Vintage

by Rosemary Friedman

  As far as companionship was concerned, Viola had taken as a lover a lecturer in jurisprudence from the University of Cork, several years younger than herself.

  When Clare had written that she was engaged to be married, it had brought Viola’s age home to her. It seemed no time at all since she had left Château de Cluzac, a period of her life over which she had drawn a veil; and, when she thought of her at all, she still thought of Clare as a child.

  Meeting Clare and Jamie at Cork Airport, Viola kissed her daughter and, looking up at her future son-in-law, appraised him, as if he were a horse, for hands and girth.

  Leading the way with Clare to the mud-spattered Range Rover in the car-park, Viola, who had assessed the situation, took her arm.

  ‘It’s good to see you. Is it Jamie brings you to Ireland?’

  Clare, who favoured her father only in respect of the de Cluzac nose, which she had inherited and which could be identified on many of the portraits of her ancestors, said, ‘It’s really about Papa…’

  Viola, with some difficulty, extracted the car keys from the pocket of her jodhpurs, which she wore tight as a second skin.

  ‘I had a feeling it might be. I think Charles-Louis is up to something. He’s been pestering me for a divorce. Is he still bonking everything that moves?’

  Seven

  Viola was more skilled on the back of a horse than at the wheel of a car. While on the hair-raising journey from Cork Airport, Clare conjectured why after all these years her father should suddenly be demanding a divorce, the object of her speculation, Baron de Cluzac, sat at the head of his solitary table in the château dining-room, with Rougemont (grandson of Desirée) at his feet, and contemplated the sale of his château.

  That he had not informed his daughter of his immediate plans was deliberate. He had not as yet finalised the arrangements for the disposal of the château, the details of which were no one’s business but his own, and there was time enough. She was not the only member of the family who was involved and who would be required to sign a pouvoir in the presence of Monsieur Long, the notary, before the sale of the estate could be proceeded with.

  Although Charles-Louis himself owned forty-eight per cent of the family home, twenty-four per cent belonged to his older sister Bernadette, the Mother Superior of Notre Dame de Consolation, a Toulouse convent, twenty-four per cent to Clare, and the remaining four per cent – as executrix of Baron Thibault’s will – to his estranged mother, Baronne Gertrude.

  His decision to dispose of Cluzac had been precipitated only partly by the fact that, after twenty years more or less on his own, he had decided not only to remarry but, in a move practically unheard of for a château owner, to eschew the Médoc with its vines, for Florida and its oranges.

  The resolution to deliver the château, which had belonged for so long to his family, and in the vaults of which many of them were buried, into the hands of strangers had been precipitated in part by the financial difficulties in which he found himself and in part by his attachment to Laura Buchanan Spray.

  With a low boredom threshold, an innate restlessness and his insatiable penchant for vintage cars – in particular those American in origin, from the 1950s – Charles-Louis was an inveterate traveller.

  Leaving Cluzac in the hands of his loyal and capable staff, many of whom had been in the service of the Barons de Cluzac for three generations, and who were, if the truth were told, better off without him, he shuttled frequently to Paris and Geneva, and took off regularly for Argentina, Australia and Japan. He travelled not so much on vineyard business, but to pursue his hedonistic lifestyle and augment his collection of automobiles, on which he squandered a very great deal of money.

  March, when he had finished skiing in Gstaad (with his current paramour), found him at the Concours d’Elegance in Palm Springs, April at the Cavalcade of Classic Cars in Anaheim and May in Palo Alto. In June he visited the Vintage Thunderbird Club in Hannibal, Minnesota, while Pismo Beach and Lakeport, California, accounted for much of July.

  He had been in Florida, tracking down an early MGA 1600 Roadster, when he had been invited by Hunter Watney, who had cornered the market in citrus (financed by the exploitation of illegally imported Cuban and Haitian refugees), to a Republican benefit dinner at the residence of Senator Hubert Spray, whose personal fortune alone was reputed to be in the region of seventy million dollars.

