The Wine Widow

by Tessa Barclay

  As she had promised, she had Jean-Baptiste’s half-bottle iced and opened for her evening meal. At first it took her so much aback, it made her cough. Knowing that it was champagne in the glass, and expecting sweetness when she tasted it, she found her palate rejecting the brisk, piquant flavour.

  Yet a moment later her brain was saying: You were bored with sweet champagne, here is something to test your discrimination.

  She held the glass to her nose to savour the bouquet. It was lively, almost teasing. Lingering in her mouth now, after that first sip, was a faint perfume ‒ not flowers, not herbs ‒ almost like fragrant leaves. She held the glass up to the light of the lamp from the dining-room ceiling. The colour was a pale tawny gold, absolutely clear except for the silvery bubbles rising to the surface where they made a frost on the yellow wine. She sipped again, carefully, holding the wine in her mouth to taste it through and through. It was mellow for all its vigour ‒ a wine that aged yet stayed young. There was a velvety after-effect. Yet nothing was owed to any sugary sweetness ‒ it was the wine itself, the juice of the grape perfectly handled so that it sparkled in rich vivacity.

  Now she understood why Jean-Baptiste had called it nectar. Even the sardonic, unimpressionable Jean-Baptiste needed special words to describe this drink. He had made it for himself, to test out a theory ‒ but what he had produced was a masterpiece. She debated sending for him, to tell him how much she had enjoyed the champagne. But it was late, his day’s work was over, he would be with his wife and children in his house in Calmady.

  She drank the second glass of his wine with the fruit and cheese. It accompanied them perfectly. What was more, it made her light-headed, light-hearted. She rose from the table humming a little song to herself, the first time in months that she had felt carefree.

  She read a bedtime story to Delphine and Alys who, as usual, refused to go to sleep until she had gone through this nightly routine. She found the words on the page slipping about a little. ‘I’m drunk!’ she thought.

  Drunk with Jean-Baptiste’s wine.

  When she went to bed the weather had cleared. Pinpoint stars sparkled in the blue-black skies ‒ a frost would follow. Good, that would break up the soil between the vine rows, which had been fertilised and then banked up to protect the sensitive graftings on the older stems. At this time of year a frost held for three days or so, and then would come a milder wind, the clouds would gather again and there would be rain or snow in December.

  She had always been in the habit of sleeping with the shutters open so that she could see the sky. Tonight she watched the stars wheel overhead ‒ Orion astride the blue-black canopy sprinkled with lesser stars.

  She couldn’t sleep. Her mind seemed full of a thousand things ‒ the new wine that she had tasted, the information sent by her mother-in-law, Jean-Baptiste and his frown of concentration when she discussed it with him, the children’s demands to be taken to watch the men set out on Sunday’s boar-hunt, the preparation for the cuvée that must begin at once now that the year’s wine was ‘resting’ …

  At length, around midnight, she sat up and turned up the bedside lamp. She would read herself to sleep. The book, however, proved unhelpful. Her attention wandered continually to next day’s work.

  Should they use more of the Cote des Blancs in the blend this year? The red Pinot grapes had been particularly rich and strong in September: perhaps a bigger share of wine from white grapes would gentle the blend. But then Tramont Champagne was famous for its body and smoothness, not its lightness …

  The difficulty of producing a consistent product, year in, year out, was one that few of the purchasers understood. It was hard enough when all you did was to harvest a grape crop and make a wine from those grapes and nothing else. But champagne, subtly blended from the produce of several vineyards, and with white grapes and red grapes to mingle, was a matter of the finest judgement.

  Nicole didn’t flatter herself that she knew all about it. But she had been taking part in the making of the wine since she was four years old when she first went with her mother to the vineyards at picking-time. She had heard the endless discussions, she had tasted the vintage as she grew older. By the time she was ten she knew a good still champagne when she sipped it. By the time she was thirteen she was helping in the work of bottling the wine on the de Tramont estate so, naturally, tasted the product at the party which always celebrated the end of bottling.

