Vintage

by Rosemary Friedman

  In reply to Clare’s question as to why there was now to be no wedding, Charles-Louis shrugged. He stepped over the pile of battered leather suitcases which the taxi driver, displeased with his meagre tip, had abandoned in the courtyard.

  ‘Changement d’avis. Send somebody out for my things.’

  The end-of-the-harvest party took place in one of the disused cellars which had been festively decorated for the occasion.

  That there was something to celebrate, that Clare’s gamble to wait until the grapes were fully mature before she brought them in had paid off, was in no doubt. Albert Rochas, tired as he was – as they all were – had been heard to express his satisfaction at the culmination of his year’s work, and even Jean Boyer who had finally come to terms with both Clare and the inox, in which the new wine was fermenting, allowed himself a smile.

  Only the Baron refused to join in the festivities. Despite Clare’s invitation, he insisted on taking his solitary dinner in the salle-à-manger as usual.

  ‘Will you be going back to Florida, Papa?’ Clare was curious.

  ‘I have thirty orange groves in Florida.’

  The sarcasm of his tone, which had once succeeded in diminishing her, left Clare unmoved.

  ‘I thought that Laura Spray…?’

  ‘Laura Spray is neither here nor there.’

  From the contempt in his voice, Clare deduced that the woman he had been about to marry had been erased from his mind as if she had never existed. Her father’s ability to turn his back on women, as Baronne Gertrude had once turned her back on him, never to give another thought to those he wished to strike from his mental agenda, had not changed.

  One person who had been delighted with the news that the wedding would not now take place was Biancarelli, in whom the Baron detected a subtle change which he was at a loss to explain.

  When Charles-Louis had told her, almost as an afterthought, during his afternoon visit, that he had been thrown out of the Palm Beach mansion and that the wedding was cancelled, Biancarelli had, to his surprise, put affectionate arms round his neck.

  ‘Ce n’est pas la fin du monde, Bianca!’ he said, submitting to her embrace.

  ‘I didn’t say it was the end of the world, Charles. Je suis tellement heureuse.’

  ‘Happy?’

  ‘La reine de Palm Beach was not for you.’

  Biancarelli’s concern was reflected in their lovemaking.

  Dressed as usual in her guêpière, she had, with all the little tricks at her disposal, convinced him that he was the great lover, reassured him of his manhood, dispelled any lurking doubts that he was unloved. Her ministrations were marked by a new tenderness towards him which took him by surprise. He asked her if anything were wrong.

  ‘Je suis malade.’

  ‘Ill?’ Charles-Louis was impotent in the face of illness. ‘Have you seen a doctor?’

  ‘There is no cure.’

  ‘Rubbish. What is the matter?’

  ‘You would not understand, Charles.’

  ‘Ah, a woman’s complaint.’ There was relief in his voice.

  ‘Men can suffer from it too.’

  ‘Now you are talking in riddles.’ He was not into innuendo.

  Watched speculatively by his mistress from the depths of her lace-trimmed pillows, the Baron left her bed and put on his clothes.

  ‘A demain, Bianca.’

  ‘A demain.’

  Although Charles-Louis could not quite put his finger on it, something about Biancarelli was different. At a loss to explain it, he decided to ignore it. Unable to live without women, he had never tried to understand them. It was not worth the effort. There didn’t seem to be much point.

  Clare left the Baron, whose every movement was watched by Rougemont, to his solitary dinner. In the cellars, where the rowdy pickers were already assembled at long tables beneath the giant bunches of black balloons, symbolising the black grapes, which hung from the low ceiling, she took her place at the top table. Flanked by her chef de culture and her maître de chai, surrounded by the exhilarated troupe, who had worked so hard to bring in the Château de Cluzac grapes, she gave herself up to the merriment and allowed herself to become exceedingly drunk on her own wine.

  Sidonie and her kitchen staff had excelled themselves. A triumphant version of her potage aux légumes, heavily impregnated with chives and basil from Monsieur Louchemain’s herb garden, preceded a Gigot Brayaude, local lamb cooked until it could be eaten with a spoon, accompanied by blackberry jam. This was followed by Clare’s favourite tarte aux mirabelles, served with great bowls of yellow cream, whipped together with icing-sugar, over crushed ice, until it was thick.

