My Grape Escape

by Laura Bradbury

  “Bien sûr! How do you think people kept their perishable food cold before electricity? See how it is so deep? It can hold a lot of cheese.”

  I stuck my head back in again. It was amazingly cool within the slabs of stone, even on a scorching summer day such as this. And with that, Franck and I exchanged glances. Saying non to Mr. Partridge and now falling in love with another house. Maybe I was fickle after all.

  About half an hour later, after touring the bedrooms, the attic and the cellars, we took our leave of Le Maître.

  “What did you think?” he tried to feel us out as he opened his car door.

  Franck pursed his lips disdainfully. “It would need a lot of work.”

  Le Maître squinted back toward the peeling white shutters and sighed. “Oui, but it could have much charm. The owners have had it listed with me for quite some time, but now they are talking of bringing in the real estate agents.” He spat out these last three words as if they were poison.

  A few years ago real estate agents were all but unheard of in France. Notaries, and only notaries, handled all real estate transactions; people sold all their vines and houses and pig sheds through the very same notaries that their family had been using for centuries. During the past few years though real estate agents had arrived on the scene and multiplied like rabbits. They were viewed by many as just another symptom of the “Americanisation” of France. Particularly, bien sûr, by the notaries.

  His words had their desired effect, nevertheless. The owners were talking about listing the house? That meant that it could be splashed over the real estate ads in a matter of days. That meant that we could have a second house stolen out from under our noses. But wait…no…we didn’t want this house. This was all happening too late. The timing was all wrong. We were leaving in five days.

  I opened my mouth to say something, but Franck must have read my expression. He stilled my words with the briefest touch on the nape of my neck and said to Maître Lefebvre, “We’ll get back to you.”

  Back at Franck’s house we sat under the wisteria and contemplated our options over a kir. Franck leaned back on his chair against the warm stone of his parents’ barn. We each waited for the other to speak first.

  As much as the Marey property was grandiose and majestic, the house across from the church in Magny was humble. It consisted of the veranda, the entranceway, the tiny under-the-stairs kitchen, the living room with the stone fireplace and the cheese fridge, a bathroom, a separate WC, or “water closet” (as in most French houses) and two bedrooms with crooked walls and lovely oak floors. There was also the attic that we visited by taking the crooked set of wooden stairs. I wasn’t brave enough to step out on to the dodgy looking floor boards but from the top of the stairs I could make out the gorgeous oak beams in the attic gloom, complete with huge oak pegs that had been used instead of nails to stick them all together. If we ever redid that space, it could be spectacular.

  “I think it could work,” I said, finally taking the plunge.

  Franck’s chair clunked forward on the pea gravel. “Vraiment?”

  I chewed my lip. “It’s a lot smaller than the property in Marey, but maybe that’s a good thing. It means less money, less risk…we’ll be able to keep things more flexible.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “Pourquoi pas?”

  Chapter 10

  The next morning, breakfast wasn’t even cleared before we whipped out a pad of paper and a calculator. This time, we wouldn’t be involving any additional notaries besides our own maître who, as representative of both the buyer and seller, had every motivation to get the deal done.

  “What was the asking price again?’ I asked. I had never been able to wrap my mind around math in the same way I had say, Shakespeare. Francs had always flustered me. They had to be divided by a figure with five digits after the decimal point to get the equivalent amount in dollars.

  Mémé, who had been kneading bread, leaned over Franck’s shoulder and read the confused and poorly photocopied property information sheet that Le Maître had handed to us as an afterthought after showing us the house in Magny.

  “I can’t even make out the number that’s written here,” Franck said.

  Mémé brushed the dusting of flour off her forearm. “Twenty-seven million francs.”

  Franck smiled up at her. “Ah. Merci.” It took a few moments for Franck and Mémé to register my stunned silence.

  “In old francs!” Mémé said, and she and Franck laughed. “New francs never did make any sense to me.”

