The Folly of French Kissing

by Carla McKay

  For the next few days Tim was alternately feted or reviled as he walked around Vevey. Pleased though he was with the big spread he had got in the paper and the money that it would earn him, he was now almost completely preoccupied with what he thought of as his ‘wine scoop’.

  Alan had introduced him to Philippe de Masson as promised, and the old man had been intrigued. Tonight, as soon as Tim knew that the coast was clear and Roland was safely in his bar, he was going to drive Alan and Philippe to see the wine stash in the hills. In the meantime, he had done a lot of research in the local library and had read up about way that wine had become a valued commodity during the war in occupied France and was fought over more fiercely by the French and Germans than almost anything else.

  More importantly, he had befriended a super-efficient librarian, a middle-aged scholar called Virginie, who knew all about the period he was interested in and was a keen local historian. She had provided him with a wealth of information about local conditions during the war, Resistance movements and which wine estates had suffered from German pillaging. Tim was sorely tempted to tell her what he had found but decided it should at least wait until Alan and Philippe had been to look. However, it occurred to him to ask Virginie if she knew anything about the incident in which Jean-Baptiste Chabot had been the only survivor in a Resistance train heist.

  ‘Only what the locals say about it,’ replied Virginie. ‘Although, I think there is some documentation… I seem to recall that there is the station master’s logbook which gives some details of what happened near St Pons, near here on the Beziers line. I know it was in 1940 – I’ll try to lay my hands on it for you. I think I can get it from the main library in Montpellier.’

  Virginie was as good as her word. Tim read the Henri Brillant’s logbook with increasing excitement. At first, Brillant detailed every small bureaucratic headache that he had to put up with: his salary was always late; his staff were unreliable; various packages kept going missing. But one day in June 1940 something catastrophic happened. He heard the news when he came into work that morning. A train had derailed in his section because a switch had been thrown the wrong way, and now the entire contents of that train were missing – the best wines of the region, crates and crates of it, destined for Germany. Brillant was terrified his job would be on the line. To the authorities he claimed he knew nothing about what could have happened.

  If that were so, Virginie told Tim, he would be the only one who didn’t. She fetched him a couple of books to look at by French war historians who affirmed that all along the railroad lines of France at that time, railway workers, farmers and winegrowers were systematically stripping railway cars full of goods bound for Germany. ‘It was almost a sport’, said one. ‘Our favourite amusement was cheating the Germans.’

  Sometimes the trains were derailed and the contents were ferried off to be hidden; sometimes people armed with jerry cans and rubber hoses would go to stations where barrels of wine were being loaded. When the guards were looking the other way (or were paid off), they would siphon all the wine out of the barrels which would then arrive empty, or full of water, at their destination, to the fury of the Germans. In this way, enormous quantities of wine was hidden from the Germans.

  Defying the Germans was widespread but it was also dangerous. Tim read of plenty of incidents where the Germans were tipped off about a future wine raid for example, sometimes by French collaborators, and the result would be that the participants would be shot. This was what appeared to have happened on the night Jean-Baptiste and his local Resistance group went to derail a wine train near St Pons. Someone had tipped off the authorities and Jean-Baptiste was the only one to have survived. ‘What happened to all the wine that night?’ Tim asked Virginie. ‘No-one knows,’ she said. ‘I assume if the Germans swooped before they had time to hide it, it would have ended up, as intended, in Germany.

  Or in a cave in the garrigue, thought Tim, beside himself with excitement. Already, he could see the headlines. It could just be the same batch of wine. It’s too much of a coincidence that the wine is hidden near where the de-railing took place. His heart thumping, he thanked Virginie for her help and walked out into the heat of the early evening. It was only when he got to his car that he realised the huge significance of what he thought he had discovered.

