My Grape Year: (The Grape Series #1)

by Laura Bradbury

  Roland launched into a detailed explanation of the rules, but he kept getting mixed up, probably because he had most likely already consumed several of his own potently mixed kirs by the time Franck and I arrived. Finally he waved his hand to sweep away all his preceding instructions.

  “Forget everything I just said. The only crucial thing to remember is that you must be holding a drink while you play.”

  “That,” I said, taking a drink of my kir, “I can do.”

  Shortly after the game began I realized that, while the players seemed to take pétanque seriously, between the shots, there was a lot of ribbing and teasing that occurred.

  My kir and a half allowed me to take part in this, giving my French extra fluency and removing any inhibitions I had about grammar mistakes and my constant mixing up of the masculine and feminine modifiers.

  Franck shot a lovely ball that landed right beside the diminutive lead cochonnet. Apparently, we all were trying to get our ball as close to the cochonnet (which inexplicably translated as “piglet”—I would have to ask Franck about that later) as possible, even if it meant knocking another person’s ball out of range. After Franck’s turn, it was mine.

  I leaned forward and enjoyed the cool, solid weight of the pétanque ball in my hand. It reminded me of the fishing weights I used to make in the basement with my dad.

  I eyed Franck’s ball and took my throw. Mine arced beautifully and then clanked against his, knocking his several feet away.

  Franck stared. “Traitor!” He pointed an accusing finger at me.

  “All’s fair in love and pétanque,” I reminded him.

  Franck gasped at my betrayal. I just laughed.

  We all got pretty serious after that. Well, as serious as you can get when you are holding and drinking kirs as you play, which meant, of course, not all that serious.

  My team had just won by a few points when we heard a distant shouting in French and the unmistakable sound of a cowbell.

  Roland consulted his watch. “It must be the hour for l’apéritif.”

  I peered into the dregs if my third glass of kir, my head spinning. “Didn’t we already start that?” I asked.

  “Non, non,” Roland answered. “That was just hydration for our athletic endeavors.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Franck took my arm, and we made our way back to the house. We were almost there when he pushed me suddenly behind the trunk of a large tree that had a large wooden swing tied to one of its lower branches.

  “Wha—”

  He cut me off with a feverish kiss.

  “Nothing heats my blood like a woman who has the gall to beat me at pétanque.”

  Time became elastic, and I was so intoxicated with Franck that I forgot where we were, or that everyone else had headed down into the cellar and might be wondering where we’d gotten off to.

  “Franck! Franck!” Someone was calling him from the porch.

  We broke apart, gasping. “Oh my God,” I said. “We almost—”

  “I know.” He was breathing hard as hard as I was.

  “Maybe the kir—”

  Franck buttoned up my shirt for me and I tried to straighten his. Both of our hands were shaking.

  “Franck! Where are you?”

  “That’s one of my aunts,” Franck said, trying to smooth down my hair. “We should go in.”

  I laughed shakily. “Are we presentable?”

  Franck looked me up and down. “Not really, but it will have to do.”

  I was struggling to clip my silver barrette in my hair.

  “Tiens, let me do that.” Franck took it from my hand.

  He gathered my hair into a ponytail and then clipped the barrette. His movements were awkward, and I could tell there were a lot of lumps and bumps and loose hair but…it was perfect.

  He lifted my ponytail and planted three soft kisses on the nape of my neck.

  “If you keep doing that,” I said, “we’re going to miss lunch and I’m not even going to care.”

  “It’s your fault for making me want you so badly.” I gave him one final kiss…and then another, and then I turned and was in his arms again.

  “Franck!” This time it was la Mémé’s unmistakable voice. “I need your help.”

  Franck broke away. “This time I truly have to go.”

  “Okay.” I backed up, putting several feet of electric air between us. “Should we go together?”

  Franck reached out and took my hand. “Yes. Come on.”