  Since her marriage she had interested herself deeply in the actual blending. To her, that was the moment at which the name of the house was made or lost. It had immediately been clear to her that Jean-Baptiste was the most important factor. It was his genius, his instinct, his experience, which gave Tramont champagne its final glories. His was the decision: how much of the product to use to make vintage champagne, how much to allot to non-vintage, how much to put by for future years’ blending.

  She had been an apt pupil. Besides, as he told her, she had a natural ability. This was proved to her by the attention he paid to her comments. Jean-Baptiste wasn’t the kind to suffer fools gladly ‒ if he accepted her suggestions, it was because they were sound, not because she was the patronne.

  She got up, pushed her feet into Morocco slippers, wrapped herself in her warm velvet dressing gown, and went to the window to look out. As she had thought, a frost had touched the countryside. Twigs glistened silver in the starlight, she could see the glint of thin ice on the puddles in the courtyard.

  Across the court and along a paved alley stood the workrooms of the chief cellarman. Here Jean-Baptiste had an office where he kept the records of the vintages and the workaday accounts. It contained a desk and a hard chair, ledgers in rows, and a sofa on which he often spent the night at times of crisis such as bad weather in the vineyards or pressure at the bottling plant.

  Beyond the office was the tasting room, with shelves for the samples of wine which he would use to make the blend, a long trestle table with an ample supply of glasses, and at the far end a small collection of scientific equipment ‒ microscope, thermometers, gauges and measures.

  It occurred to her to wonder whether there was an ample supply of Côte des Blancs among the samples. If not, she must have it brought in first thing in the morning. She decided to go now to make sure.

  There was nothing unusual in her going out in the night to the cellars or the workrooms. Even when Philippe was alive she had often left him sleeping to spend some time on some project that interested her.

  She draped her cashmere shawl around her head against the frosty air, picked up the keys from the bedside table, and tiptoed out. The great front door was always bolted at eleven, and the drawing back of the creaking bolts would have roused the servants. But there was always the little side door in the passage outside the owner’s office.

  The sharpness of the night made her draw in her breath with a gasp. She hastened across the wide courtyard to the paved path leading to the chief cellarman’s kingdom, leaving footprints in the rime. Inside the office was warm, but the tasting room itself was cool, high-ceilinged and airy. She lit the lamp on its bracket above the equipment bench then from that lit a candle to hold it up to the sample shelves.

  She might have known. Jean-Baptiste had ordered in at least a dozen samples of the wines from the Côte des Blancs. She knew from experience that there would be plenty more lying in dark brown bottles in the cellier, the ground level cellar where wines were kept which did not have to be left for long maturing.

  On the laboratory bench there was a stoppered bottle and a page of notes. She held up the bottle to her candle to see if she could judge the state of the wine but the light was inadequate and the temporary container was of very thick glass. So she sat down and began to read Jean-Baptiste’s notes.

  The measures of the various ingredient wines were registered in the ruled columns. The alcohol content was calculated, the sugar content also. Various little arithmetical totals stood about on the page. At the foot Jean-Baptiste had written: ‘As usual, firs
t attempt ‒ interesting but impossible!’

  She smiled. She could almost hear him say it.

  At that moment his voice came from behind her. ‘Well then! I thought you were a burglar!’

  She whirled about. ‘Jean-Baptiste!’

  He was in his good clothes and leather shoes. Clearly he had just come home from some gathering, perhaps in Epernay where there had been an annual dinner of vintners tonight.

  ‘I didn’t hear you come in?’ she said.

  ‘No indeed, since I thought you were a thief I came on tiptoe ‒ and armed.’ He showed her the mallet he had picked up from the tools hanging on the wall.

  ‘Good gracious! But what would a thief find here, Jean-Baptiste?’

  ‘Little enough, to be sure. But there are fools who imagine that if they break into the office of a chief cellarman they can find the recipe for making the champagne.’

  She nodded towards the shelves. ‘I see you’ve already prepared for what I thought might be a need ‒ to counteract the strength of the Pinot.’

