The Greengage Summer

by Rumer Godden

  An entrance with turrets led into the cellars, “But you must not call them cellars,” said Eliot. “They are caves, ten miles of galleries, like the Catacombs.”

  “Tours go over all day long in summer,” Eliot had told us and, sure enough, a tourist party was there. It was French, but we were allowed to join it and Eliot interpreted for us. The tour of the caves was as quick as going over the cathedral had been slow, and we had no time to say ‘Why?’, which must have been a relief for him.

  We went down into the darkness and coldness of the galleries. “But it is warmer than above ground in winter,” said the guide, “because the temperature never changes.” First we saw the enormous casks in which the wine waited until it was bottled, then we walked after the French party down the long cellar lanes where the bottles were racked, neck downwards in the pupitres, as the stands were called, and the bottle-twisters moved with their jets of light among the racks, twisting, twisting the bottles with a rattling rhythm that echoed in the vaulted roof.

  “Every bottle gets a twist every two days,” said Eliot.

  “Why?” We did manage to get one in then.

  “To bring the sediment down on the cork, and this is an art,” said Eliot. “The remueur—bottle-twister—is a devoted person, all his thoughts are for the cuvée he is working on. You see,” he said to Hester, “he doesn’t talk. The whole racking place must be quiet and still; even the currents of air we make as we walk by disturb the wine.”

  We had not heard of wine being disturbed before and the Littles looked solemn and walked on tiptoe.

  We heard pops. “What are they doing?” asked Vicky, enchanted.

  “That’s where they change the corks,” said Eliot. “When the wine is needed the cork is changed.” We saw a team of men working; together at small machines: they froze the bottle necks, drew the corks—“Which is what makes the pop!” said Hester, watching—and the sediment with it, smelt the wine, recorked it, muzzled it—“With a tiny wire muzzle,” said Hester admiringly—then the bottles were stored—“Upside-down again,” said Hester—until they were despatched or used, perhaps years later.

  We saw magnums and jeroboams and half bottles, and some 1893 champagne draped in the strange webbed fungus that always comes in the caves from the wetness of the chalk. We saw pink champagne—“For the English,” said the guide contemptuously, and the whole party turned to look at us—and we were shown the rare red wine of the champagne country. Then we came up into the daylight again, to the packing-room, where women worked at unbelievable speed putting on the gold-foil tops, the scarlet seal, the label, and giving each bottle the final wrapping in pink paper.

  When we were out in the sunlight again, still surrounded by the party, the guide asked if we would like to visit the museum, in the office opposite. “Would you?” asked Eliot. Hester and I wanted to, but Vicky and Willmouse were tired, and as we stood debating a man, dressed as Willmouse hoped to be dressed one day, in a black coat, striped trousers, white shirt, silver-and-black tie and a red carnation, came from the office doorway. Like the woman at Soissons cathedral, he had been admiring us.

  In Southstone, I thought, if anyone looked at us our spirits immediately curled up in shame and we withered; with Eliot it was suddenly different. It was partly the Rolls, his height and his clothes, but that did not explain it all; we were the same, dressed the same, yet we were quite different, at ease, confidently good-looking and poised.

  The man spoke to us in English. “You are English, Monsieur?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I say you have a fine family?”

  “We like being called a fine family, don’t we?” Eliot asked us, and in this junketing mood we did.

  “Perhaps you would care to take a glass of our champagne with us, Monsieur; you . . .” I noticed he was looking especially at Joss, “and Mademoiselle and the demoiselles?”

  “Champagne?” We were dumbfounded.

  “Would you like to?” asked Eliot.

  “Champagne, for us?” I could not believe it, and even Joss was shaken out of her calm. She put her hand on Eliot’s arm and said, “Oh, could we?”

  “Can I taste a little, a little?” pleaded Willmouse.

  “And I,” whispered Hester.

  “I don’t want champagne, I want a sirop,” said Vicky.

  “If you would step into our little museum you could look at the pictures until it comes,” said the man.

