Judith Krantz

by Till We Meet Again

  “Now, now,” Anette de Lancel commanded hastily, “I absolutely forbid you to talk politics at the table. Especially not today. This is a great day for us, and you simply cannot ruin it! Jean-Luc, give Paul some more wine. And girls, I have a very special dessert for you.” She rang for the butler, satisfied that the men had subsided into silence. “If you like it, I’ll have the chef teach you how to make it. I always say that the mistress of a house must know how to cook, no matter how good a chef she has. Don’t you agree, Eve? After all, how else can you tell when he does it wrong?”

  “I agree entirely,” Eve said quickly as she watched Paul’s hands shaking with rage. Bruno’s admiration, she reflected, was not, after all, something she’d care to win. How could he be Paul’s son?

  When the long lunch was finally over, Delphine and Freddy went to their room to change into country clothes.

  “Isn’t it exciting, having a brother, Freddy? I think he’s absolutely marvelous, don’t you?” Delphine said to her sister the minute they were alone.

  “You’re welcome to my half of him,” Freddy answered.

  Delphine turned sharply in disbelief. Just because Freddy had been too shy to say boo to Bruno didn’t mean that she had to say something nasty about the handsomest boy either of them had ever seen. “What are you talking about?”

  “He thinks he’s hot shit,” Freddy said defiantly.

  “Marie-Frédérique! I’m going to ask Grandmother if I can have a room to myself. I don’t want to share with you anymore. You’re disgusting.”

  “Shit on a stick,” Freddy repeated. “With sugar on it.”

  Several days later, early in the morning, while the night’s coolness was still on the flowers, Eve went out to cut roses, carrying two long, flat, English trug baskets and one of the sharp pairs of secateurs that she had found in the flower room on the ground floor of Valmont, where three deep sinks had been designed to hold flowers as they waited to be arranged. Her mother-in-law had entrusted her with the task the evening before. “I always do it myself,” she had said at dinner, “rather than allow the gardeners to do it—the Valmont rose garden has always been my special pride. I was wondering—would it amuse you to do the flowers tomorrow, Eve?”

  “I’d love it,” Eve had answered happily, knowing that this turning over of a job no one else was allowed to touch was a sign of just how much her mother-in-law had changed toward her.

  “You do know …” the Vicomtesse said, and hesitated.

  “To recut the stems underwater?”

  “How did you know what I was going to say?”

  “My mother taught me to do that when I was a child,” Eve answered.

  “Did she also tell you to put a few drops of bleach and a little sugar into the water to make the roses last longer?” Anette de Lancel asked.

  “I’ve never heard of that. We used a centime in the vase. Does it work?”

  “Not terribly well, but I do it anyway.” The two women exchanged a look of camaraderie that mystified the men at the table, who had never anxiously eyed a cutting garden, trying to calculate whether the roses would be at their best for a party or whether they would be in one of their maddening interim stages, in which all the bushes would be covered with promising buds, but not showing any color, or, equally infuriating, whether all the flowers would be overblown the day before they were needed.

  The Valmont rose garden was reached through a series of tall hedges, severely pruned into an almost mazelike design, in which Lancel children had played hide-and-seek for centuries.

  Eve wandered about, secateurs poised, taking only the roses that were ready to be cut, for buds cut too soon would sometimes not open indoors. Nevertheless, both baskets were soon piled high with blooms, and although she knew it was taking a risk, she couldn’t resist piling them over-high, for roses left on the bushes even a day too long would, in the heat of summer, open too quickly and be wasted. Holding one of the overflowing baskets at arm’s length in front of her, and the other behind, she followed the narrow path back to the château. As she turned a sharp corner around a hedge, Bruno suddenly appeared, walking quickly on his way to the stables. Eve stopped abruptly, starting in surprise. The basket she held outstretched overbalanced and the roses all slid off onto the gravel path in front of her feet.