  Mémé caught sight of us as soon as we emerged from behind the tree. Instead of being mad or embarrassed, as I’d imagined she would be, she seemed delighted.

  “You naughty children. Far be it from me to discourage young love, but I can’t have you missing all the food I made, can I?”

  “Non Mémé,” Franck said. Mémé patted him fondly on the head.

  “C’est beau l’amour,” she commented wistfully, then shooed me down into the cellar and took Franck’s arm in hers. “I’m going to borrow your amoureux for a few minutes,” she said as she led him inside. “I need his strong arms.”

  The thought of his strong arms made me blush again as I hurried down the stone steps into the cool cellar to join the rest of the party. I found myself in a large room with a vaulted ceiling and freshly whitewashed stone walls. Long trestle tables were set up surrounded by an assortment of chairs, most of them looking like antiques. Here and there barrels turned on their ends dotted the room for people to set down their glasses. Roland seemed to have taken up a new role as bartender behind a makeshift bar that was filled with bottles and glasses of every imaginable shape and size.

  It was Roland who saw me first. “There she is, la Canadienne!” he shouted in a penetrating voice. He raised his hands and began to sing a raucous version of “la ban Bourguignon.” I fely my face burn as the entire room full of people joined in. Franck appeared by my side by the time the song was finished.

  “Sorry,” he whispered in my ear, “I needed to move that huge pot for her.”

  Mémé came over to us, dancing and still clapping even though the song was finished. “Now the party can begin!”

  Roland filled up both of our glasses, and we raised them as everyone cheered on Mémé as she continued her jig of joy. For an eighty-year-old, she was sprightly.

  Jean and André appeared with huge baskets filled with airy gougères to go with the kir and little feuilletés of flaky pastry with layers of melted emmenthal cheese.

  Mémé grasped my shoulder and looked into my eyes. “Do you like cooking?” she asked.

  I sensed this was an important question, but at the same time, I couldn’t lie about my culinary expertise, or lack thereof.

  “I love eating,” I said. This, as least, was true.

  “That’s good enough for me!” Mémé said, and kissed both Franck and me on our cheeks and then danced away in the direction of another gaggle of people, who greeted her with open arms.

  “She’s amazing,” I said, watching her go.

  “Sacrée Mémé,” Franck said, watching her with pride. “There’s no one like her.”

  During the apéritif, I met yet more people. The introductions didn’t let up until Jean gave an impressive wolf whistle and commanded everyone to sit down.

  Franck led me to a chair beside his, roughly in the middle of one of the two long tables. I gratefully collapsed in it. It seemed a little wobbly, and I looked down to see that the wood shone with a deep patina and was exquisitely carved.

  Franck glanced at it. “It’s probably from the seventeenth century or something,” he said, off-handedly. “Jean has a lot of stuff of that era in the attics. I would offer to switch yours with mine, but I think mine is even more wobbly.”

  “It’s fine.” I lay my hand on his arm. “I won’t be sitting on any seventeenth-century chairs back in Canada.”

  A shadow fell over Franck’s features.

  “Sorry,” I said, wishing my words unsaid.

  “You don’t
need to apologize. I just can’t imagine you not being here anymore.”

  There were so many things I wanted to say, but they all stayed tangled in a knot in my throat. “Let’s just enjoy Mémé’s party.”

  Each of us had a china plate and a beautifully folded paper napkin in the shape of a swan. I picked mine up.

  Mémé made those too,” Franck said. There seemed no end to this woman’s talents.

  I surveyed the various glasses set in front of my place—a champagne flute, two chubby kir glasses, a red wineglass, and a smaller glass suitable for a digestif or some other kind of hard alcohol.

  I was examining these when I heard the sound of scraping wood behind me. Mémé had thrown open two sliding barn-like doors to another room that I hadn’t realized even existed. “Servez-vous et bon appétit!” She waved us all in.