  He led us to the door, opened it, then closed it again. From inside we had heard the sound of voices, men’s voices speaking French, and footsteps coming near. “A moment,” said our man. “They are just coming out. There has been a luncheon in the directors’ room.” As we looked impressed he said, “It is the Annual Convocation of Le Brochet de la Marne. That is a fishing club,” he explained. “It is a hundred years old and famous. No, not only local, it has members as far away as Paris. Every year they come here for four days—it’s a competition, you understand—and on the last day every year the directors of Dormans entertain them at luncheon. We have some famous members,” he said; “doctors, lawyers, artists, even a bishop. This year the guest of honour is what in your country you would call your Sherlock Holmes, one of the greatest detectives in France. If you wait a moment you will see him coming out, Inspector Jules Cailleux.”

  “Cailleux!” I suppose it was Eliot who said that, but it did not sound like Eliot, and I saw he had picked Vicky up and was holding her in front of him on his arm.

  “Put me down!” She was mortally offended. She slapped Eliot, but he did not put her down.

  “We have forgotten your doll,” he said and looked at his watch. “Nous vous remercions infiniment, Monsieur, mais nous n’avons vraiment pas le temps d’attendre. Merci mille fois,” and—what was he saying?—“I had forgotten. I have an appointment in Rheims.”

  “Mais, Monsieur. . . .”

  “Je regrette . . .” and he turned to us. “Come along.”

  “But . . .”

  “Eliot!”

  “You said . . .”

  “Come along!” Eliot’s voice was as I had heard it once before, cold and clipped. “Come, if you don’t want to walk home. Encore mille fois merci,” he said again to the man; “un autre jour.”

  He went towards the car holding Vicky, who hid his face from us. We were following, amazed, when a group of men came out of the door, three of them dressed like our man, the rest in suits or flannels and tweed jackets; there were two priests, and in the middle a little man in a suit of mixed sand- and olive-coloured cloth that went well with his sand-coloured hair and clipped moustache. “That must be the Inspector . . . did he say Cailleux?” asked Joss. The men’s faces were red and they all looked jovial, but, great detective or not, we were given no time to look. Eliot had started the Rolls and we had to run across the courtyard and scramble in, even Joss. It was the first time he had treated her in this undignified way—he might have been Uncle William—and her cheeks looked as if they burned.

  He drove swiftly round the courtyard and through the gates, and before the men had left the office steps we were out on the road and speeding down it.

  We drove in dead silence until at last Hester spoke. “This is the road to Soissons, Eliot.”

  “I know.”

  “You said you had an appointment in Rheims.”

  “I know.”

  After a moment Hester asked, “Do you tell lies, Eliot?”

  “Yes.”

  He drove fast into Soissons and stopped at a toyshop, got out and helped Vicky from the back seat; he glanced at Joss and said, “Cecil, you come.”

  In the shop he was not as he usually was with people. “Une poupée? Mais oui, Monsieur. Voulez-vous une belle petite poupée ou une originale?” the shop-girl asked. I did not know what ‘une originale’ meant, but Eliot did not answer and I had to say, “Une belle petite poupée, that means a pretty little doll,” I told Vicky.

  Vicky took a long while to choose, but when we were back with th
e others and heading for Vieux-Moutiers the silence was still unbroken.

  At last Eliot stopped the car. “I’m sorry I had to do that,” he said.

  “Then why did you?” asked Joss.

  “I had a reason,” said Eliot, “that you would not understand.”

  “Then you can’t expect us to understand, can you?” asked Joss. Her voice was cold but it trembled a little.

  “All right. I tell lies,” said Eliot violently. It was the first time he had come up against a family opinion. “I tell lies, and so do you and you and you, all of you.”

  “For you to tell them is different,” said Hester.

  “I didn’t ask to be a hero.”

  “They mean you are grown up,” said Joss coldly.

  “I see,” said Eliot. “You expect yourselves to be comfortably riddled with faults. . . .”

  “We are.”

  “And you think you will lose them when you grow up.”

  “I hope so,” I said firmly.

  “You poor little fools!”

  Joss put her hand on Eliot’s knee. “Eliot, what has made you so unhappy?”