  The intervals between the courses were enlivened by enthusiastic songs from a dozen different countries accompanied by improvised music played on guitars and accordians. It was hardly surprising that the meal took four hours to consume.

  When at last it was finished, the youngest of the harvesters, a boy from Andalusia, noisily egged on by his companions, approached the top table. Red in the face with embarrassment, to the accompaniment of wolf-whistles, he handed over the gerbaude, the traditional bouquet of flowers presented annually to the château owner by the pickers.

  Kissing the boy on both cheeks, amid ribaldry and catcalls, Clare accepted the bouquet. Overcome with emotion, she rose, with some difficulty, to her feet.

  ‘So many countries are represented here…’ She wondered why the room appeared to be unsteady. ‘So many countries are represented here, that I shall stick to English, and hope that most of you will understand. First of all I would like to say how much I appreciate your patience and understanding…’

  She waited for the mocking cheers to die down.

  ‘…in waiting for the grapes to become completely mature, and for working so very hard to make this such a wonderful harvest. As most of you who have been coming regularly to pick the Château de Cluzac grapes will know, this is my very first vendange. Thank you for making it what promises to be an outstanding one. I am sure you would like to show your appreciation to my maître de chai, Monsieur Jean Boyer…’

  The applause reverberated round the cellars.

  ‘And my chef de culture, Monsieur Albert Rochas…’

  Albert stood up bowing. It was the moment that made all the pruning and the spraying the fertilising and the ploughing worthwhile.

  ‘…who are the real stars of this evening. Merci, danke schön, danke, gracie, muchas grazias to all of you, and a special thank you for these wonderful, wonderful flowers.’

  The cheering grew frantic. Clare held up her hand.

  ‘Before you leave Château de Cluzac, before you go back to your own countries and your day jobs, I would like you to join me in a toast to the spent vignobles of Château de Cluzac, which have performed so extraordinarily well. This will be followed by “Auld Lang Syne” with the words of which, I have it on the most reliable authority, you are all familiar.’

  Clare filled her glass from the bottle on the table.

  ‘The vineyards of Château de Cluzac!’

  The toast, accompanied by tears and laughter, echoed round the cellars. Glasses were filled and emptied, instruments struck up, and two hundred white table napkins were waved above the heads of the troupe as ‘Auld Lang Syne’, in a variety of strange accents, hit the rafters.

  As Clare linked arms with Jean on her left, and Albert on her right, she caught sight of Halliday Baines, who had been called away to deal with a faulty temperature gauge at Kilmartin, pushing his way between the tables towards her.

  ‘Clare…!’

  ‘“Should old acquaintance be forgot…”’ Singing enthusiastically, Clare smiled as he approached.

  ‘Clare!’

  ‘What is it?’

  Leaning across the trestle table, Halliday shouted to make himself heard above the noise.

  ‘Sidonie wants you…’

  ‘Now!’

  Halliday nodded.

  ‘What does she want?’


  ‘Search me. She says it’s urgent.’

  Disengaging her arms from the cellarmaster and the chef de culture and imagining some domestic disaster, Clare made her way through the chains of swaying bodies to the kitchens, where Sidonie, surrounded by a mountain of empty pots and dirty dishes, was cradling the telephone receiver.

  ‘C’est Monsieur Jamie…’

  ‘Jamie? At this hour!’

  Jamie should have been at the party, but the flights had all been fully booked. Clare took the receiver from Sidonie.

  ‘Jamie?’

  ‘Sorry to drag you away from the celebrations…’

  Clare was overtaken by a giant hiccup.

  ‘Whoops! I’m afraid I’ve had too much to drink.’

  ‘Look, I do not really quite know how to put this…’

  In a moment of drunken clarity, and feeling her heart sink, Clare said, ‘It’s Grandmaman, isn’t it?’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘We’re very close. I’ll come at once.’

