“Ah, Robert!”
A man was waiting by the wooden arched door of his cave. A painted sign swung above the door, announcing Brissac and son, Wine Merchants, established 1782 and as if to prove it, a picture of a small round man with his head happily thrown back as he downed a glass of wine, was painted on the old wood beneath the legend.
Robert Brissac couldn’t have looked more different than the little painted man. He was tall, reed thin with collar length dark hair which was liberally sprinkled with grey. He was old, I thought, older than my father. But when he greeted Étienne his lined face relaxed into a broad smile and I saw that they must have been about the same age and that stern exterior was not due to age.
“This young lady is Eleanor, our visitor,” said Étienne and he put a hand between my shoulder blades and gently pushed me forward. The heat from his hand on my back added to my confusion and I must have looked like a silly little girl as I blushed through my reply to his polite remarks.
“Ah, trés jolie,” Robert said, his dark eyes probing my face. As he shook my hand he looked over my head to Étienne. “Something different at Riverain, eh?”
“Yes.” I could hear the small choke in Étienne’s voice and looked round, curiously but he seemed no different than seconds before.
“And Madame Martin, she is well?”
“She is, thank you. She is teaching Eleanor to cook. They are great friends.”
It was so strange. Madame Martin. He meant Grandmère. Mathilde and Jean Paul weren’t mentioned or referred to. It was as if they never existed.
Robert fixed his gaze on me. He had dark, deeply set eyes which seemed as though they would permit no dissembling.“Now, where in England do you live?”
“In the Pennines.”
He frowned and then shook his head slowly. “I don’t know that area. What is your nearest big city?”
“Manchester. We live about twenty five miles away, up in the hills.”
“Ah,” he nodded. “Now I know. The north of England, yes? I was never there. Étienne and I spent time in Scotland then down to the south of England before…”
He stopped at that point and looked at his friend. I was surprised to see Étienne gently punch Robert’s shoulder before winking at me.
“Robert and I learned to do many things in Scotland.” He laughed softly. “Things that we needed later. Isn’t that so, Robert?”
“Yes, my friend.” Robert heaved a sigh. “But we must forget all that now. We have to talk business. Yes?”
He led the way through the shop and we walked a narrow path between racks of wine and stacked up crates into a well lit back room where a desk was pushed against the limestone wall with two chairs beside it. I noticed that Robert walked with a slight limp and when he pulled chairs up to the desk I saw that his hands were bent with the fingers terribly out of shape. I wondered what had happened to them.
“Papa?” A girl had come through the shop into the office. She was my age, I thought, tall and thin like her father with dark hair cut short in straight bob.
“Jeanne, how timely. You know M. Martin, of course.” The girl went up to Étienne and shook his hand warmly. “And this is,” her father continued, “this is Miss Eleanor, his visitor from England.”
We shook hands and I was glad that I’d changed into my pink frock. She looked quite smart in a grey, knee length dress with a white Peter Pan collar and a row of tiny mother of pearl buttons down the front. I wondered if she was wearing school uniform.
“Étienne and I have business to discuss. Perhaps, my dear, you’ll take Miss Eleanor for a little walk?”
We walked out of the shop and onto the lane beside the river. It was very hot again and I could feel the hairs on my arms prickle under a sheen of sweat as we strolled up the road towards the bridge. A few curious glances came my way as people nodded to Jeanne or stopped briefly to shake her hand. She seemed to know everybody.
We sat on a bench beside the bridge and I watched men with fishing rods leaning against the metal railing throwing their lines into the water. I thought about the other night, when Étienne had put his arms around me and knew I was blushing.
“Are you too hot?” asked Jeanne.
“No, I’m fine,” I said quickly. “I found it difficult here at first because this area is so much warmer than where I live but I think I’m used to it now.”
“Are you still at school?”
“Oh, yes. Are you?”
“Of course.” She made a disdainful face. “I’m not going to end up mending nets or serving in cafes like the stupid girls around here. After university I shall be a lawyer. In Paris, perhaps.” She looked back over her shoulder down the road to the cave where her father and Étienne were discussing business, before continuing, “then I shall come home and take over. Papa will be ready to retire.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know what to say and I hoped that she wouldn’t ask me about my plans. I’d have to lie, if she did. I changed the subject. “You seem to know everyone round here.”
“I do or rather everybody knows me. We are an established family. My father is famous, you see. He’s a hero. A war hero.” She smoothed a hand down her glossy hair and then straightened her collar. I wondered how she remained so neat and cool on this baking afternoon. My linen dress was wilting badly and I knew that tiny curls were already twining damply around my hairline.
“What does your father do?” Her questions were rapped out as though she was already a lawyer. I thought she would have no problems in a court room and worried that she would see through my vague answer.
“We have a farm, a hill farm. We run sheep.”
“Oh,” she said. “And do your brothers help on the farm or are they going to continue their education?”
She sounded so adult, so like my teachers in school that I began to wonder if she was older than she looked.
“No,” I said. “I have no brothers nor sisters. My mother helps with sheep.” I didn’t say anything about my father’s illness. I didn’t want to think about it.
