by Alec Waugh
“That is very interesting. In America of course we don’t know anything about wine yet. We’ve all been brought up under prohibition. It’s been highballs and cocktails. Now we’ve got repeal, you see what we won’t do with our New York State vineyards.”
She asked him question after question. She had the same vivid interest in everything that Barbara had. Her enthusiasm was contagious. It was three o’clock before they finished lunch.
“And now,” he said, “for a drive along the cliffs to Villefranche.”
He ordered a fiacre to make the drive last longer; though the sun was high there was a cool breeze blowing off the mountains. They put the hood of the cab back and arranged her suitcases as a footstool. He pointed out the villas along the way. She asked him where the Duke of Connaught’s villa was but he did not know. “Do you see though, that white building on Cap Ferrat, like a solid block among the pines, that’s the Villa Mauresque, where Maugham lives. When we get to Villefranche, I’ll show you Paul Morand’s house.”
But when eventually the cab turned down from the Corniche to the steep narrow hill leading to the harbour, she was far too excited over the narrow mysterious alleyways that opened out on either side of her, to bother about fashionable villas. “It’s marvellous. I’ve got to see every inch of it before it’s dark!” she said.
The moment she had booked a room, before she had even unpacked, she insisted on being taken on a personal tour of the village that, cut into the rock itself, rose high and sheer from the waterfront to the Corniche road. So eager was she to see it all, that she kept bounding ahead of him as they climbed the steep flagstoned road up to the church. She was resolved to let nothing miss her. She peered down the dark arched avenue of the Rue Obscure; she traversed the whole cobbled length of the Rue de Poilu, that narrow corridor of a street running parallel with the sea, down which only at midday and for an hour or so can the sun’s rays strike. She examined café after dim lit café, wondering which ones she would visit that evening after dinner. Below the last house along the waterfront by the blue Dubonnet sign he showed her the vast lobster reservoir.
“It’s heaven. Now for a swim,” she said.
Villefranche was in shadow as they walked in dressing-gowns along the waterfront. But the sun was shining still onto the humped promontory of Cap Ferrat and the strip of shingle below the railway line. After they had swum in the warm and waveless water, they sat out sunbathing, throwing pebbles into the sea. She had only been a few days on the coast. She was barely sunburnt yet. As she flung the pebbles, the skin of her shoulder-blades was vividly white against the dark blue of her bathing dress. He watched the play of muscle beneath the clinging damp material. Seeing her in a light summer frock, he had not realized how firmly built she was.
“I should think you were good at tennis,” he remarked.
She shrugged. “We can all play a bit, you know.”
A train went chunking above their heads to the station frontier, she waved her hand at the grimy third-class passengers. “That’s the train I came in. I thought how lovely it all looked. I vowed to come back, I never thought I should under such gay conditions.”
As they walked back to the hotel, the fishermen’s wives were busy gathering up the nets that they had left out to dry. The water had taken on the pale mauve-pink hue that had made Homer write of the wine-coloured sea. They sat in their dressing-gowns at a small, round, blue table on the terrace, watching the local girls with their dark hair falling loose over their shoulders, stroll slowly arm in arm along the harbour side, while the young fishermen in their peaked caps and sleeveless maillots lounged by the steps, their eyes following them. In the bar-room behind the terrace a gramophone was playing. It was jour de fête and Villefranche was preparing to go gay. Pensively, she sipped her cocktail.
“I think I shall come to London after all,” she said.
Ten days later she fulfilled her promise.
Her eyes opened with astonished interest as he took her over Duke and Renton’s oak-panelled premises.
“This doesn’t look in the least like an office.”
“In the old days London merchants lived above their shops. They made their shops like homes.”
“Is this where your own family used to live?”
“Until fifty years ago.”
“How long has the firm been going?”
“We celebrated our hundred and fiftieth anniversary ten years ago.”
“And I don’t even know the name of my mother’s grandmother.”
“I’m very certain that I don’t.”
They laughed together, as from the very start they had found it easy to.
“All the same,” she insisted, as seated in his own room she took a slow and thoughtful inventory of the dark panelling of the walls and the old hunting prints and the collection of antique and misshapen wine bottles, “I do, as an American, find it hard to realize that this is the kind of place where people work.”
“I can assure you I do quite a lot.”
“What do you do? See people who want to buy your wine?”
“I have to know something about the wine I’m selling them!”
“I suppose you have. By the way, have you any here?”
“I was just going to offer you a glass of sherry.”
“No, I don’t mean that, I mean the wine you sell. Do you stock it here?”
“Most of it’s by the docks. We’ve got a certain amount though in our cellars.”
“Could I see it please?”
She shivered as she came into the stretch of long dark caverns that ran under six houses and across two streets. “It’s as cold as one of those Cathedrals in Italy, and it looks so holy that I feel afraid to talk.”
It was indeed very much in the same way that one walks round a church, examining the stained glass and statues but feeling that it would be sacrilegious to comment on them, that she moved circumspectly from bin to bin. “Have you any port? I’ve read so much about Englishmen and their port.”