  ‘There’s no need. Baronne Gertrude died at ten o’clock this evening. Louise rang me. It was very peaceful. Father Aloysius was there.’

  ‘Poor Grandmaman. I’ve been so busy… I’ve been meaning to call her.’

  ‘Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings. It was what Baronne Gertrude wanted. I’ll speak to you tomorrow, darling. Try to get some sleep.’

  As she replaced the receiver, suddenly grown heavy, an Australian voice broke into her thoughts.

  ‘Thought you might want these…’

  Halliday gave her the gerbaude, long roses and Arum lilies.

  ‘My grandmother is dead.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. Anything I can do?’

  Clare shook her head.

  The flowers were trembling.

  Taking the bouquet from her, and putting his arms round her, Halliday kissed her on the lips. His mouth was warm and concerned. She drew away from him reluctantly.

  ‘I’d better tell Papa.’

  Forty-four

  The funeral service of Baronne Gertrude de Cluzac was the first of the family funerals to be held in the chapel of Château de Cluzac since that of Baron Thibault, twenty-six years previously. Although it was to be a private affair, a few of the Bordelais closely aligned to the estate had come along to pay their respects to Baron de Cluzac and his daughter.

  Entering the little chapel behind Charles-Louis and Tante Bernadette, who had returned to Château de Cluzac for the first time since she had fled from it to Notre Dame de Consolation, Clare had noticed, through the gloom of the traditional black veil Sidonie had insisted she wear, Jean Boyer with a red-eyed Sidonie, an ill-at-ease Albert Rochas and his family, Claude Balard with his wife Marie-Paule, the notary Maître Long, Halliday Baines, whom she scarcely recognised constrained in a suit, Alain Lamotte paying exaggerated court to Delphine in designer black, which was sculpted to reveal her early pregnancy, and, to her surprise, a heavily veiled Biancarelli.

  Settling into the front pew, together with Jamie, who had come to Bordeaux for the day, Viola, who had been fond of Grandmaman, and Nicola and Hannah, who had insisted on accompanying Jamie, Clare thought that, although it was some time since she had been in a church, a funeral, like a wedding or a baptism, was one of the few occasions when the Christianity in which she had been raised came bobbing, uninvited, to the surface. It was as if what was happening to Grandmaman today was what the Church had been banging on about ever since she had been little.

  It had been a week of turmoil. Grandmaman, who had been growing increasingly weak, had finally and uncomplainingly succumbed to acute intestinal obstruction. Only Louise, who had spent a night-long vigil on her knees, had been by her bedside together with the priest and the doctor who, unable to talk his patient into any treatment, had at least ensured that her exit from the world was painless.

  Charles-Louis, who had not spoken more than a few words to his mother in twenty-five years, had travelled to London to collect her body (managing at the same time to fit in a visit to his tailor), and, while Clare was busy overseeing her new vintage in the cellars, had dealt with the formalities and made the arrangements for the funeral.

  In the little room off the chapel in which Grandmaman’s coffin lay surrounded by flowers, the estate workers and the neighbouring château owners – including the old Comtesse de Ribagnac, who had had to be assisted from the room – had come to pay their respects. By the light of the guttering candles, Clare had read the letter which Baronne Gertrude had left for her.

  Ma chère petite Clare,

  That ‘machine for living’, my tired old body, has finally given up. You thought that I was sanguine about what I knew very well to be the gravity of my condition. Like any human being, I was apprehensive at times, but I learned as a child how to control my thoughts in the face of danger.

  Since I have been going downhill, unable to play bridge any more, or even to go out, I have had plenty of time to think. Life, Clare, is very much like the Cours Albert le Grand. You are sent to school at an early age without being consulted. You get a great deal of work assigned to you (which helps you to grow) and are tested on it at frequent intervals. At the end of it all is the final examination, at which it will be decided whether you graduate or fail. This pattern is reflected everywhere, not just in life but in literature, from the Bible to the Odyssey of Homer, through Hindu and Buddhist scriptures to the Koran.

