The Vineyards of Champagne

by Juliet Blackwell

  “I noticed one of the letters was in English.”

  “When she first began the correspondence, Doris composed her thoughts in English before translating them into French. But I suppose she became more confident about her French over time and stopped writing the English drafts, or if she still did, I couldn’t find them. Émile mentioned he carried Doris’s letters with him, in a bundle in his knapsack, and put them in a safe place whenever he returned to Reims. I’m hoping I might be able to find them.”

  “That’s why you’re interested in the Comtois collection?”

  Emma nodded. “It’s a long shot, I know, and that generation is long gone, but I was hoping there might be some reference to them in the museum. I’m no historian, but don’t you think this story would make a fascinating book, with both sides of the correspondence?”

  “It would. But didn’t you say Jérôme Comtois has closed his museum?”

  She looked pensive. “I’m hoping he’s just being ornery. He’s a bit prickly, doesn’t like tourists. Then again, he had the family business foisted upon him, so perhaps he’ll mellow over time.”

  “So that’s the reason you’re going to Champagne? To find your aunt’s letters?”

  Emma waved a hand in the air. Broad and slightly bony, it was a hand seemingly more suited to hard work than to manicures. “No, I’m checking on a few vineyards I’ve invested in.”

  “Champagne vineyards? I’m impressed.”

  She shrugged. “Sounds fancier than it really is. As I’m sure you know, vineyards are just farms, after all. And it’s in the blood; I was raised in the wine business in Australia. You’re Californian?”

  “How did you know?”

  “You mentioned Napa. Also, the accent.”

  “We Californians like to say we don’t have an accent.”

  Emma’s laugh was loud and bold, a raucous party. “Everybody has an accent. So, surely you’re not just working in Champagne? Meeting a lover, perhaps?”

  A pang, deep in her belly. Climbing the steps to the Basilique du Sacré-Coeur, strolling hand in hand past artists’ galleries, poking through the Montmartre cemetery. Imagining Picasso and Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec and Renoir, wandering those same cobblestone alleyways, now swamped with tourists. Shivering while eating gelato in the park, because even though the day was freezing, the ice cream was too good to resist. Dash bought a silver necklace from a tiny, abandoned-looking jewelry store hidden in a courtyard; the handmade locket hung from a delicate-looking chain. He fastened it around her neck, his nimble hands warm on her skin. From that moment, she had never taken the locket off.

  The sheer romance of feeling safe and taken care of, in love with the man who had just become her husband. She had felt so proud, so vital.

  She had been so young.

  Once again, Rosalyn felt Emma’s eyes studying her and forced herself back to their conversation. This was a classic sign of grief brain, a frequent topic of conversation in the support group she met with for the young bereaved. Jumping from one topic to the next, having difficulty maintaining a train of thought, losing the threads of conversations. It had faded over time but was still there, lurking at the edges of her consciousness, rearing its head especially when she felt stressed or tired.

  “No, just business,” Rosalyn said. “I’ll be checking in with some champagne producers, and representing Small Fortune Wines at the festival of Saint Vincent.”

  “Oh, that’s great! I’ll be at the festival, too. It ought to be cracking.”

  “I’m sure,” Rosalyn said, accepting with an appreciative sigh her glass of red wine from the flight attendant.

  “But you’re not looking forward to it.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “It’s not that, not exactly. I’m just not really a party person.”

  “An introvert, eh?”

  “Something like that.”

  Emma’s dark eyebrows rose. “And yet you’re in the wine business?”

  Rosalyn let out a wry chuckle. “So it seems.”

  Emma smiled, her eyes searching Rosalyn’s face. After a long moment, she asked, “Were you always an introvert? Or only since your heart was broken?”

  The breath caught in Rosalyn’s throat. When she spoke, her voice was strained. “Excuse me?”

  “It’s all over your face, poor thing.”