  If Roland, who was Jean-Baptiste’s son, knew where the wine was then it stood to reason that Jean-Baptiste had told him. In fact, Jean-Baptiste must have hidden it there after the Germans shot his friends. Which could only mean one thing – that Jean-Baptiste, far from being a Resistance hero, was the one who had tipped off the authorities about the raid. And there was usually only one reason for such betrayal – money. Supposing – and this was something he had read about – supposing Jean-Baptiste was paid with fine wine rather than money – with some of the wine that was destined for Germany. It would make sense. He couldn’t have hidden it in his own cellars; he couldn’t have risked hiding it in anyone else’s either. He had to hide it in the garrigue where he could access it in secret and sell it off little by little. And now his son was doing the same thing. My God, it was breathtaking. It just could have been like that, but how to prove it? He had to find out from which estates the wine had come that night and see if it matched the cases in the hideout. With luck, Alan’s friend, the grand old vigneron Philippe, would have more information. He counted the hours until they were due to meet.

  32

  Once she was safely on the plane back to London, a weight seemed to lift from Jean’s shoulders. She’d done it! She’d made the break with Lance. It made her feel positively light-headed. Why hadn’t she done this years ago? It was so obvious now. It wasn’t as though she couldn’t afford it financially. Jean’s parents were now very elderly and had downsized from a large house to a cottage in Sussex. The bulk of the considerable profit they made, they had put into a savings account for their daughter. Lance had known nothing of it and they had insisted that Jean keep it from him. ‘You never know when you’ll need it, darling,’ her mother had said ominously when Jean had protested. Of course, Jean thought now, they’d been right all along; they’d seen this day coming. Her mother, in particular, had never taken to Lance, and with good reason it seemed. She herself had been blinded by all the attention at first and then Sarah had come along and it hadn’t occurred to her to leave Lance then even though by the time Sarah was five, he had long since fallen out of love with her – and she with him. Perhaps that’s why he had always given Sarah a hard time – perhaps it was nothing to do with his own perverted lust. Well, whichever it was, she was damn well going to find out.

  When Sarah had disappeared, she’d been so confused and miserable that it had seemed easier to go along with Lance’s French plans and try to build a new life in different country. But once in France, puffed up by his new found status as a writer, Lance became even more impossible – and she more cowered than ever. But now, with all that she had learned lately, she had found new resolve. Of course, the first priority was to find Sarah and to make sure she was safe and well; once she had done that, she would make arrangements to come back to England and live on her own. She still had a small circle of friends in London with whom she could resume contact and in the meantime she could stay in the small flat that her parents had kept on in Kensington for when they came up to town to go to the theatre or the dentist. She would call them as soon as she arrived.

  The pilot interrupted her chain of thought to announce their descent. Once they were through the cloud, Jean could see that the sky was a familiar murky grey and small drops of rain lashed against the windows. Hooray, she thought firmly, I’m home.

  At about the time Jean landed in the drizzle at Stansted, Lance sat hunched at his computer sweating into his towelling robe cursing the sun. Wherever he moved it to, the screen always had a shaft a light on it, obscuring the text. Damn bloody Jean, he thought. She never fixed the blinds in this office properly. A large fly buzzed around the rim of his coffee cup before falli
ng in. Lance resisted the urge to hurl the mug against the wall; if Jean had been here, he’d have hurled it at her.

  Finally he retrieved the document he wanted and printed off several copies. Then he started to compose a letter to Gerald Thornton. When that was done, he attached one of the copies of the document and folded them both into an envelope. He would post it this afternoon. Leaning back in his chair, he felt a stab of satisfaction. That would shaft any romantic plans that Miss Judith Hay might be harbouring, he thought.

  Once in her parents’ small mansion flat off Kensington High Street, Jean’s first and immediate need was to sleep. When she awoke, unsure where she was late in the afternoon, she decided to start her research. Clearly, Sarah’s old friend Louise was the first point of contact. Naturally, she had consulted Louise when Sarah first ran away, but at that time Sarah was moving around between squats and not keeping anybody informed as to her whereabouts or her intentions. Four years had passed since then and Jean reckoned there was just an outside chance that Sarah had settled somewhere and rekindled her childhood friendship with Louise. She hadn’t been especially friendly with Louise’s parents but the girls had been in the same form at school and she vaguely remembered dropping Sarah off occasionally at a house in Chiswick – or was it Barnes? Surely, if they were still in London, they would be in the phone book.

