The Wine Widow

by Tessa Barclay

  Madame de Tramont could have offered the Tramont family lace, but did not. When she saw Nicole in the soft folds of the Berthois shawl, she was sorry she had been so grudging. The girl looked really lovely, framed in the spider’s web of cream dentelle.

  Philippe took his bride to Paris, where he fell in love with her all over again as he watched her wonder and enthusiasm at the splendours of the city.

  Paris was so big! She’d thought it would be perhaps twice the size of Rheims, but it was bigger, much, much bigger. And that fact alone was a lesson unconsciously learned. Calmady, the Champagne region, even the Department of the Marne ‒ these weren’t as important as she’d imagined. There were greater things, farther horizons.

  For the first time she understood what it meant when wine-makers talked about exporting their products. It meant carrying the wine to these great centres of wealth and influence. It was more than just selling what you made ‒ it was becoming part of the heartbeat of civilisation.

  ‘One day I will take you to London,’ he said. ‘Perhaps London is an even finer city, because for the last hundred years they have been putting up good buildings whereas we have been knocking ours down!’

  He took her to the Left Bank haunts he used to tell her about. They were cafés full of cigarette smoke, noise, and the smell of oil paint and grease paint ‒ for most of the clientele were artists or theatre people. At first she was shocked and a little scared at the freedom of the talk, but she soon learned to enjoy the conversation, though she took little part. The habitués came from all walks of life originally: from them she painlessly learned an ease of manner that was to serve her well in times to come. They for their part were kind to her, a shy country girl who could suddenly speak with authority on a subject that interested them all ‒ good wine.

  He took her to the theatre. She was entranced. This was the world her husband longed to enter; now that she saw a real play, she understood why. Philippe told her she mustn’t admire Sardou, so she didn’t, but she enjoyed his work for all that. The great theatrical moments he contrived, the beautiful actresses who played in his pieces ‒ they were all easy to appreciate. If she found Shakespeare and the opera less friendly she told herself she would understand it all when she became accustomed to them.

  But there were other delights. He must buy her trousseau, he insisted. She had been married with only one gown suitable for town wear: now he took command and carried her off to the dressmaker, the milliner, the shoemaker, the lingiste.

  Paulette had warned her to buy only light colours and plain designs. ‘Those are suitable for a bride ‒’

  ‘But no one will know I’m newly married.’

  ‘They’ll know,’ her sister said, with a hidden envy of that glowing happiness which couldn’t be concealed.

  On the whole the disdainful saleswomen at the fashion houses were kind to the little country mouse. She had married money ‒ not a great fortune, of course, but a decent enough income. And the name was aristocratic. And she was a pretty little thing with her ringleted dark hair and long-lashed eyes. They were disposed to be helpful.

  So the shopping expeditions, which could have been terrifying, became great fun. Philippe played his part well, giving opinions on shoe trimmings and the value of a bonnet as against a toque. It wasn’t unusual for the Parisian male to take part in choosing his wife’s clothes, but for Philippe it was a new amusement.

  The greatest pleasure of all was the lingiste. In the showroom, garments of soft georgette, voile, broderie anglaise, fine lawn, lace and silk hung from display stands. When she first saw them, Nicole hid her face against her husband’s sleeve in embarrassment.

  ‘Come now, dearest … It’s quite all right. You must have pretty things to wear under all those lovely gowns. Come now, choose …’

  ‘But, Philippe … I can’t … I’ve never …’ She’d never had anything finer than soft cotton against her skin. She didn’t know how to choose between these filmy fabrics, some imported from as far away as China.