  ‘Who knows? The Côte des Blancs seems to be rounder than usual too. It may be a problem to lighten the blend this year.’

  ‘But you’ll do it.’

  ‘It’s what I’m paid for.’

  ‘Oh, Jean-Baptiste …’ Somehow she was hurt. She didn’t like to think their relationship was based only on money.

  ‘What are you doing here, madame?’ he inquired, disregarding the note of reproach. ‘It’s very cold ‒’

  ‘Oh, you know I’m used to that. I just wanted to make sure everything was ready for tomorrow.’

  ‘There was no need to come out in the middle of the night ‒’

  ‘But I often do that, you know I do.’

  There was concern in his regard of her. ‘Surely Dr Jussot gave you something to help you to sleep?’

  ‘Oh, that! I gave up taking that months ago. One can’t go on, Jean-Baptiste, drugging oneself to sleep. And you know I’ve always been a light sleeper, always apt to get up and work on some task ‒’

  He said abruptly, ‘You should go back to the house. Come, I’ll see you to the door.’

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ she said, rather indignant. ‘I can go back to the house when I want to ‒ I don’t need an escort.’

  ‘Madame ‒’

  ‘And do for goodness sake stop calling me madame when no one is by! You seem to forget we’ve known each other for years.’

  ‘I forget nothing, Nicole,’ he said after a momentary pause. ‘And I am aware of everything ‒ which you are not.’

  ‘Aware? Of what? I don’t understand you.’

  ‘What would people say if they knew we were here together alone in the middle of the night?’

  She stared, then frowned. ‘That is none of their business! I’m surprised at you, Jean-Baptiste. You’re not usually concerned about the opinion of others.’

  He said slowly, ‘And I’m surprised at you, Nicole. You’re not usually so slow to take a hint.’

  ‘What hint? What do you mean?’

  For answer he shot out a hand, grasped her wrist, dragged her against his chest and kissed her with brief, unexpected fierceness. Then he let her go.

  ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Do you understand your danger?’

  She was totally shaken, totally unnerved. She put up one hand to her lips as if to test that they really had been assaulted by that unexpected kiss.

  ‘Don’t you understand that I want you, that I’ve always wanted you ever since you changed from a little skipping girl child into a woman? And here you stand, unprotected and alone with me in my own domain ‒ and I’ve drunk enough good champagne this evening, Nicole, to make me forget all my fine resolutions.’

  He stood over her, tall, dark, threatening. Yet there was something full of entreaty in his eyes. She leaned against the table for support, because she felt strangely weak.

  ‘Are you saying … are you daring to say …’

  ‘That I love you ‒ yes, that’s what I’m saying.’ He almost glared at her. ‘Well then! What will you do now? Dismiss me?’

  She made a sound of protest, half-shook her head, then said, with a little laugh: ‘Don’t be silly! Dismiss the best chief of cellar in the Champagne region?’

  ‘Ah!’ He nodded. His tone when he went on was bitter. ‘If you knew how it irks me to be thought of only as … as … an indispensable tool! Don’t you ever think of me as a man?’ She suddenly understood that she had, recently, often thought of him in just that way. The impulse this afternoon to ask him to use her first name … The sense of his importance when she lay wakeful later in the night …

  She drew her velvet robe closer against her. ‘I think we had better bring this conversation to an end, Jean-Baptiste. And we’ll forget all about it. Tomorrow it will be as if it never happened.’

  ‘Very well, madame. Just as you say.’

  He stood aside to let her pass him, going through the doorway into his office. As she walked, the candle he had picked up to light her way flared in the breeze of her passing so that a tiny spot of hot wax fell on his hand. He jerked it in reaction, the candlewick broke, the flame went out.

  In momentary alarm Nicole seized his arm.

  She came once more against that broadcloth jacket. But this time it was by her own volition. She could feel his heart throbbing beneath the fabric of jacket and lawn shirt. His other arm came round her, gently.

  ‘Nicole,’ he murmured.

  She made no response, but neither did she try to get away. She felt him put a hand under her chin to raise her face for his kiss. Now was the moment. She must say, ‘No, Jean-Baptiste, it’s impossible.’

