The Wine Widow

by Tessa Barclay

  Rethel was not an insubstantial town. It had manufacturers and army barracks. Therefore it had a telegraph office. Nicole sent a telegraphic message to Pourdume in Rheims: Name a good lawyer in Rethel.

  She then took Paulette to the building yard, where the men were lounging about in an anxious group.

  ‘Well, messieurs, I hear you haven’t been paid for two weeks.’

  ‘That’s right, madame, and we need the money!’

  ‘Of course you do. If you’ll come into the office I’ll give you a percentage of what’s owing ‒’

  ‘A percentage!’

  ‘I can’t pay you in full. I haven’t brought money enough with me. But I’m Madame de Tramont, of Tramont Champagne.’

  A murmur went round: ‘Ah, the rich sister …’

  ‘You shall be paid, I guarantee it. I’ve been poor myself, I know how important your wages are. But it will take me a day or two to get money transferred here. Meanwhile, what about the jobs that are in progress ‒ is anyone doing anything about those?’

  There was a shuffling of feet and a glancing about. Clearly nothing was being done.

  ‘Which are the most important customers?’

  ‘There’s a new blockhouse at the barracks … Monsieur Plerignac’s stables … I think they’re in a hurry over that storage hut at the hospital …’

  ‘Who is the foreman?’

  A sturdy fellow stepped forward. ‘Me, I’m foreman, Jacques Cadal.’

  ‘Will you undertake to go to the most important customers today? And tell them the work shall be finished as soon as possible but that we shall accept lower payments as penalty for the delay. Try not to lose the work, Cadal ‒ assure them you’ll be back tomorrow or the next day at latest.’

  ‘Why not today?’ he inquired.

  ‘Today? Well, if you would ‒ but mind, I can only pay about one-third of what each of you is owed.’

  ‘That’s all right, madame,’ said one of the men with a grin. ‘We reckon the House of Tramont is good for a few francs.’

  ‘The only problem is materials,’ said Cadal. ‘We need cement and sand, and though we’ve got timber we need to have it cut and the sawmills won’t give us credit.’

  ‘I hope to see to that shortly,’ said Nicole. ‘My lawyer in Rheims will recommend a man of business who can reassure everyone who’s owed money.’

  Sure enough, by lunchtime came Pourdume’s reply. Nicole went with Paulette to see Monsieur Apadoux, who had already had a telegram from Pourdume to alert him. ‘My dear lady,’ he said in a most welcoming tone, ‘I am delighted at the opportunity to serve the head of Champagne Tramont. Tell me what I can do for you.’

  Nicole waited for Paulette to explain, but Paulette as usual was overwhelmed with nervousness and embarrassment. In few words Nicole sketched the situation: the owner of the firm gone, no way to contact him, work outstanding, money owed, the books in a mess, materials unavailable, the men anxious over their jobs.

  ‘I want you to come to my brother-in-law’s office and make a list of everyone who needs reassurance. I then want you to go, or send your senior clerk, to all those people. Tell them that I stand guarantor for all Monsieur Fournier’s debts. In short, make sure everyone knows that my sister’s finances will soon be in good order.’

  ‘Er … Madame … This is a little difficult. The business does not belong to your sister, I infer. It belongs to her husband.’

  ‘Quite so.’

  ‘And he, though missing, is still alive.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If you pay out these large sums of money, there is no way you can ever enforce repayment from him.’

  ‘I don’t intend to try.’

  ‘And you cannot dispose of the business to defray your expenses, since it is in his name.’

  ‘I quite understand that. I don’t intend to sell the business. I shall put in a manager and it will be run in the name of Auguste Fournier. If he ever comes back, he’s welcome to it.’

  Monsieur Apadoux looked at her over his glasses. There was a grimness in her tone when she said it that made him think it would be best for Auguste Fournier if he never reappeared. And indeed he never did, although he was heard of in Antwerp some years later, ashore from a merchant ship plying to Africa.

  Little by little the tangle was teased out. Cadal was willing to take on the role of manager at increased wages but it was clear he would never do more than keep things rolling along. It would be at least two years before the business would be in profit again.

