The Champagne Queen (The Century Trilogy Book 2)

by Petra Durst-Benning

  Isabelle shrugged. Inside, outside—what difference did it make?

  Josephine grabbed a few cushions from the sofa and brought them out to the wicker furniture on the terrace. Clara had gone into the kitchen, and when she came back out, she was carrying a tray of food.

  “Your neighbor made some soup. And I cut some bread and found a bottle of wine—Madame Guenin had put it in a bucket of cold water to cool. I hope that was all right? A warm meal can’t hurt, especially considering your condition, can it?” Clara cast a worried glance at Isabelle’s swollen belly.

  That was so typical of Clara, framing every statement as a question! A trace of a smile appeared momentarily on Isabelle’s face.

  The three friends positioned themselves around the wicker table. While Josephine and Clara sighed with delight at the beauty of their surroundings, Isabelle blinked and looked around as if she were seeing everything for the first time. Three half-barrels full of red geraniums. Who had planted those? The sun settled gradually below the vineyards, dousing the landscape in an orange-red glow. The vines were reaching out toward the house as if they wanted to take hold of it. And the grapes! When had they grown so big? Did they still taste sour? For a moment, Isabelle was tempted to go to the nearest vine and pick a bunch. But her legs did not want to obey her mind, and she stayed motionless in her chair. She knew that she was supposed to feel something. Pleasure, perhaps, at the sight of the flowers. Shame at her unkempt appearance. Clara and Josephine had been clearly shocked at the sight of her, although they had tried hard to cover it. And she knew she should have felt hunger or at least a little bit of an appetite. Clara had gone to so much trouble to set the table nicely. But nothing came. She was still dead inside.

  The wall of the house behind them radiated the stored warmth of the sun. For the second time that day, Isabelle felt herself held in a loving embrace, but this time it wasn’t Clara’s arms but her own house enfolding her. Her house . . . the house that she had fallen so deeply in love with before it became her prison. Tears sprang to her eyes again.

  Josephine and Clara, just then dishing out the soup, exchanged a worried, helpless look.

  “I’m sorry,” Isabelle said once she gathered herself. “I don’t know what’s gotten into me.” She sniffed loudly. Her crying attack had left her exhausted, and at the same time, she felt a little freer than before. “It must just be how happy I am that you’ve come,” she said flatly.

  “Don’t go apologizing for crying,” said Josephine. “When I think that Leon isn’t here anymore”—she turned away—“I almost start crying myself,” she whispered, her voice raw and breaking.

  For a long moment, the only sound was the hum of the cicadas in the nearest bushes. It was Clara who broke the silence. “How did it happen?” she asked softly. “Your neighbor—who’s lovely, by the way—didn’t say anything about it in her letter. Can you . . . do you want to talk about it?”

  Why shouldn’t she talk about it? Isabelle closed her eyes and let out a long, deep sigh. “It happened on the same day as the festival in Hautvillers in honor of the Ice Saints, who spared us, the winemakers, this year. I asked Leon to stay. He’d been quite successful in several races in the weeks before. But he wanted to go to . . .” She trailed off, bit her lip. Where had he wanted to go? She couldn’t remember, then stopped trying. “Two dogs ran under his wheels on a long, steep descent. He had a bad fall, and they took him to the hospital in Épernay, where the doctors diagnosed him with concussion.” Objectively, and feeling little emotion inside, she told them the rest. “He was on the road to recovery. He was supposed to come home the next day. I’d already prepared everything for him—the house was so clean it was almost glowing, and there were flowers and his favorite meal. Then it happened: a blood vessel in his head burst in the middle of the night, and he suffered a stroke. They couldn’t save him.” Even as she spoke, she felt the chill coming down on her again, the icy veil that had settled on her skin like frost back then in the hospital.

  Clara silently took her hand and held it tightly. The cold retreated.

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m thirsty,” said Josephine, lifting the bottle out of the bucket. “Clara couldn’t find any water in the kitchen, but she did manage to find this wine. Don’t you think we should open it?”

  “That isn’t wine. It’s Guenin champagne,” said Isabelle when she saw the label.

