The Wine Widow

by Tessa Barclay

  ‘I have met him ‒ at Lady Grassington’s.’

  ‘You knew of their plan?’

  ‘Of course not!’

  ‘Don’t say “Of course not!” as if it were impossible! I would have said no daughter of mine could ever deceive me so, but I am proved wrong.’

  ‘You must understand that Alys ‒’

  ‘I understand that she has been secretly meeting with a young man of whom she knew I wouldn’t approve. You were aware of these meetings?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why didn’t you put a stop to them? Or tell Mrs MacArdle?’

  ‘Mama, you wouldn’t have had me act as tell-tale ‒?’

  ‘Oh, by no means! Let us at all costs preserve your sense of schoolgirl honour!’ Nicole said with a bitterness Delphine had never heard in her before. ‘The result is, your sister has thrown herself away on a good-for-nothing ‒’

  ‘Mama, I assure you, he is a perfectly good, respectable young man ‒’

  ‘Really? Then why did they not come to me and ask for my consent? No, we shall find that there is something you aren’t aware of. He probably owes thousands in gambling debts or tailor’s bills, or else he’s already committed to some other poor young lady who will now bring suit against him for breach of promise.’

  ‘No, no, my dear Nicole,’ Grassington said when he heard her fears. ‘All my inquiries reveal him as a decent enough young fellow. He comes from a respectable family in the Borders ‒’

  ‘Respectable!’

  ‘Indeed, yes ‒ they own some acres of barren moorland and a property or two in Edinburgh ‒’

  ‘Edinburgh! Then that’s where they’ve gone!’

  ‘No, it seems not ‒ my investigator hasn’t been able to find them there. I think you must resign yourself to it, Nicole. This wedding is going to take place.’

  ‘And there is nothing I can do to prevent it?’

  ‘Under Scottish law, nothing.’

  Gerrard was unwilling to interfere too much. He had done what he could to prevent the marriage but, having failed, was of the opinion that it was best to accept it. But he hesitated to put that thought to Nicole.

  He knew, of course, that Nicole herself was of peasant origin ‒ she never made any secret of the fact. Exactly how she had come to marry into the French aristocracy she had never explained but he couldn’t help thinking it strange that she was so utterly set against this young Scotsman who had carried off her daughter.

  ‘My dear,’ he ventured, ‘couldn’t you find it in your heart to accept the match? If Alys loves him ‒’

  ‘Love!’ she cried. ‘You don’t understand! She’s fallen head over heels for the first clever scoundrel who came along! She’s led a sheltered life ‒ oh, I blame myself, I should have made sure she mingled with all kinds of men but …’

  ‘I can’t really accept that Hopetown is a scoundrel ‒’

  ‘He should have come to me and asked for her hand!’

  ‘But you would have refused, Nicole.’

  Yes, she would have refused. She herself was conscious of the irony. She had come from a background much poorer than Gavin Hopetown’s yet had made a love-match with a much richer man. Why couldn’t she believe that her daughter’s husband was as honourable as she herself had been?

  The answer had nothing to do with logic or sense. She was hurt ‒ that was all. She was wounded to the heart that Alys had deceived her. Alys, the first-born, the child who had been Philippe’s little princess, who was to have made a glittering marriage to prove to the world that the House of Tramont was paramount … And there was another wound, to her pride. She had given her life to the House of Tramont. If Alys spurned it and all it could have brought her, it meant Nicole had wasted her life.

  It was a thought she couldn’t bear.

  She ordered Delphine to pack. ‘We are going home.’

  ‘But, Mama ‒ aren’t you going to wait until Alys and Gavin come back from Scotland?’

  Her mother gave her a glance so cold that Delphine almost shivered. ‘I shall never meet them. I shall never accept them. Now, summon your maid, have your trunks packed. We are setting off for Dover tonight.’

  It was a miserable crossing. Spring storms tossed the little steamer about. They had to spend a day in Boulogne recuperating. When they at last reached the Villa Tramont it was to find both Grandmama and Aunt Paulette there, full of anxiety for news.

  ‘Nothing,’ Nicole said. ‘We’ve been unable to trace them.’