  Suddenly Rosalyn was drowning, her eyes stinging and filling with tears. She scolded herself—not now not now not now—wishing she were back home, ensconced in her little cottage in the vineyard, where she could curl up on the cold tile of the bathroom floor and keen into one of Dash’s old T-shirts, even though they’d long since lost the scent of him.

  She took a long pull on her wine, gulping twice, breaking any number of rules of etiquette about taking small, graceful sips in order to appreciate the full flavor.

  Ten long, slow breaths.

  Rosalyn felt a surge of gratitude when the older woman turned her attention back to the letters. It would only make things worse if Emma reached out to rub her shoulder or grasp her hand, asking her what was wrong—or, worse, apologizing for making her cry. That always made Rosalyn feel as if she should apologize for making the other person feel bad in the first place. C. S. Lewis wrote that grief felt a great deal like fear: the fluttering in the stomach, the repeated swallowing, the impulse to flee. That was all true, but to Rosalyn, it was so much more. Still, in a strange way, the grief itself helped her cope; it muted everything so that she could rarely summon the energy to dwell on all she had lost.

  Not just Dash, but the life they’d had together. The future they had dreamed of. Even their past.

  Rosalyn had lost the person who had accompanied Dash to Paris.

  She had no idea who she was anymore.

  Chapter Three

  It’s going to take forever to put these back in order,” Emma muttered as she opened one set of folded sheets. “Listen to this: ‘April 26, 1916. “Lucie says the blind woman must be granted the prettiest teacup, because who understands beauty more than those who have lost their sight?”’ Isn’t that lovely? By his own admission, Émile Legrand was not an educated man, but if you ask me, he had the soul of a poet.”

  “You mentioned he was a farm boy,” Rosalyn said, grateful for the distraction. “I’m surprised he was so well-read.”

  “Émile’s fascinating. I wonder whether he was this charming in person, or if he simply had a way with the written word. He wrote two or three letters a week to Doris; I have the sense they were an important outlet for him, helped him survive the trenches.”

  “Who is the Lucie he mentions?”

  “Mademoiselle Lucie Maréchal. She was living in the caves under the city of Reims.”

  “Why was she in the caves?”

  “During the war, Reims was surrounded by the German army, which shelled the city for years. Something like ninety percent of the buildings were destroyed, and thousands of civilians were killed. A lot of the citizenry sought shelter in the caves beneath the champagne houses. You’ve never been to Reims?”

  Rosalyn shook her head. “Just Paris.” The lamppost on the corner, shaking off snowflakes. “A lifetime of laughter for my beautiful bride. I promise.” “So, what are you going to do with the letters?”

  “At the moment, I’m just curious to see how many I can find. My grandmother used to tell me stories about Doris when I was little, and for whatever reason, I’ve always felt a special connection to her. I’m going to try to find a historian or someone to write a book about their story.”

  “Why not write it yourself?”

  Emma smiled. “Prose—not to mention organization—is not my strong suit. And it will take a lot of work to get everything translated. But I figured while in Champagne, I should search the archives. And I’ve put out some feelers with a few people who will let me root through their attics; and there
may still be some Legrands in the area. It’s a long shot, but in my experience a lot of Frenchies have ancient family homes that are passed down through the generations, and since they never throw anything away, it’s entirely possible something might be tucked away in some corner of a dusty attic. Maybe even some photos; can you imagine? It would mean the world to my mother, if I could find them. She’s a nut for family history.”

  “Your mother’s still with you?” Rosalyn asked.

  Emma nodded but said nothing; her lips pursed slightly.

  “Did . . . did Émile survive the war?” Rosalyn asked, suddenly sure she knew the answer.

  Emma hesitated. “I don’t know. I haven’t found an official announcement from the war bureau, or anything like that. But like I said, I haven’t gotten to the last letter. Not even sure where it is. I started to put them in order, but it’s not easy reading with that stylized script and fading ink, not to mention the censorship.”