  Charles-Louis’ fastidious pedigree and title, a rare cachet in Palm Beach, assured him a seat not only at the Senator’s top table, but at the coveted right elbow of his hostess, the forty-five-year-old Laura Buchanan Spray, reigning queen of the Palm Beach set.

  Although Laura, dressed tonight in a tight-fitting sheath of white sequins, which reflected the light from the myriad candle bulbs of the glass chandeliers, was surrounded by some of the most pampered and elegant women in Florida, her blonde good looks and statuesque beauty were unchallenged.

  Buchanan, her first husband (well, not exactly her first but she had drawn a veil over the student of architecture she had married at the age of seventeen), had been a Californian meat magnate. He had succumbed to a cerebral embolus, following triple bypass surgery, after ten years of a not unhappy marriage, leaving a widow who was extremely wealthy even by Californian standards.

  Not unnaturally, the lovely, upwardly mobile Laura Buchanan, dismissing the fortune-hunters who buzzed round her like so many flies, was extremely selective in her next choice of partner. Although she had never met him, Hubert Spray, a tall, extremely handsome, sixty-five-year-old Senator (highly respected in political circles and close to the ear of the President), who, sadly, had buried his wife on the day of what was to have been their ruby wedding, seemed the ideal candidate. Having circled his picture in Newsweek, Laura Buchanan, availing herself of the network she had built up, applied herself to the task in hand.

  Using the owner of a TV station, an admiral of the fleet and a Californian congressman – with all of whom she had affairs – as stepping-stones, she made her unerring way to her objective. Eighteen months later, a small paragraph in the Washington Post announced that, in a private ceremony, Senator Hubert Spray and Mrs Laura Buchanan had celebrated their marriage. The fact that the Senator was sexually impotent, owing to the inherited diabetes which he had difficulty controlling, was not mentioned.

  Slinging out the comfortable furniture and ‘mumsy’ drapes of the first Mrs Spray from the Senator’s Georgetown duplex, Laura had summoned Magda Mojinsky, the New York decorator, to ‘do it over’, before turning her attentions both to making her presence felt in the Senator’s office (any request had to be filtered through her) and finding a second home worthy of her social aspirations.

  After two weeks searching in Florida, she came up with a stone-built mansion in a prime location, designed and built – by a strange quirk of fate – in distinctive Mediterranean Revival style (with Spanish, Moorish, Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance influences) by her first husband, whose services were now much in demand.

  The U-shaped, pavilion-like house, gated for privacy and security, was entered by a flight of steps leading up into a massive, vaulted space, part hallway and part cloister. It was built round three sides of a patio, furnished with palms and an ornamental pond, and was ideal for outdoor entertaining.

  The living-room had antique cut-crystal doors, was hung with Chinese glass paintings and Venetian sconces, and was entered through double columns guarded by ‘Pompeiian’ figures. The hundred-year-old chimney-piece was from a château in the Pyrenees, and the chandelier, suspended from the elaborate ceiling, was custom-built by Dennis-Leen of West Hollywood.

  The landscaped gardens, which boasted a terrace overlooking extensive lawns, were embellished with statuary and giant eucalyptus trees. In them were a lake, fountains, rose-garden, tennis courts, swimming-pool (with stained-glass windows and a thirty-foot ceiling), and a Japanese tea house whose spiral columns echoed the motifs of the chimneys.

  The entire property, which reeked not so much of
the 1200 new rose bushes planted by Laura, but of new money, could have been dropped down in the 150 hectares of Cluzac and scarcely noticed. Charles-Louis, beguiled not only by its mistress (not to mention several of her exceedingly glamorous friends), but the sybaritic outdoor life and by the Laura Dear, an ocean-going, fully crewed yacht moored on the waterway, found it instantly appealing.

  The benefit dinner, at which Laura Spray had focused the full beam of her attention on Charles-Louis, at the expense of the influential newspaper proprietor on her left, had been followed by a suggestion that the Baron feel free to make use of one of the mansion’s numerous guest suites whenever he was in the vicinity. It was an invitation of which Charles-Louis availed himself frequently.