  From the Church’s point of view, the journey, through life is governed by God’s plan of creation, sanctification, and salvation: birth, sin, reconciliation death, judgement, and verdict, the so-called ‘cycle of redemption’. Christ went through it all himself and took his mother through it, so we know about it ahead of time and there is no need to be afraid.

  As I write this, my sins have been forgiven and my atonement made, and I look forward to going straight to Heaven to enjoy for ever the presence of God. Put flowers on my grave for a while if you will, but from my point of view, outside of time, my body, the temple of the Holy Spirit at baptism destined for everlasting life, has already risen, and here I am.

  I am so sad not to be here to witness your marriage. Jamie has been a rock. He never misses a Tuesday. It’s a long way for him to come, although I believe that he has friends in Holland Park. The more I talk to Jamie, the more I care for him. He reminds me so much of your grandfather, and not only in build. Jamie is as strong-minded as Thibault. He knows exactly where he is going. Thibault and I were always a team, but there was never any doubt who was team leader. Jamie has shown me nothing but kindness and respect and I know that, given his head, he will make a princely husband.

  Though you will lay me to rest in the chapel at Cluzac where my coffin will be placed beside that of my beloved Thibault, you and I will not be parted (remember the resurrection of the dead). A person does not cease to exist or lose identity (immortality of the soul), death will never break the bonds that exist between us (communion of the saints), and the living Church will be there to comfort and embrace you (unity of the faithful). If bodily death separates us, then Christianity makes no sense at all.

  As I enter into everlasting life, I pray that yours on earth will be as blessed as the happiness you have given to your Grandmaman. Je pense à toi.

  Gertrude (Baronne de Cluzac).

  As the funeral liturgy was completed – by the order of the Baron they would not celebrate the Mass – the young priest from Pauillac, who had not known Grandmaman, adjusted his cassock and took his place at the lectern to deliver his homily. There would be no eulogy, no dwelling on past glories or on achievements in the face of the great equaliser, death.

  ‘“Men fear Death, as children fear to go in the dark: and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other. Certainly the contemplation of Death as the wages of sin and passage to another world is Holy and religious: but the fear of it, as a tribute unto nature, is weak…”’

  ‘Francis Bacon,’ Jamie whispered.

&nbs
p; As the young priest went on to speak, in suitably muted tones, of God’s compassion and love and of his promise of resurrection and of everlasting life, Clare looked at the coffin girded by the book of Gospels, a few fresh flowers, and a cross, which lay before the altar. The white pall beneath it, like the square of starched linen used at Mass to cover the paten and chalice – the Body and the Blood of Christ – was a sign of life; an echo of the mantle worn by the French monarchs which demonstrated that the office did not die with the incumbent.

  On occasions such as this, she wished she could go along with it all. It would be nice to believe that she and Grandmaman would not be parted, and that when she went back to London, everything would be as it had been; that they would sit over a gigot and a bottle of Château de Cluzac in the Hyde Park flat, while Grandmaman and Jamie pitted their literary wits against each other.

  Glancing at Viola, wearing a skirt rather than her habitual jodhpurs, who had done her limited best as far as Clare was concerned, she thought that it was Grandmaman who had been her real mother and that, notwithstanding all the crap about everlasting life, Grandmaman was now dead.

  Looking round the congregation, Tante Bernadette in her grey coif praying silently, Charles-Louis stony-faced, she realised that she was the only one weeping.

  Picking up a worn, gold-embossed book for his final recitation, the young priest at the lectern removed a leather marker from it and lowered both his eyes and his voice:

  ‘“The world was all before them, where to choose their place of rest, and Providence their guide: they hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, through Eden took their solitary way…”’

  ‘Paradise Lost,’ Jamie whispered.

  Baronne Gertrude had stipulated the readings, as she had the ‘March of the Hebrew Slaves’, which would accompany her to her last resting place.

  Sprinkling the coffin with holy water in a final commendation, the priest bade farewell to the deceased. With a nod to her only son, Charles-Louis Eugène Bertrand, he signalled the mourners to escort the body to the private cemetery behind the chapel, the last resting place of the de Cluzacs.