Clara read the large letters on the cognac-colored label. “Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin.”
“I know that your husband’s death is still painful for you, but perhaps you should also throw your widow status into the ring? What do you think of Veuve Rougette champagne? We add a visually arresting label—with your portrait on it; why not? I already have an idea for that. Isabelle, the buyers will be lining up for your champagne!”
What a day it had been! Although the trip to Reims and the party had taken their toll, Isabelle was too exhilarated to sleep. She flopped into a deep armchair in front of the fireplace in the living room, listening with one ear for any sound from Marguerite, who was in her cradle in the next room. The child had already been asleep when Isabelle collected her from Ghislaine, and it had been difficult to get her to wake up for a feed. Her sweet daughter! A surge of motherly love washed over Isabelle with such force that it almost made her cry.
With a shawl around her shoulders and her feet pulled under her, Clara sat opposite Isabelle in another armchair. She did not try to stifle a generous yawn. The clock on the wall struck ten.
“Tired?” Isabelle asked. She hoped her friend didn’t want to go off to bed too soon. There was so much to talk about!
Clara shook her head. “I wouldn’t say no if you offered me another glass of your outstanding champagne. I never get to drink anything so good in Berlin.”
“Nothing simpler,” said Isabelle, and jumped to her feet. A minute later, they were raising their glasses to each other, enveloped in the warmth of their friendship. Over the rim of her glass, Isabelle peered intently at her friend. “Honestly, now—have you ever heard of that painter whom Raymond thinks would be the right one to paint my portrait for the champagne label?”
“Pierre-Auguste Renoir?” Clara nodded. “But only because there was a long story about him and his work in the last issue of Gardener’s Monthly. They even reproduced a couple of his paintings. I liked them so much I thought about cutting them out and framing them to decorate our living room.”
Isabelle frowned. “I see. And how does Renoir paint?”
“You ask some questions! As if I’m any kind of expert,” said Clara with a laugh, but then continued: “They call his style impressionist. Broad brush strokes, daring combinations of color. But the article also said that in recent years his work has developed, and he’s tending more toward classicism. Painting beautiful women is one of his specialties, and his portraits certainly have a special radiance and are brimming with joie de vivre. If you look at it that way, he’d be ideal for what you want to do.”
“But would such a famous artist paint a label for a bottle of champagne?” Isabelle’s brow furrowed again. “Raymond mentioned that he lives in the southern Champagne region, so paying him a visit would certainly be conceivable. Still, I don’t know . . .”
“If you ask him nicely enough, I’m sure he’ll say yes,” Clara said. “Besides, you’d be paying him for his work. Even artists need more than love and air to live.”
Isabelle nodded thoughtfully. “You’re probably right. Oh, I’m so glad I get so much support, from all of you!” She stretched her arms high in the air, and now it was her turn to yawn. “Daniel in the wine cellar, Raymond with his ideas about how to sell it and what to call it. And the label, of course. I know, I know, that was actually your idea,” she said, laughing, when she saw Clara’s offended look. “And now Raymond has asked me to join him on his next sales trip through Europe. He wants me to meet his most important customers and to make sure they buy my champagne—what did I do to deserve all this?”
“Oh, I’m sure I can answer that,” said Clara, her tone ironic. “The man has his eye on you. It’s as simple as that. I’m sure he’s looking forward to a ‘business trip’ with you very much indeed.”
“Nonsense! You certainly have an imagination. Raymond is a good friend. He knows I’m still in mourning for Leon and that I have a young baby—he would never try to court me in this situation.”
Clara’s silence said a great deal more than any answer would have. Isabelle had already decided to move on, but then Clara raised the topic again. “If I were you, I wouldn’t be so quick to push the idea aside. Considering the admiration in his eyes whenever he looks at you, he’d lay the world at your feet. You could still do what you want with your life, but without a care in the world, and in luxury to boot. A man who does all the work—sometimes that can be a great advantage.”