  But Paulette was saved from disgrace and the little stone villa, bought with her dowry, was hers for ever. An income would come to her eventually from the building firm but meanwhile Nicole would support her.

  ‘Yes, of course I shall, don’t be silly, Paulie.’

  ‘But you’ve done so much already ‒’

  ‘But I’m the rich sister ‒ didn’t you hear the men say so?’

  ‘Oh, Nicci!’ Paulette cried, bursting into tears of gratitude.

  Once again Nicole soothed and comforted her. But truth to tell she was becoming exhausted by the efforts she had to make. She felt strained and tired, and had no appetite. She was sure that most of it was due to grief over Jean-Baptiste and, in a way, was grateful to have so much to do, thus blotting out the fact that even now he was awaiting ship to take him to Los Angeles.

  Then came a morning when she understood at last that her exhaustion and sickness didn’t spring from grief.

  She was expecting Jean-Baptiste’s child.

  Her first instinct was to rush to Paris, tell him the news, throw herself into his arms. ‘Now you can’t leave me, Jeannot! I need you! You must stay!’

  Yet two minutes’ thought showed her that was the worst thing she could do. What could come of it but more sorrow? It would hurt Yvonne Labaud. It would probably not change Jean-Baptiste’s determination to emigrate. He was the kind of man who, once his mind was made up, seldom altered it. He would go to California with the knowledge he was leaving a child behind him whom he would never see.

  Who could possibly benefit from letting the knowledge spread? The coming baby was her responsibility, hers alone. And God knew it would cause scandal enough when she, a widow of some two years standing, bore a child.

  She said nothing of her news to her sister for a day or two, thinking things over. Then at last, a plan having evolved, she confided in Paulette.

  ‘Enceinte?’ cried Paulette. ‘You? But … Nicci ‒ how is that possible?’

  Nicole almost laughed. Paulette’s horror was so naive, so typical. ‘It came about in the usual way, my dear. And I’m paying the usual price.’

  ‘Nicci! How can you joke about it!’

  ‘I’m not joking. I have a great price to pay. You see, I can’t marry the father.’

  ‘Not marry him? But you must!’

  ‘He’s married already, Paulie. It’s out of the question to think of any help from him.’

  ‘Then he’s a scoundrel ‒’

  ‘No, dear. Don’t say things like that,’ Nicole said, taking her sister’s hand and pressing it hard. ‘He’s the best man that ever stepped, but I don’t want him ever to know he left me with a baby. I’ve thought about it ‒ night and day, almost, since I found out for sure at the beginning of the week. I’ve decided. I’m going to have the baby in secret.’

  ‘Oh, but dear … that’s not possible.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well … at Tramont … and Calmady … I mean … How could it be possible?’

  ‘I shan’t be at the estate. I’ve decided, Paulie. I’m going to travel.’

  ‘Travel …’

  ‘On business. There’s a lot I can do, in fact ‒ I made one visit to London and I realise there is information I ought to have about our markets. So I shall travel ‒ to London, to St Petersburg ‒’

  ‘St Petersburg!’

  ‘The Russians love Champagne Tramont. I shall go and find out how I can make them love it more. And Berlin ‒ I sha
ll go there. And then in due course, Paulie, I shall come back. We’ll find a place, dear ‒ a quiet yet busy place where no one will know me. And that’s where I’ll have the baby.’

  ‘You can’t do that, Nicci. All that travelling ‒ being shaken about in a coach ‒’

  ‘No, no. Travel abroad is different. I know that from my trip to England. Trains are very comfortable. On board ship it’s like a little floating hotel. Of course, if the weather turned bad … but we won’t think about that.’

  Paulette, once having got over her first surprise, had raced ahead in her thoughts. ‘But once the baby is born, what then? I don’t understand, Nicci.’

  Nicci sighed. ‘I shall have to find a foster mother.’

  ‘Oh no! No, no! One hears such dreadful tales ‒ of neglect and ill-treatment ‒’

  ‘I’ll choose someone suitable ‒ I have someone in mind.’

  ‘No!’ cried Paulette, leaping up and standing erect and forbidding. ‘I won’t allow you to hand over your child to a stranger! My own sister! Never, never in this world! If you’re determined to have the baby without anyone knowing, then I must be the one to take care of it.’