  ‘What a disaster!’ cried Clothilde. ‘Old Monsieur Pourdume has had to withdraw from all negotiations with the families who were interested in a match, and even young Monsieur Pourdume is shocked.’

  ‘Poor little Alys,’ mourned the softer-hearted Paulette. ‘I only pray she isn’t making a terrible mistake.’ She was thinking of her own disastrous marriage.

  ‘Mistake? Of course it’s a mistake! We are all made to look fools because a little miss wanted her own way over a very unsuitable match!’

  ‘Grandmama, how can you be so sure it’s unsuitable?’ Delphine put in, provoked beyond good manners. ‘I have met the young man. He is very agreeable, well educated, and I think goodhearted ‒’

  ‘And penniless,’ Nicole interrupted.

  ‘Why is that so bad? From what I hear from the villagers, you yourself were not at all rich when you and my father got married!’

  ‘That was different,’ said Clothilde, indignant at the suggestion. ‘Your dear Mama and my beloved son came to me openly and asked permission. I agree that I was unwilling at the time, and only gave in over a proposition of business ‒ but there was nothing underhanded about the marriage, no running away to have a secret ceremony.’

  Lord Grassington arrived early in April, bringing a letter addressed to Delphine at her former address in London. Inside was enclosed another, for her mother. The letter to Delphine begged her to give the enclosure to Nicole ‘at a favourable moment’.

  Since it seemed a favourable moment might never arrive, Delphine handed it over at once. The plea to Nicole was short and rather dignified. ‘Gavin and I were married in a Catholic church this morning and received a certificate of marriage according to the Scottish law. He joins with me in begging your forgiveness for the distress we have caused and asks to be received by you as soon as possible. Our address is as above for the moment but he has accepted a position with a winegrower in Portugal therefore pray send your reply quickly so that we may call upon you en route. If any unforeseen delay occurs, direct your letter as below.’ The address of a wine estate near Portugal followed and the closing phrase, ‘Your loving and supplicant daughter, Alys Hopetown.’

  Nicole had taken this to her office to read, with only Gerrard for company. ‘I shall have the marriage annulled!’ cried she. ‘I won’t allow ‒’

  ‘No, my dear, don’t cry out like that,’ Gerrard said, taking her hand. ‘There’s nothing to be done. The marriage is valid, both in clerical and civil law. You have nothing to claim against it except your disapproval ‒ and I think the Vatican would need more than that. Besides, an annulment would only have effect if Alys agreed to give up Gavin. From what I can gather, she has no such intention.’

  ‘She is a very wicked, disobedient child! How could it come about that I raised a daughter with so little regard for her family?’

  Gerrard essayed a joke. ‘I wish someone would come along and run off with our Millie.’

  But Nicole refused to be amused. She also refused to reply to the letter.

  Delphine wrote in secret, to say that she wouldn’t recommend a visit to Tramont at present. ‘In time something may be done, but Mama is very shocked and hurt. Let some time go by.’ She ended with her good wishes, which were sincere. Despite the turmoil that Alys’s wedding had caused, she genuinely believed it would succeed.

  There was an embargo on discussion of the subject after Alys’s letter. Even Clothilde, generally rather blind to the feelings of others, respected her daughter-in-law’s distress
.

  Nicole was more hurt by the affair than she allowed to show. She had always been a kind and loving mother, not indulgent perhaps and not always present when her children wanted her ‒ but she’d always thought they understood the pressure of business under which she existed.

  Alys’s behaviour struck her to the heart. She couldn’t understand why her daughter had not come to her and asked for permission. She was honest enough to admit to herself that she might have refused ‒ but then if Alys had been strong-minded enough to resist all the marriage offers that Pourdume was pursuing, in time Nicole would have had to look again at Gavin Hopetown.

  She was no judge of her own manner when, at Christmas, Alys ventured to talk about marrying for love. She scarcely recalled the discussion now. If she did, she thought she had dismissed the topic with a little joke.