“And I’m supposed to marry him for that? Please, Clara, we’re not living in the Middle Ages,” said Isabelle defensively. She felt walls going up, deep inside. She and Clara had always had different opinions about most things in life. Anyway, there’s Daniel to think about, she thought.
“Time will tell,” said Clara.
Isabelle nodded vaguely. She had no desire to fight and decided to change the subject.
“Vienna, Munich, Berlin—I get so excited when I think about such a big trip. But I wonder if these are really the right cities for selling my champagne?” As she had done several times already that day, she vacillated between euphoria and gnawing doubt.
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised if your Raymond organizes an audience for you at the emperor’s court. But what’s far more important”—Clara paused dramatically—“is that we could have another reunion, all three of us! After this trip, Gerhard won’t let me go again so soon. And now that Josephine is expecting, too, I know she won’t be taking a long journey. It would be perfect if you could come to Berlin.”
Berlin . . . The idea of it made Isabelle uneasy. She could see her friends again in Berlin, certainly, but also her parents. Did she really want that?
Sometimes it seemed to Isabelle that the day she left Berlin, she had been caught in a whirlwind that had not yet let go of her. New, exciting events were happening all the time, in her own life and in the lives of those close to her. Now Josephine was pregnant, too. All three of them, mothers—a few years earlier, none of them would have given the idea a second thought. Perhaps they had more in common than they realized?
“What do you think—could I take Marguerite with me on this trip? Or is she too young?” Isabelle’s biggest concern was where she could leave her daughter when she went off with Raymond. By the time they were on the tour, Ghislaine would be busy with her own child. Isabelle couldn’t expect her to look after Marguerite as well.
Clara sat up straight in her armchair. When she looked up, she had a strange expression on her face. “I think we need to talk about Marguerite,” she said.
“What about her?” Isabelle asked. Clara’s voice had taken on an odd, unfamiliar tone. A bead of sweat had formed on her upper lip, as if she were struggling hard with something.
Clara leaned forward. “There is something . . . not right about your daughter. You should take her to a doctor as soon as you can. A specialist.”
Her words came out of the blue and were as sharp as the lash of a whip. Isabelle let out a shrill, disbelieving laugh.
“What did you say?”
Clara looked at her and nervously wrung her hands. “Haven’t you ever noticed how sluggish Marguerite’s reactions are? When you tickle her, for instance? Or how slowly her eyes follow your hand if you hold a toy in front of her and move it back and forth? Infants usually bend their arms when they lie down, but Marguerite’s arms hang loosely. And isn’t she quick to tire when she suckles? I mean unusually quick to tire?”
“Have you gone mad?” Isabelle cried out. “You’re acting as if Marguerite is infirm, as if she’s some sort of halfwit! That’s the biggest load of . . . nonsense I’ve ever heard.” But as she spoke, a cold chill ran down her spine. She had the sensation of losing her mind then and there.
“Isabelle, please . . . I . . . I’m not saying this for my own amusement or on a whim! Marguerite is a beautiful girl. And I love her as if she were my own daughter,” Clara said. “But the way her eyes are farther apart than usual, her flat nose, her little mouth—those are all sig
ns of . . . a very particular condition. I know I’m just a doctor’s wife, but—”
“Yes, that’s right!” Isabelle cut her off. “You are just a doctor’s wife, so what do you know? Coming in here and scaring me; that’s so terribly mean!” Suddenly filled with loathing, she glared at her friend. “What can I do if your Matthias screamed the roof off day and night when he was a baby? I remember perfectly well how desperate you were back then. You couldn’t calm him down with anything. Some days, his screaming was so bad that you had to take him to your mother because you couldn’t put up with it anymore. Is that what’s causing your envy? My Marguerite is just a good child, especially good. And she’s beautiful, besides. Don’t talk to me about wide-set eyes and small nose—do you think she’d look better with a hooked nose and beady little witch eyes?” Trembling from head to foot, Isabelle rose to her feet. “You come here, a guest in my house, and you push a dagger into my heart? If that’s what you call friendship, then no thank you!” Sobbing, she turned away and went into the next room. She picked up Marguerite from her cradle and, without another word, ran upstairs to her bedroom.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The days until Clara’s departure were intolerable. The two friends said barely a word to one another and avoided each other as much as they possibly could. Isabelle made sure that Clara did not set eyes on her daughter again. She could have forgiven Clara almost anything, but not the words she had spoken that evening.
