“Marie the bride? I didn’t know she was a friend of yours.”
“She helped me out a bit in the summer when things got hectic, so I’ve known about this romance from the beginning. And that meant I had to help dress the bride, so I sent Joe my apologies.”
“Too bad you’ll have to miss the pressing of the grapes this evening, too. Now I have to run, but there’s one thing I wanted to ask you. There’s a Canadian girl working at Hubert’s cave and she’s looking for a place to rent. I thought one of your gîtes might be free. Let me know, or call her at the cave; her name’s Jacqueline. See you soon, I hope.” He turned to run up the stairs and arrived at the council chamber just as Cresseil was limping slowly from the elevator. The mayor, wearing his tricolor sash and his Légion d’Honneur button in his lapel, came forward to greet them.
“We need another witness, Bruno,” the mayor began. “Alphonse won’t do. He’s listed as next of kin.”
“Does it have to be a French citizen?”
“No; anyone with an address in the department will do.”
Bruno nodded, went back down the stairs to find Pamela and hastily explained why her presence was needed as he took her by the hand to steer her upstairs. He said it would take only a few minutes, so it wouldn’t interfere with the wedding. His request seemed to fluster her, but she quickly recovered her poise and politely shook hands with everyone in the group. She knew Alphonse and Max from the market, but not Cresseil.
“François Pontillon Cresseil,” the mayor began once they were all gathered in his office, “do you formally adopt this young man present, Maximilien Alphonse Vannes, as your son and inheritor, taking upon yourself all paternal responsibilities under the code civil of the Republic?”
“I do, freely and willingly, as a citizen of the Republic,” said the old man. Bruno noticed the pride in Cresseil’s eyes as he watched Max make the ritual replies, and pondered again his suspicions about the fire. Max had shown no sign of hatred for the genetic crops at the demonstration; he had simply been there taking care of Jacqueline. Perhaps Bruno’s suspicions were misplaced. But if he was right, this touching scene was just the prelude to Max’s arrest and Cresseil’s heartbreak.
“Then please come forward and sign in turn,” said the mayor, “and then Bruno and you, madame, in the space below for the witnesses.”
Alphonse took photos of the signing, and the mayor brought out a bottle of his own vin de noix and began filling the small glasses that stood waiting on a tray.
“We still have a few moments before the marriage,” the mayor said. “In the name of the commune of Saint-Denis and of the Republic, let me be the first to acknowledge this new family. The adoption will not, of course, be wholly legal until it is ratified and registered by the court in Sarlat, a formality that should be completed next week.”
Max kissed Cresseil on both cheeks, and then he embraced Alphonse, Bruno and Pamela, who congratulated everyone and declared it was the most charming adoption she had ever attended.
“I might as well stay up here since I think I hear the wedding guests on the stairs,” Pamela said. “But, Max, I shall be most disappointed if this means you stop selling the best goat cheese in the market. I’m sure some of my guests come and stay only for your cheeses.”
“I soon hope to be selling your guests wine as well, madame,” Max said. “I have an idea that might interest you and other businesses in the area. With my computer I can print special customized labels for your guesthouse, your own private cuvée, and I can offer you a very good price for the new vintage of Domaine Cresseil, a completely bio-organic wine.”
“Sounds interesting. I’ll come round for a tasting. And now forgive me, I have a wedding to attend. Bruno, tell the girl to call me. I’m sure we can work something out.”
The adoption party shuffled out, squeezing past the wedding guests in the hall. Bruno felt a tug on his arm. The mayor hauled him back into his office and closed the door.
“Is the boy serious about making Cresseil’s land into a vineyard, into a business?”
“It looks that way, but he’s heading back to school soon. I don’t see how he can do anything until he finishes his studies.”