  Never averse to killing more than one bird with a single stone, Charles-Louis had not only invested heavily in Hunter Watney’s lucrative orange groves, but became Laura Spray’s lover in the king-sized bed in the heavily swagged bedroom overlooking the rose-garden, where, although she did not, in truth, care all that much for sex, she went out of her way to please him.

  When the ailing Senator, whose blood pressure was too high and who did not pay sufficient attention to his diet, suffered a fatal stroke in the Upper House, Laura Buchanan Spray’s fourth husband had long been designated. Regarding the title ‘Baronne de Cluzac’ as the apotheosis of her stratospheric climb, after an appropriate interval she made her move.

  At the time of Laura’s ultimatum, marriage or ‘out’ (she was not one to mince words), Charles-Louis, who was not yet divorced from Viola, had not for a moment been considering taking a second wife. His decision to do so was precipitated not merely by the attractions of life in Florida, where, because of his business interests he now spent a great deal of time, but to the fact, which came as a complete surprise to himself, that he had grown attached to the strong-minded and highly decorative Laura Spray, whom he both lusted after and needed.

  Although the Baron had taken Laura frequently to Cluzac, where she had, to the horror of Sidonie, been unable to resist replacing the torn and faded curtains and slinging out threadbare carpets, she made it abundantly clear that she had not the slightest intention of living in Bordeaux. Openly snubbed by the surrounding patrician families, whom she found insufferably snobbish and turned in on themselves, she could not wait to get her prospective husband away from his icy château and the damp winters, which she tolerated only for the sake of Charles-Louis, whom (rumour having reached her ears of his weakness for women) she was determined to bring to heel.

  Under the watchful eye of Sidonie, who stood statue-like by the door monitoring his every movement, the object of Laura Spray’s affections carefully removed the bones from his delicate alose, the ‘rich man’s fish’ which appeared in the river with the melting mountain snows and whose disappearance coincided with the flowering of the vines. Helping himself to the accompanying sauce, made from parsley, onion, bayleaves, garlic and olive oil, he pondered on the forthcoming sale of the château, the complicated negotiations for which were now in their final stages.

  Of the three final contenders, Claude Balard, owner of Balard et Fils (wine merchants), prominent member of the Syndicat des Negociants, and his long-time negociant, had been rejected on the grounds that Charles-Louis not only distrusted the man (conflict between growers and merchants was too ingrained for any real co-operation to be possible) but disliked him intensely, and that his ambition to own the château was based purely on social pretensions.

  Alain Lamotte, the likeable young Director of Assurance Mondiale, was harmless enough – with a charming Parisienne wife, Delphine, and two exemplary children – but his offer, although extremely competitive, was, in view of the trump card held by the third contender, no longer acceptable.

  Philip Van Gelder had, as a result of certain business dealings into which the Baron did not delve too deeply, been kicked out of South Africa. The only way he could liberate the funds he had tied up in the country was through a complicated, elaborate and illegal cash scheme that required him to invest them in a wine-producing estate for which he was willing to pay well over the odds. For reasons of his own, and which were mooted in private by the two men, this suited the Baron admirably.

  This morning, standing beneath the ‘Médoc blue’ sky, among the serried vines, which were just beginning to flower, Charles-Louis and Van Gelder, unbeknown to either Claude Balard or Alain Lamotte, but watched by Sidonie as she hung out the billowing sheets in the garden of her cottage abutting the vineyards, had shaken hands on the deal.

  Prompted by a conscience that did not bother him overmuch, Charles-Louis had extracted a promise from the prospective owner that he would continue to care for the loyal staff and retainers, many of whom had been at Château de Cluzac for years and had known no other home.

  Van Gelder, dressed in sharp slacks and canary-yellow pullover, which bore a designer logo, had put an arm round the shoulders of the Baron’s well-worn English sports jacket.

  ‘Don’t worry about it!’

  Acknowledging Van Gelder’s reassurance, the Baron chose to ignore the fact that the wine-grower from Franschhoek was lying in his teeth.

  Bothered by a premonition that her future and that of her husband, Jean, the Baron’s maître de chai, was in the balance, Sidonie, wearing a starched white apron and white ankle socks, her face immobile, removed the plate on which lay the skeleton of the Baron’s fish and poured a little wine into the Baron’s glass.