When the fifth of March arrived, the day that Clara was to leave, both were more than relieved. Choking on her tears, Clara whispered an apology, but Isabelle didn’t want to hear it.
Clara’s coach had just turned onto the main road when Isabelle called Claude to her.
“Hitch up the horses, please. I need to visit the hospital in Épernay,” she said.
“Madame, I hope you have not come down with something? Or little Marguerite?”
Faced with Claude’s concern, Isabelle’s stony expression softened momentarily.
“I’m sure everything is all right,” she answered quietly. It irritated her to realize that she did not sound as convincing as she would have wanted.
“I’m not a specialist in children of this kind,” said the doctor, when he and Isabelle were sitting opposite each other in his office. “But with your daughter, a developmental delay might very well exist.”
“And what does that mean?” Isabelle said, a crease appearing between her eyes. Children of this kind?
The doctor had spent more than an hour examining her daughter. He had checked her reflexes and her eyes. He had measured the circumference of her head, and he had pinched her arm until she cried.
“Strange. She barely whimpers,” he had said.
“She’s a good baby! She’s just tolerating this,” Isabelle had replied, upset, and she had hurriedly taken the child back from the nurse who held her while she was being examined.
Now she asked, “What, in your opinion, is wrong with my daughter?”
The doctor raised his shoulders. “At this stage, all I can give you is a provisional diagnosis, madame. I advise you to seek out a specialist I know, a man more thoroughly versed in Down syndrome.”
“Down syndrome?” The crease between Isabelle’s eyes deepened. “You don’t know what Marguerite has, but you have a name for this mystery illness? How am I supposed to understand that?”
“It is not unequivocally clear that your daughter suffers from this syndrome,” the doctor said, trying to sound appeasing. “There are certain signs, no more.” He took a sheet of letter paper and dipped his quill in an open inkpot. “I’ll write down the address of the specialist. With a referral from me, I’m sure you’ll be able to get an appointment soon. I’ll just slip my bill for today’s visit into the same envelope.”
The specialist was in Reims. Isabelle and Marguerite went there the next day. Appointment or not, she would not leave the old-fashioned practice before the doctor had seen her child. They had to wait three hours, and people came and went the whole time. Isabelle sat as if in a trance, rocking Marguerite in her arms, and was only vaguely aware of mothers with their children entering the waiting room and leaving again. A boy of about three had a large misshapen head and sobbed the whole time. A girl about the same age rocked back and forth constantly and made terrible noises. Another woman carried an infant in her arms. She looked over again and again at Isabelle, and it was clear she wanted to talk. But Isabelle purposefully looked out the window. None of this had anything to do with her.
“Marguerite’s heart seems to be fine,” said Dr. Rainier Martin after listening through a stethoscope.
Isabelle pressed her lips together tightly. She had not come to have Marguerite’s heart checked. She watched every part of the doctor’s examination with an eagle eye. Some of what he did merely repeated what the doctor in Épernay had done, but Dr. Martin also listened to her heart, poked at her head for what seemed like an eternity, and measured her limbs. To Isabelle’s horror, he then placed the little finger of his right hand in Marguerite’s mouth to test her sucking reflex. The child immediately began to cough and wheeze and then to cry. How could she do anything else?
When he was finished with his examination, Dr. Martin asked Isabelle to sit with him at his desk.
“About thirty years ago, an English doctor by the name of John Langdon Down first recorded the symptoms of Down syndrome. It’s a hereditary disease. Now that I’ve examined her, I can make a tentative diagnosis, at least, that Marguerite suffers from the syndrome. Scientific research in this area is still in its proverbial infancy, but we do have a number of very reliable indicators,” the doctor said.