“I’m tempted to hold off sending those adoption papers to the court at Sarlat for the moment,” the mayor said. “I’m not going to let the fancies of an old man and a youngster who thinks he’s a vigneron block the best chance this commune has for fifty new jobs.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Bruno said carefully. “Cresseil is one of us, and so’s Max. Our obligation is to them, not to Bondino, and his investment isn’t even certain yet. We said we’d file the finalized adoption papers by the end of next week. If there’s much delay Alphonse could be asking you some pointed questions, and if it turns out we sat on them, it won’t look good. It will certainly make it harder to get Max and Cresseil to see things our way about selling the land to Bondino.”
The mayor squeezed his lips together in irritation. Then he took a deep breath. “Putain. You’re right. But so am I, and you know it. Tiens, I’ve got this wedding. I won’t bury the papers. I’ll just delay them a bit, buy some time for you to sound out Cresseil and the boy. If we can’t get those land sales guaranteed, this whole project collapses. And then some people will get really upset, including some council members, I’m sure.”
“But the council members don’t know about this yet,” Bruno objected.
“Bondino knows how the game is played. The best pressure he can apply is to get the rumor going that I’m blocking an opportunity that’s going to raise land values for a lot of people. That’s what I’d do in his place, and he’s shrewd enough to know that. We don’t have much time. Let’s meet tomorrow, with Xavier, and talk all this through.”
Disturbed by this first real breach with the mayor, someone who had been his patron for a decade, Bruno walked heavily down the stairs and into the sudden sunlight. But his mood was transformed and his face broke into a wide smile when he saw, leaning against the door of his official van, the familiar slim figure of Isabelle, watching the entrance to the mairie for him to emerge. As she saw him, she brandished a shopping bag.
“Steak, salad, cheese and a bottle of Saint-Emilion,” she said as he stretched out his arms to hug her. “Just like the first time. And I also have a bone for Gigi.”
And then she was in his arms, easily fitting the length of him as she always had, tall enough to put her cheek against his and to whisper in his ear, “I’ve missed you more than I thought possible.”
How could he have anguished over this moment? He kissed her and felt all his doubts dissolve, all his questions about how they would meet and what they would say and how reserved she might be.
“Bruno,” she said. “How fast can your little van get us back to your place?”
18
The party was still under way at Joe’s place when Bruno and Isabelle arrived that evening. Their hair was still damp from the shower, their desire for each other slaked but hardly sated. Joe’s favorite 1930s bal musette music was blaring from the speakers, and a throng of bare-legged people stood around the outbuildings at the bottom of the yard. Around them scampered the hens from Joe’s chicken coop, pecking at the ground between the feet of the revelers and fluttering fussily out of the path of the humans.
Montsouris sat with Karim and his wife, Rashida, from the roadside café at the entrance to Saint-Denis, tickling their new baby under the chin. In swimming trunks and a T-shirt, and with a big smile on his face as he played with Karim’s new son, Montsouris could not have looked less like the fiery trade union militant he liked to play at the council table. Stéphane, his vast thighs like tree trunks, had one arm fondly around his wife, and his other hand gripped a large tumbler of wine. Brosseil, the town notary, was locked in conversation with Gérard, owner of the local campgrounds, his white and spindly legs looking as if it was their first time in the open air this year. Rollo, headmaster of the local collège, was pouring more
wine.
A cheer went up as Bruno and Isabelle joined them, hand in hand, a languid, almost dreamy look on their faces that signaled the way they had spent the afternoon and raised knowing smiles from his friends. Bruno bent down to take off his boots, socks and trousers and took his place in line at the tap to sluice off his legs. Like most of the men coming for this annual ceremony of treading Joe’s grapes, he wore swimming trunks beneath his pants, and with his T-shirt he was dressed as if for a game of tennis. But the familiar sight of his bare legs sent the women into bursts of bawdy laughter.
“Ooh, there’s a hairy one,” hooted Monique, who worked at the town swimming pool and spent her life with half-naked men, and she pirouetted before a bunch of giggling friends, her skirts tucked up into her waistband to reveal her tanned and brawny legs.
“That’s why he’s Bruno, Bruno the hairy bear,” called out Montsouris’s wife, arm in arm with Josette from the flower shop. “You two just control yourselves in there—if you’ve got any energy left, that is.”
