchief from the buffet. Sitting close to her, he dried her face gently. ‘Christiane Balard lent it to me,’ he said softly. ‘When Big Mick chucked the claret over me at the Fête de la Fleur.’

  Feeling the warmth of his body leeching into her own, conscious of strange and jangled feelings in her head, Clare turned to face him. Meeting her eyes for no more than a moment, Halliday got to his feet.

  ‘What you need is some fresh air.’ His voice was brusque. ‘Why don’t we take a walk? I’ll buy you a plate of oysters at the Bistrot des Quinconces.’

  Forty-five

  By the time of the trial assemblage, Clare had spent an entire week painstakingly tasting every single barrel of new wine in the first-year cellar.

  Ever since Baronne Gertrude’s funeral, she had not been herself. At first she had thought she was ill. Sidonie had m
ade her stay in bed and brought up tisanes made from fennel and from lemon-balm from the herb garden. Later Clare had put it down to the unseasonably cold weather, which had kept her for long nights in the damp cellars, making sure that the vats were adequately heated and that, because of the drop in temperature, the fermentation did not suddenly stop.

  She had not seen Halliday, who had spent Christmas in Australia, since the night they had disposed of the Krug. That night, heading back along the river after leaving the oyster bar – the Quai Louis XVIII and the Quai Richelieu, as far as the Place de la Bourse illuminated like a giant opera set – Clare, still in her funeral black, had slipped her arm into his.

  ‘It’s all very well for Grandmaman, comfortably settled in her pew in her church in heaven. Do you believe in God?’

  ‘Bacchus.’

  ‘Dionysus.’ Clare gave the god of wine his Greek name.

  ‘On the island of Naxos, Bacchus…’

  ‘Dionysus!’

  ‘…found a young woman lying asleep on the shore.’

  ‘Ariadne.’

  ‘The very same.’

  ‘Daughter of Minos, whom Theseus had brought with him from Crete and abandoned.’

  ‘When she awoke, she realised that Theseus had left her. She gave way to uncontrollable tears. The arrival of Bacchus…’

  ‘Dionysus!’

  ‘Have it your own way. The arrival of Bacchus-stroke-Dionysus consoled her…’

  ‘And shortly afterwards…’

  ‘Shortly afterwards’ – Halliday turned to face her beneath the light of the street lamp – ‘they were solemnly married.’

  Clare pointed an astonished arm over his shoulder, as a well-built man and a woman with hennaed hair, strolling close to each other with the matched steps of lovers, appeared on the quayside.

  ‘Isn’t that my father?’

  ‘It certainly looks like the Baron.’

  ‘He’s with Biancarelli!’

  In the courtyard of Château de Cluzac where, as dawn broke over the vineyards, Halliday dropped her off, Clare had put grateful arms around the Australian.

  ‘You saved my life.’

  ‘Any time.’

  She had not seen her oenologist since, and it was over a month since she had seen Jamie, although she had been back to England twice. On the first occasion she had discussed her wedding dress – a simple sheath of oyster satin worn with Grandmaman’s veil – with Hannah, and before Jamie left for his conference in Barbados they had finalised the guest list. Next week the invitations were going out.

  On the day following Grandmaman’s obsequies, Monsieur Huchez and Monsieur Combe had presented themselves in the Bureau d’Acceuil and asked for the Baron on a matter of some urgency. They refused to budge until he was found.

  Having just seen her father leave the château with his shotgun, presumably to pot rabbits, Clare had set out along the drive to find him. A large saloon car, coming towards her at what seemed to be an immoderate speed, made her hop smartly on to the safety of the grass verge.

  As she did so, Rougemont, who had been running alongside the Baron, on the opposite side of the park, caught sight of her. With a yelp of excitement, he bounded across the drive.

  ‘Attention!’

  Charles-Louis’ anguished yell came at the same moment as the screech of brakes, the squeal of skidding tyres, and a sickening thud, as the bumper of the oncoming car caught Rougement’s flank. In apparent slow motion, the heavy red setter was tossed high into the air, before crashing, spreadeagled and immobile, like a burnished hearthrug, into the road.

  Thinking about it afterwards, Clare was unable to recall the precise sequence of events.

  As the Baron belted between the trees like one possessed, an appalled and ashen-faced Claude Balard climbed out of his BMW. Dropping to his knees, Charles-Louis gazed in disbelief at his dog, whose fixed eyes were staring into space and whose blood was leaving his body at an alarming rate.

  ‘Va cherchez la voiture,’ he ordered Clare.

  ‘Ma voiture est à votre disposition.’ Claude Balard offered his car to Charles-Louis.

  ‘Allez-vous en, Balard!’ the Baron roared. ‘This is the last time you set foot on this estate…’

  ‘Mais… I have come about the château. We set up a meeting…’

  ‘Foutez le camp!’ Raising the shotgun, Charles-Louis pointed it at the petrified Balard as the overweight negociant stumbled towards his car.

  As the wheels clumsily mounted the grass verge, and the BMW disappeared in a cloud of dust towards the gates, Clare tried, and failed, to find the pulse in Rougemont’s neck.