  He looked down at her hand and I shall always remember his answer. “What has made you so unhappy?” Joss asked, and he answered, “Being perfectly happy for two days.”

  After a moment he turned to look at us in the back seat. “Has none of you ever tasted champagne?”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Joss exasperated. “How could we?” And I said sorrowfully, “We have never even seen it.”

  “It is not as exciting as all that,” said Eliot. “You soon get tired of it.” Silence. “I suppose, to you, that is another silly thing to say.”

  “Yes.”

  He did not say anything more but started the car. When we got back to the hotel we separated; it seemed by mutual consent.

  There were roses on our table that night. Usually ours was the only one without flowers. Nobody else was dining but Monsieur Joubert and Eliot; Madame Corbet’s and Mademoiselle Zizi’s places had not been used. Besides the roses we had a clean starched cloth—often ours was left on dirty—clean napkins made into cocked hats, and by each place was a new kind of glass, high, with a three-inch stem, cut into patterns. “What are these?” we asked.

  “Flûtes de champagne,” said Mauricette and laughed.

  “Glasses for drinking champagne,” said Monsieur Joubert in careful English. He had never spoken to us before except to say ‘Bonjour’. Now he was as interested as Mauricette. “They have a hollow stem and help the wine to sparkle,” he explained.

  Mauricette served our soup. She was friendly that night and did not slam things down on the table nor lean across us. After the soup there was chicken, not the perpetual veal and flageolets. Then Mauricette, with a smile at the corners of her mouth, brought in one of the silver wine buckets we had often helped to fill with ice; she stood it by our table. In it was a dark-green gold-topped bottle. It might have been one of those we had seen that day. Eliot left his table, came to ours, and drew the cork, making us jump. It was the same popping we had heard at Dormans, but it sounded louder in the dining-room. Then Mauricette wrapped the bottle in a napkin, carried it to Eliot’s table and poured a little into his glass and gave it to him to taste. He sipped it and nodded, and went back to his table. For one moment we had thought it might all be for him, but she filled Joss’s glass, and went round the table. After Hester, she hesitated, but Eliot said, “Monsieur Willmouse will take a little. Bring a grenadine for Mademoiselle Vicky.”

  We sat in amazed silence, looking at the glasses and the pale sparkling wine. I think our eyes must have been quite round, our faces awed, but I admired Joss. No matter how moved she did not lose her manners. She got up, went to the bucket, reverently lifted the bottle from the ice, copied Mauricette by wrapping it in a napkin, took it to Eliot and filled his glass up. “May I offer some to Monsieur Joubert?” she asked.

  “It’s your wine,” said Eliot. “Say, ‘Vous prendrez bien un verre, Monsieur?’ ”

  She took it to Monsieur Joubert. “Vous prendrez bien un verre, Monsieur?” Mauricette ran with a glass and Joss poured. “Thank you, Mademoiselle Hebe,” said Monsieur Joubert.

  When Joss was back in her place he lifted his glass and called, “Santé!”

  “Santé.”

  “Santé.”

  “Santé.”

  “Santé.”

  “Santé.”

  Willmouse was white, Hester approached her lips as if she were afraid champagne might bite, Joss looked over her glass at Eliot and quickly lowered her lids, and we drank. “It goes up your nose,” said Willmouse. “I like it going up my nose.”

  “Monsieur Eliot,” called Monsieur Joubert, “you must take the bouchon—the cork—wet it and touch it behind Mademoiselle’s ears,” and to Joss, “Always with the first bottle of champagne you taste that must be done.”

  Eliot came over to us. Mauricette gave him the cork, he wetted it and we watched, as in a ritual, while he lifted Joss’s hair and touched it behind her ear. I do not know why, but we all clapped. “Now you must keep it for ever,” said Monsieur Joubert to Joss.

  “Eliot! E-liot!”

  Mademoiselle Zizi’s voice rang through the hall. The next moment she appeared in the dining-room. “Eliot!”

  I thought that, quite deliberately, he touched the cork to Joss’s other ear before he answered, “I am here, Zizi.”

  “Irène says you ordered champagne, Dormans . . . for those children.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you mad?”

  “It was for a reason, Zizi.”