  Now her elder daughter was gone ‒ lost to her, married to a nobody who had been forced to accept a minor post with a minor vineyardist. Gone forever were the hopes of a brilliant alliance with the young politician who had wanted to marry into the Tramont money. It was no use thinking of offering him Delphine instead ‒ Delphine would never be happy in political circles, whereas Alys would eagerly have accepted the chance to be a leading hostess and patroness of talent.

  But worse than that was the sense of failure, both as a mother and as the head of the family. All her attention had been centred on avoiding one catastrophe, the possible growth of affection between Delphine and Robert. Because of that she’d thrown Alys into the arms of a totally unsuitable husband, a stranger, a schemer and opportunist.

  Well, if he thought he would get any of Alys’s fortune while his mother-in-law lived, he was mistaken. She had at once cut off Alys’s considerable allowance and cancelled the settlements she’d intended to make on her daughter’s twenty-first birthday. Although French law forbade her to cut her out of her will entirely, she would get the absolute minimum. And control of the House of Tramont would go to Delphine and Delphine’s husband, who would be a man she would choose with the utmost care.

  Besides this family distress there were other problems nagging at Nicole. The weather was very unfavourable to the vines that year. The spring had been long and cold, the blossoms had been late developing. Now a wet summer seemed to be setting in, with temperatures scarcely rising above the spring averages. The outlook for the grape crop looked poor.

  Then there were political problems. France was going through one of its periodic terms of uncertainty. The provincial population played little part in the changes now going on, yet even in Rheims and Epernay there was a feeling of uncertainty in the air. The politicians in the great cities and the people of Paris, always volatile, seemed to be on the verge of some great action.

  In general France was happy enough with the Emperor Louis Napoleon. He had taken the country into the Crimean War, but that was a long way off and although men had died rather from diseases of the gut than from glorious feats of arms, in the end there had been a victory. Later France had taken control of various parts of the world ‒ Indo-China, Algiers … Trade was doing well, Paris was a centre of high fashion thanks to the patronage of the Empress Eugenie.

  And yet … And yet there was a feeling of insecurity. Between France and the new Germany being formed by King William of Prussia and his Chief Minister Count Bismarck, there was rivalry. Prussian power was such that, at a conference in Biarritz some five years earlier, Napoleon had weakly agreed to Prussian rule over greater Germany.

  Those Frenchmen interested enough to follow international affairs had naturally taken it for granted that Bismarck would be content after that. But the following year the Prussian army had had a wonderful victory over the Austrians at Sadowa, a real old-fashioned triumph which had made the whole world look with sudden respect towards King William.

  True, France had got something out of the ensuing peace settlement. Venezia in Northern Italy had been ceded to Napoleon. Somehow it seemed rather like the jackal sneaking in after the lions have made the kill, and French national pride (felt mainly among the military) wasn’t appeased when Napoleon nobly handed the province over to the Italians.

  To make matters worse, the French venture into Mexico in support of an Emperor imposed on that country, Maximilian, had ended in disaster. Maximilian was shot by Mexican patriots, a piece of news that considerably damped the festivities of the Paris Exhibition. Maximilian’s widow came back to Paris to beg for help, got nothing, and made everyone feel horribly guilty by losing her reason.

  Last year France had been too interested in her own affairs to do much abroad. Napoleon had granted a parliament to the nation. ‘Ha!’ Clothilde had snorted when it was announced. ‘No good can come of handing over decisions to a rabble of men in a talking-shop! Kings should rule! … And even though this fool Napoleon is a usurper, he should at least keep a firm hand on the reins.’

  Nicole steered a course that kept her clear of politics, though her support was often canvassed. ‘No, m’sieu,’ she would say to a delegate sent to persuade her to speak one way or the other, ‘my aim for the nation is that I should make good wine.’ And who drinks it to celebrate a victory is no concern of mine, so long as he pays, was her inner conclusion.

  Nevertheless, the sense of some storm about to break was strong. Napoleon was old and ill and had lost his grip on his government. Clothilde often spoke in whispers of a proposed coup to bring back the Bourbons. Scandals were being discovered everywhere ‒ even the great Baron Haussman, who had given Paris the new boulevards that made her the envy of Europe, was forced to resign owing to accusations that he had fiddled the books.

