The Champagne Girls

by Tessa Barclay

  ‘I am calm, Monsieur Lebel. Please, please tell me!’

  He stooped over her and took her hand. ‘Your father, as far as we know, is still at the Villa Tramont.’

  ‘Still at the villa! But the invasion ‒’

  ‘He said he would go down into the caves. You know how deep they go ‒ he stayed with a few of the men, I hear he said no damned German was going to scare him away from his vines in September.’

  ‘Oh …’ She almost smiled. She could almost hear Papa saying it. ‘You think he’s safe?’

  ‘We shall soon see. Once those swine stop firing their great guns ‒ and God knows they must give up some day just for a rest! ‒ your father will probably appear as cool as Marne water.’

  ‘My aunt and uncle? In Épernay?’

  Lebel clasped her hand tighter. ‘We only hear rumours. The people of Épernay were ordered out by our army ‒ an official proclamation, to clear the town so they could fight the German advance. Your people of course had to leave.’

  ‘Where? Do you know where?’

  ‘Well … it’s hard to say … a lot of the Epernais have gone back, now the tide has flowed well north of them. But your aunt and uncle haven’t shown up, nor your Cousin Madame de la Sebiq-Tramont, nor her little girl. At least, we haven’t heard they’ve come back. We’re all trying to keep track of what’s happened, the Red Cross are trying to make lists ‒ it’s been such a muddle, people uprooted, shoved here and there either by the Germans or our own army.’

  The door opened, the waitress appeared with a tray.

  ‘Now, drink some brandy,’ urged Lebel, pouring it with a trembling hand. ‘Stay indoors. The city’s on fire.’

  ‘Yes, what in God’s name is happening?’

  ‘The Germans bombarded the cathedral three days ago.’

  Gaby had been lifting the brandy glass to her lips with two hands. She paused now, stared at him. ‘Bombarded the cathedral?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘On purpose, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s impossible!’ She felt only incredulity. No one would deliberately … But Lebel was nodding his head with emphasis, his face distorted with grief and hate.

  ‘They began getting the range on the 14th. Of course we knew they’d train their guns on Rheims, we have army HQ officers here, and thank God for it! You can’t imagine, mademoiselle, what it was like while the Germans were passing through … Well, anyhow, they began to hit the cathedral three days ago. The first shell killed poor old Jacques.’

  ‘Who? Oh, not the little beggar who always sat on the steps?’

  ‘Yes, mademoiselle. In a way it seemed … what’s the word … symbolic. An innocent, helpless little man. The cathedral was full of wounded and prisoners ‒ French and German wounded, German prisoners. They, poor devils, hurried about trying to save the sacred statues and things … Useless, useless …’ He faltered into silence. ‘Drink your brandy, mademoiselle.’

  She obeyed, fascinated into obedience.

  ‘Abbe Thinot climbed up to the north tower and hung out a Red Cross flag. That was about two o’clock. The shelling didn’t stop. About three o’clock some wood on the north tower caught fire and so did the Red Cross flag. I saw it myself, mademoiselle ‒ it went brown and then burst into flames and fell away down the front of the tower in a little burst of sparks.’

  ‘Monsieur Lebel, that’s impossible. No one would fire on a Red Cross flag!’

  ‘I would have agreed with you until three days ago, mademoiselle. Well, the cathedral roof caught fire, and the flames spread downwards among the beams and to the pews, and there were hundreds of straw paliasses for the wounded, you know, and they all caught fire, and then there was a terrible sort of explosion because you see, the lead on the roof had melted, and it all deluged down in the nave, and … and …’

  Tears were running down his face. He mopped them with his knuckles. ‘Well, that was Sunday. The bombardment slackened off ‒ I suppose the artillery commander could see the cathedral roof had collapsed, or maybe the light wasn’t good enough because of course the smoke was causing great clouds … You know how the wind springs up here as evening comes on, mademoiselle ‒ well, the flames ran before it, and the houses around the cathedral caught fire ‒ well, Rheims is still burning.’