  We were carried by the chattering crowd into the next room where an L- shaped table groaned with food. There was a myriad of beautifully presented bowls of different kinds of cold salads, a mind-numbing array of charcuterie presented on massive platters and decorated with cornichons and radishes cut up into little flowers, terrines, and patés of every description. Huge baskets of bread bookended the table.

  “She prepared all of this herself?” I asked Franck.

  He nodded. “She even baked the bread. You’ll see. It’s delicious.”

  The problem was that my plate simply wasn’t big enough. I wanted to taste everything. I was almost to the end of the table when Mémé came up beside me.

  “Ah, Laura!” she said. “You have to taste some of this.”

  She dug a spoon deep into a bowl that contained gelatinous-looking meat mixture—one of the few dishes I hadn’t selected. She served me several spoonfulls and I didn’t have the heart to tell her to stop. I had grabbed a few slices of her delectable-looking bread and followed Franck back to the table.

  Once we were seated, Franck happened to glance at my plate. It was piled twice as high as his.

  “You’re going to be able to eat all that?” he asked me dubiously. “This is only the entrée you know. The main course comes afterwards.”

  “What?” I couldn’t believe I had fallen for this French trick again. Yet there was so much food, I just assumed it was the main course…

  I looked down at my plate now, dismayed. “Oh God. What have I done?”

  “I’ll help you,” Franck assured me.

  I certainly did honor to Mémé in the end. I tried everything, and much to my surprise, even the gelatinous meat thing tasted delicious. It was flavored with parsley and had a deep, dense meaty taste that appealed to my inner cavewoman.

  Franck pointed to the tiny bit of it left on my plate and asked, “Did you like that?”

  “Loved it. What is it? Some kind of paté?”

  Franck shook his head. “Fromage de tête. One of Mémé’s specialties.”

  I recoiled from my plate. Literally that translated as “head cheese. ” “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Franck looked at me, surprised. “Tell you what?”

  “What it was made of!”

  “A pig’s head? What’s wrong with that? It’s one of my favorite dishes and nobody makes it like Mémé.”

  “How does she make it?”

  Franck became animated in that way Burgundians did when describing food and its preparation. “You take a pig’s head—”

  I could feel the blood draining out of my face.

  “You boil all of the meat off it and then, when all you have left is the skull,” my boyfriend continued, “then you pick the tender little bits of meat left over and season them with fresh parsley and garlic and several other secret things that Mémé has told no one, and then…well, I’m not exactly sure what she does next, but she mixes the whole thing with just the right amount of gelatin so that the consistency is right.”

  Franck watched me for a moment. He plucked a bottle of chilled white wine off the table and poured me a glass. “Here, it looks as though you may need this.”

  I took a deep swallow and felt a bit more settled, although very, very full. “It’s just that I didn’t grow up eating that kind of thing,” I explained. “You know…innards.”

  “Fromage de tête isn’t technically offal.”

  “If we’re getting technical, I’m not used to eating animals’ heads.”

  “What did you grow up eating then?” he asked.

  I took another sip of wine. God, it was delicious. “Sandwiches, smoked salmon…” My voice trailed off. Memories of what I ate in Canada were foggy. Everything back home paled in comparison to the taste explosion that was France. “Moose. Deer…”

  “Really?” Franck leaned forward, fascinated. “I’ve never tasted either of those.”

  “My dad hunts, so I grew up eating those more often than beef.”

  Franck reached out and caressed my cheek. “Ma petite moose-fed Canadienne. Do you want to go outside for a walk? It helps the digestion during these Burgundian family meals.”

  I gladly went outside with him, blinking in the bright afternoon light.

  “I am going to resist leading you behind that tree.” He nodded over to the tree with the swing. “As I got an early taste of the coq au vin Mémé has bubbling on the stove, and it would be a crime for you to miss that.”

  “We’ll be good,” I vowed. “Besides, I feel like an anaconda after all that food.”