  Gently, Philippe and the salesgirl coaxed her into making the first choice. After that it was easier. She picked out a nightgown of shell-pink ninon, a negligee of matching satin trimmed with beige and pale green ribbons, boudoir caps of lace and muslin, a chemise of crepe de chine edged with picot lace …

  The items in their wrappings of tissue paper were delivered to their hotel that evening. After dinner they had a wonderful time while Nicole tried everything on ‒ and Philippe helped her take it off again. They laughed and played among the finery like children. Yet when, in the early hours of the morning, they stood side by side to watch the grey dawn come up over Notre Dame, the frippery lay around their ankles like a tide of pale mists, unregarded while they shared yet another moment of complete understanding.

  It had never occurred to Nicole that she would be unwilling to return home. But when it was time to leave Paris she felt a momentary heartache. She understood that she was leaving something behind for ever ‒ the right to carelessness, the days of sheer enjoyment. She was to look back on her honeymoon as an enchanted time, a time when love and only love was important.

  Before the wedding she had signed all the necessary papers concerning the cellarage. She had also arranged for a monthly income to be made available to her mother, for whom she found a distant relative to act as house-keeper companion. Marie Berthois, staggered at the good fortune of having money come in regularly, at once set about putting something aside as a dowry for her elder daughter Paulette, only to find it unnecessary ‒ within two months Nicole had arranged a suitable marriage for Paulette.

  The man was Auguste Fournier, with whom Paulette had become acquainted in Rheims although he came from Rethel in the Ardennes. He had a respectable small building firm, inherited from his father. If you compared him with Philippe, thought Nicole, he was a nothing. But Paulette seemed to like him and he seemed to want Paulette, if only there were some money to go with her.

  Nicole was well aware that it was a terrible vexation to Madame de Tramont to be related to a dressmaker’s drudge. Nicole had toyed with the idea of arranging for a sum of money to buy a partnership for Paulette in the Treignac shop, but perhaps that wouldn’t have pleased Madame de Tramont and besides, Paulette wanted to be married. She was older than Nicole. Now her younger sister was married, it was embarrassing to be a spinster still.

  So it was arranged, Paulette went to Rethel to live, Marie Berthois was tucked away in her cottage unlikely to be the least nuisance to the Tramonts, and all that Clothilde had to do was get used to her daughter-in-law living in the house.

  Surprisingly enough, this proved easy. The young couple were so in love that they couldn’t bear to be parted. They were seldom about to fret Clothilde’s nerves.

  Nicole went with Philippe about the estate, looking at the vines, examining the wine in the existing cellar, watching the adaptation of the new vaults on the Berthois farm. When there was nothing that called for his attention, he would walk hand in hand with his young wife among the chestnut trees in their autumn splendour or, as the weather grew colder and rainier, he would take her to his study. There he would write, pausing to read out anything he thought exceptionally good. Nicole would sit by with her needlework, always ready to listen and approve.

  The baby, a girl, was born in May, early enough to make the wiseacres of the neighbourhood smile about a seven-month-child, but late enough to safeguard Nicole’s reputation. They called her Alys, after Clothilde’s mother. The following year there was another child, also a girl ‒ to Clothilde’s disappointment, for she dearly wanted a grandson to carry on the de Tramont name. The younger daughter was called Delphine, in honour of no family member but merely because it was the name of the heroine in the play Philippe was presently writing.

  Nicole had felt herself subtly being changed by her new life. She drank in ‘refinement’ from merely living with the de Tramonts. Aghast at the outset when she saw the array of cutlery and glasses used by the rich, she bided he
r time, watched what Philippe did, and followed suit: when she came back from her honeymoon in Paris she had learned which knife to use for what.

  Entertaining had at first been an ordeal. Since Clothilde was still the head of the household, it was she who invited the guests and arranged the menus. But Nicole had to play her part in entertaining the guests.

  She rather endeared herself to her mother-in-law by admitting she was scared before their first evening party. ‘I shan’t know what to say to them, madame.’

  ‘My young friend, you need say scarcely anything. Ask about health, family, or business welfare ‒ these three topics have stood me in good stead for more than fifty years.’