  By the end of the week the fires were under control. The shells of the burned houses sagged in the bright autumn sun. On the cathedral, not a piece of standing masonry but was scarred with molten lead. The great Rose Window was gone.

  Gaby decided to try to get to Calmady. She didn’t tell anyone because officialdom would have announced, ‘It’s forbidden!’ and friends would have cried, ‘It’s too dangerous!’ The military were still trying to assess where exactly lay the front between the two opposing armies. As to danger ‒ yes, it was dangerous, but a stubborn instinct was calling to Gaby that she must get home, must see her father, must, must find out what had happened to the precious vines.

  She put on the leather coat she called her travelling coat, originally a gift from Charles to protect her from the cold of his Benz touring car. In her pocket she carried a pair of secateurs of the kind used for trimming the vines and an electric torch powered by a heavy, clumsy dry-battery.

  She walked out of Rheims in the dawn light, past the burnt buildings, past the shell-holes in the square. She turned off into little lanes quite soon, partly to avoid being stopped but more so as to leave the main roads free for the trudging infantrymen.

  Four miles out of the city, she passed the wreckage of Loucumire then turned east down a long narrow lane between vine rows scarred by shrapnel. The big guns were firing. From time to time she plunged into shelter in the roadside bank as a whistling missile went by overhead.

  Presently she came to the spot to which she’d been heading. It looked like a passing point for two wagons in this narrow lane. Behind it was a bank of brambles and wild vines. She got out the secateurs, hacked a way through ‒ it took a long time, she began to sweat but couldn’t take off the coat because her arms would have been torn to pieces by the thorns.

  At length the undergrowth began to give way. She was on an incline, partly cobbled. The bank of brambles thinned to little clumps, then she was entering a tunnel. It sloped gently downwards. She walked in without hesitation, and only when the wall on her left began to turn did she switch on the electric torch.

  At length she came to a pair of heavy doors padlocked together across the tunnel. She felt for and found the big key in its niche in the wall. She unlocked the doors, put the key back in its niche, went through, closed them, found the duplicate key on the other side, relocked the padlock and left it dangling on its chain this side of the lock ‒ it could be pulled through if needed, through an aperture especially left for that purpose.

  Now she was in a great underground hall. It used to be called the Still Wines Shed, when the drays used to come down into the tunnel to be loaded with still champagne when it was at the height of its popularity. It had become disused because Tramont no longer made still champagne for sale to the public.

  She crossed the hall to a door in the far side. Once again she found the key and repeated the former process, though this time it was a single lock, not a padlock. She was now in a corridor carved through the chalk. She walked on, unperturbed by the faint scurrying sounds of little subterranean animals ‒ shrews or voles or perhaps even rats.

  When she reached the next door, she felt for a light switch once she had passed through it. But there was no electricity. She hadn’t expected it ‒ either the generator was wrecked or the petroleum to drive it had long since run out. It was no use attempting to light the gas brackets above her head in the wall ‒ the gas for the Tramont caves came from Rheims, and Rheims had no town gas at the moment due to enemy action.

  But there were always candles and small oil lamps in niches in the wall, together with matches in stainless steel boxes. She lit a lamp, leaving the heavy, unwieldy torch in its place.


  She walked on. She was becoming weary now, for it was cold down here and she had worked hard hacking her way through the brambles. She’d been on this trek now for three hours.

  There was a staircase to mount, about a mile of passageway to thread, a staircase to descend. Then she was among the carefully stacked champagne ‒ she stooped now and again to see the date on the labels. 1874, 1876, 1880 (a blessed year), 1900 with its special label to celebrate both a great vintage and a great wine …

  She passed through one cave after another. At last she was close to the outer cellars, so she must move with care. Who knew what was on the far side of the next opening?

  In what was called the ‘Farther Cellar’ she found signs of recent occupation ‒ a pair of shoes neatly left under a bench, a plate with a crust of cheese, a woman’s pocket comb. Then she came to an entrance where something crunched under foot. She looked down ‒ new cement, and at the side of the entrance clay bricks piled with a pickaxe alongside. She understood at once ‒ the villagers had come down and bricked themselves in, leaving one member of the party to smooth old clay plaster over the new work to hide it from any investigating Germans. This last man would then make the long journey round to some other opening into the caves, to come down and join his friends much as she had just done. Now they had ‘unbricked’ the aperture.

