The Widows of Champagne

by Renee Ryan

  Chapter Eight

  Hélène

  Hélène had made a very large mistake. She’d allowed Gabrielle to see past her mask of restraint and self-possession. She would not let it happen again. She could not let it happen again. There were reasons, of course. Reasons she would take to her grave.

  At least the party was a success. Hélène’s personal touches were everywhere. In the hothouse flowers she’d ordered and then placed strategically throughout the château. In the delicate crystal glasses filled with their finest champagnes. She’d even handpicked the local boys serving as waiters now weaving through the crowd with their trays of Monsieur Chardon’s delicacies. The evening was progressing exactly as planned. And yet, Hélène fought to keep the smile on her face.

  It was the party itself. The gaiety made her nostalgic. It had been a long time since they’d invited so many people into this home. She remembered Étienne’s words from the early days of their marriage. “The Champenois like to celebrate,” he’d said, laughing a little as he added, “Especially with Fouché-LeBlanc champagne in their glasses. Each sip is a small taste of eternity, or so my mother says to anyone who will listen.”

  Étienne’s passion for his family’s business had been contagious. Hélène had been half in love with him long before she’d discovered he was no common vintner, but one of the grand French champagne masters of his day. He’d been marked for greatness. Then the war had come and stolen everything.

  “You’re frowning, Maman.”

  Hélène sighed. Now both of her daughters had witnessed an unforgivable slip in her composure. Rearranging her features, Hélène lifted a jeweled hand to smooth across her daughter’s shiny dark hair. “I was thinking of your father. He would have enjoyed this party.”

  Not a complete lie. The man Étienne had been before the war would have lifted his glass in a sentimental toast to his beloved mother. His words would have been heartfelt and inspiring. He would have toasted his deceased father next, and all the family members that had come before them. His daughters would be next. Then, he would have said something kind, and most assuredly loving, about his wife.

  Hélène breathed past her sorrow and forced herself to speak evenly. “You are enjoying yourself, Paulette, are you not?”

  “I’m having a lovely time. This is one of the best nights of my life.”

  Her daughter’s enthusiasm brought a genuine smile to Hélène’s lips, no need to pretend.

  “I’m glad.” Her words came out strained, which had not been her intent. This party was supposed to be her shining moment. There would be no more after tonight, not until the war was over. The war, she thought bitterly, that had yet to begin. But would destroy many.

  Seemingly unaware of her mother’s mood, Paulette continued chattering about the party and how admired she was among her friends. “Jean-Claude and Lucien are fighting over me.”

  As Paulette continued happily discussing all the ways each boy worked to gain her favor, Hélène thought, to be sixteen again. Or perhaps, not. She hadn’t been as lighthearted as her daughter, or as beloved by her friends. The girls at school had whispered behind her back about her own mother’s poor choice of husbands. A common banker, they called him. Never mind that her father’s financial advice and support had kept their families afloat during hard times.

  Abraham Hirsch-Jobert, son of Isaac Hirsch-Jobert, would never be worthy of them. He did not belong to the old French nobility. He attended the local synagogue and sometimes brought his daughter with him. He was an outsider, a usurer...a Jew.

  As if to make up for the subtle cruelty of her peers, her father had encouraged his wife to raise Hélène in her church. Beyond that, he’d denied his daughter nothing. What she wished for, she received. There’d been no criticism, no reining her in when she went too far. Even at nineteen, when she’d begun frequenting the salons of notorious artists, poets, philosophers and American ex-patriots, her father had given her no warnings, no insistence for moderation.

  The first inkling that he may have disapproved of her lifestyle came when she’d met Étienne and brought him home for dinner with her parents, something that had surprised all of them. Étienne was not her usual fare. After he’d left, her father had taken her hand and, with pride shining in his eyes, had asked, “You like this man, this maker of fine champagne?”

  “I like him very much.”

  Her father had nodded. “I like him as well. A superb choice, indeed.”

  From that night forward, Hélène had begun to see herself and her sparkling, sophisticated crowd through a different lens. She grew to recognize the cynicism in their manner, and hers. The way they accepted all, and yet cared for none.

  Even as she’d come to see the callousness, the blatant self-interest, she’d also come to understand why she’d gravitated to them in the first place. It was more than like recognizing like, though that had been part of the fascination. They’d never asked about the origin of her father’s last name, or where his people came from. She had simply been witty, beautiful Hélène Hirsch-Jobert with an unrivaled talent for watercolors.

  But then Hélène Hirsch-Jobert had become Hélène Jobert-LeBlanc. With a name change, and the love of a good man, came the rest of her transformation. The clothes she wore, the books she read, even the church she attended, all had become part of the complicated, layered lie and—

  “Maman, did you not hear me?”

  Hélène flinched at her daughter’s voice. Paulette had asked her a question. She had to think a minute to bring the words back into her mind. One of her daughter’s friends had been to the Ritz for lunch, and now Paulette wanted to go. Hélène rarely said no to the girl. This time, she would. She must. The hotel restaurant, even in the afternoon, was no place for a sixteen-year-old girl with nothing but fashion, parties and boys on her mind. Too many temptations. “We will discuss it tomorrow.”