  “So that means it’s listed at 270,000 francs.” Franck squeezed my knee. “New francs.” Mémé shrugged her disapproval of this whole new francs business and went back to evaluate her dough.

  270,000 francs. To some that wouldn’t seem like much, but we had no income at the moment and now that I was turning my back on the possibility of law as a career, not even a solid prospect of one.

  “How much does the price translate into dollars again?”

  Franck punched a few numbers into his calculator. “$71,145 Canadian.”

  Once we were back in Canada, I had no idea what we would do for work. I was quite certain that the salary for a barista at Starbuck’s wouldn’t pay both a Vancouver rent (astronomical according to my friends who lived there) plus the mortgage on a place in France. Two hundred and seventy thousand. It seemed like a very, very big number – almost as ridiculous as twenty-seven million francs.

  “Let’s go for a walk.” Franck grabbed my hand and led me out. “We think better when we’re moving.” We found ourselves quickly on the path that wound through the vineyards. My legs felt heavy as they moved through the still, sticky air. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

  Franck’s eyes searched mine. He wanted this house. I knew that he would feel better moving back to Canada knowing that we had a house here that would always be ours. His family frequently told the story of a cousin of Mémé’s who’d left for America after the war to be with her soldier love and never returned to France again. Franck didn’t want that to be our future.

  “We have your grandfather’s forty thousand dollars.” His thumb rubbed the humid skin in the palm of my hand.

  That was true and it would help. But if we were to buy the house, did it mean Franck and I were finally embarking on our life as a married couple, or were we just extracting ourselves from the untenable situation in Oxford in order to pitch ourselves into another one?

  “I think we should offer the asking price,” Franck said, looking down at the pink vineyard dust that swirled around our ankles.

  “How are we going to pay the mortgage every month? What if we can’t find jobs in Vancouver?” The house needed a lot of work, and as far as renovations – especially in a house several centuries old – neither Franck nor I knew what we were doing. There were so many unknowns.

  “It’ll work out one way or another,” Franck said. “I know that it will.”

  “But…”

  “It will.” How I wanted to go through life like my husband and be certain that any path I encountered in life would lead somewhere interesting and good. “Remember the fireplace?” Franck’s hazel eyes glowed almost gold. “And the cheese cupboard?”

  Need seized me by the throat. Nobody could appreciate the cheese cupboard the way I could. I felt just like I did when I was eight and stood contemplating a massive double looping roller coaster in an amusement park in California. Should I get on? The wild part of me itched to jump on the ride and feel the thrill of losing control while the anxious part of me worried a pin was loose and I might plummet to my death.

  Franck watched me. He plucked a grape off a vine and popped it in his mouth. “Did you see the date that was carved in the stone at the bottom window of the neighbor’s house?”

  “Non.”

  “It said 1789. That must have been when the farm was built. Maître Lefebvre told me it was all one big house that was split up over the centuries.”

  “1789,” I
echoed. “The year of the French Revolution.” So when the Bastille was being stormed, our house was being built, stone by stone and huge oak beam by huge oak beam. Uh oh. Our house? A clap of thunder boomed close by and the clouds began to squeeze out fat drops of rain.

  I took a last, fleeting glance at the ground beneath my feet and braced myself for the ride. “OK,” I said to Franck. “Let’s offer the full amount.”

  Franck lifted me up and spun me around until the vineyards around us became a green blur. He planted a long kiss on my lips before setting me down – a kiss that made me feel as though I was home already. We grabbed each other’s hand and tried to outrun the storm.

  We were soaked by the time we got back but we were safely inside before the lightning started to crash all around Franck’s house. I hopped in the shower, mainly because I needed a few minutes of solitude to clear my head before we called Le Maître and made it official. I wouldn’t go back on what I said – I had been brought up to follow through on my commitments, hence the two years at law school – but I just needed a few minutes of quiet and hot water.

