The Winemaker's Wife

by Kristin Harmel

  Inès knew this because Michel had told her the history of his family’s property when he’d first begun courting her a year and a half ago. His father’s family had been vignerons, winegrowers, since the sixteenth century, but it was only in the early 1800s that they’d begun to toy with the idea of producing their own wine. In nearby Reims and Épernay, and even the commune of Aÿ, massive champagne houses were making a fortune, while growers in the small villages still lived like peasants. When Michel’s great-great-grandfather married the daughter of a textile magnate in 1839, there had finally been some money to purchase equipment and supplies.

  The business had evolved slowly, and nearly stalled when Michel’s eccentric great-grandfather became obsessed with building a network of caves underneath their property to rival the chalk-carved crayères of the great houses of Reims. The tunnels he had constructed, beginning in the 1870s, were so twisting and complex that during Inès’s first week living at the Maison Chauveau, she’d gotten lost belowground for hours, a terrifying ordeal. Michel hadn’t found her until well after nightfall.

  “The tunnels go on for many kilometers and are quite confusing,” he’d told a sobbing Inès as he led her into the evening air. “Don’t worry, darling. You’ll learn.” Of course, Michel knew every centimeter of the maze by heart, had played hide-and-seek in the twisting caverns as a boy, had carved his name into the chalk portions of the walls alongside the names of his ancestors, had huddled there while bombs shredded the earth overhead during the Great War.

  But even a year after that first frightening experience, Inès still wasn’t accustomed to the dark stillness, the way the aging bottles crowded the caves like silent little coffins. She hadn’t gotten used to the constant chill, as if the seasons aboveground ceased to exist, and she had never adjusted to the way the wind sometimes howled at the main entrance to the caves, a sound that made her think of the ghosts and wolves of fairy tales.

  This was supposed to be a fairy tale, Inès thought with a pang of regret as she paused now to rub her throbbing shoulders. When she’d first met Michel, in November 1938, they’d seemed a perfect match; he had been entranced by her youth and her optimism, and she had been equally moved by his solidity, his wisdom, and his fascinating role in making a champagne that everyone in France knew of. It had all seemed so magical. Who would have thought that a mere seventeen months later, she would be wearing work boots and sliding twenty-kilo cases of wine toward the secret cave Michel’s parents had constructed during the Great War to hide their valuables?

  It was an ingenious installation, and the first time Michel had shown it to Inès, just after France had declared war against Hitler’s Germany in September, her jaw had dropped; she never would have guessed there was an enormous storage cave lurking behind what looked like an impenetrable wall. A hidden door swung out from a hinge concealed between bricks, and when it was closed, it looked as if it was part of the decades-old stone and chalk tunnel. There was even a specially ordered Madonna, designed to appear permanent, in front of it, although the statue of the virgin was deceptively easy to move. Inès knew that because she’d had to do so herself earlier that morning in order to access the hiding space, where they’d been slowly concealing bottles for months.

  Alone in the caves, her arms and back aching, she felt a chill of foreboding. In January, as they’d lain in bed together one stormy night with the wind lashing the vines outside, Michel had predicted a terrible year for Champagne—a bad harvest, a shadow cast over their whole region. Inès had thought he was just being a pessimist, but now that the Germans were over the border, she wondered if he was, as usual, right about everything. While she respected his intellect, sometimes his inability to err could be stifling. It left no room for Inès to have thoughts or opinions that differed from his.

  “Inès? Are you here?” A voice wafted down the narrow stone stairway from the main entrance to the cellars, which was behind a wooden door tucked into a stone wall behind the château where Michel and Inès lived. Inès closed her eyes briefly. It was Céline, the wife of Michel’s chef de cave, Theo Laurent. “Michel said you might need some help.”

  “Yes, I’m here!” she called back, trying to sound friendly. She scratched her left forearm, a childish habit her mother had tried to break her of, telling her it was unladylike, that the harsh red streaks her fingernails left were unbecoming and juvenile. Still, the nervous tic returned whenever she was on edge. “I’m just headed back to the cave where the last of the twenty-eights are stored.”