  Josephine immediately put the bottle back in the bucket. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  Isabelle chuckled a little but with no real spirit. “It’s all right. Here in France, they drink champagne all the time. They don’t wait for special days, like we do in Germany. They even served champagne at Leon’s wake. And I’m sure that Micheline would be disappointed if you didn’t accept her welcome gift.” She nodded encouragingly at Josephine, who immediately went back to work on the cork.

  Soon came a loud pop, and Josephine poured the champagne. Each of the three women took a glass and held it aloft a little helplessly.

  It was Clara who managed to break the uncomfortable silence. “To our reunion!”

  “To our reunion!” said Isabelle and Josephine together.

  When each of them had drunk, Josephine spoke up. “How are you now? Are you coping, more or less?”

  Isabelle looked at her with empty eyes.

  Josephine swept her arm wide. “The vineyards, the harvest coming up, and there must be a few employees here who have to be told what to do and supervised. Can you do all of that?”

  “Josephine,” Clara said, with a note of warning. “Isabelle, I’m sure, is in no state to talk about business matters. You haven’t even eaten anything. The soup is delicious; try at least a little,” she said in exaggerated encouragement.

  Isabelle ignored Clara’s urging. With her eyes cast down, Isabelle said, “To be honest, I’m afraid I’ve rather let things slide. I can’t seem to rouse myself to do anything. What’s the point? I can’t go out into the vineyards and pretend that everything is fine! Without Leon, none of it makes any sense. I . . . oh—” She broke off and shook her head. It was the first time since Leon’s death that she had tried to put how she felt into words. She had not been particularly successful, she knew. She looked at her two friends with a sudden flash of anger. Look at them, sitting there! Untouched by death—or by life, for that matter. Neither of them knew anything. Not a thing!

  “How can you say that your life has no sense?” said Clara softly. “You’re going to have a child, Leon’s child! Are you trying to say it isn’t worth living for that?”

  “Leon’s child,” Isabelle repeated tonelessly. “He was so happy when he heard the news.” She looked down at her own body as if it were something foreign. “I can’t find any joy in it. I pray and I pray that everything has been a huge mix-up. A bad dream, you know? All the time, I think that Leon will be coming around the corner any minute, and I’ll wake up, and everything will be good. But there’s no way to wake from this nightmare.” Her eyes were brimming with tears again. “I miss him so much.”

  This time it was Josephine who took her hand and squeezed it.

  Isabelle talked, and she cried. When the sun was long gone, the air grew chilly. Clara went into the house and returned a minute later with a stack of blankets. Josephine lit two large candles. Once they had made themselves comfortable again, Isabelle went on. She talked about Leon’s cycling ambitions and that he had wanted to sell the estate. She told them about her despair when he had told her that. And she spoke about her love for the house and how she had felt, for the first time in her life, that she was truly where she was meant to be.

  “This is where I belong! I was so certain of that. I talked as if my life depended on it, trying to convince Leon not to sell this place. Luckily, Micheline had given me an idea of how I could earn money easily with the estate, and that was crucial. When I told Leon what I had in mind, he finally agreed, on condition that I take care of everything and that he could dedicate himself completely to his s
port.”

  “He was confident that you could do it?” asked Clara, impressed.

  Isabelle smiled and nodded. She frowned and listened to what was going on inside herself. During her narration, she had felt something, a gentle movement deep in her heart. She didn’t know what to call it, only that it felt foreign and unaccustomed.

  “After his accident, it was as if Leon had reached some kind of enlightenment. Suddenly, he didn’t want to sell anymore and wanted to throw himself heart and soul into this place instead. We wanted to lead the Feininger estate to success, together. We were so full of hope. We wanted to show the world we could do it! And then—” She sobbed. “Nothing is how it was anymore. I’m alone, and all I see in front of me is a mountain of unsolved and unsolvable problems.”

  It was nearly two in the morning when Clara and Josephine went to bed in one of the guest rooms. Before that, they had cleaned everything up and taken Isabelle back to her room.

  “I’m so happy that you’re here,” she had whispered, her last words that night.

  Oh my goodness, what have we gotten ourselves into here, Clara thought, staring at the dark ceiling overhead.