Isabelle flushed hot and cold. She hugged her daughter even more tightly. This was the second time that she had heard the name. Down syndrome.
“Inherited? But I’m perfectly healthy! So was my husband.”
The doctor ignored her objection. “Little Marguerite shows some of the typical signs, with the emphasis on some. The flat, broad face and the somewhat smaller eyes—”
“So my child could also be healthy?” said Isabelle urgently. Marguerite was so pretty. How could the doctor see anything wrong with her?
“Well, I wouldn’t call her healthy. There is, for example, the unusually large gap between her big toe and second toe.” He looked toward Marguerite’s feet, which were once again wrapped up warmly. “A typical characteristic of children suffering from Down syndrome. There is also clear hypotonia of the palatal region, from which her sucking difficulties stem.”
“But isn’t it the case that some children are simply better at suckling than others?”
Tentative diagnosis? Separated toes? Isabelle’s mind was reeling.
“Of course,” the doctor replied patiently. “But you would not be here if that were her only problem.” He scribbled something on a piece of paper. “If you doubt my diagnosis, you are naturally welcome to seek out another specialist. I recommend Charles Fraudand in Paris, a student of John Langdon Down’s.” On a second piece of paper, he added together a few numbers. “That comes to eighty-seven francs, madame.”
Feeling numb, Isabelle drove back to Hautvillers with her sleeping child. She had insisted on a more thorough explanation, and the doctor had responded with more technical terminology about the condition, but Isabelle still didn’t feel well informed. How Marguerite would develop, what effects the syndrome would have on her life—to these questions she had received only vague answers.
“Generally speaking, in their first five years, children with Down syndrome show only half the development of a normal child. But many of them catch up with a large part of their development later on,” the doctor had said, and Isabelle’s relief had been great. But her happiness at that news was short-lived.
“Others, however, remain underdeveloped throughout their lives. On top of the mental difficulties they face, there are also health problems . . . respiratory infections, for example, and leukemia.”
Leukemia. Isabelle
suddenly had the feeling that she was about to step through a door and fall and fall and . . . But her daughter was healthy!
“Madame, there is no need to be excessively alarmed. There are now exceptionally good curative establishments for serious cases,” the doctor said.
That had been enough for Isabelle. Without another word, she paid the man, and just as silently she climbed into the waiting coach, ignoring Claude Bertrand’s inquiring look. She didn’t want to talk about any of it, because if she did, she would transform it into a fact.
In Hautvillers, she had Claude drive her straight to Le Grand Cerf. Ghislaine was sitting behind the counter, reading a book; there were no customers at all, and Isabelle breathed a little easier. With the last of her self-control, she forced herself to make a little innocuous conversation, talking about the unusually mild start to March, about the work to be done soon in the vineyards, and about how glad she was to have Daniel working for her that year. She drank a Marc de Champagne brandy. The strong spirits, however, could not rinse the bitter taste from her mouth. Somehow, Ghislaine had heard that Isabelle had been to see a doctor with Marguerite. Of course, she wanted to know how it had gone and what the result was. But Isabelle waved it off.
“Nothing certain, not yet,” she said, her voice unsteady.
Ghislaine embraced her warmly. “Forget the doctors and enjoy your child. Marguerite is the sweetest, loveliest child in all Hautvillers!”
Isabelle gave her a pained smile. “I know that you’re about to have a child of your own, but I must ask if you would be able to take Marguerite overnight, just this once. I need a little time for myself.”
“Say no more,” said Ghislaine, and laid one hand reassuringly on Isabelle’s arm. “It’s so quiet here in the restaurant that I’m going to close early tonight. Marguerite will be fine with me. And if I really do go into labor tonight, Daniel can still look after your daughter.”
The Champagne Queen (The Century Trilogy Book 2) Page 38