  Nicole hid a smile. It was exactly what she’d been aiming at. When she said she had someone in mind, it was Paulette herself. ‘Oh, I don’t know … It’s a lot to ask …’

  ‘After all you’ve done for me? Nonsense. Besides, Nicci … In a way, it’s like Providence. I lost my baby. It hurt me more than you can imagine. Now … I shall have a baby to care for. Oh yes, Nicci, let me, do let me! I promise I’ll love it as if it were my own!’

  ‘I know you would, Paulie. But it’s a long-term thing, you know ‒’

  ‘Oh, I know that! But after all ‒ what am I supposed to do with the rest of my life now I’m left all on my own? I’ll devote it to bringing up Edmond and your child. I swear I’ll be a good mother to them both, Nicole. I swear it on our dead mother’s grave!’

  ‘Very well,’ Nicole said, just in time, for Paulette was about to dissolve in tears again. ‘I accept your wonderful offer. You’ve taken a great load off my mind. I can begin the planning of the whole thing with an easier conscience.’

  Once Paulette’s affairs were more or less in order, Nicole returned to Calmady. She spent about six weeks playing and talking with her two little girls and, in business hours, watching young Compiain settle in as chief of cellar. They were busy weeks, but there had been so much upheaval at the estate that no one questioned her decision to go on a long journey abroad.

  In July she set off, leaving instructions and warnings about every aspect of the business during her absence. Compiain was surprised that she would miss the harvest, one of the most important moments in wine-making. She said: ‘You will buy-in the same as last year, according to the records Jean-Baptiste left. As to our own grapes, your father will have taken the usual care of them and if anything has gone wrong it would be beyond my powers to save them. But I don’t fear that. I feel I must make this trip now, because I believe it’s time to make a new start. You saw the new design for labels, and the new bottles I plan to use ‒ well, I want to see that the market is expecting all that.’

  ‘Yes, madame.’

  ‘I’ll be back for the assemblage of the still wines in November, I hope. If it looks as if we’ve made any mistakes, they can be remedied to a great extent at that point by buying-in some of the other vintages. Then while the wine rests I can catch up on anything that I have missed. So you see it’s all taken care of.’

  ‘Yes, madame.’ To tell the truth he was flattered that she should trust him to such an extent, and was determined nothing at all should go wrong.

  So Nicole went on her travels. She wrote regularly to Paulette, who replied as regularly to fine hotels in Vienna, St Petersburg, Amsterdam, London.

  In October they met in Spa in Belgium, where they took rooms in a quiet, respectable hotel. No one knew them there: they were two quiet ladies, one with a little three-year-old boy, the other expecting a child and taking the waters for a kidney complaint.

  But in truth Nicole was well and healthy, though tired after much journeying. She rested and took a little exercise. Just before the birth she entered a spa nursing-home. Attention was excellent, the child, a boy, was born without difficulty.

  He was registered as Robert Paul, after Nicole’s grandfather and father. His last name was given as Fournier, Nicole using her sister’s papers. There was no difficulty: the description on the papers of Paulette was just as apt for Nicole. The absence of the father was easily accounted for: he had had to stay in Rethel to look after his business while his wife, of a delicate constitution, took the waters at Spa.

  When they left the town at the beginning of November, they were headed for Strasbourg. Paulette had agreed that it would be difficult to account for little Robert in Rethel and besides, she had never been happy there except for the first year of her marriage. ‘Everything there is touched with sadness for me.’

  Nicole had bought her sister a neat little house not far from Strasbourg’s cathedral of rose- coloured stone. ‘It will seem quite like old times to you,’ she said, ‘to hear cathedral bells. You’ll think you’re back in Rheims.’

  ‘Come and see me again soon, Nicci. Come and see little Robert.’

  ‘I will, you can be sure I will.’

  She sat back in the carriage taking her to the railway station, tears brimming from her eyes. She was leaving Jean-Baptiste’s son in the hands of another woman. No one would know how much it hurt her.

  But as she had said to Paulette, there was a price to pay. She would be a long time paying it.

