by Aubrey Flegg
It was a day or two after Gaston’s departure that Colette stood in front of Louise’s portrait again. The girl looked shy, almost apologetic, as if remembering what she had said the last time. Louise thought of Pierre and how she had listened to him and silently encouraged him to tell her his problems.
‘What were you thinking about, little Dutch girl … Louise, isn’t it? All those years ago. You were asking a question, weren’t you? But it wasn’t just any old question … it was about life, wasn’t it? And who were you asking? Do you want to know about me?’ Louise could feel the girl’s hunger for companionship, but it would have to be nursed; acceptance would have to come from her. Let her ask her questions and let her feel that she was answering them herself for the moment. All Louise could do was try to spread about her the warmth of friendship. Little by little Colette began to talk, telling her about Papa Morteau, and how kind he was; how she had an ally in a miller down by the river, but how, otherwise, she was on her own. Madame Morteau still saw her only as a replica of her dead mother, while Margot, though entertaining, was not someone in whom she could confide. There were so many questions Louise wanted to ask, but here in the kitchen there were too many interruptions. She needed peace and time to develop a relationship. Madame Morteau unwittingly came to her aid.
‘That old picture is in the way, Colette. Ask Margot to help you take it into the parlour, no one ever goes in there
now.’
Louise threw caution aside. ‘No!’ she said, in silent appeal. ‘Colette, ask her to let you take me to your room, please!’ To her relief, Colette took Louise’s suggestion as her own and begged Madame to let her take it. ‘It will be company for me while I am on my own.’
It was a delight to be in the light again after the dark of the kitchen, and Louise was enchanted with Colette’s room. It was so like her lovely attic bedroom in Delft. She encouraged Colette to talk to her and the communication began as naturally and as easily as it had with Pierre. After all, they were both like shoots from the same vine. The things that Louise wanted her to ask about were the things Colette wanted to say. ‘Tell me about Gaston, before he went away,’ Louise pleaded. Colette told her of the day he had sung the ‘Marseillaise’ and Louise laughed at the image she created. ‘I wish I’d been there,’ she said. ‘And then he rode off without even waving goodbye to you.’
Colette stiffened. ‘How do you know that?’ she demanded. Louise, realising she had stepped on thin ice, had to think quickly. ‘I was there when you greeted him when he arrived, and you reminded him of it,’ she said. ‘It must have been awful seeing him go off to war?’
‘I wanted to die,’ Colette murmured. Then, as if accepting Louise as an ally, she said more strongly. ‘I ran away, you know. I couldn’t stand it here. I had to do something.’
‘Tell me,’ Louise urged.
Colette began her story. After a while she stopped addressing the portrait. It was awkward having to look up at it from where she was lying against the pillows on her bed; it seemed as if she imagined that the girl she was talking to was sitting in the chair that stood beside the dressing table. ‘One minute he was my hero, and next he was riding past swaying in his saddle like a drunken lout. He had said he would wave; that was all I wanted. But he didn’t. So I ran away.’
‘Where did you run to?’
‘Oh, I tried to walk home …’
Louise listened in silent sympathy as Colette told about the journey that led to the terrible discovery of the burnt-out shell that had been her home. Then she spoke of the sense of peace she had felt when she had revived under the cool breeze from M. Brouchard’s hat. ‘It was like waking to a new life, Louise. I knew then that there was no going back.’ She explained how kind M. Brouchard had been to her, but her words were becoming blurred and her sentences disjointed. Louise noticed her eyes flutter and close. Touched by her bravery, Louise bent over her and whispered:
‘Sleep well, my little dark-eyed friend.’
Colette’s breathing was gentle and easy. Perhaps the relief of telling the story of her rebellion had relieved her; she looked peaceful but weary. But Louise was too charged with energy to fade and spent the quiet hours of the night thinking about her story. She liked the girl. She was glad Gaston had not fallen for some limp flower who would not stand up to him. If she had to share him with anyone, then she was glad that it was someone like Colette. But as she watched her sleeping she couldn’t help but feel a small twinge of apprehension. No, that was silly, everything was lovely now, she told herself as she pushed it firmly to the back of her mind.