  “C’est bon. I’ll be right there.” She could hear heavy footsteps on the stairs; Céline had ditched her stylish mules months ago, when the Marne was emptied of its men, and now wore work boots nearly every day. She was stronger than Inès, and more sure of herself, and Inès often felt like an inexperienced little girl next to her, though they were only a year apart.

  Inès tried to pitch in, too, but she didn’t have the same knack for it that Céline did, and she was often left in the dust—literally. Inès had no palate for tasting, though she tried; no skill for the bottling of blended wines; and no finesse for the racking of bottles, which had to be done with a sure hand. She suspected that the others thought she was just lazy, but the truth was, she was hesitant and unsure, and each time she broke a bottle, she lost a bit more confidence. She was useless.

  The irony was that not so long ago, that’s exactly how Michel had wanted her to be. When he had proposed marriage to her a year and a half earlier, he had told her he would take care of her, that he didn’t want her lifting a finger.

  “But you see, I’m happy to help out,” she had tried to explain.

  “It’s my responsibility to take care of you now,” Michel had said, cupping her chin gently with a calloused hand and looking into her eyes. “You won’t have to work.”

  “But—”

  “Please, my dear,” he had interrupted. “My father never had to ask my mother to bother herself with the champagne production, and I don’t want to ask you to, either. You’ll be the lady of the house now.”

  But then war had been declared that September, and the draft had stolen their workers. Michel had slowly changed his tune, at first asking her to do small tasks with mumbled apologies. She made sure to let him know at every opportunity that it was perfectly all right, and that she truly wanted to pitch in. But as the autumn dragged into winter and the labor shortage began to take a toll on their production schedule, he had implored her to take on more and more responsibilities. She scrambled to do everything he wanted, but there was often a learning curve, and as the months wore on, she could feel the heat of his deepening disappointment in her.

  She pasted on a smile as Céline rounded the corner now. Even in faded trousers and muddy boots, Céline was beautiful, which annoyed Inès, though she knew that was irrational. But then Inès looked more closely at the other woman, and even in the darkness, she could see that Céline’s eyes were rimmed in red.

  “Are you all right?” Inès asked.

  Céline immediately ducked her head, hiding her face behind a curtain of long brown hair. “Oh yes, just fine.”

  “But you’ve been crying.” Inès knew she was being tactless, but it simply didn’t seem fair for Céline to pretend that everything was normal when clearly, above their heads, it was all falling apart. Then again, in the year since Inès had married Michel, the two women had never really become friends, though Inès had tried. Céline was quiet and serious, always tromping around with a frown on her face, while Inès did her best to look on the bright side. A month after Inès had arrived at the Maison Chauveau, she’d overheard Céline whispering to Theo that Inès’s constant optimism grated on her because it was so unrealistic. After that, Inès had at least understood the exasperated looks Céline sometimes cast her way.

  Céline drew a shuddering breath. “Yes, well, I’m worried about my family, Inès.”

  “Oh.” Inès was temporarily at a loss. “Well, I imagine they’re all right. I’m sure the Germans
aren’t harming civilians.”

  Céline made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “Inès, don’t you remember that my family is Jewish?”

  “Well, yes, of course.” The truth was that Inès didn’t think about it much. It had come up in conversation a few times over the past few months, when there were news reports of Jewish roundups in Germany. Céline’s father and his family were Jews, but Inès knew that Céline’s mother—who had died two years earlier—had been Catholic, and that Céline hadn’t been raised to be particularly religious at all. “But you mustn’t worry. This is still France, after all.”

  Céline was silent for long enough that Inès thought perhaps she had no reply. “Do you really think that will matter when the Germans have control of things?”

  Inès bit her lip. Céline didn’t have to look at every situation as if it were the end of the world. “There’s no word of anything happening to Jews here,” she said confidently. “You’ll see. It will be fine.”