  “Can’t you sleep, either?” whispered Josephine beside her. “I’m dead tired, really, but everything has got me too stirred up to sleep.”

  “I’m the same,” said Clara, and turned to face Josephine. “Were you as shocked as I was at the sight of her?” Isabelle had looked like an old woman. She had tied her hair into a single braid that hung dirty and lifeless down her back. Clara was not sure they would be able to untangle it. Was it so matted that cutting it all off was the only solution? The gray smock that smelled unpleasantly of old sweat. And underneath, her distended belly . . .

  “Isabelle looks far worse than the women sitting at the sewing machines in her father’s factory twelve hours a day. When I first saw her, I didn’t recognize Isabelle there at all. If Madame Guenin hadn’t given us some warning . . . and the way her eyes are completely lifeless. Now I know what Madame Guenin meant when she said she didn’t know if Isabelle was ever even listening. I feel so sorry for her! How far along is her pregnancy, do you think?”

  “I guess she’s in her fourth or fifth month,” Clara answered, thinking about it for a moment. “But she’s a bag of bones, and it makes her belly look even bigger.”

  Josephine rolled to her side. “A child, right now—”

  “It’s a blessing!” Clara interrupted her vehemently. “Children are always a blessing. It’s all she has left of Leon.”

  “But you saw Isabelle! She isn’t even able to look after herself, let alone her business. How can she possibly take care of a baby?”

  “The child isn’t going to come tomorrow,” said Clara. “For now, I think we have to be satisfied that Isabelle actually got out of bed and came out to the terrace with us. That’s more than Madame Guenin has managed in the last few months.” In the darkness, she could only imagine the skeptical look on Josephine’s face. “We have to be patient; Isabelle has suffered an unspeakable loss. One part of her doesn’t want to believe that Leon is dead, and at the same time her grief is eating her from the inside. And because it’s all so hard to bear, she’s gone into a kind of shock or paralysis. You heard her say that she can’t get herself to do anything.”

  “Ah, paralysis. As the wife of the learned doctor, I imagine you’ve learned something about the human soul, too?” Josephine asked, her tone ironic.

  “All it takes is a little empathy, no more. Put yourself in Isabelle’s shoes—after a tragedy like that, you certainly wouldn’t get everything back under control from one day to the next. We have to try to lead her back to life again, a little at a time.”

  Josephine sighed. “But we don’t have all the time in the world to do it! My own business is waiting for me back in Berlin, and Gerhard will make your life hell if you stay here longer than necessary. We should sit down and make a plan tomorrow morning.” As if her words had given her new energy, Josephine stood up and went to the window to open it. The room immediately filled with the sounds of the chirruping night insects.

  Clara took a deep breath of the sweet, cool air streaming in through the window. It smelled of lemons and oranges and lavender. Although everything around them was so sad, the scent made her happier than she’d felt for ages. Softly but with determination, she said, “Today, for the first time in I don’t know how long, Isabelle came out of her shell. If we approach her condition like a business, we’ll scare her straight back into it.” Clara sat up and pointed with her chin toward the window. “Can you smell the sweetness in the air here? It’s that sweetness that Isabelle has to smell again. She has to experience that life without Leon is still worth living. There’s no timeline for a resurrection like that, no plan it can possibly follow.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The following morning, despite only a few hours of sleep, Clara was up early. The cry of the rooster, the chirping of the crickets, the shouts of the workers already out in the vineyards—all these morning sounds seemed so strange and refreshing. Instead of tying her hair up in her usual severe bun, she wove it quickly into a single, loose braid. Then, barefoot, she went to the kitchen and, with some effort, got a fire going in the stove. When she had two large pots of water set to heat, she went into the hallway and opened one door after another. Pantry. Utility room. Laundry. And here, the bathroom, just as she’d imagined a bathroom in such a grand house might look. A washbasin, a mirror, an ornate iron shelf painted white and topped with a stack of towels, and an enamel tub directly under the window. When Clara opened the window, the sweet perfume of roses wafted in. Following an inspiration, she went behind the house, plucked several handfuls of purple rose petals, and gathered them in her apron. A few fresh leaves from the peppermint growing between the roses, a few stalks of lavender, and last of all a handful of verbena—did Isabelle even know what treasures she had in her garden?