  Mathieson had an irritating number of entries but Jean narrowed it down to three likely ones, all of whom lived in west London. The second number she tried yielded a result of sorts. The woman who answered told her that she was renting the Mathiesons’ house whilst they were in the Far East. John Mathieson was evidently a banker who was doing a stint in Singapore. She had a forwarding address for them, but no number, and no, sorry, she didn’t know if they had a daughter or not.

  Deflated but not defeated, Jean made herself a cup of tea and tried to think of other avenues to explore. Maddeningly, she had lost touch with other parents of Sarah’s old friends. On the other hand, there was always the school… quickly she reached once again for the telephone directory.

  The school office acknowledged that both Sarah and Louise were past pupils but had no present knowledge of them. The Old Girls’ Society would only be able to help only if the girls themselves had kept in touch. A quick phone call later confirmed that they had not. However, the school secretary, possibly egged on to helpfulness by the note of desperation she detected in Jean’s voice, suggested that she should try the internet. Jean’s heart sank. Like most middle-aged women who didn’t work and saw no need to keep in constant communication with friends by email, Jean’s knowledge of the internet was limited.

  ‘What should I look up?’ she asked. ‘Try ‘Facebook’ was the response. ‘If you don’t have an internet connection yourself, go to an internet café and ask someone there to help you.’

  It was a start, Jean thought. It was probably too late to do anything useful now but tomorrow she would go and find one of these café things and try what the woman had suggested. She knew full well that Sarah would not have bothered with anything like ‘Friends Reunited’ but it was just possible that Lousie had. She would not give up. A girl of 24 cannot just disappear, however much she’d like to. Somebody would know where she was, but who was somebody, and how was Jean to find him or her?

  Crying softly now, she cursed herself for giving up before, for losing precious time, for numbly following Lance to France like some dumb donkey and just letting go of her daughter. What a fool she had been! She blew her nose violently and wiped her eyes. Well, she deserved to suffer like this. God only knows what Sarah had been through. This time, she was not going to give up. She would place adverts in papers, she would stand in the street with a placard, she would badger the police until they let her make a television appeal. Oh, there was nothing she wouldn’t do now.

  33

  Usually, Wuthering Heights was closed on a Monday since it was open all day Saturday but this particular Monday Gerald had set aside for his least favourite task – stock-taking, a dreary business if you’re doing well, but a totally dismal one if not.

  It was only 9am but already the heat was fierce. At least the relative cool of his office tucked away in an alcove in the basement would offer some respite. But as he turned the corner into his alleyway, his heart sank still further. The local graffiti artiste had been busy it seemed, and the wooden door of the shop was once again sprayed with unintelligible obscenities in silver paint. Gerald had only scrubbed it the week before and the thought of repeating the routine so soon in the heat made him want to weep. Fucking little shit, he thought furiously. You’d think he’d give it a break on a Sunday. If only I could get hold of him I’d hammer him to death – or Ged would. Really, there were days now – plenty of days – when he thought he’d pack it all up and creep back to Britain with his tail between his legs.

  Moving to France had served its purpose for him these last ten years. He’d done his mourning for his wife here and the pain had finally receded. He’d realised his long-held ambition of running a bookshop (and found that most of the time it was just as mundane and as much hard work as selling anything – harder, in fact, since books were a commodity many people could do without) and he’d made a life of sorts for himself out here and learned to love many aspects of it. He was, however, he now acknowledged to himself, still rather lonely. He had made one or two good friends through the bookshop and had a couple of desultory affairs which had fizzled out, but that was the extent of it.