  “Oh! You frightened me,” she said in dismay, cautiously putting the other basket down. “I hope none of them is bruised.” Eve knelt down and started to replace the dozens of flowers as carefully and quickly as possible. As she picked them up and replaced them, one by one, she saw that several roses had fallen on top of Bruno’s riding boots, which were planted immovably on the path. She looked up at him, amazed that he had not yet begun to help her, and saw that he was standing with his arms folded tightly, his lips pressed together, staring straight ahead with an expression of impatiently withheld disdain, as if she were a maid who had splashed him with dirty water from a bucket, and was now mopping it up. Still kneeling, Eve mechanically continued picking up the roses, waiting for the wave of fury she felt to pass.

  “Bruno! What are you standing like that for? Why aren’t you helping Eve?” The Vicomtesse’s voice rang out as she turned the corner behind Eve and came upon the scene.

  Eve rose to her feet. “It’s all right, Anette. I believe Bruno doesn’t dare to risk the thorns. He seems quite petrified by them. Go on, Bruno, just run along and have your ride, like a good little boy.”

  That afternoon Anette de Lancel had arranged for Bruno to take Freddy and Delphine to visit the cathedral at Rheims. Freddy, however, insisted that she’d rather ride with Uncle Guillaume than explore any cathedral ever built. She would, in fact, have liked to have visited Rheims, but she couldn’t face an afternoon of being captive while she had to watch Delphine admire Bruno. If he were a movie actor, Freddy thought in disgust, Delphine would certainly be the founder and president of his fan club.

  Freddy loved Delphine with a depth of emotion, a feeling that was almost maternal, so primordial that she could never remember not feeling it. There had never been a time when Delphine hadn’t been in the foreground of her life, closer, in so many ways, than her mother or father.

  But when Freddy thought that Delphine was acting dumb, she couldn’t keep from getting mad. She had the conviction that she had been born to protect Delphine, as if she were the older rather than the younger sister. Freddy cherished her sister. Except that Delphine was maddening, so bubble-headed, so stubborn, so obstinate and so accustomed to getting her own way that she didn’t think that she needed protection and certainly didn’t appreciate it when Freddy tried to force it on her. So then they fought, and since Freddy was much the stronger of the two, she had to use words instead of blows. She wished she could give Delphine a good swat, Freddy brooded, as she trotted along with her silent uncle. Just on general principles.

  Her sister’s absence pleased Delphine enormously. She would never have been able to try her first cigarette if Freddy had been watching, she thought gleefully, as Bruno showed her how to inhale, passing her a lit cigarette, as he drove slowly along in the car his grandfather had loaned him for the afternoon.

  “I don’t really like it,” she confessed, disappointed by her acrid, incautious puff. “Still, it will make me look more grown-up.”

  “How old are you?” he asked indifferently.

  “I’m almost sixteen,” she answered, exaggerating by many months.

  “Then you’re approaching the dangerous age.” Bruno gave a short bark of a laugh.

  “Sixteen? Dangerous? My mother won’t even let me go out on a date until my next birthday,” Delphine protested. “Sixteen will only be the beginning.”

  “Well, your mother has good reason to keep you locked up. I suppose she’s afraid that you’ve inherited her tendencies,” Bruno said casually.

  “Oh, Bruno, stop being so silly,” Delphine giggled. Then she couldn’t decide if she should be flattered or not. “What do you mean, ‘tendencies’?”

  “
Surely you’ve heard … well, her background.”

  “Background? She’s from Dijon. Is that what you mean?”

  “Forget what I said. It isn’t important.”

  “Now that’s absolutely not fair!” Delphine said indignantly. “You can’t drop a hint and then tell me to forget it.”

  “Never mind, Delphine. Let’s just say that I think it’s remarkable how your mother seems to have rehabilitated herself. It just shows you what the passage of time can do—that, and the shortness of most people’s memory. Of course, your mother’s past has been hard on Father. But, on the other hand, he’s got you and Freddy to make up for it. I’m sure it was worth it to him.”

  “ ‘Past’? Bruno, you have to tell me!” Delphine demanded, blazing with curiosity.

  “Ask her yourself, if you want to know so badly.” Bruno lit another cigarette for himself, as if he considered the subject closed.