Isabelle, slipping off her shoes and sliding her jeans down her shapely legs to reveal the sleek swimsuit she had donned in Bruno’s bedroom, was laughing openly as she joined Bruno at the faucet. “These women are terrific,” she said, putting her arm on his shoulder and turning to watch them.
There was something about the day’s events that turned the usually staid women of Saint-Denis into so many jolly wenches, hooting with derision at the legs of each other’s husbands, making saucy jokes about the young men and flaunting their bare thighs as they paraded up and down, singing along to Joe’s old songs after their turn in the vat. It was the kind of evening that made Bruno aware that he was a bachelor, for the husbands seemed entirely pleased with the liveliness and the raucous sisterhood of their wives, as if the woman they knew in private was treating herself to a rare public appearance. The single men by contrast seemed startled, even a little shy, at seeing the worthy women they knew from the shops and markets, weddings and funerals acting so out of character.
Bruno relished this event each year. If the men of Saint-Denis could let their hair down at the rugby club and the hunting dinners, their womenfolk deserved a similar license. Bruno smiled to himself, remembering Cresseil’s remark about the number of children born nine months after the harvest. Probably the reason the married men were all grinning at their wives’ performance was that they took the bawdy mood home with them. He exchanged glances with Isabelle, twining his fingers into hers. “We won’t stay long,” he murmured.
“Come on out of that vat, Jacquot,” Josette shouted to her husband through the doorway. “I don’t want you tiring yourself out in there. Save something for later.” The women around her collapsed into happy hysterics. Scenes like this had probably gone on in these parts for centuries, thought Bruno, soon distracted by a number of slaps on his rump as he squeezed through the women to take his place in the vat after Jacquot.
The sweet scent of the grape juice was heady, somehow made more intense by the large electric fan that Joe had whirring at the edge of the vat. There was a sound of youthful laughter from the vat, and Joe, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, played the hose over Bruno’s and Isabelle’s legs as they waited.
Gingerly, because the top step was slippery, Bruno eased himself into the giant vat, nodding at Joe’s pretty great-niece Bernadine as she made way for Isabelle. He saw that Bondino had managed to join Jacqueline. The girl seemed delighted in his company, her arm and his intertwined as they braced on the wooden rim and their legs trod rhythmically in the purple foam. They were talking fast in English, but he noticed that Bondino’s eyes were riveted on Jacqueline’s face. Max’s girl seemed to have made a new conquest.
Beneath Bruno’s trailing fingers, the purple froth still felt greasy rather than clear, the old telltale sign for the vignerons to know when the pressing was done. He felt around with a foot, looking for a whole bunch for the tactile pleasure of treading on it and feeling it burst through his toes before starting the steady tramping motion that was the approved style. Once the novelty wore off, it reminded him of marching in the army.
Bruno had done this for years and knew the ritual, and Isabelle quickly followed his lead, holding the rim with one hand as they faced each other and moved back and forth in unison, then turned to stand sideways with both hands on the rim. He beamed at her, admiring her readiness to try anything. Isabelle grinned back at him, and then looked down to see the grape juice splashing her tanned thighs.
“They’ll never believe this in Paris,” she murmured, and leaned forward to kiss him. “I think you set this up for my return; back to the real France. Back to my very real Bruno.”
Bruno laughed aloud at the incongruity of it, exchanging kisses and the sweet words of lovers as they tramped up and down like a pair of old soldiers amid the rich and heady scent of the grapes. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew that this wondrous moment would not last, that she would go back to Paris and he would stay. But it didn’t matter. She was here, and her eyes were huge as they drank him in and her hand came up to touch his face, careless of the other couple.
“You done up there?” called Joe from the bottom of the steps. “You taught them what to do, Bruno?”
It was time to leave the vat, but Bondino and Jacqueline kept staring at each other, glued to their respective spots.
“Time to move on, Bondino,” Bruno said, giving him a friendly push toward the ladder. “Let someone else have a go.”