  Although she watched his every movement, and monitored the comings and goings in the château and in the chais with the vigilance of a well-trained hawk, Sidonie rarely spoke to her employer. When they did communicate, the conversation was brief and to the point.

  On this occasion, the Baron, having merely sniffed the wine, addressed her without turning his head.

  ‘Il est bouchonné!’

  ‘Oui, Monsieur.’

  Removing the glass, Sidonie retreated to the pantry.

  Although it had not been intended as a personal rebuke, the suggestion that the wine was corked offended her. She knew that the Baron’s comment referred not to the fact that the bottle had been clumsily opened, but that the wine had a stale, woody smell and taste owing to oxidation. Had she not been so preoccupied with what she had witnessed that morning in the vineyard, she might have detected the foul aroma herself.

  Drawing the long cork from a new bottle, she examined it carefully before returning to the dining-room where she poured the claret into a clean glass and stood stiffly to attention while the Baron tasted it.

  When he had signified his approval by the merest nod of his head, Sidonie half filled the glass, turning the bottle expertly at the last moment so that no drop was spilled on to the polished table, before serving the Baron with his côte de veau.

  Making a mental note, before the week was out, that he must visit his sister, Bernadette, at her convent in Toulouse, the Baron dispatched his customary four-course lunch in silence.

  When he left the dining-room it was without so much as a glance in Sidonie’s direction. Leaving the château by the stone staircase, he jumped into his car in the sunlit courtyard planted with tropical palms and hung with wistaria. With the wheels of his 1958 Plymouth Sport-Fury spinning in a cloud of gravel, he exited beneath the stone arch and set off for Bordeaux to visit his long-time mistress, Beatrice Biancarelli.

  Eight

  ‘See that!’ Viola said impatiently. ‘There’s no point at all in deliberately placing the horse at his fence. That’s the horse’s job; it takes years of training and experience…’

  Jamie had forgotten to bring a raincoat. With his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched and water dripping from his hair and down his face and neck, he leaned against the perimeter fence while Viola, who wore wellington boots and an anorak and seemed unaware that it was raining, pointed out to him the finer points of show-jumping, in the art of which two riders in long macs – visitors from Holland – were being instructed.

  Leaving the
jumping paddock, she led him across a mud-swilled path to the stables, where several horses, their faces framed by open wooden shutters, mournfully regarded their approach.

  Approaching a Belgian-bred gelding with a quivering black body and a shock of hair which fell over one eye, Viola took his face between her hands. ‘This is Ardargh. I bought him last week at the High Performance Horse Sales. The first horse we’ve bought in a long time. We usually breed our own. Buying at auction is nerve-racking. He should make a top three-day-eventer. He found it strange coming here. We had twelve horses in Millstreet at the International Show. This one…’ Moving on, she reassured a feisty-looking black horse. ‘Squire’s Mount, top show horse in England for four years – attaboy! – he’s just been out now for exercise this morning; he’s home bred. I wouldn’t get too close. This is Falstaff. He’s eleven years old. An All-Ireland Yearling Champion. He’s the foundation stallion. Out of the best line of Irish breeding. All our young horses are by him. He’s done very well for us. So you have. He has three full brothers, leading stallions. We keep the horses until five or six years and then we sell them. Over here’ – Viola led the way to a barn – ‘we have a trekking centre…’

  The journey from the airport had taken them past the Ban-Ard Cash & Carry and Mother Kelly’s Beer Garden. Their erratic progress – the Touchstone Tavern (‘Hot Lunches a Speciality’), Terh O’Connor’s Funeral Service – down narrow country lanes and over the Shehy mountains, was impeded every now and then by flagmen on the road, and by slow-moving tractors noisily appropriating half the carriageway. With Viola cursing at the wheel, they finally rounded a bend to come, without warning, upon the Fitzpatrick Equine Centre, a low-built stone house and outbuildings, which had once served as an army barracks, where the appearance of the Range Rover was greeted by the hysterical barking of what seemed to be a great many dogs.