  It was good advice. Only occasionally did Nicole come across a conversationalist who was determined to put her in her place, and when she met such a one she bore it with good grace. After all, she was still not yet twenty, had never ‘come out’, came from simple parentage: it was only natural that those with no manners should try to take advantage.

  An unexpected event, outside the household of the manor of Tramont, brought Clothilde closer to Nicole than she ever expected. Her only daughter, Seraphine, died in childbirth in England. Clothilde was overset with an unexpected grief. She hadn’t seen Seraphine in over eight years, and now reproached herself for not having made the uncomfortable journey to Lincolnshire.

  ‘Madame, you couldn’t have known. Don’t blame yourself,’ soothed Nicole.

  ‘But she had had two miscarriages already. I should have been more concerned. Nicole, I have not been a good mother ‒’

  ‘You have, indeed you have. You have a fine son, a credit to your upbringing.’

  Clothilde smiled through her tears. ‘You are biased,’ she said. ‘You only say that because you love Philippe.’

  Afterwards both women were struck by the phrase. It was the first time Clothilde had admitted openly that Nicole had married Philippe purely for love, and not to aggrandize herself.

  It took several weeks for Clothilde to recover her equilibrium. But then she began to think of her own self-reproach. ‘She had not been a good mother’ … it was her duty to ensure that Philippe inherited the title which was his by right. She simply wasn’t doing enough to recover it for him.

  ‘Nicole,’ she said one morning as they strolled on the parterre edged with roses, ‘I have decided to remove to Paris.’

  ‘Madame?’

  ‘Er … I am right in thinking the business is doing well? We could afford an apartment there?’

  ‘Most assuredly, madame,’ Nicole agreed. For some months now, since the birth of Delphine and the necessary handing over of the baby to the care of the nurse ‒ a thing that could never have happened had she still been a peasant girl and which Nicole half regretted ‒ she had been filling in some empty hours by taking part in the making of the wine.

  This became more important to her as Philippe began to make more frequent visits to Paris. He had three plays finished now, was negotiating to get at least one of them put on. It was his reports of the life there that had made his mother realise how provincial they were here in Calmady.

  What chance did Clothilde have, out in the sticks, of influencing the important men who could say yes or no to the necessary court cases, read the vital documentation, set in train the actual re-establishment of the marquisate? She began to think that the lawyers she employed probably didn’t even read the letters she sent. They had many such clients, eager to regain past glories.

  She explained all this to Nicole. The younger woman listened with attention. If she had been asked for an honest opinion she’d have said she thought it a waste of time and money ‒ what did it matter if Philippe were the Marquis de Tramont or plain Monsieur? Yet it mattered to Clothilde, and after her grief over Seraphine Nicole knew that beneath the imposing self-importance there was a vulnerable woman.

  ‘Tramont Champagne can certainly afford to buy an apartment in Paris,’ she said. ‘We would of course talk it over with Monsieur Pourdume but he would agree, I know.’ Monsieur Pourdume had got into the habit of agreeing with Nicole. In general, he found she talked good sense.

  It seemed a great upheaval at the time. But after Clothilde’s removal to the capital, life soon resumed its even tenor at the manor house.

  When Philippe went to town he was now able to stay comfortably at his mother’s apartment instead of in some bohemian tavern where his theatrical friends would encourage him to drink too much. Clothilde wrote regularly, long letters, rather dull in style, but full of news about Parisian life; fashion, and, of course, the progress of her court case.

  Nicole found herself busy. There was an unexpectedly good grape harvest the year Clothilde went away, and the making of the first pressing and then the careful preparation for the second fermentation were full of suspense.

  ‘This might turn out to be a notable vintage,’ said Jean-Baptiste Labaud as he leaned over a vat in the pressing house. ‘All we need is a week of cool weather and a north wind.’

  ‘Jean-Baptiste, you are the only man I know who thinks the direction of the wind matters!’

  ‘Well then, madame … You know as well as I do that the south wind generally brings infection …’ He fell silent, his attention on the vats.