  Yet all the loneliness of the past months was receding in the warmth of his embrace. The desperation of losing the man she loved, the solitude of her position in the de Tramont manor house ‒ it was to those she must return if she said no to Jean-Baptiste.

  And why should she? She had known him all her life, liked him and respected him. He loved her ‒ he had said that in so many words. She was entitled to some human warmth, some little flame at which to warm her cold spirit now that Philippe was gone.

  When he picked her up and carried her to the sofa in his office, she made no move to stop him. Instead she wound her arms around his neck and whispered, ‘Do you really love me, Jean- Baptiste?’

  His answer was not given in words.

  Chapter 11

  In the first delirium of the love affair Nicole had no other thought than joyous acceptance. To be loved again, to give love in return! ‒ it was as if she had come alive again.

  And she had no feeling of being unfaithful to her beloved Philippe. Jean-Baptiste was so utterly different, it was as if she had started all over again in some new country.

  With Jean-Baptiste there was no reading of poetic dramas, no tears over fictitious heroes and heroines, no fine words and fanciful musings. Instead there was a pure physical passion, rapturous and fulfilling. His ability to rouse her was a source of amazement to her ‒ he called out depths that she hadn’t known existed within her.

  When she lay in his arms, exhausted and filled with delight, he would laugh at her. ‘Well then, now you don’t have much time to wander about at night looking for something to occupy yourself with ‒ eh, my little love?’

  ‘Jean-Baptiste, if I hadn’t come to your office that night …’

  ‘It would have happened anyway,’ he said. He sighed. ‘I’ve loved you so long, Nicci. I couldn’t have gone on for ever without saying it aloud some time.’

  ‘And I never knew …’

  ‘Perhaps you did. Perhaps you sensed it. I’ve noticed, recently, that you’ve often been on the verge of saying something to me, and then held back.’

  ‘Yes. I was going to ask you to call me by my first name. I thought there ought not to be a distance between us.’

  ‘Distance!’ He laughed in boisterous amusement, glancing down at her white breasts on which his arm was gently lying. ‘But I�
�m never far from you, Nicci. I carry you with me wherever I go.’

  ‘Jeannot!’ She looked at him in surprise. ‘Do you really feel like that?’

  ‘You know I do.’

  ‘No I don’t. I know very little about you. You’ve always seemed …’

  ‘What? Old? I’m only twelve years older than you ‒’

  ‘Not that,’ she said, giving a playful tug at a lock of his dark hair. ‘No, but somehow … you’ve always seemed a little forbidding. It’s because you know so much.’

  ‘I only know a lot about wine.’

  ‘You know a lot about making love, Jeannot.’

  He didn’t say, ‘But you’re so young, my darling, you haven’t had time to learn.’ Instead he kissed her and enfolded her in his arms, until they came once more to the realms where only he could lead her.

  When almost three weeks had gone by, she was brought to her senses by a simple remark from her elder child. ‘Mama,’ said Alys seriously, ‘why are you always in such a hurry to finish reading to us?’

  The truthful answer was, Because I want to run to my lover.

  Instead she said, ‘Oh, Mama’s busy at the moment. You know there’s important work to be done with the wine.’

  ‘Yes, Mama, I know.’ The three-year-old regarded her from under her little frilled nightcap. ‘When will you read properly again?’

  ‘Oh, darling!’ Nicole hugged her. ‘I’ll read the story again now, properly.’ She began again on Cinderella, but before she had read two paragraphs both children were asleep.

  Nevertheless it brought her up sharp. She was neglecting them, rushing through household affairs, disregarding almost everything for the sheer joy of being with Jean-Baptiste in the dark hours of the night.

  How long could she behave so thoughtlessly without laying herself open to discovery? And if the affair became known, think of the scandal!

  Not only for herself, but for Jean-Baptiste. His wife would be hurt and indignant, the whole village would be up in arms and on her side. Nicole would bring a hornet’s nest around her ears if she wasn’t careful.