Bruno felt the spume as Joe clambered into his vat. The consistency had changed; the slipperiness had gone and the pulp was thickening. There was no sense of anything but liquid underfoot. Joe held on to the rim with both hands, probing with a foot, and nodded.
“That’ll do. Out you get, Bruno, and you too, Canada. We’ll leave her overnight, see how the cap is in the morning.”
“That’s it?” asked Jacqueline, following Isabelle down the steps to where Bondino waited for her. She flashed the American a quick smile. “You don’t run off the first pressing, you just leave it all in together overnight?”
“Always have, and I’m not changing my style now,” said Joe. “Can you take care of the hose, rinse us off as we come down the steps, and pass us one of those towels?”
“Do you feel a little light-headed?” Joe asked when they were all down and rinsed off. “That’s the carbon dioxide coming out as the fermentation starts. That’s why I have the fan going.”
“Do you add any yeast?” Jacqueline asked.
“There are enough yeast spores in the walls of this barn to ferment half of all the wine in the Bordeaux. So we just leave the yeast to Mother Nature, as our ancestors have for hundreds of years. Come on, I want you to try last year’s wine, get a sense of just what you’ve been helping to make. Bring us a couple of those glasses from the table there.”
He pulled a bottle with no label from a horizontal rack and opened it with an elderly corkscrew with a handle of olive wood. He splashed some of the wine into a glass for each of them and raised his glass.
“To the new vintage,” he declaimed, and then emptied his glass in a single gulp, like a Russian downing vodka.
Jacqueline was staring at the sludgy liquid in her glass. Gingerly, she put her nose close and took a very small sniff. Her eyes widened. She took a sip, swirling it around in her mouth and then spitting it out as if she was at a wine tasting. Then, noticing Joe’s horrified glance, she took a small sip, rolled it around in her mouth and swallowed. Bondino was staring at his own glass in disbelief, and Isabelle discreetly placed hers back on top of a barrel.
“So what do you think of my wine, Mademoiselle Canada?” Joe asked.
“Very authentic. Very true to its terroir, and to its maker.”
“You’re too kind. Unlike your friend Bruno here, you are clearly a connoisseur, who knows what she’s drinking. I’ll save you some bottles.”
Bruno tried to suppress his chuckle. Joe was no fool, and he knew what kind of rough old wine he tu
rned out, but he was amusing himself by seeing if he could tease a polite young woman into praising his pinard, and talking herself into having to drink more of it.
“Oh, but I couldn’t possibly. I’ve heard how much everyone in town depends on your wine for the vin de noix, and I’d hate to rob them of your specialty.” The girl had passed that test nicely.
“Let’s get back to the party,” said Bruno. “It’s time for the dancing.”
“Not too long,” said Isabelle, fastening the belt of her jeans.
19
Bruno awoke slowly, only dimly aware of Isabelle’s arm across his chest and his deep sense of contentment at the ease of their reunion and the teasingly delayed pleasures of the night. He turned his head to study her. She was deeply asleep, her lips slightly parted, the calmness of her face all the more striking after the passion of the night. How long would she stay this time? It was a question they had carefully avoided the previous day.
She wanted him to change his job, change his life and join her in Paris. But the work of a big city policeman held no attraction for Bruno. In his heart, he wanted to wake up with Isabelle for all the mornings that stretched ahead. In his mind, he suspected the decision had already been made when she transferred from the Police Nationale in Périgueux to the high-powered job on the minister’s staff. What lay ahead of them was snatched weekends interrupting their separate lives, into which other lovers would doubtless come. That was not a future that appealed to him, not when compared with that vague assumption that always lay at the back of his mind that someday there would be a wife in this house he had built, and children that he could teach to hunt and play tennis and watch grow and explore his woods in this beautiful heartland of France. And he could never see Isabelle in that misty mental image.
Bruno sighed gently. What would be, would be. He lay back with his hands clasped behind his neck and let his thoughts wander. No matter how long Isabelle stayed, eventually she would head back to Paris or dart away on some new mission.
Bruno 02 - The Dark Vineyard Page 11