CHAPTER 13
The Winemaker’s Assistant
It must have been raining. Louise could catch the astringent smell of moisture on dry ground. A distant roll of thunder grumbled and died away. It wasn’t the storm, however, that alerted Louise to Colette’s presence, but the way she was moving about the room. Louise had been looking forward to hearing more about the girl’s life, but the feeling she got from her now was one of hostility, and these sudden movements made her wary. Colette appeared to be dusting, picking things up and wiping them before putting them down again with a thump. There didn’t seem to be any purpose or pattern to what she was doing, she was just ‘being busy’ for the sake of it. Whenever Louise attempted to reach out to her she encountered an impenetrable barrier. They had been so close the night before; what had happened? Louise was frightened of forcing herself on her new friend, and withdrew like a tortoise into its shell.
She realised that Colette had come over and was standing somewhere near her portrait. The picture frame shook; she was dusting it. Now the duster was passing lightly over the painted surface. Then the canvas shook as Colette gave it a sharp flick with her duster. Louise was taken aback, and felt her anger rising. She had been prepared for Colette to have doubts about her appearing in her room last night, but she hadn’t expected her to take it out on her picture. Colette moved away and stood looking out of the window, humming to herself, beating time to the tune with little jerks of her duster, as if she had found the flick to Louise’s face satisfying.
‘Is that the tune that Gaston sang to the mob the day he went away?’ Louise asked, keeping her voice as normal as possible. ‘The cadets used to sing it in the barracks in Paris.’ Colette’s duster missed a beat, then picked it up again; she had heard Louise, but she wasn’t replying. Colette began to sing the words, her tightened lips flattening the syllables.
‘Allons, enfants de la Patrie! Le jour de gloire est arrivé … ta ta mm mm mm …’
‘I wish I’d heard him,’ Louise said. A distant flash of lightning momentarily lit the inky cloud that framed Colette’s head. As if the lightning had struck her, the girl spun around to face Louise’s portrait, her hands gripping the windowsill behind her.
‘Did you appear to Gaston like you appeared to me last night?’ she demanded angrily.
Louise was taken aback. Why would Colette be upset by that? Then the reason for the girl’s anger struck her like a blow. Her first instinct was to deny any relationship with Gaston and to play for time, but Colette seemed armed for combat; there was no room for prevarication.
‘Yes,’ Louise responded. ‘I sat with him when he was sick, because he asked me to. He had rescued me from a canal, and he had caught a chill as a consequence.’
‘And after that? He carried your picture everywhere, didn’t he? The boys told me. He kept it in his rooms. Did you appear to him there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did he ever …’ Louise thought she was going to say, “touch you?” but Colette’s imagination had led her much further than that. ‘Are you … are you his mistress?’
Louise was dumfounded. His mistress? Where had the girl got that idea? She was Gaston’s friend! She might even admit to being in love with him, but she was not his mistress. How could anyone think such terrible things of her? Stifling her anger, she tried to see the situation from Colette’s point of view. Only last night she had sat with Colette here in the
intimacy of her bedroom. No wonder she was suspicious. And Louise had heard enough talk in the barrack rooms to know that such situations were not uncommon in France at that time. In the Delft of her childhood, loose morals, if they existed at all, were either concealed, or smiled at in ‘Merry Company’ pictures, where laughing men drank wine and consorted with loose women.
She felt as though her lovely relationship with Gaston had suddenly become soiled. But it had been her fault; she’d been too innocent. And now poor Colette had spent a miserable day wondering if – God knows how – Gaston and she had been lovers. How on earth could she explain?