  It always made Nicole uncomfortable to have Jean-Baptiste call her ‘madame’. She had known him all her life and until her marriage he’d always called her Nicole or Nicci.

  Yet she understood his reasons. There was a gulf between them now, which must be respected.

  The transition to being a ‘lady’ meant giving up many of the easy ways of her earlier life.

  People to whom she had been a familiar figure now had to treat her with some distance. The household staff had come to terms with this quite soon, because under Madame de Tramont’s eagle eye they dared not do otherwise. After two years with Nicole as the younger Madame de Tramont, they had accepted her role, even now that Clothilde had removed to Paris.

  But the workers on the estate and in the vaults were less easy to impress. ‘What, little Nicci, giving us instructions? What does she know? Anyhow, she’s not the manager of the firm, it’s her husband.’

  But everyone knew that the real manager of the firm was Jean-Baptiste. It was his knowledge and experience that produced the wine which was now in such great demand. It was his verdict on the amount to make, the blends to choose, the timing and routines, which really mattered.

  As to the young Madame de Tramont, she might imagine she had a role to play, but she’d better think again. True, she’d grown up with the vines, but so had every inhabitant of the champagne region, They knew as much as she did about the culture and harvesting of the grapes so she needn’t think she could go around giving orders.

  If they had stopped to think it over they would have realised that Nicole gave few orders to do with the actual grapes. It was the processes in-cellar that she was interesting herself in.

  The making of champagne, a long laborious process, had always been known to her. Throughout her girlhood she had of course visited many cellars, although none on the scale over which she now held sway. But living with it from day to day was different. Slowly she began to see ways in which the processes could be improved.

  Almost two hundred years had gone by since Dom Perignon first invented the champagne method, the method which turned the good, still wine of Champagne into the sparkling drink that captured the hearts of the world. During that time traditions had grown up, habits that were now accepted not only as unchangeable but also as beyond criticism.

  Each stage of the work had its name and its appointed time in the cycle of wine production. The first separation of the wine from the lees in the casks, the collection of the wines needed to begin the blending, the second separation of the wine, the rest period, the actual preparation of the blend, the last racking for separation, the transfer to the bottling vat, the addition of the mixture of wine and sugar needed to help the second fermentation … All of these were done in order,
with a sort of ceremony that emphasised their importance.

  And of course they were important ‒ vital, to the production of a fine wine. Yet as Nicole watched the workers moving about the vaults she couldn’t help feeling that there were methods that could be improved.

  There was a lot of wastage of wine. It seemed inevitable. When the wine was bottled and then stacked for the second fermentation, there were breakages, seepages, faulty corking. Then during the re-stacking ‒ and this had to be done at the beginning of the ageing process and at least once more during the succeeding year ‒ accidents occurred. Before the bottles were re-stacked they had to be twirled to move the sediment through the wine, and in the course of that, breakages were bound to happen.

  But the process which irritated Nicole most had to do with waste of time, rather than of wine. It was the one known as the remuage. It consisted of collecting the sediment together; the object of course was to separate it so as to produce an absolutely crystal clear wine, through which one could watch the bubbles rise as if through sunshine.

  Often, when Philippe was away and sometimes when he was at home, Nicole would go into the vaults at night. She would roam the alleys between the piles of bottles, examining them in the light of her upheld lamp, sniffing the air for any change in the scent which would tell her of seepage from badly-inserted corks.

  There they lay, the bottles that contained the fortune of the de Tramont family. There they must lie until the sediment had settled, after which the wine would be decanted into other bottles. All this took time, and the loss of effervescence during the change from one bottle to another was really wounding to Nicole. What was the use of spending so much time and effort in making a wine beautifully fizzy if you then let half the fizz escape in order to get rid of the sediment?

  She began picking up a bottle or two regularly, moving it to watch the sediment slide down the side. Surely it must be possible to get rid of those dregs without having to move the wine to another bottle?