He led her to a section of curved bins. He had a bottle of vintage port decanted, then he poured her out a glass of tawny port. “That’ll show you the difference between a port that’s been matured in wood, and one that’s been matured in bottle.” She tasted them in alternate sips.
“They might be two different wines.”
“To all intents and purposes they are.”
Once again she sipped.
“I think I could get very interested in wine.”
She returned to the subject of wine at lunch.
“Very soon, when we’ve got our own vineyards working properly, the ‘America First’ type of American will be saying that they’re every bit as good as French and German wines. While the snob type that always says that everything from Europe’s better than anything we’ve got will be turning up its nose. Do you think our wines will be at all like your Dominion wines?”
“It’s not impossible.”
“Is there any Australian wine that is at all like the hock we’re drinking?”
They were drinking an undated Niersteiner.
“There’s a South African wine that is.”
He ordered a half-bottle of Paarl Amber.
“You can taste the two together.”
They were lunching at the Etoile Bleu, a long narrow room lined with mirrors.
“Don’t look now,” she said. “But there’s a woman three tables behind you that keeps staring at me.”
He dropped his napkin and picking it up saw Renée’s reflection in a mirror. It was his first intimation that she was back in London: she had left for a Norwegian holiday while he was in the South of France. He had not seen her for a month.
“That’s a compatriot of yours, Lady Burton.”
“A friend of yours?”
“A very good friend.”
“She was looking at me so inquisitively.”
“That’s only because she’s a bit short-sighted. I’ll introduce you as we go out.”
; At that point the two wines arrived.
“Taste the Paarl Amber first. Don’t sip it. Take a good mouthful. Now take a piece of bread and now the hock again. Well?”
Her forehead puckered. There was something very touching about her absorption in the subject.
“I like them both,” she said. “But they’re quite different.”
“Exactly, and the mistake the Dominion wine growers always make is trying to pass off their wine as another kind of French or German wine. They label their bottles Australian Burgundy or Australian Claret, and it’s just as silly as if the Italians started calling their white chianti Etruscan Hock. I hope you’ll use local names for your wines. Let them stand on their own feet, not call them Californian Claret.”
“Why don’t you make the Australians do that?”
“Have you ever tried to make an Australian do anything?”
“Then why don’t you start a company of your own? No, I’m not joking. An old firm like yours could easily. Buy up some vineyards, put in your own managers. You’ve your own customers here that you could sell your wine to, you don’t know what it might grow up into.”
A keen light came into her eyes as the plan fired her imagination.
“Think of all the fun you could have, going abroad for conferences,” she urged. “You might even be able to link up with the Californian growers, make a big international corporation of it.”
Yes, he thought, yes, it might be possible. Not challenging the French and German vineyards—they were hors concours in their own class, the particular product of soil and climate—but putting on the market fresh and clean wines whose exploitation would involve no heavy overheads in the way of storage, no long locking up of capital. Yes, it was an idea all right, and with that light in her eyes, that eagerness in her voice, the scheme grew before his eyes.
“I don’t see why we shouldn’t get my father in on it,” she said. “All his money goes in income tax, he says. He might just as well put some of it into a thing that’s fun.”
“I’ll put it down on the agenda for my next board meeting.”
Why not, after all, why not? He looked back at what his life had been since he came down from Oxford, a steady secure routine in a soundly-based business with profits that could only be casually affected by changes of Government and increase of duties. People could always afford luxuries. He looked back and he looked forward. What his life had been for the last sixteen years, it would be till the final curtain: no risk, no danger, a fixed assured progression. What a change to launch out on an adventure such as this; and to share it with someone young and eager, someone full of hope, someone from a country that saw life in terms of risk, of enterprise, of expansion.
Though she had told him at Villefranche that she had no friends in England, Eileen Burrows had during her last week in the South of France, collected a number of contacts for her London visit, so that when he asked her at the end of lunch, when he was to see her next, she was able to produce a diary that was impressively full of entries. She was booked till the following evening. “Fine, I’ll squire you to a cocktail party to show you how we run them; then we might go and dine,” he said.
“That’ll be swell.” She accepted eagerly rather than readily, but on his return from lunch next day, he found a telegram calling off the date. “Damn her,” he thought. “I suppose she’s run into something more amusing.” He was first angry then hurt, then jealous, then rather sad. He had not realized quite how much he had been looking forward to seeing her again. But he was resolved next morning when he rang her up not to reveal the extent of his disappointment. He was jocular and off-hand.
“I was sorry about last night,” he said.
“So was I, but I ran into an old friend who was going away to-day. It was our one chance of meeting. I felt sure that you’d understand.”
“Of course. I guessed it was that kind of thing. I hope he gave you an amusing time.”
“It wasn’t a ‘he’; it was a ‘she’.”
“If you’d told me that, I’d have found another man and we’d have made a foursome.”
“We wanted a girls’ gossip.”
“I see. Well, in that case, when do I see you next?”
“That’s just what I was wondering.”
“Is that little blue book of yours so full of entries?”