  “I think you’re just putting on an act,” Delphine said in a scornful tone that she had learned never failed to draw fire. She drew a tiny puff on her own cigarette and studied the countryside with interest. “How far are we from Rheims?”

  “I suppose you know where she started singing?” Bruno remarked after a few minutes of silence.

  “In Dijon, of course. She used to have private lessons from the best teacher in the city. Mother sings to us all the time. Freddy and I know most of her songs by heart. Of course, she doesn’t sing professionally anymore, but she’s constantly asked to sing at the most important charity benefits in Los Angeles,” Delphine answered proudly.

  “Is she indeed? Charity benefits? How very respectable.” Bruno gave a short laugh. “Did she tell you about running away from home to Paris?”

  “Bruno, no!” Delphine squealed in delight. “She didn’t! How exciting.”

  “It wasn’t exciting at the time,” Bruno said somberly. “It was totally … well, there’s no other word than … sordid. She was only seventeen when she ran away with a cheap, third-rate music hall singer. They lived together in Paris—as lovers—before she met our father and got him to marry her. Everybody said that she had other lovers as well.”

  “Who told you such terrible lies!” Delphine cried, beating on his leg with her fists. He pushed her away.

  “Both of my grandmothers, that’s who. Grandmother Lancel told me it was the reason why our father has been as good as ignored in his career. With his war record and his name, he should have been an ambassador by now, instead of being exiled as far from France as possible.” Bruno glanced at Delphine. Her face was averted.

  “My own mother’s mother, Grandmother Saint-Fraycourt,” he continued in a conversational tone, “told me that no one in Paris would have received your mother because of the scandal of her living openly with a man she wasn’t married to and working as a performer in a music hall—a place with clowns telling filthy jokes and parades of stark-naked girls. Then your mother came out to do her little turn, singing popular love songs in a bright red dress and red shoes—her signature outfit, I understand. She was known as ‘Maddy.’ That’s why I say it’s remarkable how she managed to turn herself into a perfect lady after she married Father. You have to admire her for that”

  “I don’t believe one single word! You’re making it all up!” Delphine shouted, in a fury of denial and shock.

  “Then ask anybody. If you think I’m a liar, ask Grandmother. Ask Grandfather. Ask your own parents. Every word is true I’ve grown up with the story. I’m amazed that they managed to keep it from you. It certainly explains why they waited so long to bring you back to your own country.”

  “We were posted abroad. We had to go,” Delphine said, beginning to sob. Bruno pulled the car over to the side of the country road and stopped the motor.

  “I’m really sorry, Delphine. Please don’t cry. Listen, I really thought that you must have known all of that—it happened so long ago that it doesn’t matter anymore. Come on, let me wipe your face. It hasn’t been good for me, you know, never knowing my own mother and not having a father either because he’s always been so far away. It was almost like being an orphan. How would you like to be brought up by grandparents?”

  “If you wanted a father, why didn’t you come to live with us?”

  “I wanted to! But my grandparents Saint-Fraycourt wouldn’t allow me to even come to visit. They’re very old-fashioned. They were certain your mother would be a bad influence on me.”

  “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!”

  “That’s the way they are. You’d have to know them to understand.”

  “I’d never understand people like that!” Delphine said passionately.

  “You’ll never have to. Look, I shouldn’t have said anything. Could we just pretend that you never asked me any questions, and I never answered any? Why bother about what a lot of old people think? Come on, Delphine, blow your nose. We’re almost in town. We’ll go to a café and have some lemonade and wander around. We might even take a look at the cathedral while we’re at it. Keep Grandmother satisfied.”

  She’d ask her mother, Delphine thought, as Bruno started the car. She wouldn’t believe Bruno or her grandmother. But what if her mother had run away from Dijon when she was seventeen? What if her mother had had lovers and lived with them?

  She never talked about when she was young and going to parties and meeting boys and getting invitations to dances and how she met Father, the way you’d expect. There was … there always had been … something. Not secret exactly, but something … unspoken, mysterious … something missing … something she couldn’t even name … a gap … that informed Delphine’s imagination that her mother was different from the mothers of her school friends. What if what Bruno had said was true? What if she had been … Maddy?