Jeanne nodded. “I too am an only child,” she said, her face very solemn, “but my mother was killed in the war by the Germans. My father relies on my constant companionship. Sometimes he is ill and his wounds still hurt dreadfully but he never complains. Oh, he is a truly remarkable man.”
I turned my head away from the anglers on the bridge to stare at her. To my unsophisticated ears what she said sounded extraordinary. In my experience children didn’t talk about their parents that way. Clearly, she worshipped Robert Brissac.
Two boys on a bicycles sped along the lane shouting and laughing to each other. They came to dusty screeching halt beside us. Jeanne Brissac frowned and flicked the raised specks of sand from her skirt. “Did you have to do that?” she grumbled.
They laughed and then looked at me. “Who’s this?” one boy asked. He was small with a foxy narrow face and big ears. “Your cousin, perhaps?”
“No, certainly not.” The very thought seemed to horrify her and I suppose I should have been insulted but the insult, if indeed it was one, passed over me. I accepted her attitude as I accepted everything in France. Simply a cultural difference. It was easier for me.
“This is Miss Eleanor. From England. She is staying with Monsieur Étienne and Madame Martin.”
“Étienne Martin who worked with your father during the war?”
Jeanne nodded and I smiled, hoping for a friendly conversation.
“And Mathilde,” spat the other boy, taller and more heavy set. “The collaborator.”
My gasp was audible and Jeanne stood up and pulled on my arm. “We must get back,” she said. “My father will be waiting.”
I looked back at the boys once, as we walked away. They were watching us with their heads together and suddenly one boy made his hand into the shape of a pistol and pretended to shoot me. I was bewildered. “What did he mean?” I asked. “About Mathilde.”
“She was friendly with the Germans when we were occupied
. That was a very bad thing.”
“But they don’t despise, Étienne, I mean M. Martin?”
“No,” she answered. “He was very brave and fought in the Resistance with my father. He saved my life when I was a child.”
He saved her life? How? I wanted to ask so many questions about Mathilde and Étienne and was frustrated once again by the snippets of information that kept being revealed.
“Jeanne,” I started but got no further for we had arrived back at her father’s cave and she was leading the way through the shop. Suddenly she stopped and held her hand up.
“Wait.”
From the office at the back I could hear raised voices. “I can’t.” That was Étienne’s. “I have planned it so many times and God knows I want to so much.”
“You must.” Robert Brissac’s voice had the unmistakable quality of leadership. “Those were the orders given. As far as I know, they’ve never been rescinded.”
“Come on,” Jeanne went further into the shop, knocking her arm clumsily against an empty rack and when we got to the office the two men were sitting by the desk, holding up glasses of wine to the light.
Étienne and I left soon after. I had shaken hands with Jeanne and Robert Brissac at the door and he had complimented me once again. “You’re a pretty girl with excellent French. We could have done with someone like you during the war.” When he said goodbye to Étienne, he gave him a meaningful stare. “Remember what I said,” he muttered.
I was still going over what Jeanne Brissac and those two boys had said when I got into the van beside Étienne and he was quiet too, although his fingers drummed constantly on the window frame.
We drove the first few miles in silence then Étienne cleared his throat and turned his head to me. “I’m thinking of extending my vineyard,” he said, his voice loud in the rattling van. “Robert believes that my grapes are too good to go to the co-op and that I should go back to producing my own wine. We used to, you know, in my father’s time but when I took over I wasn’t keen. I thought cattle and the dairy would be better.”
“It will be hard work, I think,” I murmured, absently, trying to push away thoughts of Mathilde, being a collaborator.
“It will. I’ll have to buy hundreds of plants, take on workers and get new machinery but, oh,” he shrugged and swung the van violently in his usual way onto the side road that led to Riverain, “Robert thinks I need a new beginning. That things must change and he will help me make that change.”
He carried on, noisy now, cheerfully telling me his plans and ambitions for the farm while I sat beside him in that rattling, swerving van staring silently ahead at the shimmer on the road while my mind was a furious muddle of conflicting thoughts.
We drove into the yard and came to one of Étienne’s shuddering stops. “What is it, Eleanor? Why are you so quiet?” he asked, not moving from the van but sitting with his hands on the steering wheel and his eyes fixed on the open door of the barn in front of us. “You are thinking of your parents, maybe?”
“No.” I shook my head.
“Then what? Have I upset you?”
“Jeanne Brissac said that Mathilde was a collaborator.” The words fell out of my mouth almost without my forming them and I was immediately horrified at what I’d said and waited, my stomach churning, for him to shout at me, to get into a rage like he did with Jean Paul and to throw me out of the van or even ban me from the house. I could see myself packing my few clothes into the pigskin suitcase and walking down the road to the village. I was sure that the British Consul would help me if only I could remember his number.
There was a long silence while I chewed my lip nervously even drawing a speck of salty blood, before Étienne heaved a sigh. “Yes,” he muttered. “She was. She went with the German officer who was billeted here and perhaps with others.” He shrugged, his voice cold and bitter. “Oh yes, Mathilde would certainly go with others.”