  A cousin of the Emperor, Prince Pierre Bonaparte, shot a young Republican journalist for insolence and the resulting sensation rocked Paris. Radicals and revolutionaries pointed to it as yet one more act of arrogance by ‘royalty’. They were known to be at work in the cities, making speeches at working-men’s clubs. The First Workers’ International was organising street demonstrations of a kind that hadn’t been seen since Napoleon was elected First Consul.

  And yet, when Napoleon called a plebiscite, he received an overwhelming vote of support. Why then should Nicole and many like her, with friends among politicians and bankers, be so uneasy?

  Her anxieties made her poor company. Delphine, over-sensitive, felt her mother’s coolness was a punishment for bad behaviour.

  ‘Take me with you to Strasbourg?’ she begged Aunt Paulette when she began to pack for her homeward journey.

  ‘No, that’s impossible!’ Paulette was taken aback. The last thing needed was to throw Delphine into Robert’s company.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Delphine said, hurt by the immediate rejection. ‘I didn’t mean to be a nuisance. It’s just that I seem so much in Mama’s black books at the moment.’

  ‘Darling, I’d take you if I could,’ Paulette said, inventing wildly, ‘but the fact is I’ve got workmen coming as soon as I get back ‒ I’m having a conservatory built, and the house will be covered in dust until they finish.’

  There was no escape that way, it seemed. It was Grandmama who came to her rescue. Seeing Delphine looking very cast down as the carriage took Aunt Paulette away to Rheims for the train, Clothilde had pity on her.

  ‘My child, I know you feel yourself to be in disgrace. How would you like to come with me to Paris until things have settled down a little?’ She jumped at the offer. Grandmama was rather a dull old thing, and all her friends were of the same kind ‒ elderly ladies and gentlemen, fond of cards and afternoon snoozes. Yet her apartment was on one of the beautiful new boulevards. There was an active and elderly maid, always willing to accompany the mademoiselle on a shopping expedition. Even though the weather was bad, Paris in May was a happier prospect than staying at Tramont while Mama was still in an angry mood.

  Nicole was quite glad to see them go. In their absence she could throw herself into the ongoing work of the wine firm, finding some little consolation for the loss of her daughter. She wouldn’t need
to be conversational at meal times, nor listen with patience to her mother-in-law’s view on politics.

  There was one thing she didn’t know, however, which would have made her forbid the visit at once. In the obsessive talk that had gone on about Alys and her marriage, little of the usual family chit-chat had been exchanged between Nicole and Paulette.

  Paulette was planning to send Robert to Paris to receive some special tutorials from a private teacher, in order to ensure his success in his entrance examination for the École Centrale on which his heart was set.

  If Nicole had known that, nothing would have induced her to let her younger daughter set out with Grandmama.

  When Robert arrived, naturally he went at once to pay his respects to his relations in the Boulevard Malsherbes. And equally naturally, Delphine’s grandmother made him welcome. He was quite a favourite with her ‒ quiet, respectful, serious, suitable to introduce to her elderly friends and to hand round little petits fours and creamy hot chocolate.

  Besides, he was good company for the girl. Poor child, she had put herself very much in the wrong by allowing Alys to form that terrible misalliance.

  She watched from her sitting-room window as they set off for a stroll to the Tuileries Gardens in fleeting sunshine. These two, she mused, they seemed fond of one another. Young yet to be thinking of marriage, but if they came one day to the notion of making a match, it wouldn’t be a bad thing. Of course the boy had no money worth speaking of, and Nicole would probably prefer a suitor of somewhat higher standing …

  Yet marriages of love didn’t always turn out badly. Look at Nicole and Philippe. She had been very much against it, but it had worked well ‒ while it lasted. As to Nicole’s escapade with Jean-Baptiste, Clothilde knew very well that it could never have happened if Philippe had lived. No, Nicole had been bound to Philippe by pure affection and perhaps that wasn’t a bad basis for a marriage.

  These being her thoughts, she had no idea of preventing the two young people from seeing each other. And see each other they did.