  ‘Il est mort, Papa.’

  ‘Non.’

  ‘Regarde-le!’

  ‘Get the car.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I’m taking him to the vet. Hurry!’

  ‘Rougemont is dead.’

  Fondling the dog’s silken ear, his eyes strangely moist, Charles-Louis shook his head.

  ‘Va vite!’ His voice was numb.

  By the time Clare got back with the Renault, her father, in an unbelievable act of strength, was standing, like some blood-stained Colossus, splay-legged in the middle of the drive with Rougemont, limp and inert, in his arms. Helping him to manoeuvre the dead weight on to the back seat of the car, an exercise that left them both breathless, she watched with disbelief as he climbed, like a robot, into the driving seat and motioned her imperiously out of the way.

  Left staring at the puddle of blood seeping into the gravel, Clare could scarcely credit what, in the space of just a few moments, had taken place. The dog was Charles-Louis’ immortal beloved: the only thing in the world for which he truly cared. Clare would not have put it past her father to kill the perpetrator of the crime, Claude Balard, with his own hands.

  Remembering Monsieur Huchez and Monsieur Combe, she had made her slow way back to her office.

  ‘Ou est votre père?’

  ‘II n’est pas ici.’

  Judging by the look on their faces, Monsieur Huchez and Monsieur Combe were up to no good. Clare guessed that Philip Van Gelder had shopped her father to the fisc. She told the inspectors, in her best château owner’s manner, that she had no idea when the Baron would be back.

  ‘Nous l’attenderons.’

  Clare left them in the Bureau d’Acceuil. This was not going to be her father’s day.

  ‘Did your father go back to Florida?’

  True to his word, Halliday had come to Château de Cluzac to help Clare with the assemblage. They were in the tasting-room.

  ‘My father is in Monte Carlo…’

  ‘I thought I hadn’t seen Rougemont.’

  ‘Rougement is dead. Tout passe, tout lasse, tout casse…’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Clare had been to visit the Baron in the Avenue Princesse Grace, where he lived with a devoted Biancarelli, leaving the orange groves to tick over by themselves. His time was spent at the blackjack tables. He was no longer interested either in oranges or in vines.

  ‘He is awaiting trial for fraud. In connection with his profits. I felt quite sorry for him. Fortunately Papa doesn’t believe that any judge in the land would dare to find him guilty.’

  With her yield low, Clare’s first decision was how much of her wine she was going to declassify. Bearing in mind that her Petite Clare would realise little more than quarter as much per bottle as her grand vin, it was a decision that could cost the château up to half a million pounds in badly needed cash.

  Watched by her cynical chef de culture, who stood, with his arms folded, by the door, Clare began tasting and mixing from the carefully racked bottles and calibrated measuring-cylinders on the table. As she silently practised her alchemist’s art, Jean Boyer and Halliday Baines, making frequent journeys to the sink in the corner, concentrated on their own selections.

  Noticing that Clare had discarded a vat sample he had put to the fore, Jean, who was watching her every move, protested:r />
  ‘C’est un des Merlots!’

  ‘It’s too soft.’

  ‘Don’t forget your yield is low,’ Halliday said, backing up the cellarmaster. ‘You’re going to need the merlot for volume.’

  Clare replaced the cylinder of merlot in the reject rack. ‘Remember forty-five? Great vintage. Very little merlot. Did you hear anyone complain?’

  They spent the rest of day arguing, lining up, as possibles, mixtures which they all agreed had balance, spurning others which were short. When Clare dismissed out of hand a sample of cabernet, which Jean was convinced should be added to the final blend, it was as if she had slapped the cellarmaster’s face.

  ‘It’s an adequate luncheon claret, Jean. That’s all that can be said.’

  ‘C’était assez bon pour Monsieur le Baron…’

  ‘It may well have been good enough for my father, but it is thin and unconcentrated. It is not going anywhere near my grand vin.’

  Another sample, this time recommended by Halliday, was rejected on the grounds of its not having the ‘class’ which Clare was determined from now on must be synonymous with the Château de Cluzac label.

  Refusing to give up until she was satified, choosing only from the finest casks, and working on the premiss that a wine that would please her would please everyone, and have a common language which could be enjoyed anywhere, she produced a plummy, seductive claret with the elegance of a woman, the potential body of a prize fighter, and the insouciance of a courtesan. Even Jean Boyer, who had recovered from his pique, was impressed.

  ‘Félicitations, Mademoiselle Clare!’ He raised his glass of deep ruby Château de Cluzac, which he tasted appreciatively and swallowed.

  ‘A bloody beauty! And it has your handwriting!’ There was admiration in Halliday’s voice as he savoured the final blend.

  ‘Let’s get out of here.’ Clare pushed her hair out of her eyes. ‘I’m bushed.’

  Making her way with Halliday to the cheerless vineyards, where the few remaining leaves on the resting vines were yellow and curling, she picked up a handful of gravel and ran it slowly through her fingers.