  Franck laughed and interlaced my fingers in his. He led me all around the garden, which was massive and completely enclosed with rock walls several meters high. In some of the natural indentations formed by the roughly hewn stones, little white statues of the Virgin Mary were placed.

  “How old is this place?” I asked.

  “Maybe three hundred years?” Franck guessed. “I think it’s been in Jean’s family since the time of his great grandparents at least.”

  I took a moment to marvel at that. Three hundred years ago, the Europeans hadn’t even discovered the city where I lived on the West Coast.

  “The house was occupied by the Nazis during the Second World War as their headquarters in this area.”

  “Really?”

  Franck nodded. “It’s a miracle anything in the house is preserved at all, that they didn’t rip out everything and send it to Germany.”

  “That must have been terrible.”

  “What’s worse is that Jean and his mother had to stay here alone with the Nazis. Jean’s father had already died before the war. It was the only way of protecting—or trying to anyway—the house and their possessions.”

  “I can’t imagine…” In Canada, especially on the extreme West Coast where I was from, the Second World War hadn’t impacted its residents nearly as much as in Europe. Even the idea of it was distant, something I read about in a history book or saw in a movie. In France, the memories were immediate, and many people at the party had lived through the Nazi occupation as children or young adults.

  “What breaks all of our hearts is the wine cellar,” Franck added.

  “Did the Germans steal all the wine?”

  “Of course, and Jean said it was a spectacular collection. Burgundies, Bordeaux, champagne…what the soldiers staying at the house didn’t drink themselves, they sent off to Germany. I think they probably drank the huge majority themselves. There were a lot of them living here, and even more who reported here for work every day.”

  “None of it was saved?”

  “Jean and his mother did manage to sneak away a few of the oldest, most precious bottles to a secret cellar. The Nazis never found that.”

  Franck and I had been walking for quite some time and found ourselves in an orchard that was still within the garden walls. It was full of fruit trees covered in blossoms.

  “This whole area of Burgundy was a hotbed of resistance activity.” Franck waved his hand around. “The separation between occupied and unoccupied France was in Chalon, just south of us, so there were all kinds of people being ferried back and forth, and all kinds
of sabotage taking place.”

  Under a blossoming apple tree, I turned around and took in the site of the huge white house in the distance. It was difficult to imagine it full of Nazis. They would have seemed so out of place in in this place of bucolic splendor.

  We began to walk towards the house again, stopping at the tree with the swing hanging from the branch.

  “Do you want to try?” Franck asked me, motioning to the swing.

  I settled on the wooden swing, and Franck pushed me gently from behind. I realized that it had been years since I’d been on a swing. Why had I stopped? The sensation of the rushing leaves above me and the whoosh of the air against my face was delicious.

  “I think this seat is big enough for two,” I said. Franck grabbed the ropes to stop me and then climbed on beside me. We swung and kissed.

  “Hé! Les amoureux!” Olivier appeared through the cellar door and sauntered up to us. “I’ve heard rumors the coq au vin is incoming. You might want to get back down to the table.”

  “First we’ll go check if Mémé needs any help in the kitchen,” Franck said.

  “I’ll come with you.” Olivier took a deep drag on a barely smoked cigarette and flicked it into one of the ashtrays that were strategically placed all over the garden.

  In the kitchen, Mémé was busy stirring the contents of the huge copper pot with the largest wooden spoon I had ever seen in my life. She tasted the sauce.

  “Come here, Laura!” she called over to me. “What do you think of this sauce?”

  I tasted it from the spoon. It was delicious. Rich and savory with the depth of sublime wine and garlic.

  “It’s delicious.”

  Mémé still didn’t seem convinced, so she called Franck over, and he tasted it too, and told her it needed perhaps a pinch more salt. She nodded briskly.

  “I thought so.” She took a pinch of gray sea salt from the old wooden cellar beside the stove and stirred it in.

  “Shoo, you three!” she said. “You need to be sitting downstairs when I present my dish.”