  “Why not now?”

  Hélène sighed, unwilling to explain herself. The words would not be right. Her own bitter disillusionment over past mistakes was too strong tonight, too close to the surface. “Because the party requires my attention, and your admirers require yours.”

  “They do, don’t they?” The prospect of winning two hearts at once catapulted Paulette across the room.

  With a sense of foreboding, Hélène watched her daughter rejoin her friends, then concentrate solely on the two young men battling for her affection. Paulette would toy with them, Hélène knew. The girl would charm and captivate and make each boy think he was her favorite. Until she lost interest in them both and moved on to another.

  That was how Paulette maneuvered through life. She was careless with people, her admirers especially, never fully satisfied with a conquest, always looking for the next triumph.

  Hélène had a moment of suffocating insight into her greatest mistake as a mother. By requiring so little of her daughter, she’d created a replica of her former self. She’d raised Paulette to accept all, and care for none.

  Mon Dieu, what have I done?

  Part Two

  Chapter Nine

  Gabrielle

  19 May 1940

  The months dragged on. 1939 rolled seamlessly into 1940, and then winter dissolved into spring, and the war remained on the other side of the Maginot Line. Hitler seemed too preoccupied with the rest of Europe to bother with France. There was no predicting how long his indifference would last, and the business of champagne making couldn’t be ignored.

  Gabrielle left the château as she did every morning—with the sound of church bells ringing in her ears. Her feet moved swiftly through the present, while her mind refused to relinquish the past. She’d been a child during the previous war, and her memories still informed her decisions now, adding a sense of gravity to her work. And always, tangled in her thoughts, was the knowledge of what terrible things were to come because of what she’d experienced before.
r />   Today, she skirted the vineyard in favor of the champagne house. The vines had been pruned, their shoots lifted off the ground, and the soil at their roots replenished. Pierre, in his role as vineyard manager, was one of Gabrielle’s most trusted employees, his loyalty equal to François’s. Now that the harvest was complete, she left him in charge of the day-to-day tending of the vines, which freed her to focus on the vin clairs.

  She conducted continuous tastings of the base wines, exploring different combinations in her search for the perfect marriage between aroma and taste. Grandmère had taught her how to use her nose and palate to produce their signature blends. It wasn’t chemistry. Not art, either. But a combination of the two that required as much trial and error as meticulous planning.

  Her mind on the first blend of the day, Gabrielle climbed the wide stone steps that curved around the exterior of the building. She imagined the taste. Crisp, smooth, beautifully elegant, with a hint of pears, or maybe apricots, perhaps a bit of both, the result a pleasant, toasty finish. The champagne would be a lovely addition to other Château Fouché-LeBlanc wines, an exquisite, pure, effervescent chardonnay, refreshing but not too sweet.

  Inside her workroom, she surveyed her tiny domain. This was her most cherished refuge when she wasn’t in the vineyard, where she became an artisan-blender of award-winning champagnes. Focusing on the process had helped her through the worst of her grief after Benoit’s death. She’d mourned in this room, and had learned to live without him, slowly, one day at a time. One perfectly blended champagne at a time.

  She ran her fingertip along the edges of the worktable, across the beakers, the measuring cups, the stacks of ledgers where she wrote down her formulas, whether success or failure.

  She liked to think of herself as practical, but the French blood in her could not be denied. She tried to contain the more passionate side of her nature to small indulgences: a vial of Chanel No. 5, a tube of red lipstick, the little black dress designed by Mademoiselle Chanel herself. Sometimes, though, when Gabrielle was alone with her thoughts, and melancholy tried to creep in, she admitted she wasn’t fully satisfied with her life. In those moments she couldn’t help feeling wholly, completely alone, wanting something that had died with her husband. A legacy beyond herself. A family of her own. A child.

  Agitated now, she organized her space and went to work creating a wine whose whole would be greater than its parts. She measured, tasted, considered, chose.

  Her first attempt was wretched, the second not much better. But at least her mind was on her work. Mostly. A vague feeling of dissatisfaction hung over each of her attempts, and she knew why. Josephine had thought today was the first day of harvest and had become angry when Gabrielle attempted to correct her. It had taken Marta’s intervention to calm Grandmère.

  Do not sigh, she told herself.

  She sighed.

  With unsteady fingers, she reached for three more vin clairs and began to blend, to build.

  She took a sip, letting the wine sit on her tongue. Her heart lifted. The crisp notes of apricot and buttery pastry were there. The blend was extremely fresh, with a lively, appealing finish full of candied lemons, but also—she gave in to that sigh a second time—a bit steely.

  “Another failure,” she mumbled.

  “You are too hard on yourself.”

  Gabrielle drew a sudden breath. Her mother rarely came into the champagne house, and never during working hours. “The blend isn’t right,” she said, staring at the wine, grateful she had someone to listen. “Something’s missing.”

  “You’ll figure it out. You always do.”

  Her mother’s confidence, so rare, so unexpected, should have filled Gabrielle with light and stars. But the tone was all wrong, flat and full of suppressed emotion. She looked up and drew another involuntary breath at the sight of her mother’s bloodless features. “Maman? What is it? What’s happened?”