  Had Mademoiselle Zizi forgotten her rouge? She was curiously white; her eyes had dark, purple-coloured stains under them as if she had spilt the eye-shadow, only it was darker than that. “I know your reason!” said Mademoiselle Zizi.

  Those haunted-looking eyes took in the table, the roses, the chicken. “Who said you could do this?”

  “Pauv’ p’tits choux!” said Mauricette. ‘Y sont si mignons, ces enfants.” She had often called us the reverse of cabbages or sweet. “Armand et moi leur avons préparé une petite surprise.”

  “With my things?”

  Joss got up. She did what she thought was the best thing. Taking Vicky’s flûte de champagne from where it stood unused beside the glass of grenadine, she filled it from the bottle and brought it to Mademoiselle Zizi. “Mademoiselle, vous voudrez bien prendre un verre?”

  I thought she would not, but Mademoiselle Zizi took the glass. Her eyes turned from Eliot to Joss and back to Eliot. “Santé,” said Eliot pleasantly.

  Mademoiselle Zizi went even whiter; her mouth made an ugly grimace, and she threw the champagne back at Joss.

  We knew from newspapers and books that grown people quarrelled but we had never heard them.

  After Mademoiselle Zizi had thrown the champagne no one moved or spoke though Mauricette gave a loud gasp; the glass had fallen with a tinkling crash and the tinkle seemed to go on and on. Then Monsieur Joubert got to his feet and walked out of the dining-room and Vicky began to cry, “I want Mother! I want Mother!” she wailed. Joss’s dress was wet with champagne, it trickled down the front of her skirt; she shook her hair back as if she were dazed, then ran out of the room and through the hall. We heard the terrace door bang, and Eliot said to Mademoiselle Zizi, “I want to see you alone.”

  They did not wait to reach the office before they began; their angry loud voices rang through the hall. They spoke English when they remembered because of Mauricette and the rest who were listening with all their ears, but they kept breaking into French.

  “I should never have let them be there at dinner,” cried Mademoiselle Zizi. “That girl!”

  “She was quite right,” said Eliot. “The small ones could eat with the servants, but she and Cecil are big.”

  “Of course you take her part.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You do. For three days I have scarcely seen you.”

&nb
sp; “For Christ’s sake, Zizi! I happened to have a little time and amused the poor brats.”

  “Brats. Qu’est-ce que c’est ‘brats’?”

  “Children, then.”

  “You don’t think of them as children.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Ridiculous! For three days . . .” Mademoiselle Zizi was crying.

  “Don’t keep on saying that!” Then Eliot’s voice altered. “Zizi, you’re not jealous of a little girl?”

  “First she is big, then she is little. Remarkable!” That was Madame Corbet, who had come out of the office.

  “Is it too much to ask,” said Eliot, his voice like ice again, “that we might occasionally talk without Irène?”

  “And why may I not remain?”

  “Because this is not your business.”

  “Zizi is my business. I gave up my vocation to look after her.”

  “Then it was not a vocation.”

  “Irène, please go.” That was Mademoiselle Zizi.

  “And leave him to talk you down?”

  “Go! Go! Go!” Mademoiselle Zizi’s voice was a scream.

  “Let us go,” said Hester and her voice quivered. “Let’s go in the garden and get some greengages.” But before we could move Madame Corbet came through the dining-room. Her neck was patched with crimson, her topknot shook and the bobbles on her shawl danced up and down. “Ah, le vaurien! Canaille! Fripouille!” said Madame Corbet as she passed. We shrank down in our chairs.

  “Eliot, écoute. Écoute-moi . . .” Mademoiselle Zizi’s voice was soft and I guessed she had gone close to Eliot. I stood up to see, and yes, she had; she was standing in front of him pleading. “It is too much responsibility, Eliot. Please! Please let us send for this uncle and get them away.”

  “Dear Zizi, because of a child . . .”

  “She isn’t a child.”

  “Of course she is, to me . . . to us.”

  “I saw you look at her.”

  “She happens to be pretty.”

  Mademoiselle Zizi shook her head. “You looked at her because you like her.”