  Perhaps it was time to call it a day… on the other hand, he had to admit, now that he came to think of it, that just lately he’d been feeling more positive about life. He was too much of an old hand at analysing his own feelings not to know that this new source of contentment was linked with his unsought and unexpected friendship with Judith Hay. They hadn’t seen much of each other but already he felt naturally at ease with her. At first she interested him because of her quick intelligence and lack of pretension or social airs. Now, he realised, he had begun to be physically attracted to her as well. She was not conventionally beautiful but she had a sort of nervous grace about her that was very appealing. He also actually liked the fact that she was so buttoned up and unforthcoming about herself. It would be a challenge, he felt, to tease some details of her life out of her. She was curiously reluctant to talk of her previous existence but he had the impression she had been badly hurt – perhaps that was why she was here in France.

  She wouldn’t be the first to think that you could offload your baggage just by moving away; sadly, most people took their baggage with them as they learned to their cost. He felt a sudden stab of protectiveness and affection for her. Well, he would see her soon – they had arranged to have dinner out midweek at a new restaurant in the old quarter. He was looking forward to it.

  It wasn’t until later in the day that Gerald bothered to pick up the post that was waiting for him. It had looked like the usual pile of bills but now, as he stopped work to make himself a cup of tea, he could see that there was a white envelope amongst the buff ones. Inside were two sheets of plain paper. On one, computer typed, he read: ‘Thought you might like to know a little more about your girlfriend.’ No signature. On the other was a computer printout of a newspaper story about a school in England. Before he read on, Gerald looked at the envelope. That too held no clues. His address had been typed and the stamp obliterated the postmark. Mystified he read on. When he had finished, he sat down heavily and put his head in his hands.

  In August, the sun burns the garrigue to dusty straw and there is the ever-present threat of forest fires which rage each year across the south of France. When Tim had arrived in the Languedoc, despite the heat, the scrubland had been vibrant with broom and gorse and if you went walking early in the morning or at dusk, as he did most days, the mixed scents of herbs and pine were sharp and sweet. Now, as he and Alan and Philippe de Masson walked along the cart track, the overwhelming scent was of dry lavender with just the occasional whiff of fennel, anise or wi
ld thyme carried on the hot wind.

  Piggy, meantime, had other scents on her mind as she zig-zagged back and forwards tracking other animals by their territorial markers.

  They had left the car half a mile away and the heat was getting to the old man. He stopped and mopped his brow with a silk handkerchief. ‘Oof,’ he remarked. ‘This summer has been the worst. I fear we shall have a bad autumn too. Generally after such heat, we have dramatic storms which can flood the vineyards – and the villages too.’ For a nano-second, Tim thought wistfully of England and the temperate climate there. Only this morning on the telephone his mother had complained that it was already quite chilly at night. When Tim told her that the temperature hadn’t dropped much below 35 degrees in the south of France for over two months – and that it remained almost as hot at night – she sounded alarmed. ‘Don’t forget to put on lots of sun cream,’ she reminded him. ‘Even here, it says on the news you should put it on if you’re out much during the day. Freya knows someone who got skin cancer after a holiday in Cornwall.’ Tim had to smile. Sunscreen and hats in summer; haliborange and vests in winter; for his mother he would remain ossified at about twelve years old.

  Now, sunscreen was the last thing on his mind. Like a terrier sighting a rat he was, he felt, within sight of his quarry and as nervous as hell. If his theory about Roland was right then he was on to a really big story. A journalist first and foremost, he hadn’t got as far as thinking about the possible consequences for the community.

  They rounded a corner giving splendid views over the valley and forked off down an even smaller track which led to the cave. Piggy forged ahead, knowing where they were headed, followed by Tim and Philippe now leaning heavily on Alan’s arm. Tim hoped the old man wasn’t going to expire just as they got there. He bent down and cleared the entrance to the cave and the three of them squeezed in. Once inside, it opened out and when their eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, they could make out dozens of cases of wine, some covered in dirt and cobwebs, some recently opened up. Alan whistled: ‘My God’ he breathed.