  She walked through. Once more her foot crunched on something, but she knew this sound ‒ broken glass. She raised her lamp high to look round.

  It was a charnel house for bottles. Not one remained whole unless it rolled empty away from her touch. The invaders had drunk all they could and then, forced to leave, had smashed all they could find. They didn’t intend the winemakers to have anything to sell when they came back.

  She smiled in grim triumph. Fools! Didn’t they know the cellar stretched for miles behind her, full of good wine?

  She extinguished the lamp and put it in a niche before beginning the climb up the long zig-zagging staircase to the entrance tunnel. The lifts, of course, couldn’t work without electricity.

  The light of the afternoon was bright and golden, causing her to blink. She looked around in some anxiety. Figures moved here and there in the distance, but nothing like the number there should have been on a day of grape picking.

  She hurried among the outbuildings to the porte-cochère of the house. Beyond, in the courtyard, two grey-haired men in peasant smocks were sweeping up broken glass with twig brooms. One of them limped aside to guide his fragments to a central pile.

  She gave a great cry of joy and flew to him across the shell-pocked cobbles. Next moment she was in his arms, crying, hugging him, demanding to know what he was doing with a broom in his hands. He for his part was asking why she hadn’t had the sense to stay in London.

  ‘Oh, Papa, Papa! It seems like another century when I last saw you!’

  ‘Let me look at you … My dear child, you look a wreck. Your coat is all torn ‒’

  ‘Well, I had to fight my way through the thorns at the Still Wine Shed.’

  ‘Oh, so that’s how you got here! My love, you took a big risk. The Germans have an observation post ‒’

  ‘Where are they? I knew they must have left when I saw you’d all dug yourselves out again.’

  ‘That was only yesterday. There’s been action over our heads for the last four days ‒ that was the German retreat. We went below the first time about three weeks ago, when the Germans made their big advance.’

  ‘Papa, why on earth are you wearing that ridiculous serge blouson?’ she broke in, standing back to survey him.

  ‘Well, you see, the Germans took all my clothes ‒’

  She thought she’d misheard him. ‘They did what? The Germans?’

  ‘I was wearing a suit when we took cover a few days ago and it got all caked with damp clay, so Yssibiac lent me a smock.’

  ‘Papa, you’re not serious. Took your clothes?’

  ‘Oh yes ‒ everything portable ‒ even the fresh-laundered caps and aprons of the maids.’

  She started towards the house, to see for herself the truth of this mad allegation. He tried to catch her arm. ‘No, daughter, don’t!’

  But she was running in through the open front door, suddenly avid to see her home again.

  And paused, aghast, in the hall.

  The place stank like a pig-sty, but it was men and not animals who had befouled it. The furnishings had been wrecked, someone had shot holes through the portrait of Old Madame which took pride of place over the staircase, the tapestry curtains had been dragged from their poles and where the pelmets had defied removal they’d been hacked with a bayonet. Every window was smashed in the drawing room. The turkey carpets had been carried off, and on the parquet floor empty or broken bottles lay about.

  The little walnut table where the five o’clock tea was served had been taken. So had all the lamps, and the great chandelier, and the mahogany chairs. And in the dining room, because the table had defied efforts to get it through the door, someone had leapt his horse upon it ‒ the weals and scratches of its shoes could be clearly seen.

  Robert caught up with her as she was about to go into the music room. ‘Don’t go any further,’ he said. ‘It’s too distressing.’

  ‘They must really hate us,’ she said in bewilderment, throwing out her hands to indicate the vandalism.

  ‘Oh, my dear ‒ it’s just that they were crazy drunk.’

  ‘Well, I hate them!’

  Her father frowned. ‘Well, don’t waste too much energy on that, because there’s plenty needs doing here.’