I swallowed. What had I done bringing this into the open? How could I have been so cruel? “I’m sorry, Étienne,” I whispered, not noticing that I had used his first name. “I know it’s none of my business…it was just …” What? What was it? Surprising? No, not really. I thought of the newspaper cutting and what was happening in the picture. It was clear that the village had been taking revenge but then, why was she still here?
“I’m so sorry,” I repeated, hating to see his previously cheerful face still and drawn, “I shouldn’t have mentioned….”
“Hello!” Lisette had poked her little head through the van window. She had danced home from her afternoon at the d’Amboise’s and was pink with excitement.
“Oh, Eleanor,” she squeaked. “I’ve had such a lovely time.”
I tore my head to the side and put on a smile. “Have you? Well, you must tell me all about it.”
As I walked to the kitchen door with Lisette’s hand tucked in mine I heard the van door slam and glancing back, saw Étienne standing uncertainly by it. He was watching me, his face creased into a frown and a shiver ran down my back. Our friendship must be over.
I hoped that Mathilde would give supper a miss that evening. Surely, after my finding her entertaining a man in the grape barn, she wouldn’t have the face to sit beside me throughout a meal. Maybe she would go into town, have something to eat there, in a bar or wherever she usually went. With her friends. With men.
I told Grandmère what Jeanne Brissac had said while I was drying the lettuce.
“Huh!” she snorted, waving floury hands in the air, “that girl should keep her stupid mouth shut.”
“It wasn’t her fault, really. She introduced me to some boys and they spat when Mathilde’s name was mentioned. Anyway, Étienne said it was true.”
“You told him?”
I found myself squeezing the lettuce so tightly in the tea cloth that my hands hurt. “Yes,” I muttered, knowing that my cheeks were scarlet. “I didn’t mean to but…it just came out.”
“Never mind,” Grandmère growled. She was standing beside the stove where the large black frying pan spat and crackled with hot olive oil. Her fingers were busy dusting different types of small fish fillets in flour and as I watched she threw a cube of bread into the frying pan to test the temperature.“It is no secret, not around here,” she added, scooping out the frizzled bread and carefully lowering the first two fillets into the pan. “But we had hoped that you would be spared our shame.”
I let my breath out, feeling calmer and stopped squeezing the lettuce. It was very dry and I shook out the leaves carefully before putting them into the salad bowl. Automatically I smashed up a clove of garlic in some butter and after smearing it on a piece of bread, buried it into the lettuce. “Shall I do the dressing?”
“Yes, but be careful with the vinegar. Not too much. And quarter some lemons”
We hadn’t mentioned the morning’s events yet and I knew that Grandmère would winkle the whole story out of me before the day was over, but Jeanne Brissac’s ‘stupid mouth’ was enough for her for now.
“Drain the beans,” was her next order and she continued to fry the fish whilst I drained the tender little beans and putting them swiftly back in the pan, swirled in flecks of butter and black pepper.
“Good. We’re ready now.” She picked up the platter of fish and went to the dining room, leaving me to follow with the dish of beans and another of fried potatoes. The panicky feeling I had after telling Étienne what Jeanne Brissac said came back and my stomach was churning with the prospect of facing him at the table. Would he want to talk to me? Would he even look at me? For a moment I considered leaving the vegetables on the kitchen table and rushing upstairs to my room. I could plead illness. Nobody would believe me, of course, but it would be easier for everyone.
I lowered the dishes onto the table and wiping my hands on a cloth edged towards the door which led to the back stairway. Once through it I would be on my own, away from these strange people, most of whom had reasons to hate me now. A tear began to squeeze itself from my
eye.
“Come on, Eleanor. We’re waiting.” Grandmère had appeared at the kitchen door and as I looked up she nodded to me. “It will be alright,” she said.
When I passed her, going through the door, carrying the dishes, she touched my shoulder and somehow those bony fingers gave me the courage to face the dining room. I thought I could face Étienne now.
I could and it was alright. But what I hadn’t bargained for was the presence of Mathilde, who was sitting audaciously in her place and who flicked me a vicious sneer as I sat beside her.
Chapter 14
I couldn’t believe that she was there. Behaving as though this was a normal evening, peering unconcernedly through her curtain of black hair and doing her usual silent mouthing across the table to Jean Paul. Had she forgotten what had happened this morning? What she’d said to me?
Of course she hadn’t, she was probably revelling in it and loving the fact that she was making me uncomfortable. I was utterly dismayed, lonelier than I had been minutes before and it was at that moment that my feelings for her crystallised. She’d been rude to me, ignored me, forced Jean Paul not to like me and then this morning had absolutely terrified me. I hated her.
I looked across to Jean Paul. He sat waiting for his meal, his eyes flicking this way and that, his cheeks scarlet. It was obvious that he was in an agony of embarrassment. Even if she was prepared to brazen it out, he was finding it almost impossible and was longing to escape like I’d been only minutes before. Did I feel sorry for him? No, I don’t think that I did.
When I Was Young Page 16