  “I noticed bits and pieces of the letters are cut out, or blacked out.”

  “Yup. Wartime correspondence was subjected to ‘Anastasia’s scissors.’ The poilus weren’t allowed to tell anyone where they were, or where they were headed. Anything that even hinted at their location or destination was censored. Every once in a while some of the letters slipped past the censors, but it was rare.”

  “Sorry—who were the poilus?”

  “The French soldiers—the regular boys, not the officers.”

  “Doesn’t poilu mean . . . ?”

  “‘Hairy,’” Emma confirmed with a nod. “Living in the trenches for days or weeks or months at a time, it was hard to shave or get a haircut, so the soldiers started to wear their hair as a badge of honor. Being hairy was associated with masculinity, being fierce and brave.”

  By now Rosalyn had part of the stack in front of her and was trying to match the free pages with their envelopes, putting the military envelopes in order by the dates stamped on the front or, in the case of stamps too faint to read, by the dates written on the letters. It was oddly calming, holding history in her hands. She imagined the words being carefully jotted down on the fragile onionskin paper in muddy trenches, the likelihood that Émile had never made it home from the front. The agony of his loved ones upon hearing the news.

  It was profoundly unsettling to find other people’s misfortunes comforting. Whenever she spotted a cemetery, Rosalyn would stop and meander through, hungrily searching the headstones for evidence of young men dying in the prime of life. It wasn’t schadenfreude—she would never wish this pain on another—but rather the recognition of a fellow sufferer. A strange, fathomless kinship.

  She wasn’t the only one. Others had survived far worse.

  Some, for instance, were forced to live in caves to escape the hell raining down upon their city.

  “Anyway, I had planned to check in with my wine producers and vineyard managers, and then do some snooping around in attics.” Emma gestured to her cast, shook her head, and let out a sigh worthy of a martyr. “But now that plan is a bust. Old French homes aren’t exactly built for the disabled.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. What happened to your leg?”

  “An unfortunate encounter with a taxi on Bush Street, right outside the Chinatown gates. Ruined a damned fine pair of jeans. But I suppose it could have been worse.”

  Rosalyn nodded and turned her attention back to the letters. Emma was right. They weren’t easy to read, but with the aid of the dictionary on her computer, she made out a few snatches of lines: “. . . The air is thick with grenades and trench mortars. These last are a diabolical kind of toy. Their explosion feels like ten earthquakes rolled into one.”

  “Intriguing, aren’t they?” Emma asked.

  “They are.” Undeniably so. It wasn’t just what the words said that captivated Rosalyn. It was the ghostly presence of the hand moving across the paper a century ago, the lingering stories of lives long gone. A tangible remnant of the past.

  The crumbling letters left tiny bits of brown and yellow dust on her tray and the pads of her fingers. Traces of a long-ago life.

  “The letters don’t paint a very pretty picture, though, do they?” said Rosalyn, as she tried to decipher a description of life on the front. “A bunch of hairy men living in muddy trenches—can you imagine the smell?”

  Emma laughed that boisterous laugh again. “Smelling good was the least of their worries.”

  “I’m curious, though,” Rosalyn continued. “If things were as bad as all that, how was there mail delivery to and from troops?”

  “The French government made delivering the mail a priority. Most of the fighting was on the western front, near France’s borders with Germany and Belgium. But the soldiers came from all over France. It was a dreadful war, with a tragically high casualty rate. In order for the poilus to risk their lives for la patrie—and accept that they might be injured or die—they needed to maintain their connection to the folks back home. That wasn’t always possible, though. Reims, for example, was so cut off from the outside world that some of the businesses that still operated issued their own currency in lieu of banknotes. I doubt the postal service could get in or out.”

  “I wonder what happened to Lucie. Her story could make a very interesting part of your book.”

  Emma nodded. “I hope to see if I can find any descendants of Lucie Maréchal in the area. Émile’s letters create quite the vivid portrait. As I said, it’s likely that Émile died—along with a million and a half others—but if not, I might be able to find his descendants.”