‘Colette de Valenod, listen to me please and believe me because you will eventually understand. I am not Gaston’s mistress, neither in act nor in mind … Yes, I have shared Gaston’s rooms and his thoughts, just as I am sharing yours now, but I know for a fact that he has never once looked on me with lust or even with attraction above that of friendship.’ She realised that this ran perilously close to a lie; Gaston had flirted with her, but she recognised now that that was all it was. It was nothing like the feelings he had for Colette, much as it hurt her to admit it.
Colette heard her out, but her face was still sullen, and Louise guessed that she had worked herself into such a state of suspicion that she was just looking for spectres with which to torture herself. Louise tried a different tack. ‘There is, however, one girl who Gaston does carry in his mind.’ Colette looked up, her eyes flashing. Louise was glad, as sullenness did not become her. ‘You would recognise her! She sits under a gnarled old tree looking down into a roadway below; it’s as if she’s waiting for someone to pass.’
‘He was thinking of that?’ Colette sounded surprised and pleased. ‘He went away without waving,’ she whispered.
‘Well, that’s the image of you he carries in his mind. Was that the last time he saw you?’
‘No. He came back for the grape harvest a year later.’ Colette’s voice was warm with happy memories.
‘Tell me about it,’ Louise urged.
Colette’s face lit up and Louise imagined that same face looking up at Gaston as he rode down the slope, ‘… the beauty you see today,’ he had said. Somehow Louise had found the spring that restored Colette’s faith in life, and she began to tell Louise all about that month when Gaston had come home for the grape harvest and love had gone to their heads like new wine.
It wasn’t easy for Louise. How she would have loved to have been in love again, as she had been with Pieter, free to laugh, and tease, and joke, and steal kisses as they had high in the Oosterport back in Delft. But Colette’s laughter and happiness were too infectious for jealousy to endure. And Gaston wasn’t Pieter. He belonged to Colette, and Louise would just have to love him by proxy. They would share him and love him equally in their different ways.
Late that night while Colette slept, Louise thought about the future, and her mind took a more serious turn. Hearing about Colette’s love for Gaston had only shown her how deeply she loved him herself. It was foolish to think that they really could pool their affections; three friends together. She had seen Colette’s possessiveness, and she had felt her own surge of jealousy. Ultimately one of them would have to yield, and Louise knew which one of them that would be. What would she do then? Retreat into her picture while her friends grew old about her? Allow herself to become an ageless aunt, a ghostly figure hovering on the edges of their lives? No, when the time came she wouldn’t linger; she would move on, or just take a different path – to where she didn’t know – but she would have to be ready when it came.
She walked over to the window. A full moon silvered the road and the square; nothing moved. Her eyes travelled further, to where a film of mist lay over the river. Above and beyond that was the dark line of the forest, notched at the point where the road to the west snaked out of sight between the trees. Somewhere down that road lay the chateau; she imagined it bathed in moonlight, a fairy castle in a forest glade. The road seemed to be drawing her. She laughed and shivered slightly in the night chill. Colette’s flick on the canvas today had reminded her of her picture’s vulnerability. Her special box had kept her safe enough while Gaston and the boys were there to look after her, but her picture had nearly been destroyed in the canal, and there wouldn’t always be a Gaston to rescue her. Maybe she would be safer in a place where she was not so conspicuous, somewhere like the walls of a chateau, where there were bound to be other paintings?
That might be a path for the future, but for now Louise was determined to live fully in the present. She was prepared to enjoy herself. First she must teach Colette how to bring her with her when she went around the winery and into the vineyards. She thought about her father and how she would have insisted: “tell me all there is to know about everything!”
Summer was approaching and there was no sign of Gaston returning. The rhythm that Paul Morteau set for the working of the vineyard was based on the calendar of his forefathers. When the French government had announced that the year would now be divided into twelve months of equal length, starting on the day of the declaration of the Republic, the only thing he liked about it were the names given to the months.