  When I emerged from the bathroom, still combing my wet hair, I was confronted with a full-blown celebration in the kitchen. Apparently, Franck had announced to his entire family that we were about to become property owners. Franck’s family never really subscribed to that whole “don’t count your chickens before they hatch” philosophy that I had been reared on.

  “It’s not done yet!” I protested to my husband. “We have no idea if they’re even going to accept our offer!” I was convinced in the deepest depths of my soul that to boast or even share hopes that something good was in the offing was to jinx that very thing.

  “It’s never too early to celebrate!” Mémé said and disappeared into the cellar only to reappear a few seconds later brandishing one of the bottles of chilled crémant she always kept on hand for impromptu festivities. “Franck, come here and open this for me!”

  A crack of lightning made the windows shake. It was too early. If anything would ruin our chances of pulling this deal off, it would surely be popping the cork on a bottle of crémant.

  “Franck,” I hissed. “We can’t celebrate yet.”

  Before Franck could answer, Mémé broke into an impromptu rendition of “Le Ban Bourguignon” – a traditional Burgundian drinking song that consisted of turning your hands and signing crescendos of “laa – laa – laaas”. It had surely become the Burgundian drinking song over the years precisely because it was hard to screw up even after prodigious wine consumption. Franck rolled his eyes and pulled me towards the door.

  “Why not? They’re happy because it means we will always be coming back here. Let’s just enjoy this moment with them.”

  “Remember what happened last time,” I reminded him. “What if we don’t get the house?”

  “At least we’ll have gotten a celebration out of it.”

  My heart was skipping beats and I was breathing too fast. “But it could jinx everything!” I had to make him understand.

  Franck studied me for a moment. “Instead of having such faith that things will turn out badly, why don’t you try to believe that they will turn out just fine - no matter what we do or don’t do? Do you really think that whoever is up there in heaven cares if we dance and sing and drink crémant?”

  “I just think - ”

  “Non.” Franck shook his head. “What you are doing is believing, not thinking. It’s a choice. The problem is that you do not believe in something that makes you happy. What’s the point of that?”

  Mémé came over, linked her arm in Franck’s and dragged him to the middle of the kitchen for an impromptu jig. I lingered by the doorway. Could I really just decide to believe something different? A door opened, just like it had when the Père Bard had said that in his opinion, God had put us here to have fun. Maybe I should try that.

  Still, it was with a vestige of unease – those old habits can feel scary to break – that I smiled at Mémé as she jigged over to me with a full glass in her hand. I tried very hard to let my reservations go.

  I had never met anyone who was more gifted for capitalizing on a moment of celebration than Burgundians, and the kitchen was soon full of Ban Bourguignons and one empty bottle of crémant quickly became two. Mémé kept leaping up to do impromptu dances of joy around the table. As far as she was concerned it was a done deal. Her cherished Franck was becoming a property owner and even if we were about to embark on that long and evil trip to the hinterlands of Canada, the Magny house – which she already thought of as our house - meant that we would be coming back.

  “I just hope I’m not dead before you get the keys!” she laughed. Judging from the way her feet flew over the kitchen floor, I had a pretty strong hunch Mémé would be around for our housewarming.

  Chapter 11

  At some point during the drinking and singing Franck remembered that he still hadn’t actually called Le Maître to tell him we were prepared to offer the asking price for the house.

  “We need to know the answer by the end of today,” I reminded Franck before he went upstairs to phone.

  “Right.” Franck was a tad wobbly, and grasped on to the doorjamb for support. I hoped he didn’t forget because we were leaving in – how were we ever going to pull this off? – three days. Franck came back downstairs after only a few minutes.

  “How did he sound?” I asked, but the crémant had taken the edge off my former urgency.

  “Drunk. But he did say he was going to call the owners right away. Hopefully he remembers.”

  “What do we do now?”