  Of course she didn’t believe him, but she wouldn’t say anything to anyone. She didn’t want to know a thing about it, Delphine thought defiantly. It was nobody’s business. She’d never even think about it herself. It didn’t matter. Even if it were true, it didn’t matter at all.

  After dinner, during the first week of the summer visit, Jean-Luc de Lancel asked his sons and Bruno to take a walk with him.

  “You’ll want to bring sweaters,” he said. “It seems cool to me tonight.” Paul and Guillaume exchanged a glance. Obviously, on this hot night, their father had an itch to visit his cellars, where, as in all of Champagne, the depth of the cellars hewn out of the chalky soil was so profound that from the hottest to the coldest day of the year the temperature never varied from a cool ten degrees centigrade.

  “I’m not going to bother, Grandfather,” Bruno said, and didn’t notice as Jean-Luc picked up a heavy jacket that was hanging in the coat closet near the door to the château and threw it over his arm, along with the extra sweater he’d brought for himself.

  So Bruno has never visited the cellars, Paul thought as the four of them walked along. I suppose he wasn’t interested enough. Or perhaps Father didn’t think he was old enough. After all, he didn’t invite Delphine or Freddy or even Eve, and the Lancel cellars were certainly more fascinating than anything else on the property. They were not anywhere near as large as the sixteen miles of cellars belonging to the giant firm of Moët & Chandon, nor as extraordinary as those of Pommery, in which the connecting galleries were each arched in a different way, in the Roman, Gothic and Norman styles, yet Paul knew that the girls would have liked to see them.

  A visit to any cellar of a major champagne-producing house was a revelation to anyone who thought of a wine cellar as merely dark, musty and cobwebby. The Lancel cellars were no exception The four men found themselves inside an underground town, well lit and well ventilated and paved, with broad, walled access avenues leading to narrower, walled streets that were regularly crossed by other streets, until, within a few dozen feet, anyone but a habitué risked becoming completely lost between walls seven feet high, made of thousands of champagne bottles lying on thin strips of wood, built up layer upon layer, until they for
med long, precise piles that were ten feet deep, protected at the edges of the cellar by chalk walls as smoothly finished as if by a mason.

  With a grimace of thanks, Bruno put on the jacket his grandfather handed him. Guillaume and Jean-Luc walked between the walls of the champagne as if they were hedgerows, stopping every now and then to pull out a bottle of particular interest and show it to Paul and Bruno.

  “Every one of our vineyards has been replanted since the plague of phylloxera first attacked them—there isn’t an unhealthy vine left in all of Champagne, as far as I know,” Jean-Luc said thoughtfully “I suppose one shouldn’t complain but it seems unfortunate that, with the Depression, the price of grapes should have plunged People can’t afford to drink our wine, it seems. Orders are way down, is that not so, Guillaume? Prohibition hasn’t helped, either. However, we of Champagne have seen worse days and I have no doubt that we’ll see better ones before long.”

  As he spoke, he stopped at a wall that marked the end of the cellars. Bruno looked back, unable even to guess at the location of the entrance to the cellars, dumbstruck by the size of the caves. He shivered slightly and took a step backwards, evidently unwilling to listen to his grandfather’s discourse in the cold.

  “Just a minute, Bruno. I have something to show you. Every Lancel must be informed of our family’s safeguard, for who knows what the future will bring? Or how soon? Guillaume?”

  The Vicomte pointed toward the wall, and Guillaume pressed firmly on a section of chalk no different from any of the others, except for a slight scratch on its surface. It swung away from the wall on a concealed hinge and revealed a metal lock. Jean-Luc de Lancel took a small key from his key chain and, inserting it into the lock, opened a door in the wall, made out of massive blocks of chalk many feet thick. Total blackness lay beyond the door. He entered the darkness before the others and switched on a battery of lights. Before them lay another vast cellar, filled entirely, except for the access streets, with gleaming ramparts of champagne. The wine, in piles of twenty bottles high, could almost have been bars of gold, so brilliantly was each bottle dressed in its two gilt labels with its upper neck and cork covered with festive gold foil.