Germinal, or ‘Seed Time’, is followed by Floréal , ‘The Time of Blossom,’ he explained to the vines he was inspecting. ‘Don’t worry though if you still think of them as April and May, just don’t let Monsieur Brouchard of the Revolutionary Committee hear you.’ He looked up with a start of mock surprise, as if he hadn’t known that his friend, the miller, was standing over him. His little performance over, he said, ‘They are a good class this year, les enfants; discipline is good,’ and he waved an appreciative arm towards the serried ranks of vines that climbed the slope above him. Then he straightened his back and looked over to where the vines that the Count had gifted to his influential colleagues were growing, untended. ‘Look at them, the hooligans, completely out of control.’
‘Why don’t you take them on? Whip them into shape?’ said Jean. ‘The new owners would pay you, no doubt.’
‘No, I won’t.’
‘Is that wise?’
‘Probably not, but one can’t make wine from those grapes alone. You see, those vines are not favoured by the sun; they were ragamuffins even before they were allowed to grow wild. However, what is a class without its ragamuffins?’ he smiled tolerantly. ‘They had their place. One can have too much sweetness, too much culture; in their right proportion those grapes gave our vintage, how shall I say … its oomph! But the new owners know nothing of this; all they want is to be able to tell their bourgeois guests: “This is the wine from my very own vineyard.” No, I will not turn out vin ordinaire for them or for anybody. There is only one way that I will make wine for others and that is from the whole vineyard.’ He dusted his hands on his trousers. ‘But you didn’t come up here to sit in on my class. Colette here will mind them, won’t you, my dear?’
‘Certainement, Monsieur le professeur,’ replied Colette with a curtsy, and watched the two friends walk down between the rows towards the winery. There they would spend a happy hour among the vats discussing village business. From time to time they would draw a sample up from one of the barrels by dipping in a long tube, sealing it with a finger and then releasing the wine into a tall glass. This they would hold against the light of a candle to judge its colour and its clarity.
‘They are a pair, aren’t they,’ she said as Louise materialised beside her. ‘Why didn’t you stay? Nobody other than me seems to see you?’
‘Oh I wasn’t far away, but sometimes I feel uneasy. I think there are people who are more perceptive than others and who might see me, even without my portrait. It feels as if they can pick up the image you are creating for me. Young Pierre is one, and now your Monsieur Brouchard. I really like him, and he likes you, perhaps that’s how it happens. It was he who rescued you when you ran away, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ Colette smiled as she remembered.
For a while she continued to tie back tendrils t
hat were blocking the path between the vines. Over the last months she and Louise had become constant companions. Colette had devised a more suitable dress for Louise than her green silk, just as Gaston had thought up a uniform for her so that she could ride unhindered. The new costume was the simple outfit of a country girl: a skirt with a detachable bodice and a blouse of unbleached linen. An apron kept the front of the skirt clean. The sabots that completed the outfit felt to Louise like her native Dutch clogs. If Jean Brouchard had in fact seen her she would have seemed just a typical French country girl with, perhaps, unusually fair hair peeping out from her headscarf.
During the day Louise would be present or absent, depending on Colette’s work. As Colette didn’t like housework, she had no wish to share it with Louise, but Louise did ask that she should think of her when Margot was around. Margot was their main window on village life. The village sports, however, gave Colette a welcome opportunity to involve herself in a local festival.
‘Lucien… Lucien,’ the girls chanted teasingly, leaning forward towards their blindfolded hero. ‘Give me your last kiss before you’re married!’
It had been a day of triumph for Lucien at the village sports. He had lifted and carried the ‘testing stone’. This was a smooth and gripless boulder that lay all year among the nettles at the edge of the sportsfield, waiting to be lifted and carried: one … eight… fifteen… and then today an incredible twenty paces, by none other than Lucien himself. Margot shrugged and pretended indifference. He had gone on to wrestle his way through a field of men and boys like a scythe cutting nettles. Now, because, in theory at any rate, he was to be lost to them through his engagement to Margot, the unattached maidens had started their chant: ‘Lucien… Lucien …’