  It did seem like a long shot, Rosalyn thought. Still, while the Great War seemed like ancient history, it really was only a few generations in the past. It wasn’t unreasonable to think that letters and other documents remained tucked away in family albums or attics. Rosalyn had left old school papers and other relics at her childhood home until her mother moved recently. It could happen.

  The flight attendants began the dinner service, and Rosalyn was disappointed when Emma tucked the letters back into their inadequate folder. The meal was delicious—nothing at all like the airplane food people used to complain about, back when complimentary meals were offered on most flights. Rosalyn had to admit that the French knew how to do air travel—at least in first class.

  Rosalyn was on her third glass of wine when Emma suddenly said, “Hey! I don’t suppose you’d like to go on the hunt for me? I’ll pay you, of course—I’m quite wealthy.”

  “Oh . . . thanks, but I have a job.”

  “But you don’t like it.”

  Rosalyn let out a startled, breathy laugh.

  “Doesn’t hunting down old letters sound more interesting than what you’re doing?”

  “Well, yes, but there’s also . . .” A debt to be repaid, a debt that could never be repaid. Hugh had done so much for her. “I’m only in France for a few weeks, and I have to fulfill my obligation to my boss.”

  “I can work with that. Just change your return ticket and stay a few more weeks. I’ll make it worth your while.”

  “I really don’t think so. But thanks for the offer.”

  Emma shrugged and mopped up the last of the sauce on her plate with a dinner roll. “It was worth a shot. I suppose I could see if there’s a local I could bribe. It’s just that you speak English, thank God. Speaking French is such a burden. And I like you. I think we’re on the same wavelength.”

  Rosalyn looked at her with surprise. Emma was so open, so seemingly eager to embrace life in all dimensions. Rosalyn was the opposite: a cardboard cutout masquerading as a person.

  Emma leaned into her slightly. “I’m not saying we’re alike, Rosalyn. I’m saying I think you understand me. It’s not just because we’re both native English speakers—I spent a year at the Sorbonne and speak French passably well, but that does not mean the French and I understand each other. They are an odd lot, aren’t they?
Fabulous, but odd. They treat you like a leper if you want to make a meal out of a bag of chips, for instance. Americans, on the other hand, I feel a certain kinship with. Might be the British-colonial thing—you Americans have a lot in common with us Aussies.”

  “Maybe so,” said Rosalyn with a smile.

  “Your attitude toward smoking, on the other hand . . .” She trailed off, popping a piece of Nicorette gum. “Can’t believe we can’t smoke on planes. Is there no civilization anymore? Did you know that the French are so antiauthoritarian that smoking rates went up after it was banned from public buildings? They also cut in lines. You Americans, on the other hand, are far too puritanical in that regard.”

  “When it comes to line cutting or smoking?”

  “Both, but I was thinking of smoking.”

  “Not sure we can blame the Puritans for that one. I think it has more to do with lung cancer rates.”

  Emma waved her off. “Never underestimate your history of puritanism. Like how obsessed you Yanks are with sex, but get freaked out at nudity.”

  “We’re a puzzle, all right,” Rosalyn mumbled, then downed the last dregs of her wine and wished she had more. She had no desire to indulge in a battle of cultures, nor did she want to represent all Americans to the French—or to the Aussies, for that matter. Weren’t we all individuals, after all? And besides that . . . Rosalyn didn’t feel capable of representing anyone at the moment, much less an entire nation. She was a bubble-wrapped Christmas ornament, ready to shatter.

  After dinner, the flight attendants whisked away all evidence of their meal, and the captain dimmed the lights.

  “Well, then,” said Emma as she fetched earplugs and an eye mask from the pocket in the seat in front of her. “France is nine hours ahead of California, which means they’re asleep right now, and so should we be.” She popped a pill, then held the vial out to Rosalyn. “Want one?”