  “Right.” Céline turned away without another word. Inès watched as she bent, lifted a crate of twenty-eights from the floor, and trudged down the tunnel toward the hidden cavern.

  Inès grabbed a crate of her own and hurried after her, her back aching in protest, her underused biceps burning. “You’re from near Dijon, though, right?”

  “Yes, just to the south, Nuits-Saint-Georges.”

  “Well, then, your father and your grandparents are much farther from the Germans than we are, yes?” Inès knew that Dijon was some three hundred kilometers south of Champagne. “They’re probably already heading south.” Michel had explained that hundreds of thousands of refugees were clogging the roads as the Germans approached.

  “No.” Céline didn’t look at Inès as she placed her crate on the stone floor of the hidden cave. “My father manages a winery, and nearly all his workers were sent to the front. He felt he could not leave. He’s quite loyal to the owner, who has been good to him. My grandparents decided to remain with him.”

  “Well, surely they will be fine.”

  “Surely they will be fine,” Céline repeated, but Inès could hear the bitterness in her tone, the fear, so she went silent and returned to her bottles.

  Inès supposed she would be worrying about her own relatives, too, if she had any left. But both of her parents had died when Inès was just sixteen—her father felled by a stroke, her mother by a heart attack two months later. There were no siblings, no extended family; Inès was entirely alone. Thankfully, her dear friend Edith’s family had taken her in, and Inès had found a home again.

  It made sense, then, that in early 1938, when Edith had fallen in love with a young restaurateur named Edouard Thierry, who had inherited his family’s brasserie in Reims, Inès would accompany her to Champagne. She had no reason to remain in their hometown of Lille, and though she resented Edouard at first for taking Edith away, she was surprised and moved by his offer for her to come and stay with them in his large apartment, situated just over the brasserie. You are her dearest friend, he had said solemnly as she wiped her tears away after their modest wedding at the baroque-domed Église Sainte-Marie-Madeleine in Old Lille. Of course you will be with us for as long as you like.

  She hadn’t believed at first that he actually wanted her there, but he’d been a genuinely enthusiastic host, often including her in social engagements and sometimes even asking her opinion about world affairs. He’d even let her help out behind the brasserie’s bar on occasion to make a bit of money. When Edouard brought his old friend Michel Chauveau around for dinner one cold evening in the fall of 1938, announcing that Michel was a very eligible bachelor, it seemed predestined that Inès would fall in love with him.

  “Oh, Michel is so handsome!” Edith had exclaimed later that night, clapping her hands as Edouard walked Michel out, leaving the two women alone. “Don’t you think, Inès?”

  Inès had smiled, her heart still fluttering. “Did you see his eyes?” They were a piercing blue, the kind that could see right through you. He was tall, solidly built, with sandy blond hair and sharp features, and though his suit was a bit outdated, he wore it well.

  “His eyes?” Edith had repeated with a laugh. “I noticed only that they were focused on you all night, my dear friend. And how could he resist? You’re beautiful.” Edith had a way of making Inès feel that way. She had always been that kind of friend, the kind who lifted you up when you were down. “Can you believe he owns the Maison Chauveau?” Edith added, raising both eyebrows meaningfully.

  “And yet he was so modest,” Inès said. He had come bearing chilled bottles from three different Chauveau vintages, but he deflected Inès’s questions about his champagne empire gracefully, turning the attention back on her, asking her about her life in Lille, her friendship with Edith, and whether she’d yet had a chance to tour Champagne.

  Later, she and Edith agreed that he had been asking her for a date. Like Edouard, he was several years older than Edith and Inès, and more serious than they were, too. Inès supposed it was because he and Edouard had both been forced into their family businesses early; they had taken on responsibilities she could barely imagine when they were in their early twenties.

  “I haven’t ventured beyond Reims yet,” Inès had told him. “But I would love to see the countryside.”