  “The Germans—they have invaded France.”

  Gabrielle’s throat seized on a breath. Her voice, when it came, was hoarse and full of horror. “Mon Dieu.” The German war machine had made its move at last. She’d known this day would come. “Tell me what you heard.”

  “There isn’t much to tell.” Her mother took her hand. “Come, we’ll turn on the wireless and discover the details together.”

  Half running, half stumbling, Gabrielle returned to the château with her mother.

  Josephine and Marta stood in the kitchen, arms linked, eyes wide. There was no sign of Paulette. She must have already left for school.

  “Grandmère?”

  Her voice gave her grandmother a jolt. “Marta,” she said in a barely there whisper. “Tell Gabrielle what you heard at the boulangerie.”

  The housekeeper relayed the information in a dull, even tone. “German panzers crossed the Ardennes early this morning.”

  That couldn’t be right. “General Pétain declared the forest impenetrable.”

  “He was wrong. Our defenses have crumbled at the first show of German might.”

  Gabrielle swallowed the bile rising in her throat. The Maginot Line had not held back the monsters. The Germans had crept through the back door, sweeping in like angels of death.

  * * *

  It took barely four weeks for France to fall. The army had been strong on paper only.

  Many mornings, Gabrielle sat in the southeast parlor with the rest of her family, silent and miserable as they listened to the wireless. Paulette rarely joined them. Her excuses ranged from the reasonable—schoolwork—to the flippant—a desire to practice a new coiffure. There were glimpses of her fear, too. Not often, and never for long, but enough to leave Gabrielle hopeful her sister was beginning to understand the gravity of their situation.

  The disembodied voice reported the latest development. “The French government has fled to the spa town of Vichy.”

  Gabrielle shook her head. Marshal Pétain had run from the consequences of his bad choices. Like so many politicians favoring appeasement, he’d tried to spare effort and, instead, had brought disaster on the French people.

  Her mother took this news with stoic cynicism. Josephine’s grief was not so subtle. With tears sliding down her face, she choked out, “Not a fight. Not one show of resistance. The Germans invaded and no one stopped them.”

  “Marshal Pétain is a coward,” Marta snarled under her breath. Perhaps she thought no one heard her. They did, of course. Her words were a summary of what they were all thinking.

  “Perhaps he may surprise us yet,” Hélène suggested, though her words were wistful rather than convincing.

  The news only got worse.

  With Paris under siege, the residents fled the city in packs. They left in buses and private cars. Others piled their belongings in carts and mule-drawn wagons. When the incendiary strikes began, more terrified residents left on foot. The roads became congested.

  France surrendered at the end of June. Government officials signed an armistice with Germany that cut the country in half. The occupied zone in the north—where the Germans would exercise the rights of an occupying power—and the free zone in the south, run by the puppet French government.

  Like Paris, the entire region of Champagne fell into the zone occupée.

  Gabrielle could no longer listen to such dreadful news. She stepped out onto the terrace and down the stone steps where Pierre stood at the edge of the vineyard. Sunlight danced off the vines. The sky above their heads was a hard, crisp blue unmarred by a single cloud. Except...

  There, in the distance, coming from the very heart of Reims. One black smudge spiraled toward the heavens, a shocking stain on the otherwise pristine blue. At first glance, Gabrielle thought the unusual-looking plume was a thundercloud and she nearly said, “Rain’s coming,” but there was something not quite right about the dark cloud swirling upward, dense and black.

  She took
an involuntary step forward. “Do you see that?” she asked Pierre.

  Shock jumped in the man’s eyes. “Smoke. Fire.”

  In unison, they said, “It must be quenched.” Before the flames spread to the vines. The spring had been especially dry, something they’d agreed was a turn of fortune after last year’s rains. Now...

  If fire spread to the vineyards...

  Pierre took off in the direction of the smoke. Gabrielle allowed herself one crumbling instance of weakness to grieve for what would be devoured by the flames, then raced into the house. Her mother was in the kitchen, staring into a half-full cup of coffee. “Maman, I need your car.”

  “Why? What’s happened now?”

  With cold, concise precision, Gabrielle explained about the fire. In the distance, the wail of a siren shattered the June air.

  Hélène abandoned her cup on the kitchen table. “I’ll drive.”

  They traveled the short distance in strained silence. Tension showed in her mother’s pinched expression as she navigated the streets of Reims, the flames her guide.

  The noise hit Gabrielle first, a loud earsplitting roar. Thick, menacing flames speared up into the sky. Others curled backward, into the bakery, licking at the structure with greedy, destructive tongues. Smoke rolled within the fire, pluming upward, rising, rising. The stench seared her nose. The whirling dance of flames burned her eyes.

  If the wind shifted, it would carry sparks to other buildings. The vines. The LeBlanc château. The fire must be stopped.

  The moment her mother pulled the car to a halt, Gabrielle jumped out. She was immediately swallowed up in the crowd and lost sight of Hélène within seconds. She tried to push through the dense humanity, thinking only of joining the fight, but she made little progress. Too many people surrounded her, crying, shouting, tugging at her, and then shoving her away.