  Back in the kitchen, she added a third pot of water to the stove and tossed in the peppermint and lavender and some of the rose petals. The water in the pot turned a pale green before taking on a pink tinge, and the delicate smell of roses spread through the kitchen. Then she went in search of soap. In the laundry, she found a ceramic jar. She expected there would be brown, sudsy lye inside, but when she lifted the lid, the soap was white and clean and fragrant. Maybe the French added perfume to their soft soap? Clara carried her discovery back to the bathroom. The soap and her herbal concoction would produce a lovely aroma in the bath.

  “What are you doing up so early?” asked Josephine, who appeared in the doorway. “Isabelle is still asleep, and I’m still tired, too, frankly.” She underlined her words with a very unladylike yawn.

  “We didn’t come here to rest,” said Clara, unperturbed. “Help me carry the pots with the hot water into the bathroom, then we can put more on to heat. When the herbal mixture is done, I’m going to fix a bath worthy of a queen for Isabelle! And I’ve got an idea for what comes afterward.”

  “Aha,” said Josephine.

  “Do you remember that time Isabelle invited us to Konnopke’s in Goethe Park and we ate potato pancakes?” said Clara, as they each took a handle of the large steaming pot.

  Josephine’s already doubtful expression looked even more puzzled. “Now you remember those greasy things?”

  Clara sighed. Sometimes her clever friend could really be quite thick. “What would you say if we made potato pancakes for lunch? There are potatoes in the pantry, and I found a few apples we can use for applesauce. Maybe we can tempt Isabelle’s appetite with something typically Berlin?”

  Isabelle sank so deeply into the tub that only her nose and eyes remained above the surface. A few rose petals stuck to her lips, and she blew them away gently. The water was warm and smelled wonderful, thanks to Clara’s herbal infusion. Isabelle felt her cramped limbs loosening up a little.

  “Feels good, doesn’t it?” Clara was looking triumphantly down at her. “If you’d like, I’ll wa
sh your hair for you.”

  Before Isabelle could reply, Clara set to work on her matted braid. Isabelle put up with the tugging and pulling, and she let Clara work the soap into her hair. Clara only meant well, after all.

  “Head back!” said her friend, and the bucketful of fresh water splashed over Isabelle’s head. “You’ll be feeling much better after that,” Clara added, when Isabelle, a moment later, wrapped a towel around her head like a turban. “Stay in the tub a little longer, and I’ll bring you a cup of verbena tea. That will give you a boost.”

  A few minutes later, Isabelle accepted the cup from Clara and sipped obediently at the pale-green tea. Then she watched as Clara left again and felt relieved.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate Clara’s efforts. The bath was nice. The tea, too. And the smell of frying potatoes drifting from the kitchen to the bathroom was very tempting indeed. But it would have been all the same to Isabelle if she’d rubbed herself down with a cold cloth, drunk water, and eaten the potatoes raw. Nothing now was how it had been, and a handful of rose petals wasn’t going to change that. Nor was the perfectly ironed black linen dress that Clara, with a motherly smile, had hung over the valet stand next to the tub.

  Over lunch, Isabelle asked her friends questions so they would describe what was going on in their lives instead of prodding at her. Josephine talked about her flourishing bicycle business, and Clara talked at great length about her son, Matthias. The potato pancakes tasted good, and Isabelle even ate a second one.

  After they had finished eating, Josephine asked Isabelle for a short tour of the estate. Isabelle agreed. They had come all the way from Berlin on her account; the least she could do was show them around.

  They went through the courtyard and visited the horses and the peacocks. Their brace of chicks had now grown into lovely young birds—the cries of admiration and adoration from Josephine and Clara showed Isabelle that her friends were impressed. For Clara, the peafowl were the most amazing discovery; she thought they looked elegant and “aristocratic.” At the sight of the blackberry bushes loaded with ripe fruit, Clara let out a little shriek. “The berries have to be picked and preserved immediately. You’ll have a wonderful supply for the winter.”