“No, it isn’t that exactly, it’s... well I never meant to come to England at all, I’ve been away longer than I meant. I was down yesterday at the American Express, there’s a ship sailing tomorrow that...”
“To-morrow!”
“Yes, I know it sounds very soon. But I’m booked on the French line. There won’t be another French ship sailing for a week, and if I don’t go by a French ship . . .”
She was talking quickly, breathlessly, in a way that convinced him that she was hiding something. He cut her short.
“Now please, one moment, what’s all this about?”
“What’s what about?”
“All this: what’s happened?”
“Nothing. What could have happened?”
“I don’t know. But something has. Have you fallen in love at sight?”
“Good heavens, no, not that.”
“It’s something though. What is it? You’re different. Something’s happening.”
“Well,” she paused, and he pictured how her forehead would be puckering. She was a straightforward person who hated subterfuge, who liked things in the open, who wasn’t good at lying.
“What is it? Please, what is it?”
There was a silence, a full half-minute’s silence, then in a doleful voice, “That woman you introduced me to. That Lady Burton. You remember she asked where I was staying. She rang me up. We had a long talk yesterday. So ... well... you see ...”
“I see.”
There was another pause; then in a voice that sounded on the brink of tears, “I’m sorry, Guy. I’m being silly. We had lovely times. I’ll never forget them, ever. I’ll always feel nicely about you, always. But I don’t want to see you again . . . not now . . . not after this. Good-bye.”
From the other end came the click of a replaced receiver.
Incredulously he stared at the metal instrument. That Renée should have done that. That Renée should have done what? What was it that she had said? What had she implied? Angrily he picked up the receiver. It was contrary to their routine but he did not care. She answered the call herself.
He broke into the subject straightaway.
“What on earth have you been saying about me to your compatriot?”
“So she’s told you, then?”
“She hasn’t, in so many words. But she’s refused to see me and she’s decided to sail to-morrow.”
“She has? Now that is interesting.”
“Interesting.” His voice rose to a note of indignant anger, but her voice retained its habitual, placid poise.
“Do you think that this is the kind of thing we should discuss over the telephone? Wouldn’t it be better if I were to come round this evening about six and have a drink with you?”
It was May but the day was cold. A fire had been laid in the grate and he set a light to it. The flames leapt high, flickering on the pale blue walls, on the dark blue damask curtains with their gold interwoven threads, on the white bookshelves with their many-coloured bindings, on the dull gilt framing of a Nevinson.
“How charming it all looks,” she said.
She was wearing the latest pillbox type of hat. She took offher coat and threw it on a chair. Under the coat was a dark blue crêpe de chine blouse with her initials embroidered in pale blue on the left-hand side. It was held at the neck by the same aquamarine brooch that she had worn on the first day that they had lunched together. She pulled a stool before the fire, took a cigarette out of her case and lighted it, sipped at the cocktail that he handed her, then put it on the floor beside her; leaning forward she stretched the palms of her hands towards the flames.
“So she’s going ba
ck to America to-morrow, that’s very interesting.” She half nodded her head as though she were talking to herself. The calm detachment in her voice goaded him.
“What did you say to her?”
“Darling, we said such a lot. We let our hair down properly. We had a real girls’ gossip.”
“But why, why, why?”
“I was inquisitive. I’ve the right to be that, haven’t I? I wondered what it was all about. I wondered how the land lay. I know how it does now, as regards her at least.”
“What did you say? You must have said the most fearful things.”
“On the contrary I said the nicest things. Certainly nothing that I, if I had been in her place, wouldn’t have been glad to hear.”
“Then why won’t she see me? Why’s she going back to America to-morrow?”
In Renée’s face as she looked up at him there was a smile part fond, part mocking; a smile that gave him the same feeling that he had had ten years back, the first time that they had lunched together, that though she was by several years his junior, her knowledge of the world was infinitely wider, infinitely wiser. Now as then he felt she was the older. Now as then she answered him obliquely.
“I said nothing that wasn’t flattering to you. I did you a good turn. I’ve made things easy for you. I’ve brought it all into the open. Shall I tell you what you should do? Go round to her hotel. Insist on seeing her. If she’s out, wait in the lounge till she comes back. Take her somewhere quiet where you can talk. Tell her how sorry you are that she should have heard this story from anyone but yourself; that you were waiting till you had got to know her better; there seemed no hurry. Tell her that this thing, this entanglement, call it what you like, was just an episode, that it had only gone on so long because you hadn’t met anyone that mattered more to you; but that now you’ve met her . . . well, you can find your own words for telling her the rest.”
She paused, the fond and mocking smile grew tender.
“Go round right away. If you talk to her in that strain, she won’t be in any mood for catching ships to-morrow. She won’t think any the worse of you. You’re in the later thirties. Do you think she imagines that you’ve been twiddling your thumbs for the last fifteen years? Do you think she’d say thank you for a man of over thirty whom no other woman had found a use for? I’ve sent your stock up twenty-five per cent. Go right round now. The best of luck to you.”