  Franck plucked up his glass and threw his arm around Mémé’s shoulder. “We wait by the phone,” he chuckled. “We should be getting good at that by now.”

  After fifteen interminable minutes during which every possible scenario circled in my brain several times over, I pulled Franck’s sleeve. “Do you think we should call him back? Maybe he’s forgotten,” I gasped. “Maybe he’s even passed out!”

  “I’ll wait until eleven o’clock,” Franck said. “If we don’t hear from him by then, I’ll call him.” Eleven o’clock in the morning was fifteen minutes away. An eternity.

  Eleven o’clock came and went. Franck called again but could only talk to the secretary. Le Maître had gone out for a rendez-vous, he was informed, and the secretary had no idea when he would return. We believed her, poor woman.

  After lunch Franck pushed back his chair. “Let’s go!”

  “Where?” I asked. We needed to stay by the phone.

  “To his office. We won’t leave until we’ve been able to get him to call the owners.”

  “You mean you don’t even think he’s called them?”

  Franck threw his linen napkin on the table. “I’m starting to have my doubts.”

  Fifteen minutes later we had zoomed down through the vineyards to Ladoix-Serrigny. Franck stalked up to the secretary’s desk and demanded to see Le Maître.

  “Mais…I don’t know when he’ll be in,” she protested.

  “We’ll wait.” Franck leaned against the secretary’s desk and signalled at me to get comfortable.

  The secretary frowned at us. She waved towards the ripped orange plastic chairs and dog-eared Paris Matches in the adjacent waiting room. “Monsieur et Madame Germain, please take a seat.”

  Franck’s smile didn’t veil the steel in his eye. “We’ll wait here, merci.”

  The secretary didn’t look happy, but she didn’t look particularly surprised either. She just shrugged and began typing again as though client protests were something she endured on a regular basis.

  There was plenty of time to suck several of the breath mints in a bowl on the secretary’s desk and to study the yellowing map of the Côte D’Or’s various wine appellations on the wall. I plucked up a copy of the free notary newsletter from a large stack and began to peruse an article about the convoluted French concept of usufruit that made my brain go numb. Thank God I wasn’t going back to studyin
g law in the fall. But then…what would I be doing? The thought of having no project at all made my hands tremble. What would I be with no project? I wouldn’t be a law student, or an entrepreneur, or a promising writer.

  I would just be me.

  Just then Le Maître breezed in, his tie askew. He granted Franck and me a vague smile that made it clear he didn’t recognize us in the slightest, then went on to harangue his secretary about the paperwork concerning the sale of some vines in Morey-Saint-Denis.

  “Bonjour, Maître.” Franck positioned himself between Le Maître and the door to Le Maître’s office, relieving Le Maître of a large pile of the papers that were rapidly slipping from his hold. “Let me help you with that.”

  “You really shouldn’t,” Le Maître protested. “Confidential, you know.”

  “I’ll keep my eyes closed,” Franck promised. Le Maître found his key and watched with resignation as we marched into his office. Franck set down the papers on Le Maître’s cluttered desk and turned to him.

  “Have you called the owners of the house with our offer?”

  Le Maître squinted at us. “Quoi?”

  I could feel Franck vibrate with frustration beside me. “The owners of the house we saw together yesterday morning in Magny. I talked to you on the phone a few hours ago and asked you to tell them we would offer the asking price but that our offer only stands for twenty-four hours. You told me you were going to call them right away.”

  It was clear that Le Maître suffered amnesia about the entire exchange. “Bah alors…no time like the present! Shall we call them now?”

  “Yes.” Franck’s teeth were so clenched I was amazed he was able to get the words out. “Let’s.”

  Le Maître picked up his phone and bellowed at his secretary to connect him to the owners of the house in Magny.

  Franck and I exchanged a glance. Thank God we had come.

  The owners answered after only two rings and Le Maître, after a garrulous bonjour, proudly informed them that, after much trouble and toil on his part, he had found a buyer for their house.