The Wine Widow

by Tessa Barclay

  ‘Yes? And so?’

  ‘We-ell …’

  ‘Alys, I had very few sous when I was a girl. Being poor is no disgrace, especially when the first Monsieur Simeon in New York seems to have done so extremely well ‒’

  ‘But Mama … The name …’

  ‘What? Simeon? What of it?’

  ‘Don’t you think it’s Jewish?’

  ‘Certainly.’ Nicole frowned. ‘You aren’t going to say anything against the girl on that score, Alys? We may be Catholic by tradition but we’re not devout, don’t let’s pretend we are.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that, Mama. I meant … Well … it can be a social disadvantage.’

  Nicole sprang up and walked about the room, her black taffeta skirts rustling against the dark Brussels carpet. ‘My dear child, I should think the House of Tramont can survive any snobbishness it meets on that point. I won’t hear any more of this, Alys, do you understand me? Robert loves the girl ‒ you can see that in the very way he turns to greet her. And she loves him. He deserves his happiness after all that’s happened to him. So that’s the end of it.’

  ‘Very well, Mama,’ said Alys, surprised at the warmth of her mother’s manner. It was odd, sometimes ‒ Mama could be as strong in her affection towards Robert as towards her own children and grandchildren.

  The families had the usual conferences, although in the case of the Simeons it had to be done through the mother only. The father signalled his good will from New York and promised to come for the wedding. Nicole expected some slight problem over the religious ceremony but to her relief there was none ‒ it seemed that if the Simeons were of Jewish origin they had let that go in the three generations since they reached the New World. Laura, serious and attentive, took instruction in the Catholic faith and was received.

  The following year their first child, David, was born.

  As she bent over the cradle Nicole felt the tears welling. Who would have thought that her darling son would ever find this happiness? The joy of a son of his own, the blessing of a wife who adored him … She felt a surge of love not only for the child but for the mother who had brought Robert this gift. And when two years later little Gaby was born, the Fournier-Tramonts were, in their quiet way, the happiest family in the world.

  That happiness had never been marred. Even the troubles of the wine-making world couldn’t disturb it. Laura played no part in that, and if sometimes Robert was worried he kept it from her. On the whole life had taken a tranquil turn for the Tramonts, and their excitements were generally of a joyous kind.

  Not that young Gaby considered the wedding of her grandmother a joyous occasion. She was made to eat a light lunch and lie down for an hour before getting dressed for her part in the ceremony.

  ‘I’m too old to take a nap!’

  ‘No one too old for that,’ said Nanny in her thick Portuguese-French. Flori had been brought as children’s nurse by Alys and Gavin from the vineyards outside Lisbon where Gavin had been employed. Still, almost twenty years later, she’d never mastered the French language. She found it an advantage when dealing with recalcitrant children ‒ when they were stubborn she simply refused to understand.

  ‘Well, Grandmama’s too old to get married!’ insisted Gaby.

  ‘Never too old for that, either.’

  ‘Well, I think weddings are stupid, anyway! I’m never going to get married!’

  ‘Verdadeiro! No one will take you!’ But Flori knew it was untrue. The child was destined to be a beauty. She had the dreaming dark good looks of her mother, enlivened by a flash and spirit that couldn’t have come, in Flori’s opinion, from either mother or father. Sometimes it seemed to the nurse that there was a strong likeness to Madame de Tramont in Gaby ‒ but that could hardly be, since Nicole wasn’t the child’s grandparent. That brave, eager liveliness must come from some earlier forbear, it seemed.

  Alys Hopetown-Tramont tapped at her mother’s door at two-thirty in the afternoon. She found her, as she expected, wide awake and sitting at her escritoire looking over some documents. ‘Mama, I knew you wouldn’t be resting!’

  ‘My dear, time enough for “resting” when I no longer have the energy for work. Well, what is it?’

  ‘Nothing important. I just wanted to chat with you. This is such an important day!’

  Nicole nodded. She put her pen down, turning in her chair to face her daughter. ‘Does it upset you in any way? That I should be marrying again, so late in life?’

  ‘Mama!’ Alys flew to her, to drop a kiss on the widow’s cap of black and white lace. ‘Fifty-six isn’t so very “late”! And I told you at the outset, when it was first mentioned ‒ I’m only too happy that you and Gri-gri can have a life together at last.’

  Nicole smiled. ‘It will be strange. I’ve been The Widow Tramont so long …’

  ‘The Marchioness of Grassington ‒ it’s an elegant title.’

  ‘And that too is strange, Alys ‒ and ironic. You won’t remember, but Old Madame was so keen to have the title back ‒ the de Tramont title. She worked half of her life, trying to make your father the Marquis de Tramont. It does seem odd that I, the peasant girl, should be the one to bring nobility into our household!’

  Lord Grassington had explained to Nicole that of course the title could not be inherited by any of her family ‒ his son William would be the next Earl. Likewise his estates and his money, which were considerable, would be handed on to the heir. ‘I can only offer you myself, really, dearest,’ he’d said in an apologetic tone when he had set it all out for her.

  ‘Gerrard, you’re angling for a compliment! You know you yourself are all I ever wanted.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but it’s nice to hear you say it after all this time, Nicci.’

  They had been lovers for almost twenty years ‒ discreet, devoted. Gerrard’s wife must not be hurt, his political career must not be damaged by scandal. They had waited the obligatory year after Emma’s death.

  It was a greater change for Nicole than for Gerrard. She had agreed to spend at least half the year in England so that he could attend parliamentary sessions and look after his estates.

  It meant handing over control of the House of Tramont to Gavin and Robert. She did it gladly, reserving to herself those things she did best ‒ correspondence with shipping agents, visits to foreign markets. Six months in England and perhaps two more spent in travel she wouldn’t be seen nearly so much at Calmady.

  ‘But I’ll always be there for the vintage, my boys,’ she had assured them. ‘It’s not that I don’t trust you … It’s just that I could never be happy anywhere else in the world in September!’

  The plan was that the honeymoon should be spent first in a tour of those parts of Germany now considered romantic thanks to the works of Herr Wagner. Business could later be done with some rich importers in Berlin. In August Gerrard wished to be at home to open the grouse season on his moor. In September, they would come to Calmady to watch the first vintage produced under the aegis of the two young men.

  Alys could hardly envisage it. Ever since she came home in 1873, Mama had been the guiding spirit of their lives. What would it be like without her in their handsome house in the Avenue d’lena? What would it be like without her in the great mansion in Calmady? What, most of all, would it be like without her in the cellars, in the pressing-house, in the gleaming new laboratory where the tests were carried out on the new wine?

  Estelle knocked, to bring in a tea-tray laid out in the English style. They drank a cup, and then the maid reappeared. ‘Time to get dressed, Madame,’ she said, tears gleaming on her lashes.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘I’ll stay and help, Mama.’

  ‘No, dear, you go and put on your own finery. You know you and the others must go first to the Mairie.’

  Alys nodded, kissed and hugged her, went out.

  Nicole de Tramont turned to her maid. Today, for the first time in a quarter of a century, she was to wear colours. Today she would put off foreve
r the widow’s weeds that had become her trademark.

  It was a great change ‒ for herself, for the House of Tramont …

  Continuing reading The Champagne Girls by Tessa Barclay …

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  A Web of Dreams by Tessa Barclay

  The first book in the Corvill Family Saga

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