  Chapter 15

  The champagne cork popped with a satisfactory small explosion. A little vapour came from the neck of the green bottle. The sparkling golden wine frothed out into the narrow glasses.

  ‘Well, madame,’ observed Richard Patterton, ‘it looks perfect and ‒’ he took the glass brought to him on a silver tray by the butler ‒ ‘it smells delicious.’

  Madame de Tramont ‒ the Widow Tramont ‒ watched while he raised to his lips the wine that bore her name, and sipped.

  ‘Ah!’ he said, raising his eyes to heaven.

  Or rather to the shell-pink ceiling of the salon which Nicole had had constructed at the back of the Villa Tramont. It had become necessary, as the fame of her wine grew, to have a large room in which she could entertain day-time visitors to the manor.

  It took up what had once been a breakfast room and a lesser drawing-room. Outside the long windows there was a terrace, and beyond that a lawn on which the young people were playing croquet in the summer sunshine.

  The gathering in the salon consisted of the elder members of the de Tramont family ‒ Madame de Tramont senior, Aunt Paulette, and of course the head of the House of Tramont herself, La Veuve Tramont. To some muted protests from Clothilde, Nicole had dropped the ‘de’ of aristocracy. ‘The wine is aristocratic, madame,’ she had said jokingly to her mother-in-law, ‘I am not.’

  She had done it for simplicity. It was difficult enough when doing business with the English, who mostly refused to learn any language but their own. Many English visitors, imagining it to be her actual name, addressed her as ‘Madame La Veuve’ ‒ which, while quite correct in French, wasn’t what they intended.

  The visitors consisted of wine-importers from abroad, a few connoisseurs, and some of her own landing agents. Her chief of cellar was also present, but Arnaud Compiain was never any use to her on social occasions. He would scarcely speak at all, and when he did it was only about the wine. Social badinage was quite outside his ken.

  The occasion was the launch of the new fine dry wine. There had been a growing interest in less sweetness in the cuvées since poor Mr Burnes attempted to make it popular in 1850. Through the fifties and into the sixties, a few wine-makers produced what was thought of as an ‘English cuvée’ with much less sugar, and in the forefront was The Widow Tramont.

  ‘You had great courage, madame,�
�� said Patterton. ‘Once it is done it cannot be undone ‒ I wonder you had the fortitude to go on with the idea when it was so slow to become profitable.’

  ‘I had good reason. A friend of mine first gave me a taste of a champagne brut. He told me then it was a wine with a great future and, as he was generally right, I heeded his words.’

  ‘Indeed? May one ask who he was?’

  ‘The man after whom I’ve named the new brand ‒ Le Baptiste.’

  ‘Good heavens! I thought it was after the gentleman for whose head Salome danced!’

  ‘That’s what most people will think ‒ because, of course, we champagne makers have chosen Biblical names for our bottles ‒ Jeroboam, Rehoboam, Methuselah …’

  ‘I’ve often wanted to try champagne from the largest,’ put in Sir Arthur Mateman. ‘Nebuchadnezzar, by Gad!’

  ‘In my opinion the wine never tastes as good from a large bottle,’ Nicole said. ‘I ought not to tell you that because of course it would be good to sell large numbers of the Nebuchadnezzar. But the finest sparkle is in the half-bottle, the bottle and the magnum.’

  ‘Can’t find much wrong with yours no matter what it comes in,’ Sir Arthur said gallantly. He had kept close to her side since arriving. By Gad but she was an attractive woman! Even the black dress that had become her famous attire made her look prettier. Her fine clear skin was set off by the soft black ruffles of silk against her throat, her slender waist by the very fashionable looped-up skirt with its fringed apron-front.

  She always wore a soft silk cap with black lace. It had become a sort of trademark. But as the years had gone by it was less a part of widow’s weeds and more a fashion accessory. They were made especially for her by a smart Paris milliner who liked to bring out something new for her each time there was a special occasion.

  Today she had provided a little wired cap of cream silk edged with ruched black Valenciennes, held up from her ears by little satin flowers of cream and palest mauve. To this Nicole had added a spray of cream roses pinned to her dress.