  ‘Oh ‒ yes, you’re right! I’ll just go up and change out of ‒’

  He drew her back, shaking her head. ‘No, don’t go up.’

  ‘You mean ‒ my room …’

  ‘There’s almost nothing there. All your clothes are gone. They’ve torn up some of your lace things and … and … Well, it’s better not to see.’

  She went slowly to the piano and was about to sit down on the piano stool when she became aware it was covered with a sticky red substance. She recoiled. ‘That’s not ‒’

  ‘Not blood,’ he said with grim amusement. ‘It’s preserved plums from the kitchen pantry ‒ they emptied about fifty bottles into the grand piano.’

  She fell against him, hiding her face on his shoulder, ‘Oh, Papa …!’

  After a few minutes he drew back. ‘I’ve got to get on, Gaby. The shelling may resume any minute, and then it’s dangerous to work out of doors.’

  ‘I suppose you’ll get some of the villagers to help clean up?’

  He shook his head. ‘Their own homes have been treated the same. Besides, when they can spare time and energy for anything else ‒ there’s the grapes. I’m not going to let them rot on the vines if I can help it.’

  She nodded in agreement. ‘Is Uncle Gavin helping you? Where is he?’

  He sighed, and she suddenly realised how drawn and worried he looked. ‘I’ve no idea, Gaby. When we first went down to shelter, Gavin said he had to get to Épernay ‒ he’d left Alys and Netta there, it was quite understandable. That was about three weeks ago. Of course, here at the villa we’ve been in the caves, so there’s been little chance of getting in touch ‒ but I can’t hear any word of them.’

  ‘You don’t think … You don’t think …?’

  ‘Of course not,’ he said with a false heartiness. ‘In any case, we’re likely to hear soon. There was a Red Cross official here earlier, asking what news we had of people, trying to collate information ‒’

  ‘Had he heard of Uncle Gavin and the others?’

  ‘No, but the whole situation is such a bedlam ‒ he says that if we go to Rheims in about three days, they’ll post lists of names and known whereabouts ‒ but you see, people are still on the move, trying to get back to their homes now that the Germans have retreated …’

  After a discussion Gaby decided to go back to Rheims to reclaim her valise from the hotel. Normally she wouldn’t have bothered, but now she
had nothing except what she stood up in, and who could tell whether it would be possible to buy new clothes if the Germans had looted the shops as they had the houses?

  Her father asked her to stay in Rheims until the Red Cross information notice was posted. She was unwilling, but he pointed out that by the time she got back it would be the following morning, so that she would only have to wait two more days.

  It made no difference, of course, whether it was night or day above ground as she travelled back through the tunnels. But she felt the weariness of night-time. She stopped to rest for an hour at the northern end of the caves before doing the walk to Rheims, and it was as she was trudging out into the wan morning light, still half asleep, that she was arrested.

  ‘Now then, young woman, who are you and where have you come from?’ It was a middle-aged soldier in a tin helmet and a rain-cape, pointing a rifle at her.

  ‘Oh! Oh, good morning, corporal. My name’s Gaby Tramont, and I came from down the road.’

  ‘No you didn’t, I had my glasses trained on that road not ten minutes since and there wasn’t a soul in sight.’

  ‘I came out of an underground passage.’

  ‘A spy!’

  ‘No, no, don’t be silly ‒ I’m Gaby Tramont, of the wine firm.’

  ‘You’re a rotten German spy, that’s what you are, my fine lady, and you’re going straight into the guardroom!’

  He marched her ahead of him, prodding her with the rifle. They soon came to a sentry post ‒ it hadn’t been there when she set out. She was taken to a ruined house on the outskirts of Loucumire, where a young officer listened to her explanation, examined her papers, looked willing to be convinced, but decided in the face of his sergeant’s scepticism to have her taken to Rheims.

  There the mistake was put right at once. ‘I’m sorry. Mademoiselle Tramont, but you understand we have to be careful.’

  ‘Of course, captain, I quite understand.’

  ‘You say you’d been to your home ‒ what is it name ‒ Calmady?’