  “Would you?” Michel smiled, and Inès’s stomach fluttered. He had called on her the following week, and by the spring, they were engaged. They married the first week of May, for there was no reason to wait; like Inès, Michel had no living family.

  It had all seemed so very dazzling at first. Inès was the new wife of the owner of a prestigious champagne house! She would be living in the midst of rolling vineyards! She would drink bubbly every night!

  But the reality was quite different. Once Inès and Michel were wed, they rarely went into Reims; the picturesque scenery became mundane after a while; and even the nightly bottle they opened with dinner began to feel repetitive.

  The biggest problem, though, was that Inès no longer had Edith to gossip with on a daily basis, or even Edouard to engage her in conversation, now that she was no longer living with them. Michel was even more introspective and serious than he had seemed during their brief courtship; they often spent entire meals in complete silence as he ruminated about problems with the production schedule or issues with growers—neither of which he wanted to discuss with Inès.

  Inès had imagined that she and Michel would go back to Reims often to see their friends, but though the small city was only forty minutes from Ville-Dommange by car, it might as well have been in another country. The demands of champagne production kept Michel busy from dawn until dusk most days, and he didn’t like her taking the car without him. Inès was effectively trapped in a place that still didn’t feel like home.

  And though Inès had met the burly, dark-haired Theo and his strong, elegant wife, Céline, on her first visit to the Maison Chauveau and imagined they might become her friends, that hadn’t happened, either. Theo was so immersed in his work that he could vanish for weeks at a time, while Céline was as quiet and solemn as Michel. The more Inès tried to bond with her over gossip or news from town, the more Céline seemed to withdraw.

  Now, with war looming on the horizon, Inès felt more isolated than ever. In the depths of the cellars, she and Céline should have been sharing their fears about what was to come. Instead, they worked in silence, the only sound the quiet thud of each crate landing in its new hidden home.

  four

  JUNE 1940

  CÉLINE

  On a Friday morning in June, days after the Germans had finally marched into the Champagne region, Theo came rushing into the small cottage he shared with Céline, his face flushed.

  “They are finally here in Ville-Dommange,” he blurted out. “The Germans. Come quickly.”

  Céline felt a surge of fear. She had known this was coming, for the Germans had been pillaging the towns around them since they’d swept in earlier that week. She�
�d been holding out hope that somehow their small village would be overlooked, but of course that was silly. The conquerors would want their reward—in this case, the endless bottles of fine champagne that huddled in the dark cellars beneath the countryside. But what if the Germans were after something else, too? What if they were coming because they knew Céline was half Jewish? “Should I hide?” she asked.

  “This isn’t about you,” Theo said instantly, his dark brows drawing together. “It is happening to all the champagne houses. Come, Céline. We are not in danger as long as we do what they say. And right now, Michel needs us.”

  Céline couldn’t say no to that, not after the kindness Michel had shown them. When Theo had applied for the job of head winemaker at the Maison Chauveau four years earlier, just after marrying Céline in Nuits-Saint-Georges, he’d already been turned down from several larger champagne houses in Reims because he’d learned his trade in Burgundy rather than in Champagne. But Michel hadn’t cared at all about his lack of pedigree. “You are a skilled winemaker; that much is clear,” he had said after reviewing Theo’s references and doing several rounds of tasting and blending with him. “Any house would be lucky to have you.”

  And that had been that. Michel had offered them the former caretaker’s cottage, just fifty yards to the right of the main house, as part of Theo’s salary, and Theo had accepted. Since that day, Michel had been generous to a fault, treating the Laurents like family, inviting them every so often to Sunday dinners in the much grander main house, even including them in holiday celebrations. He and Theo had been almost like brothers for a time, although since war had been declared in September, Céline had seen a growing distance between them. Theo wanted to pretend that nothing was happening, while Michel was determined to look the future square in the eye, even if it was frightening and uncertain. Céline would never say so, but she thought Michel was right, while her husband was being shortsighted.